Tanya Wilkinson

Fall Open Studio, Oct 14-16

2011-10-08T19:53:00.000-07:00

Reception:

Friday, Oct 14
6–10pm

Open Studio:
Saturday, Oct 15, Sunday, Oct 16
11am to 6pm

ARC, Studio #205

1246 Folsom St. San Francisco
between 8th and 9th
Civic Center BART station

Come to my studio on October 14th, 15th or 16th to see my new work. I will be showing mixed media pieces and artists books made with glass, resin, handmade paper, fiber, found objects and ephemera.

2011-09-18T18:00:00.000-07:00

ARTISTS' TALK AND FINAL CHANCE TO SEE THE SHOW WITH THE ARTISTS ON HAND

Once Upon An Other Time
Tanya Wilkinson and Kristine Mays

FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 23, 6pm to 8:30, talk at 7pm

Location:
ARC Project Gallery,
1246 Folsom Street

between 8th and 9th
San Francisco, California

Exhibition dates: Weds, Aug 31 - Sat, Sept 10th

Gallery Hours: Weds, Thurs & Sat 12-5pm.

Fairytales & Mythic Moments

2011-08-23T21:58:00.000-07:00

Old Wives

Once Upon An Other Time
A visual exploration of Fairytales, Myths & legends by Tanya Wilkinson and Kristine Mays

"Such stories... open a door on Other Time, and if we pass through, though only for a moment, we stand outside our own time, outside Time itself, maybe." — J.R.R. Tolkien (On Fairy-Stories)

Exhibition dates: Weds, Aug 31 - Sat, Sept 10th

Reception: Saturday, September 10th from 4-7pm

Gallery Hours: Weds, Thurs & Sat 12-5pm.

Location: Contact: tanya.wilkindaughter@gmail.com
ARC Project Gallery, between 8th and 9th
1246 Folsom Street
San Francisco, California

WORK IN PROGRESS FOR "ONCE UPON AN OTHER TIME"

When a story is foolish and fit only for the gullible we call it, misogynistically enough, an "Old Wives Tale". In my opinion, the "Father of History", Herodotus, was the first Old Wife to publish. The many strange stories and the folk-tales he tells also earned him the title of 'The Father of Lies'. If you want a good description of the Phoenix rising from it's own cremation, or of the strange Scythian ability to fly, you can't beat him.

detail, Old Wives

There is a collection of tales from the Middle East that is, in a way, a paradigm for story-telling.

1001, detail

The One Thousand and One Nights of Scheherazade is a compilation of Middle Eastern, South Asian and Mesopotamian folktales and legends. It presents the human compulsion to narrate as, literally, a lifesaver. The collection is framed by the story of Scheherazade's nightly effort to avoid execution by telling a good tale. Framing devices are incorporated throughout the tales themselves. Some proceed from this original tale; some are framed within other tales, while others begin and end of their own accord. Layers of archetypal reality overlap and intersect as the nights unfold. These are detail sections of a 7 foot long scroll named "1001".

Bluebeard and other tales

2011-04-28T11:28:00.000-07:00

Ondine

old lessons, still unlearned

I'm working on a new series inspired by old Fairytales. Here are the first two pieces. Ondine is a response to Irish and German stories about water creatures that become women. These tales are a bit like "The Little Mermaid" in that the water-women fall in love with men and try to live on dry land. Disney, of course, gave it a happy ending, something the old stories never have. Old Lessons is a rumination about the many versions of "Bluebeard". Most European cultures, and a few Asian ones, have Folk stories about a serial wife killer. My favorites are the ones in which a "wily" potential victim turns the tables.

This series will be part of a pop-up show I am going to do with Kristine Mays at ARC in September. Kristine's work is wonderful, check it out at http://kmaysart.blogspot.com/

2011 Spring Open Studios, April 1-3

2011-03-21T09:39:00.001-07:00

mixed messages

joy of cooking

Please Join Me for Spring Open Studios

ARC Studios 1246 Folsom, SF, between 8th & 9th Civic Center Bart

April 1st, 6-10PM - Friday Night Reception---Eat, Drink and be Foolish
April 2nd & 3rd, 12-5PM - Open Studios

Some new work, some old work, some troublesome work. My theme for this year, or perhaps for this decade is:
PRETTY OBJECTS MADE FROM SINISTER MATERIALS

dites-moi

I have also put together a photo book of my visual ruminations on this topic from the last 3 years and you can find it posted on both my blog (March 11) and my Facebook Wall. Or just come to Open Studios and see the originals.

lingering ache

Fortuna

Pretty Objects Made from Sinister Materials

2011-03-12T15:57:00.001-08:00

Click here to view this photo book larger

Curator's Talk for Telling Tales and Mixing Metaphors

2011-01-09T21:57:00.000-08:00

Telling Tales and Mixing Metaphors, a show I curated, opened on January 7th. at the Danville Art Galley. I gave the following talk that evening.

