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Tag: USA – California

TEN YEAR RETROSPECTIVES

ucla-installation
Betsy Quick, Alicia Katano and Niki Dewart at the WBB Retrospective at UCLA

Fowler Museum of Cultural History, UCLA

Los Angeles, CA
December 2, 2001 – April 21, 2002

Marla Berns, Executive Director, Curator

Christopher Scoates, Chief Curator

Betsy Quick, Director of Education

Anette G. Kubitza, Art Historian, Curator

 

University Art Museum, UCSB

Santa Barbara, CA
October 1 – December 15, 2002

Bonnie G. Kelm, Executive Director

Maria Vierra, Assistant Director

Niki Dewart, Director of Education

Lynne Sprecher, Coordinator

Anette Kubitza, Art Historian, Curator

Penny Paine, Girls Inc. Consultant
 
 

University of California Santa Barbara

WBB Retrospective at UCSB Art Museum
WBB Retrospective at UCSB Art Museum

 

Celebrating women worldwide for their creative expression, this powerful exhibition explored the nearly ten-year history and social impact of this unique international women’s art project. Transforming simple, identical boxes into vessels of artistic and cultural exchange, this retrospective featured nearly 150 of the diverse boxes from more than 36 countries around the world. Ranging from contemporary and abstract content to political and conscious-building messages, these compelling pieces give incredible insight into the lives of our individual communities while breaking down barriers and creating a global movement of women’s voices. – Anette G. Kubitza Ph.D., Art History
 

Lillian Lovelace, WBB Sponsor, Lorraine Serena, WBB Founder, and Penny Paine, WBB Curator and Artist

 

Marla Berns, Director of the Fowler Museum, Lorraine Serena, WBB Founder, Carol Kosterka, Attendee, and Rita Rivest, WBB Sponsor

 

UCSB Chancellor’s Wife, WBB Founder Lorraine Serena, and WBB Retrospective, and Bonnie Kelm, Executive Director, University Art Museum
UCSB Chancellor’s wife, Dilling Yang, WBB Founder Lorraine Serena, and Bonnie Kelm, Executive Director, University Art Museum

 

Henry T. Yang, Chancellor of UCSB, Dilling Yang, David Marshall, Dean of Humanities and Fine Arts at UCSB

 

Women Beyond Borders is an inspiring, thought-provoking, and aesthetically thrilling project. The connections it has fostered among nations and among women are remarkable. It also becomes a testament to the unbounded possibilities of human creativity, tested here in the seemingly simple transformation of the same small wooden box. – Marla Berns

 

Transforming simple, identical boxes into vessels of artistic and cultural exchange, this retrospective features nearly 150 of the diverse boxes from more than 36 countries around the world. Ranging from contemporary and abstract content to political and conscious-building messages, these compelling pieces give incredible insight into the lives of our individual communities while breaking down barriers and creating a global movement of women’s voices. A selection of boxes from extensive adjunct projects, including the Los Angeles School district and Girls Inc. were also represented.

 

retrospective-ucsb-1-jpegb

Some of the events that took place during the retrospectives included an International Symposium titled, “ Redrawing the Map/Conversation Beyond Borders”, which was organized by the University Art Museum in Santa Barbara. Keynote speakers included Suzanne Lacy, an artist, educator and writer, who inspired the project WBB from her work in Public Practice. A panel included Betty Ann Brown, professor of Art History, CSUN; Victoria Vesna, Chair at the Dept. of Design & Media Arts, UCLA School of the Arts; Gloria Alvarez, Chicana poet/intermedia artist in Los Angeles, among others.

 

At the opening in Santa Barbara, the Chancellor of UCSB, Henry T. Yang and his wife Dilling Yang attended the event, which included many cultural ceremonies, dancers and musicians representing all different cultures from around the world. The University Art Museum had over 7,000 viewers with adjunct projects coordinated with the UCSB Multicultural Center, Women’s Center and Girls Inc. of Santa Barbara, as well as the TRIBE Teen Program.

 

SEE THE GIRLS INC. PAGE

 
 

 
 
 

University of California Los Angeles

Betsy Quick, Director of Education, leading a group of Girls Inc. students

The retrospective at Fowler Museum at UCLA also had a successful opening and adjunct projects included ‘Girls Inc./Stepping Out of the Box’ featuring the works of hundred Girls Inc. participants from the greater Los Angeles area. Another adjunct project, titled Youth Beyond Borders, created a city-wide box project featuring 1,000 students from Los Angeles Unified School District.

 

A PATH WELL TRAVELED

Women Beyond Borders Catalog: The Art of Building a Community

Marla Berns

 

William Horberg, Elsa Mora, Penny Paine, Dawn Simonelli, Annette Kubiza, Lorraine Serena, Victoria Vesna and her daughter

The remarkable trajectory of Women Beyond Borders traces a story of relationships amongst artists, colleagues, women, and friends. The small group of Santa Barbara artists who conceived this international art project in 1991 never could have imagined its subsequent journey and impact.

 

I was lucky to have been one of the individuals who sat around a table in Lorraine Serena’s studio one winter evening to discuss the possibilities and challenges of launching a traveling exhibition that would bring together the work of women artists around the world the decision to build the project around the transformation of a small wooden box led to the initial distribution of 200 boxes to women in 15 countries.

 

Like the collaborative process underlying the conceptualization of Women Beyond Borders, the inaugural “call for entries” drew on relationships and contacts that the project founders, Lorraine Serena and Elena Siff, had with curators and artists abroad. The 185 boxes that came back to Santa Barbara served as the foundation of Women Beyond Borders, which then began its travels to virtually every continent in the world.

 

The stunning success of Women Beyond Borders lives in its ability to cross many borders— from local to global, personal to public, singular to collective. The accumulation of boxes is impressive by virtue of its scale: more than 800 artists have created and contributed boxes that have been exhibited in over 40 unique settings. These contributions attest to the strength of women’s voices and their enthusiastic responses to using a simple box as a vehicle for a highly individual statement. Exhibited together, The boxes are astonishing by virtue of their global reach, ethnic diversity, artistic variety, and expressive range.

 

That’s such a simple object that has offered so much to so many is a testament to the foresight of Women Beyond Borders founders. It is clear that Lorraine and Elena have been struck by the willingness of so many women to open their hearts and share their most intimate desires, fears, joys, and sorrows. The project has yielded more than an exhibition of fascinating objects: it has established a worldwide network among women that has surely exceeded all expectations. Women Beyond Borders has made individual creative expression a valued avenue for communication across cultures.

