Mixed Media Additions to Political Bulbs

bound hands

Seven of my politics bulbs in this group have mixed media additions. I added these after the pieces had been glazed and fired, but I had planned for them from the beginning. The bound hands piece was one I started early in the summer. it was one of the first of the political bulbs from this batch. I always intended to use a zip tie to bind the hands and thus I built in space for the zip tie to go into the bulb. The hands attach to the bulb by the arms and the edge of both palms for stability.

separation of church and state

Another piece that I envisioned from the beginning was the rosary covering the capital building. I wanted to reference the power that Christianity has over so much that happens in politics in our country, despite the supposed separation of church and state. In execution I am pleased that that cross ends up in front of the capital.

birth control is basic healthcare

In some cases the mixed media additions aren't going to make the work more clear, but they do serve to make the work more interesting visually and textually. The IUD bulb has a braided string (like the real thing), which isn't strictly necessary to communicate that I'm talking about birth control and family planning, but it adds color and size to the bulb without fragility.

kids in cages

The jail cell or cage bars, made from painted toothpicks, are integral to the structure of the piece. It would be possible to fill the cell with ceramic objects and make the bars from clay attached to the walls of the bulb, but it would be difficult to paint the interior pieces. Plus, I simply hadn't finished the inside pieces when I made the rest of the bulb. Attaching bars later seems to work fairly well.

inside the cage are a bottle, teddy bear, and pacifier

The pieces I am least confident in are the gun themed bulbs. Part of my hesitation to talk about them, especially online, is that I have a gut feeling that some guns rights nuts are likely to invade my online world and tell me I'm a terrible person who doesn't understand guns and because I don't love the second amendment I should be shot.

guns are patriotic

I intended both of my mixed media gun bulbs to reference how integral guns and gun violence are to US society. The gun nuts, and I here I am referring to the unquestionable nuts who make other people's lives unpleasant both online and in person, equate total personal armament with patriotism and any types of restrictions on gun types, access to guns, quality or size of guns, guns in public, guns in schools, guns carried openly in a blatant attempt to confront and cause controversy are automatically suspect and met with loud, violent, and unceasing hostility.

guns are inescapable

In part because of the baggage that comes along with guns, gun restrictions, and questions about the second amendment, I am less confident in these pieces. I also wish my rope was darker.

Art-A-Day at Columbia Center for the Arts

Daily Conversations, Art a Day opens at Columbia Center for the Arts in Hood River, Oregon on July 31 and continues in the gallery through August 31. Come see my work during the opening reception on August 3 or during the regular gallery hours, daily, 11-5.

my favorite abstract bulb, a yellow and purple porcupine abstract bulb

In preparation for this exhibition, artists were asked to make a new artwork every day for 30 days and also write about their process.

Patterns, based on the ceiling at the Yakima Yoga Collective

I made two sets of 30 bulbs each. One set is "abstract" bulbs. They are, in fact, mostly abstract, though towards the end of the building process I started making faces and hands which aren't so much abstract as random.

The second amendment

The abstract or random bulbs are in contrast to the other set of bulbs which are a continuation of a series I began last year and which I have alternately called political, protest, or patriot bulbs. Each one addresses something controversial in our nation, usually something prompted by the current administration's policies or rhetoric, or by major news stories in this country.

If you live in WA, your primary ballot is due August 7!

Taken together the political bulbs illustrate my own political views, but hopefully also leave room for interpretation and thoughfulness on some of the issues where ambiguity is possible or even natural. 

Hard to tell in the photo, but there are three colors in the bulb

The "abstract" bulbs, taken together, probably suggest that I was having fun with texture and color. In this post I've collected some of my favorites from both sets of bulbs.

