art, life (no separation)

Collapse of Distance- Project with Lisa Ulik

2012-02-12T13:37:00.000-05:00

more information here: http://printzeal.blogspot.com/

along the Mississippi- by Lisa roughly 4x5" watercolor and charcoal

Receiving images from another's perspective within their landscape, sending one's own, and translating their landscape, their view. Another lovely dialogue.

then there were three

2012-02-12T12:48:00.001-05:00

next series of silhouettes to play with

2012-02-11T14:41:00.002-05:00

Jaroslav Sustek, grandfather

2012-01-23T13:49:00.000-05:00

Rewriting Contemporary Art History through facebook/internet

2012-01-14T09:11:00.001-05:00

Today's sky, overlooking the Prague Castle

Dear Participants,

While teaching art to grades 4-8, I would like to expose these young minds to contemporary art, not the one written in books, but the true contemporaries, ALL OF YOU. (Be it painting/drawing, environmental, performance, installation, mixed media, video, etc etc.) If you have your work online or could email me images with an artist statement, I will include you in our lectures. This way we can expose your work to this next generation.

Comment on this post if you're interested.

Thanks!

P.S. If you know of other contemporary artists whom you admire, please pass this project on.

A beautiful winter day

2012-01-08T15:45:00.000-05:00

On this gorgeous winter day, I met with my grandfather for the last time. It was peaceful. I got to hold his hand for a few hours. He often looked up at forms upon the ceiling. I realized this as all journeys is just a passage.

a parallel

2011-12-16T17:28:00.000-05:00

New Czech hit from Vaclav Neckar for this holiday season. (An icon from Czech history and film who suffered a stroke not too long ago.) The song talks of hope and comfort in times of fear of the unknown.

Love of/in a woman

2011-12-16T16:09:00.000-05:00

(detail of gift, watercolor, 14"x12")

There is a lovely old photograph of a wedding couple, of mygrandmother’s brother with his wife in which you can almost feel his devotionfor her. As long as I had known them this chemistry was present. Aftersomething like 60 years of marriage and two sons, her partner left her side.Milan Tomastik died in 2008 leaving his wife for the first time since theirteens. She in turn had a stroke which left her in a wheel chair and almostmute. Miraculously she has regained her speech and is quite self-sufficient andhas recently celebrated her 80^th Birthday! I feel his presence andthis love still surrounding her.

Dagmar Tomastikova

We are still here

2011-12-10T14:25:00.003-05:00

Yay! I am so happy to have just read your post about continuing on with our blog!

Admittedly, I was a bit confused about how you wanted to participate here when you started your own, but of course didn't want to push the issue since you were moving not just yourself, but your family, half way across the world.

And so, here we still are.

I am just getting ready to mail a piece to you - to work with, next to, on top of...whatever you dream up. It could be very interesting to work in this way together.

I am intrigued by the soap carving. It very much feels like the small paintings on eggs that you did 10+ years ago..There is a warmth and intimacy to the piece - please post more as you do them. I'd like to see what more transpires. Why are you interested in covering them with dust or charcoal? What does that signify to you?

I'll do the same - posting what I'm working on, I mean.

I just started working on an edition of 30 small pieces, each only 8cm x 8cm.

It's with others from the SAP group. The pieces are supposed to be white on white; I am using the horizon line as a metaphor of the Above and the Below. I take colors (whites ) from the everyday and place them in relation to each other. The horizon line appears and then suddenly disappears. It's very interesting - a new way of relating to work.

More soon - I have to go tend to Alessandro.

Angela

Babicka

2011-12-03T13:12:00.001-05:00

She left 120 soaps. I understand the wires, the china, thetowels , the clothes, the books, the radio, the typewriter. But the soaps are ajoyful/light surprise. Their touch, smell and feel are all lovely to work in. (The carving tools are alsohers, a knife and a manicure set.) Thecarved portraits will need a layer of soot, I’m thinking of oil, or somethingthat will combine with soap, (any ideas?) and dust that is left in her room.

dialogue

2011-12-02T02:28:00.001-05:00

Let me be very clear that I have no intention of stopping our work together here. The dialogue is very much part of who I am and I cannot bare to lose that especially now that I cannot just pick up the phone and call. What is more I will need this forum for communicating and making clear those ideas that I need to translate into art form. (Clarity is not my strong suit so please do not give this up.)

(My Czech blog is more of a record for me to process the overwhelming totality of this new space and the new yet familiar experiences I find myself in.)

I think the solo show is an important step in both of our lives. I want to start coordinating (after the dust settles,) one myself for an intended space in Praha.

artist proposal

2011-11-30T17:53:00.002-05:00

Tereza,

Without you here, I feel a bit alone in the world ;)

I'm not sure if I will continue this blog without you, as it began as a conversation between us.

It seems strange and somewhat unnatural to post da sola.

Anyway, I applied for a solo show at an upstate gallery today.

Below I posted my statement and proposal.

I sent the images from 2010, before Alessandro was born.

I hope I am able to communicate with words what I can in painting.

I often find it paralyzing to write a statement and proposal.

If this blog continues with just me as an author, I will let you know what the outcome of the proposal is.

Angela

Statement

My work is an exploration of the human condition. I speak about memory, tragedy, loss and redemption predominantly through painting and performance- based work.

I begin with experiences from my own life and then move outward, drawing connections between my personal history and the stories of others. I find that taking this step is transformative in and of itself. This work is not just for me to overcome individual heartbreak or misfortune, but to open up a dialogue that also facilitates for others a space of catharsis.

Artist Proposal

For x I am pleased to propose an exhibition of figure paintings, comprised of nine canvases, formally united in identical size. Each piece depicts an individual woman in a various stage of either pregnancy or motherhood.

The series takes its inspiration from Sandro Boticelli and Piero del Pollaiuolo’s The Seven Virtues. As an alternative to the idealized forms that Boticelli and del Pollaiuolo present, however, my work offers the viewer a more egalitarian relationship to the female form. The women are not romanticized or put up on a pedestal; they are partly autobiographical, partly allegorical, and partly based on real women in my life who also happen to be mothers.

In the special setting that x Gallery offers, the paintings would resonate in an intimate way. It is important to me to exhibit them as a group, and in a woman-owned gallery. It would be a pleasure to collaborate.

Thank you in advance for the consideration.

Straw into gold

2011-11-27T08:44:00.002-05:00

The gold that is my life - all of it, the baby, the house, the weather, the work - is beginning to glean...

I've started an application for a solo show.

I've also started my portion of an edition. One work every day for 30 days and I'll meet the deadline of January 1, 2012.

I was working on the application/proposal for most of yesterday, with the baby in the room with me. He was calling for me, making noises, moving around, consistently needing attention. And I was able to work with it, with him. For the first time since he's been born, I didn't see anything 'distracting' about it. If anything, it was a grounding reminder to be clear and not to waste time.

Straw into gold. Without locking myself up in the tower!

(full story here)

Insomnia post

2011-11-21T02:24:00.001-05:00

Insomnia post

I also question what I am doing, what space I occupy, where I belong.

Been up for hours - the quiet of the night can be deafening

center

2011-11-19T01:58:00.002-05:00

Trying to keep centered while shifting ground.

2011-11-17T15:07:00.003-05:00

I question what I'm doing here.

I question my role in this world as a bridge.

I am neither here nor there.

I question my purpose.

Studio for the next two months

2011-11-09T09:59:00.004-05:00

My media

-boxes of shoes and clothes

-a box full of wires and a huge light bulb

-120 soaps

-a typewriter

-a box of towels and rags

-black and white family photographs

always/never

2011-11-07T15:42:00.005-05:00

always tired

never alone

always on call

never rested

always hungry

never ready

always another diaper to be changed

never prepared

always prepping

never clean

always cleaning up

never enough milk

always dirty

never finished

always running around

never caught up

always cooking

never asleep

always interrupted

never satiated

always anxious

never alone

always awake

never better

always rushing

never warm

always cleaning up

never worse

always exhausted

never enough money

always distracted

never polished

always cold

never clear

Dearest Tereza

2011-11-07T15:17:00.002-05:00

My dear Tereza,

I am just getting your post now.

I miss you, and will miss your voice in our discussions here.

I am so indebted to you for this experience.

It began with a conversation over the phone, and a desire to make public what we had both been keeping private. Artistically, personally, and otherwise.

It was a big step for me to have something so personal suddenly be available to everyone via the internet...that is to say, if anyone ever knew where to look for the information.

That idea of posting online, while still in the privacy of my own studio, started something that still carries momentum - in work and in life (thus the banner title of this blog).

And look what has become of it, of us!

I completely understand your need to begin in another way.

Looking forward to seeing what you create.

Always,

Angela

tereza-returntoczechrepublic.blogspot.com

2011-11-04T16:32:00.003-05:00

I have started a new chapter in all ways and must start this new adventure on a separate page listed above. I will still be posting projects and work related to our dialogue, but/and I need to start a separate record of this incredible shift in our lives.

Angela, I am indebted to you in ways you may never know. It has been this forum that has enabled me to express and vent in a rather dark time (for me early motherhood.) In an isolated existence it is a space like this that is invaluable.

Please continue posting whenever you can. You are doing an incredible job of raising you son! It is an extraordinary journey.

Purged Items, And More Importantly the Particles that Remain

2011-10-23T22:09:00.004-05:00

making house a home-

a comfy couch

a wooden table

pillows

soft yet firm bed

the I Ching

friend's art

child's art

tea kettle

tea cups

appropriate colors (personal)

plants

animals

friends

warmth

All of the above has been purged in it's material form, emotionally, quite a difficult process.

But, in my heart, I hold on dearly to the essential representation of each of the above through our relationship. I am most indebted to the many friends and family that have made our house a home for the past seven years in the Seattle area. It is you who make the difference! You are the home I carry within me.

Seeding

2011-10-03T21:59:00.004-05:00

(I almost forgot about this project.)

As a way to say good-bye to my five year old garden, I collected seeds (for the first time) and want to spread/send them throughout the US. Contents contain organic; sage, lavender, radishes, arugula, spinach and parsley.

Packet Instructions: for small seeds sow directly on ground after chance of frost has past. Sprinkle with thin layer of soil. For larger seeds (small pebble size) measure half a thump into the ground.

If you are currently without a garden please pass on seeds to friends who may be interested.