 

While each transformed box is a highly personal statement, the scale of intimacy has permitted many of the participants the safety of bold and even risky messages. Women Beyond Borders has built a global community in which women’s shared, yet individual life experiences have given them common ground. Over the years I have marveled at the remarkable reception of Women Beyond Borders in such far-flung places as Kenya, Singapore, and Russia.

 

Marla Burns, Executive Director of the Fowler Museum in UCLA and Co-Curator of the Exhibition, Lorraine Serena, Founder of WBB, Allegra Fuller Snyder, Professor of Dance and Ethnology at UCLA

 

The 10-year retrospective exhibition was organized by the UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History and the University Art Museum, University of California, Santa Barbara, in collaboration with Women Beyond Borders. Titled Women Beyond Borders: The Art of Building Community, it served as a document of the world tour representing a selection of boxes from international artists. During the exhibition’s run at the Fowler Museum (December 2, 2001-April 21, 2002), it was fascinating to observe the responses of visitors, many of whom were seeing the boxes for the first time. There was always amazement at the sheer variety of artistic solutions and the creativity and ingenuity they reflect. The accompanying texts illuminated the meaning of the boxes and extended their expressive depth, which visitors often found extremely moving and provocative. People picked their favorite boxes and made their selections a focus of the conversation. The multiple levels at which the small but compelling works creed function sustained repeated visits, each yielding fresh and affecting experiences.

 

Credit for this extraordinary effort must go promote primarily to Lorraine Serena, who has nurtured it’s growth with a profound personal commitment and the firm belief that such an international art project could make a difference. The hundreds of boxes Lorraine gathered at her studio in Santa Barbara are a tribute to her passion, as well as proof of the powerful forces that are drawn so many women to this unique global enterprise.

 

At one time we thought that the Women Beyond Borders retrospective exhibition would provide a critical look back—but now it has also become the impetus for continuing the path forward.

 

Doran H. Ross, Past Director of the Fowler Museum in UCLA, Marla Burns, Executive Director of the Fowler Museum in UCLA and Co-Curator of the Exhibition, Betsy Quick, Director of Education at the Fowler Museum in UCLA, Anette G. Kubitza Ph.D., Art History, Co-Curator of the Exhibition

 

With its mission to honor and document women’s voices and visions, to build community through dialogue and collaboration, and to inspire all women to express their creativity, Women Beyond Borders as an ongoing project not only raises questions about what art is and who can be considered an artist, it continuously challenges national, political, ethnic, religious, and aesthetic boundaries. – Anette G. Kubitza Ph.D., Art History
 

A guard at the WBB retrospective at UCSB was so inspired by the exhibition, he felt compelled to write this poem about it:

 

THE MAGIC BOXES

by Dan David

 

I made one thousand boxes by pine wood.

A thousand shrines, as nests for grist.

They were so small, you can fill them

with just the water in your fist.

I sent them far away, to see the world

as undressed bridegrooms,

Then Amen!

But, like a wary mother, first of all

I scratched the addresses on their foreheads

to know where to return when

Grownup men

After they scoured the world,

and found their own brides

And their own destinies as well.

 

In my own box,

picked up at random from the pile,

closed in tight within.

As in the magic, bold, Orpheus’ lyre

I laid my heart,

and alongside, as in Noah’s Ark,

all other parts of a wide-awake soul:

earth, water, air and fire;

to stand against the other Floods

avoiding being drowned by passion or by sadness,

To find each other in a pinch,

in time, beyond time.

 

Day or night, year by the year,

from neighborhood, from far away,

by airways, brought by winds, by waters’ waves.

or running on the roads,

migrating creatures, faithful sons,

the boxes came then back

at mother’s home.

They came back either sad or happy,

they returned as rich or poor.

Everyone brought with it a life

or two, or even more.

Some are sealed tightly. . .  capsules of time,

Others are open, readings for a night.

 

Today in Santa Barbara it’s raining.

From their windows,

looking toward the world,

Boxes reflect on the pacific waters,

colored with their magic histories:

A gallery of destinies, of women. . .

A rainbow that surrounds the planet,

as an alive, blessed shawl of hope.

And from the pine wood box, one day I sowed

and a large pine forest grew up on the earth.

 

An Old Song

Recently, a collection of my poetry entitled, Common Ancestry was published by Mille Grazie Press. The title of the poem and several others, including An Old Song, were written remembering my grandmother, Curruth Drummond Kincaid. Her picture as a young woman graces the cover of the book. All that I do- from poetry to politics- has its genesis in my grandmother’s life. She always spoke of the influences of her grandmother, Chestine Foster, and her aunt, Ada Foster. I was her firstborn grandchild and went to live with her in Marion, North Carolina, just before my 5th birthday in 1948. She died in 1997 at the age of 97. Here I have used her picture taken at age 94. The picture of me, circa age 45, was taken by my friend, Specs Powell.

This box is covered with purple star-studded paper which wrapped a book I received as a thank-you gift from a teacher and friend, Marianne Rossant. The book was her mother’s memoir of growing up in Egypt and in France, the birthplaces of her parents. My friend, Margaret Matson, instructed me in the art of paper maché. The poem is printed on a computer scanned version of the wrapping paper. The star on top of the box, part of a gift from my friend, Abigail Albrecht, symbolizes my namesake, Sojourner Truth, whose dying words were, “I’m going home like a shooting star”.

Thanks for the help to Rod Rolle, Margaret Matson, and Tom Long.

AN OLD SONG
Sojourner Kincaid Rolle

I have no new voice
it is the same old voice
the voice of my mother
calling
for her daughter
captive of Kaleidoscopic mirrors
the voice of her mother crying
for her daughters
lost
in the mill village
singing for the hill pople
dancing for nickels

Old as the voice of her
mother screaming for
daughters taller than
herself   tall as the
Carolina pines   taller
than her predators
tall enough to speak
above heads of
inferiors   old as
the voice of her mother
singing from the deep
recesses of her humming
heart   deep where
the memory began
to be played over
for the forgetting

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.

Mother’s Love

A Mother’s Everlasting Love

From that very first breath we take
That first moment when we awake
We feel the warmth of her embrace
See the wondrous smile on her face

Through the years of joy and sadness too
She’s always there to comfort you
When time then comes to leave the nest
She’ll miss us knowing it’s for the best.

When her turn comes, her job now done
She’s cared for you and everyone
Within that treasured family
Her love continues for you and me.

