HAPPY INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY!

yay!!!! celebrate!!!! however you can! think about the work of a female artist you admire, learn a bit about their life story, help a female friend accomplish something, listen to another woman's story, sit back and feel calm and accomplished, take a moment to see how far we've come, how far you've come, and be thankful to be part of such an amazing lineage of women (and men) who have pushed the legal, political, and artistic boundaries wide enough to allow the important contributions of women to be seen, honored, and take root.

check out this video

keep your hands busy...

stitches...

another one of the little lovely humble things i've been keeping all to myself...


warning
14" x 11" (framed)
embroidery
angela simione, 2009

inspired by the little sign i made myself that was hanging on my fridge. this will be hung up in the kitchen as soon as i'm done writing this post, right in line with the front door so that it's one of the first things you see when you walk in. no longer a warning to self, i suppose. i love the aggressiveness of this little piece. embroidery can be tough too, ya know.

it makes me want to put together an entire show- all embroidery, all red and white. a fun and creepy little side-project to dream about, for sure.

p.s. sorry for all the reflective glare. i was excited and couldn't wait for the sun to shove off to the other side of the sky. :)

dang!

check this out!
you must!

women painting women

lineage...

got up at 5:20 this morning and was in the studio working by 6:30. the day is off to a wonderful, happy, exciting start and here's why:


lineage
44" x 38"
oil on canvas
angela simione, 2009

she's done! YAY! she's so damn pretty! excuse me while i toot my own tarnished horn but, i love this painting! love, love, LOVE! i'm going to spend the rest of the morning sipping coffee and staring at this canvas.

when i started it - always thinking of anonymity and loss, ya know - i thought about my own history... the history of all the women in my family, really... and realized that "cleaning women" are pretty much invisible. they have no voice, no real power... at least not when they're on the job. i've worked as a maid before. very few of the people whose homes i cleaned even looked at me, let alone spoke to me. you are required to be silent, a ghost moving unseen and unheard through the house... and don't make the client uncomfortable by highlighting your humanity at all...

this painting is made to honor such a lineage- a long, undocumented, "uncomfortable" history that isn't spoken of, the women who handle the messes, who have a relationship with dirt... it isn't polite to speak of such things.

looky looky!

territories 12
15" x 11"
embroidery on paper
2009

this is what i've spent the last three days working on. lovely! i've been so taken with how much the hanging strings on these pieces resemble a girl's hair so i tried to exploit that resemblance further by braiding it. i love it! and i think it really starts to push certain metaphors to the forefront of the work: body as landscape, traditional expectations or ideals of the female, the longing for a white picket fence childhood or life, etc.


detail

i think i may add a pink or black bow to the end of the braid to really bump up the little girl associations that this piece presents.

i'm still working on the jumbo version of this and it is going to take me a long long time to get it finished. the size that the last three of these have been is 15" x 11" and it's at least a good 10 hours of stitching. the jumbo one is 4 times the size so, mathematically, it'll be a 40 hour work week to get it finished and that's only if i work on nothing else. yeah right. i like bouncing back and forth between works in progress, applying what i've learned with one piece to another, testing ideas, and just exploring the possibilities certain materials offer.

paper is so versatile that while i'm working on one piece i get so many ideas for future works that i've got to stop for a minute and write the ideas down so i don't forget them. i've lost a great many wonderful idea by assuming my mind can hold on to every whimsical thought that passes through while i'm working. and these pieces in particular are so meditative that i lose track of time and get lost in thought quite easily. that's something i've always loved about sewing and cross-stitch and crochet... all the traditional women's work that i get caught up in. i'm just so attracted to using the lineage of these activities in an art context to talk about identity, loss, longing, day-dreaming, hope. there's an inherent poetry in these traditions that i'm trying to bring to the surface and highlight. i think i'm on the right track with these territories...

but i'm also thinking of changing their names. yes, there are definitely part of the entire territories series i've been working on for the past year, but they have been such a turning point for me that i really think they need a title of their own... they are definitely different than the earlier work and don't have anything to with notions of the decorative like the others do. there's something so quiet and humble in these last three embroidery pieces that i want to honor it. they need to have their own title. i've just got to think one up. :)

territories 10

stitching, stitching, stitching...

the metaphors are endless...


15" x 11"
embroidery on paper
angela simione
2008


detail