Acts of Labor as Performance

Spirit House, Anna Peach, 2003-2005, 600 found doilies

It is always a bit of a risk to ask a community for quotes about your artwork, especially if that community feels as though you abandoned them. That is how I have spent my morning trying to figure out who the newspaper should contact. They cornered the curator, but now I am facing the ultimate test, someone not connected to the art community. It puts you in a strange situation, having a third party asking them to speak about you, and then knowing that whatever they say goes to print without you clearing it first. I guess it is about control, or the lack of it. My storefront project was a little like the circus coming to town, but not everyone likes circuses, and not everyone is happy when they leave. Many of the people were a little angry thinking I abandoned them to go seek fortune in big glamorous Switzerland. Fact is that I am living in an even smaller community, and Switzerland is another island minus the ring of water. The biggest difference is that I babble in German unable to communicate effectively. Or shall I say I babble in German worse than I babble in English.

Control is the issue that comes up time and time again for me. Much of my work involves acts of performance that are obsessive, using hour upon hour of labor. Maybe in those many days that grew into years the work actually did become a part of the community. I like to think it did. Although I was in many ways able to control the making of the piece, I was completely unable to control the interactions that at times were confrontational on their part, nor could I control the publicity that followed. For as many days that I spent moping about being mistreated by tipsy tourists, or made fun of by the Hawaiian shrit wearing land developer, I have to say I miss it, and I only wish I would have made the video of the harrassment.

I have been looking at an office room in a converted barn in the village where I now reside. They painted the old stone building mustard yellow for some reason. I wonder about another "storefront" project. This time I could or would not communicate. The other part of me enjoys the ability to be mobile, to take my performace labors into the world. I have started working again on a piece of camo that is altered through my handtying pieces of earthtoned Hawaiian shirts. I think of it as my blanket of insecurity. Monday, I pulled it across my garden table and watched the holiday hikers come to a halt. I was reminded of how light and portible the piece is, and how it could travel on my back, on trains like the Swiss Military. There is something really disturbing about making homemade camouflage, and the act of cutting shirts and hand tying them only adds to it. Maybe that is my summer project, more random and mobile. A summer of fun and fines, I presume.