Week 6: Shannon Freshwater - Giant

Shannon Freshwater

Giant

2018

Reused fabric, synthetic resin, foam, reused jewelry and beads, yarn, wire, felt, various found items

7 x 4 x 4 feet approx.

My recent work focuses on my experience of being a woman and trying to push against social norms and expectations. I enjoy working with found and reused material because it has a history and voice that guides me in the direction of the piece. For “Giant” I reused off cast materials from industrial production and discarded fabrics for the body of the costume. 

As a girl I was brought up to be small, be polite, don’t interfere, don’t interrupt, be agreeable, don’t question, don’t be too loud, and be appealing. These expectations are ingrained within us as we live our lives as adult women and I try to challenge them with my costumes. When I wear my “Giant“ costume I can take up space, I am powerful and intimidating. The emotion of being angry and frustrated fuels my work and wearing my costume becomes a catharsis where I am free to be myself and act out my emotions.

Week 6: Weng San Sit - Susan Trachman who lives with MS...

Weng San Sit

Susan Trachman who lives with MS shares her weekly pill reloading routine

2019

ongoing Archival Pigment Print

36 × 24 inches

“Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.” – Audre Lorde

Routines is an ongoing project that utilizes photography, videos and medical imageries to explore routines that women incorporate into our lives as our bodies go through transformation or challenges, visible or not. The aim of the project is to show the routines, self-care and challenges in their complexities; resilience, vulnerabilities, humor, banality and frustrations; countering the mythologies often associated with illnesses, disabilities, aging, motherhood and gender transitioning.

Week 6: Karrie Ross - The Beginning

Karrie Ross

The Beginning

2020

Mixed media collage on paper

23 x 32 inches

This piece was constructed during the Covid-19 quarantine. A time where life is more real and smack in our faces. A journey of thoughts, feelings and actions beginning with the intent to explore the below, above and in-betweens that occur in our lives. The joys of watching and celebrating the planting of seeds, facing facts and fears as the memories of times past keep popping up from out of nowhere demanding answers to the unknown questions. Alone, confined, restricted, and escape only to begin again… a journey.

Beginning each day; I wake up, I speak hello, I make busy, I plant seeds.

Week 6: Coffee Kang - XVII. The Star

Coffee Kang

XVII.The Star

2019

water collected from White Elster River and LA river, paper, wood, ceramics, light

Dimension varies

Statement

The project is referring to the tarot card, XVII. The Star, a card of hope.The 22 Major Arcanas is metaphorically the fool’s journey, an experience that a person must incorporate to realize their wholeness. In the deck, XVII. The Star, goes right after The Tower, to suggest a new beginning full of hope, inspirations and faith in the self after a severe shakeup. The installation presents a trilogy reflecting on the artist's personal transnational experience, inviting the audience to a timeless water voyage.

Caught up in a current of uncertainty, we can feel very powerless and hopeless. By entering this water voyage with the artist, maybe we can take a moment with ourselves, embrace the fluctuations, and seek for a new start.

Week 6: Dimitra Skandali - Sea beds and Signals

Dimitra Skandali

Sea beds and Signals

2019

embroidered sea grass on painted emergency blankets, sea grass strands, found fishing nets, single channel projection, sound.

8 x 16 x 17 feet (H x D x W)

Artist Statement

Seagrass and seaweed from the Pacific Ocean, a found fishing net from the coasts of Bengal and a drawing based on physiographic charts of the oceans suggest that individuals separated by geography and worldviews remain linked by the same global issues in the face of current sea changes. Drawing with overlapped charts from both the Atlantic and the Pacific Ocean reflects a confused emotional and psychological space.

The use of very fragile elements like emergency blankets which suggest refuge have lost their meaning. Painted and embroidered with sea grass are now torn apart offering no protection or safety anymore; constantly shifting lines that connect and separate, marks like letters beckoning signals of emergency, codes and charts that need to be decoded. Organic and manmade materials transmit messages of fragility, beauty, connectivity that need to be heard.

Nominated by Alison Woods

Dimitra Skandali has an uncanny ability to transform ordinary, heterodox materials into something unworldly. For this particular piece, she started with emergency blankets, an inexpensive product one might keep with your first aid kit or camping gear. This then became a signifier for some deeper meaning. The emergency blanket is perforated, embroidered with sea grass and suspended to create the sensation of being under water.   the lightweight material is suspended  from the ceiling with seagrass, a fragile material combined with pieces of fishing nets. Dimitra’s work often refers to the sea, as she grew up on a Greek Island where the sea is omnipresent. This piece most perfectly captures the essence of the sea. 

Week 6: Eric Hanson - Sun Balloon

Eric Hanson
Sun Balloon (Found In Sequoia National Forest)
2019
Digital Photograph

Artist Statement:

I hate finding litter when I’m hiking.

A key tenet of the outdoors is “take nothing but memories, leave nothing but footprints”. Even so, I always end up packing out people's trash.

One type of litter in particular started to draw my attention: Mylar balloons that I found tangled in juniper, sagebrush, chamise, and manzanita. 

These balloons started out at some stranger's celebration and then were released without a thought as to where they would land. They ended up in the middle of nowhere, an anonymous and faded memory lost in nature.

Mylar balloons are categorized as "non-biodegradable," meaning they do not break down over time. So a balloon that was used for a few hours at the most could spend almost an eternity existing in otherwise unspoiled wilderness.

Time has nevertheless taken a toll on them. The balloons' previously bright and shiny designs have been marred by holes, dirt, and bleaching from the sun. Some have been ripped into shreds.

These objects are the afterlife of a momentary celebration accidentally laid to rest in nature, bearing the destructive marks of time. I used a fan to blow some life back into the balloons while photographing them, creating shapes that can at times feel almost organic, even though the colors and shine of the objects denote their unnatural origin.

The images are intended as a sort of requiem for the balloons, and by extension a reflection on human consumption and the natural world.

Week 6: Anna Stump - Heaven/Earth/Hell

Anna Stump
Heaven/Earth/Hell
mixed media on found metal
4 x 8 feet

Heaven/Earth/Hell is inspired by Bosch and Klein, and is part of my Desert Metal Series, in which I'm exploring the militarization of the desert.

Detail below: