DEFINE YOUR BEAUTY - Beauty Revisited is an extension of The Gender Portraiture Project bringing together photographic portraits with personal narrative into the context of American material culture and power. I ask participants: “How do you define your own sense of beauty? When you look inside yourself who do you see?” My work confronts society’s displacement of female identity. I am looking to open up possibilities of being. To discover how dominant societal expectations rule our gender. My goal is to have a critical mass of portraits reflecting gender variations and to show how birth, class, family, country of origin and ancestry, personal taste, body type, age and whatever other qualifiers are placed on us affect us. “Gender variations” does not necessarily mean trans, but can also be one’s interpretation of what is feminine or masculine. To think about times when we were awarded or punished in relation to our “appropriate” gender-like behaviors or looks.
In my studio, located in Stenton Guild, (4232-36 Stenton Ave, in the Germantown area of Philadelphia, PA), I have set up a portrait photography studio where people come in to talk about gender and have their portraits taken. I invite the public to share personal stories of gender stereotyping and be photographed. You can pose in your street clothes, an outfit from your personal collection, or we can work together to conceive of the ideal costume.
Stories told by participants are about being stereotyped. What is appropriate behavior in relation to perceived gender? How should we look? What are the expectations depending on class, ethnic heritage, and family background?
Instead of relying on clues relating to dress, one may choose to explore the physical body relating to gender expectations. For many of us attaining the “perfect” body is a symbol for the ultimate gender self. Many struggle with disfiguration and some accentuate what nature gave us. Others make do with what they have. As an artist, I am also looking for people interested in body critique - making commentary on the gender body.
Please email the artist, Laureen Griffin, if you are interested in participating.
posted by laureen at 8:58 am
Please come check out EMMA’s Parlour in University City Arts League - Meet the artists during our Opening Reception, Friday Sept. 11th, 5-7PM or email Laureen for information about having your Gender Portrait taken in the Parlour.
posted by laureen at 7:35 am
Mary Kalyna is graciously hosting a special party at her home on Sunday August 16 that will feature a preview performance of ‘Emma’, one of this year’s Fringe Festival shows. Please join us for a unique opportunity to see this moving theatre piece based on the life of Emma Goldman in an intimate setting. Afterwards we’ll have conversation with the artists, food, drinks & socializing. Mary is offering the party as a fundraiser to help with the considerable production costs of this great show.
Here are the details:
When: Sunday August 16
6:30pm – party starts
7pm – performance
Where: Home of Mary Kalyna
Please email inquiries or visit facebook.
Donation: What you can – suggested $10 - $20
There will also be hand-printed textile art creations by Laureen Griffin for sale, and award-winning poet CAConrad is offering to auction one of his remarkable Tarot card readings to the highest bidder! Sounds like fun, right?
I hope you will join me – it would be wonderful to see you!
posted by laureen at 8:14 am
posted by laureen at 6:12 pm
The normal woman as studied and put forth by Cesare Lombroso in the 1890’s. The notes below are based on Criminal Woman, the Prostitute, and the Normal Woman by Cesare Lombroso and Guglielmo Ferrero translated and with a new introduction and feminist commentary by Nicole Hahn Rafter and Mary Gibson.
The Normal Woman is proven to be more primitive than man:
- Measurements of the head
- cranial capacity in weight - smaller in women
- brachycephaly or broad-headedness in size - greater in women
- dolichocephaly or long-headedness in size - greater in men
- jaw size - greater in men
- Measurements of thoracic cavity, cervical and lumbar parts, arms comparing body shape
- Body hair length in relation to age
- Weight and Height
- Viscera, Fat and Blood
- Measurements of white hair and baldness of middle class Europeans
- Differences of sensitivity
(more…)
posted by laureen at 2:01 pm
Fiber Reactive Dyes (Jacquard Procion MX or Dharma Trading Co.) are amazing to use - one reason is they do not have to be heat-set when used on cotton. (I would imagine all cellulose based fabrics, but so far I have only printed onto cotton.) I apply the dye by hand with brushes and sponges - actually anything you would use to put a paint finish on a wall. The backgrounds become less uniform than vat dying, but I think they are more interesting and take on more texture often looking aged or worn. This is perfect for making commentary on time and history as in Homage to Seamstresses. First I soak the fabric in a soda ash bath and let it sit for awhile making sure the fibers are well saturated. Here I mixed coral pink with a small amount of alginate (just enough to get the dye to stay on the applicator) and a combination of a wide brush used for paintin faux linen textures and a fuzzy paint mit. (Next time I may add calsolene oil to aid dye spreading for the base color.) The fabric was canvas that had a very soft surface on one side. The effect is worn cotton velvet.
