Departures

This work was included in an exhibition at The Salina Art Center entitled, Departures: The Art of Leaving this Place.

Viewing the Moment

Every now and then, I wonder if life is "but a dream." If so, I cannot know how the texture of time and space within the dream life is articulated until I awaken. If I have lived many lifetimes as some believe, then perhaps my other lives can only be seen in reflections while I am truly awake during the moments between. Maybe, in the grand design of the universe, dreams and lives are intertwined in the same way space and time are. Right now, in this open moment, the most meaningful question to ask is, "Am I awake?"

Remembering and Surrendering

When I remember the past, only the parts that touched me are illuminated. The remainder blends into the background. I pay homage to those parts, the ones I remember. I say prayers and light votive candles. Then, after a period of remembering, when the candles have burned out and the prayers have become fewer, I let go. The illuminated parts disappear and fall away to make a foundation for the future.

The Year of the Super Kitchen!

The idea for the exhibit, The Year of the Super Kitchen, came to me one day in my own kitchen. While I was changing the papers on the bottom of my parrot's cage, I came across a newspaper article from the Home and Garden section entitled, Super Kitchens. It was so captivating, this idea of a Super Kitchen, that I literally became transfixed. Super Kitchens! What is a Super Kitchen? Immediately, I knew that Super Kitchen for me, metaphorically represents the place in the subconscious where creativity happens. A space of spontaneous ideas and synchronicity. The beginning of an exhibit was in the works. It would be all about articulating and making visual the most fleeting and illusive parts of the creative process. What happens in an instant of insight can color the direction of an artist's work for months, years or even a lifetime. 

Feeding the Soul (2016)

Beyond the birdcage on a patio is a table with remnants of a lunch just eaten. Sitting on the chairs are the purses belonging to myself and my close artistic friends, Debbie Wagner and Peggy Medina. The three of us were in the throes of planning a group exhibit for the fall of 2017. As I was talking about the newspaper article I recently discovered, we unanimously agreed, the name of our exhibit would be called The Year of the Super Kitchen. We would each produce 12 works while continuing to meet for lunch once a month and sharing our ideas.

It was not until the final month that I became aware of how the work within our exhibit had evolved. I could see how each of us highlighted a different aspect of the creative process. For Debbie, both a painter and a fiber artist, it is about an openness to possibility and finding inspiration in the seemingly mundane. She worked quickly and spontaneously. Peggy, a ceramics artist, decided to experiment with assemblages that incorporated her ceramic pieces. Her work was about a willingness to explore and to think intuitively. After a period of gathering materials and incubation, her 12 works came together quickly. For me, when building my sculptures and miniature constructions, the creative process is about a kind of documentation and reflection on my own life through the use of metaphors. It begins in the mind before starting the actual work. In this exhibit, I tried to illustrate how transformation happens within the context of the creative process.

The insights that propel creativity, no matter when or how they come about, tend to feel like gifts. So, in a way, the creative process is also a spiritual journey where grace is found in fleeting moments.

The Process Behind Overlapping Boundary

Thought Process . . . 

The first working title was Interior System, then it turned into Filtering System, then into Thin Boundary and finally, Overlapping Boundary. 

I began this project by thinking about how we become conscious of unremembered things. A portion of what we used to know seems to become lost over time. Sometimes only a fragment or a fleeting fragment of a feeling is left behind.

I did a series of constructions in 1997 about remembering. The work depicted an empty closet (1/16 scale) from differing perspectives. View 1 was exactly how I discovered the closet many years after it belonged to my sister. View 2 was from the inside looking out and View 3 showed a barely perceptible door on the back wall.

In the process of going back (mentally or physically) to an earlier time and place, the remembering of a seemingly lost fragment can turn out to be the very edge of something gigantic.

So in 2014, picking up where I left off in 1997, I began to contemplate what might be behind the barely perceptible door on the back wall of the last view. When I first went home to photograph that old closet, a dive mask box happened to be on the top shelf. And there was no light bulb in the hanging socket. I decided to begin again from there. In this new view, with a pool of water functioning as the "personal unconscious" floating alongside and into the spaces of the closet, I placed a barely perceptible filtering system in the interior closet. It can only be seen indirectly in the mirror of the outer closet. Now, I am thinking about beginning another construction with a more direct look at the pool's filter.

Construction Process . . .

Notes & plans plus construction pieces

Parts of the pool

Closet floor tiles

Pool's inner container

Mock-up of interior closet

Forming the Clothing

Sink, scale, towels, filter & faucet

Upper bridge

Outer closet

Looking through

Looking down

Beginning with an idea and approximate overall dimensions, floor plans are drawn, a mock-up is put together, and adjustments are made. In Overlapping Boundary, I approached the work in sections: the pool, the closets, and the enclosure (the file cabinet drawer). There is a definite order to the process and a steady, continuous series of problems to be solved. If a mistake is made early on, the ramifications are compounded as the construction progresses. There must be at least a thousand pieces in this project. I tried to simplify as I moved along so I would not get overwhelmed. Silent focus is required while decisions are made. If I miss the mark or forget something, I must then alter my expectations. Sometimes, it works to my advantage and other times, not so much. For example, I made a dive mask to float on the surface of the water, but it ended up being too delicate and by the time I realized this, I had already closed off the interior closet for it to be placed on the upper shelf. It is important. Eventually, it will be included.

Paper Doll House

The foundation for my art comes from the countless paper doll houses I built as a child, when a jewelry box was a dresser, a perfume bottle became a lamp, a book, a bed and a handkerchief, a bedspread. In 1996, I created a 1:8 scale composite of the kind house I might have made for my paper dolls in 1955. The miniature version is 3 inches H x 11 inches W x 8 inches D.

Paper Doll House (1996). 3" H x 11" W x 8" D.

Today, when I build pieces for my framed Vanity Series, my emphasis is on the miniature object. I use whatever materials and parts of things I can find and then combine them in such a way as to create the illusion of a full sized object.

Perfume Bottles (Vanity Series). 9" H x 8" W.

For example, in Perfume Bottles, the brackets for the mirrored shelf are partially uncoiled pierced earring backs; the bottles are assorted beads; some of the lids are bugle beads while others are glass head pins, sliced cording or styrene tubing with small bead caps. Another way to explain is to write an equation: Perfume Bottle = crystal bead + bead cap (flattened) + bugle bead + (straight pin - tip).

As a little girl, I loved making my paper doll houses just as much as I loved playing with paper dolls. Nothing was ever impossible because my imagination always filled in the details.

Making Friends with the Squirrel

A long time ago, in the first dream, a squirrel threatened my balance by biting down hard on my big toe and refusing to let go. I couldn't shake him off no matter how hard I tried. Throughout my life he has come and gone along the edges and in the corners. Since keeping a journal and making artwork, the squirrel and I have become friends.

It has been over 25 years since my original squirrel dream. After I was bitten, I began to understand the similarity between myself and the nature of the squirrel. I have a tendency to always be in a hurry, both physically and mentally. By darting back & forth between future possibilities and past memories, it was so easy to get out of sync and not be fully present. Once I stopped over analyzing everything, I could then began to accept my non-perfect self. Over the years, it became clear that for me to have a balanced life, I needed to put a greater amount of focus and energy into creating art. By keeping most of my squirrel behavior within the parameters of miniature making, my life became less stressful.

Often, in dreams, animals are a reflection of our habits and nature. The awareness of my own squirrel tendencies became clear through the process of remembering and writing down this series of dreams, Interestingly, many years later, I developed arthritis in my right big toe; exactly where I was bitten by the squirrel in my dream.