Getty 0, Martha Miller, My Blank Canvas.
In mid March, MECA closed its doors due to COVID-19. With no in-person teaching schedule to attend to, I decided to treat the quarantine like an artist residency.
The Getty Museum Challenge inspired a new body of work which I titled Quarantine Characters. The work consists of performance photographs as well as spin-off videos of the characters performing songs and dances. In the middle of my project, I was gifted a Solar Return reading by Facebook friend and former MECA professor, Alfred DePew.
A Solar Return reading is like a map that reveals specific themes for the year ahead. Alfred pointed out that the characters I was creating are powerful inner figures representing aspects of self, people in my life, perhaps even figures from past lives. He said that this was a time of profound healing for me and that one of my themes for this year is to make public the hidden and the private. This reading helped me realize what I was doing on a deeper level.
Getty1: Frida Kahlo, Self Portrait as a Tehuana.
I have always loved creating portraits with charcoal, pastels, and paints, and I have always loved portraits in art history. This quarantine residency allowed me the time and space to combine both loves, as well as to explore the realms of performance, costume, music and dance—passions that have lain dormant inside me like dark bulbs, but were now, in this time alone, sending up urgent shoots in the spring light.
Getty2: Max Beckmann, The Old Actress.
Getty3: Andrew Wyeth, My Young Friend
Getty4: Alice Neel, Hartley with a Cat
Getty5: Alice Neel, Jenny
Getty6: Frans Hals, The Clown with the Lute
Getty7: Toulouse-Lautrec, The Seated Clowness
Getty8: Walt Kuhn, Bareback Rider
Getty9: Toulouse-Lautrec, Jane Avril
Getty10: Joan Brown, Self Portrait with Fish and Cat (except I couldn’t get a cat to cooperate)
Getty11: Joan Brown, The Bride
Getty12: Lucian Freud, Painter Working, Reflection
Getty13: Milton Avery, Self Portrait
Getty14: Max Beckmann, Carnival Mask
Getty15: Alice Neel, (title unknown)
Getty16: Marsden Hartley, Adelard the Drowned, Master of the “Phantom”
Getty17: Milton H. Greene, Marilyn Monroe, Ballerina, NY, 1954
Getty18: Max Beckmann, Girl with Banjo and Mask
Getty19: Marsden Hartley, Albert Pinkham Ryder
Getty20: Alice Neel, Phil Bard
Getty21: Alfred Hitchcock, Doris Day in The Man Who Knew Too Much
Getty22: Alice Neel, June
Getty23: William Glackens, L’Apertif
Getty24: Marc Chagall, Double Portrait
Getty25: Walt Kuhn, Clown with Folded Arms
Getty26: Martha Graham
Getty27: Princess Diana
Getty28: Walt Kuhn, (title unknown)
Getty29: Mary Cassatt, Self Portrait
Getty30: Marsden Hartley, Sustained Comedy
Getty31: Martha Graham
Getty32: Chaim Soutine, Woman with the Doll
Getty33: Max Beckmann, Journey on the Fish
Getty34: Jerry Lewis as Buddy Love in The Nutty Professor
Getty35: Walt Kuhn, Amalgam
Getty36: Walt Kuhn, Amalgam
Getty37: James Ensor, Self Portrait
Getty38: Egon Shiele, Portrait of Wally Neuzil
Getty39: Egon Schiele, Self Portrait with Physalis
Getty40: Paul Gauguin, Christ on the Mount of Olives
Getty41: Paul Gauguin, Christ on the Mount of Olives
Getty42: Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Look, It Flies
Getty43: Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Look, It Flies
Getty44: Alice Neel, Stewart Mott
Getty46: Louise Nevelson
Getty48: Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Circus Girl Resting
Getty49: Chagall, Self Portrait with a Clock
Getty50: Max Pechstein, The Black and Yellow Swimsuit
Getty54: Marc Chagall, The Music
Getty55: Marc Chagall, The Music
Getty56: Odilon Redon, The Cyclops
Getty57: Diego Rivera, Portrait of Señorita Matilde Palou
Getty58: Leonora Carrington, Self Portrait (Inn of the Dawn Horse)
Getty59: Leonora Carrington, Self Portrait (Inn of the Dawn Horse)
Getty60: Leonora Carrington, Self Portrait (Inn of the Dawn Horse)
Getty61: Frans Hals, The Laughing Cavalier
Getty62: Maya Bloch, Untitled (Reclining Figure)
Getty63: Maya Bloch, Untitled (Reclining Figure)
Getty64: Maya Bloch, Untitled (Reclining Figure)
Getty65: Judy Chicago and Miriam Shapiro, Womanhouse, The Nurturant Kitchen
Getty66: Louise Bourgeois
Getty67: Artemis of Ephesus
Getty68: Chagall, Portrait of Vava
Getty69: Chagall, Portrait of Vava
Getty70: Chagall, Portrait of Vava
