Life and Death in the New Year

It has been a while since I blogged about my own work. Certainly I have been posting pictures on Facebook...a substitute for the words?  Maybe.

The new year has begun and I am about to go into high gear!  or, higher gear than my already kind of obsessive work practice. I continue my year long commitment to the vulvar/shell form.  The theme remains Eros and Thanatos.  Eros, while certainly the root of the word erotic, also refers to the living body.  SO, the theme is life and death!  Well, actually, it is the always aging,  sensual, sensate body on the journey toward death, composting and eternity.  It has something to do with living in the moment, rather than clutching the past or fearing the future.  It has something to do with finding the luminous, numinous, liminal moment when the body ceases to restrict and the spirit soars free. There is breath and ritual and movement...and in some iterations, transgression and humor.

I began the work in the  Women's Art Institute at St. Kate's last summer.  I am about to continue working on this installation.  It will require at least 160 drawings done on 22 x30" Stonehenge, coated with chalkboard paint. My home studio is not large enough to hang four rows of 10 drawings each,  much less four walls of drawings. So, as I have done in the past when circumstances required, I have sublet a studio in the Grainbelt Building in order to work on this installation.
I am excited and nervous about starting up again!

Meanwhile, on other fronts, all kinds of things are percolating.  My friend Dale and I are framing the (Her)suit project so that the installation can finally find exhibition spaces!  The frames are huge and it is a kind of scary undertaking.  I am working on spec, as I always do, but on a larger scale that I am used to.

The frames are taller than I, the images are triptychs meant to be hung from the ceiling in rows, images back-to-back.
The images may be familiar to some of you who have been following for a long time.  They were begun in a residency at the Ragdale Foundation in 2009!

I have also been ordering fabric samples from a couple of fabric printers, designed to sew a matching suit jacket.

On yet another front, Danielle, my current administrative assistant, and I are continuing to work on the Art of Giving Project.  We have organized and sent out packets to collections who hold my artists books, offering to donate titles to expand the collection. Last year I placed many titles with Minnesota Center for Book Arts and with University of Colorado at Boulder.  It is time to place more in other collections.  And now we move on to the question of the archives associated with this project and with other aspects of my art history.  Ten years ago, I never would have thought of this. I have been saving things: press clippings, templates, edition notes, slides, journals, notebooks, postcards and posters of exhibitions...They are protected from moisture and sun, but in no way are they organized!  Much work ahead!
There is more, but this is enough for now!  Happy New Year!