Conversation with the curator of Ideas of Practice, Badir McCleary.
X Large C.O.C.K. 032521-01 (Poppy) (No one respects you for your oversize mouth), 2021
X Large C.O.C.K. 032521-01 (Poppy) (No one respects you for your oversize mouth), 2021
1952 Learn How book, 1955 Lido de Paris program, 1969 Playboy, 1976 Barbie coloring book, auction catalog, embroidery thread, magazine, stickers, vintage newspaper c1950, and vintage postcard c1950 on paper
19 x 14 inches
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Two In The Pink (Andy? He's A Two, 2021 & Joan? She's A Two, 2021)
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click to enlarge
Audio Transcription
Two In The Pink pairs Pink Tax research and auction house results to acknowledge gender biased discrimination and consumption.
Pink tax is sometimes, but not always, a literal tax. Research has shown that women pay on average 7% higher for goods and services marketed to women and 13% higher for personal care products (not just tampons, but think deodorants, body wash, razors, etc;). Interestingly, states can determine what and how these products are taxed. Only a handful of states have passed legislature eliminating tax on these products, and I discovered that although Illinois, my home state, is on that list, they used to tax these products as luxury goods!
Tampons as luxury goods got me thinking about the art world. I found ArtNet data from auction house sales from about a ten year period, between 2008 and May 2019, which revealed that female artists represent only 2% of the art market, which is less than the total sales of Picasso alone. The data shows there was $196.6 billion dollars worth of total art sales, $4.8 billion of that were works by Picasso. And only $4 billion of that total were sales of works by female artists, which includes about 6,000 women. Of those 6,000+ women, there are five top performers.
For this series, the artworks are separated by male and female top performing auction artists, and feature text used in their auction catalog entries to describe the artist and their output, inspired by an Allan Schwartzmann quote on how the women artists of the 60s and 70s “changed the language of art,” making it acceptable to use words like delicate, vulnerable, fragile, tender, personal, diaristic, among others to describe the artwork.
The artwork titles correlate with their numbered ranking on that sales data list, inspired by the playground ranking system born from toxic masculine culture, including former President Donald Trump who ranked celebrity females on a scale of 1 - 10 in a 2005 Howard Stern interview.
The handcut letters puncture a slice of an artwork that the referenced artists sold at auction, pixelated to be barely recognizable, the squares piece together like a patchwork quilt with letters cut to mimic lace.
In this video, I’m featuring the Number Two’s: Joan Mitchell and Andy Warhol. I didn’t select the highest selling artwork by Warhol, but the price tag for the piece I did referenced was more than double that of Mitchell’s highest selling work to date.
Large C.O.C.K. 120621-01 (Baby, Baby, Baby) (Orchid), 2021
Large C.O.C.K. 120621-01 (Baby, Baby, Baby) (Orchid), 2021
1934 handwritten recipe, 1946 cookbook, 1940s vintage photograph, 1947 Encyclopedia Brittanica, 1969 Marlboro ad, 1976 Barbie coloring book, Rek-o-kut record player advertisement, c1950s, auction catalog, card on paper
14 x 11 inches
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Medium C.O.C.K. 120721-02 (The Show Is Over) (Orchid), 2021
Medium C.O.C.K. 120721-02 (The Show Is Over) (Orchid), 2021
1947 Encyclopedia Brittanica, auction catalog, Anthropologie mailer, ink, and vellum on paper
10 x 8 inches
Large C.O.C.K. 120721-02 (Crazy Pudding) (Poppy), 2021
Large C.O.C.K. 120721-02 (Crazy Pudding) (Poppy), 2021
1957 cookbook, auction catalog, embroidery thread, inkjet print, and magazine on paper
14 x 11 inches
SEXY (Sieff), 2019 AS (Condo), 2021 HELL (Hirst), 2021 (One Word Poem Commission)
After purchasing Sexy (Sieff), 2019, a collector commissioned me to make a tryptch out of the piece, adding the words “as” and “hell”.
I created a couple different palette ideas, but we went with print colors: Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow.
Since the magenta bougainvillea image is so dramatic, I chose to use a George Condo piece that was a little quieter for the background of the ‘a’ and ‘s’.