I chose these works for three reasons: First, each piece tells me a story I need to hear; Second, each piece is beautiful and; Third, I thought that if they were all in one place they might tell a bigger story together than they do separately.

Critics and art historians talk about what art is but artists, when they consent to talk, talk about what art-making is. There are a number of artists in this room and each one would probably have something different to say about the nature of art-making. However, since I curated this show, I get to say what I think first. I think art-making is story telling.

Telling stories is universal to humankind and there is some reason to believe that this fact is rooted in the structure of our brains. Studies of those who have suffered brain- injuries show that, when an injury causes someone to lose the ability to construct and understand a narrative, that individual becomes unable to maintain a sense or image of self. This seems to indicate that, if you ask me who I am and I say “I am an artist”, I am telling you the conclusion of an internal story. If I lose my capacity to track that story, I lose my capacity to answer your question.

Stories tell me who I am, who we are together, what the world is. Stories are part of the way that human beings form and maintain a sense of community. A community can be seen as a collection of interwoven stories, told in every possible way--conversations, plays, actions, architecture, art. The storyteller and the listener are changed by each story told. Communities need new stories and new perspectives on old stories in order to stay vibrant. Visual art can portray aspects of the human story that are hard to put into words give new insight into old tales.

Maat by Tricia Grame

Up this ramp you will see four paintings by Tricia Grame that address some old tales, old stories about women and about spirituality. She has taken in these old stories and given them back with new meaning.

Black Ice by Kirk Brooks

The artist takes in experience, sorts it, reconstructs it and gives it a shape. All of the artists in this show have used their experiences to build, elaborate and refine a world inside themselves. When they are painting, pasting, constructing or photographing, they stand on a threshold between that inner world and this outer world, trying to make some part of their internal narrative visible.

On this wall and up the ramp you see two abstract paintings by Kirk Brooks. What story is he trying to give shape to with these brushstrokes? Something about the emotion he was feeling when he painted? Something about the gloriousness of color? Perhaps a little something about growing up with a Father who was a painter?

We participate in the artist’s narrative. All story-telling is participatory--you must have a teller and a listener. Art is participatory--you must have a maker of art and a viewer. When a piece of art works for you, it draws you in, it evokes feeling, you become a part of the story of the piece. In that moment the interaction between the artist’s act of making art and your act of responding to the art produces a new piece of art, something unique that may only last for the moment that you stand and look.

Judy Shintani's Elderly in America, foreground

The first time I saw Judy Shintani’s “Elderly in America” I was overcome with a feeling of poignant loss, a feeling intimately connected to the fact that my brother’s mother-in-law, a woman I grew up with, died at 98 on Christmas Day. Today I looked at the same piece and saw instead a story about bravery, perhaps because I always wonder, before a talk, if I will have the courage to talk to a room full of strangers.

Good works of art do not force meanings on the viewer; meaning emerges, adds up, and unfolds. With the best work the viewer is moved through a process of discovering meaning.

Floating World, Priscilla Otani

With some art the process of discovering meaning flows and with some the process needs more of your attention and insight. Some of the art work in this show is generous with its story. Not everyone here will see the same story in a piece like this (Priscilla Otani’s "Lost Face") but I think that almost everyone will readily find a narrative thread in it. On the other hand, the same artist gives us “Floating World” a piece that is more demanding, both visually and intuitively. The intentions of a piece like this seem mysterious. It gives us the feeling that it is telling us a number of overlapping stories.

I will finish with a quote from Maya Angelou “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” That is very true but, I would add, speaking of my own art-making, that there is no greater joy than to have told a good story.

HOLIDAY SALE

2010-12-01T09:23:00.000-08:00

TANYA WILKINSON, KIRK BROOKS, and JACK ANDROVICH are having a STUDIO CLEARANCE SALE at ARC STUDIOS 1246 FOLSOM, between 8th and 9th streets, SAN FRANCISCO
For directions click the ARC link under my picture

Friday Dec. 10, 6:30 - 9:00 and Saturday, Dec. 11, Noon - 6:00.
Other times by appointment.

BOOKWORKS, COLLAGES AND WORKS FROM EARLY IN THE MILLENNIUM are priced from $20 to $100

Here are some examples:

I will also be selling some work from 2008 & 2009 at half of their original prices, so if there is something you have had your eye on, you might be in luck!

