behindvelvelv

Sorry, everyone, I'm kind of a newbie at this bloggin' biz and I had comments set to be screened, but I apparently didn't unscreen them successfully...even though I could see them on my computer, but maybe it was just 'cuz I was logged in? If anyone is out there, reading this, please let me know if you can see the comments now...I think I changed the settings so that comments can just be posted automatically, but I kept one of the settings that is supposed to make it harder for spam to get through (though LiveJournal's caveat is that it also makes it harder for regular users, so I'm not sure what that means!).

Thanks!!

And if you haven't seen them yet, photos from our first installation are posted on our website (well, actually on picassa to which I've linked on our website). In terms of my ever catching up technologically, I'd like to close with my favorite Swahili proverb...

haba na haba hujaza kibaba (little by little the jug is filled)...

Don't you have something you can post as a comment for us to include in our installation?!?!?

What are you wishing for today? Post, please....

I wish for more hours today than there are in a day. (It's a wish, no one said it had to be realistic!) And in the absence of more time, I wish for godspeed...

This is the collage I made three years ago in response to Lea's poem "White Season/3"...


Below is what I wrote about it for an exhibit submission...

Behind Your Velvet Elvis (where Time stands still)

mixed media on cardboard, 39 x 44 cm

This collage was conceived and created in stolen moments of time, when I was at my desk working on another project, in between domestic duties while my baby napped and late at night when the house was uncharacteristically silent. The piece collaborates with the poem White Season/3 by Lea Graham (From Calendar Girls. Ottawa, Canada: above/ground press, 2006). Thematically Graham draws upon the myth of Persephone, re-imagining the story as if the Goddess of the Underworld spent the winter drinking wine in her girlfriend’s kitchen instead of residing with Hades.

As a new mother, I have precious little time to indulge in long chats over cheap wine with my friends, but for weeks White Season/3 hung over my desk where I subconsciously conversed with Graham’s words. I knew that I wanted to create a piece of artwork that somehow collaborated with the poem (which centralizes time in both the kairos and the chronos sense), but I was out of canvas and waiting for the chance to replenish my supply. Finally, on my way to take out the recycling one day, a corner of a magazine cover caught my eye and an empty diaper box that I was about to discard became my canvas. Without Graham’s poem in front of me and without trying to consciously recall it, I paged through the February issue of Parenting and tore out images seemingly at random. Yet, when I returned to the poem, it was apparent that Graham’s words had guided my selection of imagery.

The dappling of sunlight on a tree in a promotional glossy began the collage. Although the narrative of White Season/3 is about wiling away a cold winter’s afternoon, one is left with a sense of warmth....the warmth of a kitchen as snow falls outside and the warmth of a friendship that has weathered many seasons. And, so the collage employs signifiers of summer—green grass, yellow sunshine and lemonade—promises that winter’s germinating seeds will bear fruit and flowers, the gifts of Demeter, Goddess of the Earth.

Both the poem and the collage are about time passing and what is created in between. Women who share a long history with one another inevitably construct mythologies of their own and timescapes that only they inhabit.

 

Lea Graham and Kristina Dziedzic Wright will be posting entries about their site-specific, participatory installation called Behind Your Velvet Elvis. We would welcome your input and "offerings" to our piece!!

The underlying concept of our installation is to create a shrine-like or memorial space where visitors can contribute their own thoughts, prayers, poems, wishes, hopes and secrets. The space will contain a variety of collages, assemblages and ready-mades alongside poems, quotes and other texts, including personal confessions by the artists and excerpts of letters and emails sent to them over the years. Writing surfaces and a microphone will invite visitors to add to the space and dialogue with the artists and one another.

We will be mounting the first iteration of the piece on September 18th in West Chicago for artXposium, a 3-day arts extravaganza from 19-21 September at the former home of Grobe's True Value Hardware, 103 W. Washington St.

If you're in the Chicago area, please join us!! If not, please submit comments that we can incorporate into the space...

Your wishes.........prayers........poems........hopes........perhaps a memorial to someone you love.........a testimony about something you fervently believe......(we will include your contribution anonymously if you let us know that's what you'd prefer)

Thanks and hope to see you soon!!..........KDW & LG