Write Me for Art, installation at the Old Mint

Write Me for Art/Do you read me? (Disintermediation)

Write Me for Art/ Do you read me? (digital mediation)

Write Me for Art/ Do you read me? (digital mediation)

The envelope piece is…

Write Me for Art/Do you read me? (Disintermediation)

Mixed Media Participatory Installation: hand embroidery on cloth.

To create this piece I gave people (mostly strangers) around the country self-addressed stamped envelopes with personal questions inside and a description of the project, usually after a good conversation.

They were invited to write a short response in their own handwriting and send it back to me to become part of the project (also available to those following the artist online). The artist then hand embroidered every reply received by Jan 1, 2014, matching the color and handwriting as faithfully as possible.

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The tablet piece on the table is…

Write Me for Art/ Do you read me? (digital mediation)

Mixed Media Participatory Installation: machine embroidery, print on fabric, acrylic, weights.

This piece includes text from the companion piece Write Me for Art/Do you read me? (Disintermediation), but also text taken by the artist from online social media.

*For those of you who are unable to handle these, if you did you would notice that the ones that are machine-embroidered were heavy (about the weight of a phone or tablet, a little heavier).  Those objects corresponded to the text from the first piece (Disintermediation).  The others were printed rather than embroidered, were light and the text was taken from online social media.

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The piece in the background is Iteration #9 of Identity Tapestry.

Gala Night

The Gala fundraiser opening for SFAI’s graduate thesis show. 

This photo is right when things were closing down.  I liked the stillness and being  able to clearly see all three pieces without the crowd.  It was a really great night.  I love  seeing people interact with the work!

My work for this show included Identity Tapestry (iteration#9),  Write Me for Art/Do you read me? (Disintermediation), and Write Me for Art/ Do you read me? (digital mediation)

I poked my head out a little, but I haven’t seen the whole show yet.  I’m looking forward to a quiet viewing tomorrow.

only red and blue yarn there so far

also still empty

still empty at the end of the night

me in front of my work in the dress I designed.

I’m loving the way people have left stones on the shelf, the way it drapes

Mary Ma’s installation

Patricia Singer’s installation

Heather Jones’ work- I love the way this works with the wall and the space!

art cake!

another art cake!

Officially installed!

Done!  There is  more than this in the full installation (such as 40 more hand-embroidered messages), but this should give you an  idea.  Identity Tapestry is ready to go, the table is built, the tablets together and the envelopes hung.  All ready for visitors and participants.

Please join us at the Mint for the show this week! Details here:  http://www.sfai.edu/principal

Principal (SFAI’s MFA thesis exhibition)

 

For those of you who joined me for Open Studios it  was wonderful, and an extra thank you to those of you who contributed to the beginning of a new participatory piece.  I hope you can all join me for my thesis show!

PRINCIPAL: MFA Exhibition

Thursday, May 15 – Sunday, May 18, 2014

The Old Mint

88 5th Street at Mission

San Francisco, CA,

PUBLIC VIEWING HOURSThursday, May 15–Sunday, May 18 11 am–6 pm Visitors are invited to meander through clandestine bank vaults and decadent ballrooms to uncover site-specific and multi-dimensional displays of work.

PUBLIC OPENING RECEPTIONFriday, May 16 7–9 pm

Here is your map to my work!  There will be two stories full of incredible art.  I will be showing Write Me for Art (for those of you who have been following that piece) and a new iteration of Identity Tapestry.  If you are in the Bay Area and have wanted to try that piece out, now is  your  chance!

Write me for Art has become two integrated pieces which I will install together.  It came from the many people who sent me replies in the mail to personal questions, all of which I have embroidered and included.

Pulse Project

If you are wondering what you are looking at, it is my newest Interactive and Participatory piece and my first proper sound installation as shown at The LAB, SAn Francisco in the recent show Cubic (Sounds)2.

Visitors are invited to place a finger on the pulse sensor to have their pulse taken. This triggers the audio aspect of the piece: a story of a San Francisco Moment recorded from someone in San Francisco whose pulse matches theirs. The sound of the story is played by a the flask of Bay salt water using a vibrating piezo plate to convert it into a speaker.  The grey material is cotton cloth sculpted in a rough impression of San Francisco topography with a few major streets embroidered in red.

In the end the project worked and was well received.  I’m sorry to say that during most of the opening it was almost impossible to hear though.  Even when I made an exception for the opening and added a conventional speaker under the table to compete with the sound from the other sound installations in the echoing space it was too quiet once the room was full of talking people.  Still, for the rest of the show and at the beginning and end of the opening you could hear it and it ran beautifully.

This is a piece I would love to re-work and do again in a quieter space.  In a quiet space the flask of water speaks to you quietly, but audibly- intimately.

 

 

Cubic (sound)2 Opening Dec 5th

  I have my first sound piece in this show.  Storytelling in SF.  Come see… and listen.

There will be five performances, including one by Laetitia Sonami.

I will have an interactive piece in the show built on participation.

At the LAB.

gradland: art and the MFA experience so far

The first few weeks of the MFA program I felt as though I’d landed on Mars.  The culture was alien to me in many ways, especially after years separated into my own studio space, surrounded by programmers and anthropologists and neuroscientists and similar- compassionate creative ones.  I was struck again by what a strange breed artists are.  Since then I’ve gotten to know more of the place, and found people and ideas I connect with and have settled in.

The range is impressive though.   One professor (with a career I respect) will tell me that if I don’t create the piece I’m planning she will.  Another will tell me it’s not worth doing.  Another will tell me it’s a breakthrough work.  Subjectivity is still with us.

Last week I asked a professor a question to see how they would answer and was shocked when they replied that they couldn’t decide for me, that that was something I’d have to figure out for myself.  I was shocked at the very idea that someone would even think I would take their answer as a given!  I’ve never been one to go with any particular authority.  My parents have told me many times that from earliest childhood I had no awe about parents, teachers, movie stars or anyone really.  I see many things to respect in people, but I am always aware that they are human and form my own opinions.

I’ve always been a fan of this Walt Whitman passage from Song of Myself- it describes the listen-to-many sides-and-filter approach beautifully.

Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems,
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun.... there are millions of suns left,
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand.... nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books,
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from yourself.

The whirl of ideas, reading and research, exposure to new artists and new art, the constant dialogue with other students, professors and visiting artists of all ages and backgrounds… it’s all wonderfully stirring.  It’s fuel for ideas, it makes me want to work more and faster.

…the big catch is that with all that there isn’t much time for making actual artwork.

I’m looking forward to winter break as a time to totally immerse myself in my work five days a week!  That’s something I haven’t been able to do since Elise was born four years ago.  I have two new interactive projects in the works.  One is now basically tested, finished and waiting for the right show to do it at.  The other is still in sketch-phase.  I may be doing another iteration of Identity Tapestry in the LA area in late January.  Details still in discussion.

Tomorrow I’ll be receiving one of the head curators at NYC’s MOMA for a studio visit.  Benefits of Grad School.