Nest

My grandmother gave me a necklace with a mustard seed enclosed in plastic when I was a young girl. She told me about faith. Having faith in God, in life, in myself, and if I had faith the size of a mustard seed I would be all right. I remember her often, especially during hard times, when it is so hard to have faith; but, maybe, faith only has to be the size of a mustard seed.

The mustard seed is enclosed in resin, in a nest of words, from an old sacred book of poems about love and life, sitting on a spring…waiting.

Lettuce Revolution

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

Alice Waters, OWNER, CHEZ PANISSE RESTAURANT AND CAFÉ; FOUNDER OF THE CHEZ PANISSE FOUNDATION, THE EDIBLE SCHOOLYARD PROJECT and Dianna Cohen, ARTIST

“We need a revolution, a delicious revolution, that will induce children — in a pleasurable way to think critically about what they eat.” Alice Waters

Within the Edible Schoolyard project, Alice is teaching us all by demonstration, that we are what we eat. She creates a sense of community and our interconnectedness. These are values that I hold high and attempt to eschew and embody in my work in a more formal way as compositions made up of disparate parts joined together to form a whole.

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.

Bringing all of my Life Experiences to the Public Table

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

Rep. Anna Eshoo, CONGRESSWOMAN FROM CALIFORNIA and Laura Deem, ARTIST

Anna Eshoo’s life experiences have helped to shape her into the person she is today and the way that she represents her constituents in Congress. Her role as a parent, daughter, wife, student, teacher, woman, caretaker and friend have all come into play.

The handwritten slips of paper contain Anna’s private thoughts, memories and experiences. These personal topics feed into a “public table”. This public table is a communal meeting place that houses issues, projects and policies with which Anna Eshoo is involved as a Congresswoman.

The objects represent both the private and public world. Combined they weave together an individual narrative of the many hats that we wear, the experiences that accompany them, and the ones we chose to share with the rest of the world.

Transitive / Transform

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

Joan Ling, INNOVATOR AND ADVOCATE FOR AFFORDABLE HOUSING IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA and Ann Lindbeck, ARTIST

Contents of Trunk:

A letter ordering lumber by Pablo Neruda

Accordian landscape

Key to a China trunk

Map of California

Map of China

Architectural drawing

 

 

War Box

Since time began, mothers have nurtured, loved, taught, protected, cherished and raised their babies, then watched them grow to be killed in war or by war. This inevitable cycle will repeat itself for untold generations unless our mothers’ universal plea to Stop The Killing results in WAR NO MORE!

New Soul-Sole

As I move through this life I have…

Change has always been inevitable in these short years since I was born.  I have re-invented, moved, transformed.  Each time I fly high up in the sky, I look down imagining what will come.  When I arrive at these new places, I resole my soul and begin walking.

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.

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.
 

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.

 

Grass Roots

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

Judy Kleinberg, MAYOR OF PALO ALTO and Sharon Chinen, ARTIST.

The mayor’s interest in growing a healthy community is represented in the roots of this piece. The box is filled with the soil of Palo Alto, laid down as a rich foundation for the small red berries which represent the children of Palo Alto and education…two passions of Mayor Kleinberg. Our roles as women, teachers, caregivers, leaders — the flourishing community of which we are all a part — is finally represented by the blossoming trees that reach out to the world at large.

Emily’s Ideas

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

Emily Harrison, ASSISTANT CITY MANAGER, CITY OF PALO ALTO and Renee Winick, ARTIST.

A government building is the architecture that delineates space and frames conversations.

In the confines of that structure, Emily Harrison devotes her time and boundless energy to developing new ideas and innovations.

For her, this process becomes an explosion of joy and excitement as if sparks were shooting out in an array of twists and turns, spiraling outward, and beyond.

Hope Chest

If wishes were horses, then little girls would ride… we bind ourselves with chains of obligations, decorate our selves with symbols of the things we cherish, the very things that tie us to life and yet keep us from our frivolous dreams.

A Moroccan Bath

I have always been fascinated with texture. On my travels I photograph details in architecture and local objects which I then bring back to the studio and recreate on canvas. The paintings I show in my exhibitions revolve around the theme of texture, color and architecture. When I received the box, I was challenged with the sculptural object which turned into a base that used tile in various shades and was inspired by them for this particular project. To add a little humor, I added the bather relaxing with her arms in the air taking in the moment.
 

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.

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.

Following Examples: An Exhibition

Because I am a curator and not an artist, I decided to organize a miniature show for Women Beyond Borders. The 10 featured artists were given a dimension of 1-1/4 x 2-3/4 inches and told to make something flat. The visual artists I invited are people whose work, lives and friendships have inspired and informed my life in a meaningful way.  This is an extremely personal project and I wish I could have included something by all the others whose creative lives have proven to be exceptional examples to follow.

Barbara Berk
Angie Bray
Karen Brown
Jacqueline Cooper
Eileen Cowin
Kim Cridler
Kathy Haddad
Danielle Imperiale
Sari Roden
Liza Ryan

Women’s History/Prehistory

Black Box- Hidden Wisdom, what we know and have forgotten

Black Stone- For the Great Black Magma Mother

Opening Book- History of Women’s Mysteries, linked one to another, through our Blood, through Time.

Images are not designed to explain, but to expand awareness.

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.

Apricot Box

From childhood through adulthood- fairy tales, myths, and even nursery rhymes follow us about, shaping us, forming us.  At an early age, we learn that beauty equals good, and ugliness equals bad.  We also learn something about the narrow range that is supposed to define a woman’s safety zone.

Miss Muffet sits and minds her manners, and even then, is frightened away by a spider, while Little Jack Horner gets to stick his thumb in the middle of a pie, pull out a plum, and thinks to call himself a good boy for having done so.

Apricot Box is about women reclaiming for themselves, the ripe, fruity, fragrant, luscious parts of ourselves, and about little girls, never losing it.

 

Re:Mapping

When I was asked to create a box for this project, I wanted to use ideas and images representing the spirit behind Women Beyond Borders. I found a 1957 atlas with a world map and an accompanying text, which are very anachronistic relics of the Cold War era. More than 40 years later we have seen a myriad of changes in borders resulting from our late 20th century, capitalist, post-colonial, multi-national, global politics. More importantly, we know only too well the tragedies that have ensued when multitudes of human beings are displaced and dislocated from their homes and homelands.

