How do YOU measure up?

 As an ongoing investigation into both the Culture’s definition of beauty and my personal definition of self, I have been looking into historic fashion choices and not-so-subtle childhood messages handed down through toys.

 

Barbie was the first adult toy marketed for children. It was modeled after a sex toy, called the Lilli, made for German men. Here is one Link to learn more.  My mother strongly opposed acquiring the doll, but my sister and I managed to inherit our babysitter’s collection. Soon after, I had a nightmare of my Barbie aiming to kill me.

My fears of being less than the proportions idealized by media and plastic Barbie, may have led me to suffer anorexia nervosa as a teenager. After all, she came with a wardrobe and a teeny book called How to Lose Weight. Inside it just said, “don’t eat”.

 In less than 100 years, her tiny, pointed feet and wide-set eyes, that only looked demurely sideways, her impossibly narrow waist, and large breasts, and her pearly-pink hairless skin have become an ideal for today’s beauty standards. There is speculation that she could have led to the growingcosmetic surgery business today, the fear of body hair, and an embracing of plasticity as a filter.

 

Distorted body proportions and exaggerated poses are everywhere through time. In the 1800s the Hottentot Venus, (a stolen 20-year-old Khoikhoi woman from South Africa: Saartji Baartman), was paraded against her will and almost naked for the titillating the male European gaze. Here is one link to learn more about this. Women in France and England adopted bustles and Basques into their fashion to mimic the enlarged rear of the South African.

 As we look to history, I am amazed at the embrace of glamour through whitening of skin with the lead paint and arsenic wafers (that slowly poisoned the wearer). I am horrified by the bound miniature feet of the Asian nobility. I panic at the elongated necks of the Myanmar and imagine the dread of the daily use of a whale bone corsets. I willingly ignore the affect of the porn industry on beauty.

 

 

As recently as 2014 Kim Kardashian a woman who uses her sexual appeal as currency to sell a fashion line, posed as the Khoikhoi woman, balancing a champagne glass on her derriere for a shot which enraged many feminists and blacks. Beyonce is rumored to be thinking of making a film about Baartman, but that has led to it's own furor.

 

Fashion minimizes and exagerates the average body type. It always has and always will. How do you live with that constant feeling of falling short or being in the wrong time? How does your body measure up? I am interested in your thoughts.

Signs and Numbers

 Just like we have Thanksgiving day to be thankful, we have New Year's day to reflect on the shadow of our footsteps, and muse upon our future strides. It falls on a calendar juncture, at the peak of winter, after the solstice shifts us minutely towards the sun. "Winter," as Paul Theraux said, "is a season of recovery and preparation".

This is the 16th year I have been blogging. Some years I am more consistent than others- but last year was the worst with the lowest amount of (25) postings. It looks like I logged in as more of a book reader than a writer! The number of books read is 27. 

In order to navigate the economics of my age and culture, I have become an example of a successful artist having multiple diverse income streams. For the last nine months I have been helping catalogue, archive and exhibit a collection of art by the late Carl T Linden of Chicago. Starting last summer I ran two very inspiring 6-week art coaching workshops for artists across the country. I have, since October of 2021, taken a job at the Town Hall as the Town Clerk. All of this is fascinating and leaves less time for personal practices.  

For several years...5 or 6 now...I have been writing and illustrating an art history text, based upon my family tree and inspired by ancestors who were influencers in the art world, going back beyond the fifteenth century. The project is huge and each year the research ebbs and flows. What keeps me going are the odd signs and messages that I seem to find just when I need a push to keep going.  

Here are two very recent examples. 

1. While cataloguing Carl T Linden's portrait paintings, most of which are unsigned, undated, and untitled, I came upon one that was a double portrait with the names of the sitters written on the back! Imagine my surprise to find one was Frances Cowles, and the other was Betty Groves of Bensenville, IL. This discovery was early summer, when I was debating a late summer trip to DesMoines ,Iowa with my mother to research the Cowles side of my family. Frances turns out to be a distant relative- our great, great, great, great, grandfathers were brothers. She is also the mother-in-law of the artist I am archiving! I took that as a sign to make the trip to Iowa in the path of my great grandmother Florence Cowles. 