Three weeks

2011-10-03T21:40:00.004-05:00

the time of one workshop

a lot can get done

here is the list and I must remind myself that there is always enough time. (My 2011 New Years resolution: "I always have enough time.")

finish last commission

and some paintings on the side (I am re-realizing how little material is needed for painting. Adding medium to the color can go from most saturated, darkest, to least saturated, lightest. It can be a totally immaterialistic process.)

write an excerpt for a portrait competition

write a summary of the Art4Kidz curriculum (I'm writing the curriculum for K-6 which connects each child's development to episodes in art history.)

finish and polish first 8 lesson plans

prep and finish classes

write and email images to parents

end of this week drive a few loads to friends and family

end of next week dismantle the studio (perhaps the thing I feel most sadness for- outside of friends, family, animals and environment of course. I have truly only let myself enjoy the studio these last few weeks while Al was in school. -I do remind myself that I have been doing art throughout however, I'm grateful I have had this last month!)

end of week 3 we are on our way to Boston

end of week 4 we are on our way to Zlin, CZ

a new beginning

work

2011-09-29T12:22:00.007-05:00

comission- in process: "Holding Heart"

(detail)

teaching exercizes: "Form and Formlessness"

comission: "Brother and Sister"

First Day

2011-09-06T12:10:00.003-05:00

Today is Ali's first day at school! From my perspective it is six hours I have for myself that I have not had since she was born, six yeays ago.

I can officially start a serious studio practice, at least for the next six weeks until we are off to CZ.

First order of practice;

-purging and shedding to make space. This weekend we had a garage/yard sale and managed to get rid of half of our stuff, (incredible the amount one accumulates!) I realized that next time each item has to be of quality and we need to have much less!

-meaning cleaning- mindful tidying of the house/studio/yard

-work on "Spreading Seeds"

-gesso a couple of canvases!

back to painting

2011-09-01T14:39:00.005-05:00

"Postcards of An Other Conversation," oil and dust on canvas,

15x10.5 cm, 2011

for 'Drawing Connections', Siena Art Institute, Via Tommaso Pendola 37, 53100 Siena, Italy.

Focusing on distance, distancing

2011-08-21T22:58:00.010-05:00

Pullman, WA

perspective from downward dog

Sun Lakes, WA

"Around a Central Principle"- work for Chain Letter, Shoshana Wayne Gallery

2011-07-17T16:21:00.007-05:00

(in process)

cut paper (8.5"x11") on overhead projector

on lit projector (above)

two versions of projection (below)- roughly 5'x3'

Zlin bound

2011-07-03T17:04:00.003-05:00

- the city of my birth

- the city I have not previously resided in

- of a different structure, cultural constructs, geography, language, mentality

- thoughts on a project for a year in CZ:

- daily observation/meditation within this new/first space, (Why was I born here? What are my ties to it? topography of birth 2/2/78, rebirth 10/11, Leonardo da Vinci/Tereza ze Zlina?

- recording the daily process

- breaking down language and English/US constructs

- project 2:

- daily communication with people outside and inside the country

- painting/drawing course

- commissions: asking commissioners in each country what gives them visual pleasure? comparing the results.

- drawing/painting this series.

- continuing to run after-school Art4Kidz curriculum, long-distance.

- preparation:

- shedding of material things. The plan is to arrive with 6 suitcases of clothes, art supplies, electronics/tools, and gluten free food.

- organize visas and paperwork

- set a date and order plane tickets

- send resumes to all CZ universities

- send note to Mrs. Rosenclaire

- arrange the house for the upcoming tenant

Creative Mode of Exchange

2011-06-18T18:42:00.010-05:00

Part III

Creative Mode of Exchange (gallery doors,) 2011
Cut paper (color inkjet) and adhesive on glass
Dimensions variable

Night of the Opening for Flourish, participants engaged in hand massage in exchange for photographic documentation. Site-specific installation includes the hands of all participants from that evening.

(detail)

(detail 2)

Part II

Digital preparation

Part I

Opening night, 6/9- Hand Massage,

a setting for intimate moments through touch

Flourish

2011-05-26T14:37:00.001-05:00

Flourish: Alumni Works on Paper
Bakalar & Paine Galleries at Massachusetts College of Art and Design
June 6—July 9, 2011
Reception: Thursday, June 9, 6-8 PM

Exhibition Hours:
Wednesday: 12PM – 8PM
Thursday-Saturday: 12PM – 6PM

Flourish: Alumni Works on Paper is the first juried alumni exhibition to be held in the Bakalar & Paine Galleries at MassArt. Showcasing the breadth of talent and excellence embodied by MassArt’s artists and designers, this exhibition features the work of 64 international artists working in a range of disciplines.

Flourish highlights the wide range of work by MassArt’s diverse alumni and includes painting, collage, interactive sculpture, photography, performance, fashion and graphic design.

For example Tereza Swanda’s work begins with physical engagement and dialogue between the artist and viewer resulting in layered translucent site-specific collages. Swanda will be at the opening reception (Thursday, June 9, 6-8 PM) connecting with the public while documenting each personalized interaction—for the duration of the exhibition she will leave a trace of this encounter in the gallery as a continuation of her Bodies Reform series.

Claire Beckett’s large-scale photographs were made at military training sites in the U.S. that mimic foreign war zones and include specific architectural references, representative costumes and objects, as well as American soldiers and civilians playing roles as Iraqis and Afghans. Her work explores how Americans interact with and understand their place in the world.

Chuck Brouillette culls imagery and characters from comics and pop culture, creating digital illustrations that envision traditional superheroes as classic Hollywood film celebrities, who step into the 3rd dimension as living, breathing, and fame-seeking beings.

Stacy Scibelli sews wearable interactive sculptures—soft machines that facilitate basic interactions and elicit awkwardness or communal awareness between participants. Through her sculptures, she explores the space between people, both literal and metaphorical, and the power dynamics of distance between individuals.

Squares, rectangles and trapezoids become architectural forms in Gabriel Phipps’ paintings; the geometric units that reverberate throughout the work are at once solid and ephemeral, synthetic and organic, and fictitious and real.

The artists in the exhibition are: Scott Alario, Elizabeth Alexander, Lizbeth Anderson, Johnny Arguedas, Kristy Asaro, Brenton Barnes, Claire Beckett, Susan Blatt, Jen Bradley, Kelley Brannon, Chuck Brouillette, Emily Brozyna, Kyle Bryant, Bruce Campbell, Lana Z. Caplan, Caleb Charland, Christine Collins, Corey Corcoran, Leah De Prizio, Jess Dugan, Pat Falco, Alex Farrell, Jeff Fichera, Christian Flynn, Jessica Gath, Ania Gilmore, Emily Goodale, Hannah Goodwin, Lucy Grover, Karen Hendrickson-Santospago, Mary Huges, Lauren Kalman, Heidi Kayser, Joshua Keay, Isaiah King, Bara Kirkpatrick Jichova, Robert Knight, Regina Kokoszka, Kay Kopper, Adam Lampton, Surendra Lawoti, Sebastien Leclercq, Courtney Lockemer, John Magnifico, Bryan Martello, Julie Martini, Laurel McMechan, Kevin Morosini, Dana Mueller, Bruce Myren, Ashley Norman, Zoe Perry-Wood, Gabriel Phipps, Eric Saline, Dana Salvo, Stacy Scibelli, Ji-eun Shim, Candice Smith Corby, Dawn Southworth, Tereza Swanda, John Thompson, Dylan Vitone, Eileen Wagner.

MassArt was honored to have Tammy Dayton, Creative Director, Moth Design; Michelle Lamunière, John R. and Barbara Robinson Family Assistant Curator of Photography, Harvard Art Museum; and Edward Saywell, Chair of Contemporary Art and MFA Programs, Museum of Fine Arts; to serve as our selection committee.

mental space

2011-05-22T22:41:00.002-05:00

2011-05-19T22:27:00.000-05:00

thinking of you

MassArt Alumni Exhibition: Works on Paper‏

2011-05-17T10:17:00.002-05:00

Project Description for 2011 Alumni Exhibition: works on Paper

Bodies Reform

Residing part-time in and outside of the Bakalar & Paine Galleries at the beginning of the show, I will engage in dialogue with viewers/students/faculty. As a way to begin physical engagement through the body, I will offer body work, such as back massage - in exchange for photographic documentation and the possibility to continue the series, Bodies Reform. For the duration of the show I will leave a trace of this encounter, (cut paper (color inkjet) and tape on glass,) on the gallery windows/doors.

MassArt Alumni Exhibition: Works on Paper
June 6 - July 9, 2011
Bakalar & Paine Galleries, Massachusetts College of Art and Design
Opening Reception: June 9, 2011, 6-8 PM

Birth of a Mother

2011-05-08T22:48:00.004-05:00

>Subject: Birth Story

Date: Sat, 20 Aug 2005 20:08:36
>
>
>Oh goodness- where do I begin this process...
>our life is now a whole other process- changed in an instant when we held
>Alenka in our arms last night!
>Labor started in the night on the 17th- a few contractions 10-15 minutes
>apart- my body just started to work its way - we labored at home through
>about to 2Pm at home and decided to get to the birth center when I really
>did not feel like being in the car for longer than 20 minutes. We were at 4
>cm. and then the midwives said things went like clock work- for me it
>certainly was not the feeling- but I focused on one contraction at a time
>and took those brakes. Will was an inch away throughout- I certainly am
>skeptical about being able to do such a job as he had by my side supporting
>me through every instance. We also had an amazing doula whose body I worked
>almost as much as my own, leaning, pulling, grabbing.
>At 8cm the midvife broke my water and this is where it really started to
>move and increase in intensity. I 've certainly never worked this hard
>physically- ever- Two and a half hours later still thinking that there is
>no I had the ability way to get squeeze her head through- Her beautiful
>head finally slipped through and was floating in the water (I was
>delivering into a tub)- The midwives wanted to check the cord in another
>position before delivering the shoulders but in the transition on all fours
>to my back she just floated out of me! Next thing i new i was holding this
>beautiful being in my arms- the most exceptional moment if my life...
>daddy felt the cord finish pulsating and then cut this connection. Alenka
>and i are doing fantastic- we are both new at this- espeecially me but we
>are making things work. love to all of you, please connect soon- Alenka
>will want to say hello to all her aunts and uncles!!!!

Rereading the passage above, I recall the overwhelming feeling of those first days. This wide opening. And although some sentences don't make 'sense,' the feeling is there.

twists and turns- two

2011-04-30T23:09:00.004-05:00

The first print is on window cling with lovely colors, fantastic to see it all in one (rather than fragmented paper pieces!)

However, after speaking with the gallery and there not being any glass surface, I realized these have to attach directly to wall. And therefore there will be two versions, an indoor one with the lighting/transparent effect and an outdoor one, where the colors are more pale rather than yellow and where the transparency is not seen. These two versions is what one sees on a sliding glass door and how the paper itself acts in this configuration. I loved understanding light and how it acts through this process. Above should be how they hang on the gallery on wall. Title: "Indoor Mother Whore, Outdoor Whore Mother, Sliding Glass Doors."

off to the printers

2011-04-24T21:50:00.004-05:00

-All figures scanned and digitally manipulated for transparency effect of background lighting.

-Currently standing at 12 inches by 5 feet

-Will play with various backgrounds in the morning including paper, vinyl, etc.

