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June 28, 2022
You might say I have a thing about fiber.
I use it to create objects, vessels, sculptures, weavings and wall hangings. I even use it, or techniques related to it with materials like paint, neon or film.
I'm constantly pushing fiber and it's techniques to see what will happen.
I'm just simply curious. I use the results to explore stories of the domestic space, woman’s work, identity, memory and grief.
But the choice of this body of work and the materias I use have been brewing inside me for decades.
This is me. I'm in front of a piece made with bed sheets, embroidary thread and neon. I made it while I was caretaking my beloved sister who was battling brain cancer at the time.
I usually smile when someone takes my picture. I am a happy and hopeful person, but my photographer friend told me to "look" like an artist. Humm, what does that mean? How do people respond when you say you're an artist?
Honestly, I didn't know how to respond to his question, so I just didn't smile.
But his question has lingered with me for a long time.
My fascination with fiber started early.
I grew up in a suburb of Los Angeles in a lower middle class family. We wern't poor, we had a roof over our heads and we had food on the table but there wasn't a lot of extra money.
I started to play with fiber in a 7th grade home economics class, (I don't think public schools have those anymore). That's where I learned to sew.
As the youngest of four, my parents thought all the hand-me-downs, (purchased from Sears or JC Penny) from my sibling’s would be suffice.
Under normal circumstances these clothes would be ok, but my mother liked to dress us alike and for me that meant wearing the same dress in three consecutive sizes as they were handed down by my two older sisters.
That's when I started making my own clothes. The first few were ok. I didn't really understand how fabric was made. I'd wash the dress I created and forgetting to finish the seams, all the threads would tangle on the inside, and I'd have to cut them in order to wear it. With practice I got better and soon I was sewing and embroidering almost all my clothes.
I didn't realize it at the time, but I was creating sculpture on my body and thus creating an identity.I loved it.
Fast forward many, many, many years and two careers, (in journalism & fashion design) and 3 kids later, I turned to fiber again as a tool for exploring issues in the home and womens' work.
Basically, I began to explore what I had been doing for 25 years; raising afamily. And exploring what "that" means to me as a woman and an artist.
It’s a tall order, but I think fiber is the right material for the job.
I don't just make art; I have an artmaking practice.
It means researching and investigating issues close to me and constantly using and re-using material techniques to experiment and sharpen my skills.
It means keeping journal with ideas and reflections and experimenting with all the objects involved with raising, nourishing and supporting my family.
Not only do I use fiber and paint, but all the ephemera in the home and the history behind all these objects and materials.
An art practice is just that, a practice. It's the constant negotiation between the material and the ideas being explored. It's an opportunity to think differently about the ideas, the space and the objects around me. Sometimes the treatment of the materials works and other times it's a dismal failure.
You'd think the success are the goal, but after many years of making art, I have learned to appreciate all the pieces that didn't work; what some might call my failures.
I think when this happens I learn the most. I learn more about the material and the boundaries of that material. I also learn to think about communicating in a different way to the viewer.
This blog will take you on a journey in my head. Fair warning it might take you on a long circuitous route to get there, but I promise it just " might" be interesting.
Sometimes the issues and concerns and how I go about exploring them make sense and other times it doesn't. Or let us just say it won’t reveal itself right away. Sometimes it just takes time.
I hope by taking you with me as I explore, you will learn along side and perhaps begin to ask questions about your own life and create discussions with your own art
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July 5, 2022
I must clear my head before I go to my studio.
And that means I need to run. Getting the blood going in my body allows me to think clearly about what I’m working on; a concept or doing an experiment with materials.
After my run, I’m able to focus. I must schedule time in the studio due to family obligations. Mornings tend to be the best because it’s my most creative time. I believe the sunlight and the possibility of the day are inspiring to me.
When II enter the studio, I try and stay organized and either turn on some music or listen to a U-tube lecture from a contemporary artist. I’m interested in how those artists think about their work. It helps me to define how I think about my work.
Once inside I focus on three things,
intuition, experimentation and research.
Many of the ideas of exploration are centered around what I know; the domestic space, labor and changing identity. When I say, “things I know”, I’m referring to the space or the work I have been doing for the last 25 years and the tools that I use doing that work. Mainly the home, the tools inside and motherhood.
I keep a running list on my phone of poems, words or common phrases I hear or read which are related to these discussions.
Often, I get a gut reaction to a word or phrase, or I have a response to certain materials, material pairings or treatments.
I am very conscious of my own reaction during this process. I allow myself to play and experiment.
With words or phrases, I look closely at the language and its origins. I ask myself, what is its history, why am I attracted to this word, does it adequately represent what I am feeling or trying to describe? Then I explore other words to see if a different one fits more appropriately.