Frances Cowles and Betty Graves by Carl T Linden, oil on canvas

2. While researching the Meskwaki Tribe, because of my great great grandfather's direct hand in taking land to establish the incorporated city of Algona, I have been slowed by the dread of my ancestors homesteading settler mentality of "Manifest Destiny" and their hands in the outright stealing of lands of First Peoples. My great great grandfathers and their brothers fought in the Black Hawk Wars, which not only massacred the indigenous peoples, but led to our government embracing policies of extermination. I read the story of the last great Comanche leader, Quanah Parker. I am lining up images as reference sources for some illustrations. This photo from the Ft Sill Museum shows Parker with guests at his Star House dining room. The art on the walls are advertising posters. The one behind his head is for the Strauss Brothers of Chicago! It feels like a sign from my ancestors to get my studio, and set up the process for painting again!

Quanah Parker entertaining in his home near the Wichita Mountains and cache Oklahoma c. 1885/ photo from Ft Sills Museum

I conclude, that I will keep doing many things; keep painting and writing; keep trying to stay healthy with walking and yoga practices; keep in community even in times of isolation and keep showing up for the Muse. 

In that vein: Can I ask you: What would you like to hear more about on this blog? 

                                            What interests you and is pertinent to this space? 

If you write me an answer, I will mail you a work of art in gratitude. 

                                            Leave comments below.

Make Art this Summer with an Accountability Coach

Are you frustrated with not getting to the studio? Do you need help and a plan to make some art over this summer? Are you stuck? Are you currently in a hard place and need some light? Are you confused and trying to find a creative style? Do you have ideas but lack the discipline to show up for them?

Well- perhaps it is time to Show up for the Muse with me via Zoom!!! • Show up each week for 6 weeks • All Media artists are welcome! • Once a week Zoom to check in on your progress • Email support at any time • Exhibition at end of session at ArtsMidHudson

We can do this together! I have been teaching art to all age groups for the last 26 years and have learned that making art is possible for everyone if they just show up. The challenges in life cost all of us time and space, but I am living proof that an art practice can lift you, like a life raft, through turbulent times and it can enrich your participation in the good times. Just a few years ago my marriage was crumbling. I was sitting at the bedsides of two dear dying friends and my father-in-law was degenerating into Dementia. On top of it, my children were leaving home as adults. The feeling of loss and lack was almost unbearable. By a miracle, and through a daily gratitude list, I was able to see my way to the studio. Not expecting to be able to do much, I focused on one thing, the color orange! I painted with that color until the tube emptied. Have you ever looked at an apple (the same apple) for 30 days and tried to see it differently? It is a classic art lesson that forces you to go beyond the physicality of the subject. Certain parameters on your art can actually push you to see through to a liberating perspective. I learned so much about seeing the world when I tried to paint the greens of summer in Pyrole orange! Ever since, I have been showing up every day to paint my way to health and happiness. I have seen firsthand how a daily art practice can transform a life.

Some of each series can be seen on my website: www.tillystudio.com. Now I am passionate about helping others find their way through the challenging times, and even the best of times, by showing up for the Muse. Doing anything for 40 days, and there is historic proof that it will change you!

The details! Go from feeling cloudy to clarity As your accountability coach, I will inspire discipline to the creation of at least 6, and possibly up to 40, works of art! Sign up through www.ArtMidHudson.org , under summer workshops $100.00 per person AMH Members and $115.00 per person non-members This is a virtual class. Our weekly zoom sessions will be on Tuesdays, June 15, 22, 29, July 6, 13, 20; 7pm-8pm You will be guided each week through goal setting, series synthesis, time management, handling challenges, chronicling insights, and of course-celebrating successes! The class participants will be your new support group and I will be available for email support as well. We have a group exhibit opportunity at the MidHudson Arts Gallery in Poughkeepsie!! Expect bonus PDF resources and downloads as well as links to other artists and stories of working in a series. Are you ready to show up? Working in a series has many benefits. It is a tool to process an event, emotion, and even relationships. If you do anything for 40 days it will change your life! Sign up at www.artsmidhudson.org Questions: tillystudio@aol.com Let’s show up together!

First real test of the Maple syrup Season

 We started tapping this week (a week later than last year) and it took five of us over three days to get 1100 taps into the sugar maples. I loved being in the woods even though it was barely over 25 degrees.

On the third day there was a snowstorm, but the trees effectively sheltered us from the rage out on the roads. I joke that I am dad's apprentice...

But seriously, it means the most to me out of this experience, to be able to learn from my dad and spend days at a time helping him on this passion project. At nearly 85 years old, he is full of stories explaining remnants of old fence lines and rutted fire lanes. He moves with grace through the depths of the snow and over the limbo lines in a way I only aspire to. (Thank goodness for my Swiss semester training last fall!)

