My piece for “The Anti-War Medals Show: Artists Respond to War” is finished. Here it is:
Sterling silver, steel, muslin, cotton
It has changed a bit from my original idea (as far as the embroidery goes–a single gallows with spaces for a word), but I am really happy with how it turned out.
In a previous post I mentioned the poem that this piece is loosely based off of. When I first thought about creating an anti-war medal, the thing that popped into my head was “playing hangman.” You can think of this in a literal sense, but also think of it more abstractly…please.
Tomorow this piece will be shipped off to New Orleans, and my book will be sent to Michigan.
From Our Perspective
Work must arrive 9/7 with paperwork
Anti war medals show
Word must arrive 9/15 with paperwork
Email statement and image
Ivy Tech mini grant program
Submit 9/22
Julie Blyfield workshop
10/12-10/14
VPA faculty show
Drop off work 10/15-18
SOFA Chicago
Work must arrive 10/26 with paperwork
Will ship work to Museum of Contemporary Craft by Jan 1.
Lineage and Legacy
Images of available work ASAP.
By October 15th:
1 pg resume, artist statement, statement about Robin
Work must arrive at SCAD 2/20/08-2/25/08
Oh, and I almost forgot…I need to take the GRE and visit possible grad schools…
Yet more proof that there should be two of me OR I should have the power to stop time (like in Out of This World).
My work is featured on page 42 of the Metalsmith Exhibition in Print this year. Despite the fact that my titles are wrong, I am really excited to be included in the magazine! Here is what the page looks like:
The titles for the pieces are:
Untitled silver locket with grandma’s dried flower (top image)
Sterling silver, hair, watch crystal, flower
14×1.5×1 in.
2004
Untitled silver locket with two bundles of human hair (bottom image)
Sterling silver, hair
14×1.5×1 in.
2004
I have been busy updating my resume today. I was excited to find an email from Oakland Community College’s Womencenter in my inbox this morning informing me that my “Untitled House Fragment #3″ had been accepted into the 2007 Annual National Women’s Art Exhibition. I am going to make sure to shoot some good images of the book before I send it off to the show.
On a different note, I am making an anti-war medal for an exhibition at I/O Gallery (Thoman Mann’s Gallery).
The medal itself is almost complete. Yesterday I colored the surface of the silver and also dyed some fabric to insert into the top bar. Here it is in pieces:
I promise to explain a bit more when I post an image of the finished medal. The etched text reads “I did no more than you let me do”, which is taken from a great children’s poem entitled ” The Hangman” written by Maurice Ogden.
As for me, my to-do list is growing rapidly…its a good thing.
I’ve been spending a large amount of time trying to write a syllabus for ARH 101 (Art History survey prehistoric to proto-Renaissance). Today, I came up with this:
My syllabus:
ARH 101: The study of whatever Barb says
Description: Barb’s Interests
Course Objectives: To make Barb happy
Course Content: Barb
Grading: Arbitrary; according to Barb’s mood
Teaching Methods: whatever interests Barb based on her mood and what kind of day she is having
Not really, but, in all seriousness the newbies had gotten a sample syllabus from someone I taught with last year…and the syllabus pretty much read like that. Um.
I am going to try using a blog in my class as part of a research based participation inducing weekly activity for collaborative learning. I have found a really great resource in this blog called smARThistory. Who knew?
Update: the blog is up and running. Art History Madness.
If school were not starting next week, I would really spend any amount of money to go back to Australia…specifically to go back to the National Gallery of Victoria (which I LOVE more than any museum I’ve been to in the U.S.). They are currently having an exhibition entitled “Victorian Photographs: Julia Margaret Cameron – Annals of My Glass House”.
Another exhibition that might be interesting to see is Wenda Gu’s hair installation at Dartmouth College. I would go just to see the mixture of reactions from the viewing public…and to satisfy my interest in all things hair.
I may have mentioned that my mom and I have been working on an album as a way to organize the hundreds of old photographs my grandmother had stashed in a suitcase upstairs. Many of the images are quite beautiful and amusing while others are quite sad. These are two of my favorites:
This photograph has obviously been torn away from its backing board and in texture and weight is more like fabric than a photograph. The image shows a group of women who made up the Coleta Household Society. My grandmother is the little baby in the lower right hand corner and my great grandmother is standing directly abover her.
This photograph is the only picture of my grand mother and some of her brothers and sisters as children. L to R: Eleanor, my grandmother, Frank, and Herb. The photograph itself is an interesting object as it appears that it was once folded and broken into several sections, thus necessitating the use of glue to attach it to another piece of paper. There are many aspects of this particular photograph I find fascinating, but the postures and spaces between the children are what draw me inside the image. Frank and my grandmother were always particularly close.
“We all have two lives: the real one which was our childhood dream and which we still dream about in adult life, though it is set against a background of fog… and the false one which we experience in our relationship with others: the practical, useful life in which we are finally laid into a coffin.
In the other life, there are no coffins or corpses, there are only illustrations from childhood: great colored books which are meant to be looked at, not read… in the other life we are ourselves, in the other life we live: while in this one, we die.” – Fernando Pessoa (from Kate’s Studio)
This show at Velvet da Vinci in San Francisco was up some time ago, yet I find myself looking at the images from time to time. You can find images of all of the pieces in this exhibit, Anti-War Medals, here.
Thomas Mann’s gallery is hosting a new show of anti-war medals, to continue what Velvet da Vinci started. This show will be up sometime this fall…more on that later.
Mark Twain originally wrote “The War Prayer” in response to the Philippine-American War of 1899-1902. I find it to be quite relevant today.
If you would rather watch an animated version, click here.
