Alex Alvis Art

Inspiration Sunday

Happy Sunday to you.  For Inspiration Sunday today I have quotes from the artists featured in the WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution show that I talked about last week.  Hope you enjoy the quotes and hope you enjoy your end of the week and that this will help inspire you to start your week off on the best path it can be on.

And, I thought I'd put in a joke today...just because.  :)

It's an old joke.

"Be industrious: the more one works, the better one succeeds. The harder the task, the more honorable the labor. The more a man praises himself, the less inclined are others to praise him."  ~Theresa Hak Kyung Cha-Dictee Opening pg 8

"I don't know if I am that conscious of it, but some people say that our films have a tendency toward dirty laundry. The films say it like it is, rather than how people want it to be. Maybe it is my character that tends to want to do that, because I think the visual arts [artist?] in me wants to say the same kind of thing. So I don't know if I consciously did it; I think it is just my own spirit." ~Camille Billops

The Stone House, a Blues Legend A merger of art, prose and poetry illustrator Camille Billops

"It murmurs inside. It murmurs. Inside is the pain of speech the pain to say. Larger still. Greater than is the pain not to say. To not say. Says nothing against the pain to speak. It festers inside. The wound, liquid, dust. Must break. Must void." ~Theresa Hak Kyung Cha-Dictee Opening pg 3

"Everybody has a form of tribalism. My sister got the look from Black men because she had a Puerto Rican boyfriend. If she were on the street with two little nasty children needing a daddy, they wouldn’t pay attention. It’s male tribalism that sees women as property." ~Camille Billops

"I would like to be cast as a humanist, someone who made a statement that was relevant to art history and the way we perceive ourselves and things."   ~Lynda Benglis

©Lynda Benglis

"When I was in Berkeley everybody was carrying a little red book—Mao's red book—and when Warhol produced his portrait series of Mao in a very aestheticized way, it was a shock—a good shock."  ~Dara Birnbaum

"Things happen in this country because you’re dark. Not necessarily because your hair’s nappy, but because you’re dark. That’s the first thing they see. . . .It will be hard to say, “I’m just a person.” No, you don’t get to be “just a person” here, you have to have a camp. And if it’s going to be with white people, you have to really be white. Nothing funny here. See, with Black America, there’s a legal definition. 1/32 Black blood, that means a great, great-grandmother Black—you are Black. That is only in this country, because of slavery. . . . From what I’ve seen in other cultures of color, very similar systems are at work. It’s racism within the group and that’s very powerful. So white people are not the only players on the stage. If you don’t admit to your own racism, how do you expect to keep telling white people about theirs?"  ~Camille Billops

"From the "Woodstock Nation" on, there was a brief moment when you actually felt that a large alternative group existed—that there were millions of "us" out there. But this was incredibly idealized. . . . I can remember Tom Wolfe lecturing . . . .It was a turnoff to see the author of Radical Chic in a totally white suit that looked so elitist to us, especially because he then represented the total opposite of a blue-collar worker. And he said, "You think that you are so different. Look at you. You are all so alike—what you are reading, how you are dressing." The coding within that "alternative" society was as defined and strict as in the society we were rejecting." ~Dara Birnbaum

"All work is some form of sensitizing oneself to the environment. It causes us to recognize ourselves and become self-conscious. We perceive in many different levels all at the same time. You can’t divide the intellectual and the sensual."  ~Lynda Benglis

©Lynda Benglis-North South East West Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin

"She says to herself if she were able to write she could continue to live.  She says to herself if she would write without ceasing.  To herself if by writing she could abolish real time.  She would live.  If she could display it before her and become its voyeur."  ~Theresa Hak Kyung Cha-Dictee pg. 141

Tomorrow is Monday and I am finding that Monday is a very busy day normally.  If I have time I will post - if I don't (like last week) I won't.  But I will post for sure on Tuesday.

'Til then!

~Alex

 

A Wonder Woman Blast from the Past

So.  As you may or may not know, I've been researching each artist listed as having been in the WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution show in 2007 and I am now to the artists on the list who's last names begin with the letter "B".

Today the artist I am learning more about is a video artist, Dara Birnbaum.  It isn't really my thing to talk about video artists, as I have said before.  But for all you video artists who might be interested I decided to stick with it this time.

I found some good resources about Birnbaum and I will share those with you.

From The Feminist Art Project website, which - I very much hope you will explore further:


Next on the list of artists on the WACK website is Louise Bourgeois but I have already devoted a post to talking about Louise and if you haven't read it yet just click here. 

I wrote that post back when I was attempting to devote a certain day of the week to a certain subject.  Alas, that much self- imposed structure never seems to work well for me :}.

So - tomorrow we are progressing in our list past the artists who's last names begin with the letter "B" to the artists who's last names begin with the letter "C".

Theresa Hak Kyung Cha is who we will talk about tomorrow.

Wishing you a fantastic Thursday!

'Til tomorrow!

~Alex