recrafting history

This show looks awesome and I so wish I could see it. So all of you out in LA need to make it over and tell me how awesome it is?

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Presents

RECRAFTING HISTORY: history, nostalgia & craft in the American memory

curated by Ellen Caldwell

October 29 – December 22, 2011

Jen Pack

from the press release:

Artists Eric Beltz, Jen Pack, Karen Spector, Frohawk Two-Feathers, and Stephanie Washburn all speak to Sturkin’s concept of a shared history and entangled cultural memory. Exploring our modern world through a recrafted lens, they create fictitious, re-envisioned, nostalgic, and comical memories and renderings of the past and present. Negotiating themes ranging widely in subject and medium, each artist in Recrafting History answers the question, how do we exhibit histories that we don’t talk about? In experiencing their art, we as viewers, are welcomed to explore the deeper themes that trouble the American psyche and collective American memory.


Eric Beltz

anothe cupa please?

You know how when you feel overwhelmed--- you know intellectually that this is the time you should be eating healthy, doing more yoga, going to bed early, and being disciplined about getting stuff done. But instead what you do is sleep in, ask for another cup a wine, and turn the tv on?

That is me. Seriously you should see the mess of my house as of late, it looks like I have given up. But at least mindless stitching fits into avoiding stuff just fine and thankfully my plant piece has lots of satin stitch over and over again. So I am getting some work done. Though never enough.

How do you deal with being overwhelmed? How do you get out of a brain funk?

house plants.

I have not been to the studio for a week. I am totally unmotivated as I am still feeling a little under the weather and have been a single mama for the last 3 days (C out of town), and beating myself up for not being in the studio. But... somehow unbeknownst to my thinking brain I got work done? Not sure how it happened just little moments here and there building up.


This is the first of 5 images for an installation. It is of one of our houseplants. My plan for my solo show in the spring is to do an installation about the home and the sometimes dysfunction of it. As this year has been one of our more dysfunctional. And now that we are coming out of the darkness I am ready to make work about it.

Our home is full of houseplants. I LOVE them they just make a home mine. I have always loved photographing them and love how they dry up, look sad, then come back to life, and respond to the seasons and where they are in the home. I can always see when I have too much going on or am overwhelmed by the state of my houseplants.


So as part of the exhibit I am doing 2 works based on my house plants one of which will be a suspended installation of houseplant embroideries. The other is FINALLY making some sculptural plants, which I started doing like 4 years ago and never did as they never made sense for a show. So I am actually pretty excited about how this piece has gotten started and am feeling excited about the show even though many things are still unclear.

PSA fabulous.

image from here.

So I actually am not a fan of regretsy as the idea of making an entire website out of making fun of people is not my style... but a friend shared a link to them today to the most awesome breast cancer awareness PSA ever. So you should totally go watch. Don't forget to wipe the drool from you mouth afterward.

collected.

If you knew the state of my brain you would be impressed that I am posting so brief in words but abundant in inspiration. This is the work of NY based artist Nari Ward. I had never heard of him before this morning but his shoe lace installations drew me in and I looked further.


I love large word installations and I love reclaimed material so even though conceptually he is dealing with much more political statements than I, I am totally digging his work.

Love this piece!! and the below piece is powerful and totally creepy.

His gallery describes his work... "Ward’s dramatic sculptural installations are composed of systematically collected material from his urban neighborhood. By revealing the numerous emotions inherent within found everyday objects, Ward’s works examine issues surrounding race, poverty, and consumer culture."

His recent work has used textiles more often incorporating shoes, shoe laces, and vinyl.



See more of his work here or if you are in Philly see it in person here.

french knot moss...

I remember when I first saw an image of a piece by Claire C. Taylor and I loved her innovative use of the french knot and her technique of taking thread to make "nature take things back."



She finally has a website so we can see more of her work and it is just as lovely.



She currently is making work from trash and french knots.


She has also made some interesting and very intelligent work about coffee as an industry including this "rug" made from coffee grounds.


See more of her work here.

Check out the images and my review on the opening of the exhibit featuring Push artists at the Manhattan Textile Arts Center. Read it here.

crazyyyyyy.

Ack. My life has been crazy this week. We had guest in town again, I have been SOOO sick, and this entire moving possibility is crazy. So my brain is in a blur, I have not picked up a needle all week except for when I was teaching in Philly, my house is a wreck, and my brain is a mush.

