For me, the hardest part of being an artist is rejection. As artists, it’s so hard just to get past our inner critics and put our work out for the public/curators/collectors to judge. And when we do, we open ourselves up to criticism and rejection. Now I’ve been very lucky, most of the time people ooh and ah, and I get plenty of compliments and encouragement. But when I hear a “no” it’s louder than any accolade.

I applied for the Bellevue Arts Museum Fiber Biennial and I didn’t get in. Yes, it was very competitive and there were many talented artists who didn’t make the cut. Yes, it’s not a reflection on the quality of my work but that it didn’t fit the curatorial vision. Yes, when one door closes another one opens.

Blah, blah, blah.

I’ve been moping around for a couple days, licking my wounds. I think it’s healthy and necessary to a point. We all need to feel those feelings of grief, of disappointment, of the loss of an opportunity. It’s not healthy to stuff our feelings.

Artist Trust put up a link to a Huffington Post article by Karen Atkinson “Reasons for Rejection and What You Can Do About It for Artists.” It’s well worth reading. My favorite quote:

“If you are not getting rejected often, you are not applying for enough things.”

So it’s time to go back to the studio, put on my apron, and make messes until I know what the next thing will be. I need to foster those little shoots of ideas, coddle them until they are strong enough to face the public. I need to make work, apply to shows, and take that risk of rejection.

Nobody is going to come find me in my studio to proclaim me a genius so I better get out there and show them what I can do.

In January the gallery has a Back Room Gala where they clean the preview area from top to bottom, put up as much art as they can tastefully include, and invite their collectors over for some wine and cheese. This year they thought, as long as they were going to all that work, they might as well share it with the public as well. I visited on Friday and snapped a few photos.

It’s still a thrill for me to see my work up at such a beautiful and well-respected gallery. They show a variety of work by artists from emerging to established and the quality of work is top-notch. And the staff is so nice and so supportive of me and my work it makes me pinch myself.

I hope it was a successful night for them with lots of red dots!

Stone One: Boulder, 2011

Here’s the artist statement for the new series.

This new series, Stone, is inspired by recent travels through the landscape of the American West. Evoking concepts of time and memory, the work explores the idea of stone as both permanent and ephemeral. The Earth is solid and yet it is malleable. Time, wind, and water all make their mark on it. The inherent contrast in these pieces lie in that they mimics hard stone yet are made from soft materials.

Last Thursday, January 5th, was the opening for the group show I’m in at Foster/White and the premiere of my new series, Stone. Uncharacteristically, I was working up to the last minute as you will know if you keep up here on my blog. I actually delivered the final piece on the morning of the opening after having spent 12 hours hand-stitching it the day before. But in the end, it was all worth the effort. The pieces look great together and the lighting makes them glow.

It’s a terrific show with large-scale installations by Evan Blackwell, George Rodriguez, and Eva Isakson. They are also featuring work by Rachel Denny, a Portland artist new to the gallery who works in fiber. There are also a number of new pieces by Guy Laramee, a sculptor who works with books, who’s work is fantastic. Other artists in the show include Stephanie Ashby, Merrilee Moore, Bratsa Bonifacho, Clare Belfrage, Kevin Piepel, and others. The show cohesive, with lots of sculpture and makes really good use of the space. My husband commented that it felt more like a contemporary art museum than a gallery.

See it if you’re in the Seattle area before January 28th.

Alan attaching the first wish to the Fire Bird

2011 was my fifth year of attending Burning Man, a temporary city of over 50,000 in the middle of the harsh environment of the Black Rock Desert of Nevada. Burning Man means many things to many people. Some see it as an opportunity to cut loose from the norms of society and party their naked asses off. That’s not why I go.

For me Burning Man is a place for art and community. It is an amazing blank canvas surrounded by sky. People work so very hard in tremendously difficult conditions to give their art to the community for just one week. Much of it is burned at the end of that time. The effort and beauty are awe inspiring, even if a piece doesn’t completely work.

This year’s Fire Bird was my third attempt at bringing art to Black Rock City. The first two didn’t really work. Stone, metal, wood, and fire are all mediums that translate well to the playa, fabric not so much. Strong winds and the ever present fine alkaline dust create challenges. Every time I think I have it figured out I am reminded not so gently that, no, I don’t have it figured out quite yet.

getting ready for installation

Lesson one: nothing ever happens at Burning Man quite the way you planned it. Installation was relatively easy given that upon arrival I was told that my space wouldn’t be ready until 8pm and that we had to be out of Center Camp by 8pm because there was a private party there. A head scratcher for sure. It all worked out with my trusty assistants, Alan and Corey, there to help. Some quick edits, some additional structure, and some flexibility and we got it done. It really looked great.

Lesson two: everything instantly gets covered with playa dust. This actually didn’t bother me at all. It felt as if the piece became a part of the playa although I could have skipped the step of dyeing the reed.

covered in dust

Lesson three: Burning Man is really distracting. Duh. Although some people got the idea and added to the effigy on their own, it was much more active when there was someone there to tell them about it. I found this difficult to do but Cat, my wonderful campmate, spent time there encouraging people to interact with it. It was lovely to see people get the idea and witness their interactions.

Lesson four: carrying a really long piece of unlit fabric in the dark with people zooming around (high) on bikes isn’t a good idea. Duh again. Luckily Alan and Corey thought this one through before I did and we kept the fabric short while carrying the effigy and fabric to the fire.

