issue #8 Archives

Body of Work

May 20, 2018 | Make, Think | Comments 0 comments

I cannot describe my creative process or the meanings of my artwork, very easily or well. This is especially true for the pieces shown in this issue. They resist analysis and explanation as they would any destructive force. I can say that anything I have ever seen felt loved heard known made touched could be present – referenced, transformed, elucidated, ridiculed, mirrored, concatenated. What else I know is that making art for me is an intuitive, holistic synthetic, integral, un-conscious, self-dissolving act. I am a little reluctant to become more aware. But I believe that at its most basic, my art-making is an attempt to understand or reconcile or learn things that I cannot apprehend or process in other ways.

Isadora Duncan shared the same idea, when once she was asked what her dancing meant: She answered, “If I could tell you, I wouldn’t have to dance.”

Nevertheless, having curated this issue, I can see in retrospect a unifying subject – the Female – expressed in form and materials. Beyond that, I encourage you to find your own meanings, for all art is participatory, in exactly this way.
I want to know, “What do you see?”

Untitled

May 20, 2018 | Make | Comments 0 comments

Untitled¹ was first exhibited at the 5th Annual City Wide Open Studios – Pirelli Building, New Haven CT, October, 2002

Artist Statement.

Ideal Patient

May 20, 2018 | Contemplate, Make | Comments 0 comments

Ideal Patient ¹ was first exhibited at City Gallery, New Haven CT.
‘Inside, Outside & Between’
November, 2003

Artist Statement

Fine Line

May 20, 2018 | Contemplate | Comments 0 comments

The difference between
doing and not doing
is a fine line incised
down the center of my
being.
It starts from
the ridge of my brow
and leads
across my face
into my chest
and through my
various organs
liver, spleen, pancreas,
all the parts that work.
It surfaces
through my navel
and travels down my
thigh, knee, ankle,
past the callous
on my heel
and to the sole of my foot.
It’s an invisible fine line.
Invisible.
You won’t see it
when you see me.
When you see me
you won’t know
why I can or can’t,
but it’s all because
of the line
and how it got there
and how it will never
go away.

Fine Line by Stephanie Spaulding

The Dress Bjork Should Have Worn

May 20, 2018 | Invent, Make | Comments 0 comments

The Dress Bjork Should Have Worn¹ was first exhibited May 2001 as an entry to the 7th Leonardo Challenge sponsored by the Eli Whitney Museum, New Haven CT

“Turns of Mind”
The Prime Movements
Nature turns wheels with muscle, wind and water in dutiful simplicity. Leonardo’s mind reconstructs that movement. He collects and contrives twists and turns to compose an infinite choreography: sometimes a dull march, sometimes a graceful waltz, sometimes a jazzy jitterbug.

The Controller
The Museum constructs MacroChip Controllers to teach basic mechanics and basic invention. A crank and shaft move cams which alter the direction, the motion and, the speed of three or more lifters. The limited movement of the rotating shaft can be divided, transmitted coordinated and combined in unlimited applications.

The Challenge
Explore the simple movement vocabulary of this common controller. Adapt it, install it, transform it in a construction – that moves or not – to enrich our anthology of the infinite twists of the creative mind.
We will send you a kit to assemble the basic Controller along with a 12×12 inch box which you may use – or not – to stabilize the work. It may be part of the construction or just a display platform. The idea of Controller is a launching point for your thinking. Elaborate it, transform it, enlarge it, reduce it, conceal it, reveal it: in all cases, the essence of the Controller. [Eli Whitney Museum]