Fell

Sort of pathetic… was skating yesterday and misjudged the wind. My return trip was against it, I got tired, and suddenly I was off the bike path, down. Was wearing wrist guards, luckily. Anyway, today I’m a wreck. Have to be more careful.
Then again, maybe it's swine flu...
Finished a painting, can’t tell if it’s good or not. When your brain is jarred, the eyes don’t see.

Still Gazin'

From a review of “The Female Gaze: Women Look at Women,” at Cheim and Read, Sept. 2009, by Sarah Valdez, Art in America:
My women’s group met to discuss our upcoming exhibition of “Women by Women,” and two different members brought in this article. The New York exhibit included work by Nan Goldin, Tracey Emin, Alice Neel, Catherine Opie and Marina Abramovic.

It’s odd to call an exhibition with excellent examples of contemporary and historical female artists work a failure. But the work in it failed to accomplish its goal, which is anyway dated to say the least, of “reclaiming the traditional dominion of the ‘male gaze,’” as stated in the press release. Even if the appealing images in the show are of and made by women, who’s to say they defy the male—or anyone’s—gaze?

Instead, it proved only that women too can create commonplace—sexy, but not necessarily sexist—images that serve mainly to foreground women’s sexuality and beauty.

This opening paragraph of the review is upsetting. To use “failure” twice is strong language, especially when most of the artists listed above are fantastic in their various media and conceptual projects. Valdez was probably not the right person to review the show, if she thinks that considering the male gaze is “dated to say the least.” Most of the members of our group feel it is possible to defy the male gaze, or try, anyway. We approach it many ways: outright defiance, rejection of traditional stereotypes, working subversively within those stereotypes, creating power within existing tropes and ideals.
Women creating “commonplace,” “sexy” images to celebrate women’s sexuality was radical in the not-so-distant past. My images were recently rejected because they are “improper” (not the word used, but you get my point), so at least in SoCal, people can still be shocked by what a woman paints/photographs/sculpts, etc. The male gaze exists as ever, we experience it every f--ing day, and that Ms. Valdez doesn’t think defiance is important makes me wonder about her.
OK, let’s put on a show, girls…
(image by Rasmus Mogensen)

The Hellenistic Canon of Proportion

A friend picked this catalog up for me at ComicCon, knowing how much I’d love it. It advertises an anatomy doll to help artists and designers with drawing the female figure in action.
As you can see, this is no average girl. She’s a super model, super-hero type, 8:1 body to head. What’s the problem, you may ask? This doll is not “Art.” This doll, and others like it, could inform the anime drawings of a generation. This doll is not making fun or idolizing the female form, but “represents” women as they are.
Kloe can handle a beautifully grotesque photo of a woman in an art gallery, and possibly a Photoshopped woman in an advertisement, and even Barbie, but not this.
By the way, I haven’t been able to find out what is happening to my Bratz sisters, but there are many less of us for sale on the toy shelves. Mattel is crazy to cut us—there are no dolls that compare to Bratz, in my humble opinion.

Ladies

Saw this at Fahey/Klein gallery on La Brea. Rasmus Mogensen's "Perfectly Natural" photo exhibit of very tall, thin models, made taller and thinner by Photoshop, was perplexing. How should a feminist react? The artist didn’t hide the fact they were creations, and monstrous, but many in the opening crowd didn’t seem to understand them as altered. We are so used to seeing the supermodel image, we accept it as fact, although unreachable.
After looking at the huge prints for a while, and not feeling outraged or intimidated, I decided they were so foreign that they had become objects to worship. These were not to be hidden in the bathroom or bedroom, but displayed in modern living rooms or above the brave boardroom table. The angle from which they were shot, the smoothness of the skin, the impossibility of their existence, made the women strange angels.
The next show I’m curating will be “Women by Women.” I want to explore a specific vision of womenhood in Southern California. Do we buy into the perfect form because we are surrounded by it? Do we rebel against it? As third-wave feminists, can we embrace the erotic while not commodifying it?

Stories and Scars

Placenta Accreta
… after birthing my son, I started to bleed heavily. The doctors made an emergency decision to save my life: they gave me a hysterectomy. I remember the first time I saw the scar, I was in the hospital room with my baby boy nursing at my breast, and I couldn’t help but be angry at my body. The gift of creation, of life, my uterus, had been ripped out of me. I struggled for years with issues surrounding feeling like a woman since I had lost my ability to create.
It is six years later, and when I look at my scar now, I see that it has physically changed along with the emotionally traumatic fears I initially projected onto it. Today I see beauty, I see strength, I see survival…

From Ted Meyer’s “Scarred for Life,” in which he pulls monoprints directly off bodies. The exhibition is a moving combination of words, design, graphic photography and abstract, primitive images.
We all have our scars, but can we transcend them without art?

