Boston: Residency 3 Installation

Now that the third residency is finished, I am reflecting on the critiques I received from faculty, students, and visiting artists.  It is both humbling and exciting to begin the process of focusing on the next step, and how to incorporate the strongest directions into a cohesive new body of work.  Here are a few shots of the installation and the beginning idea of a large edition of prints for a Limerick exchange portfolio with some Irish printmakers.  The piece will be a combination/hybrid print with woodcut, screen print, sewing, and text in an envelope form.

Ann Hamilton's The Event of the Thread

My husband and I had the chance to see Ann Hamilton's truly amazing installation at the Armory in December.  I finally had time to look at the photos I took there.  Here is a sneak preview of some of them.

No Land Escapes

www.ink-shop.org

I am pleased to be invited to participate in this upcoming show No Land Escapes, curated by Barbara McPhail of Rochester, NY.  The show opens next week, Feb. 1 at the Ink Shop Printmaking Center.  The fracking pieces that I brought to the third residency will be part of this show.  The curator writes:

No Land Escapes, is an exhibition, curated by Barbara McPhail, of six printmakers whose artwork speaks about the issues related to the fossil fuel industry, including environmental, health and social impacts.

The present timing of this exhibition as a visual statement cannot be over-emphasized.  The artists, from New York State and Wisconsin, portray viewpoints featuring many facets of the fossil fuel development issue, including the changed landscape, the potential of toxicity to humans and the earth, related water issues, socio-economic impacts, the beauty of the landscape pre-drilling, and spiritual references embodied in Native American ideas of preservation and protection of the earth.

The activity in the natural gas industry in the states of New York and Wisconsin have inspired these artists to speak for their communities.  The stores told in the images are informative, heartbreaking and hold this self-evident truth: no landscape involved in fossil fuel development escapes impact.  The exhibit includes printmakers featuring unusual scale, sculptural print combinations, and innovative and traditional techniques.

Checkpoint Charlie Drypoints

In the late 70's when I was studying in Germany for six months, I traveled into East Berlin through Checkpoint Charlie.  I remember how nervous I was.  Especially upon returning through the gates back into West Berlin I feared that my one purchase of a hardcover book on Albrecht Durer would be confiscated. The militarization of this liminal zone was stark.  I had heard about the number of people who had tried to cross over the wall from the east and were shot. East Berlin was desolate, and people were not out on the streets.  There was an air of tight surveillance and lack of freedom of movement.  These drypoints are small white ink prints on black paper, sketchily drawn from actual historic images of Checkpoint Charlie.  They are ghostly reminders of the ideological stranglehold that pervaded that time period.  Could they also be somehow familiar even in our present-day politics?

   

Scorched Earth Policy #2

The natural gas industry is heavily invested in Pennsylvania, and is now hoping to score huge profits as they make headway in New York State.  I have been active in the anti-fracking movement in our region of the Finger Lakes, and have finished a number of pieces that address this issue directly, including the slate pieces, among others.  Below is another attempt to visually explain the circumstances we are facing.  The local history here is complex.  It is geologic, in terms of the glaciers that carved out the whole Finger Lakes region; historic, in terms of the indigenous history of the Haudenosaunee, the 7 tribes of the Iroquois that lived in these rolling hills; economic, in terms of the heavily developed salt mines that spider beneath Seneca Lake in particular; and spatial, in terms of the multi-use agricultural and tourism industries fighting to preserve their livelihood and businesses in the face of a much larger and well-equipped industry who wants to capitalize on the access to the natural gas in the Marcellus Shale formation.  Mapping the area where I live is part of my spatial process in "finding Valois".  

Matrix Implacements

Upon the urging of my mentor and advisor I am expanding my spatial practice to the three dimensions using the scroll as the jumping off point.   These are mini-scrolls made from the paper matrices used from making the other scroll pieces.  Each section is inked, then encapsulated in encaustic, and rolled.  They are then suspended, or floated, on the wall by pinning them with a push pin.  I am excited about the possibilities of these reconfigured landscapes, by what they seem to hide.

Palestine Envelopes

Some weeks ago I started a series of small vellum envelope pieces that dealt with the Palestinian issue.  I have reworked some of these more fully, adding encaustic and china marker to enhance the feeling of  obfuscation and missing information.  Here are a few of these pieces reworked. With the current conflagration in the West Bank, these pieces seem particularly relevant in terms of understanding cultural differences and establishing identity in a shared place.

Envelopes: 3" x 3" vellum envelopes, encaustic, graphite, charcoal, printouts from the internet