ART TALKS started off this season with the topic of SOCIAL COMMENTARY presented thoughtfully by 3 artists: founder, Jocelyn Purdie, currently director of the Union Gallery and initiator of the Swamp Ward Window Gallery; printmaker, Rebecca Cowan; and Lise Melhorn-Boe.
The subject was inspired by Toronto artist, Natalka Husar, who will be OKWA's 2012 juror for the group show held at Kingston Public Library in February with an opening Saturday February 4, 2pm-4pm. Natalka will also be speaking about her own work at Agnes Etherington at 2pm Sunday February 5.
These talks were transcribed from presentations on Wednesday, October 26 at the Mansion in Kingston.
LISE MELHORN-BOE
Lise talks about her gender-related, older work. For her "Breasts" book, she cut the cups out of a bra, put it on and had someone cast her breasts in plaster and then she was able to make paper casts from the mold. The pages fit together and the text was rubber stamped onto the pages. "Which was kind of tricky because of the forms. The stories are collected from various women; at that time I was mainly talking to women that I knew about their breasts and how they felt about them. The one I liked the best was a woman who went to a convent boarding school in England and they
had to sleep with their hands crossed over their breasts so that the nuns could see that they weren't masturbating.
She attributes that to the fact that she has small breasts. They never got to grow.
I did quite a few that were about women's impressions of their bodies. I got a very high heeled pair of sandals and glued my foot to the sandal and had a friend cast it so that I was able to make shoes with toes and the insoles are the pages. There are eight pages in each shoe and they fit into a box.
"Leaky Stories". These are sanitary napkins made out of paper. At first I used real ones. It's an edition of ten. So I spent a day printing the whole page one ten times and put it aside and printed the next one. And then for some reason when I was doing page three, I looked back and realized that they had done what they were
supposed to do and had absorbed all the print. So I had to manufacture the pads.
I turned my eye to fashion magazines (actually women's magazines in general) because there are so many bizarre images. This is called "Anything Can Happen: A Love Story". It's a shuffle book with 26 cards with 52 images on both
sides. You can make up your own story.
"Suitable for Success" also uses images from the fashion magazines. The text running across the top of all the pages is from John T. Moyes book, "Dressed For Success", popular in the seventies. There were rules about what women should be wearing in a business situation. The text at the bottom is stories that I collected and mix and matched. The first image is a very sedate dress, almost like a wedding dress, but the woman's stance and gaze is a very come-hither look and it is repeated in all
the images. The last one is a woman in a corset with a machine gun and a pistol. That one was from a Hustler magazine and it was amazing how much the same they were.
Then I had a baby. I started looking at kid's stuff. This was called "There Once Was a Little Girl and Boy." This consists of life size baby garments made out of
handmade paper with real buttons and real lace. The rubber-stamped text pairs nursery rhymes about girls with those about boys. Similarly, "What are little girls/Boys Made of?" which was off-set litho printed in a large edition also has
similar rhymes.
"Tommy Trot a man of law
Sold his bed and lay upon straw
Sold the straw and slept on grass
To buy his wife a looking glass." is one of these. It's paired with:
"See Saw Marjorie Daw
Sold her bed and lay upon straw
Was not she a dirty slut
To sell her bed and lie in the dirt."
This rhyme was actually in a Toronto library nursery rhyme book for kids.
The next piece is called, "Good Girls Don't". It is a tiny pop-up book. When I first moved to North Bay in 1990, I did a series of quilts and quilt related books that were using quilt patterns. This is actually a SunBonnet Sue quilt pattern that has the Virgin Mary superimposed on it. The text on the quilt border is Good Girls Don't…all sort
of things. "Someday" is Marilyn Zimmerman's story—she was my professor at Wayne State where I did my master's degree. "Sometimes I would be playing with my daughter and she would designate me the prince and herself the princess
and I was to save her. I would rebel and ask why do you have to be saved ,can't you save me instead? Trying to offset the internalization process of being female, meaning subordinate, weak and needful in a relationship. My strong, bright daughter of infinite potential being reduced to a stereotype at the age of three. This is the biggest personal
nightmare for any feminist professor mother. I would soon buy her all the feminist versions of fairy tales, the Paper Bag Princess, etc. but she would have nothing to do with it. She has observed the world and noticed that boys were in charge. I do what I can but she is strong."