2011-04-18T22:17:00.001-05:00

Congratulations Tereza,

I'm so happy for you!

Thank you for sharing this with me - wishing you all the best with the upcoming show.

Great work,

The Kinsey Institute Juried Art Show 2011

2011-04-15T15:21:00.000-05:00

Dear Tereza Swanda,

Congratulations! Your artwork, Whore Mother Totem Pole, was chosen by this year’s jury to be included in The Kinsey Institute Juried Art Show 2011 at the SoFA Gallery (which will be renamed the Grunwald Gallery of Art mid-way through the exhibits run).

Please see the details below for shipping information. Your shipment should also include a completed copy of the attached loan agreement and a prepaid return shipping label for your artworks return shipment. Congratulations again, and we will be sending additional emails to keep you updated on opening reception and promotional details. In the meantime, if you have any questions, contact us at kiart@indiana.edu.

Details for Shipments

Artwork should be scheduled to arrive Thursday, May 5 - Wednesday, May 11. Hand-deliveries will be accepted May 10-11, 12:00 – 4:00 p.m. As stated in the brochure, shipping of artwork to and from the exhibit is the responsibility of the artist. All shipping must be prepaid. Ship artworks to:

The SoFA Gallery

Kinsey Institute Juried Show

1201 E 7th St.

Fine Arts 123

Indiana University

Bloomington, IN 47405

The artwork must be framed and ready for installation. Late or damaged work will not be exhibited. In the past we have had problems with fragile pieces arriving damaged. Please take all precautions to protect your artwork during shipping.

Artworks must also be prepared for return shipment. Shipping cartons and materials must be reusable for return shipping, and a prepaid return shipping label must be included unless prearrangements have been made with Garry Milius (gmilius@indiana.edu).

Exhibited hand-delivered work must be picked up Tuesday, August 2-Wednesday, August 3, 12-4p.m. Shipped works will be crated and ready for return by August 9. It is the responsibility of the artist to provide postage and insurance to and from the exhibit. Nothing may be shipped COD. Any work that has been left after August 30, 2011 will become the property of The Kinsey Institute unless other arrangements have been made.

Again, congratulations, and please let us know if you have any questions.

YES!

2011-04-11T23:55:00.002-05:00

I am so happy for your realization! I'm also excited to pick up Krishnamurti as well. (I just sent the first article from the 1st workshop to the same students I wrote about last night.)

Yes, the lessons are finally being realized! It is all so significant, if only we stop and look.

I have not taken my work all the way to the source- at the root I am sure the themes are mother/father, masculine/feminine and now they are the mix of the two, from the act of rubbing two egg portraits together in a gesture of two meditation balls, one of a man and one of a woman in 1998 to the overlapping figures on glass today. I have just considered the bodies but the gesture is the same.

Much more recently I've realized the architecture standing behind victims/perpetrators, mothers/fathers and how the architecture (space created by mental constructs,) affect the bodies that perform in that space.

For me the process has been shifting the mental space to create space- I reread your passage as there is so much to dialogue with. I really enjoy this sentence: "I have always been interested in transforming something I understand in my mind into something I can feel, understand, and communicate through my body." I resonate strongly with "I've understood how to express vulnerability and compassion in my work by allowing those aspects of myself to be exposed, softened, transformed...It's the knowing without getting caught up in the concept of knowing."

It is a huge understanding of yes there is famine, disease, war, and at the same time there is healing, compassion, empathy. There is the knowing without judgement and blame, without a label.

I have this concrete lesson currently within my body, a dull reminder in my sacrum. I tried to stuff my vulnerability, afraid to expose myself and voila- the energy had to go somewhere.

Thank you for the post and the lesson. I am eager to read "Education and the Significance of Life."

A more balanced outlook

2011-04-11T04:15:00.003-05:00

I am glad you found your daughter and that all was not lost.

I too have come to a much different understanding of things since my last entry.

Re-reading Krishnamurti's "Education and the Significance of Life", and finding endless inspiration from it. Feeling the growing life inside me and getting filled with anticipation and love. Can it be that after winter's slumber I have renewed unbridled energy?

Synchronicity abounds...all judgement dissolves. Tensions leave me. Creative thoughts begin to connect with previous work and projects yet to be undertaken. I am so excited. The middle of the night is now an excellent time to work! I have never been awake this consistently between 3-6AM, but for whatever reason, canvases are still getting worked on, and ideas are being consolidated that have been dormant in my mind. Seeing the black sky slowly turn blue each morning is uplifting, even though there is still terrible unrest in the world and many people are dealing with homelessness, radiation fallout, famine, disease, and war.

I had tea with an artist friend yesterday.

It was a lovely afternoon, and we talked about many things. She is currently participating in NYFA's MARK program, and has had a very positive experience so far. She mentioned that the program has helped her in terms of presenting her work to groups of people who don't know her or her work. She spoke clearly, articulately, and confidently in a way I have not witnessed before. A huge weight seemed to have left her. I was happy for her, and was encouraged by her this change.

As the afternoon wore on, there seemed to be a mutual sense of relief of knowing what we are both doing with our work, and now never running out of ideas to work with. As both of us have had the tendency to take things a little too seriously and to become very hard on ourselves, we have recently realized there is no sense of having to recreate the wheel every time we step in front of our work. Better yet, I felt like there is more space to get out of the way of our work!

I told her about my most recent revelation, while installing my most recent piece at a gallery in Rosendale. Something that hit me in a very profound way was that I have really been working with the same thing my entire life. I have always been interested in transforming something I understand in my mind into something I can feel, understand, and communicate through my body. Since 1996 this has taken the form of painting, mixed media work, and performance.

It all connects: in 1996/7 I remember loving small text pieces I began 'on the side' that didn't have anything to do with my painting (typed words on handmade organza baskets); the methodical process of stringing beads to cover texts I found offensive to women; intervening on The Scarlet Letter by making a 500-page necklace out of it; salting another version of it and hanging it in a grid; the mediational and repetitious actions of embroidery in Airing Dirty Laundry, the endless counting and meditation of the Morse code pieces...it all has a lineage I just realized for the first time.

In performance work as well, Meaning Cleaning takes the concept of 'doing public service' and actually realizes it through often grueling outdoor manual labor: sweeping, scrubbing, packing, sorting. It is actual participation rather than an idea of participation.

Finally, In painting: I've understood how to express vulnerability and compassion in my work by allowing those aspects of myself to be exposed, softened, transformed. In 2007, I overcame my deepest obstacles. Because of that decision, I have been able to understand what universal empathy can feel like in a painting. I am beginning to understand why the Hanging Meat painting from Rembrandt is so important; I see Fran Angelico in a much different way now. It's the knowing without getting caught up in the concept of knowing - it's the realization through one's body of what is truth.

In 1996 I began painting the back of the head, neck, and torso as a way to highlight this investigation; paintings of fragmented body parts followed, fragmented undergarments, slips (with words either painted on them or behind them), shoes, and a lot of angry process work. Concepts of death and rebirth were investigated through paintings of black cats, ravens, and jackels. I kept things separate - there was not an awareness that everything was the same. The anger I felt in my body scared me, and I didn't want to work with it. What I presented through my paintings were removed from the series before it. It is really in the last month that I have understood that everything is the same. Everything has equal space. Everything is connected and is in relation.

As you know, I stopped painting for five years, from 2004-2009. Since I have returned to it there is such a deeper investigation of how to articulate my questions of how the body understands one's experience of this world. Even at my most critical, this question comes up in my mind. I understand as I work, I understand through the work.

The Rain Season

2011-04-10T22:29:00.004-05:00

Of Good and Bad:

We had an incredible week on the Oregon Coast. What beauty! (God lives at Cannon Beach.) And after all the glory a few moments stripped it all away. For a second I thought I lost Al which sent me into complete panic followed by a panic attack, insomnia and a pinched nerve in my sacrum. All previous beauty dissolved! How ridiculous! (It did help me enjoy homecoming.)

In response to your post, this is what I wrote to my students tonight:

All in all, I wanted to discuss this notion of 'not loving what you are painting.' It is a very important concept to observe and I'm glad it came up last week. We seem to be in the mindset of likes and dislikes most of our day. (Like, I really don't like this pain in my back.) What this does is it sets up binary opposites- things that relate but are on opposite sides. This is still within our mental constructs which sometime block creativity. We think we know. We label the plat. (I know it is green, it lives in the soil, etc.) But all these words stop us from really seeing the plant. (Seeing that entity in front of you stripped of all the labels.)

The still-life which wasn't still at all is a living entity- that changes, is form and color, is in relation to you.

A Good Day

2011-04-06T23:53:00.003-05:00

It's interesting to notice attachments to either feeling "good" or feeling "bad".

During this last week (week 37 of pregnancy), there was a lot of feeling emotional, weepy, feeling hopeless, feeling useless, feeling lethargic, despondent, and physically sick. I perceived this as "difficult" to get through, and did very little to resonate with these feelings. Rather, I fought against them, judged them, judged myself. I contributed to my own feelings of misery.

Today, on the other hand, I began to feel wonderful.

I received encouraging and uplifting news from many people, which helped in my tying up a lot of loose ends.

Suddenly, seemingly tons of pounds were lifted from my shoulders; I felt relieved, happy, optimistic, lighter, bright-eyed and focused. Small but profound connections were made between people, places, and energy...I noticed the subtleties of the world around me and felt comforted by being alive in this moment.

Why is it easier to feel more aware when perceived 'good things' happen than when 'bad' things do? Where does judgment come from, and why?

Is any of this part of the practice of non-attachment?

What part is noticing?

What part is being aware?

Tonight I have insomnia again, and am continuing to work on a beaded Morse code piece based on the John Donne poem Death Be Not Proud. When I took a short break an hour ago, I found an email from a friend who forwarded me the announcement for Liza Lou's most recent exhibition at L&M Arts in Los Angeles.

As I only have the thumbnail images on my computer screen to base this observation on, it was a pleasant surprise to see such a shift in Lou's beaded work. There appeared to be so much more transparency and weightlessness to the pieces: a transformation from earlier work. I felt myself exhaling more deeply after seeing the exhibition highlights online. It had such a more quiet atmosphere around it. A stillness and a breath that I haven't felt from her work before.

Synchronicity

Chance occurance

Focus

Attention

Awareness

Stillness

I will continue to work until I get tired

On another note

2011-03-29T21:31:00.000-05:00

Just about 4 weeks to go...xo

Airing Dirty Laundry progress and install shots

2011-03-29T21:28:00.000-05:00

Residency application draft for Women's Studio Workshop

2011-03-29T21:07:00.004-05:00

Project Description

I am interested in creating an artist book based on my interactive performance piece Airing Dirty Laundry. This ongoing piece has existed both as a growing site-specific installation and as an interactive collaboration between the public and myself. It has aimed to reveal a common thread between meditation and everyday actions. It began as a collection of various commands and criticisms amassed via public interaction over the last few years; it has continued as an embroidery circle, most recently at a winter residency at Roos Arts in Rosendale, where I worked alongside volunteer participants embroidering the phrases onto antique table linens and white bed sheets. I hope to expand upon the collaborative nature of the piece in the form of an artists’ book.