Knit bulb (with ceramic bulb inside)

I enjoyed the abstract ones most when I tried something new, be it a new material incorporated into the bulb itself or a new sculpting or decorating technique.

front and back of the same abstract bulb from early on in the project

At one point I had intended to create contrasting textures on the front and back of each bulb in the abstract series, but some of my surfaces are too deep or complex to allow the bulbs to be easily hung in either direction.

second screaming bulb (abstract set)

As I mentioned, pure abstraction went out the window at some point in the process, and I prioritized having fun making the work over sticking closely to my original intent. Part of me wants to make faces and hands and maybe feet and other body parts for a whole series, but I'm not quite sure why.

just a random blue hand

Some of the bulbs also began to extend well past the boundaries of the bulb itself. The flower piece was fun to make and I'm pretty happy with the finished product, but difficult to photograph before it was installed.

flower bulb

I am unable to install this work during the assigned time, so I have delivered it to the gallery and they have installed it for me. I won't actually be able to get to the show to see the work until after the opening. If you are in the Hood River area, be sure to check it out (and tell me about it). The reception is July 2 from 6-8pm.

the bulb of nearly 1000 toothpicks

Grappling with Politics in Art

My newest installation of work, dealing with politics and using a form and format I have been using for years, is currently on display at the Yakima Maker Space.

The Maker Space installation is a part of the local Nasty Woman show. This work (all of these pieces plus some that didn't fit in the YMS display) will be going to Hood River in March for the Columbia Center for the Arts' "Raising our Voices: Art as Activism" show. 

The shows I've mentioned before, but the new part of this, for me, is that I am also going to be presenting on this work for Blinc 20/20 at the NCECA (National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts) conference in Pittsburg in March. 

The First Amendment of the Constitution

The Blinc 20/20 format is like the PechaKucha format that people might be familiar with from events around the country. I presented in roughly this format for the International Sculpture Day event last spring. Of course the pressure wasn't particularly intense presenting in Yakima and with all familiar faces in the audience.

Systemic racism means that systems in our country are set up that privilege one group of people over another. When some people pointed out that black people's lives don't appear to matter in this country, based on the evidence that they are being shot and killed by police at an alarming rate, some other people were offended at being asked, as a country, to examine the systems that have led to black people being more likely to be killed than white people.

Last year's topic was also significantly less intense. I was discussing the evolution of the form that makes up my bulb installation and this simple form's presence in my sculpture and installation work. This year's work is based on that form and that same installation, but the topic of the talk is "Grappling with Politics in Art."

Nasty Woman at Yakima Maker Space

I proposed this topic because of the urge I felt last year, after the election and the first few months of the new presidential administration, to begin making work that was more direct and overtly political. My work has always been abstract (or occasionally functional), but I've never felt the need to be explicit in the stories I was trying to tell.

Who is the person in prison? Statistically, this is probably an American, since 25% of the world's prison population is right here in the USA, and a black man is 6 times more likely than a white man to be jailed in his lifetime.

Until this past year. 

Sandra Bland #sayhername
 

The frustration and feeling of powerlessness I felt as I saw decision after decision being made with apparent intent to harm the people of this country made me begin calling my congressman and senators regularly and attending activist events and meetings, but I felt like I needed to do more.

The overwhelming majority of scientists agree that the climate is changing, causing extreme weather events, which in turn damage our country's "crumbling infrastructure."

Some of this feeling of needing to do more came from feeling like I was trying what was available. The march was fine and the meetings, too. I called my senators and they mostly agreed with what I called about and my congressman mostly disagreed, but it didn't feel like I could make a dent.

#callyourrep

It also felt, and continues to feel, like the serious issues themselves shouldn't be all that controversial. It doesn't seem controversial to me that all women should be able to live with the expectation of controlling access to their bodies and not being forced to be groped, grabbed, raped, or touched at all if they don't want to be. But I'm one of those radicals who thinks that women are people, with the same inherent rights and autonomy over their bodies and lives as male people are assumed to have.

The pussy hat is a pink hat with cat ears, a reference to the offensive use of the word "pussy" in a different context by a sexual predator who ran for office in 2016. Hats like this were worn at the Women's March by people who are offended by sexual predators winning national elections. 

It doesn't seem like a stretch to think that regular people can agree that all people should have the same access to clean drinking water, paid for by our taxes, and that when the local or state government fails to provide clean drinking water, maybe the federal government should step in and make that happen.

Systemic, institutional racism is a real thing in this country and it leads to real threats to the health, livelihoods, and lives of real Americans. Like when an entire US community is deprived of clean drinking water for more than two years.