Although the yellow is bold, it doesn’t have as much detail as the first two images of the tryptch. I decided to get a little busier with the background image and selected a Damien Hirst butterfly piece.
X Large C.O.C.K. 052321-01 (Lilac) (Final perfection for a pretty smile), 2020
X Large C.O.C.K. 052321-01 (Lilac) (Final perfection for a pretty smile), 2021
1941 photograph, 1958 Almanac cookbook, 1960s photograph, 1976 Barbie coloring book, 1980s photograph, embroidery thread, and magazine on paper
19 x 14 inches
This analog collage on 19 x 14 inch paper includes a 1941 photograph on a clothesline on my Great-Grandparents farm, a snippet from a 1958 Almanac cookbook explaining how a woman should prepare herself with makeup, a 1960s photograph of my Grandmother dancing, a 1976 Barbie coloring book cutout, a photograph from an airplane window from the 1980s, a slash of embroidery thread, and a contemporary magazine swatch of clouds in the sky along with a floral cutout from the same publication.
Click on the images to enlarge
Large C.O.C.K. 031621-01 (How To Bake A Batch Of Children) (Lilac), 2021
Audio Transcription
The Collages on Color Kaleidoscopes, or C.O.C.K.S., combine feminine images cut from magazines and advertisements and pairs them with cutouts of artworks and floral motifs along with found objects and sewing notions. These nostalgia-femme works, saturated in color are descendants of magazine layouts and scrapbooking motifs.
These pieces riff on the ‘commonplace books’ of the 15th century, which compiled items like recipes, quotations, letters and poems. The ‘friendship albums’ of the 16th century, to the yearbooks and friendship books created by 18th and 19th century school girls. These replaced journaling as a way to document their experiences in a way that was aesthetically pleasing, using the ephemera and memorabilia from their daily lives, such as visiting cards, ticket stubs, plants and even trinkets. More personally, these are manifestations of growing up with a Mother that was a graphic designer, realizing those basic building blocks of design were imbedded in my psyche while sitting in on her ‘Graphic Design for Non-Art Majors’ in my pre-teen years, when I should have been concentrating on my math homework.
The collages in this series are focused on elements of nostalgia and word play or innuendo. Taking vintage cookbook recipes or advertisements glorifying the sexist landscape of the mid-20th century and turning its head on the feminine nostalgia of the cult of domesticity. Most of the items used to collage have been passed along to me from my Mother, Grandmother, and Great Grandmother. These objects of my lineage call to an era that seems so familiar and so foreign at the same time. Embroidery thread that I vaguely remember being taught how to make a blanket-stitch, now used to puncture the paper, creating a slash across the imagery. Round stickers, like the ones my Grandma used during her summer garage sales, alongside snippets of vintage recipes, the titles and descriptions shouting double entendre, “Pineapple Delight”, “Chocolate Coconut Twosome”, or in this case, a reader’s submission from the 1958 Happy Home Cookbook, “How to bake a batch of children.” This piece has a Lichtenstein eye, cut from an auction catalog, a floral from a Linder photograph featured in a contemporary magazine, a vintage camera advertisement, and a Playboy model from the year 1969.
ArtFare Virtual Studio Visit
Super excited to have been interviewed by ArtFare curator Carolina Wheat!
INNER BEAUTY / OUTER GLOW, 2020
DIPTYCH COMMISSION
INNER BEAUTY, 2020
Archival inkjet print, ink, gouache, and vellum on watercolor paper
24 x 20 inches
OUTER GLOW, 2020
Acrylic, archival inkjet print, ink, and vellum on watercolor paper
24 x 20 inches
This large diptych commission was inspired by the sunset gradients and floral elements of my One Word Poems series.
This was my first time using gold as a background, and I absolutely love how it turned out! As you can see from the images, depending on how the light is captured, the piece changes as you move around it.
The letters for these pieces were the largest I’ve cutout yet, and it was really fun to play with the sizes of the floral elements to balance that space. I kept many of the floral drawings as whole pieces instead of how I usually break them down into fragments.
PROCESS
The Crown Is Heavy, 2020
The Crown Is Heavy, 2020
Archival pigment print, auction catalog, ink and vellum
13 x 20 inches (image size), 17 x 22 inches (paper size)
Artwork commission combining multiple Basquiat-inspired patterns and symbols.
