they hit me with a truck

These three pieces are part of a series of flowers.  For now, they are untitled, but they have the working titles of “silver flower,” “red flower” and “rainbow.” The two with open petals measure approximately three feet across, witht the vines running close to 6 feet in lenth. The silver flower is about 5 feet long with the vines straightened, and a little over a foot wide and deep.

Each of these pieces examines the exaggeration of “flower” qualities through proportion and color.  “Rainbow” is consructed of brightly colored paper over wire, with expanding foam erupting from the center.  The paper, being wrapped in stripes of color, emphasizes the artificiality of the image, coupled with the long grasping vines.  Placed in a natural setting, the flower becomes even more hyperbolic in its “plant” qualities.  “Red Flower” uses red and blue yarn, a traditionally female material of construction, to create a flower that borders on creature.  The petals are red, the color of blood and hunger, and they resemble an open mouth that confronts the viewer at eye level from a tree. Twisting around the tree branches and reaching out, the vines enhance the flower’s image as a living, grasping creature.

 Measuring 12″x4″x4″ (13″ circumference), this currently untitle piece derives from much the same idea as “Is she married…”, being constructed of masking tape and utilizing no other materials or colors. Potted plants are decorative by nature, and by stripping this image of a household flower of the charm for which flowers are generally chosed, it loses its purpose and becomes merely a functionless object.

  This piece, “Is she married? No, she’s a cat lady” seeks to examine the way in which society views individuals, particularly women who choose a life that doesn’t fit expectations. “Cat lady” is the title given to women who chose a life that would have been described as spinsterhood in the recent past.  The use of masking tape to construct the cats and cover the surfaces of the table and cup, coupled with the less than life-size proportions of the feline figures and table (26″x21″x18″ for whole piece), shows how the life of a single woman is belittled and her fascination with animals becomes seen as obsessive.  Each cat has been given a personality, but the tape surface and their connection to the actual tabletop strips them of much of their individual identity, with only the colorful ribbons to show that each figure is treasured as a separate entity. The felines also interact with one another, seemingly oblivious to the viewer, as if frozen in time.

I have to say that I read “Letters to a Young Poet” in one sitting; its short, but thats not why it took so little time.  Rilke’s ideas concerning life, and particularly that part of life that is solitude, spoke to me not only as an artist, but as a human being.  To live is to essentially be alone; no one can share the space of your mind, and no one can love or enjoy something in quite the same way you can. According to Wilke, solitude is not a state that we can reject, it is fundamental to existence. Personally, I have always considered myself a solitary person, and the world seems to consider being alone to be a sign of social ineptitude, and yet Wilke acknowledges that the inability to accept solitude is a form of delusion.  Wilke perhaps takes his ideas concerning solitude a little far, believing that one can generate ideas from the interior of one’s mind alone and that the outside world is not necessary for the germination of creativity. The world is a resource, the mind a refuge, and thus it is necessary to operate on both planes.

Then there are some ideas that I am not quite sure how to comprehend; Wilke’s advice to “not observe yourself too closely” can be read in multiple ways.  My first impulse is to understand his statement as underscoring the importance of not judging yourself and jumping to conclusions immediately, but just to live and learn from life in general. But, on the other hand, how can you know what you want and how you want to live if you don’t listen closely to yourself?