FLIGHT OF THE INNOCENTS (People Move)

INNOCENT #1 This installation of seven suspended sculptures conceptualizes the impact of climate change on women and children forced to flee from homelands impacted by drought and flood.
Reclaimed vintage baby dress sourced from Who Gives A Scrap, encaustic, hand waxed threads, hand stitched embroidery, wire,18 x14 x 13 (+22” descending threads). Available December 2021 from Kreuser Gallery.

An apropos quote I discovered while reviewing my personal 1991 journal written by Ralph Ellison, pg 85, “The Second Black Renaissance:”
“Flight is an inherently ambiguous term, connecting freedom and desertion alike.”

People Move. They move for many reasons. They always have.

In the USA, we're lucky. We have big space, big options, to move for any reason...jobs, family, personal preferences regarding city vs. country, ocean vs desert vs mountains vs prairies.

In the last two years, how many people do you know who have moved? I have friends who have moved from Alaska to here (Colorado Springs), from here to Phoenix, from here to Washington state, from NYC to here.

In other parts of the world, people must cross borders to move the distances we Americans take for granted as possibilities. Ken Burn's film “The Dust Bowl” documents the man-made ecological disaster that precipitated the mass migrations of the 1930's. For instance, Colorado farmers from the San Luis Valley moved north to the mountains become miners. And for generations in America, families have moved “up,” seeking safer neighborhoods to raise their children.

In most of the world, people are born into families that reside in small geographic countries in which climate change has impacted their ability to raise the traditional crops that sustained their ancestors. As Mother Nature demonstrates that climate change is here to stay, the impacts on a population's ability to survive a location with flooding or famine will continue to create climate refugees.

Bottom line: People don't just naturally want to pick up and abandon the place they've lived for generations without good reason. The artificial borders we define as countries are barriers that kill.

Women and children, the innocents, are fleeing countries not because they want to live in another country, but because they must, for survival. It's a problem without an answer.

Solutions can only begin once we understand that these climate refugees are acting out of desperation rather than criminality.

Raising awareness of the global refugee crisis through Art. The full installation provided a visual way to process the enormity of 25 million – the approximate number of refugees estimated by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees when this project commenced.My contribution to the international collaborative art project, “25 Million Stitches.”

MENDING A SOCK

“THINGS FALL APART,” Encaustic on Panel, 24 x 24. From “The Clothes We Wear,” upcoming December 2021 solo exhibition at Kreuser Gallery. A percentage of all sales from this exhibition will be donated to Who Gives a SCRAP/Art SWAP 501c3 to support children's local programming.

Like many whose childhood occurred during the 1950's and 1960's, I grew up with hand-me-downs from an older cousin or sibling. It was a make-do concept championed by parents whose own childhood was shaped by the 1930's depression era. We shopped for new apparel once a year, school clothing and shoes, at JC Penney's, Wards, or Sears.

Thus for me, all I dreamt of was buying new. By the time I was living on my own, a transformation in the clothing industry was emerging that suited my desire (and thin budget) for all things new. With the 1992 signing of NAFTA and the outsourcing of American garment manufacturing, a new era in clothing manufacturing erupted. Fast Fashion arrived with the emergence of retailers such as Zara, H&M, Old Navy and American Eagle, companies born of cheap overseas labor.

Over the last forty years, marketing and cut-rate pricing has created our see now, buy now, discard now approach to contemporary fashion. For the past two years, I have been working on creating an exhibition that calls our attention to viable alternatives to a closet full of cheaply made, unsustainably sourced clothing.

One such approach is to extend the life of an article of clothing with mending. Although I learned how to sew in my teens, and my mother made many of our family's clothing with her Singer sewing machine, I don't remember much mending.

Mending was not part of my way of being; my generation viewed mending as a signifier of poverty in that one could not afford to buy new. Presently, however, the tide has turned and the term “visible mending” is trending as a badge of honor. So how is it that I've moved from feeling shame at the thought of wearing mended clothing, to this present sense of deep satisfaction at accomplishing a small, funky mending of my favorite Darn Tough Vermont merino wool socks?

