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BOXES beyond borders

Tag: Glass

Narcissism, Me, Me, Me, etc.

My box is titled ‘Narcissism, Me, Me, Me, etc.’ because I live in the dream capital of the world where appearance is paramount, and hope springs eternal.

According to the myth of Pandora, when the winged souls, the 10,000 woes, the spites that plagued mankind, were released by Pandora from the jar, only HOPE was left behind in the jar, and it was delusive HOPE that discouraged the mortals, through her lies, from committing a general suicide.

Because I live in Los Angeles, California, surrounded by vain, foolish, mischievous, idle and beautiful women, such as Pandora, I felt compelled to turn my box into an anti-feminist statement, that Pandora would have appreciated.

Celebration of Beauty

My box celebrates the beauty of women. The jewelry box, a classic symbol of femininity, is elegant and beautiful as is the women rising out of it. She is transparent as air and looking at her, you see your beautiful self reflected in the mirror. A universal woman, she is not confined to the box, but rising out of it.  She and the mirror remind us that no matter who we are, our age, race, color, size, economic standing or physical ability, we are all beautiful.

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.

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.

The Shape of Silence

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

Dr. Sara Bunting, SILICON VALLEY INTERNIST and Tess Sinclair, ARTIST

“We hear the rain, but not the snow. A day well lived must know the shape of silence.” –K. Nerburn

Competent. Dedicated. Compassionate. Multitasking… Exhausted.

So many women from so many different circumstances live these words. Women are tenderly caring for those in their stead, watching and vigilant for sounds of an aching heart. Dr. Sara Bunting is one such woman. And she is tired.

Reclaiming time for recreation…re-creation and solitude is the task awaiting us. Take time to know the shape of silence.

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.

 

Nancy’s Hope

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

NANCY SODERBERG, FORMER SENIOR FOREIGN POLICY ADVISOR TO CLINTON, FORMER US AMBASSADOR TO THE UNITED NATIONS

My impression of Nancy is a study in contrasts: powerful authority figure/pretty, blonde hair, soft features. Woman, wife, stepmother/facing the horror of war on a daily basis.

But a singular vision: the world can change, war can be contained.

So, we have a soft, hand-stitched pillow – symbol of domesticity, a womanly art. In the colors of the UN flag, the ultimate multilateral institution, and round, like the diplomatic Round Table. A locked, but fragile glass box, its contents a weapon of powerful but intimate destruction: an M67 Fragmentation hand grenade. And the key tucked safely away in a pocket of the UN pillow.

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.

Notions of Change

On receiving “the box” I had an overwhelming feeling, that the box somehow needed to be destroyed. But how?

The notion of destruction carries a negative taste in our society. However, the box, as symbol of the way we are forced to live and think, needed to be destroyed. How could I make the act of destruction a positive one? The answer lies in the notion of change. Change is the most constant force active in nature and our lives. The laws of change and transformation are natural laws, more important and fundamental to life on the planet than the laws of constancy and preservation.

To express this I did the following:

I decided to break the box into three parts: lid, main body, and head and foot piece.

The lid I buried in the ground to let it decompose.

The main body I burned until only the charred remains were left.

The head/foot piece I subjected to the physical force of a grater to break it into its smallest visible parts.

Untitled

Culver City High School. Grade 11.

My box represents impermanence and fragility, what was once a solid object is now only dust. The silhouette connects this metaphor with human life in that the picture is so fragile that it will scatter with the slightest wind, it is not expected to last forever.

 

Washed Up

Culver City High School. Grade 12.

Through the open seas
Now I am being driven
By an old rusty ship
The winds beat down on the deck
And the sails are always slipping in my hands
To the places I want to go
And there where I shouldn’t go,
But the ocean has chosen the way.

Surely Goodness…

This box has many references. One is biblical. “My cup runneth over” directly precedes my title from the 23rd Psalm, a thought that came to mind as I made it. It is also something like Pandora’s Box.

The surely goodness part is the outcome of both references that I mean and want for women. It is who we are and how we create and effect culture. This box stands over and beyond patriarchy.

It is also part of an ongoing project of mine to recycle into art all the many art materials I have been carrying with me for nearly 35 years with the fantasy: Someday I will make some crayon drawings again, or use this glitter in a piece! Now I am doing it as pure art materials, recycling as all things do back into life.