I feel like the lil' bird here is getting totally neglected and I just cannot seem to keep-up. But alas no more house guests until thanksgiving but still my schedule this month is nuts. How does that happen? The move is looking very likely now (ack) and therefore in reality the next month is even more nuts.

What is going on???
I have every intention on getting this blog back on track thought so please bare with me through this insanity that is life.

austere beauty.

Doesn't this image from the current exhibit of Lynne Yamamoto's work at PPOW make you want to run out and see it right now! There are not really installation images online, they just draw you in with this image and some detail shots. I know that I plan on making a point to get there before it comes down. I never end up making it to PPOW as it is a bit off the beaten path but whenever I do it is always worth it.

A quote from her website in relationship to this work, inheritance:

“…for the sake of that which ye have unlawfully gotten; it will be a moth in your estates which will certainly eat them up, either in your own, or your children’s time. (Sermon, William Beveridge, 18th c.)

I had not been familiar with Yamamato's work before and have enjoyed perusing her website. She mostly approaches her work as installations and often uses fabric, ceramic, and found materials.

Her work though often a mass of small objects also has an austere quality to it. The spaces never feel cluttered and the sense of color tends to stay quite minimal.

as you can see from these installation details Yamamoto is not afraid to explore mediums and objects and enjoys create a sense of space in her work.

All of her installations have very conceptual underpinnings and are unique in concept from one to the other. On her website she has a small statement for each series of work. Often her work references personal memory or political/cultural statements.

I love how her installations are minimal but full of emotional weight.

Lynne has been working for over 20 years and has an expansive portfolio go be inspired here.

namaste- I bow to the light in you.

my sister and I doing partner yoga.

As most of you know who have read this blog for awhile I am a yoga teacher. I do not talk about yoga here as it is not really the intention or goal of this place for me. But today I feel compelled to do so. I have been practicing yoga for a very long time, pretty much half my life, and have been teaching for 10 years.

In many ways it has saved my life, much like my art. Both yoga and art where what I turned to when I was healing and trying to survive through the after math of trauma and personal violation. They both gave me back my voice. Yoga gave me back my body. Art gave me back myself.

For all of us- sometimes life is like a tornado- and when I take the time to go to my mat I feel my feet come back to the ground. Just like when I let myself sit in my studio quietly working letting go of all else but the stitch that I make.

Yoga just saved me once again today and I wanted to honor that.

awesome-ness

Ok if you read this blog you already know all about Push and all of its awesomeness but...
There is a super awesome opening at the super awesome Manhattan Textile Arts Center of some super awesome artists featured in the book, including me. SO....


Join us for the opening and celebration of the recent release of Push Stitchery: 30 Artists Explore the Boundaries of Stitched Art! Let's celebrate these great fiber artists, admire their work and help us create a collaborative embroidery project! We will provide the materials, if you bring the creativity!

THIS FRIDAY!!!!

Friday, October 21st, from 7-9PM
NYC location
26 West 8th Street
New York NY

RSVP

The exhibit is up until mid December. One of my works is in the window so you can even just walk by...



In conjunction with the exhibit I will be teaching a class:

PUSH: Embroidery with Joetta Maue
Joetta Maue, one of the featured artists in PUSH, will teach you the fundamentals of embroidery! Learn basic embroidery stitches to utilize the process of applique and fiber collage to create 3 dimensional fiber pieces of art. Each class will be dedicated to a different technique each week. Each technique is inspired by artists in the book.
REGISTER!

Disco Love.

I came to the work of artist Sophia Narrett through my curatorial work as she was one of the artists featured in PLAY. I immediately loved her work, it has a wonderful sense of both honesty and playfulness. I meant to feature her here well before this moment so am glad she let me know about her participation in some upcoming exhibits to remind me of how awesome she and her work is.


Like I said Sophia herself is pretty awesome. I found her to be very sweet and gracious to work with. What I love about her work is that it is also sweet... and vulnerable. And also has disco references!!


She combines "hobby" store goodies with funky embroidery to comment on the complexity of love and romance. I love her use of bright, even neon, colors and non precious materials such as fake feathers, puffy paint, and artificial leaves.


Her style of illustration is a very "in the now" hip style. And don't let the pictures deceive you the work is actually on a pretty large scale. I mean not huge but bigger then you think.


In a recent feature she said:

Romantic love transforms life, allowing people to move beyond the loneliness and pain typical of human existence. In a world of fear and isolation, love is everything we can want. With this work I use embroidery and fabric paint to approach the monumental concepts of beauty, love and meaning.

