COHESIVE ECLECTIC

BY RACHEL KLINGHOFFER

COHESIVE ECLECTIC
by Rachel Klinghoffer 2012 Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulllment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Fine Arts in the Department of Painting at the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, Rhode Island

Approved by Masters Examination Committee:

Duane Slick, Graduate Coordinator, Professor, Department of Painting

Kevin Zucker, Thesis Advisor, Assistant Professor, Department of Painting

Roger White, Thesis Advisor, Critic, Department of Painting

Jamillah James, External Thesis Critic

Robert Hobbs, External Thesis Critic

 BY RACHEL KLINGHOFFER 2012 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ABSTRACT

PRACTICE, PRACTICE
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PROCESS / NOW

MATERIAL

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EVERY THING ON IT (RE-PRESENT)

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COLOR

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DECORATE

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Rachel Klinghoffer More Is More Is More Is More 2011 mixed media 90 in. x 55 in. x 15 in. A photo taken of me in my studio on October 25, 2011 Photo I took in my studio January 9, 2011 Eva Hesse No title 1970 latex, rope, string, and wire, dimensionsvariable Rachel Klinghoffer Everything On It 2012 mixed media about, 90 in. x 40 in. x 35 in. Rachel Ruysch Flowers, Fruit and Insects 1716 oil on canvas 35 in. x 27 in. Shel Silverstein Every Thing On It New York: Harper, 2011. Print. 10 - 11 4

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Rachel Klinghoffer Superstar 2012 Mixed media 88 in. x 43 in. x 17 in. Rachel Klinghoffer The only way you be seein me is if you eatin me 2012 mixed media 41 in. x 16 in. x 8 in. Rachel Klinghoffer What If Dances The Hora 2011 mixed media 29 in. x 30 in. 15 in. Miriam Schapiro Anatomy of a Kimono 1976 Acrylic and fabric on canvas, ten panels 6 ft. 8 in. x 52 ft. 2.5 in. Rachel Klinghoffer Hot to Trot 2012 mixed media 52 in. x 11 in. x 5in.

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Thank you for all you have contributed to me at this point; Paul Aspell, Marina Adams, Paloma Barhaugh-Bordas, Regine Basha, Katie Bell, Claudia Bitran, Jean Blackburn, Dike Blair, Lisa Buber, Felix Buber, Theo Buber, Marlo Buber, Dana Cash, Marie Ceri, Bouna Choe, Lauren Comito, Dennis Congdon, Diana Cooper, Corydon Cowansage, Susan Doyle, Hilary Doyle, James Elkins, David Emanuel, Zoe Feldman, Stacy Forgang, David Frazer, Pegeen Galvin, Anthony Giannini, Judy Glantzman, Rebecca Guber, Marly Hammer, Alana Hassanein, Mathew Hassanein, Collin Hatton, Amber Heaton, Cody Henrichs, Robert Hobbs, Holly Hughes, Lisa Jacobs, Lee Johnson, Tamara Johnson, Tobi Kahn, Jane Karsh, Richard Kimowitz, Sari Klinghoffer, Phyllis Klinghoffer, Melvin Klinghoffer, Lylian Kreitchman, Morton Kreitchman, Kirstin Lamb, Karen Lederer, Daniel Lefcourt, George Liebert, Jen Liese, Genevieve Lowe, Diana Mangaser, Francisco Moreno, Kimo Nelson, Norm Paris, Art Pea, Ben Peterson, Anna Plesset, Michelle Rawlings, Sara Reisman, Lara Samet, Dana Schlossberg, Mira Schor, Joan Shepard, Dana Rempell Simanovsky, Duane Slick, Amanda Thackray, Astrid Toha, Becca Schwartz Tramiel, Roger White, Page Whitmore, Kate Wignall, Bruce Wilhelm, Dinah Williams, Kevin Wolff, Kevin Zucker and most of all, thank you Mom & Dad.

