24x36, Silkscreen on paperbags,

This work is inspired by two art historical pieces. Robert Rauschenberg’s Bed painting/combine-and the Arc de Triomphe de l'Étoile in Paris.

Rauschenberg claimed that a pair of socks is no less suitable to make a painting with than wood, nails, turpentine, oil, and fabric. Rauschenberg was committed to absurdity, anti-art, the multiplicity of meaning, and im(bed)ding the messy chaos of everyday life. I had many bedside experiences last year of people who were sick, struggling, and in-hospice transitioning. I held their hands, put lotion on them, listened to their regrets and their life’s accomplishments. They told me stories I did not know about them. These were some of the most special and also the most common experiences in life. They are incredibly magical and ordinary.

My mom, a Francophile and lover of French culture would have liked this piece because the Arch is a symbol of the Iconic Paris landmark that has 12 radiating avenues extending out from its center to other destinations, much like a Star. My mom went to France for the first time in her life with my sister and I (and her good friend Margaret and her two daughters) when she was in her midlife years. This is a scrapbook-like tribute to her and those I lost this past year.

“How easy life is when it's easy, and how hard when it's hard.”
― Philip Roth, The Professor of Desire

32 years ago, I did this drawing inspired by Jasper Johns, The Seasons. Johns’ series of four prints explored artifacts and seasonal symbols to represent the epochs of life and the cycles of growth and aging. John’s shadow are represented in this work. This Serason’s was inspired by two works by Picasso, The Shadow (1953) and Minotaur Moving His House (1936).

Back then, I had a studio with 3 large windows , and like Johns, I recorded my own shadow in the changing of light and reflection I rolled up that drawing and stored it for three decades in my rafters. I was an idealistic girl back then and had big ideas of what life was going to hold for me.

I was arrested for an OVI in January of 2018 and unrolled the drawing in the midst of an avalanche of friends and close family members passing, 9 in all and during this loss and grief, I found solace in this work. It is all here-the covering up of an ideal past to a very raw, exposed beautifully messy bounty, as well as the hoard of life. And so it led me to a postcard in my studio that I have of the painting Guernica.

Picasso’s Guernica is my favorite painting. Guernica depicts the suffering of people and animals wrenched by violence and chaos during the Spanish Civil War in the city of Guernica. Guernica is 25 feet long and is epic and Picasso worked on it over a course of 35 days finishing it in June of 1937- 82 years ago.

Same Old

Routine and habit scare the hell out of people. Especially when you hit 50, routine plateaus us and an uncomfortable normalcy takes over. Politics get more party-line, we are loyal to our favorite cable news channels, complaints of the world increase, our love relationships shift with kids/parents/marriages, and our health and mental wellness lie in retrograde. We have a love-hate relationship with sameness, constancy, schedules, and instead we seek transition, newness, and things we want to fill our lives with, particularly to the things that are gone, achingly missing, those people that have passed on, the people that won’t ever be here again, life that will never to be the same.

The Last Bikini

My mom used to lay her clothes out on her bed to see how they looked. It was part of her decision making. She and I both like to be covered up. It hardly seems fair that about the age when a woman’s self-confidence is at its glorious zenith, it also seems to coincide with the breasts, belly and thighs heading south. This also corresponding with the time where women generally tell other women (or at least they think it) that it’s time to cover up.

I’m 52 and can count the times I wore a bikini past 20. As self-conscious as we all can be, how you are perceived matters-to us. We all are easy to criticize, judge, and envy other people, particularly women, and this work is about these moments where our vulnerability and truth can emerge-because we want to hide it or celebrate it or we don’t give a rat’s ass what people think. And, by the way, 47 is the age (in a study in England of 2000 women surveyed) that one should hang up the bikini forever.