sunday afternoon...

I’ve been home all weekend working on sculptures. It’s official – my work will be shown at the UCSF Women’s Hospital. I have to drop off the work on January 12 and so I am crazily busy trying to complete 4 pieces by then. It sounds ridiculous – almost impossible but I am determined to do it. It’s been raining all weekend so I haven’t minded being at home. I’m here in front of my little decorated tree making art and sipping really hot coffee.

I have waves of anxiety off and on but I am glad to say that my Christmas shopping is almost all done and the last batch of Christmas cards will go in the mail tomorrow. I ordered a gift for my brother on December 4th and yet it never arrived. When I contacted the company I was amused and annoyed by the operator. He was so indifferent and unconcerned that I was annoyed and yet I was amused when he stated the obvious.

ME: I made this order on December 4. You guys sent me a shipping confirmation on December 5 and charged my card on December 6th. Yet when I look at the UPS tracking it gives no other information other than it going to the UPS facility. Obviously there is a problem since it’s now the 18th and I haven’t received anything.
OPERATOR: Oh… December 4? That was weeks ago. You know what? I think your package is lost. Yep. Good luck getting that.
There’s more but this story sounds best when I tell it and you can hear me impersonate the guy with his accent and tone of voice and all…

dollhouse

Dolls are substitutes for humans, and are used in both childhood and adult play. A plastic doll, robot, sock monkey, paper doll, rag doll, nutcracker, marionette, soldier, voodoo effigy and blowup sex toy, they are all repositories of our fears, fantasies, and desires. We love them, we fear them; we cherish them, we tear them apart; we talk to them, they talk to us. We imbue them with our imaginary life and in return they transport us into their worlds. For the Holiday Season, Arc Gallery will be figuratively transformed into a giant dollhouse for one-of-a-kind dolls and dollhouses. Artists are invited to liberally interpret their concept of 'dolls' and 'dollhouses,' and bring to life a creature or world from your wildest imaginings.

JUROR'S STATEMENT: "I once heard someone say ' there is nothing funny about a clown after midnight.' I think the corollary in this case would be: ' there is nothing cute or sweet about a doll after an artist has their way with it.' Try as i might to add to this statement of what the doll show is about and why I chose the way I did I am stymied by my inability to add to what the artists have already." - Jack Fischer



Kevin Grady: I've been incorporating dolls into my art pieces for many years now. I have some pieces that are just one doll on a weathered piece of wood - the doll itself to me is art. Other pieces I build around a doll or several dolls, and I consider each piece to be the dolls home.




Liese Lietzke: My sculptural works invade the installation space as bulbous, many-limbed and multi-textured forms, from tiny to larger-than-life, made from second-hand clothing as well as fabricated materials. They seductively invite touch while simultaneously threatening to overwhelm, encouraging a sense of longing for union and a greiving of irrevocable divisions. This work plays in the space between adulthood and regression, magnifying the sweetened artifice and compulsive adornments that shield the ego from the disturbance of the body.




Tracy Sengillo: In our culture, the human body is often presented through heavily mediated guises. For many, it needs to be re-presented in idealizations, in purified forms and sometimes as dolls. This piece exists not as an aesthetic representation of a human body, but as an artifact, a product of the obsessions and desires that tangle one's psyche. In this sense it acts as a metaphorical doll turned inside out, revealing the veiled fears and fixations of the owner.





Audrey Heller: I'm fascinated by imagining a world in a different scale. I enjoy using props that are everyday, yet deeply resonant, to tickle memory and inspire imagination. This triptych is loosely intended as a mythological journey of life. This work, 'Measure' is about a period of reflection.





Yuriko Takata: Water is our most precious and finite commodity. Global water Paper Doll has 4 different regional outfits showing her daily allotment of water. North American girl uses 100 gallons per day. North Kenyan girl uses 4 gallons per day. East Indian girl uses 10 gallons per day. American golf girl uses 2 billion gallons per day for irrigation of America's golf courses.

cutting wire

world AIDS day

Today is World AIDS Day.
Currently, 33 million people worldwide are infected with AIDS. 1.1 million of them are here in the United States.

I remember when the AIDS epidemic begin. Here in San Francisco people were dropping like flies. I had an English teacher who died from AIDS. I can't remember his name. I was in seventh grade and he got sick half way through the semester and never came back. We later figured out (I don't remember how even though we all knew he was gay) that he had AIDS. It was when AIDS was still this scary mystery disease that had everyone freaked out because they didn't know how it was transmitted. I remember how everyone in his class knew something was really wrong but none of the adults would tell us what was going on.

I was 11 or 12 at the time and people were freaked out because no one knew how it was transmitted. Hospital workers were dying too. People thought you could get AIDS through breathing on or touching someone, which added to the feeling of fear, this feeling of tension you could sense in the air.

I never want to feel kind of fear again and yet AIDS has managed to destroy so many lives. For this reason I give to the UCSF AIDS Health project and I responded to Alicia Keys’ call to action through her foundation Keep a Child Alive.