ABSTRACT In a process bordering on the devotional, I participate in laborious collecting and making. Gathering from high-end homewares and thriftstore nds, I begin my experiments in the studio by pushing my objects to the limits of the minimal, the maximal, the technical, and the symbolical. In order to arrive at a new way of engaging with my materials, I combine methods from the realm of high art with everyday practices. Pulling from all aspects of life, I braid, tear, stuff, knot, paint, airbrush, and decorate. Remnants of material culture are pastiched into color-coordinated, aestheticized objects that bring disparate ideas together in unied forms. For me, pastiche can be dened as the successful conglomeration of re-appropriated materials, subject matter, and allegories from diverse sources. My works attempt to address portraiture, Dutch still lifes, living organisms, a hoarders delight, and the possibility of the slippage of meaning. This thesis explores the parts that make the whole of my practice and work. From the development of my process, the terms of decoration, to my relationship with materiality, spirituality and color, I am discovering where my work ts within the landscape of contemporary art.

Rachel Klinghoffer More Is More Is More Is More 2011 mixed media 90 in. x 55 in. x 15 in.

PRACTICE, PRACTICE For most of my career as a working artist, I have kept separate my personal sense of religion from my studio practice. Last fall, I began to reect on this compartmentalization, exploring the relationship between my Jewishness and my approach to making art. This process of introspection questions a larger issue of how the two relate to each other. I started to draw connections, realizing that I refer to my artistic life as my painting practice and to my observance and relationship to Judaism as how I practice Judaism. There is more here than a sharing of words. The laborious process of making an art object grips me, to the where I am almost set in a trance. This trance is contiguous to the devotional. More Is More Is More Is More (2011) is composed of an eclectic mix of fabrics and clothes collected from a range of sources: vintage thrift stores to high-end department stores. I started with a piece of white chiffon afxed to the wall nailed through grommets. I layered fabrics and homewares over one anothertucking, pulling, tearing, cutting and gluing. Layer after layer the image of a landscape within a cornucopia emerged. These seemingly excess materials from our consumerist culture are re-contextualized as art; the piece becomes at once ethereal and representational. This image is in-between: More Is More Is More Is More attempts to straddle an ambiguous realmneither being a cornucopia nor becoming a landscape. Since the essence of a cornucopia may only be seen from afar as a whole the compilation of individual components, ,

when viewed up close, have the potential for life of their own. I aim to have the piece lend itself to a variety of perspectives, which resonates with how I understand my own Jewish practice: a blending of traditional observance and experimentation. I affectionately observe the custom of lighting the Shabbat candles every Friday night. This is a tradition I grew up with; my sister, mother, and I would light the candles followed by performing three circular movements inward with our hands and then covering our eyes as we recited prayer. After we were done, we would remain quiet with our eyes covered as we reected individually. The short period of time it takes to perform this act of welcoming the Sabbath is lled with gratitude, emotions from the past week, hopes for the future, prayers to heal those who are sick, and, when I am home, it becomes a blessing simply to be with my family. When I am in the studio, I get lost in the repetition of the act of making. This evokes, in a way, the intensity of my focus when I wave my hands inward welcoming the Sabbath. Different physical acts call for different responses to the materials at hand. Smaller gestures such as braiding and gluing on crystals let my mind wander into a meditative state. Similarly, performing the act of lighting the Shabbat candles ensures continuity of this Jewish tradition. I believe that working with materials the way I do continues the traditions of craft and ne art. My artistic practice is indelibly linked to my Jewishnessnot through the use of specic Jewish imagesbut through the way I view the world and its translation into the visual media of my art practice. 1

1 This is section is partially comprised from a recently published article of mine; Rachel Klinghoffer Practice, Practice http://www.shma.com/2011/12/practice, practice/ from December 2011

PROCESS / NOW A major shift occurred in my studio this past fall. I started to cut up my paintings. I combined remnants of my past work with fabric, poured paint, and other two-dimensional materials to create collages. Hesitatingly, I began to add three-dimensional materials to these collages. The work came off the picture plane to create a form unto itself. The sheer newness and excitement of the possibilities of materials lead towards a new way of working in the studio. My process, and resultantly, my work has completely transformed. I obsessively engage in rigorous gathering and subsequent making. This new process contrasts with my past process of content rst, form second. At some points I sort the materials by color. At other points, I arrange the materials by texture or context. I continuously collect, in order to assemble an ever-changing vocabulary of media. By combining different working methods, from high art to everyday practices, I found a new way to engage with materials. I have begun to use verbsvomit, grow, explode, drip, hangas prompts to start a piece. The verb has a dual relationship with the process: it sets the work in motion as well as dictates actions performed on the work. The use of the verb sets the speed of the work both in the duration of time it takes to produce, as well as the speed in which it is viewed. Pulling from all aspects of life, I braid, tear, stuff, knot, paint, airbrush, decorate and perpetually take on new ways of working with materials. In my past work, I would think then make. Now I make then think. The subject percolates from the process.

