Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Why do we make everything so hard on ourselves? When we need to step away and have a break why do we feel so guilty about it?  I have so many wonderful things to share but not the will to do it right now.  I am taking a break and I will not feel guilty about it.

keep your own needles threaded and do a few stitches for me.

swing...


 If you missed the NYT review of the current Ann Hamilton exhibit in NY go read it, if you are in NY go see it.  I wish I could be swinging right now.


Wednesday, December 12, 2012

time.

 

time, oh time why do you escape me. why is my work so slow, why can't I focus? time oh time.

homemade


 When I picked up the November/December 2012 artscope magazine, which is a New England Art Journal, I was shocked by the number of reviews of art that featured contemporary textiles, all of which were interesting. Of course, I did not make it to any of the shows as with the holidays and current life it just was not able to happen. But I have spent some tome looking into the venues, exhibits and artists. The centerfold artist was the Somerville based artist Judith Klausner.  I swear I wrote about her work before but cannot find the post, so maybe I just wanted too.  Who knows?

 carved oreo's

Her earlier work was all based on insects and the meticulous recreations of them. But she has recently moved on to food. She explores the time and devotion it takes to make food from scratch to the traditional hand arts and what this means in the lives and roles of contemporary women.


 embroidered toast.

She says this in her statement:

The phrase, “like grandma used to make” gets nearly 300,000 results in a Google search. This nostalgia for the culinary past—before packaged foods and high-fructose corn syrup—fails to take into consideration just how much time it takes to make three full meals a day from scratch. Indeed, what it takes is a person in every household who’s full-time job it is to cook for the family. We called these people “women”.
Like the production of food, a variety of handicrafts were a mundane requirement of the female gender...Sewing, embroidery, and knitting have enjoyed resurgences, sometimes even within the realm of fine art. Home cooking is once again gaining popularity. Within this atmosphere, the temptation to romanticize the past is strong. Yet, the availability of packaged foods is what allows us the time to pursue careers, to develop new technologies, to create...
My work is about choice. As a woman in the twenty-first century, I can choose to spend my day baking a loaf of bread, or to grab a package off a grocery store shelf after a long day at work. I can choose to spend my evenings embroidering. I can choose to combine these things and call it art.

 embroidered chex

Her work is not only total visual eye candy but conceptually very thoughtful and compelling.  I hope to see it in person someday soon.  See more here.


Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Motherhood as residency.


Thank you to my dear friend LB for bringing this to my attention. The "motherhood" artist residency of artist Lenka Clayton... Read the manifesto here, READ IT!

Man, baby, boy, man, and so on.

 Dangerous objects made safe.


Mothers days- a documentation of the days of mothers.

Things found in babies mouths.

The distance I can be from my son.

All I can say is I am so inspired, so connected and so eager about this work. I find it to be incredibly brave, beautiful and important work. GO see the project and read about each art project at her website dedicated to her residency.

Then may we all go and be brave artists and brave mothers.

Friday, December 7, 2012

Hemmed In


I am so delighted to have my work as part of this wonderful exhibit. I only wish I could see it in person. Maybe if you are a Brit you can and let me know how it is?
 Presents:

 
Hemmed In
Embroidery and Needlework from MK and Beyond
 7 December 2012 – 6 January 2013, Admission free
Preview / Christmas Party 14 December 5pm – 10pm

Hemmed In: Embroidery and Needlework from MK and Beyond presents work from the 1930s to the present by over fifty practitioners, organised with MK Embroiderers Guild and Jamie Chalmers, otherwise known as Mr X Stitch. Ranging from the local to the international, the exhibits include needlework through unusual media, techniques and unexpected subject matter, including street art, rock music and internet spam. The exhibition at MK Gallery runs from 7 December 2012 – 6 January 2013, and admission is free.

MK Embroiderers Guild (MKEG) is Milton Keynes’ local branch of the nation’s leading craft organisation. For the exhibition, the MKEG have challenged their members to represent ‘Milton Keynes in an eight-inch square’, to create small, needle and thread portraits of their favourite places in the city. The results constitute a real celebration of the city in stitch. In addition to work by the members, the exhibition includes a number of rare and significant pieces on loan from national collections, including such luminaries from the embroidery world as Rebecca Crompton, Rachael Thompson, Julia Caprara and Beryl Dean.

In contrast, the work selected by Jamie Chalmers, an active leader in the “new embroidery movement” is far from “Hemmed In”, either in scale, media or content. Chalmers aims to bring the world of cross-stitch and embroidery to a new audience and to restore embroidery to the heart of the art world. The works on view at MK Gallery will offer an expanded, radical and alternative view of contemporary embroidery from stitchers across the world, and demonstrates the unusual directions it is taking internationally. It will include an embroidered car door from Severija Inčirauskaité-Kriaunevičiené from Lithuania, Erin M. Riley’s Shotgun tapestries and Tilleke Schwartz’s hand embroidered masterpieces.

Although contemporary artists today work across a wide range of genres from video to textiles and photography to sculpture as exemplified by artists such as Grayson Perry and Tracey Emin, the exhibition charts the evolution, throughout the twentieth century, of embroidery from domestic decoration to high art.

900 Midsummer Blvd
Milton Keynes MK9 3QA
T +44 (0)1908 676 900






 


Check out Sarah Terry's interview here!

Wednesday, December 5, 2012

not related but will make you smile.

go look.





This guy's, Pierre Fouché, work us awesome go look at it.

honest



Awhile back another young artist emailed me. She was newly in NYC and trying to make it happen, she asked me how I did it? How I managed to survive, make my work, have a kiddo do all that is done. Normally I love when people write me and am prompt in responding but this one it made me want to avoid, avoid, avoid, avoid.  I thought to myself if only she knew... if only she knew?

I am someone who always wants to inspire others, make them believe in themselves, their art, their path. So I just could not respond. How could I? I felt like nothing was happening and felt stuck, frustrated, alone- and she was asking me for advice? (I sort of still feel that way.)

We all are just trying we all are just attempting to live this life with our hearts.  In truth the last year has been the absolute worst of my life, even though my work has been doing great.  It is such a struggle  right now to make my work, write on this blog, apply for one more freaking job that I almost get but don't.  But the way I make it happen is I show up. Even though the last thing I want to do sometimes is pick up my work I know that in those moments it is often the best thing that I can do. Make, create, share.  This is who I am, this is what I do- and I am luckier then most because I know that.

I wish I had more energy and time to be here on these pages. I wish I had more time alone in my studio- but that is just not what life is giving me right now. And I was very lucky life gave me a lot of that over the last 5 years.

Sometimes, I get confused about the role of this blog. It started initially as a very diaristic experiment, then it became almost like a research project, then a way to help my career and build community and then I just did not know. I was writing and sharing about artists but was unsure as to why.
But now I remember the point of this blog- i has always been for me as a place to share, a place to have a voice, a place to celebrate the shit, the mess and the beauty of making art and life.

So maybe right now I am being a little bit less of a critical/intellectual voice. Finding less art to write about. But in truth I just don't want to look at art right now. I want to read about it, write about it, think about it. But not search for it. I want it to come find me. That is what I must do.

I hope you will all still come and say hello, stay awhile, share, and comment. But if the point of this blog is to be honest. Well honestly this is what I wanted to say today.