The Re-Discovery Tour

Sunday was the Arroyo Arts Collective Re-Discovery Tour, and a good time was had by all, as far as I know. I showed work at Suzanne Siegel's home at the foot of Mt. Washington -- Suzanne's daughter Rachel Siegel and Kay Brown were also guest artists at our location. I installed some of my domestic-themed works in Suzanne's vintage bathroom -- one panel of my "Arroyo Seco Watershed and Surrounding Area" shower curtain in front of the bathtub and several textile pieces on washcloths and a bathmat. Also a few diapers from my "porte bonheur" installation, "Road Trip" (my car window piece), and some other textile pieces in the kitchen. I was pleased with the relatedness of the work and look forward to making more of the textile pieces soon. As soon as I have photos of the new pieces I will post them -- photos of the shower curtain and diaper installations are already here somewhere on this blog! (look under installations).

$2 Show at i5

Recently I was invited to participate in a show at the i5 Gallery in the Brewery arts complex in east Los Angeles. Mat Gleason is curating the show -- he sent out $2 bills to one hundred artists and asked them to make wall mountable artwork. The $2 bill has the face of Thomas Jefferson on it -- so naturally I thought of Sally Hemings. I did a little background research -- which turned out merely to be scratching the surface -- on the whole controversy over the parentage of Sally's children. I discovered a lot of interesting things -- for instance, that Sally was the half-sister of Jefferson's wife, and only one-eighth African. So the free children and the slave children shared three quarters of their genetic profile and closely resembled each other. Several of the slave children walked off the plantation once they grew up and subsequently "passed" for white, living elsewhere where their origins were unknown. Others remained near Monticello, living as African-Americans. I decided to decorate my $2 bill with information about the Hemings side of the family, as well as a picture of one of Jefferson's descendants.

The i5 Gallery is located at 2100 N. Main Street #A-9, Los Angeles 90031. The exhibition opens July 11 with a reception July 12 from 8-10 pm. All works are priced at $200, $100 going to benefit the gallery. It should be interesting.

Christmas Past at Future

Christmas Past at Future was a satisfying show -- it took nearly eight hours to install and the cards and other ephemera attracted a lot of positive attention from interested viewers. HOWEVER, chaos broke out! While I was in St. Louis there were heavy rains in Los Angeles, a leak appeared above the display wall in the gallery, and Amy had to quickly take the show down -- before I got a chance to photograph it. Fortunately a week or two ago I was able to turn up one snapshot taken by a friend of a friend. Here is an edited version that shows about half the wall: