 "Spontaneous Combustion," (54" x 77") Wool, cotton, vintage domestic linens. Machine pieced, hand embroidered, hand appliquéd, hand quilted, 2013. Permanent collection of the Anchorage Museum at Rasmuson Center. In 2013 I entered "Spontaneous Combustion" in Earth, Fire & Fibre XXIX, a biennial exhibition at the Anchorage Museum at Rasmuson Center. I'd missed the deadline 2 years prior, when my children were 3 and 5 years old. At the time, missing a deadline had felt like one of so many small failures.
I'd sobbed on the living room floor and told my husband I felt some train barreling towards me and the greatest fear wasn't that it would run me over, but that it would pass right by. Melodramatic? Yes. Hormone induced? Yes. Authentic? Totally. So I drove all of that emotion into this piece. And entered two years later. And won a prize. And the museum purchased that work.
I waited 13 years to have children. I had two careers, completed three degrees, read all those birthing books before they came into my life.  But no one could tell me how sleep deprivation would affect me personally, or what part of the hormonally-laced spectrum I would slide along after giving birth -- a froth of postpartum anxiety with a sprinkle of postpartum OCD? That sounds about right. It's all here, in every stitch.  My parents hadn't seen the piece in person and this was the third time I'd made an appointment to bring them to the museum for a visit. I cancelled the first visit when my mother returned from Sweden with pneumonia and couldn't travel to Alaska from the Lower 48. I cancelled the second when my grandmother in Sweden passed away. Most of the original handwork in this piece came from women in Sweden -- great aunts, a grandmother, a great grandmother -- all gone now. To cut into their work felt sacrilegious one second and cathartic the next. My son and daughter drew all of the images around the border, easily four generations of my family have contributed to this piece. It's a time capsule.  Dad. It's held in the safest place it could possibly reside.  It's hidden from light, from temperature and humidity fluctuations, from my future teenagers who will decide to have a house party featuring all shades of vomit. It's rolled, right side out, around a cushioned bolster wrapped in Tyvek -- a paper-like, polyethylene olefin material that repels moisture and dust, with a slick surface that won't snag fabrics or degrade over time. Since we're nerding out here, you should know that Tyvek can be sewn into bag forms or wrapped around costume hangars or furniture, too. (If you are interested in this material and how conservators use it, you can learn more about it in a post by the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which describes the four-year-long rehousing of their costume and textile collection. You could also purchase a 50-yard roll of Tyvek through University Products if you have a little froth of anxiety or sprinkle of OCD, yourself.  As a woman, it's difficult to talk about my early mothering experience without feeling judged, but as an artist, I mine this cave to its depths. Frankly, artists get judged all the time ... and sometimes they win prizes. Mothers -- parents -- should receive more prizes, too.  * * * If you want to learn more about the process of making "Spontaneous Combustion," you can read A history of fire, part 1 and part 2. The Histories category in the blog side bar will take you to a series of other process posts about my work, with a smattering of visual how-to. Now, go order some Tyvek.
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 Telegraph Creek: Dog Sled (30 x 18" x 2") Cotton thread on antique textile, hand embroidered, 2014. Diana Weymar. I was recently contacted by the Gynocentric Art Gallery (The GAG, "A gallery that values the brain and cuts the bias") to write a companion essay for the online exhibition of Diana Weymar's recent textile-based work. The GAG is the project of Danielle Hogan, the founding director, who is currently presenting a talk about this project in Barcelona, Spain. My thanks to her for asking me to respond to Diana's work. I've collaborated with these two women before in the exhibition "Every Fiber of My Being" at the Paul Robeson Gallery at the Arts Council of Princeton, and while I've never met either of them, I connect with their work and writing. Collaborating again felt like a series of streams converging before splitting apart again -- natural, intense, a churn of minerals and distance traveled all melding to create a brand new moment. Excerpts of the essay are below, and you can read the full essay plus see Diana's exhibition here. I am always considering landscape in my own work and what someone recently described as "insistent work." The idea that the two are connected has been brewing for some time and this essay was an opportunity to grow some flesh on those bones. Diana's thoughts on land and insistence are featured in italics. It's like we were having a conversation face to face, but if we had, we'd have interrupted one another too many times. Then of course, there'd have been the wine. The Pull of the Needle: |
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But her logic was this: "I'd need the fire to stay warm, the flashlight to see in the dark, and the radio so I could call for help."
Ah yes. That kind of radio.
Hers was the answer that would keep her -- maybe even us -- alive.
This morning we hiked a mile downhill to a beached humpback whale lodged at the edge of Kincaid Park in Anchorage. I've written about finding things on beaches before, mostly in Prince William Sound and sometimes elsewhere, but we didn't stumble upon this morning's find; we traveled to the whale with intention.
My son, age 10, had a theory as to why the whale's side had split open, spilling guts into the silt.
"It's probably all the gases expanding. Like that one time when you put the red lid on the sourdough batter and it blew right off."
Their filter for the world is connected to their sense of place.
