This is What I Found Here

Gothenburg and Southern Archipelago, Sweden, 2014

I am without a studio at the moment, a challenging place to be. The studio is an important place for artists, obviously, and I am feeling its absence. In addition to my Pearl Piece (which you can still contribute to!), I'm looking for other ways to create beyond making objects, things I can work on anywhere. This week I will share these with you starting today with my collecting and arranging project titled This is What I Found Here. This series is a play on my first solo show in 2011, This is How I Remember It. The basic concept for that show centered on using my memories of important jewelry to create new work that was carefully arranged for the exhibition. For this new project, I have arranged different objects I collected according to where and when I found them. This documentation is a great way for me to explore composition and negative space, shape and line, and color and texture. Working intuitively, the process allows me to think spatially and arrange objects in a pleasing way. It's also serves as a method of recording the history of my experiences and memories through objects. This series of photographs is a work in progress. These pictures were taken at different times and the lighting is different from image to image. I am still playing around with editing each photo and would like to add to the series over time.

You can see all the images taken so far on Flickr. 

Blönduós, Iceland, 2015

Richfield Springs, New York, 2014

Allendale, Michigan, 2014

Thanks for reading.

Found

Thanks for reading.

Tools for Making Decisions

Tools for Making Decisions

When I was considering choice, I asked myself, as well as my friends on Facebook, what kind of tools help us make decisions. I brainstormed my own list and considered the opinion of scores of friends who responded. What I noticed was the underlying presence of the senses in both my ideas and my friends' so I began reading about the traditional and combined senses. I realized our senses are the most basic tools we have to observe and perceive our world and to make choices every day. I thought of a tool for each sense, choosing objects with layers of meaning, and forming a group that allows information to be studied and measured. In addition, I deliberately chose to focus on my love of collecting, searching the Bay Area and Etsy for just the right level or leather gloves, for example. Finally, I carefully arranged these nine necklaces for the installation, placing them atop a table, ready for use, as intuition hovers above and gathers below. 

Sight, brass, vintage bi-focal lens

Hearing, brass

Touch, vintage leather gloves

Taste, brass

Smell, brass, glass test tubes, cork, ground garlic, dried blueberries, lemon rind, lavender, vanilla bean, mint, dirt and rotting leaves, Comet cleanser, popcorn, oak tree bark

Temperature, vintage water thermometer

Kinesthetics, brass, antique dividers

Balance, brass, vintage level

Pain, brass, Dolorimeter

See more pictures on Flickr.

Thanks for reading.

Now I am Here, #4

some things I have collected around the CCA campus

Thanks for reading.

A Final Onward Ideas, Creating Space

objects found while walking around Richfield Springs

I need more room for my things... Those bits and pieces I brought back from Iceland this year, and last year; the objects I collected in Sweden; the stuff I found over the winter and the pieces I picked up yesterday while walking. My well-curated collections grow and change constantly and I like having room to spread them out. I also like arranging them just so and altering the arrangement as I acquire more or just want to rearrange the pieces. My sweet studio is not very big and there isn't a lot of room for everything so I got a great idea to move my dresser out of storage and into my studio. Now it holds objects instead of clothes and each drawer contains pieces from a specific place. I also painted a panel of wood and now have a flat, white surface where I can create arrangements and photograph them.

Working with my objects like this is a great way to exercise my mind, play with spatial relationships and create mixed narratives. It's also a fantastic way to come up with new ideas as I contemplate form, material and memories. I think of it as one more method of my practice and the perfect way to further cherish these sentimental souvenirs.

Read more about my thoughts on objects and collecting here.

See more collections and arrangements on Flickr.

Thanks for reading.

Collected and Captured

My souvenirs are not store-bought tokens or t-shirts. Instead, they are bits and pieces of detritus or various natural objects I spy on the ground as I walk. I found many souvenirs in those three months in Iceland, the pieces becoming arrangements in my SÍM studio and an ever-evolving source of inspiration, remembrance and comfort. 

Some of my most-prized finds are three porcelain forms probably used in electronics. (top image) I was told you can find these washed-up on the beaches and was lucky to find one last year while walking in Blönduós. Then one day in May, I set out on a mission to look for them in Reykjavík. I walked along the coast in the west of the city and was very pleased to find not just one (which I would have been completely happy with), but three. The last one I found was labeled "champion," an appropriate word for how I was feeling in that moment. 

Thanks for reading.

My Hands are in It, Part Three

For the last few weeks I've been working on a collaborative project with my friend, John Rogers. The project is called "Fieldwork."

Fieldwork is a collaboration between artists John Rogers and Amy Tavern.The project is a multidisciplinary “fieldwork”, presented online & IRL, that incorporates ideas of space, movement, memory and technology; place, image, experience and object.The “findings” of Fieldwork are presented in an array of formats, with internet and social media explored and reconfigured as art spaces, creating a flow of content and an expression of information generated by moving through the world.

This includes a map that uses GPS coordinates to accurately place photographs, found objects, videos and other media into an ongoing online presentation. As well as the “facts” of these travels, the map will collate the artists’ experience of the journey and the project’s development, via accompanying texts and process documentation. Fieldwork will also be shown IRL, drawing together these strands with projections, arrangements of objects, exhibition of images and videos, and the artists present and working in a constructed art-lab-gallery-studio environment.

Presentation #1 takes place in Reykjavík, Iceland, on June 18, 2014 at the SÍM basement, Seljavegur 32, Reykjavík 101. The presentation will also be open June 19 and 20 from 2-6pm each day.

Begin exploring Fieldwork via the map, which can be found here.You can add Fieldwork on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+, Tumblr and YouTube to watch the project evolve.

John and I will be in residence for the three days it's open, continuing work on the project and welcoming visitors. In this regard, Fieldwork is an eternally unfinished live work - a process and a scenario. Drop in and see us.

Thanks for reading.