Shift Happens: Advice from An Artist-Educator Friend

In the Garden, by Joanne Vena

After my last post on my own shift of work from being in an art museum to archaeology research organization and museum, I had a conversation with a friend of mine, Joanne Vena, about the experience of changing work environment and its impacts to our own introspection. I met Joanne through the Center for Community Arts Partnership at Columbia College Chicago when she was their Director of School Partnerships. After 12 years of service, Joanne left the position. As a printmaker and sculptor, Joanne always inspires me by her strong artistic sensibility and tireless passion for art in community. Facing a sudden shift from being a full-time cultural administrator to unemployed artist, I invited Joanne to share her reflection on this unexpected journey. From breaking from the daily routine to embracing uncertainty and seeking opportunities, this post is a celebration of how we as women's bravery against adversity.

From my guest blogger – Joanne Vena:

"Since 1984, I have had an ongoing love affair with arts education, in all of its forms in schools and communities. When abrupt shifted from my daily routine of an arts education administrator to an unemployed artist, it made me think about who I was at this moment - a committed educator, an evolving artist and a program administrator.  More importantly, moving forward, how was I going to "identify" in our current world of schools with their multiple layers of test prep that limit space and time for unscripted learning in the arts?  Could I possibly make the case in this environment of strategic data sets that a creative integrated arts learning environment could greatly help a school do a "turnaround" in grades, test scores and behavior?

Human Nature, by Joanne Vena

"So I stopped thinking of being "laid off" and started thinking of this unanticipated time as a "creative sabbatical", real time to reflect and re-engage in arts education in actions - doing, creating and thinking. I believe that the artists who commit to working in schools are some of the most gifted teachers I will ever meet, using their own personal artistic innovation to create change every time they are in a classroom.  Since 2013, I have joined my teaching artist friends out in the field again, in the role of artist/educator and program consultant. My recent experiences, like the many years of my prior careers, continue to calibrate my inner compass to recognize/celebrate the successes and continue to problem solve the challenges of being a teaching artist in a public school classroom in Chicago.

"In the studio, my personal artwork continues to explore the concepts of access and equity for women who live in highly restrictive environments and use their writings as a way to empower them, even if their work cannot be publicly distributed.  The collection of images and text are constructed, deconstructed and then reconstructed, with the final outcome uncertain until I decide when the art can be left alone to speak for itself. In similar ways to my work life, I am making art in the studio that is all about the journey, with the final destination becoming clearer every day."

Sabbatical. Re-engagement. Creating. Empowerment. From Joanne's reflection, I found that each person has his/her own seasons to work, pause, and explore. Joanne's "creative sabbatical" gives me a new lens to look when life is being intervened with unpredictable circumstances. Art, rather than a purely therapeutic tool, it offers a space for self-empowerment and opens up a new journey. In Joanne's words, "Enjoy the journey. The destination will take care of itself."

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About the Guest Blogger:

Joanne Vena is a printmaker and sculptor in Chicago. Currently Joanne is spending her afternoons supporting Elevarte Community Studio's in-school programs, while creating new professional development workshop experiences for teaching artists and teachers upon invitation and spending time working in her studio.  She looks forward to working with the Smart Museum of Art in the coming months.

The Quilting Women of Gee's Bend

I am not a quilter but something about quilting always captivates me. The patches of fabrics of various patterns and colors, the handmade stitches, the “imperfect” lines and shapes. In the culture where I was brought up, traditional Chinese quilts are often used as a gift for newborns; friends and family are invited to contribute a patch of cloth with a wish for the baby. They are called Bai Jia Bei (in translation "One Hundred Good Wishes Quil"t). The quilts contains symbols of luck, energy, and good wishes. They are to be passed down from generation to generation, just like those in America.

Interview with Lebanese Creative Joumana Medlej

Joumana Medlej is an amazing Lebanese creative whose work includes the comic series Malaak: Angel of Peace, educational children's books about Lebanon, art tutorials, and calligraphy.

Recently, I had the pleasure of interviewing Joumana for KULCHA Magazine. The following is a taste of her brilliance.