On this box I attempt to re-map the world to show the arbitrary and contrived nature of geo-political borders. While many countries appear as they are today, some nations no longer exist and others have yet to be established. I have tried to de-contextualize the borders to remind us how they are always in flux. Inside the box is an idealistic and paternalistic text fragment from the atlas, a bittersweet reminder of a 1950’s American dream that has all but collapsed as we approach the year 2000. The text on the lid is my own bit of wishful thinking: Even though boundaries will undoubtedly persist to exist, hopefully they will not continue to prevent us from moving freely across borders.

 

Letting It All Hang Out

This box is sort of a self-portrait.  It is about me, anyway.  It represents some of the things inside of me that I like, get pleasure from, are positive and good, and that I am grateful for in my life.  It’s a celebration.

 

Cancer

In the past
people asked me
sometimes
what is your sign
and I said
cancer
because I was born
on the 6th of July.

Now I got the disease
or the disease got me
and I hate
this word:
cancer.

I lost my hair
I lost my breast
and I may lose
my life-
who knows-to
cancer.

But I am not alone
185,000 women a year
are getting it and
we are all asking why
cancer

Why all the poison
in our food, our water,
our air, what did we
do to nature, where
is the F.D.A.? It is not
only tobacco which is
killing us.  How can we
fight the enemy
cancer?

 

Beyond Bounds and Borders

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

Barbro Sachs-Osher, CONSUL GENERAL OF SWEDEN IN SAN FRANCISCO, CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD FOR THE BERNARD OSHER FOUNDATION and Ulla de Larios, ARTIST

This box honors Barbro Sachs-Osher whose generosity goes beyond bounds and borders.

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.

Come on Breathe!

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

Grace Elizabeth Davis, WRITER, MOTHER AND MARATHON RUNNER

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.

Grace Davis, writer/runner/mother, known for “Katrina Relief” brought aid to the hurricane victims of New Orleans, the first to use blogging as a medium in disaster relief.

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.

State of Grace

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

Grace Elizabeth Davis, WRITER, MOTHER AND MARATHON RUNNER and Terry Acebo Davis, ARTIST

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

Grace Davis, writer/runner/mother, known for “Katrina Relief” brought aid to the hurricane victims of New Orleans, the first to use blogging as a medium in disaster relief.

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.

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.

Ambient Light

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

Amy Reisenbach, DIRECTOR OF CURRENT PROGRAMMING FOR CBS PARAMOUNT TELEVISION and Sukey Bryan, ARTIST

When Amy and I talked on the phone, I was very moved by her embrace of the people around her, her enjoyment of her work, and pleasure she gets from being in nature. A significant experience that we hold in common is that we have both lived through the death of members of our immediate families. Several times she said, “Don’t take things for granted”.

I covered the entire box with an image of water, an ever-changing and unpredictable source of life — as a metaphor of awareness and appreciation of the life and lives that surrounds us. The inside of the box and the inside of the lid are gold like the constant inner self that reflects light.

 

Justica

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

Julie Su, Esq., LITIGATION DIRECTOR, ASIAN PACIFIC AMERICAN LEGAL CENTER, RECIPIENT OF THE MACARTHUR GENIUS GRANT and Nancy White, ARTIST

Too often, we fail to think about where the clothes we wear actually come from. Clothes, like this necklace, are worn, but they are also made—made of fabric sewn together by human beings. Women workers are the faces behind the garments we wear, hidden as in this locket, invisible, yet upon closer examination, resilient, strong, able to rise up against exploitation and sweatshop conditions to raise one voice, in many languages, for justice.

 

 

Tomiko Fraser Revealed

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

TOMIKO FRASER, MAYBELLINE SPOKESPERSON/ACTRESS

Tomiko Fraser has benefitted greatly in her life from mentoring and, in return, wishes to nurture and empower other women. An exuberant, playful woman, she has been able to find her way and break free of the confines of others’ expectations.

In appreciation of Faith Ringgold and her painted story quilt “Sunflower Quilting Bee of Arles” (1991) and the women depicted within.

 

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.

 

Yoriko

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

YORIKO KISHIMOTO, VICE MAYOR, CITY OF PALO ALTO and Jen Schachter, ARTIST.

A photo of Yoriko as a small child with her parents and older brother in Shizuoka, Japan flies from the branch of one of her favorite trees, the maple, signifying her love of gardens. The trail reflects her journey from Japan and her love of travel while the mountain symbolizes her love of hiking and mountains, and her desire to “climb to a high place and see as far as I can”— hence the binoculars.

The central image is her interest in the 4 elements — earth, air, fire and water. Earth is symbolized by a clay container I made (I am a potter) and the water by blue glass that was melted in the clay container.

There are so many aspects of Yoriko’s life that are not included, but through some mysterious mental process, I have focused on these ideas and presented them in this way.
 

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.”

What it Takes to Make Change: Sharifa Wilson and Transforming a City

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

Sharifa Wilson, FORMER MAYOR OF EAST PALO ALTO; COLLEGE TRACK DIRECTOR and Daisy Juliana Eneix, ARTIST

When I first spoke with Sharifa, the former Mayor of East Palo Alto, I was struck by her absolute faith in her ability to make change. “I consider myself an optimist” citing her family as her primary inspiration. As Sharifa went on to discuss the strategies she has used to bring money, businesses, jobs and better education opportunities into East Palo Alto, it became clear that persistence was something she didn’t think twice about.

While considering what I could do for an artwork about Sharifa, I thought about what a formidable force she was. A picture came to mind of some unsuspecting guy delivering her the “Sorry lady, that’s the way it is” line and what she would do with that. This artwork is about the refusal to accept that answer and the possibilities it opens.

 

Untitled

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

Elizabeth Rice-Grossman, BUSINESSWOMAN AND PHILANTHROPIST, SUPPORTER TO THE CIRCLE OF CARE FOUNDATION and Catie O’Leary, ARTIST

Images used in these collages represent Elizabeth Rice-Grossman — her life, influences and concerns, benefitting those near her home in Ventura County.

Images are personal symbols meant to represent her life, such as:

San Francisco – map, horses

New York – stock market

Hawaii – orchids

Theater – Arts for Kids, Nutcracker

African American authors

Grossman Burn Center

Migrant farmer housing

Americare – senior care

Memory TV – Circle of Care

The past enables the present

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.

Pandora a Broken Myth

In doing this box I decided to see what the original myth of Pandora was. I was struck with the beauty and the imagery of Hesiod. I laughed at the obvious fear and envy that men have had at the creative female. I felt we could look at this myth and break it open and show women in all her creative force without fear or envy.

