I'm on a Roll

This is a piece I've had in the hopper for quite awhile, made with the metal foil (previously lead, but now mostly some other kind of metal) on top of wine bottles -- working on it mostly at home (where I consume wine). I fear the good old Parisian days of wine in the studio (except at receptions, when I am the lone server of wine in the SPA building) are not a part of the Vermont scene, in my experience. I finally brought the figures I'd been working on into the studio last week, along with a load of wine tops that Dorigen Keeney had saved for me, and finished it over the last several days. I still need to figure out how to frame and/or present it. I think it needs to be covered with plexi or glass to keep the pieces in place (though they are affixed with double-sided tape to the 48" high backing board, which is covered with silver metal foil).

It's an homage to the late Roy Levin (who, among other things, made constructions and collages out of wine tops) called Standing on the Shoulders of Giants. I love the idea that we are able to have a broad and expansive view of the world only because the way has been paved for us by those who went before us (such as Roy). Even a tiny person standing on the shoulders of a giant can see farther than the giant him (or her) self. And I like this Perilous Pile of People, dangerously leaning, but not falling!

And that's something to think about, and take heart from, in this time when the problems of the world seem to be getting more intransigent, and political life more rancorous, more nasty, more depressing (well, maybe not as depressing as when George W. Bush was president, but still...). Hope is again hard to come by, but from up here at the top of the pile we can look back and see that not too long ago in this country there was slavery, lynching, and no vote for women. There were giants who helped put those evils behind us, and maybe we smaller people can continue to move the ball forward now.

New Work With Squares, Not Circles!

When I got back from Japan, my husband asked me what influence I thought the experience would have on my artmaking practice. I really didn't think it was going to have any kind of direct influence; what I took away from my time there was more about social and personal insights, and less about aesthetics.

But recently, when I was visiting Emiko Sawaragi Gilbert at her house in Plainfield, I saw a very compelling work on the wall that she told me was made by her daughter Hannah when she was in grade school. The piece was made with origami paper, and I was enchanted with the material.

Emiko gave me two packs of paper, and I was off. This was the first sign that my trip to Japan might influence my own artwork. Here are the first (and perhaps only) pieces using this origami paper. I call it FIVE EASY PIECES, as there are five pieces, and each work uses only five (whole, uncut) pieces of origami paper. Parts of the paper disappear beneath the mat.

I also got a gift of six glass-clip frames and mats a few months ago from Nick Santoro, that I used to mount these origami pieces. Thank you to all who have gifted me with art materials!

I find this minimal, geometric work very strange coming from my hand, but there it is! I love the delicate transparency of the paper that lets you see the layer beneath and the subtle changes it makes on overlying layers.

Heretics Panel at the Green Mountain Film Festival

One of the films at the Green Mountain Film Festival in Montpelier this year was The Heretics, a film by Joan Braderman about some of the women in a feminist art collective in New York who put out Heresies magazine, published irregularly from 1997-1993.

Jane Pincus, Lois Eby and I were on a panel afterwards. Jane actually had back issues of the magazine, which are displayed on the floor, and I brought two bags of books about women artists.

Unfortunately there wasn't enough time for a really good discussion, as the next film needed to be screened to keep everything on schedule.


I'm the one without the scarf. Gender is such a central consideration. Another film in the festival that I just saw today was XXY, a drama about a young hermaphrodite in South America whose parents have refused to have her operated on. Her father says he felt when she was born that she was perfect. It becomes clear, seeing this young person who possesses both sexual parts, that we are all human and lucky to enjoy the pleasures life affords us of our minds and bodies. It kind of makes you wonder what the big deal about gender is. It is a mystery, but then so is racism and religious fundamentalism -- all those other ways that cast others as scary or disgusting monsters, somehow so different from us that we cannot empathize with them.

Some Images From ON THE PLANET in Nagoya, Japan

I had a wonderful trip to Japan, and wrote about it on our Nagoya-Vermont Blog

Here is an overview of my part of the installation and some closeups.




I was pleased to be doing work that was both beautiful and also connected with the issue of Biodiversity. During the course of the exhibition I was on a panel, and as we prepared beforehand, I was asked why the United States was not a party to the International Convention on Biodiversity. I did not know why (but guessed it might have something to do with biotechnology and bioengineering corporations). When I got back, I wrote to our congressional delegation and heard back from Senator Leahy that he, at least, thought we should sign the convention. When I wrote back to ask if he would spearhead such an effort in the senate, I didn't hear back. There is a lot going on in Washington now, and I guess preserving the other species on the planet isn't on the top of the pile.

Disc Dance at ECHO in Burlington

My Disc Dance piece is at the ECHO center at the waterfront in Burlington, probably through March. More information here.

Tom Messner interveiwed me on December 16 for Chanel 5 news. Here's as look at the Disc Dance Discussion!

Sackcloth and Ashes

Beth Robinson is taking my Sackcloth and Ashes piece for a show at S.P.A.C.E. in Burlington for an exhibit near Halloween. She thinks it's scary, and it certainly is, for lots of reasons. I just sent her this statement and some images, and thought the rest of you would like to see them too.

Sackcloth and Ashes: A Garment for Our Times

This piece was made in 2004 for a Wearable Art show at SPA, and this is what I wrote about it at the time:

As far as we know, humans have always worn clothing. And the kind of clothing people wear has been an indicator of social status, occupation, gender, and even political affiliation.

Sackcloth and ashes was worn in the ancient world as a sign of remorse, repentance, and grief. This sculpture represents us – the Wealthy Western World – doing penance for our consumption of more than our reasonable share of the world’s resources. We are offering the poor 27 cents, the average daily income of a person in the Congo, Ethiopia, and Myanmar in 2003.

But since we are all really one, and there is no essential difference between an American and an Ethiopian, it also represents the person about whose plight we grieve. That person has only 27 cents in his or her bowl at the end of the day.

I often think about money, the state of the world, and our hoarding of material goods. As an artist, I wonder about the consumption of art works -- which are, after all, goods that are bought and sold. I wonder about the value of trading in art. I wonder what art is for. I wonder what will speak to our spirit and bring us to do what is necessary to heal our planet.

The cost of this sculpture, should anyone desire to own it, is $199.57 (cheap, like much of human and animal life is cheap), the average yearly income of a person in Burkina Faso or Rawanda in 2004.

Art Rolls East!

You may have noticed that I haven't been blogging on ART ROLLS ON for quite some time (all summer long, in fact). The reason for this is that I've been busy with so many projects that I haven't had time to blog!

One of the most important things I've been doing is working on an art exhibit that engages the issue of Biodiversity called ON THE PLANET, which will take four Vermont artists (including myself) to Japan this January, and then bring some Japanese artists to Vermont in September, 2010 for exhibits combining Japanese and American artists in Barre at SPA and the Millstone Historic quarries, and at Flynndog during next year's Art Hop. At that time, the project will involve many more Vermont artists.

This is a wonderful project that involves those political and environmental concerns -- and how they connect with the work that we visual artists do -- that I was struggling with when I started ART ROLLS ON.

I am asking you to help support this effort by following and checking in with our blog at http://nagoya-vermont.blogspot.com/ (where we will be posting our work as it progresses) and also hope you will consider making a donation to help us get ourselves and our work to Japan.

I hope you will welcome this opportunity to support both me and a project that is bigger than one individual artist, a project that addresses critically important issues through the visual arts.

Here is some of my work in progress for this exhibit, which uses painted disks in a loose grid, affixed to the wall with push-pins. It will be about 35 feet long, stretching along a long wall in the gallery in Nagoya!