at ease under trees

"Realizing Femininity"

Unlike many previous art projects, this one has really meant a lot to me. Because I put so much personal meaning into it, I was able to spend a great deal of time on it and it did not strain me at all. These projects were once cardboard boxes, which we then filled with plaster and destroyed.

When I was creating the cardboard boxes, I had a very vague idea of my topic and my boxes had absolutely no relation to it. Through the development of this project, I actively explored my original broad topic of the construction and deconstruction of memory. I was able to get at the ideas most meaningful to me at this moment. At the same time I was doing this project, I was reading the book, "Beyond God the Father--Toward a Philosophy of Women's Liberaion" in my theology class. I've been also studying the feminist documentary for my final research paper in my documentary seminar. In a very intense way, I was thrusted into perspective of feminism. Taking this perspective and exploring my family history through it in a hands-on way was really a great thing.

My favorite is the landscape with some women in my family laid across it. The landscape was originally three boxes, but when I filled the two small ones with plaster they exploded all over the floor, so I stuck them my cardboard trough of plaster, which is the base. Then the trough fell apart and plaster was seeping out all around me. So frustrated, I was shoveling the plaster off the ground and chucking it back in, which accounts for the lumpy surface...and why it ended up looking like a barren disaster area. It symbolizes the struggle of women. I had this sketch that I did before I even knew about this project of a picture from my family at my graduation party. I drew all the women and realized they were standing in order of age. I also saw as you moved from me (on the front-right) to my grandmother (on the back-left), the women were interacting less and observing more with my grandmother leaning against our broken dishwasher with a subtle smile on her face. I didn't even notice that the first time I drew her. So, as the women move across the landscape they go from standing back having experienced the journey and knowing so much of what the women on the right are experiencing to the experience itself, gathering knowledge and building ideas and fighting and changing. On the right is a structure. On the inside are pictures of the potential of women that is not as appreciated as it is for men. On the outside are worn out pictures of the popular image of women. There is a person covering these outdated pictures with more appropriate pictures--women as strong achievers and mothers. There was not enough room for my picture on the left of this structure with the rest of my family. I find myself in the midst of this reconstruction.

posted by kristine @ 5:10 PM