Blog #6: Week 44 of “Staying In”...To Wax or Not To Wax.

White Gypsy beer, image snagged from @eirebrews. But that could’ve been my hand!

“A White Gypsy
Sits Beside A Constant Stream
Under A Bi-Polar Sky
With That Broken-Doll Look”

“White Gypsy,” Work in Progress, Hand embroidery on Vintage Linen, 2020 - 2021.

Inspired by the Irish craft beer “White Gypsy,” I wrote this poem in 2016 during Nard's and my month-long residency in Listowel, Ireland. I'm using it as the embroidered text for a Work-In-Progress on vintage linen, which also utilizes a figure drawn from a 2007 painting I made when acrylic was my primary medium. Interesting to note the many ways in which an artist's repertoire gets re-imagined over time.

Figure Study, Acrylic on Wood, 2007.

As with much of my current body of work, I plan to suspend the finished piece as a free hanging form so that both the front and back sides of the stitching are visible. This is a carrying forth of the concept initiated with the “Baby Talk” series I did for my 2019 installation, “I Never Played With Dolls.” The need for considerations of “both sides” is a concept that has been a thing for me over the course of the past four years of deepening societal polarization.

“White Gypsy,” WIP, front side.

“White Gypsy,” WIP, back side.

Installation of “Baby Talk” series, 2019. Hand stitched embroidery on Vintage Linens, waxed and suspended to reveal both sides.

A willingness to view both sides symbolizes my hope for citizens of our country to lean in to characteristics such as respect, acceptance, consideration, and kindness. It also means that during last week's January 6th insurgency on our nation's Capitol, I spent the day with the tv remote control in my hand constantly switching channels, with the intention of viewing disparate points of view regarding the deeper implications of the event. With less than a week until President-Elect Joe Biden's inauguration, we are all waiting to see how the politics of our country plays out.

Parallel to this historic moment, I stand here in my studio fussing and fuming over seemingly inconsequential decisions such as how to proceed on this “White Gypsy” piece. Should I wax the entire piece as I did the “Baby Talk” pieces, or should I preserve the softness of the linen and hand stitching by waxing only the center figure. Or, perhaps, no wax at all? After all, once waxed, there's no going back.

“Test” piece to examine how the wax vs no wax looks on linen. You can see the transparency effect upon the waxed fabric and tissue paper image.

Further, I even question myself about the PC of the phrase “white gypsy.” Might some consider combining “white” and “gypsy” an offensive labeling of the Irish ethnic minority group known as “Travellers?” Like many young teen girls of the 1960's, my favorite Halloween garb was dressing in the stereotype of a gypsy woman. The concept of a nomadic, free-from-societal norms gypsy woman was incredibly appealing to a girl seeking to break free from then-current societal expectations that suitable vocational aspirations included careers such as becoming a teacher or a secretary. Thus, in my mind, PC or not, the poetic suggestion of psychic conflict within the concept of a free spirited White Gypsy jives quite compactly within my own very white personal iconography.

I'm curious and open to your feedback on any of these thoughts.

Blog #5: Week 39 of “Staying In”…. Looking Ahead.

When last I spoke to you, a full six weeks ago, Nard and I had just returned from a trip back East to bike tour with daughter Lauren and her partner Mollie. Since then, Joe Biden has won the Presidential election and Covid cases have exploded across our country.

During the election week madness, Nard and I escaped reality with a 13 day off-the-grid camper van trip to the West. I made another Polar Steps journal to share with you the 1,800+ mile loop we took through Utah, including nine National Parks and Monuments!

Here we are at Natural Bridges National Monument, November 2020.

In the interim, the Millennials in our life both had job changes. Lauren (she, her, hers) moved from part time to full time Marketing Director for a new product called “Loftie.” Mollie (they, them, theirs) became Resonance Companies' Director of Human Capital, a 21st Century re-labeling reference to HR Director. The idea being that human beings are an asset, rather than an expendable, exploitable resource. I like it.

And what I like even more is the serendipitous fact that my child-in-law Mollie is now working for a company that seeks to re-direct the future of our massive clothing industry toward sustainability, just as I embark on creating a body of artwork (“The Clothes We Wear”) seeking to highlight the ills of fast-fashion.

