"(International) Women's Day: 10 of Paring Knives (swords) in the Kitchen Tarot."
by Susan Shie Contact me
"(International) Women's Day: 10 of Paring Knives (swords) in the Kitchen Tarot."
©Susan Shie 2015. 60"h x 90"w. inventory #485. Peace Cozy #65.
Began 12-13-14. Finished 7-4-15. Many large detail images follow this long artist's statement.
Materials: White kona cotton, airbrush paint, fabric paint, Aurifil cotton machine thread, Artfabrik variegated hand dyed perle cotton embroidery thread, one Green Temple Buddha Boy bead. Nature-fil bamboo and organic cotton batting. Various commercial batiks and prints in backing/border, including some original Lunn Fabrics batiks.
Techniques: Whole cloth painting. Black line drawing and color areas painted with Aztek double action airbrush. Small, black writing and drawing lines made with Silkpaint.com’s Airpen, using black fabric paint. Mostly machine sewn, with one row of hand stitching with perle cotton thread (on the border's outside edge.)
Statement: This piece is meant to celebrate Women in the world. I wanted to have it done for March 8, 2015 - the yearly date of International Women's Day. But I started teaching drawing online this January, and this addition to my schedule really changed how much of my art quilting I can get done! (I've made a LOT of finished drawings this year, but THIS is the first art quilt of 2015, finally finished and finally being written about!) I drew the tarot card for this piece from my favorite Sakki-Sakki Tarot deck on Dec 13. It's the 10 of Swords, which combines masterful completion of effort (10) with communication and thinking (swords). So to me, this card is about the creative fruition of women's ideas and interactions. From my own small performance art piece of 1982 "A Line You Could Hang Clothes On," (which is what's illustrated in this piece), to the newest protest piece by members of the Russian group Pussy Riot and the deaths of four women (3 local friends of mine and one international figure), "Women's Day" celebrates how women creatively live our lives. The women I've presented here are a combination of women who were actually at my performance art piece at the School of Art of Kent State University, at the Art Building's main lobby, on February 24, 1982, and women I either know now, or who have just died, or who are internationall famous women, making a difference in the world, by trying to improve it.
In my 1982 performance piece at the School of Art, I dressed in a red slip and patterned long red skirt and stood on a platform, "endliessly" washing women's slips, and chanting out a sing-song creation story I had written for this piece, called "A Line You Could Hang Clothes On." In it, the beginning line and the chorus is "In the beginning, there was this woman washing slips." She creates everything in the world, and finally creates a man, after creating all the animals and the children. Her situation deteriorates, when the Man invents Power and leaves her at home, caring for the children and washing slips, while he has a big time, doing what he likes The story evolves to her seeing a shrink, but deciding to do her own thing, too, and ending up teaching her rather insensiive and selfish Man to be more gentle and giving Well, this is over simplifying the plot, but you will be able to read some of the performance's script on the actual slips in this piece, in the detail photos below this statement.
The performance wasn't just me washing slips and chanting, but included The School of Art's glass professor, Henry Halem, a pretty feisty guy from the Bronx, who would take the washed slip and do a bad job of rinsing it. Then he'd hand it to Carol Goodwin, one of my drawing students at the time, who would take the wet slip and two of my hand-painted clothespins, go out into the crowd of friends, family, and art students and profs, and pick up a section of the clothesline rope that laid on the floor all over the lobby, and have a person hold the clothesline, while she pinned the wet slip to it. As the creation story evolved, eventually the whole lobby was full of a human clothesline that snaked around the room, with wet slips dripping. Oh, and there was a rythmn band, including my sister Debi playing her bongos, with other friends of mine and a prof of mine in Feminist Philosophy shaking rattles and tambourines, and everyone was singing along in the repeated chorus. So this performance was an exuberant celebration of women as creators and nurturning problem solvers. At the end of the piece, we walked the clothesline up to the gallery where my work was hung for my graduate 20 hour review show, and we hung that clothesline from side to side, back and forth, back and forth, in the gallery. It looked great with my paintings and drawings and collages of underskirts on the walls. I also had some slips which I'd embroidered all over. The gallery was now over full with my Women's Art.
