On January 21st, I went with Kimberly to the Women’s March here in Asheville. People gathered slowly. I had heard a lot of women say they were not going because they were afraid it might become violent. So we were really surprised when large crowds seemed to materialize out of thin air.
Transforming Hate: An Artist’s Book, was completed this year, eight years after it was started. We did not know if it was possible, but in March we pushed to get a few copies ready for an April PHOTO+CRAFT presentation. Entitled “Making and Meaning: Photobooks and the Social Fabric”, this Black Mountain College Museum and Arts Center panel with Alejandro Cartagena, was one of thirteen events organized by Warren Wilson College here in Asheville.
The “Transforming Hate” book was published recently. The working title was “The Proposal” almost right up until it went on the press. The work on the book evolved over an eight-year period. I want to share some of the steps that I took in order to make the book. I’m hoping that in the process I can see more clearly why a price of $50 for the book does not begin to cover the cost of producing it.
I visited Western Carolina University with Kim yesterday. It takes about an hour to get to Cullowhee from Asheville. While she was in class, I settled myself in the lobby to sit, write, and to read my Sunday New York Times. I was sitting in a glass fronted multi-story building where I had a perfect view of the Smoky Mountains. While the place felt isolated, it was a beautiful.
John Horn, a Master Printer, ran his own print shop for over 50 years. I wanted to know how he handled type and the presses, and how his creative process worked. His poster, “Souls Dwell in Printer’s Type,” speaks to this relationship.
On June 15, 1984 the WAVE (Women Artists Visibility Event) also known as Let MoMA Know took place in New York City in front of the Museum of Modern Art. The event was organized by artists Sabra Moore and Betsy Damon, and art historian Annie Shaver-Crandell through the New York City chapter of the Women’s Caucus for Art. I shot photos of the protest and now, 30 years later, I am compiling a list of names of the women pictured in my photographs.
I try to keep my work and my life separate. I don’t consider working in my garden part of my artwork but more and more it is becoming a bigger part of my life and in turn inspiring me. I have yet to figure out how to incorporate it into my art. I’m learning the ways a garden has a life of its own—the squirrels dig up the seeds, the soil requires conditioning with compost, there are certain times when beetles arrive en masse, nine-inch worms now reside in the soil and the birds that consider it a paradise are constantly staking out their territories.
The Transforming Hate project evolved from a project created at the invitation by the Montana Human Rights Network and the Holter Museum in Helena, Montana.
It had not been my intent to make a “grand” project, but to simply create an artist’s book that explored the struggle to make an artwork that might transform the white supremacist books that had been provided to me to work from.
During most of 2013, I wrote letters and emails asking people to help me complete my Transforming Hate Project installation and The Proposal artist book publication with tax-deductible donations of money through Artspire.
I have had to shift my focus from fundraising for the Transforming Hate Project to compiling sets of images for my new website-in-progress. This process has required that I go through my external drives and CDs over and over again. Why did I ever believe that my images were organized? And of course some pictures have never been digitized.