You are probably wondering what kind of olfactory experience that whale was, and the four of us can say, for the rest of our lives, with authority: "Smells like a long dead whale." Now we know.
There are times when I ask myself why we would ever choose to live here. Why, as an architect and an artist, my husband and I aren't willing to return to an urban hub, to a different kind of exposure or set of opportunities in some other place, one not so remote.
I wonder, why at one time we turned our backs on just such a place and walked so far away.
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Without the naivety of the first lesson -- the false assuredness, the bumbling, the sliding -- the second lessons are different. After you've learned from something, you'll never experience it the same way twice.
Maybe the deeper lesson is knowing you don't want to.
This afternoon at the Studio Art Quilt Associates (SAQA) conference in Philadelphia, 24 artists participated in 3 rounds of PechaKucha talks. No, not a Chupacabra, not a puh-chaw-kuh-chaw, not a pitchy kookie, not a picky kackie ... a PechaKucha.
(A concise way of presenting, which allows each speaker only 20 slides, shown for 20 seconds each. After your last slide, you shut up, sit down and let the next speaker speak).
The experience was moving, vibrant, inspiring and I'm thrilled to have been a part of it. Many thanks to Maria Shell for her persuasion and hard work putting it together.
My PechaKucha talk is below and clicking on an image will take you to other posts related to the work featured, its process/history or sister pieces. If you've never visited my blog before, this might be a good introduction.
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(A concise way of presenting, which allows each speaker only 20 slides, shown for 20 seconds each. After your last slide, you shut up, sit down and let the next speaker speak).
The experience was moving, vibrant, inspiring and I'm thrilled to have been a part of it. Many thanks to Maria Shell for her persuasion and hard work putting it together.
My PechaKucha talk is below and clicking on an image will take you to other posts related to the work featured, its process/history or sister pieces. If you've never visited my blog before, this might be a good introduction.
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In Defense of Doilies: An Artist's Relationship to Materials.
My name is Amy Meissner. I'm an artist in Anchorage, Alaska. My work explores fear and loss, motherhood, womanhood, and the fleeting quality of memory. While I don't always work in the quilt form, I do hold intention to work within the boundaries of abandoned cloth.
I come from Scandinavian women. I am the 12th first-born daughter to a first-born daughter, a line extending to 1642. My son severed this lineage; if born a girl, that daughter would've been the 13th.
I don't know what kind of inheritance that would have been, but I know mine.
Part of my relationship to cloth comes from a heritage steeped in making. Of bent necks, rough hands and stabbing needles. Swedish women have sent me linens my entire life -- I filled a trunk with doilies, tea towels and pot holders. Unwanted -- by me-- for the most part.
But when I had children, I sensed a shift. My living questions encompassed thoughts like, "How do I escort my daughter into womanhood with grace and joy and strength?"
"How have my own experiences shaped me as a mother?"
"How do I gather the tools I still need -- to get it right?"
To have a relationship with one's materials is to be open to the narrative power of voice. Not just your own echo, but in my case, open to the ghosts of prior generations, who still have something to say.
Whether or not you want to hear it.
Whether or not you think it pertains to you.
Whether or not it is "contemporary."
Or even beautiful.
Because an artist's job isn't to make people feel good, it's to make people think.
Materials are persistent, demanding you question their use if you are to find the heart of a piece. Have you questioned your materials lately? Can you say what you need to in another medium? Why use cloth when paint or wood or paper may be the better entryway? I ask this all the time.
In Mary Karr's book, "The Art of Memoir," she writes: "One can't mount a stripper pole wearing a metal diving suit." That visual is worth remembering, so I'll repeat it: "One can't mount a stripper pole wearing a metal diving suit."
So, what does she mean?
In Mary Karr's book, "The Art of Memoir," she writes: "One can't mount a stripper pole wearing a metal diving suit." That visual is worth remembering, so I'll repeat it: "One can't mount a stripper pole wearing a metal diving suit."
So, what does she mean?
Don't wear armor for a job that requires one to be naked, raw and vulnerable in order to seduce an audience. Also, you're going to need all your muscle strength to hang upside down from a pole so get rid of all the extra shit you're hauling around.
Or, figure out how it can support you.
For me, this meant embracing a heritage I often found confusing and foreign in ways beyond language and custom.
I spent a lifetime shoving linens in a trunk, so turning to them with joy hasn't been easy or even visually interesting at times.
In my defense, the 12-year old me didn't want a table runner for her birthday, or embroidered tea towels for Christmas ... again. I associated these items with disappointment, with a family's unwillingness or even failure to really know me.
These were the outpourings of distant Nordic women on the other side of the world, whose warmth towards me I questioned the few times we'd met. I didn't understand that their love was held in the physical act of making. That this was a vital way to nurture.
Perhaps they thought filling my trunk would prepare me. But, for what?
Early mornings at a stove?
Late nights hand washing, starching, ironing and mending?
I'd been taught to navigate the domestic realm, but I didn't want to then and don't want to now.