A photo taken of me in my studio on October 25, 2011

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MATERIAL Gathering was something my mother always did. She used the word to refer to running errands and accumulating goods. Countertops in the kitchen would overow with groceries, clothes and various sundries. Despite the fact that I grew up in a home of plenty, I was always taught that people, not things, are important: our health and relationships are what really matter. So why this love and need to have as many of these things as possible? Regardless of whatever lingering guilt in having deep materialistic desires, I have always found a comfort in things. As a child I was given a blanket by my mother as a newborn. This blanket lay over my crib and helped me to sleep. I became one of the 60% of children to adopt such an object as a transitional object, a term coined by British psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott in the early 1950s. A transitional object serves as a stand-in for the main caregiver; later, this object becomes a point of reference for an infant to see itself as an individual.2 When I was six, I would surround myself each night with all my Cabbage Patch Kids, Pound Puppies, and every stuffed animal in my arsenal. The more the better, as I knew they were sure to protect me from whatever creature was living in the closet. When I would pack my duffels for the two months I spent at sleep away camp in the summer, I would fret. After gathering, you have to divest. I couldnt bear to part with any of my things. Gathering has become both an act of desperation and self-protection. My home is lled with tchotchkes and art from friends and family. I surround myself with things in the same way that I surround myself with people. As anthropologist Daniel Miller says ... we too are stuff,
2 Dr. Justin Marley, August 18, 2009,The Amazing World of Psychiatry: A Psychiatry Blog, Review: Winnicott on Transitional Objects and Transitional Phenomena, http://theamazingworldofpsychiatry.wordpress.com/2009/08/18/review-winnicott-ontransitional-objects-and-transitional-phenomena/

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and our use and identication with material culture provides capacity for enhancing, just as much as for submerging, our humanity ... how and why a more profound appreciation of things will lead to a more profound appreciation of persons. 3 This practice has crossed into my studio: a fear of loneliness is unconsciously kept at bay as I try to coddle myself with things. It does not work. I am practically pouring out of my studio. For the better part of this year, a large pile of materials I was using to make my work ran the length of my studio. Plastic bags and bins lled with an eclectic agglomeration of mediums lined the far wall of my studio. This pile came up to my knee at its highest point. My shelves and painting cart overowed with mediums and paints. More is more is more. I surround myself with an abundance of materials. By giving myself everything I want and then some, I momentarily nd comfort in thinking I have everything I need. I change these materials into things unto themselves. The act of resurrecting these objects into life forces is false. Like a frustrated lover, I realize the work does not love me back. These things do not ll a hole but explore the unknown territories of guttural responses. Here, in what may seem a cathartic process, is actually where I can tap into my deepest intuition and basic instincts. This fuels my creative practice. Just around the corner from my studio in my apartment, I tried to divest my wardrobe of clothes and intimates that brought up memories of a past life lingering in my closet. Uneasiness ensued, as I did not want to part with them, nor even look at them; I just wanted to know they were there. I brought these garments to my studio and added them to the pile. This pile grew and grewit took the form of a larger than life sarcophagus when covered in a golden fabric, that originally was used in order to tidy my studio for visits. It looked like a death had taken place in my studio. Bringing these items to my studio, they
3 Daniel Miller, Stuff (Malden; Polity Press, 2010) 6.

