SO IMPOTENT OUR WISDOM: SURPRISED BY SEEDS

A scientific study of the structure of plants and seeds led me to this series. I kept wanting to look closer and closer, as if nature’s secrets and mysteries might reveal themselves, if only I could get in close enough. To that end I used watchmaker’s lenses to study the complex anatomy of seeds and plants. A poem by Emily Dickinson was the source of my latest exhibition at the Adkins Arboretum:

“Nature is what we know -
Yet have no art to say -
So impotent Our Wisdom is
To her Simplicity.”

We still fighting for us?

The 100 year anniversary of Women's Suffrage continues to illuminate the societal ills women face even after winning  the right to vote. We continue to fight for the right of choice, fair wages, health and freedom. This multi media collection speaks the words of the unsilenced woman of 2019. 

Bears in Bed

Scenes from any gay-themed film written or directed by heterosexuals in the 1980s, 90s, and 00s. Machine and hand sewn bears.
Synthetic fabric blends, polyester thread, rice, twin-size mattress-pad, cotton sheet.

Spindelpueppchen: Art Dolls

These little dolls are a reminiscence of my early childhood during World War II and of the years of the 1940’s. It was a time of destitution in Germany. There was just nothing available, neither food nor anything else. My mother tried to get us through these times by knitting sweaters for some kind of cottage industry. She received the yarn and a pittance for the finished product. I sat next to her and learned knitting by watching her. From some of the leftover yarn she made these little dolls for me. I gave them names, and thought of them as my playmates.

Dreams of Tartary

Tartary or Great Tartary was a historical region in Asia located between the Caspian Sea-Ural Mountains and the Pacific Ocean. Tartary was a blanket term used by Europeans for the areas of Central Asia, North Asia, and East Asia unknown to European geography. In my childhood, in the early 1940s, when there was nothing available to make new clothes, make something less drab, I encountered at the outskirts of our small medieval town in Germany a camp of Romas or Nomads.

Embroideries

I love flowers. I love their beauty, their delicacy, their variety, but most of all their incredible richness in color and form. Real flowers fade away; mine retain their beauty forever.

The History of Baltimore

When I was invited to be part of a show at Maryland Art Place, I knew what I wanted to do: I wanted to pay tribute to my adopted hometown of Baltimore and its rich history. I dove into extensive research about its people and its places. I marveled at the lovely beginning when ‘Baltimore’ started out as a settlement of 25 houses. Learning which famous people walked its street, what had been forgotten of its captivating history in centuries and decades past, fascinated me. Baltimore even had its own hymn. Like the many things about this charmed city, it has been forgotten.

The Time Machine

These stacked vignettes are inspired by H.G. Wells’ 1895 novel and visually from the movie adaptations of the same name. Each is housed in a vintage card catalog drawer except the top scene in which represents the time traveller’s laboratory. The scene of the Eloi in the original movie, filmed in 1960 at MGM in California even though it was set in London. The modern remake from 2002 has a scene when George is walking in front of the New York Public Library’s steps and the lions.

Am I Am a Mutant

When I was born, the first thing my grandfather did was to make sure I had a full set of fingers and toes, since many children of a-bomb survivors were born with varying birth defects. I remember my introduction to mutants and mutation; first, by my fascination with childhood heroes that gained superpowers through radiation and then later on, in contrast, witnessing my grandfather passing away from cancer. I have been in limbo and stuck between the perpetual question of “Am I a Mutant” and succumbing to the answer that “I Am a Mutant.”
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