artist in residence at Artscape, Toronto Canada

July 24th to August 15th , 2014

I offer a special thanks for friendly intellectual dialogue and friendship to Teresa Ascencao and Camilla Kraft.

______________________________________________________________

Text by Camilla Kraft

_____________________________________________________________

(tragic rotty flaky surface.. like a pretend-organic, but with the powdery decay feel.. I know that tactile)

.. and in this over the top (plastic) foliage.. is this a Lilith-Eve-serpent in one?

(the little bit of flesh, the half-hiddenness, the smiling eye)

.. (not the girl who turned into a laurel, not that powerless).

I love the painter’s feel, the hands, gesture, root.. (like painters) the dark background, the excess of leaves and  leaf-flows.. the strategic fruit (like punctuation)..

(can’t remember which painters,  maybe old religious paintings..

but Adamless, like a conversation/self-encirclement between Eve/Lilith and the ‘tree’.. as one person/being).

In both your hair, eye, and certain facial expressions, you (you yourself) kind-of come right through the image

(like falling through).

I get a ‘but this is you’.. so it’s also nonfictional, not overly ‘posed’ in that you are still you

(even when the leaf-flow is lyric-painterly-formal or the big foam swiss-roll ‘block’ is formal (like 60’s male minimalist sculpture, made from solid male dick-y things) <(there was even an ochre-ish one.. )

How you do that?.. Another nice ‘line’ you walk balance/unbalance on. The plastic bags.. don’t know whether to laugh (pleasure) at the plastic [something to do with drapery and not, plastic as itself (the idea of) and as itself (the physical/visual of)].. or just have a demented-painter-joy-spasm in the color (pink one), the big twists with the root (classical? layers of who stole which drape off who.. hilarity but so so serious, like drapery on dead Greek marble women.. who never had arms and were ideal.. and didn’t make any sculptures anyway).

The crochet ( single standout square) is like physical humor.. joy/laughbubble and so ‘normal’ (afghan, tea-cosy).. but still serious. counterpoint to florist-sponge.. and lovely swirls.

______________________________________________________

The author,  Camilla Kraft, at the time of writing this text was completing her MFA at Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design Ann Arbor, Michigan. Central to her work, artistic and otherwise, are two threads: the ability or inability to frame concepts in language, and the politics of inclusion and exclusion. Both threads trace back to her childhood in South Africa.

______________________________________________________

To view gallery of images Here.

Production Images