Lesson five: trying to get people who are tripping at the remains of the Man fire to move and/or hold a long piece of fabric is very difficult.

Lesson six: as an artist I am merely creating a space or structure where an audience can choose to participate by attaching their own meaning. In this case, I was honored to get to witness this.

Lesson seven and the most important: I can’t do this alone. Although the concept was mine, many hands, hearts, and minds touched the Fire Bird to make it what it was.

In some ways the installation fell short of my expectations. I wished for higher participation. And I really wanted to see that 150 foot long piece of fabric carried out the fire in a solemn procession. If I choose to make art for Burning Man again I want to site it on the playa itself. I think that I’ve learned enough now that I could do that. Successfully? I don’t know.

I can’t thank Rumor Camp enough for their embrace of this project. It still would have been pretty and we still would have burned it, but without the pre-ritual that Rabbit led in our camp and the intention that we seven camp mates put into it, it wouldn’t have had the depth of meaning that it came to have for me. I was touched beyond measure. The eight necklaces that Alan made, one for each camp mate and one that hung in the Fire Bird, gave us each a token to hold on to that is imbued with the meaning of the project. I’m wearing mine now.

The installation far exceeded my expectations in the meaning it had for me. Seeing people interact with it genuinely and hearing what it meant to my camp mates made it truly represent a Rite of Passage. It was personal.

And the Burn itself? It was powerful. Asking people nicely, yet firmly, to please clear a path and hold the fabric. Standing at the edge of that powerful heat and making the decision to walk into it with Rabbit and put the Fire Bird into the embers. Watching the Fire Bird catch and then be consumed by the flames. Feeling that intense heat be absorbed into my core self. Collecting the fabric back from those holding it and being thanked and hugged by those who had witnessed the Transformation. I can still feel all that.

Yeah, it was powerful.

into the embers

transformed into heat and ash

I’ll be using the 150-foot-long piece of silk I dyed for BM a few years ago. I’m going to drape it like a valance across a 12 foot pole that spans the entrance to an alcove formed where the shade cloth comes down to the ground. I’ll be making a Fire Bird, or Phoenix, effigy out of rattan, paper, and perhaps some fabric. People will be able to add remembrances and stories of transformation to the effigy over the course of the week. Saturday night after the Man burns, we will take down the fabric, unwind it from its pole, and process with the fabric and effigy to the remains of the Man fire. There we will cast it into the flames and the Phoenix will be consumed by the fire.

Or something like that.

We just got home from Veneta, Oregon last night around 9pm. It was a long day packing up and traveling home from the Oregon Country Fair. It was a lovely year, no rain, no heat, no major traffic jams. Just a good time with friends and family, seeing shows, eating at Tofu Palace, wandering the paths and listening to and playing music.

This was our fourth year of creating Yew Are Here, a living room space where people can relax amid beautiful surroundings, day or night. It was gratifying because it feels as if people finally know where we are and appreciate and look for the space. I was really glad that I pushed myself to make the new Tower Lanterns. They really pulled the space together. It feels cohesive now and even more inviting.

The Fair is very, very different from a fine art environment. People interact with things, even get inside the lanterns. I had not one but two couples comment while I was there that the Towers would make really good enclosures for their outdoor showers for their RVs. Yeah, great except for the poles running through the center of them. One couple even asked me, “How much?” I told them $1500 and, funny, they didn’t pursue it.

I really enjoy the work I do for festivals but it’s not the work I make for the gallery. The Fair is good family time. And that’s okay.

the kids got to ride in a new kind of back seat while setting up

the Arctic Tern puppets flying above the path

It’s at this time, when faced with 18 yards of waxy silk, that I wonder “What was I thinking?”

The wash out is always a chore. The soy wax washes out completely in hot water and soap which is much better than the old days of ironing out wax between newspaper and never getting the residue out without dry cleaning. But it takes a lot of work, a lot of hot water, and makes a mess.

And I was very unhappy to find that the biggest panels didn’t turn out the way I had hoped. I was looking for spirals of warm yellows and orange on a background of rich reds. It turns out my waxed spiral designs with their expressive brush strokes didn’t hold up to the dye and all I got were yellow splotches. Bummer.

So I redid the spirals with much bolder wax lines and overdyed with darker reds. The fabric actually turned out really well, but I hadn’t budgeted time for that extra step. So I have been humping the last few days to get it done. Sewing my little fingers off while my hubbie did all the gathering, packing, and errand running for the rest of the installation. And tonight we got them done in time to finish the rest of the packing before we hit the road for Oregon tomorrow.

I think they turned out pretty well.

Next layer is dyeing. I used the dyes in a thin solution and, because I’m doing a direct application, I used urea in the chemical water along with my fix mix of soda ash buffered with baking soda. I used two different blues on the Water fabric but three dyes each on the Sun and the Earth. I used big brushes and it goes pretty fast but it’s a workout moving all that fabric around. This is where it would be nice to have a bigger studio where I could lay out three yards of fabric at a time. Oh well, I’ve figured out ways to do it over the years and I make it work.

The next step is waxing designs onto the silks. This is the fun part. It’s like drawing with wax. It’s also a little nerve wracking because it’s pretty final. You can wash out the wax but it takes a lot of work and, in this case, there’s no time. So spirals, leaves, and waves then on to the next layer of dye.