Of course there are the hardware glitches, the batteries run dead, and the leaking lines thwart a steady vacuum. But I have returned to the studio to paint the bark, branches, wind and snow along with the glimpse of hawks, ravens, foxes and deer. It's a wonderful life. And it is getting sweeter, literally, by the moment! 

We are selling bottles of pure Maple syrup though my website store in single 8oz bottle or bundles of 5 and 10. Domestic shipping included in the flat rate. Email me and let me know how it tastes. 

************************************************************************************

                                FEATURED PAINTING- 9" oval, acrylic on wood panel

On my easel today as I recall, kind of abstractedly, two days ago, when we were tapping trees in the maple forest during the snow storm! Could call it the "Sugar Bush Snowstorm". I am still wondering if I should add a third figure, Michael, in the lower left. Feel free to let me know what you think.

Swisssemester.org equals learning, persistance, endurance, and endorphins

 I was pretty quickly shocked by the daily athletic requirements of the program, but with persistence I was able to cut my lag time from over an hour to 5 minutes behind the rest of the 48 teens! It felt like that was a wonderful achievement. I can only hope to get even more fit. Swiss semester put me out of my comfort zone and gave me the hiking bug! Seriously, it was a gift to be able to thrash my body against the natural elements and reduce the scope of my worries to the next couple of steps or the next breath. I felt all my worries about American Politics, family health, a purpose in life, etc, just fall away. Each day was planned and assigned.  Outside of classes, all I had to do was follow directions, read the trail markers and make it to the meeting places. You had to be flexible and open to changes. A lot depended on the weather and us keeping Covid virus safe.

#newhobby #athletic #challenges

Spring Arrived Anyway

(continuing the Daily Drawing During a Quarantine)

Predator Paranoia/ April 29

Spring arrived anyway...which seemed a little weird, as if it had not gotten the memo that the world had changed.
Our chicks arrived in the mail and we raised them first in the tub and then in a new coop we built at the edge of the yard. (click on link to see video of their arrival!)

Chicks in the Tub/ April 16

I feel like the May snow storm was especially cruel. On May 10th I drew an inventory of every article I wore on my body. It was a far cry from the last 9 years in Miami, broiling under the sun!

The weather tried to keep us indoors and I found moments of gloom taking over me.

Wistful/ May 6

The bed seemed the safest place to be, even though my heart was done with hibernating.

Bed day/ April 15

Moving While Staying Still

Looking Up/ March30

(continuing series of Covid19 journal daily drawings)

There are parts of the isolation that feel surreal and stressful, and then there are other parts that feel almost blissful in silences. We are getting to know our neighbors and have found gifts on the doorstep a couple of times. Reciprocating, I made large batches of ramp pesto to leave at the doorsteps, and of course, left bottles of dad's maple syrup.

Trip to Town/ April 20

Putting on a mask and grabbing a handful of gloves is "the new normal" before any endeavor. In fact on our morning walks, we keep a mask in the pocket just in case, though we rarely run into another human. All of our interaction with colleagues is through the computer.

My Peeps/ April 23

I love the daily walks, sometimes in the early morning mist, and others in the waning dusk of the day. The countryside is alive with critters. Without the usual distractions, I am able to pay attention. I almost have a relationship with the one-eared rabbit, the romancing wood ducks, the tousled teenage red tailed hawk, the near-exhausted-from-parenting house wrens and the scampering chipmunks in the stone walls.

Walking/ May 18

When night falls we have fallen prey to the offerings of Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime. Our roster of films and TV shows betrays a new obsessive interest in Scottish history. The doorway was through the TV series Outlander. The key was finding both Michael and I are descended from families who immigrated to the America's from Scotland. The fun is finding how far back we can go (1430!) and then watching historical films of the era.

TV Family Tree/ May 14

Nightmares

(continued Daily Drawings during the Covid Pandemic)

Nightmares/ April 24

A month into the national quarantine and numbers of deaths silently continue to rise. Unemployment increases are shouted about in the news. Congress tries to print more money. Alternative stations start floating conspiracy theories. The president encourages protesters to ignore the science, suggests injesting bleach, and screams hysterical over trying to find someone to blame.  No one I know will talk politics, because it is too exhausting and unbelievable. What outrages us one day is overshadowed the next. I feel like I am holding my breath and waiting.

