Fragmented Worlds

I’m honored to be featured in an article by art manager Paula Marschalek, originally posted on Marschalek Art Management’s homepage. The full article is reposted below, in English. The German version can be downloaded and viewed here.

Showing at Private Galerie Roland Puschitz

I’m having a small showing at Roland Puschitz’s private gallery space at Waaggasse 5 on Tuesday, April 9 at 18:00. Because space is limited, please RSVP at roland@puschitz.com for the event. We will gather at the Brauerei downstairs between 18:00-18:30, and then go up to experience the rest of the work together. Other viewing times are available upon request, at the same address. There will be a finissage on Wednesday, May 15 at 18:00. The fabulous Caleb Dossett and Abigail Hunter’s their two-person group, Five Days Apart, will be providing music.

For those of you who love to pick things apart and know how they are made, I’ll be present and creating in a Livekunst event on May 7, between 14:00-17:00. I’m warning you: my work is very slow. Don’t expect any wild drama :).

9.5.2022-2.30.2022 Gallery KRAS Opening

Come check out my art and the art of Magdalene Mikes, Andreas Mathes and Raphael Friedlmayer on Monday, 5.9.2022! I'll be at gallery KRAS, Stumpergasse 16, 1060 Vienna from 18-21:00!

The exhibition runs until 30.9.2022 and is open every Wednesday and Friday from 3-6pm (on request also on another day).

Some people don’t want to know what the work is about, and some of you can’t enjoy it without knowing :). For those of you who inhabit the second category, here is an artist statement about some of my recent work:

Faith Hampton is an American mixed media and collage artist with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of North Texas. Moving to Europe in 2017 after an extended time in Asia entered her into an artistic period of relative isolation. It was as if she was creating within a dark tower, with no audience, critics, and artistic companions to help guide the way.

 

Connection, both spiritual and relational, is a valued part of what may seem on the surface to be an antisocial process. Art as a means of spiritual connection helps transcend the gap between the material world and the unseen, “making the invisible visible.” The slow ritual of creation transforms base scraps of paper from trash into sacred icons, connecting the artist and viewer to something powerful, immanent and unseen.

 

Art is created, to some extent, within the quiet of the mind, much like prayer. But prayer, like art, requires the existence of some external force with which one can connect; it creates a door to the outside. Collaging and reworking relics from the past is a way of reaching out, trying to reconnect the past in some way to the future, hoping to let the future bloom out of the past.

 

Many of Faith’s works are a visual depiction of the way memories and symbols of lost or distant relationships fade in and out of each other in the human mind, combining into something new. When the mind is full, we must take control of our thoughts and wrestle them into submission to whatever task lies at hand. Art, in contrast, is about releasing those thoughts and impressions and allowing them to float and swim about, forming new impressions about old ideas in the safety of one’s dark tower, and even expressing wishes or blessings for the subjects or ghosts depicted. Faith lets the thoughts roam free, and then at the end, seeks to bring them into unity, testing the limits of her media, learning to cover and reveal with patterning and transparent layers.

 

Through this process, Faith became more strongly aware of the need, especially in the isolation of the pandemic, to involve others in her work. This sparked the creation of an ongoing creative collective art project called The End of the World, where artists across various disciplines submit works, comment and respond to each others’ work, and springboard off existing submissions to create new threads of conversation. Several of the resulting pieces represent a further attempt to break out of the dark tower, as well as to survive within it; one key participant in The End of the World project is New York poet Eva Ting, whose Poems for a Pandemic, written inside her own dark tower, inspired The In-Between Series; several of these are displayed in this exhibition, with the poet’s permission.

Rooted Exhibition

https://artforchange.space/rootedindia

All the social disconnect has led to some creative responses as artists desire to remain connected and find new forums to display their work and engage in creative conversation with others. I was honored to participate in Art for Change’s recent and ongoing discussion of rootedness.

Since this is my first time participating in anything like this virtual exhibition, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Probably my favorite part was the Zoom chats leading up to the exhibition, where I got to meet and interact with artists from many corners of the world and engage with their pandemic experience through their art. The works shown are deeply personal.

