The Corny Kiss I blow to my favorite city.
On any particular day at home in KC, I definitely have a routine that sets up my studio day. Since this past week for me personally, here at SAIC, my studio days were intermittently disrupted by managing health issues with doctor visits, etc. Using this week as an example of how I “studio” is not a great one. So I will share my practice of how I “studio” at home as it’s a more regulated cadence of work and productivity.
The truth is at this time in my life, my studio practice IS my main focus and what I do with my “9-5”. It has been, and God willing, will continue to be a source of great joy. My day starts with a drive to my favorite coffee shop, a place without the distractions of home. On the way in my car, I play music, usually music that connects me emotionally to my day as a way to celebrate the joy & gratitude I feel for how I am to spend the next several hours. I drive past downtown KC, and I blow it a kiss on a certain part of the highway (corny, I know). I love to share my affection for a town that has been so good to me for so many years. I arrive at my coffee shop, usually with a book or journal in my hand, and settle into a comfy chair to read and journal. I like to select books that help inform the concepts and ideas I am exploring. This process helps generate ideas for projects I might pursue. I read & journal for about an hour before heading to my studio.
My studio, a 250 square foot private space, resides in an artist run facility. Many of my studio mates too pursue their art practices with focus and commitment, many with MFAs from various institutions. There is almost always someone available to converse with on a project. It's a wonderful community for that. I unlock my front door and prop it open. I like to send a message of availability to my peers, and also to allow my favorite resident pup to come in for a dog treat & a scritch. I pull out the materials from my tote bag that I brought for that day’s work, then I put on my smock (an old oversized black button up shirt I acquired from my husband) and pull my hair back with a clip I keep there. I usually already know what I will be working on that day as I have decided my next steps before leaving the previous day. I pull out my jambox, and cue up either a full album of music, or a Pandora station that matches my energy that day. Then I get to work, if you even want to call it that.
I take a small break at mid-day for a quick 20 min packed lunch in which I usually research something, or check emails during. Then I return to my project but instead, listening to a podcast. My heaviest thinking is done in the mornings, the afternoons are just the time it takes to complete what I am doing that day. Podcasts are engrossing and help me to focus on the long hours of painting, sewing or whatever task that requires time to complete. Before leaving, I clean up my work space, put things away, clean out brushes or containers. Then I take a photo of what I worked on that day (see examples below). I like to chronicle my work as I make it to help me track my progress on a project, and it’s fun to share with my husband at the end of the day. I take a few moments to consider the next steps in my project then text my hubs on our dinner plans. My favorite days end with Mexican and a margarita.
I am very much done for the day aside from sharing what I’ve learned or worked on with Mel (the hubs). I allow my brain to rest the remainder of the evening and keep my focus on my relationships. I like to engage in this cadence a minimum of 4 days a week. If something keeps me away from studio by breaking up the day, I use that time for research, reading and journaling. I like to have a minimum of 3-4 un-interrupted hours to work in studio. I allow 2 days of rest to keep my life in balance and create the right amount of distance from my work allowing me to see it more clearly after time away. I find this to be the most challenging part as there is a social piece to my practice, the various artist talks, open studios, and show openings that happen over the course of a weekend. It can be difficult to pick between a movie date night with my husband and an art show that he has zero interest in.
Frankly speaking, this has been the most joyful work and life arrangement I’ve observed since graduating from my undergrad. I don’t know for how long it will continue in this form. But, it has certainly helped me in my transition to my studio at SAIC, as these habits more directly translate on the studio days, minus Mexican and margaritas with Mel.
Performance Is A Practice
What does it mean to practice art? I would say it matches up with relative comparison to practicing one’s identity. Is there a right or wrong way to practice either? Is there a correct way to practice or perform the feminine? Capitalism thrives on telling those who do, “yes.” Can the same be said of art? Does capitalism rule the art world in the same way it rules everything else? I would argue that the two share one thing in common, your level of performance or practice is largely determined by your audience.
To practice one’s identity, in a binary world is to adhere to a binary standard, in which there is a delineation between “masculine” and “feminine”. The rules state that if you are not masculine, wholly and unequivocally, you are by default feminine. This “othering” creates rules. Men are not allowed to be “men” AND practice feminine aesthetics. They are forever defined by a “gold standard”. This is a world of rules. And for those who are not “men”, which by default somehow makes them women, they too appear to have rules. Advertisements and visual media of any kind exemplify what is desired. By whom? Who’s to say? My earlier work explores the question, “for whom is this visual media for?”. Toys like Barbie model for us a “gold standard” of the feminine enshrouded in themes of entertainment and self expression. “Stereotypical barbie”, complete with long blond hair, long thin delicate limbs, and pointed toes. How is she to ever play flat footed sports, fight in combat with a cropped cut (the historical point of reference for the deemed masculine crew cut), or use her weight to manipulate heavy materials and machinery. Such cultural points of reference model for us the rules of this game. I am reminded of eleven-year-old me. Braces, an awkward perm, and clothing that no longer donned ice cream cones knew that the me of yesteryear seemed outdated. But the new me, failed somehow. Failed in achieving a type a status, a type of aesthetic. I seemed to be failing at a game that my training playing with Barbie was supposed to prepare me for. As if I too had “othered” Barbie not connecting the dots that this play somehow was for my own good. I missed the memo.
