womens beyond border logo

BOXES beyond borders

Tag: Figure

Kate’s World

Tajima Box Project. An artist and an extraordinary woman collaborate to create a box.

Kate McIsaac ,1ST LIEUTENANT, U.S. ARMY and Laura Klein, ARTIST

Kate McIsaac just celebrated her 30th birthday in Baqubah, Iraq. She is a 1st Lieutenant in the Army, serving in OIF IV – V at FOB Warhorse as a postal officer. Her unit is from Long Beach, California.

She is also a first-year law student at Whittier Law School in Costa Mesa and will either go into criminal law or First Amendment Libel law. Libel law is near and dear to her heart.

Kate also has a degree in Journalism and worked as a journalist for several years.

Sor Juana

Sor Juana Ines De La Cruz was a 16th century Mexican nun. Not only was she one of the greatest poets and playwrights of her time, she was also the first person on this continent to argue in writing for the rights of women to be educated.

In Sor Juana’s time, a girl had only two real choices: she could marry or she could join a convent. Juana was illegitimate and had no father to pay her dowry, so marriage to a wealthy man who might foster her deep love for knowledge was out of the question. Marriage to a poor man would end her education, so reluctantly she joined a convent. In her convent she had extensive free time which allowed her to continue her studies.

Although she was not allowed to leave the convent, she was allowed visitors and many important people came regularly to visit this brilliant woman. She became quite famous and her books were bestsellers in Spain.

Defying the Inquisition and the profoundly patriarchal world she lived in, she filled her room with over 4000 books and wrote voluminously, particularly poetry. Later in life, she was threatened into silence by the male Church hierarchy and forced to sign a statement of repentance.

Her final days were spent caring for the poor, and she died after she gave up writing while caring for her sisters during a plague.

In her room was a sign that she had not completely surrendered; an unfinished poem, carefully hidden.

The Little Engine That Could

When I received the box I thought, “Why me? I’m not an artist”, but the box itself intrigued me.  I loved its fragrance, its smooth lines and the fact that it could hold my secrets or be open with the story I wanted to tell.  Almost immediately, the box became a train for me.

Growing up in Denmark I was very familiar with fairy tales, and I thought the train would become part of my own fairy tale. But as I worked on the train, it took on the intensity of the American children’s book, The Little Engine That Could.

I came to the United States when I was twenty-one years old with the dream in my heart that I could start my life over again. And I could. And I did. I am a wife to a wonderful husband, I have two beautiful grown children who love me. After years as a psychotherapist and consultant, I decided to become a toffee maker. It gives me great joy to create something sweet that brings joy to so many people.

After the train was finished I was on board as The Queen of Toffee, waving to the crowd. I was right back in my Danish fairy tale where I had started out, and I think I’ll stay there.
 

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.

 

Heroines

I am personally concerned with spiritual and creative identity through the abstract form. I find that creating many layers in my paintings builds a foundation or history of the statement I am trying to make. I want to obliterate as much traditional form as I can, yet still evoke images through layers of paint, glazed, and stains.

Painting, for me, can be a very lonely and difficult process. It is also exhilarating. In my personal experience I find that painting is the most powerful expression of my life and a most satisfying way to express my own humanity.

Flor de Canela

My box is an expression of myself. Now others will know who I really am.
I did not have an original box, but built a bigger one with my husband. All objects and photos are symbolic.

Love

My aim was to transform the cold sterile box, by covering it and filling it with love.

On the outside: What could be richer and warmer than a mothers love for her new baby?

On the inside: What could be lighter and brighter than the spiritual love awakened at time of birth?

Dolores Huerta: Social Activist, Labor Leader, and Founder of United Farm Workers

Tajima Box Project. An artist and an extraordinary woman collaborate to create a box.

Dolores Huerta, SOCIAL ACTIVIST, LABOR LEADER AND CO-FOUNDER OF UNITED FARM WORKERS and Terry Acebo Davis, ARTIST

These trophies are awards to the plights that we face as women.

Dolores Huerta wanted to help her students who came to class barefoot and hungry. Through her community work she co-founded the United Farm Workers Union. At 76 years old she continues to lecture and lobby for the UFW, a model used by global labor unions as a testimony to the rights of workers.

