REDUX
EXPLORING TIME THROUGH PRACTICE AND PROCESS
Looking at my earlier work around the studio, I am reminded of who I was; it makes me grateful for who I am and who I still may become. The past work is both a touchstone and a point of reference for my survival skills, agility, and tenacity. I approach my works as a series of risk-taking experiments as part of a process of observing while learning and moving towards refinement and an authenticity in my practice.
I returned to an old piece I made in 1991. It was one of my first explorations towards combining a mosaic of disciplines: drawing, carving, clay, sculpture, painting, assemblage, into one art practice. The untitled work, made of whole and broken glazed ceramic shows a center solitary figure- withdrawn and contained, isolated by a protective embryonic-like sac. The figure is surrounded by dead-colored pink flesh shards placed in the background. I never liked or showed this piece. I hid it after I made it -shoved it behind some boards in my studio where it gathered dust and spider webs and existed in the darkness. When I look at this work, just as when I look at most of my work it is a self-portrait, a still life, a snapshot, a still montage of a woman in time. It was 1991 and I was pregnant with my second son, Elias, in a difficult and loveless marriage, still managing to work in my studio with a small child. All the obstacles of money and time and space and a chorus of art naysayers surrounded me, hoping I’d come to my senses and concentrate solely on home and family and give up that art “thing”. I continued my practice, making images that I didn’t completely understand at the time.
In 2019 I moved out of that studio, after 32 years and I excavated a lot of old work that was hidden away in the corners. I kept some for laughs and some for reevaluation. I had buried this work in my studio, just as I had buried those times in my life when I was alone and disconnected and scared and lost. It was then I had been searching for my birthmother for more than 10 years. After the birth of my firstborn, Luke, I had stepped up the search. I was floating untethered in the world; I thought my flesh and blood children would anchor me to the earth, but no. I felt was somebody’s child, I belonged to some tribe somewhere and I came from some mysterious place, but no one could answer these questions, no one could help me or understand the need to know, so I kept searching.
Thirty-two years have passed. I know the answers to those questions. Through, the ‘re-doing’ of this artwork I was forced to revisit that person who was alone without connection. In 1994, I found my birthmother, Gilda, only few years after I made that work. Everything has since shifted- my connection to a disturbing and uncomfortable history and a renewed connection to the mother that raised me, Midge. Perhaps I am too close to the recent work to fully understand it. I am excited by the life in it, the connection and hopefulness I perceive; the pieces and parts of the past and present, collected and composed as articulations of chronology.
Seeing the juxtaposition of these artworks, I experience time, akin to seeing a photograph of a child, knowing that the makings of a person are there but unresolved, incomplete, not at their full potential, still in transition; the story is still unfolding and being told.
