WAS IT A YEAR IN LIMBO? OR HELL?

According to the NYT (Limbo) & Artforum (Hell), this is how we are feeling. I am an optimist and expect a better 2022. I know. We are all hoping for a better 2022. But with the current Omicron spread, ever closer to me daily. I’m feeling this new variant spreading wildly all around me. Testing, testing. And a shortage of OTC tests available.

I find that I am not just looking back at 2021, but at two years – since the beginning of the pandemic, from early 2020 through 2021. Now I understand that year one was a major first for most of us – the first pandemic in our lifetimes. I recall that at the beginning, there was some frustration with the lack of recognition and connection with the AIDS epidemic, which for me was always too close to home, having lost so many dear friends. But I think we see things in a slightly different light these days. I thought a deadly pandemic was completely terrifying, but I imagined an end in sight. Now we know better. That’s where limbo comes in, aka Purgatory. Some might say, it’s just been Hell.

For many artists like me, 2020 was a surprisingly productive year. We felt lucky and resourceful. Even unable to go to our studios, artists set up shop in garages and spare rooms. They drew and painted on zoom sessions and outdoors. We learned to truly take advantage of online resources. We posted our art online, saw exhibitions and art collections online, and attended art talks online. We enjoyed international exchanges.

When we turned the corner into 2021, it felt like dipping a toe into water and finding it still too cold to submerge. On again, off again. Hanging a show in person. Attending an opening in person. Going to our studios – yes, I held onto mine since I’d just gotten my space in March 2020. Then the changing restrictions. Sneaking in some travel, museums, galleries, and art fairs in between surges. Intermittent panic. It seems every step forward led to two steps back and that is where the year ended.

“It’s like swimming in time.” That’s how Monica Huerta, writer for Artforum described 2021 in her article this month.

In the home of interior designer Tina Blakeney on a recent December evening. Another friend who decided to leave the Bay Area in 2021. Lots of shifting going on, including leaving-the-USA conversations.

ART IN-PERSON

I have not been quite as productive this past year. I continued to show some new pieces and work in-person at two galleries, SFWA and City Art Coop in SF. But I have enjoyed other forms of re-engagement. Most significantly, I was able to return to my art group’s life drawing sessions in-person. After a year and a half of drawing each other’s faces and hands on 2x weekly Zoom sessions, it was fantastic to see folks in their 3-d flesh. This group, run by SF artist John Goodman, has been active for decades. We finally got to know each other better due to sheltering in place requirements. But we always missed our live models – a worldly set of women (mostly) with a lot of talents and chutzpah.

I unintentionally slipped away from frequent attendance at the many Zoom drawing sessions available. But I credit the discovery of these wildly diverse life drawing events getting me through 2020 and into the first half of 2021, which was our pre-vaccination phase. Life returning to more in-person interactions again, if only for intervals, was important to me.

In 2021, there were also a number of wonderful art shows and fairs to see and to participate in. I attended a handful of art shows and events in NYC last Fall, in between surges. There have also been several great local exhibitions at Bay Area Museums. But people have been intermittently Covid-scared, and crowds were often thin or places were just shut down. For one-on-one experiences this has not been an entirely a bad thing for seeing art and talking with gallerists. Recently I was (admittedly) surprised how wonderful the collections and special exhibitions were at two excellent Honolulu museums I visited in December.

Wall-sized painting from the SFMOMA current retrospective of Joan Mitchell (through Jan 17, 2022).

The last show I saw in 2022 was the Joan Mitchell Retrospective at SFMOMA. It was totally inspiring – her bold, calligraphic strokes, sense of color, and use of paint – all spectacular. If you are near SF see it before it leaves!

Earlier in December I visited this social activism art / local artists show at Honolulu Museum of Art. These artists made so many powerful statements. Seeing this digital piece below, about wages and worth, reminded me of the Bay Area artist and participant in “Seen by Unseen”, Sawyer Rose, and her monolithic installation in the “Carrying Stones Project” about women’s work inequities.

A video installation, *Wages: What are we worth?* which I saw at the Honolulu Museum of Art Artists of Hawaii exhibition by Manu Mei-Singh.

This fellow in the shadows is about to retrieve coconuts from high up in the tree. He shimmied up with his spiked boots.

A fanciful Maui cocktail with a Hello Kitty “hang ten” transfer art right on the foam plus a fresh marigold.

Honolulu window view from the “Pink Palace”.

Here I am on a wild pink chair in the “Pink Palace.”

