Lee Miller

I took a family excursion to SFMOMA on Friday evening with my father, daughter, and husband to attend a Foto Forum walk-through of the new Lee Miller show. It was such a treat to see so many vintage prints by her. I wrote my undergraduate thesis on Lee Miller and relied heavily on books for my view of her photographic oeuvre. Now at SFMOMA I could view the wonderful subtleties in her prints. I drank them in, filling my creative well.

The walk-through was led by curator Marc Haworth Booth and Lee Miller’s son, Antony Penrose. They each animated the images on the wall with background stories and information. For example, the photograph below is a wonderful surrealist image of the magic electricity found in the everyday occurrence of opening a door. Marc Haworth Booth explained that this was a door to an exclusive shop and that the explosive illusion came from light hitting the marks left by the diamond rings of wealthy women scratching against the glass as they turned the handle. I have always viewed this image as articulating the power of the hand to ignite the creative spark that generates new art.

It is hard to consider Lee Miller’s work without connecting it to stories from her multi-faceted life. Born in Poughkeepsie in 1907, she modeled for Vogue magazine, was Man Ray’s mate/muse/assistant, ran a portrait studio in New York City, married an Egyptian and lived in Egypt for several years, then became one of the first female war correspondents during WWII, and after the war married Roland Penrose and settled down in the countryside raising her son and entertaining artistic friends like Picasso and Max Ernst. The rich variety of her life caused her son, when writing Lee’s first biography, to call it the Lives of Lee Miller. I have recently been enjoying Lee Miller: A Life and the catalogue for the exhibition.

It was a treat to see this show with my father, Charles Hobson. When he created his book, Parisian Encounters, about eight famous couples who met in Paris, he included Lee Miller and Man Ray, recounting the story of their first meeting. Lee Miller was traveling in Europe and decided to stay in Paris and study with “the best photographer in the city,” which at the time was Man Ray. So she went to his studio and rang the buzzer, but the concierge informed her he had already left for his summer holiday. Crestfallen, she went around the corner to a café, and finding him seated there, she marched right up to him and introduced herself, saying “Hi, I am Lee Miller, your new assistant.” He countered, “I don’t take assistants, and anyway I am leaving now for my vacation.” She said, “Fine, I am coming with you.” And she did and so began a rich collaboration.

It was stories like these that inspired me, as a student at Vassar, writing my thesis on Lee Miller in Poughkeepsie (the city where she was born), to really go after what I wanted in life. If, at a time when women most often defined themselves as mothers and wives, Lee could burst through limitations and live such a full, animated life, then so perhaps, could I. She helped me dream bigger and commit myself to the path of photography. When I began my series Mapping the Body, it was her and Man Ray’s vision of the cropped female figure that informed the way I photographed my own body – mining inspiration from their vision to create my own. In the end, I think there are people who touch you through time, despite death and never having met. Lee Miller is one of those intangible mentors for me. It’s why seeing her show on Friday filled me with that magic electricity of exploding hands.

Anna Isabel

I have been swimming in the sea of new motherhood and am finally surfacing just enough to write this post and share the news that my daughter, Anna Isabel, was born on May 11 (Mother’s Day). Time has had a whole new rhythm since she has arrived – it has become so fluid it pours through my fingers most days. I look at the date of my last blog post and am stunned that it has taken two months to write again here. Those days have been filled with nursing, rocking, walking, sleepless nights, and napping days as well as a whole new understanding of my body as the source for another being’s life. I know later, when I can find sustained time in the studio, this new awareness will fertilize new artwork. For now, I surrender to this experience one moment at a time.

Modern Book Exhibition

Just a quick post to share a few photographs from my exhibition at Modern Book Gallery in Palo Alto, CA. This two-woman show includes new works from my three series - Evocations, Sanctuary, and Bottle Dreams - as well as some very interesting 3-D pieces by Claudia Kunin from her series, Myth. A frame-junkee myself, I was entranced by Claudia's intricate frames and enjoyed the interactive feature of putting the 3-D glasses to my eyes that made each mythogical scene seem to pop off the wall. Mark, Bryan, and Niniane at Modern Book did the installation, and it's always fun to see my work in a new context. I particularly enjoy the way they clustered different pedestals together to showcase the Bottle Dreams work - see the first picture here. This show is up until June 3, and Modern Book keeps nice long hours - open daily from 11am into the evening at 494 University Street in Palo Alto, CA. If you are in the area, I hope you will get to see the show.

Photos below show my work, the second to last image shows some of Claudia Kunin's work, and the last photo shows the artists with the Modern Book crew - from left to right: me, Mark, Niniane, Danny, Bryan, and Claudia.

Incubation

Lately, my creative energy has been channeled into a whole new kind of endeavor. I am almost eight months pregnant with my first child, due on May 14. It is quite a miracle to feel this little being kicking around inside me. One unexpected side effect of this pregnancy has been that the more my belly swells, the less verbal I feel. Rather than initiate anything new, I have been filled with the burning desire for closure and completion of anything in progress. I imagine on the other side of birth, in the midst of parenting, new ideas for art will come to me. For now, I sort and organize, getting my nest ready to welcome this new life.

The image here, Evocation #017, was created just a month before I became pregnant and I look back on it now and see it as a fertility piece. The belly nests on soft feathers, the flower is drying up and going to seed, and the bottle is a vessel containing and protecting this process while embraced by the natural world around it. It truly amazes me how the intuitive process of art can be so previsionary.

Center for Photographic Art

I just got word that my exhibition at the Center for Photographic Art (CPA) has been extended an entire month! It will now close on May 23.

Dennis High and everyone at the CPA did a beautiful job with the installation. I love the dark wall color with the spotlighting - it really lets the work glow against darkness. One of the unique things about this exhibit is the inclusion of vitrines filled with items from my studio. It was a last minute request from Dennis, and at first I was concerned it might distract from the art, but once I got down there and arranged the bits of collage material into the glass cases, I really could see what a nice dimension they add to the show. This is one of the most comprehensive exhibits of my collage work with 59 artworks on display. It is so satisfying to see so many pieces, spanning 10 years of creative work, all up together in one space - they begin to hum and talk to each other in new ways.