Bunnell’s 10 by 10 show is coming up and I felt inspired to work out some new pieces. The small scale, and unifying format of the exhibit frees me to approach each piece as an experimental opportunity to try out ideas that I’ve been pondering. Like a 10 by 10 petri dish for art.

The theme of the show this year is “in memory of” and I hold that in the back of my mind. There has been so much grief, and loss. The first step, for me, is to just try things and see where they lead:

Branches like veins/rivers, cutting stencils from orange paperboard, collecting and attaching birch branches together into a square nest or piece of sky. The papier mache barnacles I’d made this summer wrap around a panel as accretions. An unfinished drawing on canvas also gets wrapped around a panel, and I sew a zipper to scraps of an old painting, like a skin. The small breast forms that I’d made from ripped up checks are attached to a pale green ground, and then I’m thinking about equity in the home, child support, what love looks like, and the economy of care. 

I worked on about six different pieces, resolved four of them, and sparked some interesting concepts for future work. 

-CLK