Embroidery as a central visual element has emphasized the connection between internal reflection and external daily activity. The playful yet suggestive notion of “airing dirty laundry,” in combination with public participation, has facilitated a creative space to reveal stories and life experiences we might otherwise keep to ourselves.

The book I would like to make will be comprised of 12 antique table linens or ‘pages’ that have various commands and criticisms embroidered onto them. Linen and thread color would both be white, pointing to - and at the same time subverting - notions of neutrality, purity and cleanliness. The pages would be housed in a handmade portfolio, and experienced either in one’s hand, or as a wall-mounted installation. Both configurations aim to underscore the intimate nature of the texts themselves. Edition size would be 9 or 12; portfolios and pages to be created at WSW.

It would be a natural extension of the piece to continue its fabrication at Women’s Studio Workshop. WSW has a long-standing commitment to the tradition of making work in a collaborative and non-competitive environment, which is in line with my philosophy of art making. Especially in this piece, collaboration and participation from faculty, staff, and other artists would be encouraged.

recentering

2011-03-17T17:10:00.003-05:00

sending messages of love -

organizing donation buckets and funds-

researching shipments directly to people-

there is a lot of work to do.

Mother Kitten Breath for Bodies Reform, To/From Project

2011-03-04T23:48:00.002-05:00

Whore Mother Totem Pole (Sliding Glass Door)

2011-02-14T00:36:00.009-05:00

indoor

(details)

outdoor

In the work, Whore Mother Totem Pole, (Sliding Glass Door), I play with the two acceptable roles for women within patriarchy, that of a mother and that of a whore. These two, not mutually exclusive stereotypes, interweave and support one another in this piece. I am interested in developing a gestural language through figures interacting. I use everyday materials to find a language that represents what we embody. I play with bodies to reform, alter and affect one another.

Airing Dirty Laundry: February 6, 2011

2011-02-06T20:20:00.003-05:00

Today was an excellent day to begin this piece.

Everything - from the installation, to the informal interview with Db Leonard, to the actual embroidery circle - went smoothly and in the way I had hoped it would go. The atmosphere was warm, inviting, and with purpose.

The table was set with five stations of embroidery hoops, practice cloths, needles and thread. Within the first five minutes of the opening, each station was filled! Each person understood that this was the first day of the installation, and, with help, that the piece would grow as the residency progressed.

I taught the group the only embroidery stitch I know, the chain stitch, which was easily mastered by all. Everyone worked with vigor and great enthusiasm.

I've only ever made my own work, so to have such willing participants in one of my pieces was a new and humbling experience. My aim is to embroider upwards of 50 sheets during my time at Roos. Hopefully with this much positivity and encouragement, I will attain this goal.

Images to follow

blurring boundaries

2011-02-03T22:51:00.005-05:00

exploring the impermanence of an edge

Airing Dirty Laundry

2011-02-03T20:52:00.004-05:00

Airing Dirty Laundry

Angela Rose Voulgarelis

6 February - 12 March, 2011

Opening Sunday, February 6th, 1 - 5 pm

Roos Arts is Pleased to Present

Airing Dirty Laundry

Angela Rose Voulgarelis

6 February - 12 March, 2011

Closing Party: Saturday, March 12th, 6 - 8 pm

Gallery Hours: Tuesdays, 1 - 5 pm, Thursdays, 4 - 7 pm, Sundays, 1- 5 pm and by appointment

For five weeks, Angela Rose Voulgarelis will create an embroidery circle at Roos Arts, bringing to life the second of three phases of her performance piece Airing Dirty Laundry. This picks up the thread of the first installment, which invited visitors at the show, Made In Rosendale, to complete various phrases on small cards, and place them into a transparent ballot box. The phrases collected from that exhibition are now going to be embroidered onto over 50 white sheets that will be exhibited in and around Rosendale at a later date.

As an ongoing process, Airing Dirty Laundry has continued to exist both as a growing site-specific installation and as an interactive collaboration between the artist and the public. During the six-week ‘residency’ at Roos Arts, the artist again invites community participation, this time as fellow embroiderers. Embroidery, as a central visual element in this piece, works as a way to reveal the commonalities between meditation and everyday actions. The playful yet suggestive notion of “airing dirty laundry,” in combination with audience participation, provides a lighthearted incentive to reveal stories and life experiences we might otherwise keep to ourselves. The sheets, needles, and thread will be provided, as will basic embroidery lessons. All ages and skill levels are welcome to join on Tuesdays between 1 and 5 pm, Thursdays between 4 and 7 pm, and Sundays between 1 and 5 pm, until March 10th.

Please join us on February 6th, between 1-5 PM, for the first day of Angela's residency at the gallery, accompanied by warm beverages and cookies.

Special thanks to April Warren for all her help!

For more information, please contact Heige at hk@roosarts.com or 718-755-4726.

**Free Municipal parking available on Main Street behind Rosendale Theater. Thank you in advance for not parking at Rosendale Cafe parking lot.

Women's Works 2011 24th Annual Fine Arts Show, proposal

2011-02-01T23:08:00.005-05:00

Bodies Form, To/From Mothering Alphabet

8' x 8', Dust and dirt on contact paper and wall

thoughts

2011-02-01T22:56:00.003-05:00

integrating art and teaching

proposing, proposing, proposing

bodies reforming

between fem and ism

learning as I teach

planning this season's garden

Feb. 1, 2011

2011-02-01T17:05:00.002-05:00

Been up since 5AM, awoke with the snow.
Black cats and self portraits abound in studio.
While Egypt is still rioting, this is the biggest storm to hit the Northeast in 30 years.

2011-01-26T14:38:00.001-05:00

As the paint dries on another canvas, I clean the studio.
It's in the mud stage...

The reflected light from the snow is almost too much

Cut.Fold.Interrupt.Repeat

2011-01-26T09:24:00.004-05:00

Cut.Fold.Interrupt.Repeat
Installation views
Linksoul Lab
San Diego, CA

Morse code translation of Women and Children First
by Ingrid De Kok
Coral, glass, silk, silver

Alternate view

Morse code translation of
Not To Speak Is To Speak
Not To Act Is To Act

Alternate view

Detail

Installation view

Recent work

2011-01-25T20:46:00.001-05:00

Recent Paintings
Late 2010-early 2011

Jak na novy rok, tak po cely rok

2011-01-01T15:45:00.003-05:00

There is a Czech proverb that states: how on New Years, so too for the rest of the year.

I'm taking time...

to play

to love

to be in sunshine

to de-install and be with the artwork

to reflect

to step-in and speak what I believe

to know I don't know

to feel satisfied

to sit

to drink tea

to connect

Memory Upgrade, Center on Contemporary Art Annual 2010

2010-11-22T22:13:00.008-05:00

6413 Seaview Avenue NW ● Seattle, WA 98107 ● 206 728 1980

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

CONTACT:
Ray C. Freeman III, President
(206)349-3147 ray@cocaseattle.org
David Francis, Artist Liason
(206) 851-9641 david@cocaseattle.org
Center on Contemporary Art
(206) 728-1980 info@cocaseattle.org
http://www.cocaseattle.org

CoCA Pioneer Square Presents the 2010 Annual Juried Exhibition,
Memory Upgrade

From December 2, 2010 - January 1, 2011, CoCA Pioneer Square will present Memory Upgrade, a juried exhibition featuring work from 16 emerging as well as established artists in a wide variety of visual media, including 2d, 3d, and video.

Memory Upgrade explores the ways in which artists have responded to the global financial crisis by changing various aspects of their work. Considered collectively, these artists hint at the heightened importance of memory, history, and the role of the artist to affect social change.

Over 180 artists from across the county, Europe, and Australia submitted works for consideration. CoCA has presented the Annual since 1989, each time inviting an independent juror to select the work. For this year's 21st anniversary of the show, CoCA is proud to have Juan Alonso as juror.

Over a career that spans 25 years, Alonso has received numerous grants, awards, and recognition from a wide variety of arts organization in the Seattle area, including the Behnke Foundation, PONCHO (2007 Artist of the Year), 4Culture, Mayors Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs, Artist Trust, Pratt Fine Arts Center, and Centrum. Born in Cuba in 1956, Alonso came to the Unites States at an early age, leaving behind his family to learn a new language in a foreign place.

There will be an opening reception on Thursday, December 2, from 6 – 9pm at CoCA’s Pioneer Square location located inside the former Elliott bay Book Company at 310 1st Ave South in Pioneer Square. Juan Alonso will announce prizewinners at the reception and field questions via satellite from Miami / Basel Art Fair.

Participating artists include: Minh Carrico, Laura Castellanos, David French, Douglas Gast,
Sarah Gilbert, Harold Hollingsworth, Phillip Hua, Alma Leiva, Nia Michaels, Nate Orton,
Scott Schuldt, Patti Shaw, Garric Simonsen, Tereza Swanda, Kate Sweeney and Jillian Vento.

CoCA Statement

In Bodies Form, To/From Mothering Alphabet, I leave an imprint, a trace of my movement with another, specifically my child and mother. I explore interconnectedness. I fill the form with what feels more like us rather than the superficial image. We end being a joint body made of the same or similar everyday material, residual dust, hair, cobwebs, lint, bread crumbs, flour, and threads. All of the material is collected through the “mothering” process of tidying up, (keeping home) and exposed within the joint shape instead of discarded. Twenty-six symbols reveal an other’s alphabet. I use everyday matter combined with the people who matter the most in my life to find a language that represents what I embody.

Bio

Tereza Swanda, born Mazurova, in 1978, Jesenik, Czech Republic, has shown her artwork at University of Oregon in Eugene, Berliner Kunstprojekt in Berlin, 450 Broadway Gallery in New York City, online in Storyscale Journal, Anthology One, and elsewhere. She has installed site-specific work at Chemeketa Community College Art Gallery in Through the Eyes of Strangers, artists visit South Africa. She received her M.F.A. in Visual Arts from Vermont College of Fine Arts where she was awarded scholarship. Swanda also holds 2 BFAs in Painting and Sculpture from Massachusetts College of Art and Design as well as an NCME Certificate from Bellevue Montessori. Currently, Tereza lives and teaches in Redmond, WA.

Sweet Studio

2010-11-17T15:52:00.010-05:00

I had a remarkable class yesterday.

We started the day talking about theatre. More specifically we talked about making a puppet theatre for the puppets we made last week. We talked about the background, what our character/puppet needs? Where does s/he live? Children were given a large sheet of paper and the class turned into a painting studio. Children painted standing up with their canvas in front of them and painted until most of the paper was covered with paint. The goal was to transform the construction paper into a different world.