Open studios prep-a-thon

2010-10-11T10:38:00.000-07:00

Little Wing

New work, old work, can't show everything but I really, really, really want to. Open Studio is such an adrenaline shot, it's very tempting to keep makin' new stuff right up to the last minute. Having to switch over to getting organized is such a buzz kill--not to mention having to go to the mortgage-paying day job. These people want me to do the stuff they pay me to do. Don't they know I'm an artist? Here are four pieces in the newly re-named series "Angels and Odd Bitches" (formerly known as "Seen and Unseen"). I changed the name because it's obvious that these girls are angels and odd bitches, and because they are no longer unseen--I see them and you will too when you come to Open Studios this weekend, along with a couple of their sisters whose varnish is still drying.
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Dites-moi

OPEN STUDIOS AT ARC
Reception...........Friday, October 15, 6–10pm
Open Studio.......Sat., Oct. 16 & Sun. Oct. 17, 11am-6pm
Where................ARC Gallery and Studios,
                           1246 Folsom Street, San Francisco, CA 94110
                            Between 8th & 9th, 3 blocks from Civic Center

Seen and unsee

Fortuna

New work

2010-09-20T08:33:00.000-07:00

Here is a new piece called Fortuna, the third painting in the "Seen and Unseen" series. I think it's finished but I am also considering mounting it on a dark, reddish-black background. I notice that I go through a cycle with new pieces that is sort of like cycles in dating---I'm in love, no I'm not, this is perfect, no it's not, this is the best, oh no, don't get to happy, something will go wrong........Anyway, I'm happy with Fortuna at the moment.

REMEMBER: Open Studios, October 15,16,17 at Arc Studios, 1246 Folsom St., San Francisco

FourSquared closing reception and preparing for open studios

2010-09-01T11:09:00.000-07:00

The current show at ARC Gallery, FourSquared, will have a closing reception on Saturday, September 18th from 10am to 3pm. There will be an Artist's Panel from 1pm to 2pm. My studio will be open as well. The opening reception, on Friday, August 27, was intense--lots of people, lots of family, lots of art talk. The first sale of work from my 5 piece "Illusion of Choice" series was completed that evening. Yes, Do Supermodels Dream of Anorexic Sheep?, at left, was the first to leave home, but her sisters, a sample of which can be seen at right and below, are still in my studio, waiting to be seen, and perhaps adopted, at Open Studios in October. Although I had a somewhat conflicted time producing the "Illusion of Choice" suite of works, I kind of love them now, as they are on their way out into the world. Both studio space and mental space are opened up and I am enjoying focusing on my new series, "Seen and Unseen", which will include mixed media paintings, artists' books and assemblage.

"Seen and Unseen" ( here you see a detail from the first painting in that series, Dites-moi) continues my ongoing rumination about Femininity, in both its luminous and disturbing manifestations, its cultural distortion and archetypal power. Several years ago I was in Italy, and when you are vacationing in Italy, going to Museums and churches, you are completely surrounded by Mary. It's all Madonnas, all the time. I became very interested in the various iconographic conventions of the religious paintings that I saw everyday. I especially enjoyed the attributes of the Virgin-- objects included in her portraits that symbolically indicate her qualities, virtues and powers. One night I had a dream that took the form of a slide show and each slide was an attribute of Mary: a crown of stars, a mirror, a spindle, a book, Lilies, a rose, many others. A narrating voice said "you should go home and do portraits of the bad girls of the bible. You should portray Eve, Jezebel and Salome and give them the attributes of Mary". My first thought at waking up and remembering the dream was "gosh, that seems kind of blasphemous." Many times over the years I have attempted to follow the exact instructions of the dream, to base work explicitly on the bible stories of Jezebel or Salome, but those pieces inevitably failed. Instead, with "Seen and Unseen" I am implicity exploring the attributes of good and bad girls. So far, I have been able to re-experience the playful and exuberant feeling of the dream.

On a final note, another really good thing happened at the FourSquared opening. I was able to buy the fabulous Sabertoothed Rabbit, below, by the fabulous saberbrushed painter, Sandy Yagi. I have admired her work for many years and I can't wait to bring this angry bunny home. Come and see the rest of Maestra Yagi's wonderful hybrids while you have the chance, along side the other fascinating work in the show.

Reception and Open Studio, Friday August 27

2010-08-20T09:22:00.000-07:00

On Friday August 27th a new show, titled FourSquared, will open in Arc Gallery, located at 1246 Folsom St, San Francisco (details about the show and directions are at the end of this post ). Although I am not in the show my studio, upstairs from the Gallery, will be open during the reception, from 7pm to 10pm on the 27th. In my studio you will be able to see the first pieces in my new series of mixed media paintings and sculptures. The series is titled Seen and Unseen and will eventually encompass 10 works. The triptych below is "Dites-Moi", one of the series in progress. I hope to have the first 5 of these finished for Open Studios in October.

