ABH Traveler #2: Louise Bourgeois

Louise Bourgeois, Cell (The Last Climb), 2008. Steel, glass, rubber, thread and wood, 151-1/2 x 157-1/2 x 118 inches. Collection National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. Photo: Christopher Burke - See more at: http://www.artcritical.com/2010/06/18/the-grace-of-silence/lb/#sthash.UoKbIsBv.dpuf

Louise Bourgeois, Cell (The Last Climb), 2008. Steel, glass, rubber, thread & wood, Collection National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa.

Louise Bourgeois, Cell (The Last Climb), 2008. Steel, glass, rubber, thread and wood, 151-1/2 x 157-1/2 x 118 inches. Collection National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. Photo: Christopher Burke - See more at: http://www.artcritical.com/2010/06/18/the-grace-of-silence/lb/#sthash.UoKbIsBv.dpuf

Louise Bourgeois, Cell (The Last Climb), 2008. Steel, glass, rubber, thread and wood, 151-1/2 x 157-1/2 x 118 inches. Collection National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. Photo: Christopher Burke - See more at: http://www.artcritical.com/2010/06/18/the-grace-of-silence/lb/#sthash.UoKbIsBv.dpuf

Louise Bourgeois, Cell (The Last Climb), 2008. Steel, glass, rubber, thread and wood, 151-1/2 x 157-1/2 x 118 inches. Collection National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. Photo: Christopher Burke - See more at: http://www.artcritical.com/2010/06/18/the-grace-of-silence/lb/#sthash.gtVeT5Kn.dpuf

Where is the “here” than which it would be preferable to be anywhere but?

"You see I usually find myself among strangers because I drift here and there trying to forget the sad things that happened to me." -- F. Scott Fitzgerald, "The Great Gatsby."

ABH #2/Mary Jo Bole

My Then: Requiem for a Family Tree, 2013, 32.6 x 36 inches, pigment print on rice paper

I grew up very free to roam my world, in a decaying mid-century Cleveland, Ohio. I am more comfortable with things emptying out and fading. Maybe we need our secrets, real and imagined, with all our ever-present communication. Although I was born in 1956, my cognition begins with my Granny Bole, born in 1881.  She shared her life stories with me. Her antiques, trove of early family photographs, trunks of rotting clothing and finger bowls had a profound impact on me. This joins and collides with the span of my decades, mixed with sardonic visions for a frightening future. Michael Lesy’s book Wisconsin DeathTrip remains a clarifying voice for me when considering issues around this concept. Lesy uncovered a collection of Victorian glass plates in the Wisconsin Historical Society made by a small town's photographer. What fascinates me about the vernacular images is that they sat in a box for roughly the span of a human lifetime and that what once was average and everyday had become singular and provocative.

artist link

ABH Traveler #1: Arthur Dove

Arthur Dove, Me and the Moon, 1937. Wax emulsion on canvas, 18 x 26 in. Washington, D.C., Phillips Collection.

ABH #1/Cynthia Hartling

Wyoming Series, oil on linen, 24” x 26”, c. 2013

Indian Time, (no time like now), pressed heat, liquid matter smoothed over
oblong clouds of pink flesh toned, squeezed, flattened  orange meets

space that separates, silence in the in-between places-some other place

the shape of form, where It takes me, to get at, pare down red-handed

linen skin raw earth-to not know  

Desire: the hoi polloi strangeness of it all

to squander, disperse, forget, wander about

tell-tale Heart, now you really let go……

in the wide open-  directionless

artist link

Where is the “here” than which it would be preferable to be anywhere but?

"Heaven did not seem to be my home; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the angels were so angry that they flung me out into the middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights; where I woke sobbing for joy.” -- Emily Brontë, “Wuthering Heights.”

COMING SOON!