Ruined Your Sunday Dress

"Ruined Your Best Sunday Dress:
I've Never Been a Seamstress"

Watercolor Sketch/Preparatory Drawing
click for larger view

Art On The Dark Side: Self Portraits

After spending a glorious morning at the Mitchel Park botanical gardens, I'm feeling refreshed and possessed to spend some time in the studio! I enjoy wandering around inside the big glass domes looking at the succulent root systems and watching the koi lazily swim about in their nickel glittered pond. It felt good just to stand in the humidity and feel saturated and surrounded by green. And the dirt--I love the smell of dirt. Ahhh.... so excellent. It gave me the boost I needed to start getting ideas from the brain translated into paint. My mom and I have begun designing our altar sets and the wheels are in motion! You'll start seeing those goodies pop up in the etsy soon enough! I'll be posting sneak peaks along the way. :)

On a different note: the Excellently Wicked June prodded the recesses of our seedy psyche's with her prompt: clowns. How fiendish is that?! I have conflicting feelings on the subject. Clowns are hideous and just plain spooky--something about fake hair and the smell of latex that just gives me the skeevies--but on the other hand, I think that's why I like them! This is my submission for Art on the Dark Side's creepy collection:
This is a self portrait titled, "Melpomene". It is one of part of a series I completed for an introduction to photography course this last year. Melpomene is the Greek muse of tragedy and is most often portrayed wearing a theater mask. I decided to run with the theme and expand it a bit by using other props and costume elements that say "dismal". It's difficult to see the details in this particular photograph, but I'm wearing a harlequin outfit holding a tattered parasol, crowned with raven feathers. I also chose to include a pair of worn Greek sandals, as those are associated with thespians and tragedy. (Here's a picture of the initial sitting before any manipulation or antiquing.)
I've always been drawn to images of harlequin clowns or mimes--something about the silence and melancholy disposition of these characters speaks to me. I'm also a sucker for make up: drawn on tears and pallid complexions, shamelessly and expertly wearing what you are on the outside.

What is your stance on clowns?
Are they awesome or do they need to be eradicated from the face of the planet?

Ode To Dirty Toothbrush

Oh! Grubby toothbrush! How I missed you!

It was a brisk stingy-windy weekend in Chicago, but as always I come back with a brain FulL of interesting image ideas and a tummy far too full of deep dish pizza. That town just drips art, whether it be a dazzling window display, politically saturated public sculpture or exquisitely executed graffiti you happen upon on an underground L stop. I feel so privileged that this world class city and inspiration bank is practically in my back yard! Though Chicago is always a trip, Milwaukee and her beautiful lake suit me just fine and I'm glad to be back in my own parlor. I had to hit the studio and begin preparing new backgrounds before I barely even had my coat off!

"Lilith after The Garden" by Molly Roberts 2008 Vine charcoal on Stonehenge

While sitting on the train on the way out of town I was thinking about some smidgen to submit to June's wicked Darkside prompt when I remembered this drawing. I'm bending the theme a bit--as it is not a fairytale necessarily, but more so a retelling of a myth I find particularly interesting. The parameters of this assignment were to create a completely fabricated environment at life size and insert yourself into it. I chose to be Lilith. I always wondered what the post-Eden spat aftermath was like. What really happened to her after she said "to Hell!" with Adam? In my mind, I like to imagine Lilith the way she (I--we? Whatever...) am illustrated here: in a brief moment of brooding, taking leave to the brush on the outskirts of the garden to blow off some steam before collecting herself and returning to her usual cool, confident demeanor. I like to imagine owls are good listeners. :)

What do you do to talk yourself down from a tizzy?~*

Art On The Dark Side: Artemis

Though I do SO love the lights of the season and the sweets (oh my goodness the sweets!), I needed a little deviant distraction from the mall madness and blizzard coverage. The marvelously macabre Miss June at Art on The Dark Side provided "Mutant" as this weeks prompt!

