Come Closer Opens April 24 at Atlas Bar & Gallery!

I’m excited to invite you to my show “Come Closer” at Atlas Bar & Gallery, Neustiftgasse 51, 1070 Wien, featuring all-new work about which I’m pretty excited. The show centers around themes of connection and vulnerability, and the ways our choices to embrace the constraints of meaningful relationship enrich not only our own lives, but also generate life into the dead or empty spaces around us.

The show will open at 18:30 on 24.4, with an artist talk moderated by the inimitable Paula Marschalek starting at 19:00, and followed by a musical offering from Caleb Dossett.

In keeping with the theme, we’ve invited author Nastasja Penzar, author of Yona and lecturer at the University of Applied Arts, Vienna, and musician and writer Caleb Dossett to share their own personal artistic takes on the theme of intimacy and vulnerability. There are few things I enjoy more than a multidisciplinary art evening or salon, and I’m excited to experience their work together with you on Saturday, April 26 at 18:30.

Fragmented Worlds

I’m honored to be featured in an article by art manager Paula Marschalek. 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 :).

Relaxed Summer Show at Galerie Roland Puschitz

Come see me on July 28 between 18:00-21:00 at Galerie Roland Puschitz, Sechshauserstrasse 116. It’s an easy walk from Schönbrunn U4 stop. I’ll be showing some larger, unframed collage and drawing works that haven’t been exhibited before.

If you can’t make the opening, but would rather see the work and the meet the artist simultaneously, I’ll be there at the Finissage on August 25 at 18:00.

"Winterberries" Makes an Appearance on Ria Comelli's Recent Album

I was honored that friend and performing artist Ria Comelli asked to feature some of my artwork on her recent track. Check out her work, and like her on Spotify or itunes to support.

Here's what she says about her work: "Der Song erzählt von Veränderung und Loslassen, offen zu sein, für das, was da kommt und was das Leben uns bringt. " The theme worked well with the meaning and feel of the artwork with which she chose to pair it.

For more of Ria's work, find her on instagram here:

https://instagram.com/riacomelli?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

https://music.apple.com/at/album/tag-x-single/1688043762

https://open.spotify.com/track/0qWJ1xwB1abV1Ypkfo33W1...

Portraits that Build Bridges

I first was exposed to Austrian photographer and portraitist Daniel Nuderscher’s work over lunch with my friend Anne Glassner, a performance artist with whom I had the privilege of sharing a studio space. Anne’s work is strange and personal and dreamlike; across the table, she showed me photographs of her recent performances. I was struck by the warmth and personality conveyed by the artist behind the camera. I’m very camera-shy, and I hate the stiffness and posturing of posed photography. I’m not sure if I’ve ever had a posed photo I’ve really liked, with the exception of those taken by David Fox and Stacey Wei. The difference there, though, is that I know and trust David and Stacey, and somehow that knowledge and trust translates into the photos they take. I know they are not picking me apart into little pieces, on lists labeled “flaws” and “bad angles,” to hide or expose.

There is a kindness to Daniel’s work that’s readily apparent even by a quick look at his instagram feed. When I was trying to explain to my husband about the project, I used terms like “closeness and intimacy” that skeezed him out; he didn’t understand the project and is on red alert for potential sexual risks. “He’s not a perv - I don’t get pervert vibes!” I protested. When we met that next day in my studio, Daniel said that the word “intimacy,” especially in German (his first language), almost always has a sexual connotation. I guess that’s true, but it’s a sad commentary on our inability in this age to form deep, meaningful relationships without a sexual component. A lot is about sex, but not everything is about sex.

Again, though, we see that in the hyper-sexualized instagram selfies and soft-core pornography people post about themselves. These pruned, cultivated, filtered expressions of a person say very little about who they are, but more about what they feel others may value about them: doll-like skin and facial and body features that show little more than sexual availability. These photos say, “use me sexually - let me show you the things I have you may want,” not “get to know me as a whole person and share yourself with me.”

In Daniel’s portrait project, he meets up in their space with people he doesn’t know, sits down and spends time with them. There are some subjects who choose to pose nude. These nudes, however, bear nothing of the sexual objectification and the generic sex-doll feel. They embody what I have loved about nude portraiture from the beginning: the beauty of the real person, comfortable in their space, nude as metaphor for authenticity.

When Daniel came by the space, I wasn’t really sure what to expect. What I found was someone who fit well with the expression of his art I’d briefly looked at, someone very human who was interested in finding the humanity in others. We dove right in, talking about views of the world, God and humanity in a very naked way, though I’d chosen to keep my non-metaphorical clothes on. It was a beautiful experience, getting to know each other in this way. He very unintrusively took a few photos at the end, but by that time, I felt very safe about the person he is, and hoped we’d remain friends.

Because we had become friends. This is the beauty of this project he is doing, and the beauty of his artistic gift: to see someone and accept them, to show yourself to them, and to make the world that day smaller, warmer and more personal.

Note: In addition to seeking more participants for this project, Daniel is available for other photographic commissions.

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.

Grätzl Art Open - Open Ateliers

Lost and Buried Things

I’m excited about my first solo show in Vienna! This is a sober yet hopeful collection of work chronicling the connectedness and separations of the past several years; there’s a lot of plant imagery and a lot of paper scraps. Throughout this project, I considered artist Mako Fujimura’s discussions on soil as something made up of dead things that decompose, and our cultural contributions as humans as a form of planting within that soil that we are given. These pieces are very journalistic and personal, with lots of stories and conversations hidden in the scraps I’ve layered together during this past year. It helped me to transform these thoughts and feelings into images and symbols, and I hope that there is some universality to these experiences that can bring a sense of togetherness for viewers who have walked through similar moments of loss and isolation.

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.