Nell Ruby’s sabbatical research talk was more like a story one might read about an American adventure than a lecture. She showed us an impressive map of the places she traveled around the United States. She revisited childhood inspiration as well as sites of artistic wonder, such as the Lighting Field. Her journey was exciting and inspiring to me because of how fearlessly and freely she traveled alone as a woman artist.

The way Ruby equipped her big green art van with solar panels seemed like something I would have dreamed of as a child. It was a charming and impressive way to travel. She mentioned that she was somewhat of a spectacle, as an older lady driving through towns alone in a weird green van, and that people would talk to her because of it. As Ruby spoke about how she stopped for everything beautiful, she showed countless pictures of clouds and sunsets along the road. She said she wanted to encounter nature directly and get away from her usual machines which we are so connected to daily.

The goals of this trip included escaping a static state, jogging new artistic inspiration, and working in different contexts and scales. She also joked about wanting to be a “real artist” who goes outside somewhere to draw nature, wear a beret and be stereotypical. I understand this feeling, like all of the modern art we do is fun but there is something so simply pleasing about depicting the world we see. I connected with this notion that we should do what our gut is telling us to do and figure out why later.

I saw parallels between Ruby’s journey and the Georgia O’Keeffe exhibit I saw at the NCMA. O’Keefe was drawn to depicting her surroundings in huge and abstract softness. Ruby mentioned how rocks are profound, and I was intrigued by three paintings of rocks O’Keeffe had done. They obviously share a profound respect and interest in our natural world. I  also think that the way Ruby found such an interest in the repetitive visual quality of rundown houses and barns by the side of the road is similar to the way O’Keefe was obsessed with the things like skulls, and subverting their usual meaning.

I was surrounded by an audience of other faculty and staff who clearly admired and respected Professor Ruby, and I can easily understand why. The way Ruby discusses art is very accessible. Her journey examined the beauty of our world, something at the core of art however you look at it. She documented the trip with her iPhone camera and spoke about how framing creates meaning, and photography is a practice of looking. It doesn’t take a fancy camera to see like an artist, in Ruby’s view. She mentioned that drawing is just “looking harder.” I am so thankful I could hear her discuss her trip and I hope to maybe take on like it for myself someday.

It was even more exciting to hear Robin Lynch talk to us this time. She has harvested the fruits of her through investigation and begun considering what she wants to make. I was impressed with how deeply she has researched Uncle Tom’s cabin. She dove into it until she felt she fully understood it, or at least understood more than our cultural perception of it. She recommended that everyone actually read it, which I plan to do.

I think Lynch’s process of research is really interesting because it is so much more extensive than mine. She looked into exhibitions that were themed around Uncle Tom’s Cabin and read curators comments to gain their knowledge. She also read books that seemed less directly related but are still important to her goals, such as books about earlier graphic design and the Getty collection of posters advertising about Shakespeare. Lynch is trying to understand her subject from many different angles, from historical to visual.

Lynch found that the images which have been recreated most from Uncle Tom’s Cabin are of Topsy, Eliza running with her child across the ice, and of Uncle Tom and Eva. These depictions of characters are from neutral moments in the story, not ones that show the brutality of slavery that Lynch believes make the book so powerful, even to this day. The ubiquity of these images has led Lynch to many important questions. Of the whitewashed image of Eliza, she asked “do you have to look like that to get sympathy?” When examining the almost featureless or inhuman images of Topsy, Lynch is asking what it will take to undo the incredibly racist base of our culture. She is also thinking about the suggestive depictions of Uncle Tom and Eva’s relationship, and this is the part that intrigues me the most.  

As someone in an interracial relationship, I feel a lot of discomfort coming from the culture around me about what my relationship should and shouldn’t look like, in ways that feel just as indescribable as they are pressing. I asked Lynch how looking at these images made her feel and she said angry, but that the images are nowhere near as upsetting as the graphic nature of the brutality written about in the actual book. Then she asked me how the images made me feel and I said uncomfortable. The supposed child Eva, who has a pretty womanly figure, is shown in intimate poses with Uncle Tom, who in many of the images doesn’t look very old. You can do an easy google yourself, but this is a great example. Here is another. I don’t think the interpretation that these images are sexual in nature is at all off base. I wonder if our culture still views white women in love with black men as little girls playing with emasculated slaves. I just wonder why people created images of this sexual nature. What is it about the story and these characters that so entranced peoples romanticism? Why did people change so many key features of these characters to depict them this way? I am glad Lynch showed me these images because I think they will help me as I continue to consider my relationship’s place in our country today.