You used to work under the name of Cedarseed. Tell us about the cultural significance of the name Cedarseed and what shift took place into your rebirth as Majnouna? I love the name by the way :) Explain the meaning and why you feel it describes your current evolution?

I've kept a website since 1997 but in 2001 I rebuilt it from scratch to serve as my portfolio as well as a place to share personal interests. The highlight of it was a large section on Lebanon. This was a time there were hardly any Lebanese online, long before the explosion of Lebanese blogs and websites, so you could say I was taking it upon myself to be a window into the country that would show something different from what one saw on the news. I needed a title for the website that would reflect that but with some subtlety, since it was going to be a "brand name" for my work as well. The cedar tree is THE symbol of Lebanon, it has been since the furthest antiquity we are aware of, and I liked the idea of seeds – humble little things, but they may grow into new trees if they fall on fertile ground. I didn't expect people to start calling me that, but the internet has its own mind!

Ten years later, there are hundreds if not thousands of Lebanese who blog or keep websites about various aspects of Lebanon, so that I've felt I can scale down that part of my online presence, though that was only a factor in changing my website contents, not in the change of name itself. Simply put, 2011 brought such enormous changes that whole chunks of my past started feeling like weights I needed to drop. Your using the term "rebirth" is apt because it feels in some ways as the year of my real birth, and I needed a new name urgently. It's no small thing to drop an identity that has recognition around the world, and I'm still finding out just how famous Cedarseed was. But the choice was between being fettered to that fame or being free to grow, and that's not a hard decision.

Though I love Lebanon as much as ever, I no longer feel the need to be identified as Lebanese, as I did when I chose Cedarseed; I don't identify as anything, really, least of all an old image of myself. That made finding a new name very difficult until a close friend, unaware of my quest, decided to call me Majnouna as that's an anagram of my name (close enough). Well, that sounded predestined, I'm not going to share all the changes I've made in my life but I agree I must be crazy. On the other hand Majnoun is the character in one of our most beautiful love stories, so the name may be a reference to that as well. Who knows?

Tell us a bit about Malaak and how she came about. Why a female superhero?

If she was male, would you have asked me why a male superhero? There is no answer to that, that's how the script came. Malaak is the Lebanese superhero, a young woman sent by the guardians of the land to put an end to an endless, out-of-control war. She discovers that the fighters are actually Jinn and the story takes a turn into a half-mythological half-current reality. The first kernel of the idea, no pun intended, came up in 2000 when I sketched her being born of a cedar cone, but it wasn't until late 2006, after the July war, that the rest of the story arrived and I was ripe to start working on it. Malaak is currently at the 5th volume and will be completed in the 6th. I post a new page on the website every Monday: http://malaakonline.com

You can find out more about Joumana via her website. At the moment, she is working on a very interesting calligraphy project that you can be apart of. Find out more here.

CLIO TALKS BACK: Can mothers be artistic geniuses?

While reading Paula Birnbaum’s fascinating new book on Women Artists in Interwar France, Clio came across a debate that took place in the mid-1930s between those who claimed that motherhood might be incompatible with artistic genius and women artists who defended women as artists and proclaimed that motherhood in no way inhibited their genius. Denial of women’s genius, artistic, literary, or scientific, was an old antifeminist trope in European circles, but even this more nuanced expression of such views by a well-meaning man, in an era in which well-known women artists abounded, triggered a sharp response.

In early 1934, a government official from Geneva named John Albaret opened an exhibit of Swiss women artists by asserting that to date there had been no great women artists. He indicated that wifehood and motherhood was women’s most important role – and that, given the obligations of these roles, wives and mothers could never become “artists of genius.” Albaret did acknowledge, however, that as more and more women did not marry, some were indeed showing promise in the arts. He hoped that some would soon display their creative genius. Implied in his introduction, was that no women had done so to date.

 Some women artists were highly offended by Albaret’s analysis. Marie-Anne Camax-Zoegger (1887-1952), the Parisian artist and founder of Femmes Artistes Modernes (a collective of women artists) and the mother of five, replied to the Swiss official as follows:

Maternity and art are two different things that in no way detract from one another. There are very great women artists who are not married, and there are others who are married and who have been admirable mothers. I believe that the more cultured a woman is, the more worthy she of raising her children. Maternity does not diminish her art, and Art does not erode her capacity to mother. 

