I’m undertaking a 1000-day reinvention project, blogging here daily to track my progress. In Sunday Planning, I plan for the week ahead.
It’s so interesting to look back a week each Sunday and see what I had planned, because so often the plans change.
Last week, I said I was going to apply to the River Run Art Festival at Keystone. I decided shortly after I didn’t want to. I couldn’t imagine how I could get a tent and panels along with my art to the festival. And it was going to be so expensive. My goal wasn’t to make money on that festival but rather to connect with potential collectors and learn to sell that way but still I didn’t want to be throwing money away on something that should remain a fantasy only.
Then last night I went to the show opening for the WCACO member show. That was fun. That’s how I want to show my art! I haven’t applied to any juried shows this year; this one wasn’t juried, just pick the work you want to show. It was fun to connect with old and new friends. I took my daughter and she was inspired enough that she’s going to take up paint and brush herself. The wonderful thing about a show like that is the diversity of art and the idea it gives you, “I can do any kind of art I want!” She has natural artistic talent. I’m excited to see what she comes up with. That reminds me — I want to order a set of acrylic paints for her, a mixing set perhaps like this one.1
At the show I learned of this upcoming WCACO show (Un)Altered Books: Unheard Voices – Connecting the Impactful & Unsung with our Nation’s Promise and Strength. The call says, “Using books as object, structure, or metaphor, artists will transform research, archives, and lived experience into powerful acts of storytelling and restoration that tell the full story of us” [emphasis mine]. The artworks will be displayed in glass library cases and can have maximum dimensions of 20″H x 13″W x 13″D. You can exhibit a painting but you must provide a small easel to put it on, and the dimensions have to be included in the artwork dimensions.
So I’m intrigued. I’ve been ploughing this idea space of living as though you’re the protagonist in a great novel, and this seems like an ideal time to express such an idea in art somehow. Artists are invited to “reclaim banned books and overlooked, erased, or silenced histories through visual book-based art forms.” I’m most interested in the silenced history of adultery and infidelity, or to take a wider lens, women who seek romance to escape boredom and constraint and thereby become illegible through their choices. I checked a list of the top 100 banned classic books and see that more than one has the theme or at the very least the presence of infidelity. These include The Great Gatsby, The Awakening, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Madame Bovary, and, of course, The Scarlet Letter. I didn’t see Anna Karenina on the list but that one is close to my heart, since I just finished the ten-episode 1977 BBC miniseries. Anotherone that probably qualifies is Mansfield Park by Jane Austen.
I don’t think a painting would be ideal for this show, rather an altered book or a handmade book. I’m thinking of buying old used books and maybe stacking them up and then modifying them, with paint and ink. I’ve started looking at used books to find some to turn into “An Adulteress’ Library.” I’ll stack the books into some sort of sculpture and write on them, maybe the outcomes of each story (e.g., Anna – threw herself under a train, Emma – poisoned herself, Hester – buried next to her lover, etc).
I’m so excited. I’m so inspired. Leaving behind the achievement society version of art — thinking I have to market it, I must sell it, I must make a living, I must build an audience, I must be recognized — is opening up bright new vistas for me.
- We went to Michael’s and I bought her this set of 48 colors. When you’re just starting out it’s fun to have a bunch of colors to try instead of mixing your own. Maybe later she’ll mix her own or maybe she’ll like using premixed colors. ↩︎