Clothing. We all need it. And then there is the wanting of it. Wanting so much of it that by some estimates, it is now the world's second largest polluter of our earth, just after the oil industry. Only 15% of our used clothing is recycled, the rest goes directly to the landfill or is incinerated. It's estimated that the fashion industry accounts for about 10% of global carbon emissions, and nearly 20% of wastewater.

And we've all been hearing the alarming news reports about micro-plastics that live in our bodies. Every time we wash a synthetic garment, nearly 2,000 individual microfibers are released into the water, making their way into our oceans, where aquatic organisms ingest those microfibers, which in turn are then eaten by small fish which are later eaten by bigger fish, which are then eaten by us.

I could go on and on with the scary statistics, but you get the point. For now, I just wanted to share the joy I am feeling after learning that a 20-something in my family got hired to try to right a great wrongness that our fashion-conscious society has created. Just as I was immersed in directing my art-making to call attention to the necessity for each of us to re-evaluate the choices we make about the clothes we wear.

And who knows, perhaps a possibility exists for a future collaboration between my art activism efforts and Mollie's involvement with Resonance Companies. Stay tuned. In the meantime, here's a 5 min walk through of my studio, showing work in progress for the Dec 2021 Kreuser Gallery exhibtion.

My key approach is Charity Shop shopping, but I'm looking for others. My friend, Liz Kettle, did the 100 Day Challenge, in which she wore the same dress for 100 days. Wow. Do you have some feedback for me on your efforts to create clothing sustainability on an individual level?

Blog #4: Week 33 of “Staying In”…….Or Not???

Or can it? Random photo of a building at Marsha P Johnson State Park. Williamsburg Bridge over the East River in the background.

I guess until our country has a way to combat Covid more effectively (vaccine, citizens who care enough about others to stop spreading the virus), I will continue counting the weeks we’ve endured this bizarre reality by including the Week #__ in my blog headlines. Gives me a truer sense of the passing of time during Covid.

So, two full months have passed since my last blog. We have gardened, made art, rode bikes and went on hikes. Read books, watched TV, drank alcohol and smoked weed. Paid too much attention to politics. But the big event was a trip via our camper van back East to safely visit our daughter Lauren and her partner Mollie. So so lucky to have acquired this Covid-safe means of transportation before sales of RV's got crazy busy during Covid.

You can see the camper van upper left. Turns out rural cemeteries in the Midwest provide ideal camping locations to stay socially distanced during Covid.

Day 1, Ohiopyle to Rockwood, PA on the Great Allegheny Gap trail.

Daughter Lauren graduated from Parsons School of Design with her Masters in Transdisciplinary Design this spring. Her grad gift from us was a 7-day bike tour for her and her partner Mollie, all gear provided. We rode 240 miles of the Great Allegheny Gap and C&O Canal (PA, MD, VA), a perfect, mostly flat introduction to bike touring. You can enjoy our entire trip here! via the journal and map I created with the Polar Steps App which I've really enjoyed. You don’t have to have the app or sign up to “follow” to view the journal.

Miso, our cheagle (beagle/chihuahua mix) grandpuppy, age 6 months. Taking charge of Lauren’s new home-office chair.

After the bike tour, we drove the van on to NYC to visit Lauren and Mollie and meet our grandpuppy, Miso. There was no museum or gallery hopping this trip, we stayed in and enjoyed each other’s company.

One day we did venture out into community. We rode our bikes from Bushwick to Marsha P Johnson Park, a less gentrified area of Williamsburg's beach, on the shore of the East River. I noticed a scattering of red fake flower petals, as though there had been a recent wedding ceremony. In line with my interest in re-using and re-imagining found objects and clothing remnants in my current body of work, and due to the fact that red is a re-occurring color in the works' palette, I began rescuing the petals from the sand.

Bent over, focused in my own little artist-thinking world...what would I do with these petals, how did they further my concept of the wastes of fast-fashion, and so on….I became abruptly aware of a nearby human presence. Such a different awareness and emotional instinct than before Covid, when a stranger gets closer than 6', right?!

