Defended Interiors

It is difficult to talk about my work sometimes.  I am not a word person, although words seem to be my focus on any song with lyrics.  I often listen to music when I am working on my art, and listening to it gives voice to some of my life experience.

So I am going to include some of the lyrics from   ”And it Spread”, by The Avett Brothers, with this piece.

“There was light in the room

Then you left and it was through

Then the frost started in my toes and fingertips

And it spread into my heart

Then for I don’t know how long

I settled in to doing wrong

And as the wind fills the sail

Came the thought to hurt my self

And it spread into my home

And it spread  and it spread into my soul”

Another article in Polymer Arts Magazine

 Had another article in Polymer Art Magazine.  This time it talked about my art therapy work as well as featuring ”Defended Interiors”.

Mentors Gallery, “The Polymer Arts” magazine

Check me out in the Mentor’s Gallery section of “The Polymer Arts”, Fall Edition

Miniatures for Small Works

“Watcher” and “Blackbird” art the two miniatures I entered into the Small works show.  “Watcher” won  3rd place for assemblage. 

Charles H. Taylor Center for the Arts, Small Works

 Small Works, Miniatures by Hampton Roads Artists

October 22 – December 4, 2011

The Charles H. Taylor Center for the Arts

4205 Victoria Blvd, Hampton VA 23669

 

Veer Magazine Article about Alumni Show at Virginia Wesleyan College

Veer Magazine Virginia Wesleyan Show

Veer Magazine:  http://www.veermag.com/

An Artistic Homecoming

Here is the official link:  An Artistic Homecoming.

An Artistic Homecoming

An Artistic Homecoming 50th Anniversary Alumni Show features work by some of Virginia Wesleyan’s most gifted grads By Leona Baker | August 25, 2011 They may represent different generations and different disciplines, but the artists being featured in an upcoming special exhibition in the Neil Britton Art Gallery, located in the Hofheimer Library on the campus of Virginia Wesleyan College, have at least one thing in common: They’re all Marlins. Part of the College’s half-century celebrations, the 50th Anniversary Alumni Show kicks off August 26, 2011 and runs through November 3. An opening reception will be held in the gallery from 5:30-7:30 p.m. on Sept. 8. This event is free and open to the public. The exhibit will feature work in a variety of mediums including painting, photography, ceramics and mixed media and represent Wesleyan graduates from all five decades of the College’s existence. “The 50th Anniversary Alumni Show will include artists that range in age from their 20s to their 80s,” says Associate Professor of Art and Curator of Exhibitions John Rudel. “It will be a wonderful event to highlight a wide range of individual creative talents and an overall shared connection to VWC.” Among the alumni whose work will be included in the show are several who have gone on to successful careers as working artists. Will Corr is a nationally known Florida-based abstract painter whose work is in numerous corporate and private collections across the country. Christine Harris’ exquisitely detailed mixed media sculptures combine her interest in art, psychology and social issues and have landed her numerous awards and regional exhibitions. Photographer Larry Strauss, another alumni artist whose work will be featured in the show, says his interest in photography and fascination with the natural world solidified during his time at VWC in the early 1970s. “Wesleyan allowed me to explore and advance my skills,” Strauss explains. “This was before digital, and I joined a photography club here, used the darkroom facilities and shot pictures for the yearbook. I also used my photographs to add another dimension to my studies and classes.” His striking black and white photograph of desolate, leafless tree, the piece that will appear in the show, is the result of creativity and patience. “I waited for this rainy, winter day, very uncomfortable, but the conditions were perfect for the picture I wanted.” Karen Aneiro remembers her time in the VWC Art Department of the 1990s as transformative. She is particularly indebted, she says, to the encouragement and mentorship of Barclay Sheaks and Neil Britton, both late VWC art professors. She remembers taking a painting class with Sheaks in which there were some art students along with others who had no experience or artistic bent whatsoever. “By the end of the semester they were all painting like artists,” she recalls. “He recognized that everybody has an artist inside of them, and he knew how to bring that out.” Her own artistic journey has lead to rewarding work in the arenas of fine art and museum education. Most of her mixed media sculptures are equine in nature—another of her passions being raising horses and other animals on her farm in New Kent County, Virginia. The suspended horse sculpture she fashioned out of various metals, polymer and colored glass (she purposely included some VWC blue for the occasion) will greet gallery goers near the entrance when the alumni art show opens this week. The alumni show will be a chance for visitors to experience the artistic talents of Wesleyan graduates like Aneiro, but it will also be an opportunity for former students to reconnect. “I think the Art Department at VWC has always been and continues to be a supportive, close-knit environment,” says John Rudel. “An event like this should reinforce that feeling and hopefully bring our alumni closer.’