Then the pattern is silk screened using a mixture of jetblack dye, sodium alginate, and rice paste. Here I added soda ash to the mixture as I did not trust the soda in the fabric was still affective. I am not sure this is necessary and new problems arise as a result. For some reason, the soda ash causes the rice paste to congeal and it becomes very gelatonous and difficult to apply. For some applications this may be fun as the pattern can become crackled. If the dye is not worked through the screen well enough, it will not pass through onto the fabric. In addition, the rice paste causes the dye to stay on the surface so the fabric has to be damp enough to attract the moisture of the dye into the fibers. Too much moisture causes bleeding. I suggest experimenting with an open mind onto scrap fabric in small quanities - my first attempts at home did not work out so well - I kept trying and now this!!
Now to the COLD CURE Process - After each color application, I roll it in plastic overnight, for at least 12 hours. For the background colors I usually roll the fabric pretty much immediately as the dye will bleed and feather for more uniformity. I then unroll the fabric and let it sit to dry to damp for screen printing. Again test on small pieces to get a feel for what works for you. When you print the next layer, you need the pattern to sustain and not bleed and feather into itself like an old tattoo. Again -I roll the fabric into plastic to let it cure overnight. Please be careful with the screen printed pattern. You will have to wait until the dye is touchable before you roll it. When you can touch the printed dye and your finger comes away clean, you can safely and carefully lay a piece of plastic over the length of fabric and roll it up. I try to roll it crease free just to make sure the dye does not smudge.
Next, let the fabric dry thoroughly - I prefer a clothes line or as you can see my apparatus works well too -
After drying, I rinse and wash. Sometimes, I rinse and wash twice as the rice paste takes a little more to remove and you may see a little bleeding. This will wash out the second time, especially if you use synthrapol or Dharma’s detergent subsitute.
posted by laureen at 10:03 am
First I would like to plug Women’s Studio Workshop and thank them for awarding me a fellowship and therefore giving me the chance to test my silkscreen printing techniques. I have been experimenting with pattern design and screen printing fiber reactive dye onto cotton. My first attempts simply followed the instructions on the sodium alginate package. However when I mixed alginate with fiber reactive dye and let it cold-cure, the dye bled and the pattern lost it crispness. I will write about this in detail later. At any rate my experiments entail combining rice paste or cornstarch with alginate to create dye pastes similar in consistency to acrylic based silkscreen inks. If applied correctly they do not bleed when screened onto damp fabric.
So…WSW has large padded tables with registration rails for printing onto fabric larger than my 4×8 masonite table. I could cover the table with plastic sheeting and lay the base layer of dye down before printing the patterns. Also I could print on heavy canvases and create effects of a woven blanket and printed velvet as well as printing an allegorical tapestry. See Works in Progress and Flicker for images.
Please be advised that my imagery may not be for everybody as I explore topics such as female sexuality and anarchy. This is another reason why WSW is key. Exploring issues of female sexuality is celebrated in an all women’s space.
posted by laureen at 9:15 am
I am conducting an independent research project in preparation for a proposal submission, to Eastern State Penitentiary, for an art installation - my proposal looks at phrenology and female criminology of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries.Reaching back in time, as I so often do, looking for the origins of particular societal phenomena that baffle me… I have come across a philosophy coined by Auguste Comte - Positivism. My question is: How does the concept of ‘universality’ cause systematic oppression through the creation of deviance? (more…)
posted by laureen at 8:33 am
Jen Coletta wrote a well described article in the Philadelphia Gay News. The article showcases photos from each artist along with exhibit information and direct quotes. In order to read the article you will need Adobe Reader.
download evidence_pgn.pdf
posted by laureen at 2:19 pm