Because I got an Incomplete for my 20 hour review, because they decided that I was a painting major, and I had no business doing a performance piece, the wind kind of got taken out of my sails for a bit. I decided that, since I'd done this review very early in my 3 year MFA program, I would wait and create a new body of work, still based on my women's symbols, but do it my way. (My review committee had told me to make 4 more paintings like ones I had in the gallery, come back in a month with them, and they would surely pass me. But I knew I'd made those 4 paintings to fill in the spaces more than make a political statement, and I wasn't about to do that. My next 20 hour review carried the slips forward, to become parts of Clothespin Bags, which were each created to represent a specific woman in my life.) And I had gotten into working with the slips (underskirts) in the first place, because I felt that the slip represented a woman's body really nicely. So to me, the slips were and are about women.
Anyhow, now that you know more about the slip-washing performance art piece of 1982, that I decided to celebrate as part of my 2015 International Women's Day art quilt, I'll give you a list of the things I wrote about on this piece, in my first-and-last draft style, using my airpen and black fabric paint, over the big painting I'd airbrushed on white cotton Well, let me back up all the way, to the start of this piece:
12-13-14: I randomly selected the tarot card, the 10 of Swords, which in my Kitchen Tarot deck are Paring Knives, not Swords. This would be the Kitchen Tarot sub-title of my next big art quilt, in the project I'd begun in 1998 and plan to finish with the last of 78 card quilts, by 2022 or 2023.
3-3-15. Life has gotten in the way, big time, as I spent most of my time figuring out how to teach a drawing class online and then starting to do that. But today I started making sketches for this art quilt.
3-27-15: Teaching my Lucky Drawing classes online again got in the way, as it will continue to do, but I love teaching it. Today I started to airbrush my 60"h x 90"w piece of white cloth, only looking at my sketches a little bit, as usual, so that the black airbrush line drawing will have its own freshness, and not be dulled by trying to copy from a sketch. The cloth will shrink from getting wet, being painted, and then later I'll add a backing and border to make it larger, and then the quilting will shrink it again. It will end up again at 60"h x 90"w, if I'm lucky!
4-7-15: Got back to airbrush painting again, after more teaching pulled me away.
4-25-15: Finished airbrush work, which used to happen in just a few days! This online teaching, added to my home art lessons and weeklong Turtle Art Camps, has really slowed me down, but I love doing it, and I need the money, so this is my new life!
4-26-15: Airpen writing begins. Now I'll tell you what I wrote about, when!
4-26: Eva was here on her school's Spring Break April 7-12, and we did some upcycling of clothes for her, for the first time. This winter was our 2nd terrible Climate Change winter in a row. There's a new movement to get people to divest from companies involved with fossil fuels, and this movement is headed by 350.org and The Guardian, a British internet news publication. I wrote about my 1982 performance art piece about washing slips. My friend Early Weygandt died on Feb 24, after only knowing she had cancer for less than two months. She was born July 17, 1950, and I had known her since the mid 80s, when she stared her second hand clothes shop, Uptown Downtown, across the street from Wooster Food Co-op, which I was managing and living in the attic apartment of, at that time. Early is in the lower left corner of this piece, holding a slip on the clothesline.
I told about Zanele Muholi, a South African photography artist, who calls herself a "visual activist," which I now think is what I am, too. She documents the lives of alternative sex people in S Africa, where it's illegal to persecute them, but it happens a lot, and is called "corrective rape." I drew and painted Zanele in the top left side of my piece, flying with an old camera in her hands. I added stories about another friend of mine, Marsha Newnam, who died on Dec 31, 2014, from cancer caused by working in a plastics' plant while she was in college in the 70s. Marsha was one of us seven YaYas, and her birthday was close to mine, on October 16, 19650. She's next to Early here, also holding up the clothesline and a slip.