From there we moved into painting the theatre itself (a cardboard box.) And for the finale each child (3-6 yrs.) got up in front of their audience (each other) and presented their puppet in his/her world.

Anything is Possible- Film Art21

2010-11-17T15:41:00.003-05:00

One of those films that resonates. My condensed list of memorable quotes:

"I'm only an artist. My job is to make drawings. Not to make sense."

He is talking here about the seriousness of play.

"It is in the looseness of trying different things that images and ideas emerge. It's always been in between the things I thought I was doing that the real work has happened."

And perhaps my favorite one,

"I think one does think with one's hands."

between fem and ism (digital sketches)

2010-11-09T01:14:00.008-05:00

I have been thinking about the difference between theory and practice and how one falls short without the other.

"Body Language"

2010-10-28T22:00:00.004-05:00

(sound bite is that of silence- 10 seconds)

October 29-December 19

at the South Shore Art Center

http://www.ssac.org/

Touch Art

2010-09-24T16:30:00.002-05:00

"He met me in the middle.

-primarily it was a verbal exchange (his comfort zone.)
-but he stepped on a limb, Touch Art, he called it.
-knowing that touch made him uncomfortable,
he none-the-less agreed.

We started with hands and discussed ambidexterity,
-how neurological pathways are formed through work with the hand
and more so through the work with two.

I asked of his background, a fellow Massachusettsian.
We also shared same age daughters and the loss of one.

I moved to the back,
-dialogue continued about kids, work, art.
-talking (concurrently) through our bodies.
-talking of the body/mind connection
which he expressed as lacking, (he) consisting of primarily intellectual work.

We talked of movement and the high of feeling good/peaceful through movement.
I moved to his head
-sensing tension, it would not last long."

Passage from a sketchbook entry, August 2010, Me Massaging the President

Continuing

2010-09-11T23:15:00.004-05:00

In responce to a feminist question;

how do we continue?

2010-09-11T23:04:00.003-05:00

What a difference a month, a year, nine years make,

and still none at all.

Installation Images at VCFA

2010-09-02T21:58:00.003-05:00

Unlearning, Ungendering, Space for the Unknown

2010-08-24T11:39:00.021-05:00

Tereza Mazur Swanda

“Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the Master of Fine Arts in Visual Art Program ¬¬of Vermont College of Fine Arts.”

July 16, 2010

________________________

To my mother, who encouraged me to learn
but more importantly unlearn,
and simply be.

To mothers who parented my child over these two years when I could not.

To my beloved editor.

To my partner in life.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. PROCESS PAPER
A. Introduction 1
B. Section I- (One who searches, finds). 4 Framing patriarchy especially around procreation.
C. Section II- (Father, head of family, winds clocks). 7 Looking beyond the frame to feminist art.
D. Section III- (Husband is head of family and wife is the neck. 10 Trust but verify.) Questioning gender: practicing feminist art techniques. Looking at a rewriting of history and prehistory.
E. Section IV- (However many languages you know, 14 that many times you are human or animal.) A different way of communicating citing Mary Kelly’s Post-Partum Document.

F. Section V- (In two, it is easier to pull.) 17 Dialogue starting with The Mother Reader
G. Section VII- (Everywhere fine, home’s the best. 22 There is no place like home.) The home as a malleable frame: looking at sexual politics and space.
H. Section VI-( Without work there is no ‘kolac’ [a Czech pastry].) 26 A discussion on reproductive labor.
I. Conclusion, Section VIII- (A crow sits next to a crow, 31 a straight one looks for another of the same quality. Birds of a feather flock together.) Aesthetic living.

“We must risk unlearning all those things that have kept us alive for so long…”
(Ann Newmarch, WACK! Catalogue,121)

Erasing the institution, sanded postcard of College Hall, 4x6 inches, 2nd semester, while reading the essay “Clearing the Ground,” by Henri Lefevre, the introduction to Stephen Johnstone’s text, The Everyday.

A blank space, space for possibility, an open space, silence, space to breathe, space as a place not to just pass through or over but to experience, pause, space to be, space to unlearn…

This Process Paper centers on growth, a learning as well as an unlearning, a relearning with the help of another’s perspective. It is a transformation through collaboration, through an interaction within a group of two, three, twenty two and eighty, through communication in written and spoken words and through gesture and telepathy. It is a seeing of process, a process of making, connecting and moving with. The process is shared. It is a happening; a process of discipline over a two year period, in which discipline is transformed into serious play. Play is defined in this case as the practice of following a thread non-linearly; with curves, twists and bends but also breaks, cuts and tethered ends until a new thread is picked up. (I am reminded of Duchamp’s, “Three Standard Stoppages.”) It is an individual journey and yet most of the above actions upon my trajectory in the VCFA program occurred through the interconnection or interaction with others. They also, albeit more subtly, occurred through an awareness of space housing these experiences.
Rectilinear walls limit the body’s movements to straight gestures; they close space in and produce inside/outside, public/private dichotomies. Air slows its flow. Dust settles, accumulating, then rises with each step. We breathe each other’s particles, strings, hair—endlessly cleaning. Hands wipe, scrub, polish—sucking the dirt out of sight. Eyes scan cobwebs, crumbs, lint, stains, hair—perpetuating the hand’s work—cyclically every day. What about when the eyes and hand don’t occupy the same body? When the labor of the hand is negated? When the stain, dust, crumbs are erased? When the eye sees only sparkle, only its own reflection? Does the eye then see (reality or only itself)?
In this Process Paper I will chart my unlearning of rigid gender definitions and roles, and look at the blurring of boundaries, uncovering the patriarchal grid, “the exterior that shapes, that regulates, that masquerades and conceals, that produces, scripts, imprints, divides…within which bodies take on meanings and roles” (Ashley Hunt, 4th semester). I will examine the VCFA experience as a rewiring and reforming: an expansion of identity. That identity is interrelated with others, not separate from. I present this paper in relation to others’ ideas, others’ art, with others’ processes that are linked with mine. Thoughts travel. It is within this space of dialogue and affect that a paper like this is possible, and can come upon its next destination: the reader. Each section is headed with a ‘truth’, a Czech proverb, to be either upheld, abolished, or just pondered with the support of quotes collected over the past two year period from other philosophers, feminists, professors, students, community. I wish to explore play, poetic space, the space of a daydream, a parallel possibility situated within any framework- it was for me the MFA in Visual Art experience.

Section I
“Kdo hledá, najde.”—One who searches, finds. English mis-translation “He who looks, finds.”
I began integrating art practice into my parenting life by stealing moments as soon as the baby, my first teacher in this process, closed her eyes. This accumulated to only roughly twenty minutes a day if she did not fall asleep at the breast and if she did not awaken once the skin was not touching her cheek. Please sleep! I would listen to her sucking, praying, slow down the gulps, lower the eyelids, stop moving. Then inching away, tiptoeing into the next room, always keeping a sanctuary, a portion of the living room as art space. Mix one color, listen to the stirring. Apply and throw the brushes unwashed into the sink, only to float in gray, soapy water until the next day’s nap. Only now do I realize that it was the rest of those days of non-“art” making—the nursing, holding, soothing, learning to intensely connect with another—that was the seed for the process of the past two years.
I entered graduate school out of physical and mental desperation. I came from two years of full-time parenting. Diapers, nursing, crying, playgrounds seemed all that there was. My artist self neglected, my husband and my roles clearly defined: he working, me staying home with our baby. “It was your choice.” My choice was to hold her (sometimes), wear her (sometimes), nurse her (sometimes), sleep with her (sometimes), change and take care of her (sometimes); not all day and nights, weeks and weekends, not months and years. This non-stop, isolated, institutionalized mothering is a desperate world for the millions of women who ‘chose’ to enter it; a desperation clearly expressed by a compilation of essays from the last 60 years, The Mother Reader. An institution programs the feeding, the sleeping, the sexing, the isolation, the mothering. This institution, VCFA, I was assured by the director, did not program the art-ing.
Where and when was my mothering role written? Why was there a dichotomy of a male and female gender especially apparent around procreation? “It is not only the infant whose future personality is formed at the crucial moment, but also the mother whose ‘feminine psychology’ is sealed by sexual division of labor in childcare” (Mary Kelly, Post-Partum Documents). I began my inquiry, first semester, with feminist art. I quickly realized I was not only questioning my then present parental situation, but also the patriarchy I had personally grown up with as well as societal and my own gender framing.
The patriarchal frame, although cemented into each structure’s foundation, presents itself as timeless and unchangeable, albeit hidden from view. (Henri Lefebvre) It remains masked behind, “the multiplicity of decorative surfaces that produce the sense of sexuality installed…” (Wigley, “Untitled: The Housing of Gender,” 367). It crept in early on in my development, subtly in my mothering tongue, Czech, through proverbs I can recite to this day. No matter how firm the concrete, the house of patriarchy is built on unsettled ground. It values a part of humanity, (a part of the world) and not the whole. Very quickly, through my experiences of strong matriarchs in the family, along with additional proverbs negating patriarchy’s firm stance, I became aware of a duality. I understood also that the two stances were interrelated.

Play, Mothering and Soldier Insides, cut paper and Tape transfer on paper, 11x8.5 inches each, Entry slide.

Section II
”I want to readjust— break, blur my boundaries, first I have to see clearly what they are.”
(“art, life, no separation” Blog, August 1, 2008)

Flag/my dress, personal article of clothing attached to the US Flag, 1st residency, witnessed and inspired by the work of Faith Wilding.

“Tata Hlava Rodiny, Natahuje Hodiny”—Father, head of family, winds clocks.
There are two roles for the male within the proverb—that of the intellectual “head of family,” and that of the master of time, in reality the inventor and perpetuator of it. Time implies a schedule, a compartmentalization of the day, as well as a linearity, one action following another, one day following the next, and so on. He, the father, is perpetuating the action of the machine, clock, meaning the idea time. All of history, including art history, is written from this gaze which, within a patriarchal culture, would be unquestionably male; a (logical) linearity from one perspective.
When we shift the gaze of art history to peripheral vision, we become aware of a seemingly other reality; another layer to what we previously perceived. Feminist art, for example, changed perspective from a male gaze to an inner dialogue. Women, rather than being the object of art history, claimed their subjecthood, many merging the roles of subject/object and using their own bodies as models. Works like “Inhabited Painting,” by the artist, Helena Almeida, explore the relationship between the artist and the image. She understands one is not separate from the other. Although her medium is mixed, Almeida injects them into the cultural domain of painting, stating, “I consider myself a painter… my works, as far as I’m concerned, are paintings. It’s my way of painting.” (http://www.kettlesyard.co.uk/education/almeida_teachers_pack.pdf.) Similar questions were raised by Joan Semmel in the work, “Me Without Mirrors,” and many others. “As women artists in the 1970s invented ways for women to escape self-loathing through self-love and become presiding geniuses of their own bodies, their work… challenged a woman [all] to live ‘up to and including her limits’…”(Cottingham, The Power of Feminist Art, 207). Many of the feminist artists could not be easily categorized unless it was under the umbrella of feminism. They worked through various processes: video, crochet, drawing, photography, drawing on photographs, text, etc. Feminist art was “antithetical to the aims of Euro-American modernism” (Ibid., 276).

