The Sporozoan Shrine will be on display at Lafamilia Gallery at 117 Prefontaine Pl S Seattle beginning June 3rd – opening reception June 3rd 6-9. The Shrine is a menagerie of work stemming from and revolving around The Sporozoan Cavities suite of Intaglio prints.

i drown in petroleum distillates.
hands cracked to the point of blood.
the room with the low ceilings and concrete floors leaves me empty.
yet every day every hour i am there.

i feel, i think, i hear sounds i know inside and out
they ring over and over again.
the oil and dust cloud my eyes

i am whole, driven, independent and mad
my stomach burns with the black liquid
weeping without tears
it burns and yet no where do i feel so at home

Sweetie has been really good to me. They have let me install work in their windows twice. I have really enjoyed doing it and I think it really fits in with the store philosophy on clothing. The work is visible 24 hours a day and you don’t have to go into the store if you don’t want to. Although, ladies, they do have some great stuff in there for your next evening out.

Look around everyone art is everywhere you just have take a moment to let yourself see it.

The Sporozoan Swarm is a modular work of art, made up of torn and cut Intaglio and Lithographic prints combined with drawing, with a projected 500,000 components. These components break down from The Swarm into many small clusters and migrate around the world. The Swarms component structure allows it to ebb and flow through spaces in a fluid way, wrapping around doorways and shifting through corners: it suggests the fluid dynamics of life. Small Clusters of The Swarm are installed in places that are not typically seen as “art viewing spaces,” allowing the greatest number of viewers the space to commune with the piece, free of sterile pretense, or limited access. This way of viewing makes the work become more a part of the viewer’s multifaceted memory, rather than a one-dimensional ornament. 

A great deal of site specific or time limited work relies on photography to allow viewers to witness and “own” the art. With The Sporozoan Swarm, the owner of the work or “The Keeper” of a Cluster becomes part of the larger whole of the interconnected world-wide installation. And while viewers are able to see photographs of my installations all over the world, providing a macro perspective, they are also able to install a piece of the whole on their wall using their own aesthetic, their own voice.

These Keepers become aesthetic partners when they decide how Clusters or individual pieces of The Swarm should be displayed. The Keepers physically touch, interact with, and hang the same pieces that I have printed, torn and drawn, contributing to the evolution of the whole. By handling the work they make it a less precious, more tangible, common grounded thing. The element of many small pieces available to people all over the world connects The Keepers to me and to the large-scale public installations of The Swarm I create. The Sporozoan Swarm acts as a binder of all of its Clusters and Keepers by connecting them through its on-line locating map and its serendipitous collective experience.

Art can change our world. Just let it be a part of your life.

I have been spending a lot of time recently working on putting together grant proposals. They aren’t easy. I am not one to second guess myself but when you are asking a foundation or organization for a grant of 25 thousand dollars it is hard not to question every thing you write. I well know that the most important thing for an artist and their grant proposal are the images they present, that said I am struggling so much with my cover letter it is unreal. I have rewritten it so many times and almost sent it out a couple times. It is ridiculous because I am typically not like this. I usually dive in and make it work. But writing a proposal is not like making artwork I can’t continually work on it. I can’t erase everything and start from a veiled shell on a new piece. Once I drop the proposal in the mail I am at the mercy of a group of jurors deciding if they should give me a huge chunk of money to make art with: it is purely daunting.

OK now to finish it.

Sweetie Boutique has asked me to stay on for another month. This will give all of you who weren’t able to come last month another chance. It also allows me to be more prepared. I will be showing new Swarm Containers, at least one Trophy and two prints from The Sporozoan Cavities suite and of course the two installs in the display windows.

Come out say hello and check out the work. West Seattle should be hopping.

In all this frenzy surrounding The Swarm I have neglected to talk about work that came before it. I started making these hanging wall pieces when I was in the DUMBO studio in Brooklyn. I had a lot of drawings that I couldn’t seem to finish or I just felt needed to evolve into something else. The Tapestries grew from this need to push my drawings to a new place. I had weaved prints together a little bit, as you can see in front of the wall pieces. I had never pushed the weaving to the complexity and fluidity that I was able to accomplish in these Tapestries.

When we moved to western Mass. I pushed these things even further and they led me to new places. I was never able to finish any of these pieces. Life kept getting in the way. Now we are back in Seattle and I feel confident that I can and will return to these works and bring them to the place they need to be. ( Oh to have a studio again. ) I hope to show them in a setting other than a studio so that I can think at length about their presentation to the viewer.

It is a great story. My friend John Petzinger emailed me to say he saw an ad on craigslist looking for artists. I replied to the ad and heard back, almost immediately, from Sense Nail Spa in the Washington State Convention Center in downtown Seattle. The salon had looked at images of work from Sweetie Boutique and B of A and asked if I would like to show some work in their space and of course I said yes. This happened so fast from the time John sent me the ad to the time I was showing them my work was only about 24 hours. I took in a couple Swarm Containers. When I got there Robert, the manager asked me if I could do an installation on their main wall behind the front desk. He told me there was a neurological conference arriving the next day and that over the next week about 10,000 neurological professionals from around the world would be coming through and hoped I could install it the next day: Friday.

Zanne was in China. I frantically inquired with Izzy’s main play date friends and all of them came back and said “sorry…..” It was too short notice. I called John. “Hey remember that ad you sent me…” It turned out John came to help me on Friday and Izzy went to run errands with his wife. Thank you so much you two. John took great shots of The Swarm going up and was a great help in prepping pieces for me. I ran out of steam just about the time the salon was closing and all parties involved decided I should finish on Saturday. Izzy would spend the afternoon with John and I would finish.

The Swarm wrapped its way through a corner and another and then around to the other side of the wall. It is not decorative, it does not blend in, it does command the space and grab attention both inside The Salon and through the glass windows. If you live in Seattle you should try to see one of the four installs that are currently up. They are all listed in this post.

Art can change your world.

Having a gallery is a double edged sword. On the one side they provide you with a place to display your work that is clean and designed with two purposes in mind: looking at and selling art. On the other hand they usually take a large percentage of your sales and many times will require you to sign a contract stating that you won’t show within a certain distance of them and that you won’t sell out of your studio and the list goes on.

I have had four different galleries, not including co-op’s and collectives, over the past 15 years. Every single one of them has done something to make my experience with them not worth the few sales I have received from them. Granted up until a few years ago I think my work was not really in a place to merit a large number of sales. This does not give license to damage, hold back or “lose” work. After all the gallery’s asked me to show, not the other way around.

The worst experience, by far, was being in a group show with two other people. Both artists had strong work and are still at it. By the end of the shows run I had sold all three of the pieces in the show, while the other two had sold none. The gallery asked the other two artists to be in her stable but did not ask me. I was flabbergasted at this event and it was the end of any romance I had with the gallery world. Maybe I didn’t fit in with the gallery’s direction? Maybe I was too strong willed? It just left a bad taste in my mouth.