A Mention

http://scrap-dc.blogspot.com/2012/05/artomatic-is-back-in-dc-have-you-been.html

Hallicipede Roadtrip

Here is the Artist Statement I wrote for Artomatic. I'm going to keep adding bits of content here throughout the month, and by the end of the show, I hope to have some good photos of my installation. If you found this page via one of my cards from the show, welcome! I'd love it if you commented!

Artist Statement

One of these works (SubMerged: Blue) appeared in the equally unjuried "Artomatic Takes Flight" show at National Airport last year. Prior to that, my visual art experience was mostly limited to festival banners and zines. My approach to sewing has been described as "non-Euclidean."

Impurity of Motives

I became enchanted with the broken umbrellas that appear in the gutters after each storm, their familiar shapes mangled and splayed. IoM's backdrop is largely umbrella fabric, and several of these works (notably the Hallucipede) contain umbrella ribs and wires, among other found objects.

The vulnerability and power of the human body interest me, as does the forlorn whimsy of our discarded belongings... how we, and they, endure & decay & are transformed. IoM plays with exposure and disguise, with deconstructed portraits of the artist, the synthetic vs. the organic, dream-imagery and the bad neighborhoods in the mind.

I sought lustrous clashes and interactions among salvaged materials: silica gel pellets from a shoebox dessicant packet gleaming like spider-eggs when drizzled in clear nail enamel. You will find bones, feathers, keys, bottle glass, and book paper.

I like art that leads us to view ordinary things in fresh ways. When I leave the gallery and step back into the open air, I find myself entranced by the colors and textures of everyday things -- a rusty newspaper box, an ivy-bitten wall, the sudden flash of pink from a lost toy in the grass. Perceptions merrily poisoned.

About the Extinct Flightless Arts Collective

EFAC made its debut with "Tastes Like Burning," a zine and collage-box assemblage created for the spring 2011 Playa del Fuego. Photography, mythopoetic & confessional text, found-object sculptures, and performance pieces are all in the works, all the time. We explore festivals and interzones, the circle around the bonfire and the trash-strewn brambles beside the train tracks. As of this writing, EFAC is still a collective of one, but We are accepting applications.

"Impurity of Motives" is all finished & installed at Artomatic -- ninth floor, space 187. From the elevators, head toward the Peeps but then make a surprise left turn just before entering the land of edible pastels. "Impurity of Motives" will be immediately on your left.

Clean lines, elegant simplicity, minimalism... these terms describe many of the lovely works in this gallery. The OTHER works in this gallery. If you wish to witness a louche assemblage of brain-tentacles, hallucinatory insects, and the tattered corpses of abandoned umbrellas, come visit "Impurity of Motives."

"Your exhibit is amazingly wonderful. It's back-of-the-wardrobe-out-of-Artomatic-into-a-strange-place wonderful." - Gordon Geise (Fr.Defenestrato Photography)

"Impurity of Motives" is shaping up nicely at the Aerie of the Flightless... here is a moment from earlier today.