Where patriarchy draws a clear grid isolating vision, delegating time and space, and preserving order, (preserving its own order), feminist art blew up the grid, crocheting it into infinite manifestations. One example of this concept is the work entitled “Crocheted Environment (Womb Room)” by Faith Wilding. The feminist artist created a space, in 1972 and again in 1995, in which the architecture falls away, as the space is painting black, and a woven cocoon surrounds and intimately encompasses the viewer. Patriarchy draws a clear divide. It constructs not only femininity but also masculinity, “visuality becomes a construction of necessarily sensuous social transactions” (Wigley, 371). I start the first semester with looking at myself through the gaze of another, another woman, and see feminine features as well as more gender-neutral features.

Self-portraits by others, digital photographs cropped and rearranged, 1st semester, inspired by the feminist practice of working collaboratively and by Marcel Duchamp, Rrose Selavy.

What happens when “the dream dictates?” (Cixous), when we look beyond/outside of the structure of patriarchal, dualistic thinking (male and female)?

Section III
“[I want to] see myself without the history I know…” (August 7, 2008)

"Muž je hlavou rodiny a žena krkem."—Husband is head of family and wife is the neck.
"Důvěřuj, ale prověřuj."—Trust but verify.
Matriarchy permeates Czech folklore. Superficially, men dominate, however few would dare cross the grandmother. The figure, popularized by the mid-eighteen hundreds by writer, Bozena Nemcova, evokes national pride. “Babicka, byla nam predlozena” –(Grandmother, has been our predecessor or grounding), meaning that the Czech nation, from 1855 on, was brought up with this archetype. Prior to “The Grandmother,” Nemcova’s most popular text, Czech literature’s main characters centered on the nobility. Suddenly on the scene comes a plain, elderly country woman! (I am reminded of stompthepatriarchs.com.)
Western history has been circumscribed by the Bible (Intro, The Invisible Sex.) The woman has been written out. “My memory is dust” (Diamant, The Red Tent).

Wiping Dust off the Dryer, To/From Mothering Alphabet Symbol, dust on contact paper, 5x9”, 3rd semester.

Science has been a way for men to justify patriarchal beliefs. Facts seem gender neutral. Upon examination, they are anything but. Looking at prehistory in The Invisible Sex, Adovasio, Soffer and Page, two archeologists and a science editor respectively, revisit prehistory through the female side of human evolution. They preface their text with a definition of science, “a method of diminishing ignorance… [which is] in constant motion,” and they point to the flaws of “scientifically uncovering [by male scientists] (and then creating) the past.” Through new technology that detects perishable artifacts like basketry and weaving, and through the increase in women joining the archeological workforce, a new version of the story of human evolution is coming to light, in which:
…female humans have been the chief engine in the unprecedentedly high level of human sociability, [they] were the inventors of the most useful of tools, have shared equally in the provisions of food for human societies, almost certainly drove the human invention of language, and were the ones who created agriculture (The Invisible Sex, 3).

Luce Irigaray notes the differences between the sexes as:

• being born of the same gender or of a different gender from one’s own
• being the daughter of a mother or the son of a mother
• whether or not one can conceive a living being in one’s own body
• whether one procreates within oneself or outside oneself
• whether one can nourish another living being from one’s own body or only through one’s own labour (151).

Clearly these notes highlight unique realities. Standing alone, these facts pose no threat, meaning that one body is not valued over another. However in a culture where “our civil code [has] accustomed us to evaluate almost everything in terms of property,” respect for the other is not our experience, rather they are seen as just another object to possess. Gender is a cultural value that humans have imposed on top of biological differences (The Invisible Sex, 26). “Terms such as “masculine” and “feminine” are notoriously interchangeable; there are social histories for each term; their meanings change radically depending upon geopolitical boundaries and cultural constraints on who is imagining whom, and for what purpose” (Butler, Undoing Gender, 10). Isolated, we can rarely see the bigger picture, especially when looking at history, even less so when looking at prehistory. The ‘whole’ picture would entail not only one having awareness of his/her peripheral vision but then also to have another—or others—pick up the gaze where the previous subject’s gaze ends, not to mention the perspective of a bird’s eye view and perhaps an ant’s eye view. Thus there will always be an unknown, or something we miss and do not see, as the whole is just wholly fragmented. I understand myself further only in relation with another.

Maya exchange, 2 postcards, front and back, bottom image sanded off, 4x6” each, 1st semester.

Section IIII
Dear Coworkers,
What is it that connect us?

on a spiritual level: dreams? energy? sound? color? the non-tangible?
on an intellectual level: language? feeling? philosophies? experiences? stories (hers and his)?
on a physical level: blood? water? air? molecules?

I am trying to understand and represent this space where we meet/connect…
(September 6, 2009)

"Kolik jazyků znáš, tolikrát jsi člověkem/zviretem."—However many languages you know, that many times you are human or animal.

Every infant is born with the ability to produce sounds of any language. Upon learning our native tongue, we negate all other sounds. Through practicing our alphabet we build muscle memory and strengthen one or two languages at the cost of the rest. What is more fascinating however is that prior to language development we none-the-less communicate, and do so very clearly. (Ask any mother of a newborn.)
The wiggling, continuously moving, unless asleep, human being forces recognition—be it peaceful or enraged. In its need for survival, the newborn gesticulates. (I am reminded of Brian Rotman’s essay “Corporeal or Gestru-haptic Writing”.) To bring calm and sleep to the flailing gestures one can swaddle the baby. At this point however the communication too does not cease. Endlessly I would lie watching her sleep. I recall her stirring at precisely the moments when certain thoughts ran through my mind. This was a practice witnessed repeatedly two or more times a day within the first few months and at least once a day for three years.
Going back further, to giving birth, labor generated sound I had not heard myself utter in my thirty years. It was an altogether different communication—not between humans although it was heard, and not just in and for myself. There was a bodily and a spiritual need. It was the start of an atypical way of communicating, practiced especially throughout our (mine and my daughter’s) first year but also current, continuous development (less so now that we have words to describe process).
Mary Kelly, in her work from the seventies, Post-Partum Document, is a predecessor who focused on intersubjectivity, presenting the mother-child relationship in a completely new way. Kelly presents a mother’s fetishized objects and combines them with the written word of multiple voices. Speaking to a woman’s desire’s, this personal narrative “is seen to function as passageway, and the only one, to the unconscious, to that which has been repressed and which has the potential to disrupt the established symbolic order” (Post Partum Document, 204). The objects on which both Mary Kelly and son, Kelly, intervene on are complex diagrams, charts, scribbles, texts, diary entries, and scientific and taxonomic conventions. They use materials from their shared environment, like diapers, clothing, and pieces of the child’s blanket. Kelly elevates, excavates this post-partum experience through her commitment of a five year practice and clearly communicates with the public, not just through the pieces but also through the book version of the work. Mary Kelly and son Kelly create a language of their own that seems like the Rosetta Stone ─ a key to deciphering this initial human experience. Their work continues.

Mothering body hieroglyphics, cut out silhouettes of paper, digitally worked and arranged, 3rd semester.

Section IIIII
“…thinking of dialogue as my art.” (August 7, 2008)
"Ve dvou se to lépe táhne."—In two, it is easier to pull.
We have never stopped developing a feminist continuum and a deeper inquiry into the many groundbreaking discoveries and processes that we began to work with in the 70’s. Personally, I’m tremendously helped and instructed by many younger feminist scholars and artists who are taking up this question from different points of view, and who are contemporizing feminist questions in connection to their different life experiences (Faith Wilding, 1st semester).

The Mother Reader, edited by Moyra Davey was the text I skimmed even before the first residency. While researching the VCFA faculty I was immediately drawn to this work. However I did not pick up the text until a year later, for fear of being dismissed as a Mother-Artist. “Mother” in the professional sphere seems pejorative. Picking the text up third semester, I unsurprisingly found myself completely glued to its pages.
This collection of mother/writer excerpts from the past 60 years reveals what remains raw, unspoken within the mothering institution. For example, “There is no boredom like that of an intelligent young woman who spends all day with a very small child” (Doris Lessing, Mother Reader, 7). Even more striking and heartfelt, Lynda Schor, in the short story, “My Death,” examines in graphic detail domesticity at the limits of tolerability. In the process of feeling that she, the mother, is at the brink of death, she remarks:
I realized that it was time for him to nurse, and it would be better if I left him fed and comfortable; so I left the food in the bag [she had just come home with groceries] and lifted my shirt, cradling the baby, who felt hot next to my cooling flesh, which must by now be way below body temperature, and wondering whether there was still milk in a dead woman’s breast (Ibid., 302).
Further still, Annie Ernaux in an excerpt from “A Frozen Woman,” remarks on a similar unromantic desperation. When her husband leaves for work she refers to the “solitude of empty rooms with a child who cannot talk yet, my occupation a series of trifling and unrelated chores. I can’t get used to it. As though I have been summarily put away on a shelf” (Ibid., 325). Of the religiously scheduled afternoon walk, she continues, “Out for a walk, it’s called, out: the same word as before. But there is no more outside for me, just a continuation of the inside, with the same preoccupations, the child, the butter and the box of diapers I must buy on the way home” (Ibid., 327). It is not the words that communicate so strongly. It is the empathy felt in the reader within this state of desperation.
This continues to be the current working state of millions of mothers. Women, (all) must be recognized in both public and private life for self and culture. Dialogue is necessary between public and private domain. In many ways we all start our journey in dialogue.

From me to you, borrowed photo of a friends’ placenta, 2nd semester.

In my work, Want Wall, I use blood’s colors to continue one feminist art process of collective collaboration, in order to explore the question: What is it we truly want? The viewer, writing and me, projecting, copying and erasing the viewer’s text. I layered paint onto a given surface, eight by eight feet of an institution’s wall, asking, “What is it you truly want?”

Want Wall, in process, 2nd residency.

“I Don’t Know?” Want Wall, 2nd residency.

Section IIIII/
“I'm [constantly] rearranging our house…I’m thinking of working directly on its surface.” (August 30, 2008)
“I box myself in more than a building does.” (August, 1, 2008)

"Všude dobře, doma nejlépe."—Everywhere fine, home the best. (There is no place like home.)

