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BOXES beyond borders

Category: Connected

MY Life AND MY Lesson

Artist from Canada

This is La Benida Hui’s box, broken into pieces representing her “Life’s Lesson” by a hanging mobile. The Center is her art table and art tools, hanging from this space is the root of all things; Love.

On one end is the Ocean, made into a cross-like form; standing for the sacrifice of our home planet and our health at our own hands through climate change and pollution.

On the opposite end is The Green where nature items are bound together intertwined with Indigenous patterns. Symbols of whales and butterflies represent Life, Beauty and Rebirth.

Garden of Courage…

Where the
Seeds breakthrough
From breakdown.

Seasons are the reasons…

Nothing, nothing was an accident, everything was meant to
Happen.

Garden of Courage, seeds planted, tribes gathered, beautiful friendships blooming…

The “Formosa Tales” box project has allowed me to see the courage within, I am inspired by many with the sharing circles, and the boxes created… women of different backgrounds coming together having a much-needed conversation, the power of connection creates the possibility for transformation …It is my hope that with each box, every place we go, the seeds of courage would be planted, our collective vibration for the greater good, to be the courage; strength continues to blossom…

This little wooden box
What brings is unlimited possibilities…
In sharing and listening, the bravery of the exhibitors touched me… let me see the beauty of my bravery and vitality again. How to open the chat box in my heart, and what is worth cherishing… That is really an art. This garden bloomed in the third version. It is my expectation. What the treasure island chatterbox can plant on this beautiful island is full of hope, full of long-term prospects, abundant flowers and good fruits everywhere.

Box Camera

Box Camera reflects our life-long commitment to the photographic arts from traditional to digital. It is an homage to earlier technical forms of imaging.

The tintype of the woman with books hints at Penny’s profession as a librarian and bookseller and incorporates the idea of educating women to expand their boundaries. Photography is a universal language crossing all borders.

Global Vision

As a child, I lived in Europe for several years, enabling me to feel connected to other peoples, languages and customs. Always collecting objects from my travels at a young age, I was preparing to become the artist I am now – an assembler of a great variety of objects, textures and colors.

My goal from an early age was to “become a part of all I have met.” Living in California for most of my adult life it has been easy for me to experience aspects of many cultures, as so many people from all over the world live here.

My box is very much about a global view. I chose international postage stamps, with images of women, to cover the box. The “I/EYE scroll” contained within the box includes my quote from above and images of the human eye which approximate the shape of our planet.

I feel that Women beyond borders is first and foremost an expression of clear and profound communication between cultures – a communication that I know will enrich and inspire the lives of many of the women who are participating for many years to come.

I look forward to the new friendships that will be created as a result of our efforts.

 

Six Interconnecting Planes Of Carbon – One Diamond

I wanted to eradicate the borders of the box and create an open field, so I took the lid and four sides off and placed them flat. I then reconnected each rectangle to the other from the back by using black velvet for hinges. Once I had this field of interconnecting planes, I thought about how over time, the possibility lies the hope for the future. I then burned the field of interconnecting planes, turning the wood to carbon. Within the central rectangle (that had been the bottom of the inside of the box). I inlaid a diamond to demonstrate the reality of evolution. The piece is to be either hung or placed flat, IN THE HORIZONTAL CONFIGURATION AND NOT vertically. This is quite intentional to allow for a broader reading than a figurative (totem) placement would permit and is, I believe, visually more consistent with the concept.

Conjugation Between Earth and Sky

It is commonly known that in order to survive, blossom and continue the course of nature, it is necessary to intervene with our surrounding habitats. This lid symbolizes the ever lasting sky and its thousands and thousands of living species that are endangered by daily air pollution. The bottom represents our earth, life and death, the moments of glory, agonies of defeat, and on going war and peace.

Between this conjugation, we define sacred love for human beings and nature, our dreams and desires to fulfill a glorious and promising future.