Regeneration

Regeneration embodies my journey as an art therapist. It has been a journey with ups and downs in which I have embraced the field but also walked away. My initial interest in art therapy was sparked by a desire to help others. Later, I realized that part of the desire was derived from being unable to ‘fix’ the hurt in me. Early in my art therapy career, I discovered that my empathic abilities were being amplified and distorted by own repressed issues. I wasn’t able to modulate my emotions in my personal life and was concerned that it would effect the people I was working with. So I left art therapy for several years and worked on my own art. After centering myself, I found that I still wanted to help others, and returned to the field to practice art therapy part time.

The hints at Shamanism in Regeneration allude to my art therapy graduate program. I had a professor in school that compared being an art therapist to being a shaman in a tribal society, minus the tribal support. He saw the shaman as the healer and spiritual leader in the tribe, but also as an outsider placed apart from the ebb and flow of existence. Additionally, he felt that art therapists were much the same, getting in touch with the spiritual through art, sharing the lessons of the experience with others, but simultaneously being emotionally distanced. My teacher was very expressive when he spoke of these ideas, engendering in me visions of a mighty medicine woman from the past. Sometimes I had nightmares about this medicine woman in a corporate suit carrying pharmaceutical samples. Other times, she was a new age guru bearing a uncanny resemblance to Shirley MacLaine. I was afraid of that kind of power.

Despite the nightmares, and not completely agreeing with the concept,comparing an art therapist to a shaman has always stuck with me. It felt important for the piece and I use the Shaman image to show that I have been trusted as an art therapist to guide clients. A certain amount of power is transferred to you when someone gives you their trust. It is important to respect that power.

I chose the vulture helmet to illustrate this power. Often tied to Shamanism, Native Americans had high regard for vultures. Native Americans, as well as many other cultures, saw vultures as the symbols of purification and renewal.  Relatedly, purification and renewal are involved in the therapeutic process for the client. Just as important is the ongoing process of being a competent therapist—constantly looking at your own issues (purification), and learning from them (renewal).

The lower body cabinet-like portion of Regeneration is constructed from an upcycled jewelry box. It contains personal symbols for the cycles of purification and renewal. The clawed feet are constructed from apoxie sculpt and hold Regeneration to the earth keeping her grounded in the truth of her existence. 

Article on Polymer Clay Daily

 http://polymerclaydaily.com/2011/09/02/polymer-for-regeneration/

Someday Never Comes

I borrowed the title “Someday Never Comes” from a Creedance Clearwater Revival song with the same sentiments. The song and the content in this piece are from a place in my past. 

Someday Never Comes started from a jewelry box that I found at a thrift store. It’s the kind made to look like mini dresser, and it reminded me of my childhood dresser. My mom told me that my father had painted it white and added fancy knobs to it in anticipation of my birth. I was born when he was in Vietnam, and he only stayed around until I was 3 years old. He disappeared with no goodbye, and like all small children do, I thought someday he would come home.

Though it has been re purposed to hold art supplies, the same dresser now lives in my garage. I keep it to remind me that even fleeting relationships can impact us and that we can grow from all life experience regardless whether they are bad or good. Experience, like this dresser, can be useful.

The image on both doors are of my mother and me. They are based on a photo taken by my father on a sunny, but chill day just a week before he left. Despite being tied to sadness, I love the look on my mom’s face and how we seemed to be happy that day. I paired the photo with the piece because even though the relationship ended abruptly, we had experienced ephemeral happiness.

I used Apoxie Sculpt to build a torso, the interior stairs, and the claws. The tiles on the drawers, hands, face with its bird head, and interior baby bird in its nest were made from polymer clay. The rest is a variety of found objects assembled to further enrich the content.