SALTWORKS: The Preservation of Women’s Spirit, 2006
mixed media installation

“I chose to show these works because they each re-present ways of working and addressing issues that came forward and were changed by the feminist consciousness.  Feminist thought/study stated “the personal is political”. This type of work was part of new ideas that moved outside of ‘just the art world’ and into the public.  They took the form of performance, installations, “actions” or large events patterned after older terms like pageants. These ways included people usually overlooked as participants in art.

What you see before you is a small excerpt of a two-gallery installation from 2005,  commissioned by the Center for Excellence for Women and Spirituality in celebration of “100 years of educating women to lead and to influence” by the College of St. Catherine (now St. Catherine University).

I selected the material SALT for this large project because of its relationships to body, spirituality and beauty.

For a year I conducted small group conversations in which I asked the participants to tell me about ‘inspiration’ and their experience of it. The groups were self-selected members of alumnae, faculty and staff, and the Sisters of St Joseph of Carondelet. While doing these conversations I gave each group member a lump of salt clay with the request to construct a hand-size female figure of their own design.

These 350 figures were melded into a 40 foot wall of the east gallery, complimented by another wall of words from the participants on ‘inspiration.’ In addition, a ‘kite wall’ wall installed, constructed of sewn pages from decommissioned library books. They floated on the air movement stirred (inspired) by gallery visitors.”

 

In A New Voice: Art In The Service Of Memory, 2007-2018
mixed media books

“In a New Voice demonstrates a belief that I have held for a long time, that art should and does have a place at the table in the world of health care.

This is a piece I have co-created with and for participants who live with cognitive issues. The paintings included were created in my classes and relationships with the art makers and staff at Amherst Wilder Adult Day Health. Most of my makers have not been artists before this time so they are on a new path.

The drawings and paintings are symbols of new found hopes and selfhoods. They speak to the power of imagination and a renewed permission to be a new idea generator. The renewed self confidence to express their own identity and sensibility plus the acknowledgement of each other—this is the power that artmaking has to offer.”