Open Heart

OPEN HEART is a 5" x 7" assemblage deep inside a styrofoam end cushion for a big, old-fashioned toner cartridge. I've been saving it up for Valentine's Day! but am posting it now, because we have Open Studios in the Transit Art Center this weekend and it promises to be busy.

There are windows cut in each side of this piece, and each one gives a tiny view: a tranquil scene, a pair of dice. Inside the main chamber is a Kirlian photo of a child, the Tarot card representing the Lovers, and a little mirror. And at the front is a big piece of glass that looks like ice, melting away.

The ice jam on Oil Creek broke up and moved out into the Allegheny earlier tonight, so we won't have a flood here this year after all. Deep breath, relax -- how good the melting of the ice feels!

History of the Age of Pisces

HISTORY OF THE AGE OF PISCES is a 15" x 15" collage/assemblage on a painted styrofoam base in a 4" deep custom shadowbox frame. That frame was a great extravagance -- I had a show at De Havilland Fine Art Gallery on Newbury Street in Boston, and I went all out. Since most of my work is what you may call self-framed, this is the only one that has this kind of professional presentation.

Pisces means, of course, fish and there are four fish images, one primitive, one with an East Asian feel, one Gothic-Renaissance, and one late Victorian. The Age of Pisces is supposed to have covered roughly 2,000 years and to have ended right about now. In the last image, the fish is cut in half and is spilling out the human adventurers into the air of the next age. Wheee!

Isis Raising

ISIS RAISING is an 8.5"x 9.5" composition/acrylic painting on styrofoam and paper that superimposes the myth of Isis and Osiris on a modern background: there is an upright piano and a bed painted in the niches at the bottom, and a modern-day Isis weeping just behind Isis' winged shoulder.

It is the woman-as-rescuer fantasy -- we've all tried it at least once. When Isis finds her husband Osiris cut into pieces, she tries to use her magic to put him back together and raise him from the dead. But with a vital piece missing, Osiris cannot be revived.

Osiris' spirit rising out of the papier-mache mummy is the plastic package a tube of paint came in, transparent. The hieroglyphics are real, copied from the Egyptian book of the Dead.

See Saw

SEE SAW (6.5" x 8.5") is a small composition on styrofoam, one of my first experiments with this material. It doesn't set out to say anything profound -- a little whimsical play on words and an attempt to capture movement, the picture falling off the wall and hitting the see-saw, which throws its collection of beads and broken china into the air. It sets the tone for using words and word-play as the basis for an art work. Often while I am working a phrase gets caught in my mind and I'll be embroidering on it the whole time I am composing the piece. While not ambitious, this little piece is one that fits itself in almost anywhere, and for that reason I like it.

Lunar Aspects

LUNAR ASPECTS (11.5" x 13.5") is composed in and on another styrofoam packing piece, using acrylic paints, transparent foil, and transparent plastic to layer the faces one over the other. The yolk of the egg/full yellow moon is a woman curled up in a dream state. The other faces in the egg may be the characters in her dream that are incomplete and hard to grasp -- like the faces we think we see on the full moon's surface.

The whole piece is about the gestational quality of sleep and dreaming -- how often does it happen that you wake with an answer to a question or a piece of inspiration that has come to you overnight? Last night was the first full moon of 2009, so this seemed a timely piece to post today.

Open Doors - SOLD

OPEN DOORS is painted and self-framed in the 8" x 14.5" lid of a styrofoam box that once held test tubes. It is the piece of work that most consistently elicits pleasure in a wide variety of viewers -- I think it is hopeful and happy!

We look through a series of open doors in a gray, old-fashioned, and rather sedate interior to a door that is open to the bright light outside. Three mysterious glowing glass balls have rolled in along the floor to entice us outside, where a column of light waits just beyond the door. It is reminiscent of the house I lived in in Somerville, MA, but even more, it represents my slightly agoraphobic desire to hole up and hibernate, one that I fight every single day at this time of year!

Today the Oil City streets are covered with black ice and I slid my car into the ditch, so I inched my way back up the hill to enjoy a totally justified day of working from home. But tomorrow I will follow the glowing balls again -- that's, after all, why I imagined them!

Child Tiresias

CHILD TIRESIAS 10" x 14" acrylic, terracotta sculpture and assemblage in styrofoam. This one is the mirror image of Grandma's porch in the last post -- but a very different treatment. Tiresias was the blind prophet who as a punishment from the gods spent eight years of his life as a woman and as a result, had more insight than anyone. I gave him feet of oil-based clay! As a woman, I can't imagine that he learned enough in only eight years! And all his sense perceptions are scattered around and compartmentalized and not integrated, eyes in one box, ears in another.
This was not a planned piece, but one that just grew out of what I had on hand. A lot of people ask me about the hieroglyphics -- they are invented.

4007 McWhinney Street

4007 McWHINNEY STREET 10" x 14" acrylic and assemblage on styrofoam.
We always went to Grandma's house for Thanksgiving when we were small. This piece represents her red brick front porch, and tries to evoke the fustiness, photos, and face-offs that are part of "family." Note the can of worms at the bottom! Grandma was afraid of a lot of things, from the weather to demon alcohol! and we protected Grandma, mostly by not telling her things. People say they can see a face in the negative space between the two women facing each other. I didn't intend it, but I can see it, too. Some elements of a piece of art create themselves! This piece is not for sale, though my mother (facing Grandma) is quite proud that she has been featured in exhibits.

Solar and Lunar Aspects

SOLAR AND LUNAR ASPECTS
This is the piece of work I always turn to when I have to introduce myself. It is a 14" x 18" painting/assemblage on two joined styrofoam packing cases. It brings together the studious, responsible, orderly me with a wilder side and gives them a certain balance. At least, I like to hope so!

So why a blog? To make myself get back to work. To make myself get my work out into the public eye. It's so personal, I shy away from that, but it's time. My goal is to post several pieces a week here, starting with older work I already have on hand. As of December 1, I am renting a studio in downtown Oil City's National Transit Art Center to use as work and exhibition space. The 12 pieces that are now on display at Clarion University Venango campus will come home to my new studio instead of to my living room. Exciting! Scary. The hermit is finally going public.