ONTO MIST & FABRIC

I am fascinated by the diverse substrates that artists use to apply their art. For the first time I walked through a film projected onto mist in a construction just outside of The Bishop Museum on Honolulu. It was a thrilling experience.

Artist Taiji Terasaki presents KAIMANA—an outdoor, walk-through art and film installation offering a cinematic work projected onto a dramatic, interactive mist curtain.

At the Honolulu Museum of Art I walked through an exhibition of works by Hawaiian social practice artists that included an installation (photo below) of cyanotypes of seaweed applied to sheer panels and paper. I always study the hanging and application mechanisms for art that physically connects to my work.

Artists of Hawai‘i NOW, September 2021 - January 22, 2022, Honolulu Museum of Art, Honolulu, Oahu, HI, work shown is by Gwen Arkin.

This is an explanation of the art shown above.

POETRY, NATURE, & CONSERVATION

We visited a lush, tropical nature conservancy on Maui that was home to the late, two-time U.S. poet laureate, W. S. Merwin. As a person who loves trees I appreciated seeing land being returned to its most bountiful, verdant state.

This shade of green must have been a favorite.

Everything was left just as it was the day that he died in 2019

Every object a thing of beauty and grace

A CHANGING VOCABULARY

The overall thrust of the art world feels different since the summer of 2020. It’s been activated. It’s finally color and gender conscious. Like the shift that came out of “The Summer of Love”, we experienced “The Summer of Rising Up, Fighting Back, and Exposing” in 2020. This activation fed into my group conversations with The Invisibility Collective, who were already energized. I sincerely hope we never go back to the same old inequities or the outdated terminology.

I’m glad that there’s a new language forming to accommodate this different thinking. I understand that it’s still in progress. The English language is wonderfully pliant and evolving. What are your pronouns? What will be the new word for Feminism? As I understand it, I must be a second-wave feminist (1960s-80’s) though I believe I have evolved to the latest version. I admittedly only recently learned that there’s a third, fourth, and possibly a fifth wave. Do you know of a better term to use other than adding “wave”? Do you call yourself a feminist? I do, quite simply, without the wave.

It’s exciting to experience an on-going focus on artists and arts administrators who have been ignored for too long. We are seeing artists of all shades, hues, ethnicities, and genders taking their places in the forefront of the art world. We’re witnessing a shift in top-level art administration, curation, exhibition, and media coverage. That said, I still see a need to make room at the top for more women. I see the need to pay more attention to women of a certain age who are all too often invisible.

This ring represents the diameter of a submarine! We were here during the week of Pearl Harbor Day.

MINIMAL TRAVEL

It’s so difficult to travel and freely see friends and socialize. A trip to Europe was put on hold. Circumstances keep changing. It takes a lot to keep up. So we give up and stay home safe. Sometimes when plans change new options open up. A trip to Hawaii popped up to round out my end of the year. What a quick thrill! The timing was just right before Omicron surged here. It turned out to be a total getaway – nice and slow, yet it passed by quickly as if it didn’t happen. Oddly, this unplanned trip coincided with a significant anniversary of mine. On Pearl Harbor Day, 39 years ago, I moved from San Francisco to Hawaii with the man who became my husband, Jack, two years later in NYC. We had not been back to Hawaii in over 20 years. It is still a magical place.

In addition to our year-end Hawaii trip, I took a few other short vacations – San Diego, Palm Springs, and NYC. It’s now year two of not leaving the country. This is unusual for me and I hope to make up for it in years to come.

Looking down from the memorial platform, above the sunken ships where victims of the bombing of Pearl Harbor are buried, there was a giant sea turtle.

TROPICAL FLORA

Everywhere in Hawaii there are seemingly impossible fruits, trees, plants, and flowers. Here’s tiny sampling of just looking around the landscape. So lush!

ENDINGS & BEGINNINGS

For those who follow and read my blog, you might recall that I had major shoulder surgery in my dominant arm back in May. That put a huge dent in all of my activities.

One outcome of the surgery was a “break up” with Pure Barre, after a seven year relationship, I decided it’s too stressful on my joints.

After 14 years of launching and running a book group, I shuttered that too. It had been slowly fading. I may start another group – or join an existing group. I’m open to recommendations for a local in-person Fiction Readers Group. I’m always looking for good fiction to read. Recommendations? Favorites of the year? What new things will 2022 bring? A refocus, for me, I hope!

“Midcentury Modern Woman” is one of my pieces that will be shown in Serenity at UCSF.