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Photo I took in my studio January 9, 2011

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undertook a transformation that removed them from their original lives, took that function and remade them into something else. A death and birth happens with the materials as they enter one thing and metamorphosize into something new. In December I stood in front of Eva Hesses, No title (1970) at the Whitney. She worked on this piece until her death in May of that year. Hesse believed that the total image has to do with me and my life. It cant be divorced as an idea or composition of form4 and strove to discount everything Ive ever learned or been taught about those things and try to nd something else.5 Her work elicits visceral responses. Hesse attempt(ed) to turn the inward outward and to give shape to something as ethereal and abstract as human emotions.6 There is an inherent notion of humanity that makes Hesses work, no matter how abstract, deeply personal.7 Moments in my studio are now are lled with instinctual responses to what I am working on. The work comes out of another place, an innate reaction to the materials, one that could be described as almost animalistic. Different materials ask for different treatments: sometimes the treatment of these materials are in line with their physical properties, while other times, it results in the antithesis of the function of these items. I work toward transforming incidentals into something unto themselves. Concrete blocks sat in the corner of my studio until recently unrecognized as potential constituents for my practice. Two of
4 Elisabeth Sussman and Fred Wasserman, Eva Hesse Sculpture, essay by YveAlain Bois Dumb (New Haven; Yale University Press) 19. 5 Elisabeth Sussman and Fred Wasserman, Eva Hesse Sculpture, essay by YveAlain Bois Dumb (New Haven; Yale University Press) 19. 6 Stephanie Buhmann, January 7, 2012, The Faceless Bride: Eva Hesses Early Paintings at the Brooklyn Museum, http://www.artcritical.com/2012/01/07/eva-hesse/ 7 Stephanie Buhmann, January 7, 2012, The Faceless Bride: Eva Hesses Early Paintings at the Brooklyn Museum, http://www.artcritical.com/2012/01/07/eva-hesse/

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Eva Hesse No title 1970 latex, rope, string, and wire, dimensions variable Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The Estate of Eva Hesse. Hauser & Wirth; photograph by Sheldan C. Collins

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these concrete blocks were wrapped in rope and fabric and then all three were dipped and sprayed with paint. All three of the concrete blocks were covered in varying layers of glue and crystals. I try to morph three separate concrete blocks standing on top of one another. To me, the form has become infested by an other growth, albeit one that any Vegas showgirl would be proud to bear. I believe the conditions contingent of the process inform my work.

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Rachel Klinghoffer Everything On It 2012 mixed media about, 90 in. x 40 in. x 35 in.

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EVERYTHING ON IT (RE-PRESENT) Everything on It (Re-present) is an amassing of materials gathered from a range of sources. As Petah Coyne gather(s) with precision and then just allow(s) it to be what it needs to be8 I let that start the process , for this piece. Everything on It (Re-present) encompasses craft, holiday decorations, ne fabrics and glass high and low remnants of our material culture pastiched into a color-coordinated, aestheticized, hanging bundle. Pastiche can be associated with negative connotation but, for me, it can be dened as the successful conglomeration of reappropriated materials, subject matter, and allegories from diverse sources. Grouping objects tightly together in this piece reminds me of Giuseppe Arcimboldos painted portraits using fruits, vegetables, sh and other objects. Looking at Allison Schulnicks still lifes, I am enamored with how her work has a grotesque beauty of a seeming oozing life force, which I strive to incorporate in my work. Eva Hesses studio works encouraged me to work from my gut. I follow the urge to dip rope and trim in paint to conjure intestines owing and dead vines hanging. Held aloft by its counter weight in a traditional triangular composition, the intent is to have Everything on It (Re-present) demand attention with its unusual placement and attract the viewer in the shift between beauty and the grotesque. Desperately trying to hold onto itself, it compacts into a tight mass while spilling out the sides, which reminds me of lush Dutch still lifes, living organisms and a hoarders delight. The title of this piece comes from Shel Silversteins poem Every Thing
8 Denise Markonish, Joseph C. Thompson, A.M. Homes, Rebecca Solnit and Petah Coyne. Petah Coyne: Everything That Rises Must Converge. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press; North Adams, MA: Mass MOCA, 2010. ) Print. 43. 9 10-11. Shel Silverstein, Everything On It (New York: Harper Collins Childrens Books, 2011),

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On It. As a child I fell in love with Silversteins dark-humored poems and clever illustrations. The poem humorously plays on excess and abundance, which I nd connection to the history of Dutch still lifes where everything conglomerates into one thing. This ne line between over abundance and complete excess is where I try to place my work.

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Rachel Ruysch Flowers, Fruit and Insects 1716 oil on canvas 35 in. x 27 in.

