studio index: Mother/mother

Monday, November 30, 2009

Mother/mother

My posts will be sporadic in the next week due to travel. Tomorrow my son and I leave on a six day trip that will take him to State College, Pennsylvania (where very excited grandparents await) and then Philadelphia to meet me before we return to North Carolina. I will travel to State College with him, and then embark solo to New York to visit good friends from college, see some shows and attend the opening of a group exhibition of mine, Mother/mother--at A.I.R. Gallery in Brooklyn. (Do you recall the photo of those who established A.I.R. in the 1970's from your college art history/criticism/womens studies/gender studies class? I haven't been able to dig it up online but I see the image vividly in mind--a bunch of women together in a beautiful B&W photo...Nancy Spero, Ana Mendieta, Harmony Hammond maybe.)

The above image is my collage in the show--an older collage from 2006, made one year after Alexander was born. I'm excited to be in this show because the curator, Jennifer Wroblewski, is interested in how one's work has changed/evolved/been conditioned by becoming a parent. Nothing has affected my work more in the past five years, but the result has not produced a bunch of images about babies, or diapers or domesticity (which is not to say those things can't produce amazing work). The changes I've experienced in the studio have more to do with world view, with looking and with vision. When Alexander arrived, I found it nearly impossible to conceive of a WHOLE from the outset. Instead a whole had to be built, literally constucted--piece by piece by piece.

1 comment:

Judith van Praag said...: Hi Barbara, Your collage brought a smile to my face. Sorry I missed the opening at A.I.R. One of my pieces is in the Mother/mother-* show as well. Best, Judith; December 8, 2009 at 8:08 PM

Post a Comment

Notes

Within an ephemeral present, we return through memory to things, places, and events in the past in order to find purpose and direction in our lives. Meaningful time is elliptical time.
Vigen Guroian

I have concluded that the whole misfortune of men comes from a single thing, and that is their inability to remain at rest in a room.

Blaise Pascal

May your imagination know the grace of perfect danger.

John O'Donohue

The amount of life I can put through my eyes is the amount I can see.

Ivan Albright

When I painted a chair recently, I noticed that I put the paint on indifferently, smoothly but without particular attention. The results were satisfactory but not in any sense beautiful. Does the attention in itself with which paint is applied in art actually change the effect of the paint? Does the kind of consciousness with which we act determine the quality of our actions? It would follow, if this were true that the higher the degree of consciousness, the higher the quality of art. I think it likely. Training in art is, then, a demand that students increase the consciousness with which they employ techniques that are, in themselves, ordinary.

Anne Truitt, Daybook

It was suggested to me that I would want to preface this reading tonight with a short statement about my philosophy of writing. Of course I don't want to do anything of the kind. My approach to literary problems is very much like the one Dr. Johnson's blind housekeeper used when she poured tea for him. She put her finger inside the cup.

Flannery O'Connor