Kate Sekules (clothes historian, writer, mender), in an 8/26/21 Selvedge Magazine Newsletter article “Why Do We Mend?” states it best: “mending is coming back as more and more people understand the mess we're in with our metastasized fashion industry. It's insane to keep consuming. Creative interventions in the trillions of existing garments can keep us going for decades….we forget how incredibly valuable fabric always was, until not much more than a century ago, how universal was the need to preserve the precious resource.”

She goes on to note that “taking control of one's own wardrobe and relationship to fashion via visible mending is a link to one's deeper self, the freedom, the permission to play. Mending is also an art form—a scrappy one. It's extemporizing with cloth and thread, a creative, personal process that's way more than repairing.”

Thusly, when I look down at my foot and see the healed tear in my sock, the visible mending signifies courage and strength, a beauty mark even. A smartness and skill to extend life. A rebel even, against our over consumptive culture. My part in keeping a piece of clothing out of the landfill.

I'd love to hear if you've taken up mending, your history towards the skill, and what you're doing to battle the environmental ills of Fast Fashion.

Blog #6: Week 44 of “Staying In”...To Wax or Not To Wax.

White Gypsy beer, image snagged from @eirebrews. But that could’ve been my hand!

“A White Gypsy
Sits Beside A Constant Stream
Under A Bi-Polar Sky
With That Broken-Doll Look”

“White Gypsy,” Work in Progress, Hand embroidery on Vintage Linen, 2020 - 2021.

Inspired by the Irish craft beer “White Gypsy,” I wrote this poem in 2016 during Nard's and my month-long residency in Listowel, Ireland. I'm using it as the embroidered text for a Work-In-Progress on vintage linen, which also utilizes a figure drawn from a 2007 painting I made when acrylic was my primary medium. Interesting to note the many ways in which an artist's repertoire gets re-imagined over time.

Figure Study, Acrylic on Wood, 2007.

As with much of my current body of work, I plan to suspend the finished piece as a free hanging form so that both the front and back sides of the stitching are visible. This is a carrying forth of the concept initiated with the “Baby Talk” series I did for my 2019 installation, “I Never Played With Dolls.” The need for considerations of “both sides” is a concept that has been a thing for me over the course of the past four years of deepening societal polarization.

“White Gypsy,” WIP, front side.

“White Gypsy,” WIP, back side.

Installation of “Baby Talk” series, 2019. Hand stitched embroidery on Vintage Linens, waxed and suspended to reveal both sides.

A willingness to view both sides symbolizes my hope for citizens of our country to lean in to characteristics such as respect, acceptance, consideration, and kindness. It also means that during last week's January 6th insurgency on our nation's Capitol, I spent the day with the tv remote control in my hand constantly switching channels, with the intention of viewing disparate points of view regarding the deeper implications of the event. With less than a week until President-Elect Joe Biden's inauguration, we are all waiting to see how the politics of our country plays out.

Parallel to this historic moment, I stand here in my studio fussing and fuming over seemingly inconsequential decisions such as how to proceed on this “White Gypsy” piece. Should I wax the entire piece as I did the “Baby Talk” pieces, or should I preserve the softness of the linen and hand stitching by waxing only the center figure. Or, perhaps, no wax at all? After all, once waxed, there's no going back.

“Test” piece to examine how the wax vs no wax looks on linen. You can see the transparency effect upon the waxed fabric and tissue paper image.

Further, I even question myself about the PC of the phrase “white gypsy.” Might some consider combining “white” and “gypsy” an offensive labeling of the Irish ethnic minority group known as “Travellers?” Like many young teen girls of the 1960's, my favorite Halloween garb was dressing in the stereotype of a gypsy woman. The concept of a nomadic, free-from-societal norms gypsy woman was incredibly appealing to a girl seeking to break free from then-current societal expectations that suitable vocational aspirations included careers such as becoming a teacher or a secretary. Thus, in my mind, PC or not, the poetic suggestion of psychic conflict within the concept of a free spirited White Gypsy jives quite compactly within my own very white personal iconography.

I'm curious and open to your feedback on any of these thoughts.