The city, two hours away, empties out and soon all the empty houses on our country road are filled with city people. The stores seem ransacked. There is still no toilet paper to be had. Or whole wheat flour. The trash thrown along the road reflects a higher economic shopper. Maybe we are all high, panting thru stifled homemade masks.

Mask Making/ April 11

I attend church on line, and the local hospital erects a tent in the parking lot to handle the expected rise in patients.  I can’t sleep and worry about my job as a school teacher.

Easter Sunday/ April 12

Hospital Tent/ April 13

Life on Pause, Work is Virtual

(continuing the Daily Drawing During a Quarantine)

 

Another Password/ March 19

By the end of March, the mortal predictions were horrendous and our national leaders acted like buffoons. The overwhelming message was to avoid going out, being within 6 feet of another person, touching your face, or touching anything. 

New protocols for work were straining my brain bank of passwords and the ancient computer software systems that I had in place. In order to keep up with scheduled events and meetings, I uploaded, up graded, downloaded and installed until I just had to surrender. Life was on pause and work became virtual, and it was bound to take a toll.

Handwashing/ May 4

Face Touching/May 5

 

Image of the "Mother of Modern Medicine" Inspires Hope for Vaccine.

As we try to “flatten the curve” of stress on our medical facilities and healthcare workers, we pray for a vaccine against Covid19. Doctors are studying patient responses and leaning over lab Petri dishes with questions. No doubt they will turn to the immortal cells of Henrietta Lacks, called HeLa cells, that have helped fight numerous diseases from Polio, Ebola, Parkinson’s to AIDS.  

Who was Henrietta Lacks?

Henrietta Lacks, a young mother of five, died in 1951 at John Hopkins Hospital from cervical cancer that her Doctor noted "looked like pearls". He had stitched tubes and pouches filled with radium inside her cervix, as was standard treatment at the time for invasive cervical cancer. He also took some cell samples from her cervix, without her knowledge or consent, which was also standard practice at that time.

Henrietta, the great, great, granddaughter of a slave, died that same year at the age of 31. Her cells in the lab replicated quickly and continually and amazed the doctor with their seeming immortality. They were the first human cells to reproduce outside the body! Afraid of being sued, the doctor gave the cells a code name, “HeLa” and shared them in labs across the country. They are still the most commonly used cells in research today.

The story turns rough when you learn that in the 1970’s some scientists, with secret agendas, did research on Henrietta Lacks' children without their informed consent. Then in 1975, a family friend asked about the source of the Lacks cells that his coworkers, at the National Cancer Institute, were studying. It brought a light to the two decades of darkness that the Lacks family had been kept in.

A book was written, then an HBO movie. In 2010 the John Hopkins Hospital donated a grave marker to her unmarked plot. It says: “Here lies Henrietta Lacks, Her immortal cells will continue to help mankind forever.”

To say that Lacks is a global phenomenon would be limiting. In 1962 her cells were launched into outer space aboard a Russian satellite for study. Two years ago, the National Museum of African American History ofCulture and the National Portrait Gallery jointly acquired a painting of Lacks. It adds a beautiful and much needed face to the woman often called “the mother of modern medicine”.

Kadir Nelson with his painting of Lacks

Who painted her portrait?

Kadir Nelson (b.1974), an American artist, was commissioned by HBO for the 2017 movie premier of “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks”, to paint the first portrait of Lacks. An author of several best-selling children’s books on African-American culture and lead artist for Steven Spielberg’s 1997historical drama Amistad, Nelson is known for his larger than life portraits of African American leaders. According to his website, Nelson chooses “subject matter that has emotional and spiritual resonance and focuses on the journey of the hero as it relates to the personal and collective stories of people."

There was no portrait in existence of Lacks save for two small family photos. Nelson used those as well as a vocabulary of symbolism to tell Lacks' story. Standing in a red dress, Nelson paints a yellow straw hat as a halo around Lacks’ head. Her strong faith is reflected in the bible she holds with her hands crossed over her womb. A complex “Flower of Life” pattern against which she stands is the ancient symbol for immortality and exponential growth. The pearls around her neck reflect the doctor’s note about how her cancer grew. A pendant of a nest represents motherhood and the hope of fresh birth. The repeating flower pattern on the dress symbolizes the biological bounty that she shed without knowledge for our salvation. The most poignant details are the two small buttons missing from her dress. They symbolize that something precious was taken from her.

Hopefully, soon the HeLa cells will demonstrate another cure.

