Roots

Ready for use at On The Ground Floor

http://www.onthegroundfloor.co/roots-installation-view/okeb6zmeexf9oes8o1hpjy4b4hxq7l

Oh, Ani

The question:

     "I want to know if you can see Beauty (Betty) even when it is not pretty every day.
      I want to know if you can live with failure yours and mine and still shout 'yes!'
      It does not interest me how much money you have, I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair weary and bruised  to the bone to feed the children."
     
Her answer:

Post

6/24/15

Dear Tereza,

From today: If you only
have 5 minutes (to be in
studio, to make work),
The first moment is to
reflect, to think about
who you are, what your
intention is, and how
you'd like to be present.
The first full minute.

               xo Angela

7/9/15

Dear Angela,

The postcards were left on the table when I got home. What joy to find the images and your words! There is so much to work with through a postcard and such an exchange- a public viewing of a very private world. (But the exercise could apply to anyone.)

"The first moment is to reflect."

In Seattle I came upon not only my first couple of workshop folders but also my notebooks that went alongside them. I'm working my way through each article and exercise again. Ready to teach this work. (I hope there is a teaching workshop next year.)

"Who you are"

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"What your intention is"

Anitra's work and life has interwoven in mine again. (The green ink blob with her graphite portrait  is off to a show in Cambridge in August.) They asked for a write up:

What inspired you to make this piece? 

Can you say anything about your grief and healing process while making and completing this piece? 

Who or what is it about? 

A poem or short statement is fine. Some sort of explanation helps viewers have a more in depth response to the work and connect in an universal way to grief and healing.

Please send the writing to me. 

My response:  

Savage Beauty

Darling,

I am so happy for you. A boy amongst all the pretty girls. You'll have to buy him new clothes, no hammy downs! And Will will have a son to play ball with and tinker on the car with. Unless Ali already does that stuff.

Is Ali still a dancer and singer?   I watch "So you think you can dance" and I think of you and remember when you gave me your dancing shoes and sparkly blue outfit. Which I wore just last year!

Are you birthing in water again? This time it'll be easier.I remember the photos of you - so red in the face! I wonder if you will make umbilical chord artwork again.

I gotta go to a group therapy session now...I love you always.

Ani

I was 8 months pregnant with my son the year she emailed the note above, the day before her untimely death. In the series “Awakening,” I reconnect with Anitra Haendel, a very close friend, collaborator and fellow artist who unfortunately took her own life, on July 23^rd 2013. I continue our decade long collaboration. I aim to redefine death, seeing it not as an end, but a point in a continuum. I question our physicality. The investigation gets more and more subtle and the material becomes more and more immaterial in its final form. 

"How to be present"

Thinking about a balanced seesaw arrived at by finding the right spot for each of the participants.

Ani's Gift from First Workshop 2000