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Shel Silverstien Every Thing On It New York: Harper, 2011. Print. 10 - 11 22

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Rachel Klinghoffer Superstar 2012 Mixed media 88 in. x 43 in. x 17 in.

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COLOR Colour is excess, but colour in art is also the containment of excess. 9 In the corner of my studio sits a magenta trash can. It called to me from across the shopping aisle, come hither I couldnt resist. Its color has a . unique force, an aggressive yet overtly feminine voice. I fell in love with this trash can solely because of its color. Color has a unique force in my process and work as an organizational tool allowing me make sense of the chaos in my studio. Like a snake charmer, color entices, controls and entrances. In the words of Jacqueline Humphries, color is a subliminal lure.10 Color is like candy; it hooks you and gives you an immediate high. But in my work I hope, color acts as a way to entice, but also functions to sustain the viewers attention. Color acts a siren song11 and strives to pierce into the heart of the work. My reaction to color comes from the most primitive perceptual part of myself. As Faber Birren states, Color is deep-set ... entwined in the life process, 12 Color provokes a psychological response in me. Each person . might have a different response to color, which offers the opportunity to create different speeds of seeing something. Bright, over saturated, media-based color keeps me ipping quickly through the pages of Vogue, while I have to slow down to nd a polar bear that barely shows up in the pages of National Geographic in its white arctic backdrop. For me, color can create chaos while at the same time be used as a tool to unify or create ambiguity.
9 David Batchelor, Cromophobia (London: Reaktion Books, 2000), 7. 10 Cecily Brown interviews Jacqueline Humphries, BOMB 107/Spring 2009, ART http://bombsite.com/articles/3262 11 Cecily Brown interviews Jacqueline Humphries, BOMB 107/Spring 2009, ART http://bombsite.com/articles/3262 12 Faber Birren, Color & Human Response (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1978), 48.

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In The only way you be seein me is if you eatin me13, hot pink electries the viewer. A fuchsia shopping bag from the fabric store is lled with remnants from the studio and attached to a two by four, which is all wrapped in hot pink duck tape. The duct tape acts as a binding bodice in the same way women squeeze their bodies into corsets. The duct tape constrains but also acts as an allure not unlike bondage. A hot pink wig and vintage Czech glass beads sit atop the piece suggesting a head. The object is unmistakably given a gender with the aggressive use of loud neon pink. This particular hue of pink screams trashy, tasteless and exudes slut. She leans casually against the wall, practically winking, irting with the viewer. In my current work, I apply color in an effort to create a spectrum between life and death. Braided handmade rope dipped in white paint grasps the sides as it is calcied. The rope transitions up the structure both growing and receding from a hanging agglomeration where I attempt representation as both portraiture and landscape. I try to rotate the viewers gaze through the use of color from the most saturated purple blood red of what feels like an almost throbbing underbelly that slowly leaches color and life from the piece. In my work, color allows me to both give life and take it away.

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Lil Kim, Hardcore Not Tonight, Big Beats Records, 1996 ,

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Rachel Klinghoffer The Only Way You Be Seein Me Is If You Eatin Me 2012 mixed media 41 in. x 16 in. x 8 in.

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Rachel Klinghoffer What If Dances The Hora 2011 mixed media 29 in. x 30 in. 15 in.

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Decorate Decorating acts as a way to celebrate life cycles and seasonal events. Despite the frivolous associations this term has come to have, to decorate is most importantly a transitive verb. It allows the opportunity to transform the everyday into something unique, through embracing the transitory affect of materials. As a child, Christmas tree lights, tinsel, wreaths, garlands, and cornucopias secretly enamored me. All types of holiday decor from all cultures captivated me. I never participated in decorating the home for holidays, as it was not customary for the Jewish holidays I observed growing up. It wasnt only seasonal home decors that excited me, but the way people around me growing up decorated their bodies. In high school, Indian friends would decorate their bodies with henna, bindis, and nose piercings. I had my nose pierced, for less than twenty-four hours during my senior year in high school, after a jaunt to the Jersey shore with friends. At home that night, my father was in charge as my mother was out of the country. He spoke to me for a good ten minutes before, pointing to my freshly-pierced nose, I asked, Do you notice anything Dad? My father then turned more shades of red than I could name. In a quiet and slow tone he said, You know your mother is going to divorce me when she sees you. Overcome with the powerful tool of Jewish guilt, I succumbed and removed the piercing. Guilt has been a driving force in many different decision-making processes in my life. In the past, guilt has been a restraint in the studio, steering me away from processes, materials and color that have been deemed decorative and therefore frivolouswithout purpose or meaning. In addition to my parents, many of my painting professors