I looked up to see a young girl about 4 years old reaching out to me with a petal in her hand. Her mother wasn't far away, I looked at her for permission to interact, and accepted the gift. The girl never spoke a word, she was serious, she was intent, she was full of purpose. That moment became the spot of light that has kept my heart happy for weeks on end ever since. It's that familiar adage about kindness from strangers, the innocence of childhood, emblematic of everything right about human beings.

Back home in the studio, I've already begun incorporating those petals into a piece I'm working on for my Solo Exhibition at Kreuser Gallery scheduled for Dec 2021.

I'd love to hear from you, dear Reader. Give me a Covid anecdote that created in you a momentary, unexpected surge of joy!

Blog #3: Week 24 of “Staying In”…….Seeking Beauty

Nard viewing JOEL S. ALLEN: work. Loveland Museum, Loveland, Colorado. June 6 – September 13, 2020

As a career artist with 30 years of pursuing the requisite technical skills to visually convey emotion and concept, I am always in search of artists whose work surprises and delights. Work that is not another version or a derivative of work I've viewed before.

Instagram is a platform I visit because it provides global access to creatives young and old. By examining and then exploring hashtags of images that I find compelling, I make discoveries of new-to-me artists. So it was that I first took note of the work of Joel S. Allen. Additional delight was mine when I read that he is a fellow-Coloradan residing in Steamboat Springs. And another dose of joy when I discovered that the artist has a current exhibition at Loveland Museum, on view through September 13th.

I've yet to meet Joel, but after viewing his vid's in which he speaks eloquently about his work, I felt a kinship of intention. The show itself is titled simply: “work.” He speaks of a passion for simply making things. This feeling is what I carried while spending a year working on the “I Never Played With Dolls” installation. It is the mental reminder I am holding while pursuing a new body of sculptural forms from fiber and encaustic. When I begin to stress over “what” I am making, I remind myself to return to a place of freedom from knowing what I'm making. Instead I think of just putting things together to create form.

And Joel has spent the good part of a year of his life creating a body of phantasmagorical forms out of precision, hand-wrapped fibers. With my current interest in textile as art material, I was immediately drawn to the strong textural aspects of his work. But what really knocked my socks off in this show is the way the artwork is suspended in space, making exquisite shadow shapes on the gallery walls, floor, and ceiling. This manner of site specific filling of space is an achievement to which I aspire.

After viewing the six short but poignant vid's he produced for this show, despite the knowledge that I'd have to brave the terrors of I-25 navigation, I knew I had to get up to Loveland to see the show in person. (Thank you, Nard, for doing the driving!). Here are some samples, but really, you need to see it in person.

Blog #2: Week 20 of “Staying In”…….The Clothes We Wear

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Ever since my 2019 installation “I Never Played With Dolls” in which I enjoyed a collaboration with actor/activist Julia Greene I've mentally explored ways to introduce regular collaboration into my practice.

I recently realized that incorporating collaboration in one's art can be something as simple as talking aloud with a trusted someone about an idea or concept previously only considered in the privacy of one's own head.

And so it was that after a long conversation with a friend who worked for a well-known charity shop, a vague endeavor which I had in mind for a while, to create a body of work surrounding an examination of the clothing industry, with reflection on my own choices and what those choices reveal about my personal ethics and allegiances emerged.

Have you ever wondered what happens to all those shoes and clothes after they've been donated and then, after spending some time on the charity shop racks, remain unwanted? My eye-witness explained that inside a giant warehouse space known in the industry as a “rag-out” room, the unwanted items are transformed into ½ ton clothing cubes, which are then stacked to the ceiling like giant bales of hay. After which they are shipped off/back to China.

Already cognizant of the extreme environmental and human costs of “fast fashion,” I wanted to dive deeper. In a future post, I'll share some of the research. But for now, here are images of the progress of art piece number one, from a new series with the working title of “The Clothes We Wear.”

Worn cotton t shirts make great buffing rags for my encaustic paintings. After deconstructing most of a worn out tee, the remaining structure tossed out on my work table looked to me just like a woman's bib top skirt.