This can be a long process. I don’t necessarily find the right words or phrases in the beginning or even after the object or image is complete.
If it is material I’m working with, I allow myself to push the material in different ways. I want to take it to its limits.
This may involve changing its composition by, layering, stretching, tearing, cutting or puncturing. Or, by adding fiber to other materials to create a new relationship. In a way I believe I am creating new space for new ideas.
Often, I don’t know where I’m going, but I allow it to be okay. I’m on a journey.
Recently, the passing of two woman close to me; my mom and my sister, brought me to investigate grief.
Above is a picture of happier times.
I began to think about how we process grief with regards to the domestic space. I started to think about the tradition of “Shiva”, where people gather and bring food to home of someone who has lost a loved one.
One of the foods in the Jewish faith are eggs. I started to think about what an egg symbolizes, rebirth and hope.
An egg is also what my mother used as a metaphor to describe a good person. She would say “She’s a good egg”.
I decided to make a series of paintings made with egg tempera that were then buried for several weeks.
Here is what it looks like.
The other piece I’m working on involves the saved jar of clothing buttons from my mom’s closet.
I began to think about the function of a button: to provide closure to a garment. I began to think about closure and I also began to think about time.
I decided to take a handful of the buttons and crush them in a blender and use the dust for an hour timer. I feel like this represents time and it's preciousness.
I haven’t decided how to display this hour timer or how the egg tempera pieces will be presented. It’s all still very much in process.
July 9, 2022
Recently I had the pleasure of visiting fellow SAIC low residency MFA artist Zoe Cohen.
Here recent work is a combination of painting and sculptural works often made with fiber materials.
Here is a transcipt of our conversation:
Linda:
I'm sitting here with Zoe Cohen. Your background is in abstract painting. How do you process your ideas into your new work?
Zoe: I’m very materials based. And so that's part of the reason I'm here is to translate my ideas. They really stem from abstract expressionists, which has a lot to do with Judaism. I won't go into all of that, but there was a huge component of the post-World War two processing that went into my research and showed up in those abstract paintings. So, I'm kind of a descendant from them, like design wise, but then I tried to take it into the 21st century. But for me, it's also intuitive and materials based. I put down layers kind of unconsciously, and then let the forms appear.
I'm always thinking about buildings and bridges, and boats and ships and things like that. But I don't have any imagery, and nothing representational that's going in there. And so that's bothered me. And so here I am. I came to school. And Kelly's (graduate advisor at SAIC) already got me on getting some more observational qualities. I really want to create more structure in my work, I feel it's a little too free floating. And so that's one of the challenges that I'm facing here. I’m looking at other ways to create,
You asked me about the ideas behind the work. And it's always about some form, for me right now. In the last few years, it's been processing the grief and the loss that I’ve had. And so, that's in the painting, but you know, again, there's not a lot of intellectual underpinnings, it's more like ideas, but they're a little looser. And that's why the other reason why I'm here is to concretize those ideas and get more specific. The ships are part of a tribute to a loved one.
Linda :Your use of words or poems is part of your process?
Zoe: I'm always starting with words and concepts and word lists. It’s all about associations for me. What do you know, and that I love to title it that way, too. I joke with my friends, I should of been just be a writer. I love words, and they're not really separate.
Linda :In your work there is a reference to bees or a beekeepers. Can you talk more about that?
Zoe: I've always loved working with images of bees and beehives, and beekeepers. But then it became an environmental message recently. And it wasn't until a few years ago that I realized, so this is how it works. For me, there's a lot of meaning in it. But I don't even always know what it is. And it comes out. So, my mother's name was Deborah and I just found out a few years ago because I don't speak Hebrew that Deborah is “bee” in Hebrew. And I was always working with bees. I love the images. I used to do a lot with collage, and I love the images of the beekeepers all wrapped in their white outfits with a veil over their face and, you know, tending to their boxes, because I love squares. And so, yeah, I just love the whole thing.
Linda:You also referred to being Jewish and also Irish. And it seems like that is infused in a lot of your pieces?