SFWA FINDS NEW PARTNERS

San Francisco Women Artists Gallery is going strong. We are beginning a new curatorial partnership with UCSF Center of Excellence for Women’s Health and I’m producing our first Serenity Exhibition. Opening on January 17th, there will be five different artists, three times a year at the Women’s Health Center in SF. I recently re-engaged with SFWA’s Board, returning to the role of Exhibitions Director. In our first exhibition, “I am Resilient”, the SFWA member artists are: Valerie Corbin, Marie Massey, Susan Proehl, and myself.

Both 2020 and 2021 were terribly hard on retail galleries, but we’re feeling good about membership, 2022 exhibition themes and jurors, and sales from the gallery and online. It’s easier than ever to buy art even if you rarely leave home.

Throughout 2021 I continued submitting work and get juried into many of our themed group exhibitions. Currently I’ve got a piece in the year-end exhibition “Artful Giving” juried by Priscilla Otani, partner of Arc Gallery (SF). In February I’ll be in SFWA’s “Fresh Perspectives” juried by Ceclia Chia, owner of Glass Rice Gallery (SF).

Exhibition Entry Opportunity Feb 2022:

Photography & Digital Art: We invite all SF Bay Area artists to submit their best work in either category or any combination of the two. JUROR: Diane Fenster, Award-Winning Photographic Artist, Curator, Member of the Adobe Photoshop Hall of Fame

Look down into the landscape – just as is it creates a colorful, textural picture.

“A practicing Buddhist as well as a proponent of deep ecology, Merwin lived since the late 1970s on an old pineapple plantation in Hawaii which he has painstakingly restored to its original rainforest state. Merwin was once asked what social role a poet plays—if any—in America. He commented: ‘I think there’s a kind of desperate hope built into poetry now that one really wants, hopelessly, to save the world. One is trying to say everything that can be said for the things that one loves while there’s still time. I think that’s a social role, don’t you? ... We keep expressing our anger and our love, and we hope, hopelessly perhaps, that it will have some effect. But I certainly have moved beyond the despair, or the searing, dumb vision that I felt after writing The Lice; one can’t live only in despair and anger without eventually destroying the thing one is angry in defense of. The world is still here, and there are aspects of human life that are not purely destructive, and there is a need to pay attention to the things around us while they are still around us. And you know, in a way, if you don’t pay that attention, the anger is just bitterness.’
– Poetry Foundation

INCLEMENT WEATHER

Travel is intense and exciting for so many reasons including unpredictable weather. In the wintertime in Hawaii there are severe tropical storms which can mean cyclones. You don’t enter the water. You stay indoors safe and warm and watch. The trees fall and the rocks slide. The power flickers.

There isn’t much better than a sunny day of sailing, watching whales, and seeing a show of fish all around you.

Look up into the sails. Look out and see the whales. Look underwater and see coral, sea shells, and fish.

Some of my sumi ink wash drawings made during a virtual session (Zoom) in my studio. These are from one of my series underway.

Resolved for 2022

Get away every season.

Figure out my (new) master plan for my art.

Find the residency to support #2.

Re-up my language study and work on my Spanish before my next visit to Spain.

Stick to a regular art studio schedule.

Find or create an art critique group.

Find my next exercise routine.

Call, write, and visit friends more often.

Keep walking. Learn to walk alone.

Learn plant and bird names.

Always draw and paint manually (in addition to digitally).

Keep records.

Keep up my series.

CONTINUING MY SERIES

As I enter into 2022 I plan to keep up many of my series including: Barbie on the Cusp photo series, sumi ink drawing series, digital collage series (botanicals, abstracts, and more), portraits, and printing on fabric. I’d like to tackle some new artistic challenges. See samples of my work from this past year below. Stay tuned for lots more.

A year-end field trip to Old Sacramento marked our approach to another year around the globe.

WISHING YOU A HAPPY, HEALTHY & PEACEFUL 2022

So long 2021! Good riddance.

But now we’re genuinely alarmed that we've brought Omicron with us into 2022. At the moment that I finish writing this post and hit send, it appears to be everywhere.And that puts a damper on fresh starts. Maybe we need a new year re-do, once we are out of the woods?

“Alluris in Red Swimsuit” is hanging in “Artful Giving”, the December show at SFWA Gallery.

The Collective CONTINUES

Since I founded The Invisibility Collective in 2020 we’ve lost some of our initial traction but we persevere and plan to expand in 2022. We had a thought-provoking “Seen X Unseen” Group Reunion on Zoom with artists who participated in our first exhibition at Radian Gallery (SF) in Dec 2020. It was hosted by Tony Wessling, owner of Radian. Look for a call video on our website and FB page soon.