To illustrate her point, Marie-Anne Camax-Zoegger invoked the examples of Mme Vigée Lebrun, the celebrated French court painter of the late 18th century, who “exalted maternal tenderness,” of Berthe Morisot, who had several children and painted with the Impressionists, and of Camax-Zoegger’s near-contemporary Suzanne Valadon, whose son Maurice Utrillo had also become a great French artist.

 “I know from experience,” Camax-Zoegger wrote, “that children do not detract from one’s art; they renew its vigor. For a woman they are the immortal fountain from which she is able to draw tenderness and life.”

What do Clio’s 21st century readers have to say about this debate? From the perspective of your own culture, what response would you make to the question of whether or not mothers can be artistic geniuses?


Source: “Attendons avec patience les artistes de génie, que les femmes nous donneront avec le temps,” Comoedia, 8 Nov. 1934; “Deux femmes artistes répondent au Conseiller de Genève qui plaça l’art féminin au-dessous de l’art masculin,” Comoedia, 24 Nov. 1934. See Paula J. Birnbaum, in Women Artists in Interwar France (Ashgate, 2011), p. 36. Translations from Camax-Zoegger lightly amended by Clio.

From Cassatt to Woodman: Ideal Space

This week, I led a discussion in class about the feminine ideal, the American-born artist, Mary Cassatt, and the use of space as a metaphor for sexuality/gender roles. It was a rich conversation but I was surprised at how accepting the class was about the assigned role of domesticity to a specific gender (feminine). While considering the prevailing concepts of what feminine beauty looked like--and what it promised the viewer--we compared two images, Cassatt's Mother and Child and Kenyon Cox's Eclogue:

Mary Cassatt.  Mother and Child.  1905.  Image courtesy of the National Gallery of Art Collection online.

Cassatt's work is an Impressionist version of a popular theme of mother and child. While the usual religious symbolism was omitted, the implicit piety of motherhood still resonates. As a matter of formal analysis, we discussed the "feminine" distinction of inhabiting predominantly domestic spaces. In addition, we considered the use of contemporary, "real" women as a means of subtly challenging the historical infrastructure of the feminine ideal.  Consider this while looking at Cox's Neoclassical version of his subjects.

Weekends with Georgia O'Keeffe: Beauty in Simplicity

Georgia O'Keeffe at her home in New Mexico. Image via proustitute.tumblr.com

I am fascinated by the lives of artists. I appreciate the work they produce, but I also love learning about the person behind that creativity, their life's journey, and how they spend their time. That's why I was delighted to read Weekends with O'keeffe, a book of journal entries, poetry, letters, and detailed observations made by writer and librarian C.S. Merrill. The author lived and worked closely with artist Georgia O'Keeffe during the later years of her life in New Mexico.  Merrill's meticulously detailed writings transport the reader to 1970s New Mexico, and feel as if they are an honored guest in O'Keeffe's home.

A journal entry from May 31st, 1974 reads:

Lebanese artist Ginou Choueiri

This week I thought that I would lighten up a bit and introduce a very special Lebanese artist, Ginou Choueiri. I met Ginou five years ago at a party the first night I arrived in Lebanon. In the beginning, I never inquired about her work but it was clear that she was an artist of life by the positive creative vibes oozing out of her being.

After completing a degree in Marketing at the University of Connecticut, Ginou returned to Beirut and started a career in advertising. Seven years later after realizing that she was destined for greater creativity, Ginou traveled to Barcelona to participate in Metafora’s International Art Workshop and has been making art ever since.

Her work has been exhibited in venues such as the Contemporary Cultural Center of Barcelona, the Mario Merz Foundation in Turin, Italy, and Beirut Art Lounge. Last year, her mural "Nomad’s Land" was part of the Pop Up Lisboa 2010 Festival. Here’s a video of Ginou in action.





Ginou’s long-term project, "Potato Portraits," has created a global buzz. The series, which uses potatoes as the main canvas, saw the transformation of political figures, celebrities, friends, and family to random people Ginou would meet on the streets into potato heads.

