"Midwestern! Punk! Mom! " 2019
This show, "Midwestern! Punk! Mom!," was the last show I completed before the COVID-19 pandemic shut down. I had no idea how important this show was to be, as the last time I would be able to gather with my artistic community for over a year.
At the time of this show's conception, I was 45 and felt a certain tipping point in the arc of my creative life. I felt a deep, personal need to reflect and witness the overarching narrative of my life’s work. Both as a way to claim my life's experiences and as a way of moving creatively forward. I proposed a "punk DIY self-retrospective" to Lisa Degliatoni director at 1100 Florence Gallery and she enthusiastically gave me radical permission to create the retrospective of my dreams.
It was laid out chronologically in three phases, each corresponding to the three words in the show’s title. "Midwest" covers my youth and earliest artworks including earliest inspiration: my toys, books and records. "Punk" covers my teen and young adult years, particularly undergraduate. "Mom" covers adult years including the birth of both of my daughters and several artistic accomplishments along the way. I spent months going through my archives, selecting art and objects including personal snap shots, diaries, toys and even garments.
The result were walls hung from floor to ceiling with a selection of my life’s accumulated artifacts and art. When hung together they wove one single story of inspiration, trauma and resilience from birth to midlife. To give the art and object context I painted directly onto the wall in a confessional diary like style in the negative space around the art and objects. It felt like you were walking into my archive with notes in the margin. Gallery visitors “read” my life’s creative trajectory through the text on the walls and I was able to see my own conceptual through-lines and creative resiliency with clarity. This clarity was the ultimate goal of the exhibit as well as an act of recentering my story as heroic rather than tragic. In doing so, I aligned my future work with this narrative to continue this story…
