Opening May 24, 2013 4 - 8 pm Firehouse Center for the Arts

I had the honor of being an Artist in Residence at the IAA this past school year.  This show is a culmination of my work with students and features a portrait project that includes a photograph of each student member of the IAA community.

What I have been up to...

self portrait

Horse and Dog

Help Me Up

 I have been spending all my time writing, writing and re-writing my thesis but did manage to have work in 2 Boston area shows ( GAME ON and THE OTHER F WORD) and snap a few photos when inspired by the light.  I have just a few minutes of unaccustomed open time while waiting for a business phone call and decided to post an update of the last month.

GAME ON

Betsy goes to her first art opening - Game On

Betsy and Bruce checking out the Spoke Gallery at Medicine Wheel Productions Boston

Admiring a performance piece

Guarding my piece "This Is Not A Game"

"This Is Not A Game"  see statement below

Kathleen Bitetti curator/mentor and me

detail

detail

“This Is Not A Game”
Artist Statement

Popular lore, fueled over the years by the manufacturer of Monopoly, would have us
believe that the board game was invented in 1933 by Charles Darrow. Supposedly Darrow, a
repairman from Philadelphia developed the game, and along with Parker Brothers patented it
in 1935.

This story is not exactly true. Thirty years before Darrow, actress Lizzie Magie created
the first version of Monopoly which she called "The Landlord's Game." Magie, a follower of
economic reformer Henry George, used the game to teach his philosophy. George believed
that all people have an equal right to the earth and that private ownership of land and natural
resources was morally wrong because it gave privilege to a select wealthy few. George
claimed that private land ownership was destructive to both the economy and to social
development. He argued that land should be held in common by all members of society
acting collectively as caretakers. Magie hoped the game would teach people the economic
principle that paying rent to a landlord would keep them in poverty while enriching the
landowner.

In Keeping with the educational spirit of Magie's game, "This Is Not A Game”is a
vehicle delivering facts and evidence on the current face of domestic violence in 2013
America.

Images from 1970's Red Cross Safety training manuals were used to cover the outside
of houses which were patterned after the original Monopoly game houses. Creating the
houses in this fashion takes the issue of domestic assault, something often thought of as a
private family matter, and externalizes it into the public sphere. We cannot look away.
Chance Cards remind us that no one is exempt from the possibility of entering into an
abusive relationship. One's wealth or poverty, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, age or
social status do not predict nor guarantee protection from domestic violence.
Community Chest cards tell the current status of resources that are available to
victims. Years of decreasing employment and diminished personal wealth; paralleled by
decreased government funding for social programs, have left large holes in the safety net that
might protect and heal.

Domestic violence is not a game. Only through acknowledging the truth about who the
victims and perpetrators are; and by recognizing what causes violence can we begin to
protect ourselves and help our friends, family and neighbors.

 

THE OTHER F WORD

The Other F Word show at Bunker Hill Community College Boston

My Aprons at The Other F Word

I was invited to participate in this show by curator Laura Montgomery.  I met her last year at the PRC portfolio review when she critiqued the Apron Project.


For Women’s History Month 2013
The ART GALLERY at
Bunker Hill Community College
Will Present:

THE OTHER “F WORD”
The future of Feminism Today
A Group Exhibition of Massachusetts/Boston-Area Women Artists

“Good girls go to heaven, bad girls go everywhere.”
“How could any woman not be a feminist? The girl I’m editing for wants to be known for herself.
If that’s not a feminist message, I don’t know what is.”

March 7 through April 5, 2013
Artists’ Reception: Thursday, March 14, 6:00 – 8:00p.m. Art Gallery/A300

one night

Reworked an earlier piece by removing the small photos of the attic construction that were originally on the center right panel and added in a detail of two walking figures that also appear in another section of the collage.  3' 8" x 4' 3"

Took the washed photo scraps out of their zip lock bags and put them into loosely knotted sacks of gauze.  The affect is much more gratifying in person.  Still thinking.  5' x 4' 3"

A detail of the gauze pouches.  They look a little like plastic trash bags in this photo - not a bad association but in reality they have quite a bit of texture and sense of weightlessness which matches them to the wallpaper in a more aesthetically pleasing way.  Coming full circle back to the question I started with six months ago - "what does a pocket mean?"

The companion to this piece will be a series of 4 photographs, sewn together,  that will lay on the floor in front of the wallpaper, and will have loose piles of the washed photos on them.  Still in process.

pulling it together

 

Small reconstructed collages grouped together.  Pieces range in size from  6" x 6" to 6" x 9".  I am thinking about how to install all the work together to make a cohesive statement.

As I washed the photos I collected each one and put them in their own quart size zip lock bag for safe keeping.  Originally I intended to use them in collages, but realized that they seemed just right the way they were.  I am not sure if the zip lock bags should stay or if I should sew bags out of shear fabric or plastic.  There is something about the nowness of a zip lock bag.  An odd contrast.

This collage is 52" x 19".  The scale in this photo is hard to judge.  Here again thinking about a parallel structure between poetry and photography.

The work keeps getting bigger and bigger.  This piece is 57" x 52".  I am running out of room in my studio.  If this keeps up I will have to move.  There is something satisfying about the unmanageability of working this large.  The work is hard to sew, hard to hang, hard to document and very hard to store.  This piece started with the photograph of the doll house wallpaper posted in November.  An image doesn't seem finished until I have cut it apart, reprinted it, sewn it back together or washed it.

 I started out the semester continuing with the challenge of representing autobiographical memory through the mediums of photography and collage. Feeling all the while that a concept as multifaceted as memory required a complicated visual presence and perhaps, mistaking that a simple image would not impart the complexity of my thinking. 

Talking with Deborah Davidson last night she suggested that there was a way of "de-skilling" art making, interrupting the way in which a person typically works.  Skip over the steps of the usual practice and go directly to the end results.  Interesting thought.  I read a bit about "de-skilling" in both manufacturing and art, very heady articles mightily laced with academic jargon.  Needless to say, I relate more Deborah's explanation of the concept.

We all have those "default modes", how we do everything in our lives including art making for those of us who dedicate our time to such. Obtaining an advanced level of skill guarantees certain, consistent results, the downside to this competency is that it may impede spontaneous and unexpected outcomes.  By doing away with the regiment A to Z steps, there is room for new discovery.

I made the five photographs above a few weeks back and have been living with them hanging on the studio wall.  Thinking, looking, feeling and thinking some more.  They seem to be the pause within the chaos of the distressed photographs.  And, although I wasn't even aware of "de-skilling" at the time, they were made by skipping over my usual hands-on manipulation of the image.  These photographs are of physical forms that I had no hand in creating; physical forms already complete, manifested thoughts in themselves.


 

rephotographing rephotographed photographs

A quick posting of recent work.  Suggested to me was the idea of photographing the pockets and having those photograph be the piece itself.  Essentially rephotographing photographs that have already been rephotographed.  A process reminding me of the possibility of poetry in a photograph and of verse born from failure.