It has been quite some time…
It is not new years but i’m making a resolution!! I’m going to post to my blog at least once a week for the next six months. It’s nice to have a goal.
Well, gentle reader, since I last posted lots has happened. How could it not have, It’s been almost a year!!! The 4<40 Show wrapped at the beginning of the year, and I continued working on other things. In July I curated/participated in a show at the Arbor/Artist's Lofts in Lancaster. The show was titled "Under Construction" and featured the works of Marthe Aponte, Caleb Macy, Elizabeth Macy, Stephen Fiche, Nancy Scherich, and myself (Laurel Jean Siler). It was a lot of fun to put together a show with such a diverse group of people, but a little insane to do it in the time frame I had. I basically had 3 weeks, but still, it was lots of fun and there was a pretty good response from the local arts community. There were lots of challenges but it turned out really well.
I am still a Full Time Artist (read: I still can't find a full time day job to support my art habit), and have a few projects I am working on. I've become really obsessed with the idea of casting faces. I may work my way up to life casting the faces of friends, but working with images of people you know gets so tricky (plus it's hard to life cast a face with the eyes open) so I've been "collecting faces" (read: trolling thrifts and yard/garage sales looking for old dolls/toys/statues with interesting faces). Thanks to the doll collection I'm also developing an interesting collections of hands and feet. I think I need to go grab a Barbie head or two (as long as the features are different, so i may have to get some from different time frames) to throw in there.
What I am envisioning is these faces. Hundreds and hundreds of faces somehow adhered to some kind of surface. Sort of similar to Yayoi Kusama's older work with all the phallic shapes glued all over it– but um, more objective less… ambiguously sexual. I love Kusama. The totally unimpeded nature of her work still thrills me.
I also have been collecting wings. I'm thinking maybe it's a sort of heaven image. I've done my fair share of the hellish variety.
There's much to say about how exactly do we make work when our lives have changed…
I'm also working on some newer larger scale embroidery projects. looking for source imagery with some kind of natural pattern to it, like aerial photographs of cities… I've worked with several images of freeways (i live near LA, its sort of ubiquitous to my existence). Also bird flocks. I have more imagery of bug swarms and am planning to work on some overhead images of tract housing and cities (like Paris and Pommersfelden. It's so pretty from over head). Lots of French knots and little stitches, let me tell you. Once the initial stitching is done (the piece is two yards of lavender broadcloth) I will stretch it onto a frame (like a painting) and then add some hand-beading to it. I can't bead until I stretch, the lack of tension on the fabric makes it crazy, and it eventually gets too heavy to keep in a frame.
I have some more vague ideas about sculptural work, thinking about investigating mold making and casting more fully so that I can buy a couple of something and make dozens and dozens more. Yes, you may have noticed, i'm still on a repetitious streak.
Being unemployed (or self employed) makes time a challenge. It's so easy to let it get away with you. Time management and self discipline are vastly important things to me right now, and i'm working on developing strength in those areas! Back to the Hoop…
