Spring

It’s been a busy 2025 so far, which is spectacular. I’ve sold a few things, been in 2 publications and 5 gallery shows across the country and in the Pittsburgh area. Currently I have a few pieces in Lyrical Abstraction at the Stifle Arts Center through June and 3 upcoming shows in Norfolk, Minneapolis and New Castle this summer.

My work is evolving in interesting ways (to me anyway). I think more than anything, what I find fascinating is how the line between human form and landscape is incredibly blurry. As above so below, micro -macro, whatever you want to call it. The work keeps taking me deeper and deeper and that’s the end goal, I think. It’s the admin part of all this that makes me insane. I have yet to come up with a good way to catalogue and inventory where art is, where it’s going and when I have to pick it up or ship it out. I’m not sure how to store it… I have a bunch of canvas and now I’m collecting 3d pieces like it’s my job. Works on paper are somewhat easier but then I have to remember where I put which piece. Have I mentioned I have a spicy brain, and all of this wrangling makes me anxious and stressed and then the dumb organ just totally turns off.

I guess updates are as follows: everything is coming up Milhouse but I’m, also, still Milhouse. So.

Maybe by summer?

Ana Mendieta

Last year in bookclub we read Anita Demonte Laughs Last. It is a fictionalized account of Ana Mendietas death at the hands of her ‘artistic genius' husband.I didn’t know it was based on a true story when I began it. (Great book btw). I’ve been doing the deep dive, and although her medium is much different than mine, her passion and raw honesty are something for which I strive. Her murder and the polarization of the New York art world in the 80s still has lasting effects to this day. But not in the way one would think. It is the absence of conversation, the void into which her existence was thrown, like her body from the husband's ’s loft window. The refusal to hold the man accountable because his art was capital A Art. Big money built on the idea of minimalism.

It is infuriating, her story dovetailed and ending with him. He requested a bench trial because his defense team knew the average person wouldn’t know the Artist, The Genius. But the judge assigned to the case fancied himself an art connoisseur and that was the best bet they had. And it worked.

Even though he had scratch marks on his face and back. Even though she was pathologically afraid of heights (the defense argued she climbed up onto the windowsill on the 34th floor and either jumped or lost her balance). Even though there were no footprints on the sill. Even though his story changed 3 times.

And for the art community, it wasn’t so much a question of IF but Did it Matter? Wasn’t his legacy heavier than the act? And she WAS a lot.

This story sticks with me, the way she was erased because she was too much, too argumentative, too loud, too passionate. She was too feminine in the wrong ways. Matriarchal anger is not lady like.

Anyway. Check out the podcast Death of an Artist. I think the next artist she does is Pollock. The interviews are good.

*pictured Anima

Hot mess express

The hardest thing about existing as an artist is the networking. I've never been what you would call a skilled conversationalist. My ealiest memories of being forced to talk to strangers are painful and gross. I heard the word 'backward' alot. Thinking about socializing can make my brain go into overdrive and I am exhausted before I even get to the event. If I don't get an immediate headache. And I am not writing about this to elicit sympathy, but rather to offer a deeper understand of my reliance on imagery to communicate.

About 10 years ago I made a concentrated effort at putting my artwork out into the world. Self awareness is a bitch when it comes to owning your awkwardness and limitations. I had no idea how to 'be professional' as in I know WHAT to do I just cannot make my meat suit comply. I began introducing myself by aknowledging my socially anxious and nervous twitching and corner lurking. That it is indeed very obvious and hard to corral, but that I am present and trying. It took me until age 35 to be able to comfortably carry my uncomfortableness.

Images are where it’s at for me. Speaking and writing about emotions really upsets people. I have been reprimanded for my dramatics, accused of being an attention whore and told I am dangerous. Leading people astray with my talk of self-awareness and integration of life experience, traumatic and glorious, being a way to become a fully realized person. It is easier for me to create an image. Something that gives you space to feel a feeling, a focus for the feeling.

What I know is people can see these spaces I create. They respond with joy or curiosity or overstimulation or repugnance or confusion. Some of the feedback I get is the viewer can FEEL the piece. That is something, I think.

Krasner to the rescue

I spend a lot of time watching paint dry. I like it. The shiny, wet slowly being overtaken by the matte. In some ways a walking meditation. I've been thinking alot about the abstract. How most of womanhood is a complete abstraction to maleness. That simply telling a straightforward story may be indecipherable to some. I thnk that's why the Profiles in Nature have taken a more abstract turn. The deeper the honesty I end up tapping, the more obscure the refrence. And so on, with the colors and mark making. I think there is more interpretation required in viewing realism, no hints in the thickness of paint or line. I did just read a Kasner quote that said "All art is Abstract", and I felt at once seen and cradled by the wisdom of the women artists before me.

January 2025

I think I am going to try and write here more regularly. Something about the documentation of the working process and thoughts and environment feel like an important element to my body of work. I just completed an interview for PJAS (Pennsylvania Journal of Arts and Science) speaking to the impact of environment and daily life on an artist’s works. We are all just teabags floating in the ocean of existence. We color the water, and the water moves through us. I cannot understand believing one’s creations, whether musical, visual or linguistic, are not built of the stuff of their life. My body and brain are held hostage by the hormone cascade that skiddles through my cells. I am my chemical makeup. That chemical makeup is affected on the daily by environmental interactions. Fight or Flight. The dopamine cookie. The message is refracted through that prism. Even the gestation of that message is refracted through the prism. Long rainbow shadows across the floor of my mind.

