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Despite everything going on, the goal was always to feel centered. Somehow. Some way. It worked out better some days than others.
Beyond the Story: Exploring Visual Memoir
Sept. 5 – October 30, 2014
Hillsboro Public Library, Main Branch 2nd floor
2850 NE Brookwood Parkway
Hillsboro OR 97124
Opening celebration:
September 7, 2014 2:00- 5:00 PM
artist talks at 3:00
The next piece in the series Then. Life growing up was complicated. With a huge extended family, something was always going on, both fun and challenging. It was a crazy time. I was always left trying to figure out what was going on.
Beyond the Story: Exploring Visual Memoir
Sept. 5 – October 30, 2014
Hillsboro Public Library, Main Branch 2nd floor
2850 NE Brookwood Parkway
Hillsboro OR 97124
Opening celebration:
September 7, 2014 2:00- 5:00 PM
artist talks at 3:00
http://www.facebook.com/beyondthestoryart
Part of my series, Then. Inspired by my childhood. I was surrounded by lots of things. Some were great, lots of love and family. Others not so great. It’s all a part of who I am.
Beyond the Story: Exploring Visual Memoir
Sept. 5 – October 30, 2014
Hillsboro Public Library, Main Branch 2nd floor
2850 NE Brookwood Parkway
Hillsboro OR 97124
Opening celebration:
September 7, 2014 2:00- 5:00 PM
artist talks at 3:00
http://www.facebook.com/beyondthestoryart
This is the first of six panels and two spacers that will be displayed together in a series I call Then. They have rich layered surfaces, with flashes of metallic. It’s a set that emerged from thinking about my childhood. So many things happening all the time.
Source is about the beginning. Origin. My parents. All that goes with that.
[hr/]
Beyond the Story: Exploring Visual Memoir
Sept. 5 – October 30, 2014
Hillsboro Public Library, Main Branch 2nd floor
2850 NE Brookwood Parkway
Hillsboro OR 97124
Opening celebration:
September 7, 2014 2:00- 5:00 PM
artist talks at 3:00
http://www.facebook.com/beyondthestoryart
I’ve been working on a show about visual memoir for over two years. Creating work focused on a topic– a series, a body of work, a show — is different than creating a singular work of art. There have been many styles and phases as I have walked through deciding how I want to share a slice of my life publicly. Each stage of the work has led to the next, the pieces I am creating now could not exist without those that went before. Sometimes the threads are obvious. Other times not as much.
I did a three week artist’s residency at Sitka Center for Art and Ecology in May 2013. I had lots of preliminary work done on the story I wanted to tell in written and painted form. This was an opportunity to dive deep and start the work I wanted to show.
There is a unique magic that happens in creative retreat. Getting away from the distractions of daily life allows openings to occur that I have found fruitful over and over in my career. It’s best when I allow whatever to happen that bubbles up from inside and avoid getting caught up by a need to produce brilliant finished work.
I was writing stories from my past into watercolor paper with a bamboo skewer. Painting over them. Incising another layer. Paint, stories, paint, stories. Colored pencil to pull out more of the texture. I wrote each story many times by hand. Pressing the words into the paper took effort, my hand would cramp by the bottom of the page. I’d get a break on the painting layer. A rest as the paint dried. Then I would start again.
Writing the story felt hard. By the time I had carved a story several times I was over it. Not just in an I’m bored way, more like the emotional charge it held was gone. I found myself with a new level of empathy for others in the drama. The tight hold I had on my version of the story released. I could see other viewpoints, sometimes for the first time.
I took a few writing classes before I went to Sitka. I had a lot to learn about the narrative form. I wrote a lot while I was away and finished a series of paintings. I was struggling with the structure and arc of the story. I took another class to get help.
When it was time for me to get feedback on my story structure I presented the words and with small images of the paintings to the class. I felt something important about the story emerging from the space between the visual and the verbal. The class wasn’t much interested. They wanted another story. A comedy perhaps? Set in group therapy, a story looking back on how my life unraveled.
It felt like they were looking for a story about the train wreck of my life. Yes there were gnarly details, but it was a tiny part of a much larger story that was about the transformation of my family’s lives. One of the class members sent me feedback where his conclusion was unless I focused on answering the question why I didn’t leave, no one would care about anything.
