yuppers

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Mike Finnigan is a veteran keyboardist and
blues vocalist who has toured with more than 20 major acts, including
Jimi Hendrix, Etta James, Leonard Cohen, and Los Lonely Boys. There's a
primal quality to his singing. It's gritty and fluid and tempestuous, almost
feral at times. I understand perfectly why Bonnie Raitt has called him a
"tall drink of bacon." The sound he makes with his voice is that lush and
tasty. Can you guess his astrological sign? It's Taurus, of course. I'm
naming him your patron saint this week because you yourself are as close
as you have ever come to being a tall drink of bacon.

endings.....

unbelievably, the term is coming to a close. The work has been stop motion animation with mirrors and sky and chickens. Performance art has included baking bread as dad and the gingerbread wall.

from stop motion animation scenes

there is focus....beginning focus.....in turns out that I am creating unconventional self portraits. I have known for a while that the work was about my identity, but as the semester has evolved, the mirrors continue to show up, the outdoors, performance, all manners of telling a story about myself, a self portrait per se, for the audience.

until next time,
Michele

MIDTERM!

sooo midterms have found me, well, hopefully NOT slumping but in the calm before a storm. There is so much to learn, still, and forever....the work has evolved to sculptured hens, continued mirror studies, chicken wishes, and thoughts about mother. There's thinking as well, thesis thoughts and professional studies thoughts, to go, you know, with the degree.

chicken sculptures (there's 21)

chicken wishes

mirror studies

mirror studies: stream

this mother

chicks arrived in the mail

chicken pinata

one of many gingerbread walls

Is it really?

The summer intensive has passed; here are some images of work that occurred!

detail; altar cloth

one of many broken mirrors

the "before"

"those were the good old days, huh mom?" paper/ink/stitch

detail; curio cabinet

mirror studies #7; projection video, 7 found mirrors, 7 plinths

detail; Hansel and Gretel 

Kate Gilmore! Me!

I decorated a gingerbread house in front of an audience

light studies digital photograph

Mirror Studies digital image

mirror studies #3 light reflects 

mirror studies #8

pm2 digital image

detail; mirror of a witch

detail: gingerbread house witch

so, there was a lot happening!
Michele

another quote that will be useful

"The line between art and life should be kept as fluid, and perhaps indistinct, as possible."

Alan Kaprow

Performance Art Cont'd

"Performance art does not present the illusion of events, but rather presents actual events as art."

Joan Jonas

Performance Art

so, over the past weekend I participated in an endurance piece created by kate gilmore ( http://www.kategilmore.com/) which was transformative, amazing, focusing, meditative, and an experience of a lifetime. I walked for two sessions of 5 hours each over sets of stairs that surrounded a monument in Portland, ME.  The piece was created by but not defined by kate, and she asked audience to get what they wanted from viewing the experience. For myself, the stairs were in sets of seven up and seven down and I totally counted my way through the five hours and was in every moment of my time spent climbing. The stairs weren't aerobic, but there was an aftermath of a sore blistered toe and really tight calf muscles just now subsiding.

I wrote a note to kate to thank her for the experience, and here's what she wrote back:

michele,
thank you for being so fucking amazing!
you blew me away (and everyone else for that matter).
maybe we can fly you around the country to do this!
i loved working with you.  i hope we can do it again soon!
good luck with the rest of your summer... (and your mom video).
xxxx
kate

also, it turns out that I am the oldest woman to ever perform an endurance piece for kate, as well as one of only two women out of the group to perform all 10 hours. Pretty badass, right?