Many of the participants are Indian nationals. As an American woman living in Austria, with many ongoing friendships in China, I was aware that different countries were experiencing the pandemic in different ways, but hearing these artists share their journeys through the loss and isolation of this last year showed me how much there really was that I didn’t understand about the experiences of each different people group. Even in writing that, I realize that is still too generalized; each person was alone in their story of loss and perseverance. And in that, paradoxically, we were all together.

Joseph Joyson

I especially appreciated Harman Taneja’s work on the cracks of her sidewalk as a stable, repetitive presence on the way to her studio during lockdown. Avani Bakaya’s Floating Structures, and Joseph Joyson’s embracing cocoons are also really interesting. As tensions have risen in response to fears and loss of control, I’ve sensed an upsurge in aggressive online communication. In this shattering and strained moment, I appreciate this project’s attempt to bring people together in an expression of empathy that stretches across national lines and belief systems.

Feel free to enjoy this work on https://artforchange.space/rootedindia for a limited time.

Collaborative Bookmaking: solving each other's problems

Last year, my friend David Fox approached me with an irresistible offer: two almost blank books that we could fill with anything. 

He had taken apart, cut up, and reassembled two books of a Chinese printmaker's work, adding in his own pages and leaving some interesting pop-up elements. Our job was to each privately work on the book for a couple months and then exchange.

There was a lot of freedom in the process. I knew whatever problems I created, he would help me fix. And then, it's also fun to work to solve, delete, or solidify images and ideas he'd begun to flesh out. The pages grew thicker in ideas as we worked. Now, with the pages of each book almost filled, I look at it and I see something like a cut-away cross section of a city that I once visited in Egypt.

It was one of those ancient temples that had been buried by sand and time. Later, a church had been built on top of the temple - which was, by then, fully invisible under the sand. Atop that, centuries later, a mosque was built. Now that modern archeologists have brushed and peeled away the layers, you can walk through the streets of the temple and look up to see the odd layer-cake of religious structures teetering above. 

When we meet to exchange the books, it's amazing to see what elements have been covered over or pulled out. Sometimes we've even forgotten what the page had looked like several exchanges before. This is a work of transformation and conversation.

In addition to the layering of thoughts and the call-and-response feel of the work, we learned a lot about each other's creative process, strengths, weaknesses, and even artistic volume of voice. His work was initially less committed, and more thoughtfully tentative, whereas mine was covering over and revealing and filling up space, solidifying lines, even thoughtlessly at times following the dictates of aesthetic with one half of my brain in the book, and the other out in space.

I loved the pop-up element of all his odd-sized pages, and the puzzles they created as some images needed to stand alone or be able to integrate and then pull away from other images as the pages turned. Sometimes I loved them, but my mind was too tired to deal with all their complexities, so I laid them aside for less braindead creative moments. Blank or simple pages were more intuitive, while the pop-up pages felt like differential equations: they required time, space, and planning if they were to work out successfully.

This book is really a conversation and response of two different artists and friends, with a third voice being the otherwise silent printmaker that we have never met. I'm truly sad to see this project coming to a close. I'm not sure what we will do with the resulting collection of images, but I hope it won't be the last of this sort of artistic conversations.

The upside of self-promotion for the artist

What artist hasn't dreamed of the days when they could hole themselves up in their studio and paint, with the occasional visit of a wealthy merchant patron in pantaloons, an embroidered doublet and hose, and otherwise ignore the business side of art? Gone are the days of the art patron, but gone too are the days of the requisite bevy of portraits featuring homely spouses or offspring with questionable chins. (This system explains the choice of subjects in Flemish painting. Why else would the artist choose to immortalize this chin for posterity?)  Now, we can depict who and what we like. But we also have to figure out a way to promote it ourselves, now that we're no longer the "kept women" of some business professional. 

In light of this, I trust over time, I'll be able to leave my luddite ways behind and at least acknowledge, if not embrace, the necessity of maintaining a website. In the meantime, if you feel that the taste of my work sampled here on this site is insufficient or leaves you with questions, feel free to contact me. I prefer the old-fashioned conversation to blogging. :)

Oh rappers and wealthy oil magnates, I'm glad I don't have to paint your niece in a graduation robe, or your cat in pajamas and a gold necklace. But I wish you would still give me your money so I didn't have to pay attention to online self-promotion.