As a researcher, I am fascinated with cultural installations that play out these games. Reality TV shows that center around the value of one’s visual appearance, such as “Love is Blind” or “Naked Attraction” tug at a tacit importance of our visual presentations. In one such episode of “Love is Blind”, a seemingly connected couple who “fell in love” sight unseen, found the spell to be broken once they finally saw each other. For him, he found offense to the level in which his betrothed performed her appearance, claiming her natural beauty to be more alluring. In “Naked Attraction” which presents the exact opposite in which the viewer is exposed, quite literally, to a person's genitalia before learning of their personality or even ever seeing their face. In the end, we learn that what we attempt to hide or manipulate in the performance of ourselves does not seem to actually matter, and that nakedness is of no consequence as it turns out.
If there is a measuring stick, those who practice the feminine appear content to accept the challenge. Striving for an idea of perfection, but whose idea is unclear. Often we rise to our peers, those closest to our personal circles. Friends & family who share tried and true tips and tricks for the perfect “xyz” become our guides to our identity. Proximity often determines the level of practice. I suppose the same could be said for practicing art. Aligning our level of practice to our community to achieve a higher level of performance becomes the game. Your work is only as good as the members of your community help you achieve. The community you decide to align yourself with holds the key to your performance, in both art and identity. If only there had been “fine art” Barbie to prepare me for that game instead.
Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie”: Not the Movie We Deserve
Okay, it seems I am a second time offender, however today’s gender focused culture holding America’s favorite gendered toy offers too many opportunities for thought. With that here goes my likely contested and unpopular view of Barbie. Yes, she can be anything, an astronaut, a business woman, a doctor and such. But if we challenge the honest way in which we played with this toy, the true story places Barbie in a love triangle. As simple as that, I challenge any woman, especially from the 80’s who regularly played with Barbie and who owned at least 1 Ken to tell me their play story lines offered anything more than a daytime made for TV telenovela. If Barbie attended any type of work environment, her participation in such activities set a stage for the love drama that soon followed. With “day to night” convertible outfits that outlined clearly Barbie made after work plans, girls read the room loud and clear. Barbie lives to model the mating game. To be honest, I struggle to remember any story during Barbie & Ken play that lacked a dating narrative. I feel safe to say 99% of her stories involved meeting up with Ken for adult fun, not friendship fun. The excitement when Ken admits he thinks she’s pretty and wants to be her boyfriend, the first kiss, and of course Barbie and Ken absolutely had sex, at least laying in bed together. Any woman who tells you otherwise is lying. The makers of Barbie made her purpose perfectly clear knowing most girls would own three Barbies for every one Ken doll. One boy in a toy box full of girls provided a very accurate model for the future. Ken always had his pick, constantly changing his mind and having time with each Barbie, usually favoring one. Barbie performed literal gymnastics to get Ken’s attention and win the boy.
Although Greta Gerwig’s well meaning Barbie movie was the movie we wanted, it was not in fact the movie we deserved. The real Barbie world is a world in which NO GIRL owns more Kens than Barbies, where Barbies fight over Ken (literally) and she always felt the pressure to be romantic with Ken knowing eventually it would come to that. My art considers how desire shapes our identities, poking at the force behind it. This force fuels the transformation girls experience the moment they realize the world wants something from them that they will never escape. No amount of character, intelligence, skills or strength will save them from the desire they will feel from heterosexual men (specifically) for their bodies as well (quite frankly) as the converse lack of desire for some girls. The public can demand the patriarchy exercise control of their desire in public discourse. However, privately the gloves (and pants) ultimately come off and we know their desire rages in their porn filled caves, and I’m not sure erections can be labeled as fundamentally patriarchal.
French philosopher Simone De Beauvoir claims one is not born a woman but becomes a woman. Perhaps Barbie’s dating life sets the stage for women's inevitable role in the pageant of desire. The stereotyped version of her offers the quintessential ideal of beauty, long blonde hair, caucasian, thin, and pleasantly always smiling, the vanilla flavor of desire enjoyed by the lionshare of the population. Playboy’s printed content heavily focused on this ideal, knowing its universal appeal sold the most magazines. Girls whose Barbies focus on their careers fail to recognize the doll, modeled after the busty Bild Lilli doll sold in tobacco shops to men, already embodies the physical ideal of female performance and desire without even trying (unless you turn her into “Weird Barbie"). To become a woman is to participate in this pageant, and the winner wins the boy’s desire, and ultimately proliferates her DNA (whether she intended to or not). Failure to perform your gender is a failure to compete. Failure to compete renders less options for procreation whether you choose to procreate or not. For the act of procreation to happen (outside a laboratory), Male’s desire must be present. As it turns out, Gerwig’s Ken is not “just Ken”, but the key to the future of the human species. For if young girls fail to learn how to win him, their girls won’t exist to play Barbie and repeat the cycle.