To acknowledge the theme of FourSquared, in which 16 artists were asked by the curators to create a coherent series of 16 compact works, I have completed a suite of small pieces called 16 Recollections of Places I Will Probably Never go to Again. The pieces in 16 Recollections are cast paper tiles (linen, abaca, cotton and plant fibers), mounted on 6"x8" canvas board, with silkscreened, lithographed, stenciled, drawn and transferred images, polaroid transfers and emulsion lifts, wax and metallic pigment. The series is on display just outside my studio door. Below are "Ubud" and "Penang".

FourSquared

Opening reception for the artists: Friday, August 27th, 7 – 10 pm 

Exhibition dates: August 27 – September 18

Gallery hours: Saturdays 10am – 3pm; and by appointment

ARC Gallery is located at1246 Folsom St. in San Francisco, between 8th and 9th streets, South of Market. The Civic Center Bart station is 3 blocks away at 8th and Market.

“FourSquared”, co-curators, Matthew Frederick & Michael Yochum, invited 16 local San Francisco/ Bay Area to create 16 small works each. “FourSquared” will showcase all 16 series – a total of 196 works. “FourSquared” artists include: Brett Amory, Blair Bradshaw, Mitchell Confer, Sidnea D’Amico, Rebecca Fox, Ivy Jacobsen, Denise Laws, Michael McConnell, Brian McDonald, Molly Meng, Silvia Poloto, Kristina Quinones, Fernando Reyes, Monika Steiner, Marcia Stuermer and Sandra Yagi.

See http://arcsf.wordpress.com/ for more information about the show.

SPRING OPEN STUDIOS

2010-03-08T14:59:00.000-08:00

Friday, April 16, 7pm-10pm

Reception for Spring Open Studios at ARC Studios and Gallery

1246 Folsom St., between 8th and 9th. I am in studio #205. Please click http://www.arcsf.net/index.html for a map. The Reception will feature live music and refreshments.

Saturday and Sunday, April 17th and 18th
Open Studios continuess at ARC over the weekend. Artist's studios, including my own, will be open to the public from 11am to 6pm both days. Please go to http://www.somaopenstudios.org/ for details and directions

In my studio you will see my new series “Illusion of Choice”, which is finished (at least for now), and some new Artists Books.

The five pieces in "Illusion of Choice" have been both exhilarating and troubling to produce. I have constructed figures resembling paper dolls, marionettes and death masks which are then collaged over 5 or 6 distressed layers of fashion magazine layouts and beauty advertisements. These underlying layers are inspired, in part, by the semi-destroyed temporary walls that you often see surrounding construction sites. The walls are plastered with tattered posters making vague promises, partially peeled away; revealing fragments of older posters with more vague promises. Such walls document relentless cycles of unfulfilled desire. Unfulfilled desire is also at the heart of beauty magazines--desire for love, for self-regard, for power--all to be gained through appearance.

The process of building up and stripping down images (choosing—tearing—shellacking—texturing—painting) was great fun.
However, working with the source material was oppressive. Paging through magazines full of beauty advice brings me to the place where identity and capitalism meet. It is the wellspring of an unending quest for perfection.

I will also be showing the remaining three unsold pieces in my "Female Personae" series, as well as a couple of new, smaller mixed media sculptures in a similar vein.

That entire series may be viewed at http://www.tanya-wilkinson.com/

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ARTIST TALK CANCELLED

2010-03-07T10:43:00.000-08:00

The talk scheduled for March 20th has been cancelled. All of the other events in March and April that are described in the March 2nd. post below are good to go.

Artist Talk, April 5, 2008

2008-04-03T00:16:00.000-07:00

At the opening of Tell Tale/Tall Tale I gave a talk about the series of mixed media paintings, titled Female Personae, which is featured in the show. The pieces in this series are in the Portfolio of my website at www.tanya-wilkinson.com. The gist of my remarks follows:

The artist statement and artist talk seem to have become necessary adjuncts to viewing art. In just a few centuries, Western artists have moved from making unsigned depictions of well known religious narratives to presenting personal cosmologies, using idiosyncratic visual vocabularies that need some context to be understood. I fabricate a corner of the world and ask you to buy into it, by looking at it, imagining your way into it, or by literally buying it and making it part of your world. Creation, and here I mean Creation with a capital C, is not finished. It is ongoing and I want to get my two cents in.