Celebrate the Meeting of Life…

I am attracted to the fine color of the dawn, sunbeams flickering through the leaves, broad colorful sunsets,  stars shining in the sky…the mysterious harmony of all these things, so this is what I try to make.

I love both light and darkness, and wish to celebrate the splendid harmony of their meeting. I hope opening this ‘box’ will lead you to see the harmony of light and darkness… and the meeting of you and me, or anyone.

Num-Num

There is the inside, the outside and all around, there is life, there is death and other lives, there is oneself, none and all the others, there is light, dark and dusk, there is laughter, there is brightness, transparency and it can be opaque.

There is but, maybe and also, a little, nothing, and all the colors, all the fantasies, all the eyes, all the souls, all the sounds, all the noises…

…there is everything in and under every form.

 

Nights and Days of Life

Some days are dark
We don’t get anywhere
We feel stuck in a dead end
Going round and round in a circle
Banging our head like a stone
On the walls of our own limitations

And some days are light
We feel free like a whistle
Our voice rings like a bell
We see light everywhere
We see clear through everything
And all makes sense
All shines and all is well

Such is life
After all
For every single one of us
Isn’t it just a mirror
Reflecting our own inner state

 

I-Eye

I/Eye is one destination of a journey, the result of dialogues with a group of close friends and family. It is a fluid look-see at the emotional, intellectual and artistic issues of life; equally, a way of looking at my art and myself. I saw the box as very personal, as the baggage or the tools, both good and bad, given to me, with which to live this life. I have set this box within a fence that is open and yet enclosed, transparent, yet opaque. It marks personal boundaries. On this fence are the eyes of friends and family sketched as we talked. Their presence is about seeing eye-to-eye, or not, having them to look out for me, helping me to look at myself with creative eyes. The box was always meant to be the most transmutable part of my project, it did change, move and let itself be affected by this interactive process. Its final form, then, is one that signifies growth – a sort of literal ‘breaking out of the box’ to explore one’s potential, whatever that may be, wherever that may lead.

 

Make Up

The title, Make Up, is chosen as it refers not only to the cosmetics we women apply on our faces, but also to other connotations–to fabricate, to supplement, to collect, to put together, to parcel, to put into shape, and to arrange–all of which formed part of the process in its making. Make Up looks at the notion of wholeness with reference to the obsession in women to be or to be seen as psychologically and physically sufficient. The mirror on the top of the box reflects the viewer’s face, thus engaging/making him/her as a subject. Hence, the artwork questions a woman’s need and her behavior in wanting to “fit in” through the act of supplementing her appearance with cosmetics. Is the woman’s quest to Make Up her complete self destined to fail?

 

Coca-Cola Wind Chime

Coca-Cola Box Project.

As a child actor, Kelsey was in an ad for Coca-Cola when she was ten years old. The set was designed to look like a tree house. Kelsey was dressed as a tomboy and just wanted to hang out with the boys who were sitting around a table in the tree house drinking glass bottles of Coca-Cola. With longing, Kelsey was pictured peeking at the boys as they enjoyed Coca-Cola.

My Grandmother

Coca-Cola Box Project.

As long as I can remember my grandmother in Mexico always bought seven bottles of Coca-Cola a week. She has one bottle a day: a few ounces in the morning mixed with two raw eggs; a few ounces with lunch; and the rest with her dinner. She never drinks water at all, just the Coke. She is ninety-two years old.

 

Conflict

Like most domestic tools, the straight pin is usually considered a useful and innocuous object. I use thousands of them to make aggressive statements referencing handwork, domesticity and the female voice. The finished pieces are beautiful. They are also sharp and dangerous. Like the tiny pins that efficiently perform multiple household tasks, my work suggests more than what meets the eye. “Conflict” physically expresses endured emotional battles.

With my background in fiber art from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, I am intrigued by the works of George Segal, Edward and Nancy Kienholz, Cathy de Moncheaux, Annette Message, Louise Nevelson, Eva Heese and Ann Hamilton. Finally, the following excerpt, as read not in context, but taken from Anais Nin’s A Spy in the House of Love, 1968, pp. 6-7, sheds light on my ideological treatment of perception.