Lynch plans to create a visual collection of these images, in some type of book that subverts these images or makes them contemporary. She was also considering the format of an anti racism Alphabet book for children, or animation. First she has to create mind map so that she can see everything visually. I cannot wait to see what she makes, especially after I read Uncle Tom’s Cabin.  

Here are some pieces of advice that I will most likely follow:

• She suggested buying slow dry to make acrylic paints dry less quickly which I think is a really good idea.
• She said that adding medium is like adding water but better for holding the paint to the canvas, so I think I should invest because I like my paint to be really watery but it sometimes can mess with the paint already on the canvas.
• She mentioned that one can paint the canvas one base color that is common in the entire image before actually starting painting. I really wish I had done this for the Maya Nude, it would have been so easy to paint the whole thing pink to start off with!
• She also told us how she interned for free with an artist and how that experience was very influential for her. This is something I will definitely look into.

After giving the talk to our class she joined me in my workspace to look at the Maya nude and critique my progress. She said that I should fill up the huge white space that I had thus far neglected, and we agreed it was bad to leave so much white space on the canvas. I immediately colored in the space and I think psychologically it does make a difference that it isn’t just blank anymore.

I appreciated these nuggets of wisdom and will hopefully be able to explore them more in depth soon.

This exhibit was very exciting to me because it paired work from throughout O’Keeffe’s career with pieces by currently working artists. The NCMA even commissioned a floral mural to be painted on one of its exterior walls for this show, which is very beautiful. I enjoyed the juxtaposition between the works of O’Keeffe with their sexual undertones and the works by modern artists such as Tschabalala Self and Monica Kim Garza, which confront the viewer with female sexuality a little more forcefully. There were also many works that explored nature and its beauty, as well as American Landscapes. I and my Dad spent a very long time in front of the Light Atlas by Cynthia Daignault. We enjoyed figuring out the organization of the 360 small paintings, some of which were idyllic and some of which were less so. Because it was created on an American road trip, it reminded me of the prints of Nell Ruby.

My Dad and I also enjoyed the 3 walled video of O’Keeffe’s home and work environment which she narrated. This show gave me a deeper appreciation of her works and her artistic skill in general. We had fun drawing a still life at the end of the show.

Artpapers!

Artpapers is an art journal that during our visit gave me insight into what it is like to be a small nonprofit arts organization. The head office is housed in a repurposed school building and the staff was comprised of less than 10 people working full time. The current executive of Artpapers discussed the struggle with funding and making sure that they are serving the right population.

The visit to Artpapers, although brief, led me to consider a bit more deeply the various directions and options I have in terms of art careers. I didn’t even realize that working for an art journal was an option. I  think the idea of writing about art is attractive but in the end I feel more drawn toward actual art making. One of the staff people at Artpapers said that the art world is oversaturated and it’s hard to get a job doing what you want in it, but I just feel hopeful.

Here is what I have done so far:

• Dinnertime Happening (link)
• Water Talk video (link)
• Donut Game. I handed all of the control over to Maya and Julia, who set up the game. Gracie and I competed blindfolded and hands tied in a slightly more difficult version of this traditional children’s game which we had both played when we were younger. It was out of my comfort zone to give all of the artist control to someone else in an artistic concept that I engineered. I don’t usually buy that many sweets at once, and Gracie said that she liked the game when she was little because she got to eat more donuts that she is normally allowed to. It’s interesting that BDSM themes appeared in this piece, and that donuts have such an element of denial, pain and struggle attached to them for many.
• Blue Foods- This was a brief sketch I did to make myself more interested in the food I had to eat. Ruby suggested more iterations of this, with more colors.

• Watched the Amy Winehouse Documentary- She was a Jewish singer with bulimia and a drug addiction. It got me thinking about how we know so many intimate details of singers lives but don’t necessarily know the same about artists.

What I am working on/planning to do:

• Stomach punch painting and happening
• Maya Nude painting
• “Leave You” music video
• Bob for apples? Or another food.
• Maya and Julia want to play the donut game.
• Possibly paint with my mouth and food.
• And I also wanted to use the darkroom, not sure if I have time for that.

I have been feeling so forceful and full of creative energy which is very exciting. I think it’s because I have not been able to really make conceptual art in a supportive environment since high school and it feels very familiar, yet thrilling in its newness. It feels good to let myself make things without exactly knowing why then figuring the “why” out later. There is always a reason that I am driven to create. I am not sure if I have done exactly 12 hours of this but it feels like a lot and like I am pushing myself. 

