Boston Young Contemporaries and Vacation Time

So I found out last week one of the three pieces I submitted was selected to be a part of the Boston Young Contemporaries Exhibit in Boston starting on July 26th and running to August 24th! The piece they selected is called "the women" and here it is...

The opening and awards ceremony is on July 26th from 6-9pm. I will be there for the opening weekend only, but at least I will be there. From the exhibition in Boston I will be taking a detour to New York City for a week before returning home. Hopefully, I will get to every art museum and be completely inspired and ready to get to making amazing art when I get home. I'm excited about the summer, but at the same time I'm still trying to figure out how to keep my Fibromyalgia under control while it is all happening. I think the last will be a lost cause, but I have a lot of coping mechanisms and when all else fails really strong pain killers and drugs to knock me out :) Not letting my illness bring me down! As my mentor says, "Onward and Upward!"

Also, I have let all my work dry and dropped it off to be packed up and shipped off to Boston! Two weeks to residency. I'm looking forward to it! I'm taking the two weeks before residency as vacation time from school. I will be spending time in my studio but not as diligently as usual. I'm making time to do things outside, exercise, visit and talk with friends (finally), and of course do the readings and rework some of my papers.

With all of the ups and downs of this semester I think it turned out to be a good one. I'm ready for Residency 3 :)

Saying Farewell

Since I have decided to move away from military themes it seems my last project is very appropriate. It's like the death of my idea and the growth of me spurred me to create a memorial of sorts. At the time I thought it would just be another piece in the series, but now I see it as a perfect way to end things and move on. Looking at influences like Liza Lou, Jessica Stockholder, Cindy Sherman, Judy Chicago, Martha Rosler, John Cage, Gerhardt Richter is forcing me to grow and change as an artist.

Memorial

Now I'm trying to figure out what I actually want to make art about. I'm tired of being happy and excited, and then getting into the studio and getting angry because of the nature of my work. I want my work to focus on the positives of life and things that interest me. In an attempt to make less didactic, more intriguing work I am moving into an experimental phase. My mentor has suggested a more John Cage approach to see what comes out of my head. I have three boxes of thrift store "treasures" and I am using a board I made up of different art techniques and dice to determine what happens to the items in the box. I'm hoping a more intuitive approach will help me reach the break through I need. I will be posting pictures from this process in my next post. Until then I wish a fond farewell to my military art.

Let's Talk About It

First things first. Here is a picture of my completed light boxes and necklace boxes that I will be taking to Boston in June.

Bed Memories

The Women

Now let's talk about where all of this is actually heading. I've decided to let things get a bit messier. This epiphany has come about from my experimenting and play. Restraint, identity confusion, indignation at the forgotten in past memories. It's also about the injustices women still face today in the military. The titles are VERY important. The piece is not whole without it. So here are some new pieces...

No Larger Than Regulation

A Small Stain

I took my belt and displayed it on coveralls. Still working on a title as the coveralls add a new element.

Start of my floor panel project. The center tile is non-existent and in it's place is a crochet vagina. Hard to see in the picture.

The Invisible War

In 2012 a documentary was made addressing sexual assault in the military. In a male dominant ego centric society like the military those who are assaulted, men and women, get swept under the rug.

The Invisible War (the trailer)

The problem with being ignored doesn't go away over time. It creates identity confusion, anti-authority sentiments, continued anger and judgement over the injustice, and the monsters that won't go away that no one talks about. This is happening now in the United States. Yes, all of the world has problems, but I'm just one person in an ocean of sharks. The lives that are being altered and sometimes destroyed matter. Who will be their voice????

New Stuff

This week I started working on new ideas. I completed one and added pictures here, but the other is in a weird stage in the process and just looks like a bunch of gesso'ed birch panels. So I am going to be sharing more on that piece next week. My experimentation has come down to adding paint, sculpture, and craft. I figure these are all things I like to do and they all work to convey the meaning I want so why not smash them all together. The only constraints I really have at this point are my physical ailments that slow me down so I am sticking to non-installation art for the time to save my sanity. The project below is the first thing I consider heading in a "solid" direction. It still alludes to the military ribbon, women and their involvement in the military, and restraint without being too forward...I think. Anyway, here are some pictures.

 Ok, so it's a belt that I crocheted from a belt pattern. I decorated it with flashy beads and sequins in the color and order of a National Defense Ribbon and secured it through the "belt buckle" opening. The belt buckle is an orchid...with a vagina as the center and opening. At the bottom of the belt is a good conduct ribbon that when fastened around the waist goes through the orchid to rest nicely over the vagina. I don't know how I want to display this yet. Maybe on a bust (need to figure out where to get one of those)? I think it loses a lot by just hanging. It really needs to be clasped to give the whole affect. Below are close ups of the closure and orchid...

This picture didn't turn out so well. The orchid has some yellow to it and there is more detail.

The other piece will be a floor piece with text elements, craft, found objects, paint, and sculpey. I'm really excited about moving forward with the piece, and I hope to have a lot more to show of it next week. In the meantime, I finished my necklace memorial boxes and here are a few shots of those:

Wrapping Up and Experimentation

April 25-May 4th

I spent this week completing all of my half finished projects. It was a week of toil for sure! I finally completed my self-portrait I started a month ago. This was my first time working with the Apelles palette exclusively. I also did a great deal of reading on contemporary art and artists and a lot of sketching and journaling. I began experimenting with creating art without thinking. I made quite a few things thus far from this stand point. They mostly feel empty, but I do feel like they are helping me work out what is really going on inside me. I have been starting with painting but it tends to lead to a desire to add something three dimensional, which then leads to adding some sort of craft element.

I visited the Bellevue Art Museum on Tuesday. There was an exhibit about currency art. The work was very politically charged, but in the end I left the exhibit bored. It felt like all the art being shown was doing the same exact thing. There was also an exhibit on Italian furniture design on the third level that was much more intriguing. It was interesting to see how design in the 60's 70's and 80's was a great deal similiar to the artistic movements happening at the time (granted it was artistic furniture design, but it was all still functional and for sale at the time of creation).

Here are some pictures of the process I went through to completion on my large portrait:

Experimenting

First week with working intuitively. I walked into my studio and just started making things. Then I smashed them all together. At the end of the day this is what I got...

I made a painting...I also made some sculpey flowers...with military ribbon fabric...and pins...

There is blue embroidered stitching on the right of the body but it's hard to see here.

In the end I mashed it all together and added some marbles (cause I must be losing mine)

I also finished my jewelery box project. Here is the final image of that.