This next image has very brief text from women who were abused as children in their homes. The pattern, and the book itself, are called "Little House". This actually started as a quilt and then I later cut it up and made it into the house shape. It is all pink and cute but I was sitting on the train once working on it and someone said "What's that about" and I said "sexual abuse" and that ended the conversation.
And then I started looking at what happened to the good girls when they grow up. I moved into looking at women's lives. "Bound by Convention 2" consists of life sized 1/4 inch plywood gingerbread cookie cutouts. This is the front cover. All of them have pink rubber gloved hands that are sort of tied together in the back with their apron strings. One text reads, "I began editing myself, asking for approval of behaviour I had never needed approval for, of my habits, my daily life…checking myself.
He didn't ask me to do that. I did it even when I didn't want to. I constructed a wax doll for 18 years of marriage. It is a doll with no feelings. She's simply whatever he wants her to be. I was really his creation, learning opera and chinese cooking. When he was out, I played Fleetwood Mac and ate ice cream. When the wax doll became suffocating, I began doing all sorts of things he didn't approve of, not cooking at all, taking tap dancing, and he felt betrayed. When I realized how many parts of myself had to be locked off to fit inside the doll mould, I panicked. If I burned through it and become myself I would lose the relationship."
Here's a story from the "Young Mother" page: "After months of having her sleep sliced and diced, a new mother develops a kind of post-traumatic stress syndrome. She can never quite relax because the call might come. If she goes to a party the sound of the phone ringing will act on her like one of those choking collars that dog trainers use. Instantly she will know that it is her sitter calling to insist that she stop having fun."
Using the Little House patterns again, this one is stories of women who were abused by their partner. Although it is made out of paper it is all hand-stitched.
"A Good Wife Wouldn't" is a tunnel book where you have the pages with holes in them so that you can look through the tunnel. There are accordions that hold the pages together. So the whole thing shrinks up. This has dirty dishes at the front and the light at the end of the tunnel is a dishwasher. "Why doesn't she just buy the god damned machine and have it delivered to the house? " The woman who told me this story is a lawyer, she couldn't understand this stay-at-home mother. But to me, it made sense. I could see it in my mother and unfortunately now I am beginning to see it in me too.
The next piece is called "Ghost Costumes" . It is a large piece: there are eight replications of garments that my father wore and then eight that my mother wore. They go in 2 semi-circles and hang from the ceiling. On my father's, they are all his work clothes ; he was an electrician. When I hang them the legs touch the ground so they don't move so much but my mother's are made of sheer fabric and they sway. They are quite beautiful but very sad. They have text hanging from the crossbar of the hanger down inside the garment so it is a little difficult to read through the layers of the
garment. The text came from her journals. She had left 43 volumes of her journals when she died. They were both dead by this time, hence the "Ghost Costumes". The text reads, "This is how I felt at 11:30 a.m., May 3, 1983. I am surrounded by army ants who nibble at my time and disturb the mold of my life. Each night I lie in the dark and plan paintings , write poems and draft stories . In the morning they begin. Their chewing prebosicies take the form of telephone calls, lost objects, loud voices, disturbing thoughts, incompetencies. I empty the garbage, prepare the noon meal, wash a few clothes, gnash my teeth. The poem is lost, the painting never reaches canvas or paper, the outline vanishes. Only left is a tiny pile of dry thoughts which crumble and blow away. My heart contracts, my muscles tighten, I choke fear." The poignancy of her text talking about things that she wanted to do, paintings that she
wanted to paint or writings that she wanted to do is a really good contrast to the photos of the actual installations of my father's that he accomplished and was very proud of. I was with him on his 77th birthday—he died before he reached his 78th—and he said , "I've accomplished everything that I wanted to do in life." But she didn't get to, like
many women.
REBECCA COWAN
"The topic is Social Commentary. I never think of my work that way, but maybe it is.