4-27: I wrote on Kayla Mueller, who's next to Marsha in my painting. She was a young American humanitarian aid worker, who'd been volunteering to help others since she was very young. Born 8-14-88, she died on 2-6-15, at only 26. She served over 20 NGOs in her short life and died in Raqqa, Syria, where she was being held by ISIS, after kidnapping her 18 months earlier. ISIS said it was Jordanian fighter planes who killed Mueller while bombing buildings held by ISIS. What a terrible shame and loss, of such a loving and giving young woman!
Next to Kayla stands Roxana Saberi. (Both are holding the clothesline and slips.) Roxana was arrested in Iran, when the protests began there in 2009, when she was working there as a freelance reporter and doing research. She spent over 4 months in Evin Prison there, and only got out, because of a huge amount of international efforts to have her freed. She wrote a book "Between Two Worlds," about the people she met in the prison, who are still there. She now works for Al Jazeera America, and did a lot to try to help free Kayla Mueller. Roxana gave a lecture at Mary University, in Bismarck, ND, where one of my students, Sister Nancy Gunderson is a professor, and Nancy sent me a photo of herself with Roxana Saberi, and this connection ended up getting me to decide to do this piece about all these women, who have done and continue to do so much to improve living conditions in the world!
I wrote about my mom and my sister Debi, who are standing behind Roxana in this piece. Mom and I went to the Goodwill in Wooster, and I got all the slips I used in my art in grad school and in this performance piece. Mom insisted on buying the slips for me, even though I knew she probably thought I was pretty nuts, doing this! She brought up her big galvanized steel washtubs and her washboard for me to use in the performance, and Debi probably drove to get them both up to Kent. Bill Jones was standing at the clothesline next to Mom, at the performance. I have a picture of them holding up those slips, standing there together somewhere, but I can't find it!
Two women from the Russian protest group Pussy Riot are in the piece, to the right of Debi. Nadya Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhima were arrested in Moscow on 3-16-12 for "hooliganism motivated by religious hatred" and sent to prison in Russia on 8-17-12. Yekaterina Samutsevich also went to prison with them, but was freed on 10-10-12. Nadya and Maria were sent to two separate prisons in late 2012, and Amnesty International called them prisoners of conscience. They had been doing performance art pieces protesting President Putin and how he uses the Church to gain support. Nadya and Maria were freed on 12-23-13 and have been going around the world, trying to expose the plight of prisoners, especially women prisoners in the world. I got to see them on The Colbert Report, I think in Feb, 2014.
4-28: I wrote about Pussy Riot's first performance piece in English, protesting both the strangulation death of black man Eric Garner by the NYPD and Russia's war on Ukraine. In one version of their protest video, Nadya and Maria are dressed in Russian riot police uniforms and are being buried alive, as we hear the soundtrack of Eric Garner dying. In the other video, there is the same soundtrack, but we see the riots in Staten Island, when Garner's killer was acquitted in Dec, 2014.
I then wrote about Aung San Suu Kyi, who was born on 6-19-45 in Rangoon, Burma, and who was educated in the West, becomeing committed to Democracy. She lived in house arrest from 7-20-89 to 11-13-10, because of her political stance. She would now be President of Burma (called Myanmar by the miltitary dictatorship which ran the country up to 2010,) but the country's constitution has a special rule just for her: You can't be Burma's President if your spouse or children are foreigners. Her husband, who died while she was under house arrest, was British, as are their two sons. Aung San Suu Kyi is now a representative in the country's Parliament and would win the Presidency by a landslide, as she is a true heroine in her land. She received a Nobel Peace Prize while in house arrest.
5-2: I wrote about the card, the 10 of Swords, and how, since swords are mental energy and 10s are completion, harvest, then this card, and this piece are about women making our best efforts to bring peace and healing to the world, and that we are stronger when we do it together.
