Story building

This little lady has her dress on to go to Oxford in the morning for a
"One Night Stand at the Ole Miss Motel"-don't judge. I wanted to make a piece to talk about Sargent's Madame X. and Amelie Gaureau's life. The map on the seat shows her ancestral home of False River, Louisiana, the map then moves to her birth place of Toulouse Street in New Orleans and then the walk from John Singer Sargent's studio to The Academie De
Beaux Arts to hang the famous Madame X portrait and then a map showing the route from Amelie's home to Sargent's studio where she begged him to take down the infamous painting.

Interior Building

Last year at this time I was asked by A Public Space editor Brigid Hughes to make a project that started with a Found Object-at the time I had come upon the work at the Ulysses S. Grant Association and was captivated by Mrs. Grants Opera Shawl...That began a series of drawings that essentially re-decorated the Grants New York brownstone-in a fictional way. Look for the the drawings published in this issue of A Public Space.

Working

Alot going on around here-October 14th a show opens here at the Visual Arts Center on campus. And on October 22nd I will be showing at the world famous Motel Art Show in Oxford...busy month. Here is a sneak peek prototype of some of the work I am into right now..Hope you can come by!

Building a body of work

My work has entered a very funny phase in the last year but I am getting what I have been interested in for along time; telling a story. These two pieces are finally installed in the Grant Association reading room at Mississippi State. The loveseat is an embroidered map of General Grants movements around the state of Mississippi during the war and the arm chair is the final formation at the battle of Vicksburg.




P.S. A bit of a repeat post but such great images by Caleb...

Building for Pearl Street

I finished (with the help of Micki Hagler) these six chairs for the Pearl Street dining room. One of the big things that will unfold his summer is I will be taking orders for Walker Evans chairs-I will fabricate them in sets of four, six and eight. Contact me if you are interested.

building General Grant's legacy.....

For the past 10 months or so I have been obsessed with General Ulysses S. Grant as well as his wife Julia Grant. I have done a number of projects where they are the catalysts for ideas. This week I finished one phase. This is a love seat commissioned by the Ulysses S. Grant Association (funded by a Art Incentive Grant from MSU) that describes through embroidered maps (by me!) the military movements through Mississippi during the Civil War. This piece will be joined by another "map chair" later in the summer. It will be carried over to the Grant Association reading room in the morning.

Building stories

I didn't get to show this piece completed before Christmas because it was a gift. The chair was the recipients grandmother's and I worked from Eudora Welty's story The Optimist's Daughter. The recipient is a wonderful woman who reminds me of the characters of "The Bridesmaid's"-the group of women that you grew up with who in all times of crisis whisk in with pound cake and tomato aspic for funerals to hip surgery.....This chair is a homage to such love and community.

Building for boys......

I have finally, almost, finished two commissioned pieces I have been working on all month. This is a chair for The Little Prince-by Antoine De Saint-Exupery. Colors were chosen accordingly.

Building Christmas

Santa's workshop is in full swing here on Greensboro Street. Working on this commission and another little boy's chair. Its good to be in the studio making things again. This chair was my neighbor's grandmum's kitchen chair- I think it looks just right on the front porch.....

Little black chairs....

So this is why I have been looking at chairs that are black. I have been doing research and working on a project about Julia Dent Grant, Ulysses S. Grant's dear wife. The outcome as of now are these small sitting room chairs that I would design for her house on 62nd Street.
They would be black straight back chairs with skirt like drapes around the legs, inspired by her wonderful portrait by Matthew Brady.

Chair building

Check out the wonderful article by
Sara Fernandez-Cendon in the on-line version of ReadyMade magazine. We talked about how the chairs got made. It was very fun to reconstruct the thinking process. Thanks Sara!

Building sensibility

And this is my favorite image of the whole lot. It really talks about the intensity of the last month.......

Building the morning after.......

Here are some images of the furniture after the party........

Roomaking in room 342

As you know we took the show on the road this week and took work to Oxford for the 3rd Annual One Night Stand in the Ole Miss Hotel orchestrated by Erin Austin Abbot. I stitched and stitched my way through the world of Hotel/Motelnise And this was the result + list of works

Six Attributes of Mapping

1-Bedcover 1-Places I’ve been

2-Bedcover 2-The Map to Waverly Plantation;

as Told by a Modernist

3-Chair Group- Walker Evans Builds a Chair:

four chairs built in the conceit of Walker Evans

4-Wing Chair-Mapping Rowan Oak again…..

5-Yellow Chair-The Advent of Mrs. Welty Garden

6-Loveseat-Marie Antoinette’s Gardens

building work

I have been a bad blogger lately, mostly because I have been working on a large body of new work. I am proud to be a part of this show up in Oxford on Thursday. Entitled The One Night Stand at the Ole Miss Motel , impresario Erin Austin Abbott has a truly original way of producing shows. She has asked 10 artists to bring work up to Oxford and they each get their own room-to do with -what they will. The company I am keeping is very interesting, check out Katharyn Addcox's work as well as Francis Berry. You will be the first to see the pictures of the installation.

Place Building

I am working on mock up of stitching/drawings/maps for another series of furniture. I was really taken with Faulkner's Rowan Oak and reading about his tireless energy to revive the house and grounds...It is an overwhelming sense of loyalty to place that I think is very prevalent to the south....I am going to be working on a series of maps that illustrate this connection....oh sounds so formal/academic-we'll see.

Building Ideas

I have been working although its a struggle with so much going on. I have been working on these peices for a year, sewing chairs. The sofa has the plan of Le Petit Trianon embroidered on it and the yellow chair is an attempt at flora and fauna overtaking the chair. More pieces will follow these.

Chair Power

This an image from the photo shoot that Rinne Allen did for Little Building this month. It really says it all.

Building a Biography

These are the drawings that began the furniture work. I was wondering about the feminist contention that the biography was a limited form to document the life of a woman. At the time one could go to library and see that the biography of Susan B. Anthony was markedly slimmer than say Harry Truman. Was this because her life was slimmer? It got me thinking that a piece of furniture is perhaps I more tangible format for illustrating a life. Therefore, I began to design pieces for woman who's biography I had read and tried to form a built manifestation of the woman's life.

Building girls-part two

Madeline looked at the blog today and lamented that I had not written about her lately. It was a rough getting back to school period and we are not quite in the happy blogger rhythm... But I am working with these drawings that reminded me of doing work and being a mother. These are drawings that I did from a series of Maxine Kumin's poems. Kumin's work really speaks to me in that it is about the everyday. When her child enter into her work its very frank discussions of who she is as a person and who this other person-the child- is. I think because Madeline was born after it became fashionable to have children there is not a lot of guidance about how to be a parent when your child is taller than you and has discovered the art of contradiction. Kumin's poems remind me that it is a state of grace. These drawings took imagery from the poem and made a furniture/place/space out of the gesture.