My super-wife (http://lifeinrelationtoart.wordpress.com/) strikes again – a triptych selected for exhibition opening this Friday at City Arts – Wichita, KS. Come participate if you can – a varietous juried show! Congrats love!
https://www.facebook.com/WichitaCityArts
http://www.downtownwichita.org/have_fun-first_final_friday.php
To my dearest and most beloved : Holly Suzanne – I confess, profess, announce, sing, display, proclaim that my life is altered, changed, extended, enhanced, enriched and “reciprocally molded” by yours! Thank you! I love you! Words really do not do justice to what I yearn to express in this matter. So – Happy Birthday!
And what joy to have your lifelong twin, your originary “reciprocal molder” with us on this day! Happy Birthday (of course!) to you too – Heidi! Thank you so much for journeying to be with us in Kansas this year – and to both of you for allowing the nation to celebrate your wonderful existences with such pomp and blast!
Twinning. It boggles my mind to consider an Other with whom all one’s existing moments have been shared in some genetic and psycho-somatic physio-biological manner. We all arise from “families of origin” – known or unknown. Sets of DNA/RNA, environments, contexts, socio-political realities all conjoin to formulate and tweak, morph and develop us along our passing journeys of existence. With that come difficulties and joys. Traumas and opportunities. Constraints and affordances. Over decades so much of our environment embeds in us it can be hard to discover/uncover/observe/revise the functions and effects of it all. But this is also a great freedom we have. The difficult work of digging and awareness, discovery and revision – “unworking” patterns and pains, “automatic” responses and flinches to the world that have been threaded into us from our own “time immemorials.”
Not having composed this song, all the words surely don’t belong – but the tone, and sister-sentiment – “the story goes…” – and the urging to excise and unpack the “demons,” afflictions, griefs, traumas and so forth – that you two have shared from fertilization and beyond – is my wish for you – together and individually (is that possible with twinning?) …
how glad I am that they entwine with mine!
Announcing: STUDIOVOGUE Gallery Group Exhibit “Harmony in Diversity” with Holly Suzanne.
So proud of this particular artist! Congrats – wish we could be there! Love you brilliant wife!
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and don’t forget you can still catch Holly Suzanne’s work at Mead’s (through Saturday)
among the many other things happening this lovely eve in Kansas!
Waterplay – a triptych by Holly Suzanne
Waterplay – a triptych by Holly Suzanne
What we know for certain is the steady stream of life, the flood, the flow, replete with bits and currents. Immersion.
What is less clear is whether we are rising or falling, whether paradoxes hold true, what that might look like.
And if we’re swimming together, how that alters the land, changes the buoyancy, rearranges our standards of measure.
We – individuals – no longer a fixed point of reference.
Now “I” that formerly looked oh-so-much like a “1,” is just a needle in a flurry of dried whirling pines.
Rising up, rising down, in relation.
The self, the other, the flood.
In certain light, it shimmers. In little light it bleeds dark.
It’s not as if we’re provided decoders, infra-red goggles, enlightenment.
I’m as much in the sea of life as you.
We share, in this sense, an equal, fluid, ground.
And not as something to step up or out of.
The self, the other, surround – weighted flotation devices.
I’m in, at a kind of “over here.” So are you.
There is no escape. We sink. We rise.
N Filbert 2012
(My apologies – these pieces have proven very difficult to photograph in a way that presents the depth of layering and colors truly present. These are fairly large oil paintings created of Autumnal colorings and glow, many more greens and yellows, oranges and hues filling out the originals. It is painstaking to present them here struggling with glares and digitalia in a way representative. Forgive me, and if you are able come see the originals through the month of November at Mead’s Coffee House in Wichita, KS – they are rich to behold!)
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It is my great pleasure to be composing something for myself regarding my wife’s art in regards to an upcoming showing of hers in Wichita KS (see below for details). I am accustomed to engaging her work with an ekphrastic/participatory sensibility and interaction rather than an observer’s point of view. The pieces below are mixed media encaustic works by Holly Suzanne on 6×6 or 8×8 wood boards.
“First my…forever my…grown in a…garden” of hands, words, expressions, visages and image.
The mind in bloom, the mouth as fruit, our world in our hands, are nothing new.
Underlying love vaguely aware of an end from the stars of night to ground of flesh,
in layers.
I was thinking of text-emotion-change-emotion-text-emotion-change. Of over and again. Begin.
With rarely the perspective to see in, or through, as we are forming and tattering layers simultaneously. Always.
There is something viscous about us, like warm wax.
“Turning away…she saw herself…” But not really. Recollection rearranges, perception also blinds. Assemblers and dissemblers we. Our stories. Growing them even as we prune. Story over story, backwards, forwards, like the strokes of a brush, the trembling of hands, motions of a body at rest. What comes out, in, or through depends on the moment. Each story a backstory with a curious future.
“First my…forever my…” ever-altering “garden,” the world in my hands behind my face. I tinker and trouble, collage and create, rationally embodied in emotion. What shields and separates reveals and connects: our skin, our language(s), our sighs.
Even our names are malleable, oily pools.
Look at, look in, look through. And over again.
Begin.
If near Wichita…you can look for yourself!!:
see more of Holly’s works here: Holly Suzanne: A Gallery of Creative Artistry
and visit her blog! Lifeinrelationtoart
Related: Show Announcement – Mead’s Corner (Combinatory Art in Motion)
FANTASTIC INTERVIEW / INTRODUCTION WITH HOLLY SUZANNE!!!
(click on image to view)
CONGRATS DEAR PARTNER!
GREAT JOB AND GREAT WORK!
Holly is having a dickens of a time getting there – but she’s on her way! Wish I could see the show – if you’re in Toronto – please check it out!
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