Mark Wigley in his essay, “Untitled: The Housing of Gender,” speaks of space as constructed under patriarchy. Referring to the work of Leon Battista Alberti, Wigley looks at the ramifications of privatizing space for (the male’s own) use, and in turn, of the development of a disconnected subject.
A new kind of space emerged in which distance is no longer the link between two visible objects in space but is the product of a mask whose surface is scrutinized for clues about what lies beyond it but can never simply be seen. Order in general depends upon an ordering of the body, which is to say, a detachment from it. It is this detachment that makes the individual subject possible (Wigley, Sexuality and Space , 345).

Putting up a vertical wall disjoins a horizontal land, dividing land into landscape; landscape being four lines drawn, forming imaginary boundaries. Walls demand attention while thwarting the ‘other’ reality beyond it. We perceive ourselves as different from nature, as we live within the masquerade. (Nature works in the round, having her verticality grow to a pinnacle in a cone-like gesture, always enjoying a horizontal view, as in mountains and trees for example.) What if the building continues or echoes the land? What if the building is made of that land? What if the wall does not separate inside from outside, only meanders in a snake-like gesture, presenting various perspectives from which to appreciate the land?

There are alternatives, Cob Cottage Company, digital image, 4th semester.

In the public eye, I at times remain labeled, “stay-at-home-mom;” my position clearly fitting the orchestrated sexualized space. Playing with my identity, and with the building that shapes that identity, is a daily exercise.

Out of Context, Family, Digital image of cut paper and tape on living-room window, figures 10x7.5"

I relate here to Lynn Spigel’s dual activity of “Playing with toys and toying with theory” (Welcome to the Dreamhouse, 313). There is always another way—another way of being.
In Sentenced to the Everyday, Lesley Johnson and Justine Lloyd examine how even within feminism “the housewife” remains a dirty word. Understanding sexual politics and space one can see why. Yet as Johnson and Lloyd argue, “in doing so feminism conﬁrmed the very way in which home and everyday life had been understood in modernist thought and hence the way it had banished women to the edges of modernity” (154). They continue expressing that escaping or devaluing domesticity is not the answer. “The self does not have to imagine itself as ‘leaving home’ to become a self; selfhood is formed precisely by a robust engagement with the social relationships of everyday existence, including those of domestic life” (155). I would add that the social relationships of everyday existence include the whole population: elderly, men and women, teen, etc.; not isolated to babies/children/mommy relationships.

Section IIIII/_

A Body at Work—Reproductive Labor, Ectopic, digital image, Labor Day, 2009, 3rd semester.

Are you still there?
I'm tired, I want you out. But you are me and I can't escape.
You are dying, so slowly, please hurry up.
Who the fuck is I and who the fuck are you?
Regular life is ridiculous. It is about this isn't it?
This inbetween, this not knowing. But I fight it.
I want the ridiculous, I want the light, Ali's laugh, kitten purring in the lap.
My lap is so sore. I'm tired of being sore. Waiting for a possible burst. But hoping that it would then be over.

I mourn you but I wasn't sure I even wanted you, at least not all the painstaking work that comes with it, the enduring months of carrying you, the pain/border between life and death of delivery, the agonizing cries of a newborn and the responsibility of being its only hope…
(September 5, 2009)

Work is difficult to describe although it is something we participate in every day. Most labor, service, or exchange within a capitalism economy is paid (unfortunately at a different rate). Examples include medical, dental, business, manual, technical, educational, industrial, and governmental. One example which remains unpaid is reproductive labor, unless it is set outside the domestic setting. When the same or similar work is done as part of the child industry, the labor is again paid, albeit poorly. I propose this has something to do with patriarchal mentality, valuing certain work and not others.
"Bez práce nejsou koláče."—Without work there is no ‘kolac’ [a Czech pastry].
This proverb follows the story of “The Little Red Hen.” Its meaning orchestrates a work ethic for the Czech nation. At the same time it implies value for stereotypical women’s work, as the ‘kolac’ is usually baked by the grandmother. It suggests helping not only a woman but an elderly woman in order to help oneself, or by extension, for a society to survive.
The proverb points to the significance of preparatory work: the work that is not necessarily understood unless embodied or even seen in the finished product. It is the process. Examples include, among many others, the work that goes into a finished meal, (slicing vegetables, breading or marinating the chicken, washing, cleaning dishes, setting of table) and into childrearing, (having age appropriate material around, developing language and games, besides the physical needs of washing diapers, wiping butts, doing laundry, feeding, brushing hair, brushing teeth, bathing, walking, when they are ready, getting them ‘fresh air’ when not, soothing, pushing on tummy when gas pains frustrate a newborn,) continuous…This (domestic) labor is hidden within the house walls, and the public, along with the working-outside-the-home parent does not see. It is not his/her experience and by default is taken for granted.
Leopoldina Fortunati, a Marxist feminist, in her work, Arcane of Reproduction: Housework, Prostitution, Labor and Capital, argues that housework, (process oriented), holds seemingly no value within a patriarchal mode of production, as it remains unwaged. At the same time she uncovers the absolute surplus value housework provides for capital. By this, she means that women and children’s contribution into the economy is absolutely unpaid, so it provides pure surplus value to the economy—in other words, pure profit. Mothers and children make up a large portion of consumers, pouring more money into the system while being paid none. She also adds that children provide the next generation of labor and reproductive power.
In the United States there remains an old-idea system of European and Christian descent (Rich ix). Labeled as developed or “civilized,” the structure continues to be patriarchal in nature (Rich ix). Currently, the system is layered, patriarchal and capitalist. Within capitalism value is placed upon “exchange-value, taking precedence over the-individual-as-use-value” (Fortunati 7).
In order to uncover a mother’s reality, we must first look at the institution of motherhood. Who or what serves as the employer in this institution and who dictates its practices? Fortunati argues that the exchange-value within reproductive labor occurs not between man and woman, but actually exists as an exchange between the laborer (mother/housewife) and the state. “It is an exchange that appears to take place between male workers and women, but in reality takes place between capital and women, with the male workers acting as intermediaries” (9). In this instance, Fortunati points to how reproductive labor supports and contributes to capitalism. I add (gender) to her argument that the state remains an extension of individuals, and therefore motherhood is still defined within the conceptual binary of male/female, a concept that is limiting and confined to duality. Mothering is a learned behavior that can be learned by either male or female persons, and more importantly both, allowing for continuous parenting.
The question remains what is it we, human beings, truly value (be it within or outside of capitalism)? Not what we were taught to value, not what the media tells us to value, but what is it that we have always valued. What is it we hold dear? And if the answer is “I don’t know” then what was it we valued most at three years of age? If the answer is “I don’t remember”, then observe a three year old and see what matters to them.

Link, Silhouettes on sand, digital image, 1st semester.

My water broke after twenty hours of labor. The pain is either a sense of being completely alive or entering death, somewhere in-between. Nothing else exists. (No thing.)
You get the highest oxitocin rush you’ll ever have in your life when you give birth naturally, you will go into an altered state of consciousness and be in a kind of state of yes there is bliss, and yes, there is pain and it’s all tied up together, and you cannot have bliss without pain. (The Business of Being Born)

Birth and death are intimately linked. A mother exists before the birth of her child. So too shall the child exist past the death of her mother. One realizes that things go on, before birth and after death. Recognizing that continuum, there is no possibility to live within just a capitalist frame. Facing death, one understands that s/he does not possess time or space; one redistributes work and leisure; and seeks quality time within every day, making every moment count. It is that quality that we, the American culture, have to understand and embody.

Section IIIII/__

Overlay, Female Pyramid, Cut paper and tape on living-room window, figures 10.5x12 inches,
4th semester.)

“My interest lies in breaking the line, the edge, so that there is a space for us to meet...living daily process…based on different interaction with each individual … I will not only construct or find clean spaces that allow plenty of natural light and air in which to conduct the exchanges but also will try to generate mental space for each happening, with a meditation practice… I hope to branch out from working in the one-bedroom space I had designed for my ‘art’ practice, to working in the entire space I occupy at many moments.”
(August 22, 2008, Studio Study Plan, 1st semester)
"Vrána k vráně sedá, (rovný rovného si hledá.)"—A crow sits next to a crow, a straight one seeks the same quality within the other. (Birds of a feather flock together.)
Art is a way of life. It is living with the understanding of the fine quality potentially within each object, each person, each place. “Aesthetics is something we intuitively know. We feel it here [touching his gut with a fist]” (Ianto Evans, author of The Hand-Sculpted House)—the sound and softness of a cat purring on your lap (if you are not allergic), the sweet smell of the air when rain begins after a dry spell, freshly baked bread, a warm, cozy bench on cold winter days, a cool one during sweltering heat, a conversation. Suzi Gablik, critiquing aesthetic ideology of the 1990’s, writes, “To be able to see current aesthetic ideology as actively contributing to the most serious problems of our time means breaking the cultural trance and requires a change of heart” (“Connective Aesthetics: Art after Individualism,” 76). She continues:
Can artists and art institutions redefine themselves in less spectatorially oriented ways in order to regain the experience of interconnectedness—of subject and object intertwining—that was lost in dualistic Enlightenment philosophies, which construed the world as a spectacle to be observed from afar by a disembodied eye? (80).

What is it that connects us? You, a male, head the institution, I, a female, attend it. “Bodies do matter, and they are sexed and gendered in many different ways… I think it is clear that women are not necessarily constructed differently, but they are socialized differently, in different bodies, and through bodily activities” (Faith Wilding, 1st semester). We are both vested, I invest in the dream of it; you are supported by the concrete. “The material wall is no more than a prop, a contingent piece of ‘scaffolding,’ ‘foreign’ to the production of the building, merely a supporting player, playing the role of support, supporting precisely because it does not play”(Wigley, 367). We indirectly invest in each other. I question the investment if I am not supported by you. But who knows reality? We rule ourselves in accordance with laws we perceive. Once our perception is suspended, broken, blurred, and folded, what then of our laws? As Griselda Pollock headed in the Conversation with Mary Kelly, “We are all working from situated knowledge with our own forms of blinds.” If we take down our walls, will you meet me in the middle? Can we dialogue in our language? “There are so many things which one learns only by doing, and when one does things differently one thinks differently. Problem solving often happens when the mind is at rest and the hands busy” (Faith Wilding, 2nd reflection). Our hands need to get busy. Let’s play. (Any structure can be subverted!)

Play, Power, Ink jet printed in color, draft mode on legal paper, 14x8.5inches, 4th semester.

Play, Ground, Time- space of the thesis exhibition

2010-08-10T16:23:00.018-05:00

Ironing, daily habit, Cobbing Cluster (living-room window), 2010

Overlay, Female Pyramid (kitchen window, installation shot), 2010, Cut paper (b&w inkjet) and tape on glass, figures 11x14 in; glass 33x33 in; wood support 4 ft. high

Romping Cluster (bedroom window), 2010, Cut paper (b&w inkjet) and tape on glass, figures 27x16 in; glass 42x42 in; wood supports 3 ft. high

Romping Cluster (detail)

looking through Romping Cluster at Cobbing Cluster

Cobbing Cluster, There is another way, (living-room window), 2010, Cut paper (color inkjet) and tape on glass, figures 27x26 in; glass 44x42 in; wood support 3 ft. high.