It was a time of great and exalting excitement. The country was up in arms, the war was on, in every breast burned the holy fire of patriotism; the drums were beating, the bands playing, the toy pistols popping, the bunched firecrackers hissing and spluttering; on every hand and far down the receding and fading spread of roofs and balconies a fluttering wilderness of flags flashed in the sun; daily the young volunteers marched down the wide avenue gay and fine in their new uniforms, the proud fathers and mothers and sisters and sweethearts cheering them with voices choked with happy emotion as they swung by; nightly the packed mass meetings listened, panting, to patriot oratory which stirred the deepest deeps of their hearts, and which they interrupted at briefest intervals with cyclones of applause, the tears running down their cheeks the while; in the churches the pastors preached devotion to flag and country, and invoked the God of Battles beseeching His aid in our good cause in outpourings of fervid eloquence which moved every listener. It was indeed a glad and gracious time, and the half dozen rash spirits that ventured to disapprove of the war and cast a doubt upon its righteousness straightway got such a stern and angry warning that for their personal safety’s sake they quickly shrank out of sight and offended no more in that way.
Sunday morning came — next day the battalions would leave for the front; the church was filled; the volunteers were there, their young faces alight with martial dreams — visions of the stern advance, the gathering momentum, the rushing charge, the flashing sabers, the flight of the foe, the tumult, the enveloping smoke, the fierce pursuit, the surrender! Then home from the war, bronzed heroes, welcomed, adored, submerged in golden seas of glory! With the volunteers sat their dear ones, proud, happy, and envied by the neighbors and friends who had no sons and brothers to send forth to the field of honor, there to win for the flag, or, failing, die the noblest of noble deaths. The service proceeded; a war chapter from the Old Testament was read; the first prayer was said; it was followed by an organ burst that shook the building, and with one impulse the house rose, with glowing eyes and beating hearts, and poured out that tremendous invocation
*God the all-terrible! Thou who ordainest! Thunder thy clarion and lightning thy sword!*
Then came the “long” prayer. None could remember the like of it for passionate pleading and moving and beautiful language. The burden of its supplication was, that an ever-merciful and benignant Father of us all would watch over our noble young soldiers, and aid, comfort, and encourage them in their patriotic work; bless them, shield them in the day of battle and the hour of peril, bear them in His mighty hand, make them strong and confident, invincible in the bloody onset; help them to crush the foe, grant to them and to their flag and country imperishable honor and glory –
An aged stranger entered and moved with slow and noiseless step up the main aisle, his eyes fixed upon the minister, his long body clothed in a robe that reached to his feet, his head bare, his white hair descending in a frothy cataract to his shoulders, his seamy face unnaturally pale, pale even to ghastliness. With all eyes following him and wondering, he made his silent way; without pausing, he ascended to the preacher’s side and stood there waiting. With shut lids the preacher, unconscious of his presence, continued with his moving prayer, and at last finished it with the words, uttered in fervent appeal, “Bless our arms, grant us the victory, O Lord our God, Father and Protector of our land and flag!”
The stranger touched his arm, motioned him to step aside — which the startled minister did — and took his place. During some moments he surveyed the spellbound audience with solemn eyes, in which burned an uncanny light; then in a deep voice he said:
“I come from the Throne — bearing a message from Almighty God!” The words smote the house with a shock; if the stranger perceived it he gave no attention. “He has heard the prayer of His servant your shepherd, and will grant it if such shall be your desire after I, His messenger, shall have explained to you its import — that is to say, its full import. For it is like unto many of the prayers of men, in that it asks for more than he who utters it is aware of — except he pause and think.
“God’s servant and yours has prayed his prayer. Has he paused and taken thought? Is it one prayer? No, it is two — one uttered, the other not. Both have reached the ear of Him Who heareth all supplications, the spoken and the unspoken. Ponder this — keep it in mind. If you would beseech a blessing upon yourself, beware! lest without intent you invoke a curse upon a neighbor at the same time. If you pray for the blessing of rain upon your crop which needs it, by that act you are possibly praying for a curse upon some neighbor’s crop which may not need rain and can be injured by it.
“You have heard your servant’s prayer — the uttered part of it. I am commissioned of God to put into words the other part of it — that part which the pastor — and also you in your hearts — fervently prayed silently. And ignorantly and unthinkingly? God grant that it was so! You heard these words: ‘Grant us the victory, O Lord our God!’ That is sufficient. the *whole* of the uttered prayer is compact into those pregnant words. Elaborations were not necessary. When you have prayed for victory you have prayed for many unmentioned results which follow victory–*must* follow it, cannot help but follow it. Upon the listening spirit of God fell also the unspoken part of the prayer. He commandeth me to put it into words. Listen!
“O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle — be Thou near them! With them — in spirit — we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it — for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.
(*After a pause.*) “Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire it, speak! The messenger of the Most High waits!”
It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic, because there was no sense in what he said.
Over the course of the last two days, I have been spending all of my time on my book project. My manual labor job is over for the time being, so I have really been able to focus…despite a few minor freak outs about other show-type commitments I have made. I digress.
Anyway, all three of these books look like this when closed (size approximately 28 by 10 by 2 when closed)
Eventually, after I finish the other 3 books in the series, I will be making boxes with little silver locks on the outside. That is a whole other can of worms however.
A book by book breakdown:
Untitled house fragment #1
handmade book handmade paper, palladium print, hair, teeth
A closer look at the image and the object page:
Untitled house fragment #2
Handmade book, handmade paper, palladium print, hair, white pine needles
A closer look at the image and object pages:
Untitled house fragment #3
Handmade book, handmade paper, palladium print, hair, Queen Anne’s Lace
A closer look at the image and object pages:
I would love to hear what anyone has to say….
