@_fake_nudes_, acrylic on canvas, fiber fill, thread, glow in the dark parachute cord, silk chiffon, powder coated steel, fluorescent plexiglass, wire, blue light, 96 x 114 x 52 inches, 2020
Apple Eater, acrylic on dimensional canvas, dyed silk charmeuse, metallic silk tissue, steel, led lights, 108 x 60 x 50 inches, 2020
cynara cardunculus, acrylic on canvas, fiber fill, thread, 37 x 36 x 12 inches, 2020
digitalis purpurea Dalmatian Peach, acrylic on canvas, fiber fill, thread, 27 x 17 x 10 inches, 2020
amaranthus cruentes Velvet Curtains, acrylic on canvas, fiber fill, thread, 46 x 20 x 3 inches, 2020
Helianthus Moulin Rouge, acrylic on canvas, fiber fill, thread, 50 x 19 x 8 inches, 2020
Froth, acrylic on dimensional canvas, wire, plasticized gauze, satin thread, satin, lace, silk, silk faille, iridescent tissue lame, sequins, glitter, steel, 101 x 125 x 63 inches, 2020.
Gilded Lilies, acrylic on canvas, wire, gold leaf, electrical cord and socket with flicker bulb, velvet mohair, beads, steel, approx. 45 x 20 x 24 inches each, 2021
Prototype, acrylic on dimensional canvas, steel, gold leaf, parachute cord, gauze, quilting pins, paper, 62 x 38 x 12 inches, 2021
P1eta™, acrylic on canvas, fiber fill, thread, tulle, wire, gold leaf, dyed poly fill, satin mouse tail, iridescent tissue lame, glitter, silk charmeuse, tinsel, led lights, 65 x 72 x 30 inches, 2021
Immaculate Conception, acrylic on dimensional canvas, gold leaf, olive branch, silk charmeuse, led lights, wire, 100 x 54 x 13 inches, 2021
Ecstasy, acrylic on dimensional canvas, gold leaf, wood, gauze, wire, silk charmeuse, led lights, 97 x 92 x 24 inches, 2020
Cathedral of Hands, acrylic on dimensional canvas, gold leaf, steel, chainette fringe, glitter, silk tissue, wire, led light, 100 x 68 x 60 inches, 2021
Radio Cowboy, acrylic on canvas, fiber fill, thread, interactive Instagram “thought bubble” made from various fabrics, 74 x 58 x 12 inches, 2020
Larkspur Cowboy, acrylic on dimensional canvas, wood, wire, 65 x 132 x 18 inches, 2019
Unicorn Cowboy, acrylic on canvas, fiber fill, thread, 74 x 58 x 12 inches, 2020
Cupid Cowboy, acrylic on canvas, fiber fill, thread, silver leaf, chainette fringe, wire, various fabrics, 72 x 72 x 10 inches, 2020
“Every present aesthetic object carries the metaphorical genes (and memes) of an aesthetic object that existed in the past. Every text is the result of an architect … nothing is original. Originality is an illusion: each and every narrative — however much it might appeal to us or move us — has its origins in an earlier one. And that narrative comes from another, and so on.... That is to say — that every narrative is, in the etymological sense, a parody, a parallel ode.”
The title of this exhibit comes from a term used by Cal Newport in his book Digital Minimalism and refers to the complete absence of solitude resulting from social media, regardless of our actual aloneness. This work started before the pandemic, but the imposed physical solitude only augmented this truth. Life as performance, or life as a digital post, feels similar to religious or devotional life in that one is performing to appease a force outside oneself or to quiet what is inside oneself. I am always worshipping something, be it a frosty glass of wine, an epiphany of oneness, or a dopamine hit from Instagram.
In 1999 I moved from NYC to Austin, TX, where I encountered the hipster cowboy archetype. I started thinking of cowboys as both a crafted identity, and a metaphor for the frontier of social media — they, and all of us, are galavanting off into a partly delicious, partly problematic, partly unknown territory. Reclining in my garden, riding emojis, shooting emojis or embodying the Instagram post, these men became like dolls or companions for me. And I began to feel the oddly nurturing quality of taking something that is not really mine and making it mine. I amused myself in recreating comments or performances from Instagram and making them absurdly handcrafted and labor intensive, taking the instant and making it painstakingly analog.
I relish the care and emotion that goes into painting a portrait, and also the subversion of it’s formality by taking scissors to it. It is a dance of supreme care and joyful destruction, after which comes the stuffing, boning, gilding and embellishment that turns deconstructed paintings into companions and dolls. What I did not expect is the poignant dimension of friend-making in the middle of a pandemic lockdown.
Newport’s concept of banishment refers to our mind, ever bound up with distraction. I wanted to play with and merge the ideas of social media as our god and the history of how we tell stories about our gods and ourselves. I heard someone say, I wish I could remember who, that even when we have no way of knowing which attributes to assign to our gods, we choose attributes that keep us not free. Or as the poet David Whyte says, “we are constantly finding ways to not really be here”. We are afraid of death, yet we are constantly engaged in acts that numb us, limit us, or distract us from being engaged with being alive. The story of humanity is a story of self banishment, starting with the banishment from Eden. I have early memories of my shame around Eve. The ambient shame in this origin myth is present for all women, regardless of their belief systems. In my piece Apple Eater, I merged Eve with earlier stories of Sumerian Inanna and the sacred tree, Egyptian snake goddesses, and the concept that Eden, which is always now, is both joy and suffering. They belong together. We bite the apple.
I remember watching Donald Glover on stage at ACL last year, and thought to myself he is creating his own Genesis. It felt like joy. It felt like freedom. I think we each are here to create our own Genesis.
In this body of work, I am playing with the stories girls tell each other and themselves on social media. How this is a landscape that offers good fruit and bitter fruit. Newport would say neurologically, the negatives outweigh the positives. Jeff Orlowski and Jenny Odell would say we are offering ourselves as commodities in an attention economy. Legacy Russell in Glitch Feminism would say it offers a safe haven of expression for vulnerable people. I don’t have an answer. But in mining the meaning-making of historical archetypes from cowboys to goddesses to saints and exploring the impact of social media on how we occupy our lives, I am trying to create my own mythology, my own reliquaries -- a parallel ode.
“What would put an end to the worst of the internet? … We’d have to care less about our identities, to be deeply skeptical of our own unbearable opinions, to be careful about when opposition serves us, to be properly ashamed when we can’t express solidarity without putting ourselves first.”