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The Ersatz Mail Art Exhibition at SF Camerawork opened recently. The curators (one of whom is a UPS driver) hung the work salon style as pictured here, which is a nice way to emphasize the sense of community in the show – every entry represents a different SF Camerawork member. You can see my work in the upper right hand corner, or click here to see a close up picture of my piece on my earlier blog post about this show. A nice example of how artists used the theme of mail art is the large piece in the center by Chris McCaw, who folded his large photograph and sent it through the mail un-enveloped, so that the wear and tear of being mailed became part of the piece itself.
I was invited to talk about my process and my piece in an interview about the Ersatz Exhibit with Inside City Limits: San Francisco, a Comcast cable program about arts and entertainment. If you use Comcast cable, you can download that program and check it out. The exhibit is up at SF Camerawork until August 22, and I believe they are still accepting entries of mail art for the show, so if you are inspired, join SF Camerawork and mail in a photo-based piece.
I just got a delightful surprise in the mail - a preview copy of The Map As Art: Contemporary Artists Explore Cartography by Katharine Harmon. I am a big fan of her earlier book, You Are Here: Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination (which informed my thinking about maps in my series Milagros), so I was quite honored when she asked me to submit work for her latest book. My piece, Territory, from the series Mapping the Body is reproduced on page 144 as an example of "Personal Terrain: Maps of Intimate Spaces." I am in some very good company - the pages of this book include works by 350 artists including Maya Lin, Olafur Eliasson, William Kentridge, and more. Katharine Harmon writes in the introduction:
"Spend time immersed in the world of artists' maps in this book, letting it steer you through familiar landscapes revealed in new ways and over strange topography resonating with hidden meaning. Contemplate each artist's use of cartography and consider maps of your own journey. Discover how mysterious, jarring, thought provoking, and gorgeous artists' maps can be. Wayfinding documents as artworks have never been as diverse, or as stimulating. Mapmaking as a whole is enhanced as each artist makes a mark on a bigger map, calling out I AM HERE."
My foray into maps began with my series Mapping the Body, in which I often layered maps under kodalith images of the body to convey a sense of a pschychological inner world. I am most often drawn to older maps for both their beauty and their errors. Just as early navigators set sail on uncharted seas, so does the explorer of the self. Some contours of one's world are known, but many others shift and change and surprise.
The Map as Art will be released this fall by Princeton Architectural Press. You could pre-order copies at Amazon by clicking here.
I am so inspired by Lisa Sonora Beam's book, The Creative Entrepreneur. It feels so good in your hands and the lush color illustrations make you want to dive right into it. Lisa's book offers a terrific synthesis of right-brain creative processes and left-brain business planning, making things like marketing and sustainability so much more accessible and fun for artists. I had the pleasure of interviewing Lisa recently for the current issue of AHN News. Below is an excerpt - to read the whole interview, please click here.
"It took many years before I felt like I was living my creative dream and had the resources to support it. And I did it all by intuition, without having any specific tools or teachers. It was all trial and error, and believe me, plenty of error! By the time I went to business school, I had already run several successful creative businesses and worked internationally as a creativity teacher for individuals and in corporations. I went to business school because I thought it would honestly help me understand the world of money better -- making money, that is. I'm quite skilled at spending money. I wanted to launch a new business and was worried that all I had was my intuition, and that it wasn't enough (which is true in some ways). Business school (the useful parts) helped me develop a solid set of tools to test and back up my intuition. It was like learning a new language. I learned the language of business, and that helped me greatly speed up the trial phase of an idea and eliminate a good deal of the errors. Eventually, my creativity classes that I had been teaching since I was a therapist in the late 80’s, morphed into teaching business strategy to creatives, which is how the book material was tested and documented.
With The Creative Entrepreneur, I wrote the book I wished I had when I was struggling and trying to figure out how to make a living doing what I love (without selling my soul). I include the essential business tools you need to know, but it is all based on and taught via the creative process. So your new, healthy relationship to your creative process informs and guides the business essentials. Plus, learning about business this way is just so much more fun and engaging. When we learn something new with a sense of play, and using our creativity, that knowledge becomes deeply absorbed in a very practical way that can be used immediately."
I just completed a piece today for SF Camerawork’s Ersatz Mail Art Exhibition – the front side of that piece is pictured here. There are a couple things that really appealed to me about this show. The first is that it is open to all SF Camerawork members who want to mail in a photo-based contribution – it’s egalitarian – no judging. The deadline is May 1, so there is still time if you would like to participate. The second is that at the end of the show, each work gets mailed back to a different person. So my piece becomes a gift to an as-of-yet unknown stranger, and I will receive a surprise in my mailbox. I love the sense of chance and possibility here.
In making this piece, I dug through piles of prints and ephemera in my studio and finally settled on working with the print pictured here – an early test from my series Milagros. I have stitched this print together to a piece of BFK Reeves paper and sandwiched between the sheets is a secret message – a blessing of sorts – which I hope might bring the recipient luck. On the back side, I have handwritten the required address info as well as a little inspiratioin in the form of this poem by Rumi.
Every part of you has as a secret language
Your hands and your feet say what you’ve done
And every need brings what’s needed
Pain bears its cure like a child
Having nothing produces provisions
Ask a difficult question
And the marvelous appears.
-Rumi
The studio is now a mess of bits and pieces of cardboard, tape, and bubble wrap. I just packed and wrapped artwork for transit. Sanctuary #4 is headed to a collector in New York. And five Bottle Dreams pieces are on their way to the Houston Center for Photography for their upcoming show called Human Nature. Curated by HCP director Madeline Yale, the show “raises questions about the current state of our relationship to the natural environment.” It includes the work of 9 artists and I was delighted to see Paula McCartney’s name on the list, as I really love the cleverness and subtle beauty of her series, Bird Watching. I recently purchased a print of hers on the affordable art site, 20x200. The show at HCP will open with a reception on April 3 and will be up until May 11 with lots of great public programs in between emphasizing environmental concerns like the slow food movement and tree planting.
The photo here shows an installation of five Bottle Dreams pieces at the Bolinas Museum in 2007. A similar installation will happen at HCP, but the five bottles there will have no trace of mankind – no buoys, no ships, etc – so as to emphasize the tension between pristine nature and man’s desire to control and preserve it. If you are in the Houston area, I hope you will get a chance to see the show.
The Ersatz Mail Art Exhibition at SF Camerawork opened recently. The curators (one of whom is a UPS driver) hung the work salon style as pictured here, which is a nice way to emphasize the sense of community in the show – every entry represents a different SF Camerawork member. You can see my work in the upper right hand corner, or click here to see a close up picture of my piece on my earlier blog post about this show. A nice example of how artists used the theme of mail art is the large piece in the center by Chris McCaw, who folded his large photograph and sent it through the mail un-enveloped, so that the wear and tear of being mailed became part of the piece itself.
