Visible Mending Workshop, USC Fisher Museum, Sept 10-Oct 1, 2022

Join me for a visible mending workshop as part of the Fisher Museum’s exhibition of works by Louise Bourgeois, What Is the Shape of This Problem?  During this four-day visible mending workshop, we will repair and mend in ways that don’t erase the damage but rather leave the remnants of the damage and the repair visible. We will discuss the concept of mending and repair in relation to Louise Bourgeois’ work.

Participants will be invited to bring discarded textiles and paper such as blankets, quilts, pillowcases, ripped letters, book pages, etc. to participate in this hands-on experience. All other materials will be provided. For ages 15 and older.

Dates: Saturdays, 1-2:30PM, September 10, 17, 24 & October 1, 2022.

The workshop is offered freely. Register here on USC’s website. 

Sad Clothes Clinic, July 27, 2022, 4:30 PM

Join me at Bridge Projects for this first iteration of the Sad Clothes Clinic, July 27, 2022 @ 4:30PM.

Textiles are, perhaps, our most intimate possessions. Our clothing, our bedsheets, our towels, our napkins — they cover us, comfort us, and protect us, and are often the first barrier, however fragile, between our bodies and the atmosphere. Some textiles act as talismans and some are strictly utilitarian, while others hold our deepest sorrows, disappointments, and losses, and also our joys.

In this clinic, you are invited into a collaborative mending practice with me. We will begin repairs to the worn or damaged textiles brought by participants who will then complete the mending during the workshop and at home. The act of mending could be physical, or emotional, or both. Perhaps the textile was worn by a beloved one who is no longer here, or was present for another kind of difficult transition. It may involve disassembling the textile or embellishing it, adding or taking weight away. Through the act of sewing and giving careful attention, the textile will be transformed and, perhaps, healed. Written instructions and materials will be provided for you to complete the repair.

Here After @ Bridge Projects, May 5 – July 30, 2022

Thrilled to be exhibiting Apophatic Quilt in Here After, a remarkable group exhibition exploring conceptual ideas of paradise at Bridge Projects in Los Angeles. Curated by the Bridge team, Cara Megan Lewis, Linnea Spransy, and Vicky Phung Smith, this expansive exhibition approaches what comes next with openness and generosity. On July 27, 2022, I will be presenting an interactive performance/workshop, Sad Clothes Clinic, where we will intervene with textiles that have emotional import through embellishment, repair, and, perhaps, disrepair. The workshop will begin at 4:30 PM, PST.

Exhibiting artists include:

Unseen Things Are Still There, February 27 – April 9, 2022, Riverside Art Center

Excited to be showing new work in this group exhibition curated by Joanne Aono. I’ll be exhibiting Night Quilt as well as a small grouping of felted Lladros from a new series, Reliquaries for Future Rituals. The exhibition, featuring the work of Alexandra Antoine, JB Daniel, Esau McGhee, Elsa Muñoz as well, is centered around the beautiful poem by Misuzu Kaneko, “Stars and Dandelions.” Read the poem and more about the exhibition here:

https://www.riversideartscenter.com/freearksculpturegarden/2022/02/27-unseen-things-are-still-there

Art and Hope at the End of the Tunnel @ USC Fisher Museum of Art through Dec 9, 2021

I’m honored to be included in a beautiful group exhibition at USC Fisher Museum of Art. Curated by Edward Goldman, “Art and Hope at the End of the Tunnel” features work by LA artists responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. Apophatic Quilt is a discarded quilt that I repaired with gold thread and embellished on the backside with the phrases, “not this” and “not not this.”

Apophatic theology is describing the divine or sacred by what it is not. This conceptual practice is present in many traditions. I am a student of Zen, and in our tradition, we do not stop with ‘not this.’ What is ‘not this’ is also ‘not not this.’ Everything is empty of a separate existence, a separate self, and therefore what is “not” also “is.” I felt compelled to embroider these two phrases across the entire quilt as an offering, a prayer.

You can see the quilt, along with the work of a number of wonderful artists, at the Fisher Museum through December 9, 2021.

Apophatic Quilt, 2021

Collage Sale to Fund Stargazer Projects

Quarantine Projects

I’ve worked on three main projects during our many months of quarantine and they’ve all involved collage and altering existing materials. The first one, which is ongoing, involves Betty Crocker recipe cards. I’ve been turning them into drawings and sending them to friends and friends-of-friends. My impulse throughout quarantine has been to make things to give away. The second project I’ve called “Moon_Moire,” a collaborative project with Carsten Nicolai’s Moire Index, his playful and useful reference book of moire patterns from 2013. I painted on the pages, rubbed graphite into them, scratched and burnished them, and occasionally used scotch tape to make prints of the handmade stencils I used. The book was transformed into a series of 156 pieces. The most recently completed project is a similar collaboration, this time with the pages of Kenneth Grahame’s “Dream Days,” a small collection of children’s stories first published in 1898. This book was added to the pile of raw materials at a collage class I taught at the Camera Obscura Art Lab in Santa Monica during my studio residency there a few years ago. I’d held onto the book and decided to start marking the pages on the new moon in August. Again I used graphite, watercolor, colored pencil, and scotch tape. Some of these pieces have poems on them. There are 154 pieces in this series.