I capitalize on the communicative power of symbols and color by using a language of love signifier and clichés. Disco music describes the euphoric, glitzy kind of love I imagine, and the multi-colored disco floor can be a bed, a stage, a source of sublime light, a garden, or a cage. While suns, computers, and disco balls radiate truth, rainbows frame mini-landscapes, which act as doorways to new possibilities.

I cannot wait to see what she does next, especially knowing that she is such a young artist, she is totally one to watch.


See more here.

nyc? or not.

Ack, my brain is spinning. We are seriously considering moving from NYC. The reality is that for my husband this is not the place for interesting jobs. He is a software engineer and loves cutting edge work and NYC is so not tech. But to even consider this is huge, huge, huge. We have officially lived in NY longer then any other place as a couple.

In some ways I would be so happy. We could have more space, a porch or even a yard, and he, aka husband, would be happier. Not to mention our finances would be happier.

But as an artist it is SCARY. I mean NYC is the place, it is the epicenter of everything. At least that is what we are taught to believe. The idea is you HAVE to be in NYC to make it. Intellectually I know this is bulls**t as many of my favorite artists do not and have never lived in NY. They have successful careers and are making amazing relevant work.

But it is impossible to not think that maybe all the good things happening for me are because I am here and will all those things go away if I am not? Does it really matter if you are in NY for your art? In some ways it might even be easier to make a living elsewhere, grants and galleries are less competitive- aka money in the artists pocket.

The good thing is if we did move we would not move so far that I could not maintain my relationships, contacts, and even some of my gigs in NYC. But I am having a hard time even wrapping my brain around the possibility.

What do you think? Do you have to be here? Does it better your career in the long term?

human form.

Sorry I have been totally checked out, we had very good old friends in town all week last week. It was their first time meeting the lil'man. So we were busy and distracted. So distracted that I forgot to mention that I was am in a show that opened this weekend on Saturday.

The Ann Street Gallery is pleased to present Human Form: Enduring Inspiration.

This new exhibition highlights a thematic grouping of sixteen visual artists whose work demonstrates the enduring interest and diversity of figural art, showcasing an array of stylistic approaches to the subject. The human form has endured as a powerful theme throughout the long history of art. Since prehistory different cultures and time periods have painted, drawn, and carved images of the human form applying to these the values and beliefs of their own age. Prehistoric caves entomb our earliest known figurative drawings and paintings. Ancient Egyptians carved the rigid human forms into their hieroglyphics, while archaic Greek and Roman sculptors, as well as artists of the Renaissance, created works of art that glorified the human body. As societies evolved, so did the ways artists investigate and interpret the human form. Not only does figurative art act as a direct means to address the human condition and make connections, but especially for these sixteen contemporary artists, it remains an inexhaustible source of inspiration.

The works in the Human Form: An Enduring Inspiration exhibition features artists drawn from across the country, bringing together exemplary works of paper, videos, photographs, paintings, drawings, sculptures, collage and embroidered fabrics bound by their shared theme and inspired by the human form. These representations offer the viewer an opportunity to compare and contrast works of different styles and mediums, while experiencing an encompassing range of possibilities. There are the classical nudes, illusionistic portraits that express powerful emotions, drawings that explore identity and sculptures focusing on social issues, as well as, embroidered narratives of personal histories. In short, what these works reveal is the artists’ inspirational use of the human form emphasizing its versatile capacity to capture the diversity and complexity of the contemporary human experience.

Artist featured: Gulgun Aliriza, Andrea Cote, Rebecca Darlington, Kaya Deckelbaum, Marsha Gregory, Erica Harris, Joetta Maue, Meridith McNeal, Theresa Pfarr, Jacquelyn Schiffman, Jackie Skrzynski, Tracy Stuckey, Catherine Welshman, Mallory Wetherell, Jeremy Willis and John Yost.

The exhibition was curated by Virginia Walsh, Director of the Ann Street Gallery. The gallery hours are Monday through Thursday 9 am-5pm, Friday and Saturday 11am-5pm. For more information regarding Human Form: An Enduring Inspiration and the Ann Street Gallery, contact Virginia Walsh at (845) 784-1146 or visit www.annstreetgallery.org.

Like us! facebook.com/annstreetgallery.org

I could not make it to the opening which was very disappointing, but have a friend that was there and she said my work looked great. They took 2 large pieces and on small. My friend implied that they were in a small back room which just added to the intimacy. I should have pictures soon and will share them

an article for the event.