A friend of mine has just qualified to be one of the Garden State Roller Girls - Go Elektra Shock! And so, they need a new poster, they may use mine depends on how many are submitted, it might then be put to a vote by the team so fingers crossed, it was fun doing that. If it's chosen it'll be up all over the place at their first bout of the season which we're hoping to attend.Then, I've been writing out a spot of creative block -the one where I have to do self-initiated work, I can do stuff for other people at the drop of a hat, I just never treat myself as a worthwhile client and so my stuff always gets shelved due to lack of something; just not sure what. Maybe lack of conviction, because the stuff I feel I should be doing isn't much fun? Who knows... Anyway, one issue is that I'm totally obsessed with doing useful/worthy stuff and then putting pencil to paper, or stylus to tablet, becomes something stupidly agonising. So, all of the stuff I fret about, and all of the things I aim to convey and plan to do, I decided to get out where I could see them, so they can't cause trouble. That's what all the yellow paper is in the photos above. I've adopted an upturned crate as my neurotic workspace for all of my solipsistic witterings. So far it feels good. I've done some painting this week, not sure if they're finished, but I like them. Nothing profound, but at least I know I can still paint.I've had lots of hints to tell me to just go do, rather than thinking things over to the point of paralysis: In the Diesel shop in Union Square there's a big lit sign for their new campaign that says 'Smart Critiques, Stupid Creates', I bought a book on humour in art and there's a bit by Sean Landers who says 'I figure that it's better to be a sucker who makes something than a wiseguy too cautious to make anything at all.' and last night an artist who we've befriended in a local bar said 'Jo! Just make the work, then make the next idea, then worry about it later.' All signs point to go.....>>>>
Well, been a few days since I blogged. My bro's been to visit and we've pottered about visiting Brooklyn Museum, being in the audience for a TV show at NBC studios, eating goooood pizza, and going to a talk in SoHo called 'That Not So Fresh Feeling' at Housing Works Bookstore about how embarassing products are marketed to women and the cultural implications. And, whilst there we met Sarah Haskins who was on the panel, and who's work I blogged about a few days back weirdly enough! Me and Sarah, for research purposes (and for yuks) watched all of her clips on Current TV and then two days later saw a panel discussion advertised at a charity bookshop and ended up meeting her! How fortuitous.
There's a write up here at Jezebel complete with video from the evening.
One of the panelists, Susan Kim was promoting her new book called 'Flow: A Cultural History of Menstruation' which, also oddly enough, I'd leafed through in a bookshop the other day before buying 'Adventures in Menstruating' a UK zine, which was mentioned in a piece in the Guardian recently. In fact, it was in the same piece as Susan Kim's book, so all in all a strange convergence of smart funny women's writing and periods. Make of that what you will, but personally I find it all very interesting and at times very funny. One thing I do find unusual is women's squeamishness about the subject, I know women who are so enraged by the any mention of the M word or reference to such bleeding that they deface the ads for Mooncups in public toilets. Pourquoi? I dunno. I don't want to dance about during mine celebrating my inner procreational goddess, but nor do I think I should be considered a biohazard for 25% of the year. It serves companies that make pads & tampons etc for us to be afraid of it all, since we need 'sanitary protection' as if its corrosive or something, I mean obviously it's gota be dealt with but there's no need to make us feel bad! Apparently menstrual blood and its accompanying goo is great plant fertiliser, and I once read that some aboriginal tribes collect it as it has great healing properties, which I suppose makes sense since it's uterine and for growing people. It's no less disgusting than when cosmetics companies put placenta in face creams eh? On a vaguely similar note, when haircare adverts say there's pearl extract in shampoo and conditioner it means fishscales and other aquatic scum that's scraped off the bottom of fishing boats... mmmmm lovely glossy fishy hair.Continuing (yes still) on the uterine theme as I mentioned above we got to be in a TV audience. A friend of ours who works in New York is a TV producer, he works on a show called Dr. Oz. Dr. Oz is an actual surgeon and is in theatre every Thursday. He also used to have