I started telling about the slip-washing performance piece, writing around me, at the top of the painting, and then starting with the slip that Early's holding, I wrote the whole script that I'd written in 1982 for the slip washing, on all the slips here. And it all fit. I finished writing the script here on May 7, at the bottom of Nadya's slip.
5-6: I wrote about the memorial service for Early, that was held on May 3 at our Community Center, where our yoga classes with Mary Nicholls are held. Hundreds of people came to celebrate Early and her quirky life full of love and strong opinions and sentimentality. Many got up to tell the stories, and we all cried for our dear friend....
5-11: The giant earthquake that hit Nepal happended on April 25, 2015. It was 8M on the Richter Scale, and by now over 8,000 are dead there, and over 16,000 injured. In Nov, 2014, Obama and Aung San Suu Kyi held a press conference about Burma's constitutional section 59f - that you can't be the Burmese President if your spouse or children are foreigners. The Burmese military won't undo this rule.
5-12: Up by me on the piece I wrote about how making this piece is making me have really warm memories about making that performance. I wonder how I thought it up, and how I feel it really holds up well as a women's creation story. There was another earthquake in Nepal today. Two weeks after the 7.8M quake of April 25, this one was 7.3M, one fifth as strong, and centered between Mt Everest and Kathmandu.
5-13: Indian Point nuclear power plant on the Hudson River in upstate NY, had a fire in a transformer near the nuclear reactor on May 9th, and it shut down Reactor #2. Reactor #1 was already shut down. An oil spill happened into the river, because of the transformer fire. This power plant sits on an earthquake fault!!!!! I wrote things about my online class, Lucky Drawing 103, that ran April 14- May 11, and talked about reading books with Pat and Rita, that our YaYa friend Marsha had on her booklist, which we now own, as it was on her computer. Jimmy's fixing Nancy's lawnmower for her, and I'm making 6 airbrushed paintings about Nelly Bly, to donate one quilted, to the SAQA auction this year.
6-9: There was another long hiatus from writing on this piece, for me to make those Nelly Bly pieces and go to the Quilt National opening weekend with my friend Mary Urbas. We saw my works in three shows that weekend: my "Pie of Life" Maya Angelou piece in QN '15 at the Dairy Barn in Athens, OH; My "Muddy Fork Farm" piece in the SAQA Earth Stories show at the Kennedy Art Museum in Athens, OH, and my "Annie Leonard" piece in Pushing the Surface at the Johnson-Humrickhouse Museum in Coshocton, OH. And I airbrushed a white jacket the night before we went, and wore that to the openings. I was worn out from that, but Mary looked pretty good!!
Eva is here, June 7-12, and we're doing upcuycling of clothes for her, so she can learn more sewing skills and have fun. I wrote on Liz Stanley, who's the flying angel here in the top right corner. She's a friend I met when we moved to Wooster in 1971. She was born 2-6-57 and died 3-21-15, at age 58. She got MS and suffered for years, but tried her best to keep on going and was always very sweet.
6-10: I tried an experiment: cut the tops off some of my tallest perennials. The joe Pye Weeds are starting up again from their cuts, with about 8 new stems for each old one. Yikes! Eva and I are making an upcycled dress for her from an old nighty of hers and a top and some fabric she likes a lot. Pretty snazzy.
6-11: the US is sending more troops back to Iraq, to train Sunis to not join ISOL, but to work with the Shia Iraqi goveernment. We already have a lot of troops back in Iraq. sigh. Mercury goes direct today, after its usual 3 week retrograde. I'm planting more of my Orange Cosmos seeds now, tho it's getting late to plant seeds! I wrote Nelly Bly's story on this piece. Did you know that in the TED talks, TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design? It does.
