I believe that art isn’t done until someone besides the artist has seen it. I am also at a point in my career that I want the pieces I make to leave my studio. I want them to travel. I want them to go away, clear the decks, and move on. So I spend some time each week seeking ways to get my work into the public eye. I like to start a conversation with my work. I’m interested in how we communicate with each other.
With that goal in mind, the art group I am part of (Six Points) made a proposal to a local university gallery called 2 sides/6 points. Here’s the original proposal we made to the gallery.
2sides/6 points
In 2 sides/6 points we ask ourselves these questions: Can art have a do over? How does an immersive conversation with an artist inspire new art? Can one artist reinvent the work of another? Can imitation or intention carry an artist to a new place?
We six artists have met regularly for over seven years. As a group, our aim is to support, nourish and react to each other’s work with critical eyes born from long discussions. We know and celebrate each other. We listen and consider. It’s a deep dialog based on the belief that our aim is to assist and our process is to be honored.
And now our task is to dive deeper. With this show, we bring the time-honored practice of one artist being inspired by another to create new work. Each of the six will choose a work by one of the others and reflect, re-imagine and create a work inspired by that piece. After a one-on-one artist-to-artist conversation the original piece will act as a muse to something new from a different point of view, medium, or palette. This show will include the original artwork, the inspired creation, and a sampling of each artist’s body of work.
The tall piece in the middle of this picture features the work I created after engaging in this challenge.
I was paired with Mary Jo Karimnia in this challenge. She has a multi-media practice that includes using beads, flocking, paint and paper. One of her series is devoted to eyes. When we met we talked about evil eyes, inner eyes, protective eyes, seeing eyes, third eyes and the many ways that eyes are referred to in art. Her eyes are painted on plates, cut out of wood, mounted on baskets and gathered in installations.
Mary Jo Karimnia does a series of works focused on eyes.
Choosing a strong palette with lots of pattern was a new challenge for me. I usually work with less color.
Recently I watched a documentary about refugees and asylum seekers traversing the jungles of Panama to get to safety. Their journey is horrendous, murderous and rife with corruption. Many die. It occurred to me that the whole world should witness this disaster. The whole world needs to figure out how this ends. And then I realized that the whole world is watching this disaster, all across the globe people are hungry, hopeless and in danger. So I decided to use that idea in my piece called The Whole World’s Watching using eyes as a focal point.
The Whole World’s Watching, detail, Paula Kovarik
Every so often we get a news flash of more people dying in their attempts to get to safety.
The Whole World’s Watching, Paula Kovarik, 50.5” x 16”
The 2 sides/6 points show will debut in September at the UT-Martin campus of the University of Tennessee. If you are in the area please stop by and let us know what you think about the show. Let’s continue this conversation.