“as a favor to Zeus the father,
On this had been done much intricate work,
a wonder to look at:
wild animals, such as the mainland
and the sea also produce
in numbers, and he put many on,
the imitations of living
things that have voices, wonderful,
and it flashed in its beauty.
But when, to replace good,
he made this beautiful evil
thing, he led her out
where the rest of the gods and mortals
were, in the pride and glory
that the gray-eyed daughter of a great
father had given; wonder seized both immortals and mortals
as they gazed on this sheer deception.”

Hesiod translated by Richmond Lattimore

Love

Teen Box. Culver City Highschool. Grade 11.

My box was based on the book of I Corinthians 13 in the Bible. Love is not something that is jealous, boastful, and impatient. I used the last verse:

“And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love.” But the greatest of these is love. The box represents love itself, with in it are the mustard seeds which represent faith because God said “if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you could move mountains.” The stars represent hope. The leaves in front of the box symbolize the growth of love, that it never stops getting better.

Fabricated Fame

Today’s celebrities seem to all be coming out of some celebrity machine.  Behind the glitz and glam, the expensive cars and fancy clothes, are producers and stylists that give celebrities their identities.  They all strive for the ideal image but in the process they become copies of each other.  I made my box into a gaudy, sparkly representation of fame.  I’ve carved in idealistic image of a figure into the lid of the box and created prints from it.  The prints show how celebrities are simply produced copies that are made to be this ideal.

 

Representation of a Population

Culver City Highschool. Age 12.

My box is a representation of my population, African Americans. Throughout history, my people always had something to represent. From the motherland to this present day we have represented life, struggle, triumph, and perseverance. But as we begin a new generation, what do we have to represent now? What do we have to show our future, besides being a statistic?

How To

I collect “how to” illustrations, the drawings that come on packages that show you how to use the product. For this box, I made three scrolls with my copies of those illustrations.  I used instructional drawings from health books, dental floss, box cutters, screwdrivers,chopsticks and Hi-8 tapes.  They are packed tightly inside the box, a representation of the jumble of rules.

A Mother’s Treasure

A Mother’s Treasure was created to depict an experience that women share in common– the love and nurturing of our children.  The symbol that came to my mind was baby teeth.  Every child in every culture sheds its first teeth, and everywhere mothers soothe and celebrate this rite of passage from babyhood to childhood.  Just as my two sons grew up and moved into their own adult lives, I give up my treasure  –  their saved baby teeth  –  to make a rattle to distract and amuse other babies in other places. Loving greetings to all the mothers and their young.

 

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.

 

Outside the Box

To know who I am is the quest.
To learn lessons is the school of life
To see emotion as the road least traveled.
To find the path past mind is the road to the soul.
To see life as a continuously unfolding process
To live life to the fullest is to live in the present.
To open to humaness is to see life’s treasures
To live in the present is going outside of the box.

From: If Life is a Game, these are the Rules
The Rules for Being Human
Dr. Chérie Carter-Scott

 

Welcome to La La Land

Culver City Highschool. Grade 11.

My box represents my life and being a high school student in a modern world, which is all crazy. I titled this piece Welcome To La La Land because my nickname is Lala and I wanted to show a glimpse of my life. Well, what I wanted to say about myself was that, I am a quiet person but inside I am crazy, confused and talkative, but I keep it locked inside most of the time. Inside, I put little things that represent me and keys, which is the thing that will open the box (myself). I see finding the keys is like finding you, the key that will open you to the world. I have little things that can’t remain in the box like my creativity, self-expression and friendship. I feel that most people are like me and until you find yourself, you can’t find the key that will help you open up and allow you to be more yourself.

The monarch trapped in their expectations, reducing the imperial ruler into a mere puppet controlled by golden strings.

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.

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.

Radical Profiling

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

Joan Takayama-Ogawa (artist) and Elaine Tajima (CEO, founder at Tajima Creative)

We live in times of war, where racial profiling threatens the freedom of Arab Americans. By transforming this wooden box into a shrine representing my family’s internment in Japanese American relocation camps, I hope that racial profiling will not happen again.

Symbols of the highest decorated American 442 Regimental Combat Unit, the luggage tags with family numbers for the Takayama and Ogawas, rotate around the box symbolically, tied with barbed wire. Along the perimeter of the black tray, a plant revered by Japanese Americans, connects with barbed wire symbolizing their incarceration. A gold crane perched on a post, represents the Hiroshima bomb.

Thirty-seven last names along the edge of the tray represent hundreds of my family members who were incarcerated during World War II, remembering freedom is fragile, and racial profiling is intolerable.

 

Living Out of the Box (As a Survivor)

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

Beverlye Hyman Fead, CANCER SURVIVOR and Rita Rivest, ARTIST

The theme of my box is how much happier I am today — living out of the box. For half my life, I lived within the confines of the box and when I realized I was dying inside, I moved on.

Inside the bottom of the box are names of women I admire that have chosen unusual roads for themselves. They inspired me to move away from everything I knew and start over. When I became a cancer survivor, it was then I realized I had been a survivor of sorts all my life and now I could start inspiring others.

I wrote a book and have decoupaged pieces of my book on and inside my box. My banners of survivorship and living my life in my own way, wave triumphantly from the box spurring me on. I hope they will have the same effect on any woman, young or old, who will see this box.

Rita Rivest, my friend and soul sister, has been my mentor and my muse in this project. Thank you, Rita.

In Memory of My Father

This box turned out to be about the death of my father (1925-1986). In thinking about the exhibition and before I actually had the box in my hands I thought of “hope chests” and “Pandora’s box,” both representing women’s issues and lives. But behind these thoughts was always the image of coffins and bone boxes (the boxes that the bones of the dead in Greece are transferred into after their initial burial).

After receiving the box and playing around with it for awhile, I had to go with the more direct, personal association of my father’s death. So it became a shrine, a memento mori, a symbolic object. The words on top are FUTURE, PLACE, GOOD MAN, LIES. The words inside of the half-open box are HERA, MOTHER, THERAPY, FATHER, DREAM, STRANGER. We will all go to this future place. Here, a good man, lies. Hera, Greek goddess, wife of Zeus, mother/father/therapy, dream, father stranger.

