Updates Updates

from Architecture

I updated my website over the weekend to reflect the works-in-progress I described all last week and two recent groups of jewelry, Architecture and At Once Final. I added brief descriptions for most of the different bodies of work and changed many of the thumbnail images. I also added a link to YouTube where you can see my work-in-progress videos, which I will add to more often now. Awhile back I updated the artist statement section to reflect new versions and a brand new general artist statement that describes what I strive to do in all of my work. Here is that statement now:

"I am devoted to observing the world that surrounds me and questioning the human condition through the lens of my own life experience. Through a variety of traditional and exploratory multi-media techniques, I create jewelry, objects, and installations that hint at memory, time, loss, and the layered sense of self I believe we all carry. I intuitively select materials and forms to represent the intangible and to create abstract narratives. Using my own memory of people, places, and objects, I seek to communicate the duality of the human experience, convey emotion, and connect with others."

from Drawing Iceland, Works-in-Progress

from At Once Final

I hope you will visit the freshened site!

Thanks for reading.

Textílsetur, Part 1

So much has happened since I arrived at Textílsetur Íslands, so much that it's been hard for me to keep up on the blog between working in my studio, taking my long walks, and going on day-trips. Over the next three days I will attempt to share some highlights, and today I want to begin with the space itself...

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, Textílsetur Íslands is located in Kvennaskólinn, a former women's school, situated at the estuary of the Blanda River and Húnaflói Bay. The second floor of the building is dedicated to the residency and includes private bedrooms, a kitchen, a living room, bathroom with laundry, and two large shared studios, one for weaving and one for other textile arts. There is such history here and I love the feeling or the energy that immerses all the rooms. Photographs of classes from years passed line the walls and the original furniture is still in use. I have met many women who went to school here and also met a former headmistress. I have my own private room and studio and feel being alone in this small space has been beneficial to my work. I have needed the silence and solitude for this piece specifically. (More on that soon.)

Thanks for reading.

Insight

I Can Only Stay Away for So Long

I've been working on my artist statement for "I Live Here Now" for weeks and just added it to my website the other day. I'm considering it a work-in-progress because it feels not quite there yet. I do want something I've written about the work to be out in the world, though, and I think finding the thing that it's missing will come with time. I may need to let it all settle in more and I'll make adjustments as they come.

Wayfinder, detail

I’ve been without a home by circumstance and by choice for several years. In 2012, I began traveling in the United States. and abroad for my work, rarely spending extended periods of time in any one location. This new lifestyle made me realize I don’t know where I want to live, and I find myself searching for this seemingly elusive place today. While I am content to be without a home, I long for that one place where I feel most myself, a place where I want to stay. In an effort to find what I’m looking for, I was compelled to define and redefine home through research, writing and object making, as well as examining my past, my present and my future.

Over the past year, I have explored ideas of home in three distinctive places. Arriving in Iceland for the first time, I felt attune with myself and with my surroundings in a way I had never felt before. The pieces I made in a two-month residency there illustrate feelings of belonging and of being found. In my childhood home in New York, I reflected on my relationships with my family as well as relationships with the other places I’ve lived in the United States. The foundation of my artistic sources and countless other details were revealed as I considered individual people and places. Further, through all the places I have traveled, I have become keenly aware of my ability to find home in the unknown. In all of these places, Iceland, the United States and countries abroad, I examined memories and focused on things that carry emotional weight. I also relied on the language of jewelry, looking to a variety of historical forms for guidance.

“I Live Here Now” represents what home means to me as well as the memories and emotions associated with the different places that are a part of my collective home. Jewelry, objects, text, photographs, ritual, arrangements and installation serve to demonstrate my ideas and to establish a unique narrative. Ultimately, I know my home is the place where I am truly myself, and, essentially, I know now that I do not need a physical location to call home; my home is me and it is wherever I am.

Island of 14,264 Days, detail

Thanks for reading.

Island of 14,264 Days

After a great deal of thought and much writing, I have chosen a title and completed the statement for my embroidered piece. It is called "Island of 14,264 Days."

"Island of 14,264 Days is an imaginary island that represents my life. It presents my experiences both past and present as an independent landmass that is seen at once in a faraway and a close-up view. It is also as a kind of self-portrait, an abstracted interpretation of my physical form and persona. I made this piece during an artist residency in Iceland where I was constantly inspired by the environment, the weather, and the isolation of the location.

The shape of the island, which took approximately 200 hours to create, was not predetermined. Instead, it formed intuitively, knot by knot, with needle and thread. I used an embroidered knot for its inherent texture, pattern, and layering possibilities, to mimic lichen and moss, and to symbolize the act of not forgetting. I utilized only one stitch, the Colonial knot, as a way to create focus and to add to the contemplative process. The island is white to reference Iceland and to symbolize solitude, honesty, and the beginning of something new--feelings and states of being that I was present with as the piece developed.

I made this piece to spend deliberate time processing and making sense of my experiences, both wonderful and troubling. I felt it necessary to slow down and consider each moment individually and collectively and embroidery was the perfect way to do this--it is an innately slow and methodical technique. The moments captured in the countless knots comprise the number of days I had lived when I completed the piece, as the island itself established a place of existence and home for me."

Thanks for reading and a huge, huge thanks for reading and following and commenting while I was away. I return to the U.S. this weekend and I'll be back here shortly after that with final happenings, thoughts, and photos. 

A Longer Statement

I completed a more in depth statement over the weekend. Here it is for you to read now:

"Observation is the act or instance of noticing. As a resident in a new and foreign place, my power of observation has become important to me in unusual and often unexpected ways. It has also become heightened in a way that allows me to simply see more. Over the course of more than two months I have recorded my daily observations with photographs, drawings, and text, everyday encountering things I have never seen before. These observations are moments between specific inanimate objects and me, and, unbeknownst to them, between other people and me. They are also impressions of the beauty I see in my surroundings, such as the often-gray sky of Belgium or the sense of history preserved in its architecture and urban decay. Finally, they are representations of maps and walks and the work of the Baroque painters.

Translation is a change from one form to another.  Also as a resident of a new and foreign place, I translate almost everything I do: language, time, measurement, temperature, currency. At first my ability to translate was slow and challenging, often taxing. Then gradually with practice, the process became quicker until eventually translating was nearly second nature.

My new work focuses on my observations and the way I translate them to tangible objects. I observe, I record, I translate in my mind, I form an opinion. Then I develop an idea for an object and translate it again into a new, physical form. This process and the resulting pieces are how I understand my new home and share the experience with others. Ultimately, they are the reverent manifestations of a personal collection of memories."

Here are the details of the show:

Observation/Translation
New Work by Amy Tavern
Beyond Fashion
Pourbusstraat 7
Antwerpen Zuid
Belgium

September 6-October 20
Opening Reception - September 6 from 6-10pm
Artist Talk - September 5 at 7pm

Refreshments will be served at both events and the opening will be part of the first gallery walk of the season.

I also posted titles for all the pieces on Facebook and Flickr.

Thanks for reading.