6-14: Nadya Tolokonnikova (of Pussy Riot) and Katya Nenasheva got arrested on National Day in Russia, 6-12-15, for holding an unsanctioned rally in Moscow. They were dressed as women prisoners and were sewing a Russian flag, to draw attention to the struggles of Russia's women prisoners. They were released later. This was part of Nenasheva's, called "Don't Be Afraid," and educates us about how hard it is for Russian women, especially after prison, to have a life again. They can't have their children back, can't get jobs or shelter.
Last week, when Eve was here, we got Mama Wanda and went to the cemetery, to visit my parents' and Jimmy's dad's graves. Eva hadn't been there before. Then we all had ice cream at Hartzler's Dairy.
6-15-25: I sandwiched and quilted this piece.
6-28: On the new border of the quilt, I wrote about Dylann Roof's murder of 9 prayer meeting participants at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston on June 17th.
6-29: I wrote on the border, about Strom Thurmond's son Paul, who's a state senator in South Carolina, getting up in their Congress and basically disowning the whole Confederacy thing. He was almost crying. He was friends with Clementa Pinckney, who was a state senator, too, and the head preacher at Emanuel, who was murdered on June 17, along with 8 others. Then I wrote abotu Bree Newsome climbing the flagpole at the SC statehouse, and taking down the Confederate flag, because the state wouldn't do it, on June 26 - and she was arrested and 2 black workers were made to put the flag back up.
6-30: It's our 25th wedding anniversary, and Jimmy just got home last night, from his yearly trip to Grayling, MI for fly fishing and bamboo rod gatherings. And Eva's here and has a cold and a fever.
7-1: Last night Mt Zion Lutheran Church in S Carolina was burned down. Five other black churches have burned down since the murders at Emanual AME on June 17. (this is written on the big pink bird in my piece.) Jimmy got our friend Victoria Balsamo to make me a silver ring for our anniversary, that has a piece of walrus tusk in it, that my friend Luanne Moffett gave us years ago. It was the last piece of the Alaskan walrus tusk from Luanne, that Jimmy still had. Vikki came and brought my ring, and we all went to supper together.
I put my favorite fortune cookie saying ever next to my signature on this piece: "A good wife and a good skillet gets better with age."
7-4-15: Mike and Gretchen came down and we all went to watch the fireworks together at the corner, sitting in the street in folding chairs or on blankets. Later that night, the toilet tank in my little bathroom broke and flooded out, but we got the flow turned off fast, and the kids all woke up and helped us. There is some damage, but it could be worse!
So that's it. All done, finally!
Many thanks for actually reading all this way! There are a lot of detail shots below here, so keep scrolling down!
Susan Shie, Wooster, Ohio, 7-17-15
If you are interested in studying with me, please check out my Turtle Art Camps, which I teach here at my home and studios, as well as my online drawing classes, my privare art lessons in my home, and the classes that I teach around the US and sometimes in other countries, as all are listed on the main page of my website, Turtle Moon Studios.
Read all about my Turtle Art Camp - how it works for your weeklong artmaking experience here in Wooster, Ohio, and see the changes I've made to the agenda. I have many large photos on the page, to show what's going on at this biosphere-like art experience. The emphasis in this adult students' art camp is on drawing and painting, whether you choose to work on cloth or paper, or both, or even on stretched canvas. And you don't even have to try my airpen and airbrush, or my sewing techniques, if you don't want to. If you want to study my personal painting and quilting processes, which I've taught consistently here, I have a full lesson plan for the week. So you can go by that plan or do more of your own thing, with my guidance. I want my art camp to help you become more open to letting your art flow out, in whatever medium you want it to be in. I have even had students over the years who are mainly writers, not visual artists. I started my Turtle Art Camps in 1994 and they're going strong. See my 2015 TAC schedule on the main page ot Turtle Moon, along with a link to my current online Lucky Drawing class for info and enrollment.
Many thanks, Lucky / Susan,
Turtle Moon Studios: Outsider Art
Quilts and Paintings
Susan Shie
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