I also feel a strange combination of hope and powerlessness when it comes to climate change, evolution, and vaccination. It seems like fairly reasonable educated people can learn and understand how science works and what sorts of information support a scientific theory. In a related direction, it seems like education can be the tool that helps people begin to sift through the mess of hyperbolic, fearful, click-baiting, and fear-mongering "information" available for a lot of these "controversial" topics that aren't controversial to experts in their respective fields.

vaccination

At the very least, it seems like people just aren't pausing to think about what is being said, what is being implied, and what is being enacted into policy by our current administration, but really by many of our leaders prior to the current administration. If people would stop and really consider how the same comments and policies would sound if applied to white people or men instead of to people who, for some reason, are seen as the non-standard color, status, or gender, it seems like the frustrations of the left, the women, the minoritized peoples wouldn't seem so surprising.

knot of tension/things Trump says

As I try to articulate my frustrations, in advance of the conference presentation, I realize that I'm letting my naivety show. I'm making this art out of frustration and that stuck feeling of not knowing what I can do. In the immediate moment, the art I make is an outlet for me. In the next part of its life, showing in a safe space, like a liberal venue or show, it is an object, a snapshot, and a focus through which like-minded people can connect. But what I'd like it to be is more.

 

trump tweets

I live in Yakima, in central Washington, a staunchly conservative part of the state that I've heard referred to as Reagan (in contrast to the liberal West side of the state, which can, apparently, hold onto the name of our slave-owning founding president.) Living in this part of the state and in this city, I am constantly reminded, and constantly surprised, by the divisions in ideology between what I believe is most important in our country and what some of my neighbors and students and friends believe.

And, yet, I still have to believe that we aren't just opposites who naturally believe in contrary things. We all want to be safe and healthy, we all want our city to be better than it is. We all want to be reasonably happy and successful in our lives. We all have some interest in seeing our friends and/or family also safe and healthy and reasonably successful and happy. What constitutes success and happiness, probably, is the cause of most of our disagreements, but in all that shared humanity, shouldn't there be some common ground on which to build?

  

the opiate epidemic, insurance lobbyists, rich and powerful pharmaceutical companies, life saving medicines accessible only to the wealthy or the insured, insurance coverage of ED pills, but not birth control

When I first started making this work, I was illustrating events, controversies, policies, or statements that I think are fairly straightforward in their wrongness, visually striking, and fairly unambiguous to look at. Sandra Bland's traffic stop at gun point, Trump's most offensive tweets, and Flint's dirty water.

gerrymandering

But after I had been making pieces for some time, I started thinking about where there were places of ambiguity. There are some issues that maybe most people recognize as a problem but that have complications that make solutions more difficult that it would immediately appear. For example, I think it is pretty clear that gerrymandering is a problem, but there's a little more to it than just cutting up districts in a grid.

A woman who is not allowed control of her body, cannot control her life.

There are also issues I chose to represent as an image, but without a necessarily straightforward one-way interpretation. I included a birth control pack because women's rights and women's ability to control their own bodies is obvious. But, I suppose, someone could look at that and see birth control as a bad thing. (No, I don't quite think real people with think that.)

 

I also included several images of general control or silencing: rope wrapped around the first amendment text and lips crossed out in tape. I'm not saying who is doing the silencing, which means the viewer can interpret the imagery themselves, though in context with the other images, the overall theme becomes a clue. And the tape is orange.

tent city, USA

I also included some imagery that is meant to be more specific locally, though not much, yet. I included what was meant to represent the tent city where a significant number of Yakima's homeless spend their summer nights.

Unfortunately the tent city is one of the least effective images, because the tents look like mountains. A related piece has a man in layered sweatshirts, hunched over against the cold with a shopping cart next to him. 

pollution, EPA, emissions standards, big business, tax incentives

I want the pieces, particularly the more ambiguous pieces and the installation as a whole, to encourage the audience to think about an issue. In most cases, I think I'd rather not have the pieces work as simply a quick code to reference a side on a two-sided competition. Ideally, people looking at the work will not recognize every image immediately, or at least not immediately recognize which side they're supposed to fight against.

MOAB

I kept the colors intentionally muted compared to my typical work. Because the motivation for the work is so dark and depressing, it seemed wrong to make the pieces themselves bright and shiny. 