Dreams of Dancing

Idee Levitan, an artist and patron of the arts, world traveler, lifelong philosophy student, adventure seeker, mountain climber, wife, friend, and proud member of a most independent sisterhood of polio survivors, died before she had the opportunity to work on the Women Beyond Borders project.  The virgin box was among the mementos Idee’s husband sent to me.  My dearest soulmate, Elena Mary Siff, invited me to create a tribute to Idee’s spirit so that Idee might be a part of an intriguing and profound exhibition she would have heartily embraced.  The Wheel Chair could not contain her Dreams of Dancing…

 

Shoe Box

Shoes are also an important artistic expression for me. You see, as a walker, shoes are to me what cars are for others. They transport us from where we are to where we want to be.

The first box in my Women beyond borders series, represented women as guardians of the treasure within. “The Guardians R Us” 1996.

Now, the third box in my series releases part of its contents. The missing shoe mate and box top travel to Europe, entitled “Left Shoe Looking For Right” 1999.

Additional boxes by same artist

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.”

Emerge: Each Holy Remain

This book/box was produced for the 1999 leg of the Women Beyond Borders show.  Its surfaces covered with gesso (support for intricate graphite drawings) and gold leaf, includes a reliquary indicating potential life, death, and  emergence into light. The 52-page book pictures detritus from daily living, preserved by attentive drawing and watercolor: seeds, bones, plant tips, shells, buds, nuts, skeletons.

I know that there are lives much tougher than my own, and that I am enormously privileged to luxuriate in the poignant beauty of the commonplace. I hope that we all sometimes have the opportunity to pause and consider, even in the helpless despair of suffering and the frustrating reality of working so hard so often for our own survival; physical, spiritual, intellectual and emotional, and that of our loved ones, as well as all sentient beings.

Dragon Box

Using the box as a metaphor for prescribed limitations in one’s life, this box is not a place of confinement. The edges have softened and fallen open, allowing the light to radiate from a life force of an egg. From the light comes new freedom and love. The inside of the box reflects the light so that the power is magnified, thus illuminating the path towards release.

 

Seyburn Zorthian – Open Box

Balkan Dance

This traditional Balkan folk dance slipper carries a box holding the grief and terror of deportation and internment as well as hope for endurance and the end of all exiles- physical, political, cultural and spiritual.

Shoes

“Walk a mile in my shoes”
and vice versa.
To understand someone else,
put yourself in their shoes.
Too often, women force their
feet into shoes
too small, too pointy, too high-heeled
and then stumble along
the unmarked roads ahead.
Life is a journey,
be prepared to wear
sensible shoes.

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.

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.

 

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.

 

Lost Butterflies

Where have all the mothers gone?
Off like butterflies in the wind.
All to great deeds of glory
Then on to new beginnings again.
The chrysalis of life is a never ending bond
Until the end of time.
Where have all the mothers gone?
Lost the most precious gift, a child of mine.

 

Outside In

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.

 

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.

 

Biological Baby Buggy

With my work I explore the theme of a woman’s fertility.  Fertility is a complex issue and fertility is not always a G-d given right.  Age and circumstances can exert enormous pressure on women to define themselves, to reach important decisions at what could be an inopportune time.

To embrace motherhood or to reject motherhood, or to gain motherhood through extreme and unusual means: are all fraught with their own assumptions and characterizations, either internally innate or imposed by external forces.

The tendency to define a woman by her ability to bear children is limiting and demeaning.  A woman must be defined by her ability to live a positive and meaningful life.

My quest is to honor all women who engage in creation whatever form it might take and encourage women to feel comfort and acceptance on many paths.

Voice Box

Voice Box is a reminder of the fertile, nurturing potential of women’s words and the pain that women endure in trying to speak those messages. It contains powdered milk and an egg licked by tongues of flame and so marked with soot.

materials: wood, powdered milk, soot, paint, paper.

Slick Chick – A Balancing Act

Age takes slick and chick
But eggs so perfect go on
And on
To feed the fragile Universe
And return and recharge and provide
Time and time anew
The best nests everywhere.
Beyond borders
Or difference we nurture
And yet strut our stuff.
No dumb clucks- we chicks!
You know…we have something worth crowing about…

 

Revelation

“To laugh often
and much, to win
the respect of
intelligent people
and the affection
of children, to earn
the appreciation
of honest critics
and endure the
betrayal of false
friends, to
appreciate beauty,
to find the best
in others,

to leave the world
a bit better, whether
by a healthy child,
a garden patch…
to know even one
life has breathed
easier because
you have lived.
This is to have
succeeded!”

-Emerson

Welcome to the Forest of Dreams

I have built a place of healing and repose.
Though small enough to fit in your hand,
it is a place to soothe and comfort the weary sojourner.
May you enter and find your peace.

Enter the forest, its cool green breath,
its embracing boughs, its mystery.
Enter the shadows your spirit longs for,
follow the labyrinth.
Enter the heart of the ancient forest,
wander until the dusk surrounds you.
until you find you have come to a place of rest.
Dream until you have found contentment.
Dream until you have found your own way
home, into the light.

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.

 

No Chains on My Feet

Inspired by Bob Marley’s concrete jungle. My box signifies the reality of life. Nobody is really free. There are restrictions, expectations, and guidelines on you, which don’t allow you to be free. People are fed lots of lies, been told things that sound good, just to keep them satisfied, but if you stop and really think your chains may be invisible, yet they’re present. You are never really free to be yourself. Life is captivity. The baby inside the box shows that the moment your life starts is the same point your freedom dies.

Garden of Life

Friends are the flowers in the garden of life. My flower gardens bring much pleasure to myself as well as many others. Through gardening and art, I have made many friends who enrich my life. Friends in far-reaching places oftentimes come to mind. I like to think of them as flowers given to me in my garden of life. True blessings.

It is my hope that my box will convey to others how important friends are. May my little traveling garden bring a smile to the viewer, along with a reminder of someone special—a flower placed in their garden of life.

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.

 

Face

Soon after the birth of my first child, I became aware of a sense that on a grander scale, all children were my children. Universal.

I am now a grandmother for the first time. Mostly, I am happy. Sometimes I feel sad, maybe a bit jealous because I no longer carry the egg that becomes the baby. Look at my little grandson in utero. He is perfect, just like the one perfect living cell, the egg. What gift this is that we may, “…bring forth those who bring forth.”

Iamthereflectionofyoubutdoyouseetheconfusioninsideofme?

Culver City High School. Grade 11.