I am going to show you some prints, a couple of books and some collages.
The first three are from a suite of prints I did a long time ago. 8 prints called "Terms of Confinement" and they all have to do with family relationships and sibling rivalry. Images Inner Beauty, Mother and Child, Real/Ideal.
In 1992 I got a scholarship to Open Studio in Toronto that gave me a year of free rent and an exhibition. To do that I had to present a good proposal of what I was going to do. I had an idea that I was going to do two sets of prints to work together exploring the idea of beauty. My plan was to do large dry point images of people with scars and then I was going to do small almost abstract images of the scar itself in colour. This is a large drypoint 24 x 36". I had to find people with scars. Some people I knew and I also contacted a support group of people with facial deformities.
The models would come to my house. They would tell me about their scars and surgeries. I would do a bunch of drawings and then go into my studio and make a dry point. I started in September, but by December I hadn't got one image that I was happy with. I realized that though my concept sounded good it just was not right for me. I couldn't make it work, because I kept making the scarred people too beautiful. I was getting nervous because I had this exhibition that I was committed to and four months had gone by and there was nothing yet. So one day I was in the studio and I realized that I was the god of my own pictures. I could make the scars as big as I wanted. They could take up the whole picture frame if I wanted.
This one model had a neck injury that had several surgeries and the end result was that she couldn't lift her arms above shoulder height and she couldn't lift anything more than 15 lbs. so her life as a sculptor was over and she became a painter. So I tried to show that one door is closed but one door is open in the print.
One of the reasons my initial concept wouldn't work for me was that I just couldn't draw these people ugly. That seemed important because I was so moved by their spirits and their spirit of survival. Some of their stories were amazing.
This is Jane who dances through the world as if there is no pain at all. And Mildred who conquers her pain and becomes a healer. She has a little needle there to sew other people up. And Allen who knows how to put his pain away. David, who travels the world with his pain attached to him at all times unable to fit through the door to enlightenment. Sarah who lives with the shadow of child sexual abuse. Joe whose pain is all around him and he cannot escape. And Jenny who clings onto her pain/scars as if it were a loved one.
I finished this work and hung it in the gallery and stood in the middle of the room and was immediately overwhelmed about how sad it was. Somehow when I was making them I didn't know they were sad. These were all people who had survived and came out the other side. The other reaction I had was that they felt almost like they were ten self portraits. I felt that I had to answer that series with work that looked at pleasure and happiness.
I felt that to really appreciate pleasure and happiness, you had to understand pain, so I decided to etch directly over the previous set of prints. Using those same etching plates I etched a new image directly on top. These are all found images. I used a xerox transfer technique to get the image onto the plate. The second image relates to the story of that person. Then I had the issue of titling these prints. In prints the title is usually on the bottom, and the previous set I had just named them after the people. That was easy enough but I didn't want to call these, for instance, "David 2". I struggled with that quite awhile and then I decided I would use newspaper headlines for the titles of this work. I chose that because the headlines bring us back to the dark side. This first one is called "Boy Found Unharmed"; "Tragedy Strikes Family on Way to Party".
One of things that inspired me to do this is that when I was working on this print the story Jeffrey Dahmer, the serial killer, was in the news. There was a big interview in the Globe and Mail with his father who talked about happy memories of fishing trips.
This fellow was a childhood friend of mine. He was adopted when he was four. When his adopted parents got pregnant, every time he was bad they threatened to send him back to the orphanage which he could remember. When he was fourteen he built a bomb and tried to blow up his mother in the house. He ended up in reform school and jail and I don't know what has happened to him later. When we were children my mother was the only parent that would allow him in the house. He was the "bad kid". That's his story.
One of the most remarkable experiences I have had with my art is that I had this print at the Toronto Outdoor show and this biker guy was walking by. He walked right by and then he came back. He said, " I know that guy. I was in prison with that guy." He saw that from that image. So that was incredibly powerful for me. Especially from a person who doesn't look at art.
This one is called "Mother of Aid's Patient".
People ask me about the titles alot. I just felt they had to be there.