In the end, conjugations of any type: earth and sky, man and nature or man and its kind must be cared for and preserved. The lack of attention to this contributes to the heavy consequences that we face today: the holes in our ozone, the wars and its death toll, last but not least the AIDS epidemic.

Untitled

Geometry:  To measure or survey the earth. A branch of mathematics that deals with the measurement, properties and relationships of points, lines, angles, surfaces and solids.

I decided that from these definition, to figuratively talk about the emptiness and its outer limits. The possibilities of connection and/or communication therein. Self-confinement and solitude. Intolerance.

My work is a product of my constant preoccupation about the quality of our lives. A continuous analysis and search of confrontation – questioning.

Therefore, in my work one should be able to see the structure, shape, feel the materials, and most importantly, the reason behind it.

A work that occupies at the same time a space and another more subjective one.

The analysis should not stop at the level of the elements that constitute my work, but should further try to see, or feel what links keep it together.

Those links give the various elements their true meaning, their reason to be and why they occupy such space in that order… and how they change in the mind of the viewer, thus becoming a silent accomplice of the artist.

Untitled

Geometry:  To measure or survey the earth. A branch of mathematics that deals with the measurement, properties and relationships of points, lines, angles, surfaces and solids.

I decided that from these definition, to figuratively talk about the emptiness and its outer limits. The possibilities of connection and/or communication therein. Self-confinement and solitude. Intolerance.

My work is a product of my constant preoccupation about the quality of our lives. A continuous analysis and search of confrontation – questioning.

Therefore, in my work one should be able to see the structure, shape, feel the materials, and most importantly, the reason behind it.

A work that occupies at the same time a space and another more subjective one.

The analysis should not stop at the level of the elements that constitute my work, but should further try to see, or feel what links keep it together.

Those links give the various elements their true meaning, their reason to be and why they occupy such space in that order… and how they change in the mind of the viewer, thus becoming a silent accomplice of the artist.

Break Water

Borders are changing lines on our world’s map that demarcate culture, land, time, history, ethnicity.  These are intellectual separations, but the older physical lines of division are also lines of connection- the oceans that separate us, join us.  Water is the vehicle for life- our food, our bodies, our planet.  Women share the experience of our body’s potential to transmit new life.  Our female bodies are both the source of our common oppression and transcendence. Break Water recalls the moment that proceeds birth.  The image is simultaneously bound and released, evoking change, possibility, destruction, hope.  I have included materials from previous works; a Xerox transfer image of a rope sculpture I made across a rotten East River pier in New York City, and two eggs which I collected in Brazil during a women’s collaborative show.  These are symbolic “births” of new ideas and images that women artists are collectively making to Break Water and change the marks that divide us.

Song From the Earth

My work celebrates the Native American philosophy of centering one’s life in the natural world.  This is both a conscious and instinctual commitment.  Rather than illustrate this idea, I use materials to suggest our relationship to the earth.

On the brink of the new millennium, let us all be mindful of celebrating and preserving the earth’s gifts. This should be a universal concern.

Mother Ireland

This box as I first saw it started off as a “box nichili”, the more I analyzed it the more vague it became. But as I admired the perfect symmetry and beauty of this innocuous little box, we developed a very strong bond, and I knew I would be very loathe to part with it. It was this bonding that inspired my theme.

Mother Ireland bore her children in the knowledge that emigration was inevitable. The egg represents the womb, with the never to be severed umbilical cords spreading out to all parts of the world and generation after generation respecting and remembering their roots.

I shall never forget you my “bosca bag”, and I sincerely hope wheresoever your sojourn takes you, you will be my “box popoli”, “vox humana”.

Slan agus beannacht my little wooden friend.

 

Bridge Between

I have been working with the image of the moon for the past two years, which on many levels has associations with women and the universal.

As my work is largely abstract, incorporating the specificity of the form and object of “the box” was a challenge.  The association with Pandora’s box set my mind back to the beginning of humanity, the myth of creation, the fall of man, loss of innocence, knowledge, and in particular, how woman is perceived. I began wanting to turn the box into a bridge, using it as a metaphor for women’s ability to access a more open-oriented position (meaning).  A bridge gives access between two lands, worlds, positions; over what seems impassable.

