à la ligne, string and thread on denim, stained with fabric dye and bleach, 10 x 8 inches This semester I tried some new ways of working. The piece above was created for an assignment I had early in the semester. Our assignment was to create a painting inspired by a piece of art that we don't like. I first fell in love with painting when I saw impressionist paintings in high school, but have always disliked Renior. His chalky pastel palette is off-putting and his forms often lack definition. They're so etherial, like they're made of someone's hot breath. But the assignment intrigued me. I started looking at his paintings online and came across the painting Le pêcheur à la ligne. I was drawn to the phthelo green + beige color palette and marks he used, so decided to try and reproduce those elements of the piece, minus the subject matter. The first thing I did was turn the reproduction of the painting upside down as a way to isolate the colors and marks. Working from "back to front," I poured fabric dye on a canvas of stitched jeans that I had made earlier. Then I added some bleach to the dye. I worked back and forth until I created a "stain" to work on top of. Then I began adding lime green stitches to the denim using my sewing machine and drawing with a royal blue marker to describe some of the forms I observed, like the flittering leaves of the vegetation. Then, for several hours, I continued layering machine stitches, hand embroidery, and loose threads to the surface until the image felt resolved. I really enjoyed the assignment. It was a practice in empathy. I learned to appreciate the technique of someone's work who I usually have a negative reaction to. It was a little like being locked in a room with an enemy and being forced to find common ground. Left: A Piece of Me, A Piece of You, acrylic, spray paint, oil pastels, string and thread on sewn canvas and repurposed clothing, 18 x 22 inches Right: Love Quote, repurposed clothing and mesh on sewn canvas, stained with fabric dye, and oil on pre-primed canvas, 22 x 18 inches I continued experimenting with mark-making throughout the semester. Above are two different examples of experiments in mark-making that I tried. On the left, I layered a lot of different colored sewing machine stitches on top of paint, spray-paint, and oil pastel until the colors began to blend together. This caused the canvas to warp and buckle. I had seen this technique several years ago in a video of Rebecca Ringquist explaining her process and knew that I wanted to try it at some point. On the left, I created individual marks with the machine, dispersing them across the canvas. To me, they start to resemble letters or characters from an alphabet. Detail of A Piece of Me, A Piece of You To see more of the work I made this semester, click on the tabs pieced and painted and fabric paintings.
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This semester, I am taking a Contemporary Art class. Our first assignment was to write a paper in response to a recent show. With Tschabalala Self's recent ICA show "Out of Body," set to close at the beginning of September, I decided to visit the museum to see it in person before it closed. And I'm so glad I did! Below is a short excerpt from the art history paper I wrote in response to her work. The Multiplicity of Selves in Tschabalala Self’s Out of Body Exhibition at the ICA Boston
Tschabalala Self’s show “Out of Body,” at the ICA Boston, takes its name from a sewn fabric painting of the same title. Out of Body (the painting) hangs at the entrance to the exhibit, a preview of the show’s overarching themes of creation, identity, representation, and multiplicity. The canvas is composed of two female figures standing opposite each other, as if looking in a mirror. The figure on the left, adorned with yellow fabric, patterned with pints of red strawberries, looks critically at the figure in front of her. Her hands outstretched, she is in the process of, “constructing her own avatar” (ICA wall text). In describing this painting, the wall text goes on to suggest, “Perhaps this [painting] is a self-portrait of the artist, who, in her self-assuredness, confidently fashions the shapes and pieces at hand into lively figures.” (ICA wall text) Nearly complete, the brick-red figure on the right, with shoulder-length blue hair, yellow eyebrows, and red fingernails stands upright on the heel of her black and white floral foot, which is attached to a hyperextend salmon-colored leg with a few simple stiches. The hyper-mobile limbs of the figure on the right remind me of the Barbies I used to play with as a little girl, and the stories I used to conjure up about who they were and what they were doing. Using my imagination, I could change the name, age, clothes, thoughts, and backstories of the dolls in front of me; each of them a container for an endless number of possible identities. Like the characters in the writings of well-known author Zadie Smith, or