Cobbing Cluster (detail)

Cobbing cluster (rear detail)

Return from Just Painting

2010-07-30T16:33:00.002-05:00

Back from Just Painting.
Some works started on days 1,2.
x

2010-07-30T16:31:00.000-05:00

Cobbing in the Oregon Rainforest (celebrating co-dependence)

2010-07-04T19:06:00.008-05:00

Cob is a sand, clay, straw mixture, (same as adobe).

It can be mixed on a tarp with the soles of your feet.
(It is the material between two; it is the ground, the Earth)

The feel of the architecture in its context.

Amazing tree.

Inside the Laughing House

2010-07-03T01:07:00.006-05:00

the heater warms the bench

the woodwork is phanomenal

Cob Cottage Company (samples)

2010-07-03T00:10:00.007-05:00

the first building you come upon, library

garden walls meander in a snake-like gesture throughout the land

green roofs

outdoor kitchen/oven

cob cottage facing the west

roof garden

The Project, Composting Toilet

2010-07-02T23:47:00.011-05:00

plant nook, next to the sink and arch over the root of a red cedar tree (I believe)

garden wall attching to a cob cottage (holes in the wall save on drying time and are plastered in when complete.)

continuing the arch and butresses

sink nestled into the cob with marble slabs, second window and wiring for the light switch

composting bucket niche

private toilet area with a view into the forest

Recent work

2010-06-30T18:43:00.003-05:00

Some recent work. More soon
x

Bowl
Oil on Canvas
48" x 60"
2010

Kitchen
Oil on Canvas
48" x 60"
2010

Bed Reflection
Oil on Canvas
48" x 60"
2010

Markers
Oil on Canvas
48" x 60"
2010

Death Be Not Proud

2010-06-18T10:21:00.000-05:00

72. "Death be not proud, though some have called thee"

DEATH be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not so,
For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee, 5
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee doe goe,
Rest of their bones, and soules deliverie.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell, 10
And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well,
And better then thy stroake; why swell'st thou then;
One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.

John Donne

post reflections

2010-05-26T16:16:00.009-05:00

("Family," part of overlays series, cut paper on glass, roughly 14x6")

Fam. detail 1

Fam. Detail 2

Fam. Detail 3

("Multiple Pyramid," roughly 14x10")

sound bites

2010-05-25T23:51:00.003-05:00

"It is the sound of a language I do not know, but understand."

10 second recorders are distributed to continue expanding "To/From Mothering Alphabet".

Each participant is asked to take the recorder with him/her to a safe, comfortable setting.

He or she is asked to record a personal, non-verbal sound. An example is a man's deep, escalating growl while pounding a table. Participant can rerecord until s/he is satisfied.

This project comes from my experience within labor, vocalizing in a language that I had accessed for the first time.

with Karen Dunbar and Michael Minelli, reflections from LA

2010-05-25T22:01:00.007-05:00

("Play, Power 1," 8.5x14", ink on legal pad)

We discussed the history of using the legal paper and what the relationship is between power and play. A question raised was; can this (type of play) happen outside of the domestic?

("Overlays, No.4," (below) all figures smaller than 8x10", cut paper taped onto glass.)

We discussed the importance of seeing the intimacy of the face, the gaze or expression. The tape was also discussed and the relationship to Duchamp's glass and how his work was specifically about his relationships. We also discussed the installation- the paperwork was displayed on a studio door, so the forms are reliant on the architecture. Architecture without Architects was mentioned.

Questions raised were: Why is it always two? Is it site specific or can it be free standing, propped on glass, etc.?

Not only did I get to present my work in a studio visit but I spent a day and a half in Karen's and Michale's intimate studio/home. It's special in that this space was cohabited by two artists both dedicated to their practice (at least two thirds of the space is the studio). One enters through a commercial looking space- a milky, glass door into the long, open space pf the studio. Walking past the library/storage and studio restroom, one finds all the amenities and comforts of home; living room, kitchen, bedroom, guest room, even a garden.

The transformation of space especially by artists always stuns and inspires me.

2010-05-16T22:04:00.001-05:00

comparison is the root of all unhappiness.
comparison is the root of all unhappiness.

2010-05-16T21:40:00.002-05:00

between me and you
between above and below
between top coat and underpainting
between proclamations and reality
between me and husband
between me and Ali
between me and the door
between me and the house
between me and household responsibility
between me and the institution
between me and perceived intelligence of the academic institution
between me and patriarchy
between me and duality is duality
between my inner and outer form
inner and outer are aspects of the same whole
between me and the viewer
there is no separation, we are both participants

between

2010-05-10T14:28:00.002-05:00

between me and you
between my top coat and children's mural underpainting
between me and Will (husband)
between me and Ali
between me and Emily (fellow student)
between me and the door (outside)
between me and the house (the objects of the house
between me and the institution
between me and patriarchy
between my inner and outer form
between me and the viewer

2010-05-07T23:29:00.000-05:00

Thanks for the Marina inspiration!

working/playing through the process

2010-05-07T22:57:00.007-05:00

("Disrupting Order," ink printed in draft mode onto legal paper, overlaid with red ink by 4 yr.old, 8.5x14")

The more I write and practice, the more I understand that the random happenings

are actually the work. For Example when Ali scribbled on my printing paper the contrast to the strict horizontal and vertical lines is what I am working on: the critique of institutionalized linearity, institutionalize marriage, etc. I have a feeling this contrast; juxtaposing scribble lines overlaid with straight ones, will be incorporated into the thesis work.

("Three overlays in space,"carbon paper transfers onto studio wall, each symbol no bigger than 10x6", image 1.5x2')

Back to my obsession with painting directly on walls. A chunk of the studio wall might be embedded into the gallery wall in Vermont. The straight blue ink line is the same concept as in the lined paper above. I am having blueprints of College Hall which will house the thesis exhibition sent to me. I think the straight lines will be the blueprint of the building transcribed onto the wall which will then be broken up by red linear scribbles as in the previous work.

Expanding my symbol vocabulary

("Friends!", Images taken from facebook and printed onto paper in draft mode, cut into silhouettes, 11x8.5" each)

These will be transferred onto studio wall and then continue onto the gallery wall somehow within the scribbles.

Or something like that. (I will soon post my Process Paper- a journey reflecting on the past couple of years.)

More inspiration

2010-05-03T14:41:00.001-05:00

Researching Marina A's performance - homage to St. Therese, in the kitchen

2010-05-03T14:33:00.000-05:00

apron
bowl
chopper (mezza luna)
dish
egg beater
fork
grater
hamburger press
icepick
joicer
knife
ladle
measuring implements
nutcracker
opener
pan
quart bottle
rolling pin
spoon
tenderizer
u
v
w
x
y
z

play, process 3

2010-04-21T16:46:00.003-05:00

play, process 2

2010-04-21T16:43:00.005-05:00

play, process 1

2010-04-21T16:39:00.006-05:00

In studio, will post more photos soon

2010-04-19T11:39:00.002-05:00

Monday morning - it's been a full week in the country!
We extended our stay another month in our upstairs apartment. It will be nice not to move in two weeks.
Time seems to go more slowly here - the days seem so much longer, with so much less interruption.
I have been working on a painting thinking about our passage of time, our relationship with nature, and,ultimately, death.

Yesterday we rode our bikes to the next town over and found a great food co-op.

Bought my ticket to summer workshop on Friday.
I would like to buy a camera soon,
A

Bemis rejection letter

2010-04-15T18:20:00.000-05:00

At least they were nice about it:

Dear Artist,
On behalf of the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, I would like to thank you for applying to our Artist-in-Residence program. We received a record number of applications due to the ease of the online application and the jurors' task was a difficult one. Our jurors were Endi Poskovic, an alumni of the residency program and associate professor of art at the University of Michigan, Christopher Cook of the Salina Art Center and Matthias Harder of the Helmut Newton Foundation in Berlin.

Unfortunately, your application was not among those selected for a residency at this time. Please note that a new jury panel composed of different art professionals is selected for each application cycle. Many artists have applied more than once before being selected as an Artist-in-Residence. For this reason, we earnestly encourage you to reapply.

Our next application deadline is September 30, 2010 for the July through December 2011 residency cycle. You will find the link to the online application on our website at www.bemiscenter.org, which includes the latest news and updates from the Bemis Center.

We are proud to announce that next year the Bemis Center will be adding more studios and increasing the amount of artists we serve each year from 24 to 36. In these uncertain economic times we feel that the need to support artists is more important than ever.

Thank you for considering the Bemis Center’s Artist-in-Residence program. We wish you every success and truly appreciate your interest in the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts.

Sincerely,

--
Heather Johnson
Residency Program Manager
Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts
724 S. 12th Street
Omaha, NE 68102
Ph: 402.341.7130 x12
Fax: 402.341.9791
heather@bemiscenter.org
www.bemiscenter.org

Creativity Matters

2010-04-15T00:01:00.002-05:00

it has something to do with being transparent and overlapping bodies

Wiping Dust Off Dryer

2010-04-09T00:26:00.003-05:00

Was accepted into the 2010 Pacific Northwest Art Annual:

Show runs from April 24th- May 26th

Opening on April 24th at 6PM at Adell McMillan Gallery

order in chaos

2010-04-09T00:12:00.002-05:00

-keep house open, space clear
-kept Alenka engaged in activities all throughout the week, her spring brake
-exercise half hour each day
-meditate 20 minutes
(single parenting this week, Will in California)
-fighting insomnia (hopefully winning)
-for grad school
writing: thesis, Process Paper 1st draft(at least 3 sections this weekend, next 3 in the week, last 3 next weekend)
studio: -transpose more figures onto the tarp, cut out and trace more symbols in steel
-think deeply about the concept of play.
-emboss Intimate Box,
-show symbols to mother groups, record their sounds for them
-organized teaching courses
send out flyers publicizing the next Intro to Drawing Course
-apply for one more position by the end of the month

2010-04-08T10:56:00.001-05:00

Office of Blame book completed
congratulations Geoffrey and Carla

moved

2010-04-07T12:58:00.003-05:00

Moved out.
Torn ligaments in both wrists
Fingers swollen
Face swollen
Ankles feel like they are broken.
Left ankle hurt more than right - can hardly walk
Tenants in - they love the place
I feel like I haven't had a creative thought in weeks.
I ache for the studio, but feel like my choices are just pulling me further from what I want.

conversation between inner boundaries

2010-04-02T14:56:00.001-05:00

Moving Day tomorrow

2010-03-31T07:04:00.002-05:00

Repairs done.
So much to move downstairs.
Already exhausted, and it's barely 8AM.
Fingers crossed we stay healthy and get everything done.
xo