Drawn after spending an afternoon with interesting women friends. Each is a different flavor of deliciousness. Part of my synesthesia is to “taste” the essence of things and people I find beautiful-not like vanilla -more like eating sculpture – still very satisfying!
I can’t hold on to a single thought: the murders in Orlando, world and US politics, the death of a 21 year old friend, and perhaps, what I hope is only a momentary experience of “adjustment fatigue” to change. The bottom images in this piece are me throwing and kicking and being angry and miserable. The top images are life flowing forward through those not touched by pain at this moment. I experience life as liminal between a yin/ yang of tensions.
Sometimes the details of just living a life get a bit confused both intellectually and emotionally.
“How Long Can I Keep My Balance Before I Fall Into Infirmity?” Silk on linen, with linen cord, metallic and cotton floss and thread 24″x36″
For all of us Baby Boomers, Infirmity is real!
I was talking with a 60-something friend about his health issues this morning, and this fell out of my pens.
So far I am the pink dancer, but watching friends and family age, I can anticipate a probable future. And I always experience pain as very sharp. I can only balance on one leg for so long, no matter how much I exercise, how strong my core is, or how much healthy food I eat.
After a week spent with my elderly mother and her growing dementia, I needed to create a newly quiet, meditative space for myself, and did so through this work.
This was the most compulsive piece that I have ever made, begun on the very first day of my retirement. In my impulse to create on the spot, I simply cut up three old pieces of silk clothing and sewed them together. I am the person on the right side, looking backwards toward the left, at my skills, passions and my undeveloped hopes and dreams.
Translation: “Something always happens. You chose.” Although this piece is only two colors on the surface, any one of these boxes could be opened and might contain extraordinary colors, textures, and opportunities. In other words, attitude is everything.
9.5”x14.75”
After caring for my 89 year old mother, who was beginning to develop dementia, I reflected on how all of us are finally left with just our bones among the bugs.
When I first drew this as a study, I had been reflecting on a lecture I had heard about Ganesha, the one who removes obstacles and the God of new beginnings. As one sometimes takes the bits and pieces of what’s in the refrigerator and makes soup, this was a reflection on the bits and pieces of a recent year, including having been mostly paralyzed, and having had cancer treatments. The center reflects the “dark night of the soul” from which I was recovering, while the gold is the healing process throughout and surrounding my life.
This was drawn in response to Professor Anne LePore’s encouragement to submit my artwork to a juried art show. The small boxes represent my march forwards without being sidetracked by real or imagined obstacles.
Living Out Loud: The Art of Geri Hahn 