A friend said to me, “You have a musk about you and it runs through everything you do. Don’t let it go!”
I took this as a great compliment. I am pervasive. I don’t really fit. I always seem to be the odd out no matter the situation. The “musk” my friend was talking about is both figurative and literal. I make no attempts to cover up or apologize for who I am. I have spent 25 years making myself into the person I am with all the baggage and madness that that brings a long with it. I make bad decisions and good ones I regret nothing.
My art and I have a musk about us and we will continue to do so, no matter what comes our way. So bring it on life! You cannot and will not steal or force me to cover up my “musk”.
It may not look it but the map has changed drastically. Seven new Keepers in the past two weeks. Check it out and play with it. It is a pretty cool little tool.
The Sporozoan Swarm now resides in three countries and eight states. It wants to double that in the next month. Become a Keeper of The Sporozoan Swarm and add to its proliferation.
It has been a while since I worked on this project, the Sporozoan Swarm is running me ragged. Before I began The Swarm I was working on a project in which I asked people to send me an item of clothing and I would modify it with The Sporozoan. I started out just screen printing the image on t-shirts and the like but then I started getting excited about sewing and began embroidering articles of clothing.
Katrina was very daring in sending me a dress and telling to me to go for it. I cut into it and added bits and pieces and did a lot of hand as well as machine embroidery to the dress. Now that I have finally seen the dress on her I am excited to breath some life back into this project. We shall see what the next few days bring in the life of The Sporozoan Embroidery project.
My work space/dining table is now covered with Sporozoan Swarm Containers as I put about 10 of them together. As I am doing this I am once again reminded of how I thought my 175 square foot studio in the DUMBO section of Brooklyn was so small. I made great use of that space and was able to make about 10 or 15 drawings that were about 4 feet by six feet in size.
Here I am working off my table to make the building blocks of huge pieces and using the walls of banks and boutiques to create my larger work. It is an exciting and terrifying process as I watch the primary focus of my art shift from the making of large solitary objects to the creation of thousands of tiny pieces that ebb and flow finding temporary locales in which to exist.
It is in this excitement and fear that I am finding a passion I cannot ever remember having: one of almost giddy elation. This work has rejuvenated me, my work and the excitement of people with regards to my work. Making work to exist in public spaces for only a short period of time feeds into my idea of serendipitous experience producing memories with grand meaning.
Art can change your world just allow yourself to see it.
My first Sporozoan Swarm subscription has been delivered. It was purchased as a gift. I personally find buying art as a gift a tough thing to do unless you know that the person on the receiving end knows the artist and likes their work. In this case the receiving individual did not know me, in fact the buyer didn’t even know me, she found me on Etsy. She gave her friend a three month subscription to The Swarm and this was the response when the gift was opened: “The reaction was as follows: confusion, followed by intrigue, followed by delight!”
It is exciting to get a note like this emailed to you from a complete stranger who has given your art work to another complete stranger.
Art is a part of our lives and it should be even more a part of our lives. It is for this reason that I love showing my work in all sorts of settings. I do not believe art should be relegated to gallery and museum walls, rather I want to see it all around us. The two Sporozoan Swarm’s installations I have at Sweetie Boutique are in two large display windows. They are visible to passers by and customers of the store: they are public art and like the install at Bank of America they are site and time specific. All three will come down within two months.
If you are in Seattle try to stop by and see these pieces and if you do please tell Karen or Joanna at Sweetie and Shanon at BOA thank you for showing them. If we want businesses to continue to show work that may ask them to go a little outside their comfort level than we have to show support for it.
I finished the Bank of America project and although at first I was not very happy with it I have now begun to feel better. Installing this type of work with customers in the lobby is not at all easy. Normally when making a piece of this scale I will spend hours sitting and thinking about it. This was not an option on this install as I could only work while the bank was open and in between hours when Izzy was at school.
It is also an interesting experience to have so many people watch while you are creating a piece like this. I have always been one to not want anyone to see my work in progress even in the studio so this was a challenge for me. It is not like performing The Spore Box on the street, at least with that the piece is already finished and I am simply creating ritual around it.
The Sporozoan Swarm has proven it self to be the most versatile of all my work. I also feel that it is showing its ability to speak to the greatest variety of the public I have ever been able to reach. While hanging this piece I spoke with other artists, business men, moms with their kids, veterans and a few others that I couldn’t easily figure out. The common thread for all of them was they were drawn into the piece for all sorts of reasons and all of them left excited by it.
Art can change our world.
I have begun installing The Sporozoan Swarm in the lobby of The Bank of America in West Seattle. The scale of the wall is completely different than that at Edie’s Shoe Store. For this install I wanted to allow The Swarm to form an image, rather than just cluster together on the wall. I really didn’t know what the form I wanted to do was but I did know I wanted it to be some sort of vortex shape (more on this when I am done).
Installing a piece like this while the bank is open is not easy, customers are coming and going and needing to use the table in front of the wall that the piece is hanging on. It is interesting to see the piece take shape while on lookers make comments, ask questions and give advice. Ultimately its progress and evolution are partially dependent on these interactions and the installation it self becomes a performance.
I met Sarah Scott of Pinafore Print Collective through Etsy. Sarah is one of three women who make up Pinafore, she along with Alynn Guerra and Rebecca Rodriguez have created a shop in which they create work individually as well as collectively. Now I have been an artist for over twenty years now and I know how hard it is to leave the ego behind and work as a unit when it comes to making art. Check them out they have a lot to offer in the way of thinking about why and how we make art.
Change your world.
I believe art should be in everyone’s home and to do that it needs to be affordable. This is my reasoning for making The Sporozoan Swarm. The Sporozoan Swarm is a piece of grand scale with a projected population of 50,000. It is one piece that can be broken down into smaller clusters and find a place on thousands of walls around the world. An art lover can, for a very reasonable price have a commanding art object in their home that is part of a larger whole. Thanks to the use of negative space that naturally occurs in hanging a Sporozoan Swarm it only takes 20 or so pieces to adorn a poster size space on a wall and best of all you can break it up into many smaller Sporozoan Swarms around the house and because Swarms are modular it is easy to increase the size of your piece of The Swarm. One can start out with a Tiny or Minuscule Swarm and build on it as you have space and or finances. The Swarm is adaptable and ever changing because The Swarm is made up of many pieces of all different sizes most of which are printed or drawn on both sides The Keeper can rearrange or turn their pieces over to create a new piece of art over and over again. The Swarm can also be hung through corners and around other transitions on The Keepers wall.
Become a Keeper today and find yourself being part of a grand piece of art.