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How have I not mentioned this here?!? On February 1, my exhibition “Chthonic” was featured on thisiscolossal.com which was a dream come true! I have been admiring this site for years, trying to figure out how/what to submit. And then Mia has a marketing department and asked for my wishlist of places to reach out to…and hear it is…A Monumental Collection of Slouching Figures Considers the Effects of Aging on the Body
Spend some time looking through the archives…you won’t be disappointed!
So pleased I was finally able to see my studio mate, Sophia Chai’s work in the Jerome Fellowship Exhibition at MCAD this week. I may be biased, but it was a fabulous show. I only ever see small increments of change in the studio and then at the end there are these amazing photographs which play with how we perceive photography. And I love the framing of the photograph with the same color of paint on the wall, it puts us in the space with the original painted wall in a way that is really interesting. Hope you get a chance to see the exhibition! And there will be more images of the other artists work coming soon.
So now that Chthonic is installed, I have a little room to share what the making of this work was like. It really was the best year of my life, all the way around. I feel so lucky to have had it. All I did was make work, assemble food for my family, sleep with a cat under the covers, and start again. I was fortunate that I could take a semester off of teaching to make it happen. And that my family is not bothered by the filth we clearly live in. Anyway, here are some images of the sculpture Lumber in process in my studio over a period of months.
I worked with another artist friend to build the skeletons. We started with 1” conduit pipe that I bent into the gesture. The pipe then actually goes into an electrical box and is set with a screw. At the ground, the conduit comes into a drilled 2x4” that has been secured to plywood. Then we set screws through the 2x4” to the pipe. It worked pretty slick! She took up nearly the width of my studio. I did not plan well.
And getting her through the door was a whole other thing! Luckily I had handy, thoughtful helpers who kept me from freaking out. We removed the horizontal floor braces, turned her on her side so she was a U, and then threaded her through the door! Now she is hanging at Mia!
I am excited to share that I have an upcoming solo exhibition in Gallery 2 at the Phipps Center for the Arts in Hudson, Wisconsin, opening February 26. Artists Susan Gangsei, Fawzia Khan, Susan Solomon and Christopher Palbicki will also be exhibiting in the Center’s other galleries. I hope you will have a chance to attend!
I created a new series of drawings for “Den Mother” this last fall on the most beautiful gesso you can spread on a board. It is like butter. I will never go back to anything else. The boards are 10x10” and the drawings made in ball point pen. I love me a ball point pen. I think I am ready to explore this series in graphite with powdered graphite so I can get larger, softer areas of tone.
These images will soon be available as prints in the shop!
So it has been over a year since my last blog post…and a pandemic, online teaching, an election and two exhibitions. The last post the acceptance or my (how many?) proposal for the Minnesota Artist Exhibition Program at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. There was so much in between, but that is where I am starting now. From that day on I put my head down and got to work. It was the most fulfilling creative endeavor of my career. I am just so thankful for all of it. By the end, I could hardly get around my own studio, and I had moved two figures into another friends studio when I ran out of room. We needed a 26’ truck to deliver the work and it had to spend a week in the deep freeze after arriving at Mia; felt can have larvae and it had to be frozen before going into the museum proper. Then I had the best help for two weeks of install. We got it finished right as Governor Walz shut down entertainment and hospitality venues for Covid. But it opened this last Thursday, and I am thrilled that people are getting a chance to see it! I will post more about the making, installation and exhibition in the coming weeks!
Title text and door way into second gallery space…
Supine, Sway and Lumber
Twine, Sway, Supine, Lumber and Settle
Trunk and Nourish
So about six months ago, I posted about a proposal I was putting together for the Minnesota Artists Exhibition Program at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. I was rejected a year ago…which was disappointing as I thought it was my best proposal to the program to date, but not a surprise as it was my sixth or seventh rejection. MAEP is a program with three deadlines a year, and only one exhibition awarded per deadline. With every rejection, I would call the program administrator/curator to get the details on the panels response to my program. And with the panels comments about my proposal, I would make adjustments and wait for the next deadline. With this last rejection, I did find out that I was a finalist, so I was getting closer. And I did feel like I had made the best proposal possible, but when the curator offered that some images for scale on the felt sculpture would help, I figured I would give it one last go. My art buddy, Chris Rackley, was kind enough to bring his photo kit to my studio and model with my sculpture for images! I also had images of work installed in a recent exhibition and I had some newer work related to the things I wanted to explore with the exhibition, so I swapped out nearly all of the images for those, and included sketches of the proposed sculptures, my video of the work in the space and the floor plan. And then I waited. There were about five weeks in between the proposal deadline and notification, so I couple of days out from the notification deadline, I started checking my emails a little too frequently. There were no emails. But I was at my friend Chris’ house with two other artist friends helping him with an upcoming project deadline, and when they all went upstairs to eat lunch, I thought I would just check quick. And there was an email that I would be having the July 2020 MAEP exhibition at the MiA. This is big. And I was able to share the first news of it with my most favorite artists in the world. They have been there editing my proposals since the very beginning two years ago when I started applying. We hugged, ate chocolate, and then I basically shook with fear and smiled the rest of the day. If you would like to see my name on the MiA website, the link is here.
I am thrilled to be teaching the workshop “Doll as Storyteller” at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts this fall! There is still time to register…or please email me if you have questions about it.
We will spend six days making a small doll with moveable limbs and an accessory, looking at contemporary doll art and telling stories. I hope you can join me!
About six or eight weeks ago I scored some major supplies at a neighborhood estate sale. I spent a couple of weeks working on altering a ceramic baby doll, and I am so excited about the outcome! I did get help cutting the baby dolls feet off so I could add the bird feet, and then promptly dropped her and broke a leg off above the knee. But I like that the amount of ceramic leg varies, so it was a happy accident. She will also be on the way to RISDCraft in October. I hope you can visit us in Providence!
