My series of watercolors “Altered States” were painted from my subconscious while I was in an altered state due to a severe autoimmune disease flare. The watercolors are painted on yupo, a non-absorbent surface made of polypropylene, which allows the pigment in the paints to separate while sitting in an abundance of water. The paint sits in a large amount of water and the painting changes over the many hours it takes the water to evaporate. I work additively and subtractively, as yupo allows you to wipe away the paint even after it’s dry. Through this method, I am able to achieve a surreal blurriness and ill-defined quality. I give just enough information for the viewer’s pareidolia (the brain’s penchant for creating faces and scenes out of random visual stimuli) to be activated – allowing the work to be finished in the mind of the viewer.
I was invited to be a part of a group exhibition with eight local artists called (un)Altered(ego) curated by Rieko Chacey in Baltimore, MD. She requested work that emanated from our true selves, or deep within our subconscious, and my Altered States seemed to be a perfect fit.
Bogus Gallery, located in the CopyCat Building, responded to Rieko’s proposal and suddenly we had a show! I knew nothing about the CopyCat Building walking in and wondered at first what I had gotten myself into. Built in 1897, the Copycat is a cavernous warehouse and contains artist studios, there are mannequin torsos and furniture from all ages about the building along with odds and ends left by generations of artists. The gallery is large and consists of a room with high blacked-out windows and concrete floors that you reach by wandering through what seemed like a maze, or you can enter through the back door and cross through a space that gives off an abandoned feeling. I felt as though I stepped into a space entirely different from my ordinary surroundings – an altered place.
I was given a large wall to mount the Altered States and I felt quite strongly that I did not want to put the 16”x12” frames in a grid, it seemed wrong and part of some otherness – a way of presenting artwork to be sold in the gallery world -an approachable installation, neat with everything in its place. This space was the antithesis of a white cube gallery and the women depicted in my works are not neat and in their place. They are altered, in a strange, foggy, unsettled, and off-kilter way.
I set about installing the pieces in an organic free-flowing installation that could be seen as one piece. I wanted the Altered States to be an unruly mass. They look like someone tried to install a grid but got it wrong. I see them as states of mind that your eye hops about from one to the other. I feel like they are a mouth full of crooked teeth that don’t quite fit their owner’s mouth, some jarringly out of place but still contained within.
I spent over five hours installing and had multiple conversations with myself about the weirdness of it. It looked so off and outside my normal expectations of how work should be installed that I felt it wasn’t working. I told myself to trust the 20+ years of experience I had doing this and go with it. If there were any place that I could be experimental, it was this unique space. Finally, after many misplaced nails and a great struggle to create this puzzle without a reference, I felt like the installation had come together. I snapped a photo and then drove home feeling pleased and happy about the interactions and connections with the other artists I had met that day.
I looked at the picture when I got home and thought it looked horrible! What the HELL could I have been thinking installing the work like that! I was going to embarrass myself, the curator and the other artists! I wondered if I had installed in an altered state! I was going to have to go back on Tuesday morning, an hour and three quarters each way to tear it down and start again!
My autoimmune disease is flaring, and my body is telling me in a hundred different ways I am not well. My joints are swollen and painful and I am struggling with fatigue. I am in and out of an altered state. I knew that my body could not go and reinstall my work and then go back again on Friday for an opening. What was I going to do?
And then… my fellow artist Yeeve Rayne shared a video with my installation and it looked good! Thank you Yeeve! The photo I had taken was at a weird angle and the lighting distorted everything. But now, I could perceive that my installation looked weird, but in a good way. I am curious how I will feel about the installation when I see it again in person on Friday.
I want to thank artist and curator Reiko Chacey for being supportive of my idea and saying that she thinks “people should experience new things when they walk into a gallery”.