I was lucky enough when I finished this second set of prints to have an exhibition with both sets of work hung side by side in their pairings and that was really satisfying.
In 1995 I had some of my work published in a literary journal and before they went to press the editor called me and asked, "What would you like us to write about these?". Just say that I want to collaborate with a poet. The magazine came out and a month later a poet , Julie Pollack, got in touch with me
A story captured our interest about a woman who was sentenced for killing another woman in prison. What made this story even more interesting is that the woman who died had been a heroin addict. She had had several strokes and needed considerable care in prison. The woman who killed her had been one of the people giving her care. So there was a question of euthanasia. Julie and I both found this story amazing but we didn't feel that we could deal with it directly. We had never been to prison and didn't know that experience. So what we decided to do was to create a series of poems and images based on the seven deadly sins and seven cardinal virtues. We used that story of the 2 women in prison as sort of a background story for us to use as a place to jump off of.
IMAGES: "Anger", "Fortitude", "Temperance", "Pride", "Gluttony", "Greed" "Envy", " Lust" "Justice".
This collaboration with her was very remarkable. We would get together every 2 or 3 weeks and do a show and tell. We worked on all of the images simultaneously. One of the most interesting things about it was how many images about these topics were common to both of us, the archetypes etc.
The finished book is 18 x 24" bound with metal. The poems are silk screened on transparent Japanese paper that is interleaving paper between the images. 7 copies were made in the edition with 2 artist proofs.
So often you work within your comfort zone, pushing a little bit here and there. I wasn't sure I could actually get this book bound. It really pushed me to the edge of my capabilities which was wonderful. When I finished the first proof copy and it opened and laid flat and did everything that it was supposed to do, I just sat in my studio and cried. I just couldn't believe it had come together.
I had been wanting to do something about my sisters for quite some time (in my art). I couldn't get it right, and then my older sister turned fifty and had a big party out in Victoria and we all flew out. She was a complete bitch to us and we became kitchen slaves at her party. I had a kind of epiphany as I took myself to Starbucks to cool off. We don't get together much as adults. One of the things I realized was that we were still stuck in roles that our parents had given us. We were still wearing them with each other and probably in other parts of our lives. That inspired another series of dry points: double plate images, there are two plates printed on top of each other. I used photo references and some of them are family pictures that I used. I was playing with the text as texture without any real theme. I thought about these labels that we all have, like the oldest, the flirt, the beauty. "And Yes, She Really Is Bossy" . I was afraid to show her (my sister) that print for about ten years. This is "The Baby". By overlapping them and making one more dominant than the other I was also trying to speak to how the way your parents' affection changes. When you are the oldest you have all the affection at the beginning because there was no one else. When you are the baby you take a lot of space too. "The Flirt" and "The Beauty".
COLLAGES: current work for the past two years. These are 8 x 10". I have been saving images of working women for a long time. I had been carrying this image of the girl reporter around for about 30 years. I just love the look of her and it was great to finally put her some where.
JOCELYN PURDIE: The Swamp Ward Gallery on Bagot Street, Kingston
The Swamp Ward Gallery operates out of Jocelyn's front porch and front yard. The public does not come into the porch so the work has to be accessible from the street. There is a broad range of installations that have happened over the years, not just sculptural installations; there have been sound and performance pieces.
The first project was 2001. It has been going on for 10 years now. There have been over 20 projects and they usually stay up for 2 to 3 months. Because this is something that I do on my own time I try to make it logistically possible. It comes out of interest in seeing contemporary art in public spaces. I work in a gallery setting and as artists we all visit galleries to see art work but the general public doesn't necessarily do that and I think if there is any way to engage people to get them interested and aware of the kinds of things artists are doing outside the norm this is one way of doing it because they are actually encountering it in their day to day lives as they walk through the streets. I am also really interested in work that is temporary.
For this particular project which interestingly ties in with Lise and Rebecca's work of domestic and women's space, I wanted people to think about projects that would relate to the site, not necessarily the home but sensitive to the home, the neighbourhood and the community. Most of the projects have some kind of tie into that."