In our endeavors, our lives can be in danger, our pasts can haunt us, our vulnerabilities can be exposed.

Unselfishly, women strive to be all things to everyone; we endure the odds guided by our passion to care for our world families.

Art Box

Tajima Box Project. An artist and an extraordinary woman collaborate to create a box.

Yvonne Banks, Owner of Art Consulting Services and Marie Hassett, artist.

Yvonne Banks is passionate about art! She has been instrumental in bridging the art world with the rest of our community for over 20 years as an art consultant and former gallery owner. Art Box is a tribute to her contributions. Her own vision and tireless energy strengthens her advice to young women, “You can do anything if you’re willing to work to get there.”

It was my pleasure to spend time with Yvonne sharing stories from our lives, finding commonality in our experiences as mothers, gardeners and lovers of art.

The Encrypted Future

Tajima Box Project. An artist and an extraordinary woman collaborate to create a box.

PHYLLIS CAMBPBELL, PRESIDENT AND CEO OF THE SEATTLE FOUNDATION

Right angles are only made by human beings. And if one thinks of the ultimate object created, one is led to the computer and its binary innards.

The dots on the unpainted, rectangular box are like the zeroes and ones used to create software. The disks represent programs which have strategies for solving problems of all dimensions, from local to global levels.

The box is about hope in the computer, that it will be able to help humanity.

 

 

Alpha-Omega

My work shows our life’s journey from birth to death. These events are the bond that links all human beings. In between we encounter life’s challenges, both good and bad. The torso represents our beginning, the copper wire warrior figure shows our battle with life’s forces, and the lino block suggests our passage through time in the unknown. The jagged edges on the mirror glass show our testing times, where the smooth line of the circle represents life’s calmer waters. In traditional Celtic Art this holds the promise of eternity. For this reason I have included the circles and spiral symbols.

 

Threading Water

Tajima Box Project. An artist and an extraordinary woman collaborate to create a box.

JANET LEAHY, EXECUTIVE PRODUCER OF “BOSTON LEGAL” TELEVISION SHOW

1 small wooden box

5 Peruvian worry dolls

1 drill

800 holes

1 can black spray paint

countless threads

1 very small crochet hook

one artist

one executive television producer

one collaboration

one phone call

many many emails

one new friendship

Threading Water honors women, mothers, daughters, friends, workers, wives who feel pulled in all directions while trying to stay afloat.

 

New Beginnings

This is not a title of hope but one of irony. We all know that the lady who gets cut in half by the magician appears moments later gloriously grinning in one piece. The sword was real, the box solid, yet we are time and again puzzled by the discrepancy between what we see and what we know.

I have tried with this piece to convey that what we see and what we know is both illusion.

Although the Barbie-like woman, as a trickster, cheerfully saws herself in half, an extra pair of arms, pink and girlish appear like a last minute doubt to the saw. The last laugh and the first tear are closely connected.

 

Laurie Dolan

Tajima Box Project. An artist and an extraordinary woman collaborate to create a box.

Laurie Dolan, DIRECTOR OF WASHINGTON STATE GOVERNOR’S EXECUTIVE POLICY OFFICER

Because Laurie had twice run and lost close State Senate races, my first impulse for this project was to create political art that is stark and confrontational in the style of outsider Bible-literalists — using red, black, white, block letters and simple but expressive figures.

Laurie is genuinely engaged in and faithful to the political process, seeing herself as glue, as a relationship builder. Laurie underwent a successful stem cell transplant in July 2003, and her illness and recovery impressed on her how little time we have to touch the world, and how important it is to touch our children. The text on the box runs together and reflects the impact of Laurie’s illness on her life, her desire to touch the world, and the importance of her family.

 

Being

My box represents the three aspects of being. The lower section shows bones and clay through glass, representing the transient nature of the human body- physical being. On the box itself I drew my doodles and ancient Irish symbols representing the collective unconscious of mental being. Finally, the angel on top represents the spiritual being.

Woman in Bloom

Tajima Box Project. An artist and an extraordinary woman collaborate to create a box.