I am curious to see where this blog will meander. I have never been really interested in explaining my technical approach, maybe it's time to investigate? Who knows!

Across January and February, I have work in 7 shows. From Terra Haute, Indiana to Temple University and a whole bunch of spots in Pittsburgh and print in between. Most times, when looking at the actual list of places I am actively showing, I am surprised. Pleasantly so, Imposter Syndrome is real. Be careful out there.

Leo and Vinny

It is fascinating the power that gesture holds. Both Leonardo and Vincent speak at length about the importance of draftsmanship in regard to understanding the body. What I don’t think is quite as focused upon is the follow up to that statement which is, in regard to understanding the body so as to utilize it as a vehicle of human spirit and emotion. Men trying desperately to free soul and make it visible to the world. It was never about the mathematical perfection but understanding the perfect form and adjusting for each expression of individuality. They found perfection in the natural world and humans are a part of nature.

We are obsessed at reaching a perfection innate to our existence.

I approach all subjects with this desire to capture the essence, the spirit expression of the thing, whatever it may be. Energy portraiture I used to call it, when my subjects had a more constant botanical theme.

Friday 11/8

I think I've finally distilled the nature of my work down to micro/macro. I want my work translatable from a distance, but truly seen from very close up. For the viewer to get lost in the plane of the canvas, appreciate the dramatically subtle interplay between line and shape and color.

It’s about the little things. Being so close to the piece, your view naturally abstracts the truncated perspective. To find harmony deep within the balance of composition is a delightful nesting doll and what keeps me working, falling in love with making as the ultimate act of authenticity. Art for artsake is truly art for human sake. And that is worthy.

Color Soliloquy

My whole life I have used art as a language. Colors are my numbers to a mathematician. It isn’t even just as they are, what they are….it is them in relation - to each other, to their own negative space, to texture and light.

There is grounding in color. Rules. And yet unfurling, new truths discovered every movement or so.

The act of making art, seeing and allowing and creating gives me a sense of belonging, a way to tap into the humanness that connects us all. Like birth. And color is my vehicle.

The first sketchbook drawing I did my sophomore year of high school that included color was a quick still life sketch of my bed post and various things I had hanging. My Miss Honey of an art teacher left a little post it note that just said ‘Color!! More, more!’

Indeed, Mrs.Hilbish.

I wonder sometimes if perhaps my ability to see so many colors in what others see as a single color is what drives me to create. I want others to see, too. The neurodiverse yearning for understanding.

My brain, between electrical storms and extra synapses, has been quite dramatic lately. Which is how the ER doctor described my FL41 glasses in his report. ‘Patient wore sunglasses, dramatic effect.’ Specialized migraine glasses are as dramatic as a cane or walker or hearing aid. Fuck, my dude. But of course, I am a hysterical, fainting woman.

Exits the room in Miss Piggy fashion.

Poem from Amy Bornmans workshop

White wall speckled like eggs

With dreams

Sorrow

Ailments

Definitions

Who we are, as women.

White wall graffiti

- more faery

- less shepherd

magic of motherhood

Birther of invisible lines

Ties generations.

Our sanity strung from the ceiling

A room full of lore,

As the middle school girls say.

Prequel, they all assume

But we are still children, too.

Into our next phase

Exploring

And still curious

Aimee

Oh Boy

Becoming a mom completely halted my practice. I created 2 paintings in 7 years. No drawings. It was as if my creative self was 100% occupied with figuring out how to create healthy humans. And then I wanted to make my husband a birthday gift, something special. And I did a portrait of him and our oldest as a baby looking out into the ocean. Something cracked open with that piece. Something irrepressible.

I find the older I get the closer I come to returning to my youth in terms of authenticity and simple expression. The message may be complex but it is clearly a message from my consciousness to the world. Allowing the hollow bone to funnel. It is a frightening thing to recognize how far down you can stuff your truth in the spirit of not causing a fuss. Simply because I haven’t spoken out I am suspect when I do find my voice. Not really sure what this rambling is for other than another outlet for the nameless whisp. I’m awful tired and yet so content.

I find now my children inspire me daily to create. I am stitching a roadmap.

New Year Same Crazy

Career, Trajectory. Discipline. Practice.

They all feel so far away from play to me. So heavy and serious and complicated. I have been chastised for daring to say this aloud. Amateur. Unprofessional. The innuendoes are enough to wash away the staunchest self-promoter. Honestly, though, it’s my truth. If I hear the word ‘Grind’ one more time in regard to how I approach my art I may just grind to a halt.

Perhaps creating in a moss clogged vacuum is jusr a fantasy world but who creates fantasy worlds? ARTISTS! Yes, I am not the first creative to wring my dirty hands at the state of practical affairs but truly this cash game is out of control. I need to create before I can market and manage and sell myself. All of those things are not authentically me, and to create GOOD work I need to be me. My head is in the game, it’s just in MY game.

Play is where the good lessons happen. So please, don’t ask me about my work. Ask me about my play.

Reworking

I’ve been revisiting some old pieces and working back into them, pulling color and shape. There is so much in surviving the last few years that has leant itself to rework… viewpoints, definitions of normal and reality, my why’s. In any time of cleansing, we are offered a chance to prune and remold and I am taking my turn.

On the rehashing block is a landscape previously published as a lit magazine cover. I like the idea of a visual maturation being catalogued, a snapshot of evolution. The deliberate reconfiguration of a previously finished piece is a liberation for me during a time of limited control.

detail of WIP