Work's Up!

Sweet spot on the wall, for my work at the Faculty Exhibition...

Breaking the Mold - Exhibition

A little late on the draw, this show is only up through August 27th. Breaking the Mold is currently on view at the AR Gallery at the Creative Alliance in Baltimore.

I was asked to be a part of this exhibition of past Creative Alliance educators, and I got to see a whole metric TON of my MACA/MFACA peeps while I was there, too. I guess we all tend to gravitate that way, for at least a minute. I worked at CA for 3 years at the start (I am still at the start, really) of my teaching career. I miss teaching the kiddos. This was the first year that I didn't teach any little ones at all; just adults for me. I did notice, and I am sad about it...in the new year I will work on that again.

Anyway, this was my piece... In the Round (but it's really not, sometimes I just like to be contrary). Also, the heavy shadows give away the illusion (space). I'm not sure if that helps or hurts me in display. Still nice to see the art that lives in buckets in my studio, to get a chance on the wall for once. Happy to be a part of the show!

Of Women and Time

I am revisiting a series. It's mostly about my mother and my grandmothers. I started this series several times already and stopped...then I created two lesson plans out of it in the last month (one for college students and one for little bits). Today I woke up and realized that the concept of time and memory was really important to me...duh. I wrote this shortly thereafter, everything finally made sense, and the words flowed like fine wine.

Of Essence and Time

We construct our own time, we color memory and nostalgia as we see fit. But how do we express the measured, yet ethereal? Is time linear? What does it look and feel like? How do we visually express a full life, or a portion of a life; a period of time, maybe last week, or today, this past hour? If you had to represent time and memory through touch, what would the experience be like?

Of Essence and Time is a series which deals with issues of time and memory through texture, line and mapping. Originally based on past low relief pieces, then developed as a lesson plan for students, I return to the concept to further my own understanding of "time", and in part, to have a solid record of my own remembering. 

As an artist with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, the past can often be evasive. I have lost as many soft and sensitive memories, as I have large, definitive chunks; important periods that I really shouldn't be able to lose, but have. I find myself constantly chasing time, begging it to leave me more residuals, some residue, any kind of physical mark, proof. I feel the loss greatly when there are gaps. I fear it gets worse as I get older. This is little bits of my time and memory, fragments from the missing, collected visually.

 Ode to a Knitted Rainbow Scarf, 2013

 

Oh! Also a Show!

I forgot because this was sprung on me at the last minute as well...one of my pieces will be in The Highlandtown Arts District Association Exhibition, which runs October 26 through the Closing Reception on November 2, 530-730pm. I think Los Muertos will be in the Amelia Rothschild Gallery upstairs at the Creative Alliance...it's a multi-locale exhibition for people who live and work in Highlandtown (that's me, at the Creative Alliance!)

Anyway, this is a sort of bad photograph, but I had to pop one off all fast-like, early yesterday morning before the drop because I had altered it from it's original. This is a somewhat normal practice for me...the tweaks...however it means I sometimes have to shoot new photos of the work before it leaves the studio. Since I only had about 12 hours notice of the exhibition beforehand, it was a mad, mad morning; one with way too little light. I'll be sure to get a better photo at the exhibition. If it's installed today, I just might be able get the image while I'm at work this week.

But here's the crappy version until then:

Los Muertos

yarn, acrylic on canvas

Exhibition announcement: http://www.creativealliance.org/events/2013/highlandtown-arts-district-association-exhibition

Hope to see you there, Bmore!

Chosen

Last night I attended Lotta Art for School 33 Art Center at Silo Point in Baltimore. My work has been accepted for the past two years into this lottery-style benefit. Last year my piece was chosen at the last minute. I was excited that I didn't have to go pick it up again, quite frankly. I was delighted it was chosen, but I was in the midst of my final thesis right around the pick up time.

This year I was speaking to a friend and missed the big moment where my piece was chosen (not a stretch, given how many mispronunciations of my name are actually possible), but when I looked up I did, indeed have a red dot. I stuck around and pounced on the patrons when they requested a gallery assistant to remove the piece from the wall. I got 'em right before they left. The above piece, Keepsake, is no longer mine.

Yarnz

I felt compelled to work with yarn. I don't honestly know what happened other than a few general impressions I had and continue to have. This is a work in progress for sure...I am still exploring.

My impressions of yarn are of comfort, they remind me of my paternal grandmother, Dorothy. I used to play with her yarn and unwind it and wrap it around her dining room furniture (what a nightmare). I am attracted to the feel of yarn, I am attracted to how it makes me feel and remember; it calls on my nostalgia.

I also like the lines that can be made with yarn,  the linear quality. I like the order of lines all in a row, and the chaos of them not being perfect because my human hands touched them. Many human hands have touched the handwoven yarns. Close to perfection, but not quite.

My college students are right now completing a narrative project, what I've titled as "String Theory"; to tell the story of your everything (yourself) with string, yarn or rope (may be low relief, high relief or in the round)....I realized later that I had been completing the project before they embarked upon the journey. It was an interesting moment. I teach, to a certain extent, to what I am interested in as an artist. I pick the image examples based on them being appealing to my eye and my aesthetic. The students get my experience and I get their experience regardless, if we realize it or not. It's a subconscious and reciprocal conversation.

So the story of my everything (at the moment) is...tactile...comforting...youthful...wise...fond... memorializing...patient...womanly...motherly....strong...safe...grandmotherly.  These pieces are about memory, and I am currently still experimenting with application and medium...but I do think there may be a deification of Grandma Dorothy on the horizon...I'm thinking soft, colorful, altarpieces to be ready for the Day of the Dead in November...I always miss it, well not this time!

Memento Mori...

The above piece, Keepsake, will be up for auction at this year's Lotta Art, for School 33 Art Center in Baltimore in April.

The first one I did is the small, intimate one above, Loss. I will have to keep this one for my own collection.

...And now I feel like I'm getting there...bright and 1970's/1980's. They have a shag rug feel to them without actually being shag rug.