• installation with mixed media drawing on paper and altered found objects, dimensions approximately 30’ long X 8’ high X 2’ deep, 2019
For the past several years my studio practice has obsessed on the idea of prophecy.
I long for an outside voice that offers clues to the riddle of an increasingly perilous present, for fabled faces to point me toward clarity, toward a future that could make some kind of sense.
I have never followed prophets, but I do believe in divas. And my diva of choice is Joan Crawford.
Not the actual actress, but rather her caricature, that beautiful, mythic banshee portrayed by Faye Dunaway in “Mommie Dearest” and by countless drag artists ever since. Part ice matron, part mad-woman-in-the-attic, Faye’s Joan is my silver screen Oracle of Delphi.
I watch her late at night on my laptop, and that flawless, contorted face seems to hold some hidden message:
“You have every right to be angry, to be very, very angry with the way things are all going down.”
And I am angry. Screaming, wire hangers angry.
And when I’m angry, I draw.
I make things.
I make faces.
I mimic Joan’s steamy glower in the studio mirror and draw what looks back. I pose my left hand like hieroglyphics and draw its twisted silhouette. I open my cabinet of wonders and pull out all the junk I’ve collected from flea markets and thrift stores and throw it on the floor, like entrails, like tea leaves, and ponder the shapes…
This keeps me busy, this gives me present purpose.
These are the altars I have built to that Saint Joan.
She is my sibyl, my medicine, my muse.
Mommie Dearest, mommy weirdest, weird mothers.
Like Macbeth’s Weird Sisters, but somehow brighter, louder, each with their own tight laugh, and exquisite personal agency.
Modern witches with modern problems who aren’t afraid to shout back and waste no time on the trifles of wannabe kings.
If you must be angry, then stay busy.
If you must be busy, then busy your hands and your voice and your head. Ransack the garden and rip out the orange tree, but be ready to plant something else in its place.
“Tina, bring me the ax.”