“She was like an actress who must compose a face, an attitude to meet the day…She must redesign the face, smooth the anxious brows, separate the crushed eyelashes, wash off the traces of secret, interior tears, accentuate the mouth as upon a canvas, so it will hold its luxuriant smile. Inner chaos, like those secret volcanoes which suddenly lift the neat furrows of a peacefully plowed field, awaited behind all disorders of face, hair and costume, for a fissure through which to explode.”

Who am I?

As a growing teenager, I often find it hard to determine who I am as an individual. I used the box as an icon of my self-being. I feel as a teenager we often take life for granted and forget how every decision we make is an important one. The stilts on the box are there to exaggerate how important the choices you make in life are. The shattered pieces of glass, directed toward the box, show the constant pressures in life. I chose mirror to show that by just looking in the mirror at yourself you think about who you are. The box is placed upside down to show how I have built my own shelter, apart from my family to protect myself in this world.

A Confirmation and Discovery of Witchcraft

My recent work is focused on issues of identity, sexuality and language. I am also interested in women’s history and in women’s roles throughout different cultures.

To address these issues, I explore a variety of media, whatever I feel most appropriate to convey a specific feeling or experience. Confirmation And Discovery Of Witchcraft is an homage to witches and their wisdom and to their power to combine magic, mystery and wisdom.

The box is smoked; the top of the lid shows a young witch casting a love spell. Inside the box are burned matches, inscribed with the names of real women who were burned because of witchcraft accusations. In the mirror is a scroll, in the shape of an uterus where oral language reads: ‘ar yu squerd of mai tiars an mai blod?

Just A Tear

The box: the everyday object is used in different ways. It is taken out of its specific context in order to become an object that is artistic, cultured, of utilitarian adornment.

In this case the change is taken from a philosophical, conceptual foundation. To accept this transformation from a common, everyday object for purposes of exhibition, it is necessary to take on the challenge of new shapes and ideas, to comprehend their true structure in order to give it symbolism and a distinct visual representation: a confrontation between form and action, between reality and idea. This is to say, the object must be viewed from another angle in order to break the established canons. This shall be the philosophical stance for my work.

My subject is tears. I began with an incision between the warmth and gentleness of the wood sharply contrasted against the rigidity and coldness of the metal exterior, in order to place, in its delicate interior, a tear.

Tears are shed daily; they are commonplace and become relics when taken out of their context, just as the crusaders brought back relics from the Holy Land: pieces from the cross, from the crown of thorns, from the robe, from the nails. These amulets, upon being sacrificed, acquire properties of protection for those who hold them.

This syncretism happens in the Americas, lands which we carry deep within ourselves from the cultures of our origin and the influence of the Christian religion brought over by the Europeans.

We Are This and That and Everything In Between

Ironically, rather than dealing with the Individual, Western society tends to place us in particular categories (little boxes) and more specifically opposing polarities in order to deal with us more easily, more quickly, less personally.

This easy stereotyping is even more prevalent in regard to the position of women: Madonna/Whore, Mother/Worker, Young/Old, Beautiful/Ugly, Nature/Culture. This box contains references to the stereotyping that we as women experience and the title, We are This and That and Everything in Between, refers to the true individual nature of the female sex.

 

The Women’s Voices: Diana Robson from WOMEN BEYOND BORDERS on Vimeo.

Untitled

I find this concept very challenging although of course initially, I found the concept of Women Beyond Borders and the form (BOX) contradictory, as boxes inherently are about discreet entities/objects with their own definite boundaries, surfaces and edges etc. And these boundaries are walls in themselves, not just an imaginary line or flat paths on the soil dividing countries nor printed lines on the map. In other words, the whole notion of borders and liberating women from it contradicts the very form of the box given to every participant that say so disturbingly otherwise. My intention for the approach to producing a work for this project is to deal with this collision of concept and form. I have gathered a few women and men from the community I am with, to witness a cremation of this box, after which the ashes would be placed in a custom made replica of the box but it will be in cut glass. Death to borders–of course the glass box and its glass walls is practically a vitrine – to enshrine the diminishing of all borders that divide us.