And by the way, we women demand so much more of our Ken’s than ever before creating the 1 to 3 scenario in Barbie land. I know, this likely unpopular opinion diverges from the progressive ideals in which gender exists as a fluid construct existing on a spectrum. It also diverges from the idea that women perform the female gender as an act of identity purely for themselves. These ideas may still be true, however it is not patriarchal to claim there are limits to what wins Ken’s gender fluid non-existent implied penis and that which ultimately results from it.
Cindy Sherman Untitled #93: What was she made for?
It’s cliche, I know, to respond to Barbenheimer. However, upon my 2nd viewing of Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie”, (Oppenheimer is a story for another time) I discovered something buried considerably deep. A truth visualized in Cindy Sherman’s Untitled #93. Both works left me quietly weeping in very public spaces. I realize in my adopted existence, I lack the fundamental knowledge of knowing “What was I made for?” The movie’s title track, composed by the ubiquitous Billie Eilish, verbalizes what our favorite doll was thinking, what I am thinking. There, lightly holding the hand of her creator Ruth, Barbie stares into her future for the first time. This moment, pregnant with boldness, fills my throat with a lump. This doll, this blonde doll, plays into the hands of every hand that holds her. Their dreams and visions imprinted onto her. Has she ever assumed the role of creator herself? In Sherman’s Untitled #93, we are the creator imprinting our story onto the blonde in the bed. In this year of self discovery and a return to a creator role myself, I attempt to uncover for myself this mystery. “What was I made for?” Surrendered at birth, and loved by those who claimed me, I metaphorically hold the hands of a creator I never knew, my own. A blonde doll forever staring into my future, I felt like the girl in Untitled #93. Laying in bed unsure and waiting for you, the reader, the viewer, the creator to tell me my story. Does Barbie ever get to create her future? This year I reclaimed my role returning to my studio as a creator and not a problem solver for hire. Utilizing a skill I taught myself as a child (and a little help from Bob Ross), over 30 years ago, using brushes and oiled pigment to create a story born of my imagination. I think of my mother who gave birth to me while studying this very skill. No longer the blonde doll, I dye my blonde locs red. I become Ruth. I become Mother. I become my creator. My paintings, my dolls, my daughters, here for you to decide their story.
Hustler Magazine: Porn for (almost) Everyone
I wince as my husband scrolls my phone’s browser history looking for a link I wanted to share, “Gay porn stars on Ebay huh?” I promise him it’s for my new project and to just keep scrolling. It’s true, my phone records minutes spent on various applications including several hours on Ebay searching for pornography magazines. As an outdated medium, the present and future of pornography exists solely in digital spaces behind cheeky drum intros promising treats for various kinks. But in full disclosure, I do not patronize pornography. Call me a prude, a square, old fashioned, pent up, which is why my newest project “Popporn'' felt like an unpleasant dare performed at a sleepover. “Popporn'' consists of harvesting 3”x3” pictorial excerpts from PlayBoy, Hustler, Men’s Health, Hometown Girls, and the like and designing them to resemble fluffy playful satisfying pieces of America’s most beloved snack, popcorn. I attempted to add “Gay porn stars” to my collection but lost the auction, sadly the only one of its kind in the past couple of months. I am forced to make due with the all female and mostly caucasian sample of printed pornography of which there seems to be no shortage of. The first magazines arrived, 1960’s era PlayBoy. I hypothesize pictorial spreads of charming vintage naked kitsch only to learn folks are truthful when claiming to read these “for the articles”. I count an average of 5 images consisting of titillating content resulting in my first bust (no pun intended). So I return to the market for more modern era issues, year 1990 and on. The PlayBoys arrive first and I observe adorable sexuality in several collections of entirely caucasian, mostly blonde models playing basketball “with the guys” only to end up disrobed on the court minutes later, or sexy starlets arriving for the big premier suffering a wardrobe malfunction, “oopsie, he he.” These are wholesome “fun” girls living life and offering up more scenery beyond the great outdoors. Indeed, porn you can take home to Mom. Then the Hustlers arrived. The first issue, a mid ‘90’s edition, squash any notion that ladies are anything but. Out of a half dozen pictorial collections, my personal favorite features a confusing vignette of an orgy atop a vintage taxi cab, with the 4th wheel (not the kind on the cab) simply squatting and urinating in front of the driver’s side door. Different strokes? I must remember these magazines reflect a market, catered to a consumer with enough disposable income to produce it. Magazine production requires significantly more resources than its digital grandchild. Publications such as 1990’s Hustler presents a reflection of the 14 year old boy who likely stole it from his father as evident in the abundance of juvenile humor found throughout. Nuanced kinks find no home here. Diversity of any kind, body shape, color, ethnicity remain a twinkle in the internet’s eye. I gird my loins as I open the next Hustler, a late aught’s edition, and marvel at a decisively different magazine. More couples represented, both hetero and homosexual (sans male homosexuality), more ethnic representation and a more considered and playful approach to the pictorials provide a refreshing delight akin to watching the first season of Ted Lasso. Real people depicted enjoying themselves within relatable, visually colorful & fun scenarios that invited this prude midwesterner to join in the fun. Amusement washes over me knowing Hustler likely hired a career professional with a similar background to mine to elevate their production, masters of a visual medium bringing enlightenment to an artform often viewed as lowbrow & cringy, allowing Jack & Jill Mainstreet to join. Hooray for Hustler. I recognize a tinge of shame as I deface and deconstruct this collector’s item for my project. My full circle experience provided me with a deeper appreciation for this shadowed artform replacing shock & shame with an invitation to an accessible fantasy open to a broader world.