Deanna Oppenheimer, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OF RETAIL BANKING, BARCLAYS BANK

Wife

Mother

Mentor

Water-skier

Senior Appointed Chief Operating Officer Barclays Bank, United Kingdom

Chair of the Board of Trustees, University of Puget Sound

“Of all my accomplishments, what I am most proud of is my children, that they are growing up to be fine individuals.”

Keeping On Course

Tajima Box Project. An artist and an extraordinary woman collaborate to create a box.

Barbara Boxer, U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA and Barbara Leventhal-Stern

The first words I associate with Senator Barbara Boxer are passion and courage. In my mind, I saw an image of a boat that “keeps on course”.

Because the exhibition serves to inspire young women who could be faced with adversity or hard decisions, I inserted excerpts from our email dialogue so they could read about the sources of her commitment themselves.

Thanks to Senator Boxer, and Michael and Adrienne, her talented staff.

The Women’s World

Mother Earth

Deep within her there is life.
She is encircled by the web of life.
It is no mistake that earth is a “she”
for all that grows does so because of her.
We are the children of this mother.
We are all connected to the earth and one another
through this mystical experience we call life.

Song Heartfelt

Tajima Box Project. An artist and an extraordinary woman collaborate to create a box.

Nita Song, PRESIDENT/COO OF IW GROUP, ASIAN AMERICAN ADVERTISING AGENCY and Ann Enkoji, ARTIST

The starting point of this sculpture began when I asked Nita about pivotal moments in her life and she began to share the stories that created the themes for the box:

— moving with her family to the US to live in Alabama with her aunt
— pinching a young playmate until he broke her nose with a brick
— taking that injury and wearing it as an emblem of her character
— delivering her first child, weighing in at 10 pounds
— her two children’s artwork
— deepening her family and community relationships, especially with her mother
— and her love of the soil

Clay became the natural connection between my art and Nita’s life when she said: “… soil represents who I am. Soil is fertile, nutrient rich and stimulates growth.”

Peace Offering

Peace Offering is about seeing the angelic possibilities in our existence on the Earth, despite all adversity. It is so easy to forget that goodness is as real as horror when we are in the midst of difficulties. I hope that my offering to the Women Beyond Borders project will serve as a beacon to remind us of the beauty and light that is always within our reach.

 

Sea Dream

When I set out to create something I try to draw in the season and the place I find myself.

Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter – I like things that evoke the seasons. I have packed a little box with memories – marine blue skies, turquoise seas, white corals, green jungles, so that the fragrance of summer can tickle your nostrils too!

Skin Deep

Spilling out of a Pandora’s box, previously concealed truths reveal themselves. A hand, a living experience and the intuition it contains, is full of signification. This can be translated in a multiplicity of paradoxical ways.

Beauty is a socioeconomic and political construction. How we depict women in art opens up a dialogue and an opportunity to affect our inter-relationships. We are not alone in deriving pleasure from the spectacle.  Manet’s Olympia, and the official ideology she implies, returns our gaze.

 

Permanent Love

“Love’s over brimming mystery joins life and death.”              Tagore

In former times, Romeo and Juliet could not remain together, and were willing to die side by side. In recent days, the modern Romeo and Juliet ran from the Bosnian siege, also dying side by side. How many such unhappy love stories are there over the world?

I believe in destiny. I make this box as a coffin, with the wish that it is the house of girls and boys, women and men who love one another, yet are not able to become man and wife. This box is a love coffin for Permanent Love.

Men and women in love, whether old or young, may die, but their love still remains, it never dies.  They will lie in the same coffin, and pray to live together in many future lives.

Self Portrait #2

My work is a personal investigation which began as an attempt to see the body through the photographic medium in ways which are impossible with the naked eye.

I realize that we view images of the body very differently when they are life size or larger. Other objects do not hold such power and are always subject to interpretation of space when confronted by differences in size. The body, although conforming to the same rules of perspective, also holds another set of rules. The body is the common denominator of all the viewers, it is something to relate with on the most personal and intimate basis.

When working in photography it is important to remember that, unfortunately, photography is the choice medium of pornographers. It is a transparent medium; one that is taken of evidence of objective truth with little subjective interdiction. Any picture of a body is not necessarily thought of as a picture of a body, but as a body. We see through the portal of the pictures medium and look at the picture as evidence of truth…or of the body itself. A painting of a body has a different emotional charge than a photograph of the same body. Where a painting of the body would be considered sensual, a photograph of the same body is considered pornographic.