Inside of me there is a thin line between depression and happiness. Sometimes I dangle between the two, as if I am suspended on a wire and tied up by my own thoughts. Outside I am the reflection of everyone around me. You look at me and see yourself, see who and what you want to see. Although you look at me forever, you will forever see your own reflection and never penetrate to the inside where I am forever suspended between the two poles of my mind.

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”.

Overflowing

As the world’s population increases at alarming rates, heavy human consumption is producing drastic amounts of waste and garbage. Landfills are overflowing and space for containing our trash is limited. This box represents Earth’s limited available space for containing our waste. By recycling, we can collectively help to prolong the Earth’s beautiful and natural elements.

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.

 

Ask for Guidance

When I started this project, I had a general idea of what I wanted to say and how I would do it. However, once I started beading it began to take on a life of its own. For one thing, the beading took much longer than anticipated, which forced me to slow down and enjoy the process.

Beading is a mechanical type of thing which allows contemplation while still doing the work. It began to look a bit different than I planned and time was getting short so while I beaded, I literally asked for guidance and trusted that this would lead me somewhere. Is it a pillow, a blanket, a symbol?…it is any and all of these things and a place to rest and to think. The idea to glue messages to the box came as I beaded. Lesson learned.

“All you need to do to receive guidance is to ask for it and then listen.” Sanaya Roman

“Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself and know that everything in this life has a purpose.” Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

 

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.

 

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.

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.

Celebration

My box is a celebration of the joy of life, magic and imagination. I used the red part of the cardboard and some of the words found on the carton the words joy and oz., referring to the Wizard of Oz, and Coke. I cut the cardboard in the manner of Matisse with shapes of women dancing.

I teach eight art classes at four different colleges, sixty hours a week including driving time. Needless to say, I have little time to stop for a meal. So when my blood sugar starts to drop, I have a Coke. There is nothing like it–the two major food groups of sugar and caffeine. Coca Cola gives me a lift and makes me feel good.

 

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.

 

Dreams Fly

Inside this box, within a bird, a dream is sealed.

Please PICK-UP and hold this wise, matriarchal creature. Shake her gently and listen. Hear her dream stir? What is within her; within you? Permit your vision to awaken emboldened, released with wings spread and soar beyond every limitation that you impress upon yourself.

Goethe said, “Whatever you do, or dream you can begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.” Truly, all women have dreams and passions pleading to be set free on the wings of imaginary flight.

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.

My World

My box is a small square world, and part of my world is in the box. On opening My World and looking closer one sees part of my individual history. A mirrored reflection of my wedding day. It represents love, culture, and intimacy. The bottom of the box is a coffin.

 

Watersheds

Coca-Cola Box Project

We were intrigued by the boundary aspect of this Women beyond borders box project. Our thoughts turned to physical boundaries, specifically those found in Santa Barbara. By looking at a map, you can see the natural boundaries that are created by watersheds in our area. A watershed is an elevation, a divide, a drainage basin that separates one river system from another, and ultimately drains to a watercourse or body of water. Defining Santa Barbara by its watersheds would change our existing boundaries.

At this point in time, watershed education is important. There are vital connections between our watershed resources, human activity and water quality. Watershed restoration improves water quality, creeks, wetlands and the ocean.

Fannie’s Soap Box: The Story of an American Cheerleader

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

Fannie Flagg, ACTRESS, COMEDIAN, AND AUTHOR with Ramona Otto, ARTIST.

When I was told that I would be doing a piece on Fannie Flagg, I was honored. We are from the same generation, and I’ve always enjoyed her TV and film work, and was impressed that she was also a brilliant author and screenwriter. Because word play is often a part of my work, my original thought was to make the box into a soapbox, and then I could make the theme into whatever message was important to Fannie.

Fannie’s wish was to have a positive art piece because she was tired of all the negative art and energy being released into the world. She hoped her piece could reflect that life was good.

I hope my title gives a whole new meaning to the word “cheerleader.”

 

 

RIDGECREST

Dinner with Ridgecrest artists

 

Maturango Museum

Ridgecrest, CA
September 1 – October 13, 2004

 

Barbara Andolsek – Dreams Fly, California, USA 2004

 

Barbara Andolsek – Dreams Fly – California, USA
Inside this box, within a bird, a dream is sealed.

 

Please PICK-UP and hold this wise, matriarchal creature. Shake her gently and listen. Hear her dream stir? What is within her; within you? Permit your vision to awaken emboldened, released with wings spread and soar beyond every limitation that you impress upon yourself.

 

Goethe said, “Whatever you do, or dream you can begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.” Truly, all women have dreams and passions pleading to be set free on the wings of imaginary flight.

 

Kelley Serena, Hearth, USA – California, 1999

 

Kelley Serena – Hearth – California, USA
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.

 

Betty Spindler – Woman Thinking Outside the Box , USA – California, 2004

 

SEE RIDGECREST BOXES

Girls Inc.

 

University Art Museum, UCSB

Santa Barbara, CA
October – December 2002

Christine Scott, Girls Inc. Program Director, Art Therapist
Jody Nelson, Girls Inc. Program Director, Filmmaker

 

Women Beyond Borders collaborated with Girls Inc. at the Ten-Year Retrospective in 2002. Girls Inc. held workshops where young students created boxes that were exhibited at the WBB exhibition. Christine Scott worked throughout the program to empower young girls to tell their truth through art. After the program was completed the girls were encouraged to keep their boxes as reminders of their powers of self-expression. Below are a few heartfelt statements the girls wrote to describe their boxes.

A pair of young artists with their boxes and their teacher at the exhibition

 

 

Emmaly Read, Age 8 – Court – California, USA
I was thinking about how a judge who doesn’t know me, my dad or my mom changes my whole entire life in a few minutes. I think if you live with your mom, you should get to still see your dad every few weeks, and if you live with your dad, you should still get to see your mom every few weeks. I don’t like how you can never see your dad or mom again because some judge says that. Judges should have to learn how to meet somebody before they judge them.

 

Breanna Maxwell, Age 10 – Nothing, Something – California, USA
My box is about being a girl who doesn’t have a dad who lives with me and who has a dad that lives in a car and doesn’t live in a house. My dad doesn’t have a house, he has a car as a house. He made the wrong decision. It is his fault but the devil just made him. He made a very, very, very, very dumb decision. It sometimes feels like I have a dumb dad.

 

Rebecca Ramos, Age 10 – A Mess – California, USA
My aunt says that girls in Mexico start cleaning when they are 5. They clean because their parents have to work. I have to clean a lot because my mom isn’t there. I have to wash the dishes and take out the garbage and clean the bathroom and get my sister ready for daycare and clean our room. (Sarah helps me) I wish everybody in my family would pick up their mess instead of me cleaning it.

