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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.
Recently I received a wonderful box in the mail from Healing Environments full of postcards featuring a detail of my collage, Flight (pictured here). This card was part of a postcard gift packet distributed to their audience. In addition, work from my series Mapping the Body is going to be in their next publication. I am truly honored to have my work included. Healing Environments is an extraordinary organization whose tag line is “together we will comfort the suffering,” and you could learn more about them by clicking here to read an interview with co-directors Traci and Kate on artheals.org. They create both healing spaces with interior design and elegant books and publications, which they give away free of charge to their audience as tools for healing and inspiration. It is such a beautiful model of generosity. In response, I want to offer something back as well. I invite you to leave a comment here on this blog post before March 26. Then I will randomly select three people to receive a set of 5 of these postcards.
PS - I have gotten some feedback that people are unsure how to leave a comment. Be sure you are reading the post on my blog page and then click on the text below (1st line, right side) that says Comments. Then you can fill out the form and submit your comment online. Thanks!
I am so grateful for this view from my studio. This time of year, it might not look like much – overgrown, dormant, chaotic. There are weeds and gopher mounds and plants that have gone wild. Yet amidst this disorder are fruit trees about to blossom, butterfly bushes that will burst into flower in a few months, dahlia bulbs hidden in the soil that will send up bright spots of red and yellow, strawberries waiting for summer to bear fruit, and artichokes thick with leaves promising edible flowers. This view sustains me – it mirrors my own creative life – overgrown, chipped away at by details, projects gone dormant. But spring is coming and there are roots, seeds, and bulbs – ideas - just waiting for a little care and the right timing to flower. There is a season for everything.
It's a stormy Sunday here in the Bay Area. I count my blessings with every rain drop that is falling - placating fears of drought. A nice reminder that when dark clouds gather, it is not all gloom and doom. Each rain burst yields the vital resource of water - cleansing and nourishing the world around me.
Today's New York Times offered an unexpected reminder of the upside of a stormy economy for the artworld. Holland Cotter in his article, "The Boom Is Over. Long Live the Art!," offers the optimistic view that in these down economic times, the commercial art world may suffer, yet the art itself may flourish. He looks backward at the innovation that came from artists in earlier financially challenged times, and also looks forward, offering prescient questions about what art making and art education could become. His article left me with a feeling of deep curiousity about the future of art in America, and many good questions about what role I as an artist can play in today's changing world. Below is an excerpt - you could read the whole article on the New York Times web site.
"At the same time, if the example of past crises holds true, artists can also take over the factory, make the art industry their own. Collectively and individually they can customize the machinery, alter the modes of distribution, adjust the rate of production to allow for organic growth, for shifts in purpose and direction. They can daydream and concentrate. They can make nothing for a while, or make something and make it wrong, and fail in peace, and start again.
Art schools can change too. The present goal of studio programs (and of ever more specialized art history programs) seems to be to narrow talent to a sharp point that can push its way aggressively into the competitive arena. But with markets uncertain, possibly nonexistent, why not relax this mode, open up education? Why not make studio training an interdisciplinary experience, crossing over into sociology, anthropology, psychology, philosophy, poetry and theology? Why not build into your graduate program a work-study semester that takes students out of the art world entirely and places them in hospitals, schools and prisons, sometimes in-extremis environments, i.e. real life? My guess is that if you did, American art would look very different than it does today...."
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. 