Nick Cave: The Hustle Club
Packing for my first trip to NYC since the pandemic, and since turning 40, brought a new set of priorities. Footwear with arch support trumps cuteness & style. Indeed, this is not my first rodeo. I suppress old thinking, finding a new logic over past logic. I resolve that comfort takes priority over a sense of style. After all what is style really and why was it ever important? In the past, cute shoes provided armor. A desire to belong in a perceived cutthroat community where designer labels rule the streets. I decide I’m old enough not to care about such things. Afterall, my club membership to the “40+ Club” includes the useful perks of invisibility and having zero fucks in my small wristlet to hand out. Confirmed in my decisive comfort, I, along with my travel companion, traipse through Bergdorf Goodman clad in factory model Adidas sneakers. We peruse the shoe section taking notice of blingy footwear displaying large gaudy designer logos. It occurs to me these tacky fashion pieces operate as a type of calling card for those who, unlike middle aged me, strive to fit in and assert they belong in the room with a class above their own. The irony however lies in knowing that those who truly embody this perceived “upper-class” enjoy the perks of the “1% Club” (or in my case the “40+ Club”) including a lack of need to appear they belong to it. Truly wealthy (and middle aged) people find the logo’d footwear to be what it truly is, overdone & tacky. Such is the goal of Nick Cave’s “Hustle Coat”, on display a few blocks north of us at the Guggenheim, which illustrates this point beautifully. A coat in which the lining is made from large chunky gold chains & diamond encrusted watch bezels allows the wearer to engage others who wish to identify with a perceived higher class. Call it “class dysphoria” (a type of gender dysphoria) where we covet a perceived sense of power and control that a group of people possess. However, a truly powerful man does not need to wear a fine silk necktie to the business meeting (think early 2000’s Mark Zuckerberg hoodie & fitness slides). The truly powerful woman does not need the charms of her beauty to dazzle others (think aging IG models). The truly wealthy person does not need the logo of the designer to signal their wealth. The necktie, the décolletage, the Louis Vuitton logo, the Hustle Coat, all types of ornamentation in which the wearers, members of the “Hustle Club,” wish to possess a perceived power in others and with obsession hustle after facsimiles of true club members signaling instead they are indeed “other”.
Karine Giboulo: A Bittersweet Symphony
I stare into my closet as The Verve, Bittersweet Symphony, plays on the CD alarm clock radio gifted to me by the mother of my highschool sweetheart. I remember the lyrics sounding out like gospel as shame washed over me. Clothing, shoes, bags stare back daring me to make my life about them. I remember thinking, this is life, “Tryna make ends meet, you're a slave to money then you die.” Sickness fills my stomach feeling annoyingly called out by The Verve. For the first time I ponder the true and honest point of my life. Am I to define it with the items in my possession? More, nicer, newer, bigger, to be American is to consume. “I am here in my mold” born to purchase. Karine Giboulo’s documentary style installations illustrate the inconvenient truths of what she calls hyper consumerism we live with everyday. Like a sickness with a hold on us that we may never recover from where we must commodify literally everything, I take bets on at which point big business bottles the air itself and sells it to us only to realize O2 bars already exist. After all, when all you wield is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Human progress seems devolved to a form of excessive trade which dwarfs all other notions of progress. Education commodified, health commodified, faith commodified, literally mind, body and soul commodified. Karine blows the whistle with elaborate dioramas playing out this symphony and challenging us to consider the absurdity of a community that asks us to contribute nothing more than dollars. I ask at which point we grow bored and tired of this future and consider the notion that spending power is anything but, and the “Bittersweet Symphony” of trading time for money becomes a pitiful excuse for a life. Could we abandon visions of building our own personal kingdoms and find contentment in smallness so that an alternate form of happiness can thrive? Want less, work less, and therefore live bitterless.