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have used the term decorative in a negative context. While at the School of The Art Institute of Chicago, I learned of artists Le Corbusier and Amde Ozenfant, who both stated in 1918 that there is a hierarchy in the arts: decorative art at the bottom, and the human form at the top. Because we are men. 14 Ayn Rands writings rang in my head too, as she claimed that the decorative was only sensory and perceptual . Torres, in his biography of the philosopher writes: Rand insisted on an essential distinction between art [in the sense of the major arts] and the utilitarian objects that she termed decorative arts . . . ornaments and decoration are associated with femininity and domesticity, and are relegated to the minor arts. 15 I rebelled against these words as I began to paint brightly colored landscapes composed from photos of piles of textiles. I fell in love with works of Joyce Kozloff, Miriam Schapiro, Robert Kushner, and other artists from the Pattern and Decoration movement of the late seventies. Artists of the P&D movement sought to merge modernist art traditions with motifs from womans crafts, folk art and ethnic arts in order to express ... humanistic and decorative themes that had been excluded from the domain of modernism. In using such decorative motifs they questioned the hierarchies of high art and craft.16 The P&D movement challenged, as Joyce Kozloff called it, the dumb blonde theory of art: the belief that something that is beautiful cannot be intelligent ... P&D artists not only express an afnity for the formal aspects of patterns, but also raised issues of identity, power and gender.17
14 Kristine Stiles, Peter Howard Selz. Theories and Documents of Contemporary art: A Sourcebook of Artists Writings (Berkeley; University of California Press, 1996) 161. 15 Louis Torres and Michelle Marder Kamhi. Decorative Art and Craft What Art Is, . The Esthetic Theory of Ayn Rand (Chicago:Open Court Publishing, 2000) 202. 16 Thalia Gouma-Peterson. Miriam Schapiro (New York; Harry N. Abrams, Inc.) 83. 17 Frauke Ehlers. Just Decoration? The Hidden Implications of the Depreciation of Ornamental Art. Her Circle. April 22, 2011. Web. February 8, 2011 <http://www. hercircleezine.com/2011/04/22/just-decoration-the-hidden-implications-of-the-depreciation-of-ornamental-art/>

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Miriam Schapiro Anatomy of a Kimono 1976 Acrylic and fabric on canvas, ten panels 6 ft. 8 in. x 52 ft. 2.5 in.

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Rachel Klinghoffer Hot to Trot 2012 52 in. x 11 in. x 5in.

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The P&D movement freed me from the worst thoughts on decorating as a frivolous process. Glitter started to show up in my studio. I embraced that (the) medium is the message, (and) did not wish to deal with domesticity minimally, but with Victorian abundance of both sentiment and ornament.18 Now I engage with everyday materials for the home and body to create extravagant works celebrating these materials through transguring them. Working with materials and processes associated with decoration has allowed me to think about making work that is democraticin the sense that it is visually accessible to all. Materials such as textiles and seasonal decor are elements everyone can relate to, despite class, race, or socioeconomic connes. Joyce Kozloff stated that pulling from the decorative arts doesnt have to be intimidating or only for the supereducated. Its conversational. You can understand it and participate.19 The work of Miriam Schapiro, a prominent member of the Pattern and Decoration movement, is described by Thalia Gouma-Peterson as another kind of sense-making and a route for the feminine to lter into the symbolic, into the meaning.20 I believe that a similar process has begun to happen in my studio. I take items from the domestic realm, which is innately associated with women, and aim to create new physical and conceptual forms. In my studio practice, I strive to transform mundane materials, setting them into motion and allowing them to take on their own being. My process takes inuence from Femmage, dened by Miriam Schapiro and Melissa Meyer in Waste Not Want Not: An Inquiry Into What Women Saved and Assembled - FEMMAGE 21 as combining
18 Thalia Gouma-Peterson. Miriam Schapiro (New York; Harry N. Abrams, Inc.) 81. 19 Patricia Johnston. Joyce Kozloff: Visionary Ornament (Boston; Boston University Art Gallery) 27. 20 Thalia Gouma-Peterson. Miriam Schapiro (New York; Harry N. Abrams, Inc.) 74. 21 Miriam Schapiro and Melissa Meyer. Waste Not Want Not: An Inquiry into

