Reform, 2017-2018
Mixed media Installation
Dimensions Variable
In Painting Reform, I breakdown painting, both the frame and the color. I look at the dark and its relationship to light. I study the hidden, the trashed, the obscured negative. I dismantle house, restoring it through change, much like my immigrant parents.
Exhibited: At ReachArts Gallery's inaugural exhibition, "Chasing Shadows"
2017 Residency
Poppiano, Vasari’s Studio
Contagion (Fig,) 2016
Mixed Media
19” x 13” each
Spot, Light, 2017
Mixed media,
Dimensions Variable
In “Spot, Light,” I work with themes of erasure and recognition. I embed portraits of victims of police brutality within soap which are slowly revealed as participants wash their hands. Illuminated with light and color, I then preserve and display these cracked, painful images.
Spot, Light, Kimani 2016
Transfer on soap, colored tape and Velcro on light
3.5” x 3.5” x .75”
Installed at Gallery 263, Cambridge. All proceeds go to Black Lives Matter.
Spot, Light, Michael 2016
Transfer on soap, colored tape and Velcro on light
3.5” x 3.5” x .75”
Spot Light, Sean
Transfer on soap, colored tape and Velcro on light
3.5” x 3.5” x .75”
2016
Spot, Light, Texas Teen
Transfer on soap, colored tape and Velcro on light
3.5” x 3.5” x .75”
2016
Spot, Light, Trayvon
Transfer on soap, colored tape and Velcro on light
3.5” x 3.5” x .75”
2016
Bruised, Capital Cleanse, 2015
Cast Soap, Embedded Tape Transfer, Bleeding Ink (left), 2"diameter
Trayvon Martin (Preschool Graduation) Tape Transfer, Bleeding Ink revealed through washing (right), 2 "diameter
In Bruised, I look at the victims of police brutality. I embed their image within soap. (Please see Capital Cleanse.) The image bruises, stains and cuts into the soft material which is revealed as participants wash their hands. The project was installed at Vermont College of Fine Arts as part of "Art as Advocacy," a 2015 Alumni Symposium. It was presented in the talk "Capitol Cleanse: Skin Tone and Privilege." https://vcfa.edu/2015-alumni-symposium-videos
Fluid Remains, 2016
Grease and watercolor on ceramic ware
12” x 8.375” x 2”
Reflective George, Capital Cleanse Series 2017
Installation Shot
Site: Restroom, Gallery 263, Cambridge
Eric Garner holding his granddaughter
15-Year-Old Tackled by Police
Eric Garner
My Skin Color is Not a Crime
Wife of Eric Garner
My Skin Color is Not a Crime II
Embroidery Circle as a form of Protest, 1/21/2017
as part of Angela Voulgarelis’ participatory project
Airing Dirty Laundry
“Don’t be too shrill, quiet, polite, rude.”
Embroidery Circle as a form of Protest, 1/21/2017
as part of Angela Voulgarelis’ participatory project
Airing Dirty Laundry
Site: Gallery 263
Embroidery Circle as a form of Protest, 1/21/2017
as part of Angela Voulgarelis’ participatory project
Airing Dirty Laundry
Site: Gallery 263
M/othering, 2017
Reception
http://gallery263.com/exhibitions/past/mothering/
M/othering, 2017
Reception
http://gallery263.com/exhibitions/past/mothering/
2.
Monoprint, 10"x 8.5"
$50
3.
Oil on Acetate, 9"x 12"
$100
4.
Monoprint, 10"x 14"
$100
6.
Monoprint, 9.5"x 8.75"
$75
7.
Monoprint, 9.5"x 8.75"
$75
8.
Monoprint, 9.5"x 8.75"
$75
9.
Oil on Acetate, 9.75" x 8"
$75
Sold
9. Detail
Sold
10.
Oil on Acetate, 9.75" x 8"
$75
Sold
15.
Monoprint, 10" x 14"
$100
Sold
16.
Monoprint, 10" x 14"
$100
In Impermanent Resident, I provide two hundred bars of soap for the Fung Wah Biennial.
I question the process of ‘naturalization.’ Each participant erases an engraved word, such as gender, used to identify an individual on a Certificate of Naturalization. Soaps are wrapped in current, twenty-three page application form that asks questions like: "Have you ever been a habitual drunkard?"
Impermanent Resident, 2016
Engraved Soap, sizes variable
I
Clogging the Drain, No. 86224 (Impermanent Resident Series,) 2016
Lint, dust and colored pencil on tape, washed
Site: Washington Wardman Park Marriott, CAA Conference, February 5, 2016
Impermanent Foundation, 2014-present
Unfired Clay, Dimensions Variable
In Impermanent Foundation, I look at Classical busts and bring them back into the landscape. I also document the figure as it breaks down and becomes the landscape.
Dar·link \ˈdär-ˈliŋk\ : creating a different structure based on caring for one another, 2014
Project with Anitra Haendel as part of Diane Jacobs' $PEAK OUT. Add your voice here: http://www.dianejacobs.net/work/263
The following 40 quotes written by Anitra Haendel were laser cut into 25 one dollar bills and 15 five dollar bills.
In She $PEAKS, I take quotes from a handwritten notebook Anitra and I passed back and forth from 2005 to 2010. I continue our collaboration post Ani's untimely death and aim to redefine death, seeing it not as an end, but a point in a continuum.
Review: (p.72-75) "A Change is Gonna Come"
Feel(s) like death.
First, we have to answer to ourselves alone
for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.
How else will you morph?
I believe
I can see Beauty
I can sit with pain. of mine or yours. I can sit too long!
I fail.
I shout “Yes!” my “failures.”
I trust her
I want to fix the pain!
I want to know if you can sit with pain
mine or your own, without moving to hide it, or fade it, or fix it.
