Once & Again: Alterations at the Springfield Arts Association in Illinois

(Above:  Once & Again: Alterations at the Springfield Arts Association in Springfield, Illinois.  Click on any image to enlarge.)

On Tuesday I drove all day! In a little more than twelve hours, I arrived back at the Springfield Arts Association in Springfield, Illinois.  It was good to return!  From mid-January to mid-February, I'd spent a cold winter month in their artist-in-residency program.  It was truly "a gift of time" and the timing couldn't have been better.  By the next month, COVID-19 was raging. (To view blog posts from this opportunity, please scroll down on the right-hand side bar to my blog archive and select Jan. 2020 and Feb. 2020.)

 (Above:  The M.G. Nelson Gallery before installing my show.)

During the art residency I started creating The Clothesline.  At the time, I knew the work was speaking to my environmental concerns.  Found fabric hand prints were fused to vintage household linens.  This was my way to promote energy conservation and other common sense reasons to line dry laundry.  (The dryer really is the biggest suck of electricity in most houses!)  Yet within a month after the residency, my hand prints also became a visual reminder to WASH YOUR HANDS during a pandemic and thereafter!

 

(Above and further below:  Images from Once & Again: Alterations.)

The Clothesline grew considerably during those dark pandemic days, but something else also happened.  I started stitching Found Object Mandalas.  Amazingly, I knew why I was doing it!  Often, I start a series and I have to figure out why I'm so compelled to create the work through the actual process of "making".  This time was different and the reason had everything to do with the quiet solitude of the art residency.  I had time to devote to "thinking" ... which led me to longer stream-of-consciousness daily journal entries. 

Since 2006, I've practiced this routine.  It's the result of Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way, a twelve step program for creative living.  Okay ... I admit it!  I cheat!  Julia Cameron suggests longhand writing.  I type my journal entries.  They are sorted by date in folders labeled by year.  While in Springfield for this art residency, I wrote about my compulsion to use vintage and antique materials.  I wrote how the desire to give "second life" to the old, neglected, unused, unwanted, and often damaged had everything to do with repeated childhood viewing of Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer.  That entire scene at the Island of Misfit Toys touched my eight-year-old soul.  I knew even then to feel guilt for asking Santa for something new when I had old things I hadn't touched in months. 

I wrote about the first auction I ever attended and how the remains of an old woman were sold off to the highest bidder.  I wrote about my family members who washed aluminum foil and Ziploc bags.  I realized that my preferences in materials was with me long before I became an artist.  I wrote about my hope to transform everyday objects into art and how these things might touch others.  I actually started writing the original proposal for Once & Again: Alterations. 

For me, bringing this show back to the location where its seeds were first planted feels so very, very right.  I spent all of yesterday hanging the show.  Sure ... it isn't as large as the show was last year the Imperial Centre in Rocky Mount.  (CLICK HERE for a video!)  The entire Patchwork Installation was left back in South Carolina along with several other pieces.  Sue's Environmental To Do List (which was also started during the art residency) isn't here either.  It was sold to a non-profit last year!  The work really does seem to touch others in the same way as they touch me!