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collage, assemblage, decoupage, photomontage, and bringing these traditionally feminine craft activities into the art historical context. The term Femmage takes ownership over the notion of womens work in art without relying on male artists such as Picasso to bring collage into high art. I continue this lineage of women artists who utilize decoration as a means to elevate everyday ephemera into suggestive forms. I feel an ownership and pride in embracing these activities of pastiche as Femmage. I believe my work carries a contemporary femininity, which both acknowledges the past but also the multilayered nature of women today which can encompass both the Madonna and the whore and all shades of grey in-between. The works sit on the history of Femmage, as I am a woman who has collected, saved and recycled items that yield new forms. This complexity extends beyond notions of feminism, to encompass all individuals and celebrate their hybrid identities. The materials I use come from these myriad sources, reecting different points of origin. I aim to pastiche this plethora of sources and processes in the hopes of being part of making sure our visual culture is inclusive and diverse.22 For me, pastiche examines modes of appropriation and what that says about our past, as well as contemporary culture. It is an enabler to create new work out of the breadth of history. In the words of Dario Robleto from his manifesto I love rock and roll, there is a romance with the world. This is what the aesthetics of sampling offer: a reenchantment with the world ... Sampling is not passive consumption. It is the creation of new meaning out of shards of the past.23 I pull fragments of the material world together in a practice that
What Women Saved and Assembled - FEMMAGE, Heresis I, no. 4 (Winter 1977-78) 6669. 22 Feministing, May 18, 2011, The lack of progress for women in the art world , http://feministing.com/2011/05/18/the-lack-of-progress-for-women-in-the-art-world/ 23 Dario Robleto I Love Everything Rock and Roll (except the music) Field Guide , 1999-2000

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incorporates decorating with making in a way that is almost spiritual. I practically decorate in a sacred trance. I become enamored by the materials and transxed by the transformation process. I get lost in the process of making, entwined in the instinctual response to the constituents at hand . There is something to visual language, an openness, which escapes written language. In my work, I use objects as words in new compositions, their juxtaposition with each other attempts to offer new connotations that can pull from the viewers own psyche and our collective memories.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Baskind, Samatha, Silver, Larry. Jewish Art, A Modern History. London: ReaktionBooks, 2011. Print. Batchelor, David. Cromophobia, London: Reaktion Books, 2000. Print. Bee, Susan. Schor, Mira. Feminist Art: A Reassessment. M/E/A/N/I/N/G. 2007. Web. February 5, 2012 <http://writing.upenn.edu/pepc/meaning/04/forum.html#intro> Belasco, Daniel. Size Matters, Notes on the Triumph of Feminist Art. Lilith. Fall. 2012: 24 - 29. Print. Birren, Faber. Color & Human Response. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1978. Print. 48. Boris, Staci. The New Authentics, Artist of the Post-Jewish Generation. Chicago: Spertus Press: Chicago, 2007. Print. Brown, Cecily interviews Jacqueline Humphries, BOMB 107/Spring 2009, ART <http://bombsite.com/articles/3262> Bryson, Norman. Four Essays on Still Life Painting. London: Reaktion Books, 2000. Print. Buhmann, Stephanie. January 7, 2012, The Faceless Bride: Eva Hesses Early Paintings at the Brooklyn Museum, http://www.artcritical. com/2012/01/07/eva-hesse/ Butler, Cornelia. WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2007. Print. Congdon, Jessica. Newsom, Jennifer Siebel. Raskin, Jenny, Miss Representation. Movie. Newsom, Jennifer Siebel. United States. 2010.

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Owens, Craig. The Allegorical Impulse: Toward a Theory of Postmodernism. October 12 (Spring, 1980): 67-86. Print.

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