I have also been making collages, felting lladros, and writing the occasional poem. I’ll be adding the new work to my website as I document it.

If you’d like a recipe card, email me your address and I will send you one. If you have a particular food group that you’d like me to choose, send that along too.

Slowly, With Care @ Dominican University, January 29-March 6, 2020

I’m showing an embellished quilt for Agnes Martin (Friendship) and two new felt pieces for Joseph Beuys (a felted lladro and Reliquary for a Future Ritual) with the marvelous work of artists Joanne Aono, Sherri Denault, Holly Holmes, Jeffley Gabriela Molina, and Gwendolyn Zabicki in a show about slowing down curated by artist/curator Karen Azarnia. This will be a beautiful show! Here is the announcement:

Slowly, With Care
O’Connor Art Gallery, Dominican University
Participating Artists:
Joanne Aono, Sherri Denault, Holly Holmes, Kate Ingold, Jeffly Gabriela Molina, Gwendolyn Zabicki
Curated by Karen Azarnia
January 29 – March 6, 2020
Opening reception: Wednesday, January 29, 4 – 7pm, artist talk at 4:30pm

The artists in Slowly, With Care deal with notions of slowness, caregiving and meditation. Empathy and tenderness permeate the work. With attention to craftsmanship achieved through a dedication to meticulous labor, the work is made slowly, by hand, with care. Nostalgia, longing, loss, domestic labor, relationships, motherhood, meditation, and the history of craft are among some of the themes addressed. A range of materials are incorporated, including traditional oil painting, ceramics, sculpture, sewing, and fiber-based installation. Questions this show hopes to raise include how have we arrived at a socio-political moment in which tenderness has become radicalized? How can we collectively develop strategies to slow down, be present, and take time to care for one another?

To Sight’s Limit @ Woodland Pattern Book Center, Milwaukee, December 8, 2019-January 25, 2020

I’m excited to be included in this show of poets who take photographs curated by poet/photographer Joshua Edwards, at Woodland Pattern Book Center in Milwaukee. To Sight’s Limit features the photography of Suzanne Doppelt, Jibade-Khalil Huffman, Emily Hunt, Eileen Myles, Anthony Robinson, Andrew Zawacki, and four of my Highway Dreams’ pieces. Highway Dreams are drawings on original photographs. I print each photograph once then scratch the surface of the photograph with a sewing needle. Opening reception is Saturday, December 8, 2019 and features performances by Joshua Edwards and Jibade-Khalil Huffman.

Cantos Comunes/Common Chants @ 13th Bienal de Habana, April 17, 2019

I was invited by my good friends Cara Megan Lewis and Alejandro Figueredo Díaz-Perera to participate in Cantos Comunes, a day of Fluxus and Fluxus-inspired happenings at the Blockhouse in Havana, Cuba during the 13th Havana Biennial.

The day included performances of known Fluxus scores, including June Nam Paik’s One Violin Solo (performed by Yasmany Guerrero), Alison Knowles’ An Homage to Every Red Thing, and a number of new Fluxus-inspired scores, including works by the performance collaborative Research for the Bermuda Triangle (Regina Mamou and Lara Salmon), two works by Balas and Wax (Susy Bielak and Fred Schmalz), solo works by Alejandro Figueredo Díaz-Perera, Benjamin Del Castillo, Carmina Escobar, and Alberto Aguilar, and my day-long performance, Franz Kafka’s 15-Minute Workout.

Just weeks before I was invited to participate, I’d read about how Kafka had been an adherent to an early 20th-century fitness craze, “My System,” developed by Danish athlete, JP Muller, that consisted of daily calisthenics, a method for proper bathing, and a series of post-bathing skin-rubbing exercises.

Through conversation with Alejandro and Cara, we decided it would be interesting if rather than simply performing Kafka’s 15-minute calisthenic workout, I “performed” my normal day in the house, with adding in my attempt to learn Kafka’s workout, as if I were in my home. I spent the day in the Blockhouse while the other events were happening, doing what I normally do: eating breakfast, washing dishes, meditating, working on art, doing some exercise (in this case, following the instructions in Muller’s book, just as Kafka would have done), and bathing. I stayed present to what was happening around me in the house, but did not engage with it. It was as if I were at a silent meditation retreat — not ignoring anyone around me, but simply being silent. It was as if the house were mine and it was any day of the week. The art that I made was to embroider “Motion is life” and “Save your progress!” on the ends of a red bath towel, a towel that I used throughout the day for the workout and for drying myself after the bath. Muller stresses in his book that “Motion is life,” and it felt appropriate to write that on the towel with silk embroidery thread. After I finished the day, I went into the courtyard of the house and placed the embroidered towel in one of the squares of Knowles’ An Homage to Every Red Thing to complete the piece.