Not All Hospitals are Equal

In the light of today, when countries around the world are scrambling to build hospitals, virus test sites, and labs, I can’t help but reflect on the glorious façade of the Ospidale degli Innocenti. Back in the late 1400’s, the Silk Merchant Guild of Florence hired Filippo Brunelleschi, who would go on to become one of the renaissance’s greatest architects, to build the first public building to receive and house orphan babies as community service. 

Brunelleschi pulled together ideas of scale and optics that glorified human proportion and signaled the beginning of the Renaissance in Europe. 

The hospital façade is longer than tall. A colonnade of composite columns rhythmically punctuates the full front. Each column is placed apart at a distance that equals their height and the arcade behind them maintains the same measurement, creating a series of cubes. Sweeping arches fly up from each capital and leap down the length of the building, like a beating pulse. In the triangular spaces where the arches meet there are tondos, (circular framed), ceramic babies in sculptural relief. Above, on the top floor of the 2-story building, the rectangular windows have triangular caps that visually lift the weight of the horizontal building upwards. The design incorporates grey stone and white stucco to break up the space into geometric patterns. The whole building feels light and measured.

Brunelleschi was a trained goldsmith, and sculptor, but when in 1403 he only won second place in the competition to create panels for the FlorenceBaptistery doors, he seemed to quit all that and turn to architecture. He is known for designing innovative machines to help construction, and for his greatest masterpiece, a wonder of the world, the largest Dome of the time, theDome of Santa Maria del Fiore. It is more then 150 feet across and involved construction 180 feet in the air. It took 18 years to build and there were only three accidental deaths recorded! Brunelleschi, a problem-solver, patented many innovations to get the job done. Born in 1377, he died ten years after the completion in 1446 and is buried under the dome.

My son, another problem solver, is working in construction with a company proposing fast pop-up buildings for FEMA. It looks as though they will be made of extruded recycled plastic, and dome like in shape. I wonder if asking for columns and arches would be too much? Maybe some tondos framing the virus?

Coronavirus Shadow is as Terrifying as Breugel's Triumph

Triumph of Death by Bruegel ca.1562

When I think of the Coronovirus leaping around the globe and adding to the daily death count, I think of one of the most terrifying paintings in history, the Triumph of Death, an oil-on-wood-panel painting, created in 1562. It has something, like this virus, of everyone’s worst nightmare. Set along a coast in a village with commerce, the scene looks like a premonition of hell. Flames and smoke dot the horizon. It’s an eco-horror. There isn’t a sign of any green life in the landscape. Trees are being chopped down. The land is scorched and rust colored. A bloated fish gasps on the shore. The painting is of a jumbled panicked populace surrounded by almost quaint little scenes of victims stuck in torture contraptions, and coffins sinking into the mud in the surrounding fields. It looks like the cursed forecast of what we can expect if the stores run out of medical masks, or you are stuck in an airplane full of coughing aliens.

Not enough is known about Pieter Bruegel the Elder, the artist from the Netherlands who worked in the 1500’s. No one knows his birth date, but the time he was registered in an art guild (1551) to his death (1669) he executed 40 paintings and 60 prints. This particular painting is hung at the Prado Museum in Madrid.

In The Triumph of Death, the hysteria is loud and panoramic. Men, women, babies, the rich, the poor, the laborer, the gamblers, soldiers, monks, and kings, are all tormented and terrified. Skeletons arrive in massive numbers and outnumber the living. They arrive on boats and by horseback. They interrupt meals, disrupt commerce and dismantle forts. They amass an army, creating a wall of coffin-shaped shields.  They pull wagons piled high with skulls, trampling over victims, and herding crowds into a large dark door: a death trap in the side of a hill. They wield long slivered scythes and blow on trumpets, even drumming percussion with bones. A woman, face down, cradles her baby while dogs eat it’s face. A man is hung with his pants down. A bewildered king is taunted by a skeleton holding up an empty hour-glass.

Everyone in the painting is in the throes of death except for two young lovers in the lower right corner. They are seemingly oblivious and feeling immortal as they play music and read. But, behind them, a skeleton has picked up an instrument and is playing along.

On a barren hill to the left, two skeletons ring a large black bell.

Painted during a time when northern Europe was rocked by pandemics, reeling under the ruling religious wars, and leery of the inventive fury of the Inquisition, pictures such as this were called “moral paintings” because they were warnings to live right. No one was/is immune to death. Washing hands hadn’t caught on and religion, literally, could kill.