Rihanna Super Bowl 57 Halftime Show - A Legacy of Creation
Glitter, sparkle, chrome, fringe, billowing fabric, skin and sass did not receive an invitation to 2023’s Super Bowl halftime show. Recording artist Rihanna redefined spectacle by arranging other visual cues to express boldness, strength, confidence and yes, femininity. Shifting from sexual desire to corporal capability, Rihanna’s subtle display of her baby bump and a contoured breast plate communicated fertility goddess instead of sex goddess. Every inch of Rihanna’s body covered in loose fitting bold red coveralls, auto mechanic chic, reminds us this mechanic creates life and art simultaneously for us to witness in real time. What could be more powerful? Successfully elevating the visual language for women in power, I feel refreshed & liberated as an artist. I feel as though her performance brought the marvel of creation into the light and for the first time I feel seen in mainstream entertainment. My desire to make, as most women feel, far outweighs my desire to be desired, instead chasing a legacy of creation rather than the fading beauty of a flower and the fading superficial power that comes with it. Fine art on display for the world, dance entirely performed by men with tribal choreography communicating community rather than desire. Far too often dance presents a mating narrative, a very narrow use of a powerful creative expression. Our bodies create so much more than desire. The strong men of color covered head to toe in loose fitting white hooded jackets and face covering eye wear worked in unison as one body supporting Rihanna’s message of creation and hope. Finally removing all traces of sex from performance, except for the evolutionary reason we have it, the baby bump, Rihanna reminded the world atop a suspended stage 150 feet high to shine bright like diamonds in the sky. A performance that felt more like a plea and a reminder to us, rather than a seduction, that the world awaits the creations we all have to give. And with that I am off to my studio.
Ellen Weitkamp - A Requiem for Identity
I find such an intense joy when an artist keys into an experience so familiar it feels like an admission that indeed my existence is somehow incredibly unique and simultaneously completely familiar. I pleasantly discovered Ellen Weitkamp, a fellow alum from my alma mater, on one of my research sessions, and a pervasive secret part of me feels relieved. I often recount moments of my day, of my life, of my past, like very often. I revisit them from different outlooks during my timeline. A moment that once looked one way 20 years later looks different, sometimes better, sometimes worse, but I am aware that the moment made a fractal of me. Weitkamp’s work visualizes this phenomenon, which is phenomenal considering I lacked an awareness that anyone else noticed it too. Any one of her paintings could very well be one of these frequently visited moments, they feel so familiar to me. Specifically “Goodbye” (2022) which depicts a garage door to a very specific house on a late afternoon (as evident in the elongated shadow of the photographer, perhaps us). I react not just to what this garage door looks like but what it feels like and it feels familiar. Specific details such as the shadows on the door, the surrounding foliage of trees, the lighting on the door, the rusted artwork on the wall, the straightforward first person POV create a moment of such specificity that it convinces me of a memory, a past moment I once experienced and will continue to as long as I remember it. Her work embroils me in comfort and sadness simultaneously for that experience I remember so well taught me a fragility in my existence. That moment shall never more exist, that block in my identity on which I stand takes on new meaning as a memory, so valuable and completely extinct. This process makes up much of our lives, an endless string of moments each perishing as it builds our sense of self. Such a strange thing to value something, several somethings, as a foundational part of a person that in its ephemeral nature abandons us. All the more emotional to me in the piece’s title “Goodbye,” I question if it references impermanence or simply the garage door’s epilogue upon occupants leaving the house. Regardless, my relief in the piece’s existence carries me on. Weitkamp captured the moment that others failed to, that I failed to, but brought to my attention an aching need to. Thankfully for us, this moment survived its own death inspiring me to find ways to immortalize other building blocks of my identity.