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A lot of the process I'm interested in right now has to do with the transformative qualities of waxing a piece of cloth. Having never “encausticized” a knit fabric before, I first tested the outcome. My preferred qualities of stiffening and transparency still show true even with a t's cotton knit fabric.

Somewhere during the pondering of what text to stitch, I read the t-shirt's label. I'm still shaking my head at the quirky nature of the phrase I appropriated to symbolize our international clothing manufacturing process: “Assembled in Mexico of US Components.”

For an abstract painter who prides herself in a “Without Knowing” approach to applying paint to panel, it is at once ironic and amusing that I'm finding great pleasure in using a thread and needle to draw and write text in a very representational style.

The act of making marks on this flexible cloth substrate one stitch at a time, is simultaneously meditative and contemplative. With a creative history of word-smithing, bringing text into my visual art is brilliantly pleasurable and satisfying.

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Tools and materials. Waxed black linen transformed into encausticized scrolls which I’ll use to construct the sculpture.

Super jazzed about constructing! Figuring out how to shape the waxed, stitched fabric. Here, I realized I could firm up the top of the sculpture by “stitching” the wire through the stiff waxed fabric.

WIP: I expect to add a lot more of the red, waxed threads, connecting them with the tiny black wax scrolls.

“Assembled Components (in progress)” aka Assembled in Mexico of US Components. Deconstructed Man's T-Shirt, St. John's Bay (JCP), thread, linen, beeswax, damar resin.

And to think, it all started with a conversation with a friend. I look forward to further opportunities for conceptualizing the creative possibilities of Collaboration.

Week 10 of “Staying-in”

Sinton Pond and Pikes Peak: Sinton Trail has been a favorite bike route during Covid.

Corona Street, Colorado Springs. That word takes on new meaning…..

I had planned my first blog on this new web site to be all about the personalities and manners in which the galleries that represent my work have been dealing with going Virtual. I'm so proud of their creative endeavors to show and sell artwork while their brick and mortar sites are shuttered.

But as the days, and then weeks, and now months, went by, and I still hadn't motivated to finish, I considered why…. clicking on Links is getting old. There would have been a lot of links in that blog post.

We're all so inundated these days with emails and zoom and fb live. It gets to be too much. I've even put off my monthly “From the Studio of Nard and Sheary” e-newsletter.

I don't know about you, but these days I often feel busier than before Covid. I can't keep up with all the links I've bookmarked to watch cool vid's and participate in free online classes. And of course, there's Instagram. Sooooooo many posts, soooooo much creativity bursting out of tiny squares.

So, instead of more words, I give you some images from Nard's and my days of “Staying In.” As you scroll through them, consider…

How have you been keeping busy during the quarantine period? And, what photos have you been taking to document this historic situation we are sharing?

Please let me hear from you in the comment area below. Thank you, and…. stay safe!

PLAYING DRESS UP, just a little girl am I, and good for me… I play well alone. Should it be this way?

Or, this way?

Lots of Chalk Art Philosophy during neighborhood walks…”What Makes You Is You! Keep Being You!”

Let’s see what we can do with Blue Paint!

When we ARE able to invite friends back inside….

Lots of healthy cook’n’ going on!

As things should be…Nard in the kitchen, me with my feet up and a margarita!

Like so many of us, cancelled trips. This one was to see our daughter, Lauren, graduate with her MFA from Parsons. Yup, we attended virtually via Zoom.

Staying-in gives time for put-off “to-do’s” such as going through 30 years of journals so that the daughter doesn’t have to read through the dribble.

Self-care reminders: Move! Drink H2O, wash hands, don’t touch face. Painting above my desk: “Rain on Horizon,” by Cathy C Martin.

And, YES, lots of studio time!

Old Colorado City….empty Colorado Avenue.

Plenty of Hammock Time!

I decorated the Golden Rain tree in our courtyard with shells collected back in the day when we road-tripped to oceans East and West. A lot of time lately spent looking at Pikes Peak (distant, top right) from home.

I think we’re all feeling a little Funky these days!

Buffs take on added functionality!

Garden of the Gods…..yup!