I will stand in the fire with you
It is a dark cold scary place, scared of living – I am not afraid of further pain
Listen to ourselves + our intuitions
Long live the dance of wildness
Love overcomes all grief.
Morph, shed skin
My sorrow + grief –I want to get to that place of pain with someone close.
Most vulnerable most true and most alive!
S/he will be safe!
She taught me how to love myself.
She wants to take care of them; but needs to take care of herself first. (FYI
Someone close. Most true. Does birthing a child take you there?
O(h) Wonderful Childbirth! A whole new universe has just surfaced.
Sorry sorry
the center of your own sorrow, fear of further pain. (with arrows)
This is the main question
This is the main question
Trust myself
+ trust that pain is necessary
What more is there? (after
When all else falls away
I want to know if you can be alone with yourself
Yes, I can
Yes I have touched the center of my sorrow.
You keep the empty moments.
You must see outside that pain +
You’re here to shout with me
Capital Cleanse, 2014-present
In Capital Cleanse, I cast 50 bars of soap 2" in diameter; a box of George Washington's, a box of quarters, (spare change, exchange, change.) I provide soap for public restrooms throughout the US. Twelve dollars and fifty cents represents “bride price” or money exchanged for one girl sold in Nigeria, April 2014 to Boko Haram militants. I plan to multiply the project 219 times representing all the girls sold into sex slavery.
The project has evolved to an online conversation on economics; an exploration on superficiality in skin tone and its link to privilege; and into portraits of Native Americans, the founding mothers and fathers of America, which will be cast in bronze, made permanent, while over ten thousand George Washington’s, or capital, are made with the intent to be used, to change and disappear.
Published: "Art for Everyone" Chapter 3.7 Installation and Performance Art
Participating institutions:
Anticipated: Capital Cleanse, Oregon State Penitentiary, Salem, OR.
Capital Cleanse, Bruised “Art as Advocacy,” Vermont College of Fine Arts, Montpelier, VT.
Capital Cleanse, “A Change Is Gonna Come,” Augusta Savage Gallery, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA.
Capital Cleanse, Shades of Gray, ”Roots,” On The Ground Floor, Los Angeles, CA. Includes online exchange.
Capital Cleanse, Uncertain Caucasian, “Transformation,” Pyramid Atlantic Art Center, Silver Springs, MD.
Capital Cleanse, Odds and Ends Caucasians, Museum of Science and Industry, Manchester, UK.
Capital Cleanse, Uncertain White, Cream and Lavender, Antioch University, WA. Includes online exchange.
Capital Cleanse, Hampton Inn and Suites, Portsmouth, NH. Cleaning lady exchange.
Capital Cleanse, “After the (Ten Bulls,)” Temporary Agency, Brooklyn, NY. Invitational group exhibition.
Fragrance Free III
Fragrance Free IV
Fragrance Free VI
Fragrance Free VII
Porous I
Porous III
Porous IV
Porous V
Porous VII
Porous VIII
Porous IX
Uncertain III
Uncertain V
Uncertain VIII
Untitled, (Girl), 2014
My daughter’s left over banana stubs
Untitled, (Girl), 2014
My daughter’s left over banana stubs and cleaning rag over clay bust
In Untitled (Girl), I press clay into a mold of my grandfather 232/243/272/292 times and juxtapose them with everyday objects. Similar to Nancy Spero, I see this series as a protest. It is not a war that I am protesting directly, but a much more subtle struggle, that of gendered living under patriarchy. The number represents the over three hundred girls that went missing in April 2014 this time in Nigeria.
Unstable Foundation (Us, Them), 2014
Unfired clay in water and oil on canvas and wall, 2001
Untitled (Mutual Cleanse), 2011-present
Carved and painted soap, washed
In Untitled (Mutual Cleanse), I carve and paint portraits into my grandmother’s collection of 120 bars of soap that she ‘skladovala’ (which means stored but more so, stacked with care) in her one bedroom apartment in Czechoslovakia during Communism. I bring them back to a functional state, placing them in public restrooms throughout US and Europe. Much like Janine Antoni in Lick/Lather where she slowly erased her outer appearance exploring the love-hate relationship we have with our physical appearance, I want to explore the love-hate relationships within the family/country and demonstrate one’s effect on another.
Remains, 2012
Sumi ink and shell in jar lid, washed
In Remains, I question the contents that we leave behind when life expires. What are the lasting impressions, material and immaterial, that we leave behind?
While the shell clutches to a branch, the cicada bursts through the exoskeleton. Remains I
Shells, 1998-present
Oil on ostrich egg
I have been drawing on eggs since childhood, a rich, feminine tradition especially around Easter in my native Czech Republic. As a child I was greatly aware of the egg shell’s frailty as my clumsy hands worked the surface, breaking dozens in the process. In my art making, the egg is a metaphor for the fragility of human life as I represent the portraits of my friends and family. They are given to the subject as gift.
Spoon in glove of easel, 2012
Oxide on egg shell
Consumption Bucket, 2009
A month's amount of junk mail and paper cutout in rain bucket.
In To/From Mothering Alphabet, I leave an imprint, a trace of my movement with another, specifically my child and mother. I explore interconnectedness. I fill the form with what feels more like us rather than the superficial image. We end being a joint body made of the same or similar everyday material, residual dust, hair, cobwebs, lint, bread crumbs, flour, and threads. All of the material is collected through the “mothering” process of tidying up, (keeping home) and exposed within the joint shape instead of discarded. Twenty-six symbols reveal another’s alphabet.
Published in: Storyscape Journal
and
Want Wall, 2009
Housepaint on wall
Dimensions Variable
A community based project inviting participants to write down what it is they truly want. Handwriting was then traced onto the surface of an 8 x 8 foot space.