Corsage - The Missing Script After 40
Like swallowing a bitter pill, ads for skincare, weight loss and videos of cats float past my daily Facebook scroll. The little Facebook knows about me it guesses knowing my age. I suppose the fact that I scroll Facebook tells the data czars I am not indeed a young woman. And in predictable fashion upon seeing the preview for Marie Kreutzer’s historical drama Corsage, I bravely admitted a feeling of FOMO at the thought of not seeing it. So along with my husband (who bravely agreed to join me) we took in a mid-day showing, a luxury of those whose advanced careers & schedules allow. Where the film lacks in plot twisting drama it annoyingly delivers in an eerily accurate portrayal of midlife for women. Part lament, part celebration, I felt as though the director interviewed me directly when making this movie. Although I decided to skip the role of motherhood, society only recently offers alternate plausible life paths for women. Traditionally seen as the only real role for women, once one’s children are grown are women not fit for the trash heap or at least 6 feet under? We find stories of the multiple lives of men a fairly common narrative. The young man who races off to war. The less young man who returns to start his family. The not so young man who wages the next war. The old man who tells wise tales on how the world runs. Multiple lives across a lifetime, what of that for women? The young woman who waits for her beau to return from war. The less young woman who starts her family. The not so young woman whose children have left. The end. With little to no purpose why show up to life at all, such is the story of Empress Elizabeth of Austria, whose life of privilege imprisons her in daily pointless ritual. Embarrassingly, I relate to daily pointless rituals. Along with my husband, whose career leads to more lucrative earnings, we live fairly inexpensive lives. No children to pay for, small cars, a small fixer upper in an old part of town, and only a weekly guitar lesson & a health club membership to pay for leaves us wanting for very little. As a minority earner, working for money felt pointless, like riding a bicycle with a stick & string holding only a baby carrot. Even in a modern society where careers offer women alternative purposes I felt barren. Running in place brings one to exhaustion especially during a pandemic. Unsurprisingly, like that of Empress Elizabeth, I quit everything. I sold my business, retired professional wardrobe pieces, abandoned the feeling of needing to contribute and belong, spending an entire year in blissful solitude all to jump off the preverbal ship into a vast cold ocean for merely a thrill. A reminder I still live, a redefining “why bother” all to learn the script for life after 40 is completely missing. And in my quiet rebellion I write a script of my own and marvel in the freedom of societal rejection removing my corsage with my middle finger extended.
And I Will Feast
One by one I opened my presents each a piece to a much larger puzzle. A pad of canvas paper. A set of paint brushes. A palette. A set of acrylic paints, 6 colors total. Our new Christmas Eve puppy whimpered from his cardboard box as Dad took a snapshot of him with his newly gifted Polaroid camera. I set off to my room, presents & Polaroid in hand. I sat looking with great affection upon the image of my puppy, our family's new adventure. I thought, I bet I could paint this picture using my new art supplies. So as witnessed in the movies, I set up Mom’s drawing easel with a page of canvas paper torn off the pad and clipped to a masonite board. With a pencil I sketched my puppy’s Polaroid image and proceeded to dole out paint onto my palette, one by one mixing the colors in the photo and applying it to the paper. I was hooked. At 12 years of age I painted something new everyday during winter break. A glowing human heart, a Native American (Blockbuster released Dances with Wolves on VHS that winter), each painting more challenging than the previous. I marveled with glee at the discovery in creating surprisingly accurate images with paint of the things I felt a passion for. No lessons, no videos, just an innate understanding of color and how to create any one I wanted. A language I knew well, painting and drawing always came easy to me. But I met my one true love a year or two later upon receiving a set of materials to produce paintings in oil. A medium I studied mostly while watching PBS airings of Bob Ross, left me intoxicated in more ways than one, it still does. Like a drug, “Considerately killing me” one blissful hour at a time. Each time returning to my studio, the smell of toxins in the paint, like pheromones, fill me with the promise of an enthralling conflict in each passing hour, calm and excited, soothed and stimulated, assured and challenged by a perfect balance held with immeasurable joy. But as it does, life took me away. Art education opened doors to new thoughts, all to be replaced by life’s one true foe. And like so many, I settled making one of the biggest regrets of my life.
Sitting in the living room, she handed me a manilla envelope. Wanting to wait till I was 21, Mother agreed to share my adoption papers while home for the holidays from my 3rd year in Art School. Shuffling past my birth certificate, and a medical report on my bio grandparents (as my young parents lacked any real medical history), I saw it typed by typewriter “BM (biological mother) was in her late teens in college studying art.” A shiver shot all up and down my body upon realizing I followed in her footsteps for 20 years without knowing. In all the possibilities in this grand life of mine, I found myself in the exact same place she did 20 years later, a truth that makes my flawed decision all the more heartbreaking.