Our conversation was in keeping with our observations on issues surrounding seeing, being seen, being heard, erasure, obliteration, ancestors, lost histories, and art that tackles social issues connected to invisibility. We discussed how our art and lives have changed from 2020 into 2021. Reunion Participants included: Mary Graham, Sophia Green, Susan R. Kirshenbaum, Rhiannon Evans McFadyen, Sawyer Rose, Samira Shaheen, Christopher Tandy, and Angela Tirrell.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this topic! We invite guests to our monthly meetings, too, in case you’d like to participate in a call.

Artists left to right: Angela Tirrell, Lonnie Graham, Susan R. Kirshenbaum, Sophia Green, and Rhiannon Evans McFadyen. Work shown behind left to right: Sawyer Rose, Mary Graham, Lonnie Graham, and Christopher Tandy. At Radian Gallery (SF).

NCWCA

This year I became an active member of the Northern California chapter of the national organization whose mission is to create community through art, education, and social activism.

Artwork by our chapter members is on our flag for the national conference in 2022. My piece is in the center of the third row from the top.

Originally photographed at Radian wrapped in my fabric panels, I made it into a black and white self portrait for “The Naked Truth of Arts” and later these banners became my installation at Arc Gallery.

Nathalie Fabri CURATED EXHIBITIONS

I was pleased to be included in two back-to-back exhibitions organized by Nathalie Fabri. “The Naked Truth of Arts” began on Instagram with visual artists and musicians submitting black and white selfies with their Covid stories. Later the co-curators transformed the show into a physical gallery exhibition at analog gallery (SF) with live music.

Just after “The Naked Truth of Arts” exhibition I was invited into the “Intimacy Illuminated” show, another exhibition curated by Nathalie Fabri, at Arc Project Gallery. I showed the the three hot shades of my nine foot sheer chiffon figure-laden banners. They were originally produced a year earlier for “Seen X Unseen” at Radian Gallery.

Viewers were invited to interact with the banner and swish through them, feeling and be felt. A fan moves them around and a light shines through them.

She also created The Mission Kiss painted heart and art walk project, which I took part in twice.

My pieces were in “Intimacy Illuminated” at the Arc Project Gallery in Dec 2021.

CITY ART COOP GALLERY

If you’re local, you can see my work on display in-person at City Art Coop Gallery in their Back Room. The gallery is in the heart of The Mission, on Valencia Street between 19th / 20th Streets. I’m in the annual two-month show through January 2022. I’ll be showing new work in February. I’ve exhibited several times during 2021 and so I can say that I’ve fully experienced working in a retail gallery during Covid!

Artspan Open Studios

SF Open Studios was a different series of events again this year to accommodate Covid. I held a Studio Reception one day only and welcomed guests by appointment. The virtual aspect of exhibiting and viewing art continues to be critical as in-person opportunities keep shifting. I’m happy to report that my piece, featured in the Guide and the SOMArts exhibition, “She is a Rose” was purchased, and so I contributing to the Artspan fundraiser. But it was another difficult year to have fully open studios. Hoping for a better 2022.

Here’s a wall from the 2021 Artspan exhibition at SOMArts with my piece on the far right top.

Grace of No Age

Trying to stay focused on my art practice, I decided to disengage from my role as a “goddess” and writer for the Girona-based website Grace of No Age. I still appreciate the core concept of this international blog site which disseminates articles written by women for women about aging and menopause. Their slogan, “No Pause at Menopause” is wonderfully direct. I enjoyed part of the start of this online venture and writing for the cause. You can see my most recent article here. The site is a good resource and has just expanded to include men’s issues and male menopause.

Imagery from Hawaii: Barbie 2x, an apartment building display, red bamboo trees, and a starry sky…

The Tiger Ride at Evangeline’s Costume Mansion in Old Sacramento

YEAR OF THE TIGER

Here’s what Her World says about the upcoming year. “2022 is the Year of the Water Tiger – and in Fengshui this means it’s a year made for bold action. The Tiger is known for its power, daring, and ability to do everything on a grand scale. This is markedly different from 2021’s year of the Metal Ox, which was all about hard work and pragmatism. Think about it: in 2021 the world had to plod through months of pandemic lockdowns and WFH isolation. It wasn’t glamorous or fun, but we plodded on because we knew it was necessary…”

A VISUAL TOUR OF 2021

Learn more