Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Something I'm working on

     Here are two photos of a work in progress. Each frame contains a white-on-white silhouette. There will be stitching on each piece that relates to the image inside the frame and how it relates to an adjacent frame. I am considering connecting the frames with thread. I have been working on this piece since April, but as I continued to reflect on it in relation to what I learned in June, I discovered that it is autobiographical.





     I have added more stitching since I took these photos and will post a current image later this week.

Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Residency 1 Summary: Who am I, Why am I here and Where am I going?

     I came into my first residency with what I thought was a clear idea of what kind of art I wanted to make,  as well as the ideas that would drive it. By the end of the residency the picture was not so clear anymore. While at first disorienting, the critique process has given me some new tools to really examine the purpose and direction of my work.
    
  It was rare in my undergraduate studies to get a critique about much more than the formal elements of my work. In my independent studies, I have thought deeply about contemporary art practices and worked to understand “idea” as art and not necessarily “object” as art. Two books that have been very influential to my understanding are: Conceptual Art by Tony Godfrey, and Art and Today by Eleanor Heartney. As I delved into post-modern art and other related “isms”, I began to understand conceptual art in a way that was not accessible to me when I was in my 20’s. This study combined with the seminars, lectures, critiques, and graduate presentations of the residency, revealed to me the importance of cultural context to art making. I had an abstract understanding of context and how it defines art, but now I understand that it is the defining arena for all art making. I am beginning to discover how to situate my work in contemporary art and culture.
    
  The most consistent feedback I got from the residency critiques related to first, the formal elements, and second, a need to personalize my work.
    
  In the first there was an appreciation my technical skills and that in general my work is “engaging”.  My comfort with exploring and working with a variety of materials is good since it indicates flexibility and a willingness to experiment.  Some feedback related to craftsmanship details that were either present or lacking. The other consistent comment concerned the relevance of assemblage. How can I make it current, or how can I transcend its history?
    
  In the second area it was suggested that I dig deeper into the general ideas that interest me and connect them more personally with my experience. This is the area where I found the most helpful feedback for my work.
    
  Though I have attempted in my work to express deep personal feeling, I now see how I project them externally on the objects I create. This has distanced me from my work making it about ideas “out there”, instead of concerns that are the source of my art making. I need to understand various “representational strategies” and understand how I can develop my own and use them to create meaning. I need to discover my own consistent voice in this process.
     
The work that seemed to most engage viewers are the fabric and stitched pieces, the wood and wire box, and a piece with text:  Do You Know?. The critiques helped me see that I cannot avoid the idea that fabric and thread carry a built in dialogue between “Art”, women’s work, craft, and feminist issues. This is an area I have skirted around with my work, but I must plunge into. This also relates to my thoughts about assumptions we make about others which I will explore as assumptions others make about me, and my experience. These thoughts are coalescing around issues of feminism today, marginalization of the older female in our youth oriented culture, and “fabric” as idea such as labor, touch, and process. I am also intrigued by how to use language/ text with these ideas.





     In my studio practice I am working on fabric lined frames with stitching and silhouettes. Two new ideas I am playing with include a piece with layers of translucent fabric that will be torn, stitched and imbedded, and a colored fabric piece. I am also thinking about a video piece that includes fabric curtains.
  
  In the area of assemblage, I want to continue to explore using boxes, found objects and discarded packaging. I will study assemblage based on past iterations of this kind of work. I am considering ideas about assemblage or still life as portrait.
    
  Collaboration in art is very interesting to me. Fia Backstrom’s seminar and Aaron Lish’s project introduced me to a new way of looking at the collaborative process. Since I have an established group of women quilters who I worked with in 2012, there is the possibility of a new project based on the ideas already described.
     My research is divided into three areas: marginalization and feminism in the 21st century, how language/text is used to suggest meanings and relationships, and “value” as it is perceived in our culture.

These are the artists I am researching:
Jenny Holzer                      Barbara Kruger                  Anna Mediota
Eleanor Antin                     Mark Bradford                   Doris Salcedo
Sarah Sze                          Sarah Charlesworth            Ken Lum

Glen Ligon,                                Gregg Bordowitz                     Miriam Shapiro


I am currently reading or have read:

Gouma-Peterson, Thalia, Miriam Schapiro: Shaping the Fragments of Art and Life 

Shapiro, Miriam, Miriam Shapiro’s Art Journey
Storey, John.  An Introductory Guide to Cultural Theory and Popular Culture
Chicago, Judy. Beyond the Flower: The Autobiography of a Feminist Artist
Herrera, Hayden. Frida Kahlo: The Paintings
Butler, Susan Bulkeley and Keefe, Bob. Women Count A Guide to Changing the World
Broude, Norma and Garrard, Mary D., ed. The Power of Feminist Art The American Movement of the 1970’s, History and Impact
Findlen, Barbara, ed. Listen Up: Voices From the Next Feminist Generation
Hooks, Bell. Feminism is for EVERYBODY Passionate Politics


WHACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution

Living as Form: Socially Engaged Art from 1991-2011 by Nato Thompson

“Taking the Matter Into Common Hands” ed. Joanne Billings

“Collaboration Handbook” Michael Barry Winer

Julie Ault              “Show and Tell”

Claire Bishop: Relational Antagonism      “Artificial Hells”

Grant Kester: “Conversation Pieces”

Ferguson, Russell, et al.  Out There: Marginalization and Contemporary Cultures

Recently viewed video:

!W.A.R. !Women Art Revolution. Dir. Lynn Hershman Leeson. 2011. DVD
Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision. Dir. Freida Lee Mock. 1995. DVD
Beautiful Losers. Dir. Aaron Rose and Joshua Leonard. Sidetrack Films in association with BlackLake Productions, 2008.
    DVD.
Wasteland. Vic Muniz. Dir. Lucy Walker. 2010. DVD

Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present. Ulay. Dir. Matthew Akers. 2012. DVD

Saturday, July 13, 2013

     Scientist Stuart Kauffman coined the term "the adjacent possible". In his book "Where Good Ideas Come From", Steven Johnson describes it as "a kind of shadow future, hovering on the edges of the present state of things, a map of all the ways in which the present can reinvent itself".  As I begin my grad school experience, anything is possible in this playground of ideas, art, and imagination. Share my journey as I push through old boundaries and discover new avenues of exploration.


                                          From the MFA, Boston Contemporary Wing