As my grades & awards reflected an assured future in art, my parents offered me a deal, a full ride to a state college or get a scholarship to pay half of my tuition at a private college. My highschool’s Advanced Placement (AP) Art program attracted art schools across the country making us a regular stop for recruiting and portfolio reviews including The Kansas City Art Institute. Having met with the recruiter on several occasions, my school visit to KC on MLK Day 1996, sealed the deal. January, a dismal miserable month in the midwest, remains a pearl in my heart. That day marked the first of a grand journey I would make. Woefully unprepared for the frigid temperatures, I bared the 20 degree tour in bare legs. I met with Nancy, my recruiter, in her round office surrounded by dark wood built-ins and wood floors. I made it clear that a competitive award seals my future at the school. I asked for what I wanted. A few weeks later by phone, Nancy congratulated me not only for my admission to the school but for being a recipient of a competitive award, $38K, half my tuition, over a 4 year program. This gift represented a belief in me, a belief that they valued my attendance as much as I valued attending. A belief that I may bring further prestige and vision to an artistic institution revered in the country as a leader in fine arts. I was to be a legacy. I was an investment in their future. And after choosing a safe road, one with a promise for employment, I failed to fulfill this promise. A regret that I only discovered mid life after a 20+ year commercial creative career I grew bored with with each passing year. Blinded by some abstract expectation, for over 20 years I squandered my potential and traded it for a safe and stable life. And I felt it, the growing resentment. So I quit. I quit everything. I sold my business and sat by the pool for an entire year. Numb with exhaustion and disgust, I sat with it, with the pause my life must take. This road went nowhere, so I stood still in the middle of it for several months languishing in my directionless existence when we were reintroduced. A casual stop on our summer road trip, we wandered into Rule Gallery in the town of Marfa, Texas. I spoke with the resident, James William Murray, an artist from the UK when I felt it. There in the middle of the hot July desert, on a road to nowhere in every way possible, I recognized her. The 12 year old staring back at me, filled with joy, curiosity, and confidence. The 20 year old staring back at me with hope, knowledge and history. I never made good on my promise to these girls, my promise to follow my true potential free of fear. And like a disease, the malaise of my sickness lifted unveiling a fearless 40 something with nothing to lose. The twist reveals that although I focused on an education to prepare me for a commercial industry, KCAI developed the fine artist Nancy saw when awarding me the scholarship. I began to realize like a hibernating bear waking from an extended slumber, I felt hunger, hunger for something commerce fails to sell. Thoughts, feelings, visions, 40+ years worth hungry for their light. A new master to feed, far beyond the junk in capitalism’s teeth, my brush with new purpose breaks an 11 year silence with a roar. And I will feast for the next 40 years, as long as it takes until I feel satisfied.
Katrin Korfmann - The Ironic Milliner
Truth lies in the past as the evidence of our world reveals our way of life. Anthropologists translate for us ancient artifacts connecting yesterday’s way of life to today’s. I find the thought of my Ikea media console evidence of my way of life amusing, as well as that of the few other mass produced items in my home (I much prefer antique furnishings to MDF). Katrin Korfmann, along with collaborator Jens Pfeifer, took a deep dive into the world of the modern day craftsman in their collection “Back Stages”. The human effort taken to produce, for example my Ikea media console, exists as evidence of a new kind of workshop. Beautifully captured, factory floors of product, materials and workers work to create items that express our sense of taste, style & culture. Though intended to be a celebration of the modern craftsman, I subscribe to the belief this new commercial workshop merely offers an eulogy for art and culture procured by a community asleep at the wheel. Where to start? I could seethe at the misguided “updating” of my friend’s former 1925 Kansas City Sante Fe style stucco home in which so called modern craftsmen removed original archways, tilework (even the vegetation) all of which were in beautiful condition, and replaced it with a trendy open floor plan, dated shiplap walls and a ridiculous ultra modern horizontal electric fireplace. Indeed Santa Fe by way of Hyatt Hotel lobby. But I digress instead to my pursuit of a bespoke hat fit for the Kentucky Derby, a bucket list event I plan to mark off this year. One could argue the Kentucky Derby is a grotesque celebration of opulence and privilege embodied in the iconic sun hat worn to the races. As such I plan to take part in this extravagant display of wealth, call it 1% tourism, and while in Rome don a hat fit for society. To prepare, I took to the internet for a crash course in millinery hat fashion. However, instead of finding cultural timepieces, I found “milliners” (ironic versions of the Milanese craftsman of yesteryear) fashioning hats from cookie cutter materials sourced from the same type of factories celebrated in Korfmann’s collection. Gaudy colors, piles of texture and thin materials creating $300 “ready to wear” hats for what appear to be fit for your daughter’s tea party or a drag show. This ironic take on a fashion piece designed to display one’s financial status instead presents us with abbreviated facsimiles made by modern factory workshops driven by profit not design. This new evidence of “the haves” left for future anthropologists to interpret fills me with a mischievous joy. Upon arriving at this year’s event, I will no doubt see unwitting grown women, who spent hundreds of dollars on their event ticket, designer dresses & shoes, posing for photos sporting these cheap costume hats so that the Gram may chronicle 2023’s newest representation of opulence & culture.
Pierre Gonnord - One Chair Over
Nursing his 3rd vodka soda with a splash of cranberry, a guess on my part, the gentleman next to Mel graciously moved over a chair. In 20 years of marriage, Mel & I decided sometime ago we much prefer the bar to isolated tables and chairs when dining out. An opportunity to engage in social roulette, the evening’s gamble presented us with a man in his 70’s searching for something. In our short time together we learned not of his name, but an explanation for a noticeable pain in his gaze. A pain I only recognize after 40+ years with a father who like our bar buddy served in the Vietnam war. My husband, also a veteran, missed the call into action during the Gulf War. I observed the two talking. Our friend leaning closer in an effort to hear better, another familiar trait to that of my father. Both served, but our new friend wore the gravity of his circumstance like the tanks he drove across the jungle. Slow, heavy, strong but still somehow so vulnerable, reminding me of Pierre Gonnord’s portraits. Able to see honesty in everything about him, I felt as though I knew this man in a 5 minute conversation, but only as I knew my father. Mirror images of each other and having never met, I felt great affection for this troubled man. A power embodied in Gonnord’s work brings me to a state of empathy for people unknown to me and that society ignores. This discovery surprises me, to feel so much for a stranger, to see something so familiar in another. Could his lens capture the grace in this man’s regret so that others too may find it familiar thus creating a powerful tool for the lost veterans who live out in the open amongst us, one chair over.
