Orphan

When my Dad died several years ago, his sister cried that now she was an orphan. My Aunt was in her 80's when she said this, and it occurred to me every one of us has our own very personal relationship with someone who has died, whether it be a parent, child, sibling or friend. We have experiences unique to that relationship that no one else can share.

When someone close to us dies, a connection is lost. We are the only one left with those memories, the jokes we shared, the not so funny times we got through.

The thing is, we all have gone through similar experiences, we've all felt loss, grief, pain.

There's a golden thread running through this work, connecting our individual grief with the rest of the world

Open the Window

 I'm continuing to explore the concept of personal loss, how it affects the people left behind, how it affects those on the periphery, the coping mechanisms we all employ to deal with it.

We all want to be available to help someone suffering from loss. Often, that person isn't ready to receive this comfort. While a window may be open, they construct barriers and roadblocks to prevent our help. Maybe they are angry, maybe numb, feeling guilty, or just uncomfortable with sharing what they are feeling personally.

We need to persevere.

"Look for the helpers in times of tragedy" Mr Rogers advised. "If you look for the helper, you'll know that there's hope"

The sixth installment in my Loss series is called "Open the Window". It's 7 feet tall, 32 inches wide and 32 inches deep. Made of strips of silk organza with windows stitched in them, wire, and rusted organza with hand stitching.

The Installation. Part 1

I've been thinking for a couple of years now about doing a three dimensional installation. The challenges involved in this are numerous, and I have a new respect for artists to work this way on a regular basis.  I'm blogging about it as a personal reference of the stages I went through to develop the art.

This work is based on emotion, and it took me a long time to work out how to show feelings in artwork.  I have often felt emotion looking at other artist's work, but how to express that myself was a mystery.  I started by keeping a small journal, writing down words and phrases that came to me, and over time I was able to start writing down ideas to try to express those words.

It was important to me to not bash you over the head with my thoughts, but rather to have you look at the art and decide for yourself what you think it means. I will say that the art is based on loss, both physical and emotional.

Once I decided on the basic idea of how to make this work, I needed to figure out the finer points of actually making it.  I knew I wanted an overhang supporting the basic structure, but I didn't want it to be the focus of the work. I started with a plastic grid from Home Depot, thinking I could wrap cheesecloth around it and it would look all floaty, but it looked like plastic with cheesecloth wrapped around it so I gave that up.  The basic structure, by the way, is several lightweight shapes made from stiffened cheesecloth, to be dangled from the overhang.

 I ended up with a piece of metal from a fabricator, 2' x 4', that I wrapped in vinegar soaked cheesecloth to rust.

The next step was to figure out how to attach the shapes to the supporting structure. I knew I wanted to use fishing line for that, so I stitched about 2 yards of fishing line to each shape.  I had the metal fabricator drill holes in the metal every 4 inches, with the intention to threading the line though to the top of the the support.

But how would I attach it once I threaded it through?  My first idea was to glue two 1/4 inch layers of cork board together on top of the metal.  It was a good idea, because the fishing line seemed to stay in place where I pulled it through, so I could easily adjust it.

I glued it down and put a few pieces of fishing line through.

Then watched it pop up again, even after clamping it. Not a good look, so I abandoned that idea.  By this time, my husband Ted started getting sucked into this project, and he came up with the idea of using these small jewelry thing a ma bobs.  They clamp the fishing line, are adjustable, and just big enough not to fall through the holes.

This was my major struggle with this piece.  How to have it hang freely, be able to dismantle it, and use small parts.  Next week, I will talk a little more about the project as a whole.

New York

We spent 9 days in New York/New Jersey recently attending artist receptions for the two exhibitions I'm in, and while there we were able to get to a few museums. I haven't counted, but there must be a hundred museums in New York, and it's a bit overwhelming to try and decide what to see.  I have two favorite exhibits to talk about here.

The first is at the Guggenheim and it is a 30 year retrospective of artist Carrie Mae Weems

http://blogs.guggenheim.org/checklist/truth-power-carrie-mae-weems-opens-guggenheim/

This exhibit was not in the main area of the museum, the wrap around area, it was in two side rooms on different floors. We wandered in, taking a break from the main exhibit, which was Italian Futurism, 1909-1944. Not really my interest. But the minute I walked into the Weems exhibit, I was caught up in her stories.

Weems describes herself as a "Socially Engaged Artist"  and I can't think of a better description of her work.  She works primarily in photography, but also text, fabric, instillation and video.

To see more of her work, check out her website  http://carriemaeweems.net

The other art we saw that made an impression on me was at the Museum of Art and Design

http://www.madmuseum.org

The exhibit I like was "Out of Hand" and was all about digital fabrication, including 3-D printing.

I apologize that I didn't write down the name of the artist who made this light, and now I can't find it anywhere on the site.  Look at those great shadows.

I always think of Valerie Goodwin and her experiments with 3-D printing

http://www.quiltsbyvalerie.com

The museum had a hands on display where we could put our hand into a holograph type computer and make our own 3-D images.  Very cool.

We walked into the Met at 2 in the afternoon one day and were immediately overwhelmed.  We tried to concentrate on specific exhibits, but barely made it past the first floor. I was talking to a volunteer and she mentioned that we have lots of large museums in L.A.  Nothing like this.