I stopped writing and started looking for artists who work with the visual and verbal. I was missing the mark and very annoyed that I was once again being asked to explain. Not to mention, I did leave, a long time ago. I didn’t want to create work about being surrounded by addiction and violence. I wanted to create a show about healing and moving beyond it.
The studio is a place of refuge for me. I went back to my most comfortable visual language. I needed a place that felt productive, where I could find flow.
I needed change. I didn’t know how to get from where I was to where I wanted. I decided to change media, moving into painting first in oil, then in acrylic on panel. I moved to the abstract, to find the essence of what I was trying to express.
Ultimately I found what I was looking for. The work that is part of Beyond the Story: Exploring Visual Memoir is just that. The stories don’t appear at all. Instead the work starts on a gelli plate where random unexpected things occur. I’m faced with a series of choices about how I embrace or reject the print.
When I was feeling so frustrated, I started looking for artists who were writers. Specifically people who were working on visual memoir. I had been following the work of Rebecca Shapiro and Lisa Sonora Beam for a couple of years. I was able to meet each of them, and asked them to collaborate on a show. The talks we have every couple of weeks over a year have deepened my understanding of what I am trying to do.
I leaned on my artistic community. I sought out people who would understand what I was wresting with and who could talk about the integration of the stories into the visual. They helped me see the essence of what I was trying to say visually. The conversations about what I was trying to do were critical to my ability to break into new places with the work I was creating.
The whole point of this show is to celebrate a wide range of ways we can share our stories. I’m creating opportunities for others to experience the transformation I have lived many times over the years by going to the places between the visual and verbal. One of these will happen at the opening of the show. More to come soon.
[hr]
Beyond the Story: Exploring Visual Memoir
Sept. 5 – October 30, 2014
Hillsboro Public Library, Main Branch 2nd floor
2850 NE Brookwood Parkway
Hillsboro OR 97124
Opening celebration:
September 7, 2014 2:00- 5:00 PM
artists talks at 3:00
As I explore memories and stories from my life, I see many patterns. Some are mistakes I’ve made more than once, while others are strengths that have gotten me through a lot of good times and bad.
It’s not that I do the same thing over and over. It’s more like variations and similarities emerge. Like themes, or tides that flow in and out.
Each time they are slightly different. One part fades, another comes forward.
Things that seemed so huge long ago seem small today. Others so painful at the time, pale in time. Looking back with the wisdom of passing time shifts everything.
I’ve started a Facebook group with Lisa Sonora Beam and Rebecca Shapiro to discuss all things Visual+Memoir. We’d love to have you join us there if you are interested in this topic. We’ll be talking about the work we are doing for our show in Sept/Oct.
Oh kitty, I can tell you are having a hard time breathing. The hair in front of your back legs separating and spreading with each breath. Your tail switches to the short beat of each exhale. I see you shifting trying to get your neck forward, hoping to help the air pass more easily. The little puffs of air have no ease.
My heart feels like it is wrapped in barbed wire. The tightness makes it hard for me to take deep breaths too. At least I can consciously override the tension and make myself breathe deeper.
There is a searing hot pain between my shoulders like a sword is stuck in my back. The back of my neck is tight or maybe it’s the sides? I have a headache between my brows and my eyes burn. Cat allergy made worse by my insistence you get to sleep with us. The rest of the crew follows but they stay at our feet letting you take the prime spot between our heads.
Everyone seems to know. The other cats are nearby. Behaving. Even the usual spats around food have stopped.
Your fur looks different, not flawless from your usual meticulous grooming. It moves in small segments instead of each hair separately. It’s still soft, but greasier. Your eyes show the most, tired, mournful. Not distressed, at least not yet.
I wonder if your eyes will tell me when you don’t want to do this anymore? You don’t seem ready to go quite yet, but is that you? Or my reluctance to let you go? How can I trust myself to detach from my own emotion to see what you need? Is it unrealistic to even try?
~~
Life happens. We move along crossing paths with a wide assortment of others. Each affecting us in profound and subtle ways. We have input, but not total control.
The gelli plate is a surface that paint sits on but it gets affected by anything that comes in contact with it. The way the paint is mixed, rolled out and textured is different each time. Every element creating a unique piece of what emerges on the paper.
Once I saw the parallel between the parts of my life I was writing about and the gelli and gelatin plates, I turned my attention to seeing how the work could develop. I started with one 6″ x 6″ gelli plate, adding a second one and two
8″ x 10″ plates so I could create larger prints and multiple prints that were visually related.