Ironically, this is exactly what I'm doing. Laundering these items late night, slithering around my stripper pole, confronting questions of mortality and fear and disappointment and loss. Circling and circling until I find the entryway. Until I find the voice.
Another irony, is that I am being sent more domestic linens now than ever before. Through my recent crowdsourcing effort called the Inheritance Project, I've received packages from all over the world -- England, Canada, Sweden, Australia, the US -- people are considering the history of cloth, judging its weight, then letting it go.
Sending it to Alaska. To me.
And I am accepting and shaping it. I'm holding the time, the material, the work it took someone to create something from nothing. For every maker I can name, there are 20 or 30 items that come labeled "Unknown." Same with origin, same with circa.
Inheritance. It's a weighty thing.
And it's forced me into a correspondence and documentation effort that far surpasses the time I have available, but this is an integral part of the work I'm compelled to do right now. The handwork of the past and the lingering hum of history simply become another material.
And I know it's the right material, because I continue to ask myself if so. And also because of its persistent nature. The raw material continues to arrive at my door, along with stories from strangers, about strangers. And I keep circling, looking for the entryway, considering the living questions.
I'd always thought it was funny to force a man -- in from the field and starving -- to wade through a sea of doilies to get to his hot dinner. But here's that last irony. At 6:00 I hear the side door open, the scrape of shoes and my husband say, "Ugh, what's all this laundry stuff hanging everywhere? --Wait -- is that lingerie?"*
To breathe new life into the discarded is to hold a deep relationship with materials. Even if it means confronting vulnerability, questioning beauty and becoming a vessel for the work and time of others.
Even if it means defending your past, defending memory, defending doilies.
Thank you for listening.
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*Now, a quick note--my husband would actually never say this...although he did admit to thinking briefly that a certain red batch of doilies looked an awful lot like some really sexy stuff hanging there. No, what he always says, without fail, is this:
(Insert his version of a Swedish accent) "Oh. So many beautiful things."
What a guy.
"Inheritance," (38" x 34") Abandoned needlepoint, vintage doilies, cotton velvet, silk organza, wool. Hand embroidered, machine pieced, 2016.
"Inheritance" is currently on exhibit at the Paul Robeson Center for the Arts in Princeton, New Jersey. It's one of four works I shipped for the fiber art invitational "Every Fiber of My Being," curated by Diana Weymar and including work from Maira Kalman, Cassie Jones, Caroline Lathan-Stiefel, Danielle Hogan and Katie Truk. Let's just say I'm blown away to be in such company. Check them out.
This post is a brief exploration of the visual dynamic and thought process behind the making of "Inheritance," which I started in the summer of 2015, abandoned for many months, then completed in the winter of 2016.
Plus, I'll explore some misunderstandings.
Like this one: old, dated, even poorly made items of unknown origin and/or maker aren't worth salvaging.
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Here's another misunderstanding: imperfections in one's handwork should be ripped out and re-sewn.
And this is what I do understand, deeply: Sometimes we have to circle around the heart of a problem many times. Sometimes the right words aren't the first to come. Sometimes you have to put work aside and be patient.
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Then one has to figure out how to apply those words to a situation, and this can take a long time, too.
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And then there is the misunderstanding of the words, themselves. Like when your daughter, age 7, has worked out the language on the wall and comes to you all wobbly chinned and eyes flashing, fists at her sides, hissing: "You made that art because of us, didn't you?"
No.
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Well, partly.
And then one has to clear up the misunderstanding of voice: "I could say this to you, right?"
"You have," she says, wiping her nose.
"Okay. But what if you said it to me?"
Silence.
"What if a man said it to a woman, or to an old woman?"
Silence.
"What if a child said it to an old man?"
And then, "What if I said it to the cat?" she says.
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There are messes she can't even conceive of. And misunderstandings that lay in her path, hidden, waiting for her to stumble over.
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And the fears I have as a mother, the things I possess and need to pass on to my children -- the tangible and intangible parts of myself and my history, the living questions and my own misunderstandings, that Inheritance -- how can all this be best shaped for clarity?
How can my intent and my will be made relevant?
How do you create a work -- a body of work -- that prods at this from all angles while striving for purity and emotional resonance?
And how do you use old fabrics, old skills, in ways that feel contemporary and vital? How does the valueless become valuable?
And here's a final misunderstanding: How do you convince people that the needle really is supposed to hang there like that on the finished work? I picked up this piece from the last gallery and some well-meaning art connoisseur -- or a very tidy sewer -- had stabbed it into the canvas.
Mess. Even the idea of it provokes the muscle's response.
If you are interested in other posts like this (note that I don't lay out step-by-step how tos because I believe we're all really smart people around here and can figure things out visually) please scroll through the How To or Process categories there in the side bar. Any of the posts in the Histories category will take you to other artistic backstories if you're curious.
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Amy Meissner
Artist in Anchorage, Alaska, sometimes blogging about the collision of history, family & art, with the understanding that none exists without the other.
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