Dear Book Arts Friends,
Please join me for my Retirement (from PLU) Exhibit, Shadowplay. I will be exhibiting a few new artist's books, watercolor paintings and collages and some older favorites. The public opening is Wednesday, February 21, from 5 to 7, which I realize is a difficult commute time, and the gallery is not usually open on the weekend, so PLU has graciously allowed for special gallery hours on Saturday, March 2, from 1 to 3 pm.
You know I wear my heart on my sleeve. I always have, and my work is almost always autobiographical. As many of you know, I’ve struggled with the weight of grief for the last few years, I lost my parents, my husband, my auntie, my brother and multiple close friends. I’ve divested two households, much of which has landed in my studio, making printing impossible, finding anything, embarrassing, and just generally overwhelming…I’ve moved twice in the last four years, I had two surgeries last year…I went into what I call Turtle Mode. (Yes, I remember I owe many of you a Community Dictionary and I will finish that soon! I’m learning to eat the elephant one bite at a time rather than trying to swallow it whole.)
Why am I spilling my guts? Context for my show. I found all that grief and life to be creatively debilitating for a few years. A friend suggested a 100 day project and that lead to my taking a folktale class or two and joining the StoryCampDisco project group. I finally feel like I’ve returned to myself. I hope you can see that joy in my new paintings.
I have never really painted much with watercolor, that was Buzz’s thing, but after he died, I picked up his paints. Stacy (my little niece) and I would paint together when we missed him. We used up all the blue. I bought more paint, more colors, and fell in love with the medium. I get it now.
Like many of you, I worked online during the pandemic, teaching drawing, design, printmaking and book arts. (I see your eye rolls). I drew with a Sharpie on a nice big white bamboo paper I had, so students could see the lines on a screen. Remember how no one could shop? But then I had all these drawings…blind contours of cups and flowers and just random still lives, on really nice paper. They began to pile up. Buzz used to take my print proofs out of the recycle bin and draw and paint on top of them. Late one night, I painted over a sharpie drawing with his watercolor paints and brushes, hoping for comfort from the trace of his hand on the tools.
Sometimes when you are creatively bereft, it’s good to just make. It doesn’t matter what, just make something. That’s where I began, make and repeat. I am grateful for the love and support of so many of you during this challenging time for me. And your patience! Special thank you to Meredith MacLeod for talking me into the 100 day project, for sitting in cabins and her studio with me, patiently listening to me and inspiring me with her Art Camps, the Deborah Stein and the StoryCampDisco Community and my core group of dog walking besties, and water lovers who have keep me moving forward.
Most of my new work is from a series of drawings I’ve been doing of shadows. The first ones happened in Meredith’s garden. I cut them up and made a book out of them. I have made the drawings for this show at Whidbey Island, Greenlake, Woodland Park Zoo, Jim’s Garden Bartlett, Crater Lake, Portland, San Francisco, New Mexico and Bonaire. Sometimes Stacy helps me with the base drawings. My only rule is, “draw the edges of the shadows and if they move, do your best.” My entire artist statement for this work really could have been summed up by my mini-me’s reply, my drawing mantra:
“trust your heart
trust the drawing
do what it’s telling you to do
draw what you see”