The material and color of the box dictated the other components of the work.  (There is a fleshiness to cedar and clay.)  The two ceramic circles which I used, connect the bridge, continuing and expanding the human sensation into abstraction.  The work relates to lack and possibility, of balance.

Bearing One Another’s Burdens

As I contemplated my involvement in this project I was immediately drawn to the reverent simplicity of the tiny redwood box.  As I held the box and pondered its humble strength and quiet stability I was instantly reminded of the strength, perseverance and poise-under-pressure that often signifies women in general.  This strength of endurance caused me to then think of the many burdens we all carry around with us, and how much lighter the burden can be when we know someone is helping to carry the load.  The Bible reminds us to share in each other’s trials.  By helping to bear the load brought on by death, illness, heartbreak, loneliness or other oppressions, we offer comfort and hope.

In creating this visual testimony I attached the lid to the box and produced a stable and strong vessel.  The vessel houses the strength, perseverance and love that together can lift, carry and support the great weight of the burden that is placed upon it.  The burden, a complex aggregate rock, is both rugged and smooth in its makeup.  Beneath the rock is a cushion, a sheet of gold, intended to soften the burden.  The rock is bound to the box with a tightly wrapped and intertwined cord.  The cord is the weakest element.  It can be cut, and at any time the burden can be lifted.  The cord reminds us of our obligation.

It is my intent that this box stand as a reminder to all of us to humbly bear one another’s burdens, to encourage and strengthen one another, to love, honor and pray for one another.  By helping to bear the burdens, we find joy in knowing that we have contributed to the needs of others.  By bearing one another’s burdens there are blessings to be found in the midst of tribulation; there are victories to be found in hidden places.

Did you want to Come In?

This piece explores the dialogic relationship in question and response.  The speaker of the question, did you want to come in? –which is computer printed text repeated- this speaker is absent in image but present because of the text.  The viewer is alone with the question and asked to respond but in a monologic way.  The dichotomy between one way communicating and communication, an interactive experience, is brought out in the piece through its own dichotomy – the answer is not provided for the viewer.

 

Couple

When two do not recognize their internal forces they remain prisoners of their facade and they add this facade to the other.  Thus inevitably they will be attached to each other by an intricate chain, forgetting their own space, staying knotted and desperately isolated.

Abject Expressionism

The workings of a patriarchal symbolic system have long associated culture and mind with the masculine (esteemed), and nature and body with the feminine (constantly devalued).  This work attempts to reevaluate that which is defined as inferior by deliberately using a body part that refused to fit into any particular definition. Hair– a symbol of sexual prowess (or lack of for the Western nudes)– also acts as a “momento mori”, marking lack. It is a significant abject material, highlighting the slippage between opposites, the living and the dead, the sensual and the repulsive. Because it stands at the borderline separating the inside and the outside of the body, it holds simultaneous powers of fascination and horror. The weaving and braiding of hair in this work act as a metaphor for the bonding and networking amongst women.

 

Hearth

Diverse meanings are attached to the shape of a box. This particular box represents the amalgam of two ideas. The first is the idea that all our judgments and ill-imagined, preconceived notions might go up in flames so that we might remember to view each other with fresh, clear perspective.

The other idea is that each of us would throw our boxes of hope and treasure onto the pyre for warmth of body and food on a cold night. This flame of necessity, real for some, but taken for granted by others, might illumine a way of looking at life – that we might value the bare essentials of life more than we do – and care for those who don’t have them.

The green flame represents the possibility for growth and a new way of life that would rise from the kindling of excess with unsurpassed brilliance.

 

Think Local, Act Local

Santa Barbara focuses within its boundaries by caring for its people and environment, which causes a domino effect. The effect touches locally, but also worldwide. Santa Barbara is a jewel by the sea. Fishing is an integral part of the local economy. The sailing vessel made out the box exemplifies our location and the many wonderful sights and sounds that await tourists who touch our shores.

