Text in The Hall

I like cutting out big letters and writing things on the wall of my house. With that said, here is a project that exhibits my need to write meaningless things in big visual ways. Soon I will have some old projects up that exhibit this, um, tendency. The words in this project are a bit difficult to read from the pictures. They are meant to be read while going up and down the stairs. Some viewers can spot it immediately and for others it is more of a meditative process to figure out what the words spell. For those of us in the second category, I will tell you that they say: "up up up we are all going up always" and "down down down we are all going down always". I wonder if there is a difference in the brains of the people that can read it quickly versus the brains of the folks that need a bit longer??? In either case the text is meant to correlate directly to the simple motions of going up and down the stairs. In this interpretation I am intending to simply draw awareness to our daily movements. In a larger sense the text also relates to the movements of our minds and the relativity of points of view. I may conceive of myself as going down or going up (in life) but perhaps these are not real differences in my life situations. Rather, they are labels I somewhat arbitrarily attach to give a false sense of meaning and direction to my life situation.

Stencils, Prints, and Crafts Galore

My my, it's quite hard to put things in categories. I have been all over the place in the making of things that this might be a post that proves to be the dumping ground for all my experiments. I have been finding a lot of joy in stencilling recently as well as this new aesthetic I'm developing here in Vermont. This may explain the animal themes. Plus, as we all know, animals are very in right now. Another Vermont factor is that there are some hard core crafters here. They don't fuck around. None of this contemporary, "I'm just gonna use the idea of craft because it reminds me of the 60's" bullshit. (Don't get me wrong, all I am is a contemporary crafter)...but man, if you really want to see dedication, if you really want to see neurotic, obsessive compulsive behavior, come to Vermont and we'll take a tour. I met a weaver the other day who was so excited to see me in her shop. She was inviting me to classes, selling me cloth goods, while simultaneously knitting, weaving, and spinning, all the while jumping up and down for the love of craft. My hero. My other hero, I realize, is my mom, who was also a weaver while I was growing up. I wish I had inherited just a tad bit more of her...I don't even know what to call it...patience???

Anyway, first up we have some old stencils I did that first got me excited about crafting. They are called "Birds of Wisdom"

2. Here are some of my stencil friends. (there are a few up donated by friends). They are the part that got cut out (obviously), and they are now enjoying a view from my studio wall.

3. Here's the draft of a poster I'm working on that will become available in quantity once I get the silk screen printer up and running

4. a flower mbroidery on silk

Drawings and Graphics

I have always been a draftsperson but never a "picture a day" kinda gal. I know some people who sketch and sketch and sketch. I get whiny when my hand gets tired. Despite this I have embarked on some "shadow drawings" that keep my mind precoccupied. They are simply light studies with materials like pencil, conte crayon, and packing tape. I plan to use these techniques in a larger scale with the canvas projects. There is a scene in my bathroom that happens every morning where the light comes in the four window panes (two windows each with a upper and lower half). The shadows of the frost on the panes creates a spotted pattern on the flat window shades, oftentimes in large streaks, like mountains. As the frost melts water shadows trickle down the shades. There are two old-fashioned locks on the windows. The kind that swing back and forth. These two locks' shadows look like small men bent over, praying. They cry water droplets down the surface of the mountains. Pictures to come.

Also included are some other sketches and illustrations. The first is one of a series I did copying pictures out of "Designs On The Land", aerial landscape photographs by Alex S. MacLean. This book is beautiful and I highly recommend it for those parking-lot-farm-grid-nuclear-sunset fanatics out there. These images have really helped me in thinking about the organic parking lot structures. The second illustration is also of a similar kind of concept-pavement-although the original picture was a photgraph I took, which will soon be on view once I get my photos up here.

Organic Parking Structures

I have been working with this idea for awhile. After spending a lot of time photographing parking lots and suburban shopping plazas and office parks I began wondering if we should think more about the patterns in which we move. I wonder if driving could be not eradicated but naturalized. That's probably not the right word but what I mean by it is the process of turning something considered to be automatic and indicative of an unconscious culture into something beautiful, poetic, and closer to nature.

In parking lots nature is confined but not entirely dissolved. Small median strips of grass and planted trees color vasts fields of gray. These spaces, (Non-Sites) are not meant to be enjoyed. Do you ever see anyone picknicking on a grassy knoll outside the grocery store? Do you ever lean back and enjoy a good read on a sunny day outside Wal-Mart? If you have it might have been by accident. Shoppers rushing in and out of the parking lot in their cars may glance at you strangely from their side of the glass.

My idea is not turn the surroundings of big box retail stores into idyllic playgrounds but rather to create a structure in which we at least become more aware of the movements we make in our everyday space. This idea has recently grown in the development of text based structures. Certain words or phrases could emphasize one aspect of an environment or make us a biit more aware of the logic behind our daily routines that we take for granted. Here, the word "local" could conceivably be built in a parking lot of a retail space that is trying to increase business in a small town, where customers who care about local business might be impressed. Of course, I'll need to think of a different word to be built in the parking lot of Home Depot.

Text, shape, and environmental pleasure can combine to give more meaning to our landscapes.

The Canvases, or, My House as A Gallery

This project consists of dozens of large canvases stretched within the interior of my home creating "false walls". In it's complete phase the canvases or walls will create new rooms within the preexisting rooms. On the canvases is imagery relating to my psycho-emotional relationship to the house. Making work inside an old home all by myself (a new experience for me) I've begun to build a relationship with the space that is personal, emotional, contemplative and at times, antagonistic.

This differs greatly from previous work I've done with space relationships in that instead of locating distant spaces and trying to find some semblance of location, I am starting with a space that is imbued with location and history. Built in the 1850's our New England home has an intense personal history well documented in the town offices down the street. This is so different from the suburban concrete geometries I'm used to photographing!

Because of this intensely personal relationship I'm developing with the house space I have decided to bring that personal element to a universal level, rather than the other way around. When the house is done I will have created a space that showcases my own psychology as it relates to my home space. This psychological imagery will be open for the public to enter, peer into, investigate, and navigate through. This "ghost" space will privelege outsiders witha view into the interior.