St. Basil's / Russian Interference

The pieces are sometimes pretty, as in the Russian interference bulb, which is just a depiction of St. Basil's in Moscow. I think the pieces as a group are visually pleasing and maybe pretty, but that initial attraction is, hopefully, a lure to a closer, more thoughtful interaction with the works and maybe with the audience sharing the experience of looking at the work together.

the rich getting richer, monopolies and lobbyists, corporatocracy 

I wish, as I look at the work now and write about the intent, that I'd had time to do more before the conference. There's whole swaths of topics that needed to be included that either hadn't happened yet or I just didn't get around to making. I'm presenting on this work at this awkward early stage, when I haven't figured things out and I haven't even created all I want yet. To be continued, I guess.

Nasty Woman Exhibition at Yakima Maker Space

Resist Bulb in progress

Come see my NEW work in the Nasty Woman show this coming Saturday, January 20, 2018 at Yakima Maker Space. The opening starts at 6pm and there will be live music and TWO interactive art pieces. I have no idea what they are, but can't wait to find out. One of the interactive pieces will be done by my talented friend, Kelly McKnight.

I have an installation of 30 Resist Bulbs in the exhibition, the composition similar to my last installation at YMS, but with a very different subject and intent. Some of these new Protest/Resist/Patriot Bulbs (I've been playing with titles) were shown previously at Larson Gallery for the Membership Exhibition, but some are new, including several with the First Amendment text stamped onto them.

First Amendment bulbs being darkened with oil (I had some trouble with the surface color)

I worked on the bulbs during the summer, with an eye to this exhibition at Yakima Maker's Space in January. The exhibition coincides with the one year anniversary of the Women's March. This year Yakima will hold another Women's March on January 20. I'll see you there before the YMS Nasty Woman show.

Gerrymandering 

I started making the bulbs last year for this Nasty Woman exhibition, but also in reaction to the current administration and the divisive political climate we now live in every day. I felt, for the first time, really, that I couldn't not address current events in my work, which has usually remained abstract, inspired by nature, and fairly apolitical.

Incarceration

I started these pieces because I felt I had to--for me--but three opportunities have come along this year because of these pieces. I had spoken with Eunsil Kim, the curator and organizer of the YMS Nasty Woman show early last year. Over the summer, while discussing plans for a different show down in Hood River at the Columbia Center for the Arts, I was invited to show these pieces in CCA's Art as Activism show coming up this March (I install in Oregon the day after the YMS show closes).

#SayHerName Sandra Bland

The third opportunity came as a bit of a surprise. I applied to talk about these works, and, in particular the urge to transition from abstract to narrative work given the current political climate, in a short presentation at the NCECA (National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts) Conference in Pittsburg.

Flint Water

And here I am, writing about the showing of the work, but skimming over the content of the work. Content, especially content that is not meant to be wholly open to interpretation, is something I haven't had to address much in talking or writing about my work, as it has pretty much always been abstract, ambiguous, and personal, not to mention not my main source of income. 

Russia

These bulbs are ambiguous up to a point, but taken together my intent is certainly to make people think about a particular set of issues, most of which have I have strong views about. Some of the topics, like gerrymandering, dirty water in Flint, pollution and police violence come across fairly unambiguously just in a single image. Others, I have designed to be unambiguous, by showing the Monopoly man hoarding money and by collecting some of 45's less impressive tweets and statements in one place.

Tweets

I also have bulbs in this collection that are simply images of symbols of our country that are worth preserving and considering in our calls to action, such as the flag, the first amendment, and the Capitol Building. 

US Flag

There has been fairly little publicity about the Nasty Woman show (PSA, be careful Googling this show) at Yakima Maker Space and one theory was that the YMS wanted to avoid controversy because of the tone of this show. (I suspect lack of paid staffing is the more likely culprit for the missing advertising.) However, I've found more than one person discussing the exhibition by downplaying the controversy and politics and focusing on the raising up of women's voices. True, some of the work is not explicitly political, but I think mine is fairly clear, at least if one spends any time with the work.

First Amendment, Trapped

As you can tell by my writing about it, I'm still working out what it means to begin making political work now, but I am hoping that by the time I have these two shows done and am ready to present at the NCECA Conference, I'll have a more comprehensive view of the work and its reception. Help me out: come talk to me about the work at the YMS opening this coming Saturday. Or, you know, reply here or on Facebook. I'd actually love to hear from people (ahem, not from Trolls).

Installation view of part of the earlier iteration of this work at Larson Gallery