I am dealing with the total involvement of the figure and the role and relationship of the artist and viewer.

 

Indulgence

This project is based primarily on my interaction with family members – my mother and sisters. I have chosen to engage in this community and my interaction with them started more than twenty years ago. All of them now are working females, already spending half their lives working, financing their flats, maintaining households, and taking care of children and husbands. Growing up in such an environment has prompted me to have many thoughts. As an artist and having the privilege to express, I included this engagement in my artwork to reflect and to question the roles of women in our modern society today.

I Can See Beyond…

I Can See Beyond the Forest and Thru the Trees Now speaks for all modern women and will hopefully in the future. We no longer are tied to aprons, but represent a significant change in our roles, as mothers, policy makers and breadwinners. In the 60’s, we were underpaid as educators and had less chance to be  put into responsible position in life than our counterparts. We have come a long way in forming the framework for the future.

Singapore Sling

My box sculpture represents my past and my hopes and dreams for the future.  Now I am caught in the middle as I work in Singapore as a domestic help.

It is the thought of my children back home in the Philippines (that’s why their picture is here) and my dream of having my own restaurant in Manila that keeps me going.

We’re All in this Boat Together

I work with containers because they make me happy. Each piece I create becomes a container of conscious and unconscious thoughts and feelings: a nest, a womb, a secret, a surprise or a giggle. And always, a feeling of being in touch with my female ancestral beginnings.

My containers contain “me”. Being a wife, mother and “Nana” have been the most important things in my life. My baskets honor and celebrate the family. I use words and images of women and children because I want my basket/vessel to have content…to say something. I want to validate the importance of the family and the values and morals it nurtures. My vessels are autobiographical and are the scrapbooks of my life.

Throughout history women have found creative time in their lives to make baskets. Knotless netting, the technique I use to cover the gourds and molded forms, is an ancient, tedious, continuous thread technique that is used for nets, baskets and button holes and is symbolic of women’s work in the home.

 

Mom, Me, and the Pink Dancers

This work has to do with the cycle of life and where I am in that cycle now. It is a combination of fears–past and present, traumatic experiences—past and present, hopes, dreams, pain and frustration that continue, that I am more or less resigned to endure. It is to honor my mother and her teaching and love for me, my love for her and what each generation of women pass to one another.

The pink dancers were an image I formed from an interview I heard on public radio with young women activists who dress in pink and perform on the sidewalk of urban centers to attract people to engage them in discussions pertaining to social and political issues of the progressive left. I yearned and regretted for a moment that I was not there, was not a pink dancer. But soon saw that they were the next phase, and was glad just that they were there. Yes! to them.

War is still bad, starving children are still bad, and women still have to keep working to stop these things from happening. There is a lot of pain we must carry with us.

My own children (17yrs old & 21yrs old) saw this piece being made. The red stuffing, I told my questioning son, represented blood and tissue. However, it was not bad. Blood is everywhere when you are born. It is a good thing. Blood is life.

Such a small piece, so much to say. Very personal.

Sparkle of Life

Coca-Cola Box Project.

Many years ago after a long and hot morning of doing house chores, my exhausted and thirsty mother would unexpectedly rush through the door. Intrigued, I would rapidly tie my worn out shoes and head to the kitchen. There holding a bottle, as if it were the last one left in the world, was my mom. As she drank it, a smile would slowly illuminate her face. Noticing my curiosity, she pointed at the bottle and said, “This is the sparkle of life.”

In a convulsive world of dispute over territory, religion and culture, men and women face a daily struggle searching for solutions to make this planet a better one for everybody. What has for many years been missing however, is the perspective of the real sparkle of life: The Woman. Just as Coca-Cola illuminated my mother’s eyes, this world would benefit greatly by considering more seriously the ideas and propositions of the woman. So, the purpose of this project was simply to portray and honor the woman not only as the sparkle of life but as the queen of the universe.

 

The Ideal Women

The work challenges the notion of an ideal woman and our perception of a perfect appearance. The Ideal Woman exists today in various forms.  The construction of the ideal woman is constantly propagated by the media, mass culture and social standards.  Reconstruction with corrective surgery, Cyber-heroines modeled in the realm of virtual reality, Plastic dolls with envious 38″-18″-34″ dimensions are but just a few examples of what influences our conscious psyche.

