My Gravity Table
I’ve been fortunate to work as a self-supporting artist all my adult life. Early on I illustrated greeting cards and posters of nature and wildlife while also selling my paintings in galleries. I got a job at a printing press while I attended ASU. I was the only woman in the press. That experience taught me how to navigate in a “man’s world.” Printing taught me many of the basics very quickly. I worked with other artists teaching them printmaking. I started abstraction and fell in love with it. It’s an international language. I cast fiberglass sculptures 5’ x12’. The beauty and mysteries of nature inspired me then and continues to this day. I loved ( and still love the paintings of Rothko, Frankenthaler, O’Keeffe and many others.
I moved from Arizona for LA to exhibit my work in galleries and open my own press and company working with a publisher. I did many series of prints and had several employees and continued to work with other artists. When I met my husband, Bruce, I moved to NYC where I continued printing and painting.
I’ve always been inspired by myths and the idea of a female spiritual role in various mythologies. First, European art and then art of other cultures. Ana Mendieta and her work became a touchstone. I began to throw my naked body onto the canvas. I printed a series of power plants and electric wires, invoking my environmental and nuclear concerns.
When Bruce and I got a year-long live-work residency at the 18th Street Art Center in Santa Monica, we moved west. In New York I kept getting kicked out of my studios as the neighborhoods gentrified. In my Avenue B studio from my window, I could watch the drug dealers and junkies steal hubcaps from cars. In Tribeca studio where the phone booth on the corner was drug dealer HQ. That building got sold and became million-dollar condos.
In LA I still printed for commissions and paintings as well. Not for long. Soon, I was only exhibiting in galleries. I began working based on the idea of the Mandala, a sacred symbol in many cultures.
We settled in Los Angeles and I received an extended studio-only residency at 18th Street. In 2,000 Bruce and I got a residency in India for 4 months which really changed my paintings. In many cultures Mandalas are swept up after assembling them. So, I swept the painting sideways, pouring paint onto the canvas creating moving images that looked like something created in nature. Or the female body.
The idea for my table came when it came time to paint larger than what I could hold. First, using ropes hung from the ceiling and then rolling my paintings on a giant ball. That was a disaster. I went through several more ideas. I got an idea for a table. I was recommended to Jack Brogan who worked with the original Light and Space movement artists. (I was later included in an exhibition with the old and new L&S artists who worked with Jack Brogan.) I came up with a draft for it and he made the table according to my specifications. From then on, I could work from 6’-10" and larger. It gave me the freedom to expand my paintings. To pour from almost any angle and with more control. The idea of nature continues with the added images of space. Hubble photographs and storms on radar. People will always see something different in my art; it's almost always a thing of natural origin.