"Artemis" Molly Roberts 2007. Oil on canvas

"Artemis" was part three of a goddess triptych I completed a year ago. She was designed to represent the playful and strange attributes of maidenhood. I don't remember exactly how I came to give her fawn arms--I knew I wanted to include "deer" in the work somewhere as it is one of the goddess's most well known symbols. I had sketched her holding a fawn, or wearing necklace with a stag charm, but it must have been a late evening at the studio when I decided I would depict her sprouting hooves. I wanted her to be childish, curious. I did a brief jot on her while the work was in progress:
"Girl hood. Maidenhood. Fleshy flowers in bloom. Flat chest. Imaginative because they don't remember. Mischievous. Flitting about in a dandelion tutu blowing bubbles in the evening. Apple blossoms in early may. Am I too skinny? Too short? Too blond? Wanting to be a mermaid, sand pushed up on my skin. Hair was wild like a thousand shivering threads. Teeth like an old house full of ghosts. Firsts: first taste, first swim, first crushed firefly. Unsure, bashful, insignificant. Flying was not improbably, it was a necessity. Queen of the Thicket, benevolent ruler of all the crickets. A petticoat full of hares. "

Book Work: Piel de Noche

The To Do list is No More! After much cutting, stitching, and smudgy finger prints the casket book is complete!

[Piel de Noche]

This piece is about memory. It's strange how memory is not really what we think it is--that it is permanent, like a fixture we can look back on when really, memory is elastic. It's subject to editing. We change it to accommodate our lives, our needs. We romanticize it, we demonize it, sometimes both simultaneously. This seems to happen to an even further extent when something we loved, or thought we loved dies. The blurry font, faded bone paper and haphazard binding are meant to elude to the muddiness of memory. I weighted the cover so it resists the reader as if to say, "Are you sure you want to recall this? Do you want to deal with this now? With all these people around?" Then the cover slaps back onto the table exposing the pages.
The book is small, only 6 inches long. I wanted it to be intimate, something you'd have to hold in your hand to read. Each page is hand printed, one letter at a time with water-based ink, sewn together with coffee dyed thread and mounted inside the wooden casket. My dear friend Rick was a peach and translated the text for me. (Thank you!) He did an artful job, making sure it remained lyrical and wouldn't read like stereo instructions. This is the text in English:

[Night Skin]

Beneath the blood black maple—
The dying leaves dance a dance of animal bones—
and I am putting on my night skin.

The evening grass—
The wet hair of a boy I used to know—
it was the kind of love that drew blood slowly.

The trees, waif skeletons of Luna moths
soon to be stripped twigs praying for the cover of frost—
I hear the shudder and coil of living things below me
where tendrils of trees intertwine—
when roots touch—do they make a sound?
Do they know one another?

The breeze stirs the branches in slipperless steps—
Telling me that summer has passed.
The sun is merely a whisper—
The taste of ash lingers there
as the naked quiet of night crawls towards us.

The brushwood weeps a scarlet psalm
as I try to remember his skin—
It was the kind of love that made you fierce.

Beneath these bundled twigs within arms reach of the dead—
In my night skin, I am there with him
tender and fading, the dusk drawn by wind twine—

Where we dance a dance of animal bones
for the last time.

Molly Roberts 2007

I'll be glad to get this thing off my work bench! Now it's time for a little rest and relaxation. First thing is First: Detox! Since I've been making things like a banshee I've been living on day old pizza and pot after pot of coffee with minimal catnaps. I'm looking forward to walking into my studio wearing my pajamas with my hair all awry to begin tinkering with all the ideas that have been piling up. I've got dream boards to create, journaling to catch up on and new years plans to plan! For now, I'm off to dream of buckets of cold water and cucumber facials!

What do you kids do to rejuvenate?

Wishing you Much Peace and Many Blissings!~*

Art On The Dark Side: Poppet

How Serendipitous! I've stumbled upon Miss June's deliciously dark blog gallery, Art On The Darkside Challenges, and had the perfect piece for this week's prompt!!

"Poppet" Self Portrait by Molly Roberts. 18"x24" Charcoal on canson. 2007

I created this work for a figure drawing class a semester back. I was SO excited about June's prompt, masks, as I use them in almost everything I do! However, I don't include them as a form of hiding, or shame but I feel like the masks I put on my sitters transform them--as if the mask gives you freedom to do the things you're too afraid to do and say the things you're far too polite to say. I love dressing up my sitters! First watching them experience the weird uncomfortable nervousness and you see the expression on their face when you come at them with gray blush and a headdress and you KNOW they are thinking, "You know what you're doing...right??" Then, watching their eyes light up when they look in the mirror and realize how different they look--how free they are! My favorite was dressing up a football mom friend of mine and watching her tear up as I transformed her into the flowing, glowing, abundant goddess Ishtar. This particular piece is a self portrait as it is difficult to find models in the area to do long term sittings--an artist is her own best friend. :)

Go visit June and see what other shadowy surprises she has in store! Go forth and draw, friends! :)

Merry Making!
Many Blissings~*