Mixed Media
Late last year, my mom told me she'd been invited to show her work at a friend's home. The friend, an art collector, was having a party-slash-art show. My mom, a recently retired and celebrated landscape designer in California, hadn't shown her paintings in close to thirty years. She'd made a career pivot in the late 1990s, when she put down her brushes. All but a handful of her wooden puzzle art was gone, sold off, and in private collections.
When she told me about her friend's show, I had the idea to interview her about her career as a painter, and the body of work she'd produced. For most of my young life, I'd known mom as a working artist. I knew how tough it was. And, as an adult, I understood what it must have taken: the confidence, the drive, the bullish determination. Not to mention as a woman raising a kid alone.
We talked for an hour. I used the conversation as the basis for descriptions of each of the works she would include in the show, as well as a brief bio and essay. The product isn't tongue-in-cheek, but there is a winking quality to it, self-series albeit self-consciously. Which isn't unlike the work itself: mom was making high-art out of pulp imagery. She was making a statement, but she was also making things she liked. She was invested in the art world, but never invested enough to take it all that seriously. This catalogue takes her art as seriously as I think it deserved to be taken, while retaining a sense of humor.
Copies are available for $10, which includes shipping.
