Pilgrim's Progress

As the weeks churn on and rapidly bring us to the end of the semester, I am reflecting on my progress and all that yet needs to be completed before its conclusion in early June.

Above is a photograph of the progress I have made on my Kollwitz Homage that is a stained glass assemblage. The photo depicts the glass pieces being ground, at about 75% completion at this stage. I am looking forward to the next stages whereby pieces will be painted on with vitreous paint and an underground of a photomontage will be created.

The progress of this Kollwitz Homage can be viewed at:

https://picasaweb.google.com/113967877601706753492/DrawingsCartoonAndStudiesForKollwitzHomage#

Below is my most recent Artist Statement in a first draft form. I decided to go ahead and begin working on this as the semester seems to be grinding to a halt, and everything needs to be ready for the same date. With my 3rd research paper having been written and submitted to the Writing Center for their suggestions of revision, I thought writing this draft for my current artist statement would be a good idea while these concepts are fresh in my mind. I am sure it will be revised a few times before June.

Artist Statement Draft_4/11:

This past semester my work has been devoted to the meta-narrative of women artists. I have taken on the mission statement of the Guerilla Girls, an activist feminist group fighting for the rights of women artists, past and present.

Women artists have been historically written out of the art canon. My archive presented and which is forming allows the medium of stained glass, through vitreous paintings on glass to present the heroines of art, as patronesses of art.

Utilizing a metaphorical parody with both the historical traditions of the icon and traditional portraiture, in addition to the symbolic nature of the medium of stained glass, I am embracing a concept from the sacred to the secular.

The archive forming presents the icons as honestly and forthright as possible to convey the seriousness of my intent. Through a metaphor of hypertext that is found electronically on my blog, the key to the archive can be found and understood. Hypertext as a contemporary notion alludes to the code and meaning of these collective images as a gestalt, to further tell the story of the meta-narrative and women artists of generations, represented through the varied intensities of glass, color and light.

Furthering the meta-narrative of my work, in an attempt to conceptually bring together my vitreous paintings on glass, vitreous femmage, stained glass assemblage, and mixed media/ oil paintings, I have explored the idea of the ‘homage’ to further extract and tell the stories of heroines of art. The homage paintings stemming technically and aesthetically from my intuitive paintings from last semester as visual prayers, places the meta-narratives of these paintings to ask, “So what shall we pray for?”