We “locals” touch the world community by our friendly hospitality and we offer tourists numerous and varied experiences to understand the American lifestyle. We care for ourselves, therefore we care for and respect others in all parts of the world. We have many organizations that support world-wide causes, such as Direct Relief International and Jean Michael Cousteau’s Heal the Ocean. We are seeking ways to maintain a homogenous community to assimilate all walks of life and when anyone encounters our beautiful city, he or she may also “think local and act local”.

Life Beyond the Box

A heart that is closed within myself…
Fostered by the many changes of my life
What is Life Beyond the Box?
Nothing but a complicated colorful world.

The wooden box has been left to its original color to represent the simple me. The colorful nylon lines are communication lines between my community and me. The intensity of the lines on each side of the box symbolizes the importance of the communication level. Phrases have been inscribed onto the acrylic panels to reflect the views of Life.

Tran-Sisters

This is a continuation of my Hole Project which started, and the beginning presented, in 1999. The holes drilled on the foundation parts of the box represents the idea that life is full of little openings.  The transistors (primary device for amplifying electronic signals) represents the idea of enhancing the message of openings we find in life. The interconnection of the 3 (number 3 is one of the lucky numbers for me) parts of the box represents interconnections that we beings can engage in among ourselves, to promote the attitude that there is hope because we find openings.

Spill It, A Veil of Truth

Coca-Cola Box Project.

The idea for our box originated from a website that the Coca-Cola company published called Spill It. Contained within the site were thousands of messages by people all around the world who just wanted to spill their minds and share with others. The box, covered with small pieces of aluminum Coca-Cola cans found in trash cans around the campus, is overflowing with little scrolls of personalized messages from whoever wanted to contribute.

Indra’s Net

“In the heaven of Indra, there is said to be a network of pearls so arranged that if you look at one you see all the others reflected in it. In the same way each object in the world is not merely itself but involves every other object and in fact is everything else.”

– Translated by Sir Charles Eliot from the Avatamsaka Sutra, approximately 500 BCE

Lorraine Serena furnished the box
Julie Coale suggested these pearls
Sylvia Hyman recommended Sherry Male for drilling them
Tyree McFarland provided the silvered glass and the glasswork
Daisy gave me the idea for suturing thread
Dr. Dee Dee Fredin supplied it
Dixie Gamble manifested the replacement glass
and Jane Braddock buttoned it up
women’s network.

Untitled

This box of boundaries and borders of seams and skin-colored patterns uses the images produced to explore the possibilities of connection. By using these borders between colors of skin as a connection instead of a boundary of separation, it creates a quilt-like or map-like pattern. The connection of the visual image similar to a map and the intellectual understanding of different ethnicities throughout the world attempts to introduce the possibility of these coming together beautifully without attempting uniformity.

This cloth covering, this skin is also superficial. This cloth is synthetic and covers the box almost completely, except for one run in the stocking and one square wall inside the box. These show the natural wood underneath this cloth skin, the same wood each woman began her box with.

The images produced from this quilting of panty-hose is almost primitive and yet the material is a symbol of progressive, fashionable women. The appearance of smooth, uniformly colored legs has been considered beautiful in Western Europe and America for some time now. This aspect introduces the difference in perspectives of beauty.

Sewing with my hair weaved in the traditional concept of long hair as beautiful and feminine. This image of women’s long hair is in many regions and reminds me of the many places I find hair I have shed, in the bed, in the shower, on my clothes, on the floor. Historically in some areas women used to sew with horse hair. The concept of women’s hair connecting many regions twists the projection of beauty into a powerful relationship where the object that was used as a thing to look at, now fulfills the position of bridging the boundaries, of connecting the borders.

The process of sewing this box reminded me of the women throughout the world who sew for their families and communities. They create to keep people clothed and warm. The process is time consuming and requires patience and care. The needles remain hanging from the box by hair and thread because we are still in the process of sewing our borders and recognizing our differences and using these to create a new understanding, a new connection of women artists around the world.