the fictionalized self-portraits taken by contemporary photographer Cindy Sherman, in “Out of Body” (the ICA exhibition), Self’s figures, which span three galleries of the museum, can be read as representations of the artist’s multifaceted identity. In the essay “Fascinated to Presume: In Defense of Fiction,” Smith champions the ability of successful authors to provide a convincing portal into the experience the characters they craft, people who may or may not resemble the author and who may or may not resemble the reader. (Zadie Smith, “Fascinated to Presume: In Defense of Fiction,” October 24, 2019) In advocating for an author’s right to step outside of themselves, to step “out of body,” so to speak, and imagine other possibilities of personhood, Smith provides a productive framework for understanding Self’s portrait paintings. The figures Self creates are artists, avatars, mothers, pedestrians, consumers, jocks, goddesses and icons. “Multiplicity—which the artist defines as the notion that we are all made up of fragments of memories and identities—is central to her formal vocabulary” (from the introductory wall text). In contrast to Smith, who takes pleasure in writing from the perspective of a vast array of characters, that include people who are, “adult and child, male and female, black, brown, and white, gay and straight, funny and tragic, liberal and conservative, religious and goddess, not to mention alive and dead,” (Smith), Self’s representations are more focused. Self’s primary concern is “the iconographic significance of the Black female body in contemporary culture.” (From the “About” section on Tschabalala Self’s website) Her canvases, wall silhouettes and sculptures, composed of abstracted figures, are inspired by personal narratives, her relationships with family members and friends, and the her upbringing in Harlem, NY. “I don’t have the interest, and nor do I think I could earnestly speak about another lived experience outside my own.” (“At the ICA, ‘Out of Body’ Explores Color and Texture of Black Life In Harlem,” Pamela Reynolds) In the galleries of her ICA show, Self creates a world in which her lived experience and artistic imagination coexist, a place where her observations, memories, and feelings about the people and places she cares about, provide the inspiration for the assembly of abstracted figures on display. Your Work Here @ Gallery 5
September 9-October 9, 2020 855 Commonwealth Avenue, 5th Floor, Boston, MA I recently installed a couple of paintings in the Gallery 5 Pop Up Show, Your Work Here. Undergrad and graduate students in the School of Visual Arts were invited to hang recent work in the space. I love the conversation that is happening between the two pieces I chose and how they interact with some of the other pattern and textile work in the show. Collective mural in the “Field Notes” exhibition made by Kate Holcomb Hale, Soyoung L. Kim and Stephen Hamilton. Photo by Celina Colby I am so humbled to be a part of the show Field Notes: Teachers, Lovers and the Consciousness in Between and am thrilled with all of the press it's been reicveing. The show is up for one more week. Go see it before it comes down! Powerful drawing show debuts at BCA’s Mills Gallery Artists draw from teachers, lovers, and the past for annual BCA show Field Notes: Lovers, Teachers and the Consciousness In Between @ Mills Gallery at Boston Center for the Arts
Juried by: Chanel Thervil, Invited Curator and Juror November 1 - December 22, 2019 539 Tremont St, Boston, MA Opening reception: Saturday, November 9 from 6-9pm About the Drawing Show: Since 1979 the Drawing Show has been a widely anticipated hallmark of Boston Center for the Art’s programming. This juried exhibition has allowed BCA to work with more than five hundred artists and invited curators. Proposals are welcome from all artists and designers who explore drawing as a medium in their work. Curator’s Statement: Truth Teller. Observer. Disrupter. Activator of Possibility. Since the first cave drawings ages ago, people have been trying to decide on the most accurate titles to describe the function of artists in society. The sentiments behind this exhibition are fueled by the James Baldwin’s quote, “The role of the artist is the same as the role of the lover. If I love you, I have to make you conscious of the things you can’t see.” In order to lift the veils of consciousness through their works, artists themselves are shaped into the role of lover by their past, present, and future. Gallery Hours Wed. & Sun. | 12-5pm Thur.-Sat. | 12-9pm |
CurrentDrawing from Perception, Invention & Memory @ Stein Galleries
Jan. 16 - March 8, 2024 160 Creative Arts Center Wright State University Dayton, OH Gallery Hours: Tue/Thur 11-4pm Wed/Fri 12-4pm Sat 10-4pm Feast @ Mosesian Center for the Arts Jan. 26 - March 8, 2024 321 Arsenal Street Watertown, MA 02472 Gallery Hours: Wed. - Sat. 1-8pm Tag Cloud
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