Friday, February 27, 2015

nothing holding...


I am really excited about my show. WHICH OPENS NEXT FRIDAY!!!  Even though it is a small space it feels good.

This work is so new and such a shift for me that I am looking forward to seeing it on a wall in a gallery and getting some feedback.  I do not know if I have ever shown such "still figuring it out" work before and it feels exhilarating and scary and wonderful.  I hope that I am happy with how it turns out and hope that I get everything done.

(image from scary moment where I decided to smear graphite powder all over a drawing I had spent over a month on. It was terrifying but hopefully the end result is good.)

It will be so strange to have all this new work out of my studio for a month and me with "nothing" to do.  I am hoping to tie up some loose end pieces. Ones that have never been met to completion so that...
when the work returns I can totally dive into this new direction without anything holding me back. That is something I really look forward to.

I will try to share some install pictures next week. Ack.

Thursday, February 12, 2015

f*****


I remember how essential this blog was to me for years. I still think and save things all the time to post here. But sadly life has become so full and overwhelmed with life that this has become something that I long for but not something I often get to.
My son has had 8 snow days. My husband and I both work, we have NO local family.
My job is highly complicated by the insane amount of snow here in Boston.


I just spent 2 hours typing a VERY thorough tutorial for my photography class at UMASS Boston as due to the snow days I will not have seen them for 3 of the first 4 weeks of the semester.
and I have a show that goes up in less then 2 weeks and I have no frames yet and 2 pieces yet to be finished.
So I am happily living a life that is full but I am also totally f****
So I am sorry I am not here. But I have faith that someday I will be again. I am so busy because I am trying to push my life in a certain direction which requires me to take on more then I really want and more then I really should but that I have faith will be worth it.

But I am happy in my studio.  Happy with my work. And excited to exhibit. Which are all wonderful.

Thursday, February 5, 2015

in transition...

My show is coming, I am stressed and so busy and need to be drawing right now instead of typing but...here is the press release!




March 4 - March 29, 2015
First Friday Opening Reception: Friday, March 6, 2015, 5:00–7:30 pm

IN THE MEMBERS' GALLERY

As an artist I have always utilized my daily life as muse; my work inevitably reflects this. After spending years on a body of work, I felt as if I had nowhere left to go. I found myself alone in my studio, in a new city, with a young child, a changing relationship with my parents as they age and I mature, and a vastly different partner as he met a new stage in his life. I turned my eyes away from those relationships that had so long inspired me, toward the objects that surrounded me. The objects were real, solid, reliable, less malleable, less fleeting, tangible markers of this moment in life. The pile of trucks my son left on the floor was less ephemeral then the fact that my son was changing at an unfathomable speed. The dirty blanket on the couch was reliably there while my partner was often on his own journey without me. The beauty of the sunlight on the plants, that I never seemed to have time to water, made me remember why I had plants in the first place. The objects became what located me in my state of transition.

Not only was I transitioning in my subject but my medium as well. I began to be satisfied with just the photograph or the tonal variations in my thread drawings instead of needing overly developed mixed media works. I gave myself permission to strip down, simplify, explore and accept all of this, looking at the objects for grounding and allowing the experimentation of medium to play out. I have arrived at a place that is unfamiliar, totally terrifying and absolutely wonderful.

The photographs are a return to my first way of "seeing." In these diptychs I create a visual relationship between one space that represents someone coming to the end of life while the other is at the beginning. My graphite drawings allow me to zoom in on the importance of these small, possibly insignificant objects, focusing on their texture, tones and detail, abstracting their meaning and role while simultaneously elevating them. Through this work I replicate the process of the darkroom via my technique of drawing with projection & enlargement, mirroring the process of silver halide printing and the use of a grain focuser, the tool which brings a negative to clarity, and using process to develop the tonal variations important to the image. Lastly, the embroidered work is from a series of houseplants, using the houseplant, the object, as a metaphor for a psychological state. At what moments do our plants need to be watered and when do they flourish? What does an overly dirty floor or overflowing sink signify in our life? How do we listen to what these objects are trying to tell us?

All of these works, though finished individually, are the infancy stage of an idea, an artist and a process that is unfinished and in transition

Joetta Maue-The Table, his house
Joetta Maue
The table, his house
Archival print
11 x 11 inches
2014
Joetta Maue, Detail of Found Joetta Maue-Detail of found
Joetta Maue
Details of found
Graphite drawing
22 x 30 inches
2015
Joetta Maue, The basket, her house
Joetta Maue
The basket, her house
Archival print
11 x 11 inches
2014

I hope to see some of you!!!