an occasional guest spot on the Oprah Winfrey show. We got to sit right at the front and just narrowly missed having to handle an actual fibroid tumour (we were given gloves) from, yep you guessed it some poor woman's uterus! The show was interesting both in content and seeing how they go about shooting something of this nature. There was a warm-up comedian who got everyone all riled up and told us when to applause etc and some bits had to be re-shot so we had to be enthusiastic on cue! Dr. O seems very pro women's health and urges people to be as informed as possible about their bodies. He's quite a charismatic chap and has a rather eager female following! The show is shot at NBC studios in The Rockerfeller Centre and our friend Liam let us see the view of Manhattan from his 43rd floor office! All in all a pretty good morning.After that we went to The Brooklyn Museum as mentioned in my last post about The Dinner Party. Also in the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art was an exhibition called 'Sojourn' by the artist Kiki Smith. I first came across her work when studying for my degree and was particularly taken by her piece called 'Train' (pictured above it's the white model of a woman with the beads, it fits in very well with the rest of this post dunnit?). 'Sojourn' was very different from the work I had expected to associate with Smith, but not at all disappointing. Her drawings, paintings and sculpture are beautiful and evocative of the stages in a woman's life. One thing I particularly liked in this grand sequence was her use of what was described as Nepal Paper. It looked like tracing film and the ink work on it was really delicate.
Well that's that for now. I have some more logo work to do, some film titles to design for some film pieces Sarah's been working on and also I've been painting a wee bit myself so want to see where that takes me, it's been a while so I'm starting small. Will post a pic or two when I've got something I'm not horrified with! Bye for now.
Went to the Brooklyn Museum today to see Kiki Smith's exhibition and most importantly 'The Dinner Party', an amazing feminist art installation by Judy Chicago and her group of 129 women who contributed to its making.Introduction to the work on the Brooklyn Museum website:-
'The Dinner Party by Judy Chicago is an icon of feminist art, which represents 1,038 women in history—39 women are represented by place settings and another 999 names are inscribed in the Heritage Floor on which the table rests. This monumental work of art is comprised of a triangular table divided by three wings, each 48 feet long.'
A friend of mine on my foundation course introduced me to the work ten years ago, I don't think I ever thought I'd see it, especially since despite its first being exhibited in 1979, it had no permanent home until 2007 due to its controversial nature. I was, awestruck, it's beautiful and spectacular and monumental, I know that many things are described this way when it's certainly not the case, due to our culture's fondness for hyperbole, but I'm not exaggerating, it is a magnificent work.
I'm not sure if photography is allowed,and I didn't take any of my own because I felt almost reverent before it, I just want to have recourse to it from my own shabby memory imbued with my awe, rather than any half-arsed photograph I might have taken.
http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/dinner_party/
Have done two small cards to contribute to an exhibition to do with my MA course called 'Barely Noticeable'. My first thought was to make some kind of pattern that was difficult to discern without close inspection, but maybe that is too obvious? But anyway I decided to think about it from another way, how can I say something about the things that interest me (female self-image for instance) within this title? So I had a ponder and decided to focus on getting things out of proportion and the perception of tiny problems such as troublesome facial hair compared to the excessive anxiety they may cause in social situations. CLICK IMAGE FOR DETAIL.I will try and post more drawings etc. as I want to up the ante creatively. I'm generally quite prolific when I have a set brief for work for someone else, but I want to consider myself as a worthy client as well. So in addition to design work for The Sarah Maple Project @ Novo Studios I want to develop ideas via my own practice, more practically than I usually do. I get a great deal of inspiration from reading, but when I made 'FYI' the short zine last week (in an earlier post), I found I suddenly had lots of possible resolutions to things that had previously troubled or inspired me. It's a different approach but it might just work...watch this space.
