For several months—alone in my studio, here, writing on my blog—I’ve been working through the parts.
The flag stripes.
The birds and the stars.
The sky.
The boat.
The family.
Then I stitched them all together.
Now, completed, it is a finished work that’s a portrait of my family, and a portrait of what I knew of America as I grew up.
Row, Row, Rowing Our Boat is currently hanging in my studio. It’s 67” x 42”. I look forward to showing it in person for the first time this summer as part of my exhibit, Beyond the Surface: Symbols and Stories, at the Museum of Art DeLand.
About my family: I created these figures on fabric beginning with an actual photograph, small and grainy, from a family scrapbook. I enlarged then transferred the photo to fabric, using gel medium to pull the image off a laser color copy on paper. It took a lot of surface painting to get the images discernible, allowing me to be intimately involved with bringing these people I know to life on fabric.
About America: As I have written before, the status of this family in a too-small boat is rocky, as I have come to see much of the post WW-II America as rocky. The dreams were real. The intent was often good, and sometimes innocent. But the realities of economics and not thinking through deeply the forces at work have taken a lot of families down.
If you have worked on large pieces that take a lot of time, you know that at the end there is both exhilaration and letdown. Exhilaration: “It’s done!” Letdown: It’s done; (implying the inevitable questioning, “Did I get it right?” as well as “What do I do now?”)
There are, I am grateful to say, still more stories to tell.
. . . .
Sharing happy news: I am so pleased that the work currently showing in TRIO, the juried Regional Exhibit of SAQA FL-GA-SC, has sold: Three Yelow Doors was purchased at the exhibit opening at Lighthouse ArtCenter in Tequesta, Florida. It is also an autobiographical storytelling work, depicting the households of my life in the language of memory and dream.
. . . .
UPCOMING EXHIBIT: The Museum of Art DeLand is a 75-year old vibrant museum, with a first-class exhibition space, newly renovated, right in the heart of downtown DeLand, my hometown.
For all of us: focus each day
on the good that needs to be done in the world.
Be part of doing it.
Thank you for reading. I always enjoy questions and comments.
--Bobbi
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