Bookends: Within a five year span of the art life
Then and Now and wherever it goes next
Saturday night, one week ago today. How surreal it seemed to be showing my collage work again. I’m not even sure why, but there it is, it felt surreal to be there hanging out in the local gallery, just a ten minute drive from home up here in the far north suburbs of the city; Chicago that is.
It hadn’t occurred to me until the memories started popping up in my Facebook feed that it was the five year anniversary of exhibiting at the SOFA Chicago Expo held at Navy Pier, one of the highlights of my career as an artist.
Each November for as long as I can remember, I’d attend the SOFA expo (Sculptural Objects and Functional Art) as a spectator and dream. Never imagining that the day would come when I would show my work there as an invited artist. The weekend was a whirlwind of activity and strangely I have very few images from my time there, mainly snatched from other artists social media accounts after they stopped by my booth and snapped pictures with me.
I posted this one on my other blog a few days ago and it wasn’t until I looked at this image again that it clicked, I wore the same jacket for both openings. A handmade creation by artist Hadley Clark1 created from salvaged silk and other textiles used in men’s suits. The SOFA expo being just the kind of occasion that warranted the investment, and the patchwork design appealed to me for the gathering of authentic salvaged materials I was so fond of using.
Damn. That last sentence is a sucker punch to the gut kind of feeling. Somehow it keeps unfolding, this bookend of these two opening receptions and the span of the five year period in between. What it all means to me. How much I felt I’d lost and how far from that former version of myself and my art I felt I was.
Pause here to note how other details in this image jump out at me, from this milestone perspective. The way artists I hadn’t realized I was even on the radar of stopped by to congratulate me. It happened time and again that weekend, artists stopped by to take pictures with me, congratulate me, express well-wishes as my peers. Talk about surreal.
That may sound a little silly, or somehow naive maybe? When I look back at my career as an artist, I see the step by step progression I’d made to get there. I knew the artists/gallery owner/curator/mentors in this picture,2 had attended seminars and gallery events they held, had interacted many times in the past. There’s just a bit of a mind shift to see myself as a peer in these things.
At the same time, there were details about that weekend that aren’t as apparent, yet quickly spring to mind looking at this picture. A flood of memories.
I was in the thick of the spiral of my physical health, losing weight rapidly with very (ahem) unpleasant symptoms requiring a constant state of hyper vigilance over my whereabouts and the closest exit. I was also fresh on the heels of a dramatic DV event that marked the end of an abusive marriage. I was mentally, emotionally, physically raw.
I was tag team babysitting my grandchild all weekend with her other grandma, I had the evening/morning/overnight shifts, because I’d previously committed and did not want to miss those precious few moments of time with her.
In other words, you may not see it when you look at this picture, but I was freaking exhausted. Elated and Exhausted. Is there a word for that combo? There should be.
But I digress in the remembering of it all.
Here’s one of the eight large collage works I was showing then. Aptly named Whirling, which is exactly how I felt. And somehow exactly how I felt again this past weekend, with my opening reception at Blue Moon Gallery. The local one here in my own neck of the woods.
Whirling. That maybe sums up the feeling of the last five years. That maybe is the thing I’m trying to identify here. This whirling, falling, spiraling, head-spinning sensation of trying to get my bearings. Trying to hold onto each precious moment of time with friends and family. Finding my way through each difficult phase, each diagnosis, each continuance of the divorce, each milestone moment in my career, and each major life disrupting event in my personal life and on a global scale.
Bookends. The past five years enveloped between these two bodies of work the elements in each which tell a story in themselves.
The way I used to hunt and gather vintage ephemera, antique papers, old books, tactile materials worn with age, beautiful in their decay. How I considered myself a fodder purist - no photocopies in any of it.
How I identified my art statement,3 the overarching theme of it, through those salvaged elements. How each one in itself might look like trash, something too dirty to have any worth. And yet, when brought together in a collage, not one could be left out without altering the entirety of it. A metaphor for how I viewed my life and how I wished we could see each other as a society. All of it mattered to the whole.
"For a seed to achieve its greatest expression, it must come completely undone. The shell cracks, its insides come out and everything changes. To someone who doesn't understand growth, it would look like complete destruction."
~ Cynthia Occelli
In the span of that five years, to the outside observer, my life may have looked like complete destruction. Hell, who am I kidding? It has felt like complete and utter destruction to me much of the time. Shedding more of who I thought I was, the career I thought I was heading towards, the structure of my life, everything. My personal and professional life, almost everything has changed. I think that’s why the opening of my current show felt so surreal.
It’s definitely why I named said show Metamorphosis:4
“We applaud these transitions as a completion of a process, yet little thought is given to the time spent inside the darkness during that transformation, when every cell of the original body dissolves before the new can take form.”
Here in the hindsight looking back on it all place, I recognize this period as a growth cycle—AFGO5. One in which everything about me had to be completely undone. Here in the writing of these words even, I’m reminded of the image that’s come to mind repeatedly through much of it; a car stuck in the snow, tires whirling, having to switch from reverse to drive to reverse to drive over and over before finally gaining traction again.
I think that’s why I had that stupid ass grin on my face in the first picture way up there. The show, when I walked into the gallery and saw it hanging for the first time felt like regaining traction. (Also, it was because my good friends of CRAM collective6 were with me and it was Melissa on the other end of the camera giving me her signature brand of encouragement: Good Lord Woman! Stand still and smile at the freaking camera!)
Getting to gather with these guys also felt like regaining traction. Forward momentum. They are so good for my soul and for my ab development.
Traction. Perhaps this is the theme for the coming season. Forward motion.
Out of the darkness.
“To be a teacher means that we take our turn standing in our life as full as possible, so we might reflect what matters and be bright enough for those nearby to find their way.”
~Mark Nepo
I’m excited to announce the opening of COLLAGE SCHOOL a new series of collage focused workshops designed to help you master the art of collage.
Beginning with Fodder Fever of course. It’s more than mere pieces of paper. It contains the memory of everything.
Read the entire show statement here:
I had to follow the AFGO link. Then I went, duh. 😅
I do love the expression Melissa captured from your Metamorphosis opening. It appears you are out of that goo of the cocoon. I know it’s not that simple, but you are glowing a bit.
And the show is fabulous.