One of Jocelyn's own pieces, "Carapace" has a warm glow about it. "I was thinking about carapace which is sort of an armour or shell. Thinking about the home and womb-like soft feeling that emanated and also the shell that hides the reality of what often happens in the home to women. So it had this double edge to it. There was a house full of guys that lived across the street, not young men, older guys. They sort of fell in love with it and were disappointed when it disappeared. They liked to smoke their cigarettes outside and watch. That was the first piece.
I have presented the work of local artists as well as artists from out of town. This piece was by Montreal artist, Anne Ramsden. This is called "Winter Garden". She had earlier participated in the exhibition Museopathy where contemporary artists put works in museums throughout Kingston. Anne did one down at Murney tower. Murney Tower was a place for soldiers and their wives to stay. They could live in there. She played with this idea and installed fake flowers on the outside around the tower in the garden area trying to bring out that domestic aspect of this fortification. This is a translation of that onto a domestic space.
In this installation, ‘FOR’, by Craig Leonard, the artist created a facsimile of a real estate sign exploring the idea of language and symbols. People actually did stop to see if the house was for sale but I don't think the artist got any actual calls however.
This one is done by two young artists who had just graduated from Queen's University. Julie Fiala and York Lethbridge created this piece, "Salvation", referencing the home and the idea of, "Is the home a place of refuge or violence?” This lit up at night.
"Turbulent” is another piece I did with Jan Allen. This was a combination of installation and sound. Behind a sheers curtain that was backlit, the sound of breaking dishes was projected from speakers onto the street, while a fan inside created constant movement of the curtain.
Another piece we did together was "Continuous Colour" made from lipstick applied to the inside of the window.
Toronto artist Sarindar Dhaliwal did a piece, ‘Call the Wind Virago’, an archive of hurricanes. For the piece she made 72 sets of multi-coloured curtains of Indian cotton, which were installed on each windowpane of the porch. In the opening between each curtain are a woman's name and a date that references the name of the hurricane and the year it occurred.
This is a performance piece by Jan Allen called "Neighbourhood Watch" so it is playing on the idea of the neighbourhood watch. She constructed a platform that sat in the porch. There was a day where there was a gathering of people where they could come and participate in the piece, sitting in the porch and be the neighbourhood watch.
This piece is by Thunder Bay artist Ann Clarke. She was the director of Modern Fuel for a short time. In 2006 she did this piece called "Random Courses" based on the old stone walls that were called random courses. With this in mind she used household product packaging, consumer products and constructed a wall from them.
"Blue Red Blue" is a poem, almost like a nursery rhyme. Artist Ted Rettig states, "The text is like a nursery rhyme that has a bit of an edge. It has a degree of innocence and playfulness but also contains an undercurrent of pain. The pronouns he/she is interchangeable. Two can mean an affirmation of the relationship of a couple or it can refer to a third person. " It was lit up at night.
This was an installation from artist Mark Prier from Newfoundland whose work was about citizenship and borders. He set up a fake consulate to talk to people and issue passports. He also set up a temporary consulate in Confederation Basin.
In this installation, ‘Intruder’, artist Kathleen Sellars draws on a friend’s illness to create this tumour-like object, which would inflate and deflate over the course of the day.
‘Passing’, is one of my pieces, which was inspired by a trip to Venice to a small cemetery island. The island was incredible; it was a sea of artificial flowers and cypress trees. The piece consists of a blanket of white flowers that flowed out from the windows onto the lawn.
Dave Gordon did an installation titled “Inside’ of text on banners outside the porch based on his time spent teaching art in the prisons in Kingston For example one of the banners read, "Inmate seen participating in sexual activity during social. Visitor was seen with her hand inside his pants." It was interesting in peoples' responses.
The most recent piece ‘Settle’ was done by a graduate of Queen's Fine Arts Program as well. This is an installation of chicken wire figures poised for running or settling.
How do people apply? I am in the process of developing a website but if people want to put in a proposal they can do so through HYPERLINK "mailto:Jocelyn.purdie@gmail.com" Jocelyn.purdie@gmail.com.