The first layers are gelli prints with added layers of a variety of mixed media techniques. These include stamping, stenciling, ink drawing, colored pencil, drawing and painting.
I’d been thinking the work I’d be creating for my next show would be oil on panel. Now I’m doing mixed media, primarily acrylic, on paper. I’m trying to let go of any ideas I had and just let the work develop. I’ve learned my work is always stronger when I allow it to be what it wants to be rather than what I think it should be.
I still may get to oil, and I’m already exploring assembling on a panel. With careful attention to the order of the layers, I can use acrylic under oil. this may just be the way I can generate starts to the work that have more of an energetic feel than I get when I start painting directly. Or these could be the sketches for larger paintings. Or what inspires my next series.
It could even be something I can’t even see yet. I just need to keep the focus and make the time in the studio for the work to come forward.
I’ve started a Facebook group with Lisa Sonora Beam and Rebecca Shapiro to discuss all things Visual+Memoir. We’d love to have you join us there if you are interested in this topic. We’ll be talking about the work we are doing for our show in Sept/Oct.
Life happens. We move along crossing paths with a wide assortment of others. Each affecting us in profound and subtle ways. We have input, but not total control.
The gelli plate is a surface that paint sits on but it gets affected by anything that comes in contact with it. The way the paint is mixed, rolled out and textured is different each time. Every element creating a unique piece of what emerges on the paper.
Once I saw the parallel between the parts of my life I was writing about and the gelli and gelatin plates, I turned my attention to seeing how the work could develop. I started with one 6″ x 6″ gelli plate, adding a second one and two
8″ x 10″ plates so I could create larger prints and multiple prints that were visually related.
The first layers are gelli prints with added layers of a variety of mixed media techniques. These include stamping, stenciling, ink drawing, colored pencil, drawing and painting.
I’d been thinking the work I’d be creating for my next show would be oil on panel. Now I’m doing mixed media, primarily acrylic, on paper. I’m trying to let go of any ideas I had and just let the work develop. I’ve learned my work is always stronger when I allow it to be what it wants to be rather than what I think it should be.
I still may get to oil, and I’m already exploring assembling on a panel. With careful attention to the order of the layers, I can use acrylic under oil. this may just be the way I can generate starts to the work that have more of an energetic feel than I get when I start painting directly. Or these could be the sketches for larger paintings. Or what inspires my next series.
It could even be something I can’t even see yet. I just need to keep the focus and make the time in the studio for the work to come forward.
I’ve started a Facebook group with Lisa Sonora Beam and Rebecca Shapiro to discuss all things Visual+Memoir. We’d love to have you join us there if you are interested in this topic. We’ll be talking about the work we are doing for our show in Sept/Oct.
After playing with gelatin printing, on the advice of Michele Martin, I purchased a Gelli Plate. It’s a commercial version of the gelatin that can be reused and doesn’t need to be refrigerated. It has a different kind of feel, and I don’t think it is quite as sensitive and responsive as the gelatin. On the plus side, it is instantly available and much easier to take care of. Not having molding gelatin in your refrigerator is very helpful.
I control some of the inputs for the gelliprints, but there is still a chance aspect involved. Very much like the parts of my life I had been writing about. Things happened. Ofttimes leaving cracks and gaps in what had previously been smoother and more consistent. Life didn’t make sense anymore. I was left with fitting pieces back together and adding new things to them to create a better whole.
The experience of creating this artwork was in parallel to what I was trying to write about. The visuals are so much closer. When I write out all the details, it seemed to suck the life out of the essence of what happened. It read like verbal mud. All the spontaneity of the lived experiences were gone to be replaced by something that wasn’t very interesting.
The editing process in words feels laborious and dull. Editing on the visual side is interesting. Both were problems to solve, but doing it feels contrary in my body. Editing words makes me want to surf Facebook. Editing images feels alive.
I frequently feel a huge gap between the visual and verbal. I’m almost always far more interested in the visual side (even though I spend more time writing than doing artwork.) My commitment and skill level on the writing side is more limited, so it feels a lot more like work.
One one hand I wonder why I even bother writing. On the other I have learned that going back and forth between visual and verbal elevated both. Meaning deepens. My understanding and compassion increase. All of which enables me to reach other people in different ways.
I’ve committed to doing a show about art and personal story. the early landscapes contained the words of my stories. The work that is emerging now contains the energy of my experience. We’ll just see where it all goes.