Kloe’s Prozac

Here’s what I recommend for depression: heavy exercise. It’s like a drug. I can be miserable before I get on my bike, skates, or walking shoes, but, moving into the sunlight, I begin to calm down. I start to think more clearly, I get hopeful again.
Of course it helps to keep that fantastic-plastic figure of mine in shape…

Performance Wheels

Finally gave in and ordered new skates, only available online. I needed to replace my fitness wheels anyway, and figured I’ve been skating for two years on these Rollerblades, so why not try racing skates. My Goddess, it was like going from an old VW bug to a Porche. And I got the lowest grade racing skates. You stand in them and you roll.
I have skated with racers a few times. They left me in the dust in a blink of an eye. I thought they were just in much better shape. Now I know the skates are partly responsible.
Which makes me consider, if I have better brushes, pigments, canvas, do I paint better? No, the sports/art correlation doesn’t fly. But why then do we have art competitions? Purely politics.
Anyway, I am flying down the highway now, getting addicted to speed.

Black Womanhood

This show really surprised me. I’d been warned it was mostly “anthropology.” But for me, the African craft, and the nineteenth century photos of African women "on display," were only background to the main event: a beautifully edited group of works by international, contemporary, black women. About themselves.
I just loved seeing these bodies. Photography, video, costumes, totems, installation… as a figurative artist, there are so few shows to inspire me. I understood that as banal as the white woman’s body has become, the black woman’s body is still taboo and dangerous. Black women can be Nude, and with that power these artists deliver strong punches. The work was lovely and shocking at the same time.
This is partially what I’m afraid of: making work this strong.
All images from the catalog, Black Womanhood.

Crazy, Sick Artists

I had to go to the rheumatologist for a problem with my hand (which he fixed, bless him). He asked me what I did, prompting an interesting conversation on medicine and artists. His anatomy book has a portrait (by Picasso?) of Renoir, who suffered crippling rheumatoid arthritis, on the cover.
The doc tried to tie artistic vision to medical conditions, like manic depression. For example, he’s fascinated by the colors used by Gauguin in his South Pacific paintings, done under the effects of third stage syphilis. I disagreed that much artistic creativity is the result of a physical abnormality/condition. I think artists teach themselves to see differently.
Apparently many medical professionals are worried that the huge number of people taking anti-depressants (one in three American women?!) will hurt America’s creative power. When I suggested most artists don’t have health insurance to get meds, the doc said that soon China will be making cheap, generic happy pills, and the problem will get worse.
So when we’re sad do we make better art? Sometimes, for some artists. But many, like me, make art when we’re sad to get happier. If that makes sense.
Lovely colors of Charles Sheeler and Georgia O’Keefe, both from 1925

Speed Skating

I’m still skating a couple times a week. I got intimidated a while back when I met some “real” speed skaters, and they literally left me in the dust.
Other setbacks:
∞ Quality skates cost at least $300 and must be ordered online.
∞ Wheels constantly wear out and must be replaced.
∞ Oh yeah, the little matter of safety—when your main object is speed, you can have some pretty nasty accidents.
But another part of my turn-off was the macho sports culture of the online posts these uber-athletes make. All about training and times and race routes. Just too much testosterone for a poor blond like me, who only skates to keep her rear end in shape, and to get out in the fresh air.
I guess I’m just not competitive. ;)

Mirror, Mirror

Am feeling not so pretty or perky lately. Sort of wish I’d just catch this bad cold that’s going around and have an excuse to stay in bed a day or two. It’s partly starting the new fall quarter in the middle of an ongoing semester. Rather much.
Lovely little piece by Meret Oppenheim, 1962.

Chunky Dunking

I recently saw a new Eve Ensler play, “The Good Body.” As with the “Vagina Monologues,” it’s theater based on interviews with women, but this time about how we deal with our bodies: fat farms, botox, the “spread,” boob jobs, vaginal tightening, nipple piercing, starvation, living at the gym, and bread fixation. Girl talk to the hilt, with lots of four letter words thrown in to toughen up the mood, which I like (women denied colorful language is one of my pet peeves).
That same day, someone gave me a compliment, but I heard it as “Kloe is fat.” Really incredible, because that’s not at all what was meant. So even rail thin dolls like me are always on the verge of hating ourselves.
(above pug's name is Smudge-perfect, no?)

4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days

I knew this movie was going to be both brilliant and tough. I was unprepared. It follows 24 hours in the lives of two friends in mid-1980s Romania, Behind-the-Curtain; Otilia and her roommate Gabita, who needs an illegal abortion.
On the DVD the director/writer says the story is about solidarity between the women, but I was struck how the students are raped, literally and metaphorically, repeatedly throughout the day by just about everyone with whom they interact. They pay price after price for small mistakes, little lies they make to survive. Yes, the film shows the fetus on the bathroom floor. But see how Otilia scoops it up in her purse, runs through the dark streets of Bucharest to get rid of it, knowing what’s pressed up against her, oh my god, knowing that she could be in exactly the same place, that her boyfriend wouldn’t be there either. These women want to escape the entire fate of motherhood because they see no reward in it.
Please see this movie.

Staying In-Line and Fit

I skate on very rough asphalt and my in-line skate wheels were worn down to the point of danger. I went to my local sporting goods store to buy replacements. And guess what, no stock. Same at other stores. Seems blading is no longer popular in SoCal, except for indoor hockey.
So I found an online source and had the wheels mailed to me. Which was probably cheaper than driving around looking for them with gas prices the way they are. The new wheels are stiff, I have to expend more energy on my workouts. But it’s still great. I recommend fitness blading to anyone who can’t run because of joint problems.
There’s a tour/race here soon, I might go check it out to meet other bladers (read: oogle a bunch of great quads in spandex…)