Artist
Presented as part of:
Enjoy my solo show and other exhibitions in the Library!
Excavation of the Interior, 2021, 12 x 28 x 12.5″ (wood, mulberry paper, hemp cord, canvas, muslin)
Chromatic Interactions: The Golden Thread, 2020, 76 x 90 x 1.5″, mixed media installation utilizing file cards written and drawn upon by Craft Contemporary Museum patrons participating in my commissioned interactive artists’ book project: Chromatic Interactions, (File cards, gold thread, pencil and crayon)
Rent Wound Tear, Mend Heal Repair, 2022, 64 x 68″ (dimensions variable), Triptych Installation, (canvas, acrylic paint, hemp cord, lace, string)
“Finally and Just for a Minute“, 2022, hanging from the ceiling in my studio at 18th Street Art Center (Olympic Campus) in Santa Monica, CA. (Canvas, burlap, hemp cord, acrylic paint, ribbon) (Pictured, the Los Angeles-based artist Randi Matushevitz)
“Rent Wound Tear, Mend Heal Repair”, 2022, hanging on wall in slight relief, in the exhibition “Collective Acts of Peace” at the 18th Street Art Center Airport Campus Slipstream Gallery in Santa Monica, CA. (Canvas, string, hemp cord, lace, acrylic paint)
“Womb”, 2020, hanging from the ceiling in 18th Street Art Center’s Slipstream Gallery, in my studio at 18th Street Art Center’s Olympic Campus, Santa Monica, CA, and in the Arts at Blue Roof Summer Festival, in the “Please Touch” exhibition at Blue Roof Studios in South Los Angeles. (Plastic hula hoop, raw canvass, jute cord)
“Unfolding Possibilities“, 2021, on pedestal in the exhibition “Recovery Justice: Being Well“, at the 18th Street Art Center Airport Campus Slipstream Gallery
in Santa Monica, CA. (Mulberry paper, sewing thread, gold thread)
“Chromatic Interactions: The Golden Thread“, 2020, hanging on the wall in my studio at 18th Street Art Center (Olympic Campus) in Santa Monica, CA.
(file cards, sewing thread, gold thread, markers, crayons, pencils)
Charlotte Salomon and Eva Hesse: Genius, Trauma and the Invention of New Forms of Visual Art in Response to the Holocaust
Employing research, artistic production, public engagement, the project investigates, compares and links the lives and the groundbreaking work of Jewish women artists Charlotte Salomon and Eva Hesse on the basis of their shared experience of trauma and loss through the Jewish Holocaust, the remarkably similar intimate traumas of their families (both lost their mothers to suicide), their invention of new forms of visual art through which I posit they respond to and attempt to cope with these traumas, their early deaths, and the emotional involvement of each with a charismatic and powerful male artist who proved to be influential, even pivotal in the development of their work and artistic/creative breakthroughs.
Themes of the project include being a woman artist, being a Jewish women artist, being an artist during or affected by a profoundly turbulent time in history, the relationship between internal and external turbulence and the creative act and the transformative power of the creative process: the triumph of the imagination as opposed to the triumph of the will.
On a broader scale, the project examines, through these two geniuses, ways in which the creative process can transform traumatic pasts, and how trauma can elicit the creation of new forms, voices and materials that outlast their makers and continue to reverberate throughout the ages, inspiring posterity.
As part of my Fellowship project commitment, I created a series of works responding to these artists: their oeuvre, their lives, their concurrencies. I was thrilled to welcome friends, colleagues and students to share the works and say hello! (All images by Steve Hankins Photography)