Street Artist Swoon's Creative Community

Paper cut out by Swoon. Image via Revel in New York. Photo by Joann Jovinelly 

If you've walked through any New York neighborhood within the past couple of years, you may have come across some street art that stopped you in your tracks. Artist Swoon (real name Caledonia Dance Curry) has been adorning the city's walls with her intricately detailed paper cutout pieces since 1999. A native of Daytona Florida, Swoon studied painting at Brooklyn's Pratt Institute and continues to live and work in the city. But as Swoon's work continues to grow in popularity, her ideas continue to evolve and grow more expansive in their scope. It's as if she's extending a hand to her audience and saying, "Like what you see? Come be a part of it."

Swimming Cities of the Switchback Sea installation. Image via Deitch Projects. Photo by Kristy Leibowitz  

In 2008 Swoon and a team of collaborators created Swimming Cities of the Switchback Sea, an installation of seven boats handmade from salvaged materials which were launched into New York's Hudson River for a 3 week journey. The boats made stops on their journey from upstate Troy, New York to Long Island City, Queens for riverside performances by the boats' crews (each one held between 9 and 13 people).

Women in the Arts: Where Do We Stand Today?

Guerrilla Girls poster from 1988. Copyright Guerrilla Girls Inc.

How much has changed for women in the art world since the women's movement shined light on its inequalities in the 1970s and the Guerrilla Girls entered our collective consciousness in the 1980s? What is it like to be a woman artist working in the 21st Century? What difficulties do we face? Have things gotten better? I decided to ask women artists working today how they felt. (And by the way, check out a video excerpt of a recent talk the Guerrilla Girls gave at the Museum of Modern Art for some updated information on the status of women in the arts today.)

“I'd say women in the arts today struggle with being categorized as 'women in the arts' instead of just 'more amazing artists.' I feel the same about 'Black Artists.' Whether we like it or not, whether we admit it or not, there is a difference--society makes sure of that. Whether we're talking about the 1970s...or 2011, the change isn't as significant-in my opinion-as one might think.” - Artist Mallory Dover

Guerrilla Girls poster from 1985. Copyright Guerrilla Girls Inc.

“Women and women's art are still segregated. It’s a women's art show rather then an art show, or labeled feminist regardless of the content of the art. Although I suppose being a woman you just are a feminist. And 'women of color' is almost always meant to represent [an] entire race, which can be good or bad or simply not meant for that. It’s one person’s expression…” -Photographer Sara Hart

"I have to place being a woman as a secondary thing as an artist. It's actually how I like to work, so that when the piece is viewed, one is truly honoring the integrity of the work sans the gender. It's allowed my work to be seen with a strength usually reserved for male artists....I can be strong...and can be raw...and not apologize for it." -Painter Kimberly M. Becoat

"'Keeping it truckin’ on the high road is always a challenge. They don’t tell you, but the high road is full of sinkholes and the tolls are crazy expensive. Low road? Free ride and smoother than a billiard ball, baby. My struggle as a writer, particularly writing for and about women of color, is that I know that I can knock out a magazine article on ‘Back-stabbing Girlfriends’ or ‘Down-low Brothers’ and get ten, maybe even fifty times the readers as I do with a “positive” piece. That’s nothing new, bad news always attracts more eyeballs, but it’s particularly sticky when dealing with issues of race--because I know the history and I want no part of something that is going to cause us harm. So, that means being creative, and constantly trying to find new ways of sexy-ing up the real, of repackaging the good medicine in the latest IT bag." -Writer Black Lily

"Surprisingly, I feel like since I switched from 2D mixed media over to performance art, gender has stopped being a major point of discrimination. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that my work is often about black women and they are also often my primary target audience. Doing public performance means I am often responsible for creating the avenues through which people initially view my work. I also tend to apply to places or events where there are lots of black women, so these places are often excited about me being black and female as opposed to put off by it. So far, the people who run these spaces or events that I have shown my work at have been predominantly women. Perhaps this is rise in female curators and arts professionals is what is making the difference." -Performance artist Aisha Cousins

While these artists all had varying perspectives on what it means to be a woman in the arts today, it's clear that whatever barriers there may be, it's not stopping them from creating or having successful careers. There are still obstacles to be overcome, but there have also been changes for the better. As Aisha noted, there are more female arts professionals in the field today. There are more alternative spaces artists can show their work in, and the introduction of the internet has helped level the playing field in that artists can promote their own work and reach a wider audience quickly, for little or no money. This means that the major museums and galleries--long the primary taste makers, and venues that excluded women and artists of color--are not the only way for an artist to make a name for herself.