The box presents a metal pedestal upon which women fixate the psychological image of an ideal woman.  The proliferation of body types littering the box illustrates the quest to attain the ideal image through various stages of her life.  The doll parodies a woman’s fixation with her own body and her quest to find the perfect body.  Swathed in slim-wrap, draped with a tape measure, the woman is never satisfied and the craving for the image of the ideal woman never stops.

So, pause!  What / who / where is the Ideal Woman?  A fiction of our imagination, mostly.

Emerging Woman

don’t judge me on how I look
don’t assess my usefulness with inverse proportionality to the size of my waist
you will not measure my true worth in inches
don’t use my breasts to see a product that has no connections to my body
if my thighs are large
it’s because I use them to support myself
if my stomach is rounded
it’s because it is full and fertile
my face–my eyes, my smile are not important
I am a woman and therefore beautiful.

 

The Model and the Box

I pay homage to the naked form. In this piece the artist is absent, but her palette remains. The model is not naked but nude. To be naked is to be deprived of clothes, to be nude carries no uncomfortable overtones. She has no vulnerability. She has energy and vitality. She offers this artist stimulation and creative thought.

 

I thank the model, the nude…and the box.

Granfaloon of 3

I adored my maternal grandmother and gave my daughter her name. Isabella. One day when my daughter was a tiny girl, she said to me, out of the blue, “Remember when I was the big lady and you were the little girl? Wasn’t  that fun?” It was fun.

Untitled

Survivors of Genocide.

I have drawn a volcano in eruption and fruits on a tray. I have also drawn a person in a boat. An active volcano is very destructive. Fruits are nutritious. If you take a ride in a boat you take a rest and feel happy when you look at the water.

An American Girl

Is there no greater suffering than “An American Girl, Shopping For A Husband”? In her single days, she would cry and cry over lost loves, covet the sacred purchases of keepsakes in hope for love, and dream endlessly for the one– a final purchase of the dream guy and live happily ever after.

Medium: The box, Ukranian egg dyes, silver and gold spray paint, floral wire, embroidery thread, wood ball, buttons and dominos, netting, yarn, plastic shopping bags, things girls buy, one groomsman cut in half, newspaper clipping, wire, crotchet needle, Modge Podge and Tacky glue.

Shades of Africa

Everywhere you go In Africa a woman is always present. Through my presentation I portray three major roles that make African women so precious in our society.

A woman does not only bear a child in her arms, wood on her head or a clay pot in her hands, she bears the daily burden of African experiences.

She is the strength of Africa and I hope that we can learn to appreciate what a woman does and the one who created her, God.

Self Portrait #1

My work is a personal investigation which began as an attempt to see the body through the photographic medium in ways which are impossible with the naked eye.

I realize that we view images of the body very differently when they are life size or larger. Other objects do not hold such power and are always subject to interpretation of space when confronted by differences in size. The body, although conforming to the same rules of perspective, also holds another set of rules. The body is the common denominator of all the viewers, it is something to relate with on the most personal and intimate basis.

When working in photography it is important to remember that, unfortunately, photography is the choice medium of pornographers. It is a transparent medium; one that is taken of evidence of objective truth with little subjective interdiction. Any picture of a body is not necessarily thought of as a picture of a body, but as a body. We see through the portal of the pictures medium and look at the picture as evidence of truth…or of the body itself. A painting of a body has a different emotional charge than a photograph of the same body. Where a painting of the body would be considered sensual, a photograph of the same body is considered pornographic.

I am dealing with the total involvement of the figure and the role and relationship of the artist and viewer.

Beatrice’s Box – A Coffin

The figures on the top represent her husband and four children who were all murdered during the genocide. She had to (forced) watch, as her husband was hacked into four or five pieces. Overwhelmed with tears, she could not go any further.
Note the small red heart on the side.

House Cleaning

We clean our house every day and throw the useless things away. But often our minds for years get filled with foolish thoughts and fears.

The Women's Voices: Jennifer Barton from WOMEN BEYOND BORDERS on Vimeo.