Talking to Ruby has been an essential part of this brainstorming process. She suggested that I create this word-map that shows how expansive my conceptualization is of eating disorders so that I can see all of the space that exists for me to make art inside of.

I have made two works recently that I think are both very successful beginnings of this investigation of how I can authentically but also curiously represent my eating disorder and recovery. The first project is my video Water Talk. I was more interested in the visuals and wrote the spoken word aspect in about 2 minutes because those words are a part of me they were easy to regurgitate. I think the most important part of this film is the end where I explode out of the water, hinting to recovery. Even more interesting is the idea of sexuality, and I wonder how does sexuality interact with ideas of eating disorders? They are obviously related but I want to mine deeper about how.

After much discussion with Ruby, I sat and thought deeply about how to challenge myself and be experiential. I thought about how trusting others in my art is something I have almost never done. I also do not usually explicitly include food in my work. Combining these elements, I had Maya feed me while we were both blindfolded to create my Dinnertime Happening. An important thing Maya brought up during our discussion after the happening is that I am not making art about spiraling deeper, I am making work about me trying to claw myself out of this hole and recover. The happening had a sense of play and mothering which was really positive for both of us.

The happening was messy and kind of gross which made it more interesting to me.

Going forward I want to create more happenings, as well as creating visceral and tactile pieces. I want to play and punch things and be wild in my art so that I can find out about how I make art and why I do. I think I need to look a little deeper inside of myself to see what is going on, but not let that prevent me from going with my gut. I am very excited.

I have been thinking about it literally all the time, and I have tried to record it with this chart but need to be mroe on top of it. I know I have done more than this.

Here are some other things I have been ruminating on

• Can an eating disorder be separated conceptually from its context (being a woman/ living in america/ the news)?
  • If no how can that be shown in art?
• What about typical/ therapeutic eating disorder art turns me off? Why is it so repetitive?
  • What is it about representing recovery is different from representing the spiral?
• Why is eating disorder art so hard to find? Is it actually more common than I think but just less explicit?

Joel Peter Witkin’s work Courbet in Rejlander’s Pool (1985) is a square, black and white photograph. Surrounded by velvet darkness is the white nude woman who is facing away from the viewer. The only attributes with which we can identify her are her neatly coiled hair, the bracelet on her right wrist, and 3 lines which zig-zag down the left side of her back. She is relatively curvy with arms that slightly sag and creases where her hips meet her waist. The space she is in is unclear, we can see water coming up to the top of her legs, but that doesn’t help the viewer solve the mystery of where she is. The space is defined by the 3 pieces of flower drapery; which her right elbow rests on and which also obscure some of her hips and backside. She also seems to be leaning against a black wall with her right hand resting in front of her face, possibly like she is looking for something. Right above the woman’s head is a line that creates an arch, separating the bottom of the composition from the black empty space at the top of the composition.

Although there is some highlight on the fabric, the woman is the brightest part of the piece by far. Her body rests leaning to the right and her leg can be faintly seen extending to the bottom left of the piece, creating a diagonal composition. While her body moves the eye up and down from the bottom left to the upper right, the lines on her back move in the opposite way and create a sense of balance within the composition. These black lines which seem like a tattoo or a scar are parallel and intersect with each other. The lines mirror her left shoulder blade and follow her spine.

Although the photo is black and white there are some sepia tones around the edges. There is wear on the photo, so much of the space that is black appears scratched, scrubbed or otherwise distressed. Only the woman is rendered clearly with no distortion to the image on her body. The hand of the artist being so visible give the photo a painterly quality, especially because the subject of a nude woman with drapery is so classical. As a viewer, one would expect photos to describe reality so this piece confuses and creates a sense of fantasy more commonly accepted in paintings.

• Black square photo
  • Appears really old because of how worn and distressed it is / sepia
• Woman
  • She is facing the back
  • Curvy (arm sag, hips crease at the waist)
  • She has coiled hair, a bracelet and 3 lines on the left side of her back
  • Her body is the whitest thing in the composition , creating a diagonal w her leg and arm
  • She is also the only thing without scratches, she almost glows
  • The lines go in an opposite way of her body and create balance
  • Lines appear to be a tattoo
• The space
  • Confusing, there is water coming up to the top of her legs
  • She’s leaning forward against a black wall
  • There are three pieces of flower drapery around her , slightly obscuring her also providing depth
  • Over her head is an arch
  • Its a mystery!