The detail images show the combination of crown, skull, and instrument motifs with drawn floral elements. Note the depth from the shadow cast by the cut letters.
Pair/Pairs: Crutches/He, 2020
Crutches/He, 2020
Acrylic, archival pigment print, catalog, embroidery thread, 1947 Encyclopedia Brittanica, ink, magazine, marker, sticker and vellum on watercolor paper
14 x 11 inches
The featured photograph in Crutches/He, 2020 is of my Paternal Grandmother and Grandfather. My Grandpa died before I was born, but there is a story of him breaking his back when he was fixing the roof of one of the properties he was a landlord of. The way I remember it, he was told he wouldn’t walk again, but somehow he pushed through and was able to again. My Dad still has his crutches in the attic.
Each letter is stenciled backwards on the back of the photograph, and then hand-cut with an Exacto-blade. The pair is dissected by the colored block behind it, revealing the second word.
The jewels from an auction catalog remind me of the nostalgic feeling in the photograph, as I wear the diamond engagement ring my Step-Grandfather gave my Grandmother as my own engagement ring. A snippet from a 1947 Encyclopedia Brittanica of a black and white replication of the 1434 painting The Arnolfini Wedding by Jan van Eyck, depicting a somber-faced couple in their fine attire juxtaposed by my Grandparents smiling faces in theirs.
My Grandmother was an avid gardener, so I included a floral drawing and the sun-drenched photograph of a field of flowers surrounding her portion of the photograph. The close-up rectangle of a yellow-orange and pink smear of what appears to be paint, is actually a swath of frosting from a cake, something I remember my Grandmother often made for birthdays and celebrations, although it was usually chocolate smeared upon a German chocolate cake.
One Word Poems II: Heather Brammeier
Fragile (Brammeier), 2020
Archival pigment print, ink, and vellum
11 x 14 inches
Before I was her painting student, I was an overconfident 19 year old in her drawing class doing snarky projects (draw popcorn? I’ll take this photo eating popcorn and say I’m “drawing with light” instead). Time passes and I’m lucky enough to to call her friend, and now collaborator!
The work in the foreground is a cropped section of a 2008 painting by Heather, Dark Sun.
One Word Poems II uses an artwork and a word provided by some of my favorite artist friends. The original series featured words I’ve been called in my life, this series turns the tables and the collab artist gave me a word they’ve been called 🗯
One Word Poems II: Anastasia Samoylova
Opinionated (Samoylova), 2020
Archival pigment print, ink, and vellum
11 x 14 inches
Anastasia Samoylova and I met something like 15 years ago! She was a graduate student in photography while I was in undergrad at Bradley University. Since then, she’s become a warrior for the environment with a camera 📷 This work is a cropped version of a piece from her Flood Zone series.
One Word Poems II uses an artwork and a word provided by some of my favorite artist friends. The original series featured words I’ve been called in my life, this series turns the tables and the collab artist gave me a word they’ve been called 🗯
One Word Poems II: Zach Reini
Lanky (Reini), 2020
Archival pigment print, ink, and vellum
11 x 14 inches
When I asked Zach Reini if he’d be down to do a collaboration with me, I had no idea how awesome it was going to be! Behold, a new series of One Word Poems, using an artwork and a word provided by some of my favorite artist friends. The original series featured words I’ve been called in my life, this series turns the tables and the collab artist gave me a word they’ve been called 🗯
Places: Ten Mile Beach
Images from Ten Mile Beach in Norther California taken in 2017
One Word Poem: Baby (Lichtenstein), 2019
Baby (Lichtenstein), 2019
Archival pigment print, auction catalog, ink, and vellum
Image 5 7/8 x 9 inches
My Father always called the women in his life “Baby,” so it’s not surprising to me that the person I most associate with this word is my Dad. In all fairness, I am the youngest.
Sunset reflected in a cloud hovering above the East side of Los Angeles the summer of 2019. The reds, yellows, and blues softened against the starkness of the Lichtenstein woman in the background.
The black lines of the eye mimicked in the ink outlines of the floral petals on vellum.