Chris Doyle: The Fabricators - A Future Built on Buffalo
Upon visiting home for the holidays, our travels drift past the once native rich land of Oklahoma. Brimming with casinos and cannabis dispensaries, evidence of an extinct way of life, I am reminded that for Native Americans labor no longer balances in the simplicity of survival engaging both the body and the mind. The evolution in fundamental truths, namely security, rendered the daily cadence of securing food, shelter, safety & tribal narratives obsolete by removing their source of survival, the buffalo. Our postmodern world, envisioned in Doyle’s industrialized imagination in “The Fabricators”, dreams to eliminate all labor of both the body and of the mind, a machine to produce every corporal & creative need. 3D printed housing, food, machine guided weaponry & sex with the push of a button freeing us to industrialize our imaginations with computer generated art & travel. Our advanced society automates every aspect of the human experience seeking a perfect life void of all labor, the ultimate dream. Susceptible to elimination, the buffalo remind us to question if this technology dependent way of life differs from that of the Native Americans. Doyle’s digital display, the hide of the buffalo, envisioning for us a future projected on a fragile digital landscape. I question the vision of a fully automated future. The laborman retains the wheel. The artist retains the burnt branch. The warrior retains the arrow, all truths that remain immortal. The leisure man gambles these things, reminding us along with the native people, that the future ultimately resides in fundamental truths.
Dean Byington - Ahead of AI Art
Dean Byington: Omphalos
Etching style imagery invites us to trust it, as though a time honored image existed for centuries. A stark contrast to sharing modern day ephemeral digital images that exist only in digital bytes. Today’s digital renderings of filtered reality appear to oppose antiquated printing methods and call into question the viability of the image and how much if anything about it is real. Ironically, Dean Byington’s images present an analog version of today’s digitally enhanced images, completely faked but believable just the same. As artists, we contextualize our creations. Even Degas' aspirational ballerina sketches enhance reality. We do not see the heavy exhaustion in the eyes of the tireless dancer. Only her weightless graceful gesture implies she awoke blissful, free of all struggle, well rested and smelling of roses. Unlikely for the life of women in the late 1800’s, Degas drawings suggest he filtered reality. In a new era of AI that creates facsimiles of facsimiles is the joke on us or the machine that made it? AI offers filters resulting in renderings void of context. Byington knows that we take comfort in etching. His choice roots his work in that of the “human” experience and not the “machine” for with out human context how could the machine know we crave the comfort & assurance that comes with 600 year old tech. Only should AI evolve to own its experiences would it truly equal the human artist, able to contextualize independent of us.
Tracy Stuckey - The Western Mythos: Nature vs Nurture?
A Piece for Jane - Tracy Stuckey
I can’t discern if I agree or am offended by Stuckey, but perhaps that is his very point. I admit I am 100% courted by the Western mythos. Raised in North Texas, my very first memories are of weekends on my parent’s ranch. Wandering the broad unbroken land & sky as a toddler, the cows we assigned sympathetic names to like “Bert & Ernie”, tractor rides with Papa feeling safe up high from giant tarantulas below. These experiences are etched in me, sewn into my personality like an appendage. We packed our blue Dodge pickup with no AC and rode home to the burbs in time to attend school at one of North Texas’s most accomplished public school systems. Do I identify with a silly dream or am I the recipient of a legacy? Was my Dad, who initiated the ranch as a family endeavor, living out his fantasy all while imbuing those values in me? I might poke at Tracy Stuckey’s satirical perspective on Western culture. Today, living in Kansas City, the fearlessness found in the community no doubt held over from the days of western expansion. Once the jumping off point into nothingness, westward expansion exists as a uniquely American experience. For those who left their home countries or ventured beyond the Missouri to find something more, must possess a bold, fearless, and dumb quality to attempt such an endeavor. We are the very descendants of those bold thinkers. Is our obsession with Western mythos nature or nurture? Could not one man’s wagon trail be another’s man’s start up? Is Stuckey missing that the suburban actors in his paintings authored a new app or product that we enjoy, perhaps proprietors of the tech that allowed Stuckey to obtain the canvas and paint in which to create his paintings. Is the Western mythos a silly dream or a legacy in which we as artists pay homage to with every forward thinking piece of creation. To be truly “Western” demands us to explore the great unknown & make something out of nothing. Is not surrounding ourselves with its kitsch connecting us to a legacy of fearlessness and bold thinking?