NOT YOUR MOTHER’S MILK; WOMEN ON THE EDGE”
(Revisiting the Female Archetype)


“Naturam Expelles Furca Tamen Usque Resurret.”
(“You expel nature with a pitchfork, but it just comes back.” Horace)

In the history of art, female archetypes have been the first and, for a long time, most important subject. They were carved into cave walls and megaliths, and they were the first (Neolithic) sculptures. They were the first (Egyptian, Minoan) frescoes. The images, representations of matriarchal deities, had the metonymic power of amulets. They embodied the divine force of nature, which is primarily the power of fertility. Fertility, of course, is creativity, which is what artists throughout the ages depend on. So female archetypal imagery has thrived through the centuries to our day. Typically, female archetypes have been representations of mothers, whores, warriors, priestesses--big-hipped big-breasted royals portrayed as goddesses of justice, fertility and destruction, Christian or classical female holy beings. My take on the female archetype is firmly antidualistic. I am drawn to the predualism of the earliest art. I eschew the long GrecoRoman/JudaeoChristian, Hindo/Chinese link of archetypes to tables of opposites (male-female, eros-logos, yin-yang, dark-light, odd-even, internal-external, strong-weak, east-west, right-left, straight-gay, good-bad.) This exhibition presents female archetype images updated through embroidery which represents female craft throughout the unbroken arc of history and culture. In this context, I plan to show a video of famous images of female archetypes (eg, Cycladic ‘steatopygic’ women, Snake Goddess, Athena, Diana the Huntress, Three Fates, Mary Magdalene, Brigitte Bardot), and build a womblike camouflaged cave out of the embroidered screens whose archetypal stitched images echo those on the video screens. In the center will stand my Perpetually moving female (lovemaking) machine. On the video the familiar goddesses spasm, morph into one another, turn into waves and whales and alienlike phantasms, or are obliterated by explosions like the ones that destroyed the monumental Buddhas in Afganistan and the monumental Summerian statues in the National Museum of Bagdhad during its American liberation.

Art Has No Future: But Your Chains, folding screen, 84”x64”, hand-stitched embroidery on unprimed vintage linen, using hand-dyed thread, vintage embroidery, Indian textiles, pencil and acrylic

Details of Art Has No Future screen:
But Your Chains, 16”x26”, 2006, hand-stitched embroidery, pastels and Sharpie on unprimed dyed linen
Figure 8 (All I Know is that I Know Nothing), 16”x26”, 2006, hand-stitched embroidery, pastels and Sharpie on unprimed dyed linen
You Light A Fire In Me (Sappho), 16”x26”, 2006, hand-stitched embroidery, pastels and Sharpie on unprimed dyed linen

J’ Accuse screen, 48”x36”, 2006, hand-stitched embroidery on unprimed dyed linen, using hand-dyed thread, pastels, colored pencil, Sharpie, ribbon and acrylic paint

Details of J’ Accuse screen:
Alfresco, 12”x16”, 2006, hand-stitched embroidery, pastels and Sharpie on unprimed dyed linen
Out, 12”x16”, 2006, hand-stitched embroidery, pastels and Sharpie on unprimed dyed linen
Vitruvian Babe, 12”x16”, 2006, hand-stitched embroidery, pastels and Sharpie on unprimed dyed linen

These screens are the movable walls within which stands my Perpetually Moving Female Machine which is currently under construction..