This show, Tell Tale/Tall Tale, is dominated by the series I just finished, called “Female Personae”, mixed media paintings (or perhaps sculptures) that use the forms of women’s clothing to explore the experience of being female. Ten or so years ago I imagined that the purpose of my work was to investigate what it means to be a woman in this time and place. However, I concluded that that was far too big a task, one that ran the risk of breaking my heart. So, I reoriented myself and took on something more straightforward, namely, what is it like to be a woman in this time and place?

That brought me straight to clothes. Many pieces in “Female Personae” are pretty objects made from sinister materials. Women love their clothes and their clothes injure them. I mean actual, not metaphorical, injury. Nor do we need to go to distant times and places to witness Isadora Duncan being killed by her trademark drapery, or a courtesan with bound feet, or a Victorian matron made faint by her strays. At this 21st century moment we can consider the underwire digging into flesh, the platforms you fall off of, the tight jeans that give you an infection. And still, I love my clothes. The piece “Out of Season” portrays that love--the way in which a dress can capture something about feminine love, the glow of a female kind of light. Pieces like “Strap/yoke/halter/hook” , which sports a skirt decorated with the names of menacing-sounding fashions or “Good Mornin' Little school Girl”, a sweet little sundress fabricated from escort and massage parlor ads, use rather blatant strategies to show the seductiveness of a persona that injures:

Last year I was planning a trip to Oaxaca with my friends Anne and Jon. At one of our planning sessions Anne and I got into a detailed discussion about pedicures--what kind to get, when to get it, how long it would last. Finally, Jon interrupted us, saying, “God I would be terrible at being a woman. I could not stand worrying about my toenails” Of course, he may have interrupted us because he was afraid we would move on to a detailed seminar on bikini waxing. Why do I tell you this story? It illustrates this important fact: to carry even a minimally appropriate feminine persona through the Western world is both labor intensive and anxiety producing. I am a feminist and an old, unrecovered hippie who has dropped approx. 75% of the female grooming demands I was raised with (for example, the injunction to never leave the house without wearing a “foundation garment”), but I still cannot contemplate wearing sandals if my toenails are funky.

The majority of women who are more or less normally socialized give meticulous, fastidious, sometimes obsessive attention to details of their appearance. The particular details a particular woman focuses on may be influenced by her ethnicity, class, politics, region, religion, race, or they may be quite idiosyncratic. What remains consistent is the pressure to maintain a very specific kind of persona, a persona that acts as a shield against criticism from other women, a prop for self image, an obsessive defense against anxiety, and, in some ways, at some times, an expression of primal and archetypal aspects of femininity. The presentation, for most women in most situations, is only secondarily concerned with sexual attraction, especially when it comes to those fastidious little details. Certainly this is true if the target of attraction is a man, as research tells us pretty clearly that most men don’t register the details of anyone’s appearance, including their own.

In the early 19th. century the French novelist Stendhal said “The fastidiousness of women is the result of that perilous situations in which they find themselves placed so early, and of the the necessity they are under of spending their lives among cruel and charming enemies:”

Chilling isn’t it? What is the heart of this “perilous situation” women find themselves in? In the West, Woman is cast as the chief exponent of the Flesh in a culture that has a severe mind/body problem. The problem is that, to the western mind, the body is both wonderful and terrible. This makes women both wonderful and terrible, in much the same way that her personae, her clothes, are both wonderful and terrible.

So, what are we to do, we women? One thing we can do is to try and show that we are able to control this troublesome flesh--that we don’t have too much of it, that what we have isn’t too hairy or too smelly or too crinkled.

Rita Hayworth, the screen siren of the ‘40’s whose iconic role was in the movie “Gilda”, famously, and pathetically said, “Men go to bed with Gilda but they wake up with me.” In this comment she succinctly conveys the paradoxical dilemma presented by female personae--To the extent that you succeed in manufacturing the ideal feminine presentation, you will feel less accepted as an actual woman.

The ideal feminine persona is a shuck, a trick. If it were solely or primarily a shuck used by historically powerless people in order to manage more powerful people--those “cruel and charming enemies” Stendhal refers to--I would not have much problem with it. However, it is a shuck we women believe in ourselves. We enact it everyday, even if we see through it intellectually. We invest time, energy, resources, most importantly, feeling, in the pursuit of it.

Female personae are pretty things made of sinister materials. They are a feminine disguise that slowly and surely confuses both the wearer and the beholder as to the nature of the person within. Yet, the seductiveness of Feminine disguise remains largely impervious to this insight. That is the conundrum that my work in the series "Female personae" explores.