Glittering Spirit: The Art of Kelly Shaw Willman

From uphill invisible swimming performance series
copyright Kelly Shaw Willman

As an avant-garde performance artist, a vocalist, an experimental poet, and multimedia artist, Kelly Shaw Willman's creativity spans many mediums. Her work is an intricately woven into her life’s journey, making her performances deeply personal. Willman’s performances have taken place in the remote woods of Maine to a sunny Iowa farm to a dimly lit living room in Brooklyn. She has an uncanny ability to transform spaces and to draw the audience into her inner world.

From the uphill invisible swimming performance series.
Copyright Kelly Shaw Willman

According to her website Kelly was "born & raised amongst the cornfields & creek-beds of eastern Iowa, but a life-long obsession with the ocean inspires her to one day settle in a self-sustaining ((coastal)) arts space... Kelly migrates through these creative times as an original daughter of the waves & seeker of glowing trails."

Kelly's performances invoke a sense of magic and involve ritualistic processes with objects and symbols that give her work layered meaning. There are recorded sounds and voices played back on tape recorders, apples being sliced, honey being poured, and copious amounts of glitter in Willman's sacred space.

From Kelly's grunge*quest performance series.
Image copyright Kelly Shaw Willman

Spirituality and the sacred within art practice is a common theme in my ongoing creative discussions with Kelly. During one such exchange over email, she had this to say:

"The community of artists I gravitate toward is operating from spaces that are more energy-based, more mystical. Sounds are words. Color and iconography (in placement and mere presence) equate efforts to communicate a deeper meaning: something of the spirit, of a life past, of a shape shifted, of a message received, of a dream...I think a newfound fixation on this creative magic is much more intensified in the artists of now."

From Kelly's uphill invisible swimming performance series.
Copyright Kelly Shaw Willman

From uphill invisible swimming performance series.
Copyright Kelly Shaw Willman

In Kelly's most recent works, part of her uphill invisible swimming performance series, her body becomes the vessel for her sacred rituals. The pieces bring to mind the work of the late artist Ana Mendieta, whose groundbreaking works incorporated her own body and explored themes of ritual, spirituality, and her own identity. She coined the term "earth-body work," as a way of "resisting the terminology that she felt the art world establishment tried to impose on her." (Olga Viso, Unseen Mendieta). And much like Mendieta, Willman resists putting labels on her work. "I am...not attracted to the exercise of labeling art or beings...I prefer no labels on my work or on my sleeve..."

The strength of Willman's work is that it is so personal, so uniquely her own. Through performance, sound, and image, she has developed a personal iconography that charts the journey of her life. In documenting her own course, she invites each of us to consider the beauty and lessons of our own paths.

From uphill invisible swimming series. Copyright Kelly Shaw Willman

Kelly Shaw Willman is an exciting young artist we'll definitely be hearing much more from in the future. Keep up with her creative process on her blog, check out her facebook fan page, and view more performance photos on her flickr page.

WOMEN OF THE WORLD: Anki King

Announcing a new, recurring Her Blueprint feature: Women of the World, where we'll introduce readers to I.M.O.W. community members from around the globe! For our inaugural Women of the World column, we asked Anki King, an artist and illustrator from Norway (whose work has been featured in I.M.O.W.'s "Imagining Ourselves" and "Exhibiting You" exhibition) five questions about being an artist, a woman, and a part of I.M.O.W. Here's what she had to say:

You're a pretty prolific artist. What's been inspiring you lately?
I primarily work from images that appear in my inner mind. Like dreams, they are results of what I see around me, memories, feelings, emotions and thoughts. So I guess everything is part of what inspires me! I also do some space specific work as I often get inspired by a place or a room. When that happens I just see the work right there in the space and then try to find ways of creating it.