 


Girls Inc. Program Film by Jody Nelson

 
 

Christine Scott and her students view the original boxes at Lorraine Serena’s studio

 

 

 

SEE THE TEN YEAR RETROSPECTIVE PAGE

 

What’s a Box Got to Do with it? Reflections on the Body…

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Broome Gallery, California State University, Channel Islands

Camarillo, California
January 31 – March 25, 2011

Dr. Anette Kubitza, Curator
Lorraine Serena, Curator

 

The group of boxes selected for this exhibition focuses on issues of subjectivity and the body from a variety of perspectives. The box, providing an inner space as well as an interface to the world, becomes a metaphor for the body itself in its myriad expressions by hundreds of women. It has provided a vehicle for introspection as well as dialogue, reflecting the personal feelings and realities of women across the world.

– Dr. Anette Kubitza, Art Historian

 

 

This WBB exhibition, addressing women and their bodies, was  shown in conjunction with an interdisciplinary symposium and weeklong program entitled Facing Our Bodies which took place during National Eating Disorder Awareness Week (January 31 – March 24, 2011). Organizers were Dennis Downey, Professor of Sociology and Irina Costache, Professor of Art History. Dr. Justine Reel, a University of Utah professor and specialist in eating disorders and body image delivered a keynote speech. The exhibit featured a selection of approximately 80 boxes from the “Women Beyond Borders” collection. Co-curated by Anette Kubitza,  Ph.D. an Art lecturer at CSUCI, and artist Lorraine Serena, founder and artistic director of Women Beyond Borders.

 

ANNETTE
Anette Kubitza, Ph.D.

 

CSUCI Panel

 

SEE BODY IMAGE BOXES

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.

Open Box

The box I have created (recreated) is an “open box.” Here the box signifies self-imposed limitations within which we live. Whether in the marriage box, the mother box, the artist box, we notice ourselves playing certain preconceived roles. This becomes inhibiting and sometimes agonizing if we are not aware and perhaps unable to change the rules and roles of the boxes as we grow and change.

I particularly admire people who constantly recreate themselves; who seem unrestricted by society’s boxes. Louise Bourgeois, one of the great sculptors of this century, is one of these people. She looks at things, relationships, her life and her art always with a fresh eye.

One can see Louise Bourgeois in the ceiling of the open box by looking in the mirror. The picture shows her holding a large bronze phallus that she made. The photograph is by Robert Mapplethorpe. Above her is the shell which signifies the soul.

For Ritta

USA/Czech Republic

My sister died before I was a little girl.
She was put in a gas chamber in a
concentration camp.

My daddy was so sad he couldn’t stop
them so he made another little girl right
away so he could forget about Ritta and
be happy again

Only this was not ok with G-d. G-d
thought that this was too fast so he
played a trick on Daddy. He took
Ritta’s soul, which was still very upset
from being starved and gassed and
burned and sent it back to Earth.

Normally a soul would be allowed to
float around out there for a couple
hundred years or more to calm down
after doing Life. So it was shocking for
Ritta’s soul to come back too quickly
and-this was the mean part-to be
stuck in Janicka’s body.

This was very hard for me. I thought I
was supposed to smile. Everyone
wanted me to be a happy pretty little girl
so they could be happy and forget. But,
too bad looked like a bullfrog and I
could tell they thought that and were
ashamed. So no smiles. They didn’t
know about Ritta’s soul and that it took
up so much space may own little heart
didn’t have room to beat.

So along we went, poor starved gassed
and burned Ritta and what was left of
me and no one knew so I was very sad
and lonely. And poor Daddy couldn’t
forget Ritta because she was inside the
little bullfrog.

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?

The Battlefield of Selfhood/ A Box of Empty Shells to Ponder

Beings killing out of jealousy, rage,
betrayal, revenge, self righteousness.

Some die without a loss of body though —
through abuse and intimidation, disagreement.

Untamed emotions creating a battlefield within.
Un-conquered, raw, heartless.

The primary battlefield.

Led from the mind, from the heat of hatred,
destroying another, destroying the Self.

Hear the names of outer battlefields —
Bosnia, Iraq,
Oklahoma City, Somalia, subways in Japan.
In the home,
Couples turning from lovers to killers.
Children killing children.

Anger looming in the human heart —
on the loose, unpredictable.
Where is the greatest battlefield to conquer,
on the terrain or in the heart?

Where to fight the battle?

A box of empty shells to ponder.

Eggies

Candy-like ovaries
Nibbling like berries
Sucking and squeezing
Pulling and pleasing
Contradiction and friction
Shiny, sweet eggs
Long skinny legs
Steel wire and red
Cold blue-purple and dead
Hot glue opaque blue
The barrier has become the existence
The chaotic shamble has become the resistance
Confine, restrict, disengage

Another Play-Thing

A child or an adult who handles this magnetized material discovers through a variety of experience what it is saying.

For those who like surprises, I suggest collaboration with this animated material when attempting a re-arrangement – even “letting go” and allowing the magnetic forces of attraction and repulsion direct the play.

A haphazard appearance is one of the factors which may provoke a viewer, out of attraction, annoyance or curiosity, to touch this material and discover that its arrangement is temporary.

Leaving Home

from the time my soft head crowned
through the red hole
and my mother’s spent muscles squeezed me
out of the watery place,
i began leaving home.
the empty tunnel that led me
from my first home
closed up and healed.
as i grew, i sloughed off years
like discarded snakeskin.
she saved the skins.
she wears them around memory’s neck,
to mark time to the cadence of
an ancient song
her mother’s mother’s mother once sang.

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.

Family

This altar is dedicated to my boys, Shawn and Josh, two beautiful people who I cherish. Between the little dots in the photos are images of them surfing in Mexico. The inside of the box and the top of the box have surf “sex wax” melted, hardened and enclosed in resin. The wax will turn to liquid when it gets hot and change its shape when it dries. I like that.

Grief Repair

All is metaphor, even that which we may take as fact. Human logic is fragile. The box may represent a construct of human logic. Boxes do not occur in nature. It contains wax with the translucency of human skin, threads, a needle and blood. The needle under the “skin” is a metaphor for the grief of women all over the world in their efforts to keep love and the grace of human relationships and community whole, despite a world which seems eternally based on war and conflict. The needle is used for healing. The box is a prayer for continued courage and creativity.