Zoe:Yes, so again, that's one of those things that I have intellectually studied a lot and done a lot of research on my own. And I guess I hope somehow that translates to the work, although I'm not making the work about that. So, it's kind of funny because from the time I was seven years old, I was asking my family about, you know, the family heritage and what things meant. And my family had zero interest in it. So, it took me until I was out on my own to study all that. I studied Irish language and I studied both of my hereditary cultures a lot. I know that the ceremonies, the languages. I know some Yiddish and I studied Gaelic. Before I came, I started thinking about the Hebrew word for “mending” or “repairing.” And I had been thinking about that before I came. But since I got here, it really gelled into sort of musing of thread. I see that we use a lot of those words in our common vernacular around grief in like community tapestry and the threads. And so I’m interested in, how we can use fabric and cloth and the ideas of mending and repair to address communal grief. I've looked at individual processing of grief but now I'm interested in historical communal forms of grief, which I feel are lacking in our culture. I've done a lot of research and I've gotten a lot of images for my research practice journal about artists that are stitching clothes and cloth and bundles and piles of fabric. I've been painting in acrylic for years, and I'm dependent on it in my own teaching and work but I also have had an internal conflict because I feel that it's not the best for the planet. And so, I've really wanted to use things that are already around and there's an abundance of fabric and cloth and used clothes and just clothes they're so personal and intimate. And so, I'm interested in working with like used clothes for that memory of collective grief.
Linda:Do you feel the clothes carry with them a certain amount of historical memory?
Zoe: I just feel like they're so personal, the clothing that somebody wore, found comfortable and that they moved around in. There's so much there I haven't explored in terms of research. What are the associations of meaning with clothing and fabric?
Linda: And I noticed you've made these beautiful bundles that are on your table. They're so delicate and colorful and beautiful. Can you talk a little bit more about those?
Zoe: Kelly gave me a few assignments and I did them and I was happy to do them. Those really brought me true happiness when I made them, and I made them quickly. I just took things that I had laying around. I took paper, torn pages from books some wax linen dress. They have a very sweet presence. I love Japanese aesthetics.I just find it abhorrent in America living here there's so much ugly stuff and it rubs my sensibilities the wrong way so that's my connection to the minimalist letting the Japanese aspects and I love minimalism. These feel very personal, they have a little hidden message. We were talking about secrets in our lives, so I love the idea of putting like a little secret message. It can be a message of encouragement to somebody and so they appear as gifts. I'm just happy about this new direction.
Linda: Can you also talk about these collages?
Zoe: I’m just about the fabric. I have no idea where that's going. The collages were an assignment from Kelly when she asked me to take a set of pictures of my old painting and cut them up and rearrange them. It was super fun. I tend to work quickly and intuitively and I just I really enjoyed it. I get excited thinking about the possibilities. I don't know where it's leading.
Linda:And you also use text which I thought was kind of interesting. Why did you do that?
Zoe: I always love adding text to repurposed things.And so my favorite one has a magazine article and somebody else's imagery, a photograph of them building the Statue of Liberty, and then page from the Shakespeare book fits all yellowed on the edges. And I just love that aesthetic.But I'm trying to go deeper than just the aesthetics here. I’m really looking for the intellectual underpinnings here.
Linda: I am looking forward to seeing where this will go. Thank you!
Studio Update
July 20, 2022,
I've been thinking about the idea of heaviness and how it relates to the two areas in my practice grief and woman's work in the domestic space.
This ideas of "heaviness" began to form during the pandemic when it seemed all I did was cook meals and do dishes. I started to think about kitchen ephemera. I wanted to create an object which acknoledged the repetitive and abundant nature of womans' work. I also thought about all the kitchen ephemera I used on a daily basis. I started to make these objects in the shape of mamery glands, which is of course how woman feed their children when they are born. The works are comprised of kitchen strainers , citrus juicers, yarn and embroidary threads. Each one has hundreds of french knotts attached to the strainer. It takes weeks to finish the top of just one of these. When I'm working on them, I feel as if it is an acknoledgement of my labor as well as an act of devotion. I'm also using other kitchen ephemera such as baking sheets and grill pans : weaving a heavy rope through the holes. I'm not sure exactly where these are going to go, Perhaps a mobile of somekind along with the mamery glands? Hmmmmmmm
Another body of work perculating in my studio also seems to related to heaviness but in a more abstract way. I'm using paint as fabric and creating geometric shapes. There is no canvas in each of these pieces. just paint. This work I hope to show along with the kitchen ephemera, I think I will know more when I work with it a bit longer. I have always found that the more I work with a material the more knowledge the material gives me and if I make enough objects in all shapes and sizes,, the idea will surface. The brown and green paint fabrics are tests made with a quilting technique called "improvisational quilting." The pieces are cut and then attached at random. The last pink paint fabric piece is my attempt at grids and patterns. I'm really not sure about the pink and creme one. But I will keep working on it.
Stay tuned !
July 26, 2022
I had the great pleasure to put togther a show with artists, Julie Leblanc and Leah Del Harrison. Please click on the link to see an online gallery show called "Reversed Hierarchy" .
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