Tag Archives: remembering

Finished pieces

Earthen Vessels

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Guilt and Love

Loss and Healing

I just finished a week sharing my art and my process with the children at Patchwork Central, where most of the time the children see me as the Co-Director and camera lady.

It was fun to share my sculpture with them, and it was very fun to see the art that they created. It was also great to work again with my friend and fellow artist Jane Case Vickers. I started my career in community art almost 18 years ago by teaching art as Jane’s assistant in Patchwork’s Arts & Smarts Children’s Program.

I was very glad to get to teach with Jane again–I think she’s a great artist and a great teacher. We’ve always been attracted to similar materials and have similar artistic inspirations. We’ve done several projects and exhibits together.

One of these collaborative projects was called “Earthen Vessels”. We each created a series of female figures that explored the human form as a container for emotions and experiences. Each figure expressed an individual emotion or memory using  found fabrics and found objects that we felt were symbolic of the theme.

The images above show my work paired with Jane’s. The first shows Jane’s depiction of Guilt (titled “Guilt: She’s Got a Belly Full of Walnuts”) and my depiction of Love. The second shows my depiction of Loss and Jane’s depiction of Healing. They range from 64″ tall to 40″ tall.

When we took these photos, we intentionally paired a more positive emotion with a more negative one to highlight the interaction between the two.

 

Works in Progress

Bundles of Art

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Tree Bundle

Jane Case Vickers and I have a show coming up April 3-28 in the Krempp Gallery at the Jasper Arts Center in Jasper, Indiana.

Our show will be made up of lots of found object sculptures, plus we’re thinking we’ll display some of our odd collections of trash and weird objects. As part of all this, we’re experimenting with the concept of bundles of found objects and assorted materials that are left outside for the elements to weather. The items included in the bundles may have special meaning and that meaning can be enhanced by the weathering process.

Pictured above is my experiment with the idea. I found a fragment of brick in my garden and wrapped it in fabric scraps and paper, some with a brief reflection about the brick written on them. The brick is a reminder of structures that were part of my backyard when the house was built more than 100 years ago. I tied the bundle to the magnolia tree in my yard.

Inspiration

Patchwork Neighborhood

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Several pieces of my art are on exhibit at the Pomerene Center for the Arts in conjunction with my residency. In the gallery next to the one showing my art is an exhibit  by an artist named Melissa Vogley Woods.  This is a piece of her art. In a third gallery there is an exhibit of quilts by local quilters.  I enjoyed the combination of all three galleries and their variations on art involving fabric and memories.

I liked Melissa Vogley Woods’ art reflecting on empty houses, including photos like the one above where she has mended the empty house with old quilts. I like her process as a way of interacting with a neighborhood like the one where I live in with its empty houses that disappear to the demolition crew in a day. How do you heal the houses? How do you heal the neighborhood? What memory does the neighborhood have after a house is gone after having stood for more than a century?