Libation for the Lineage of the Unlived [video art]

The Mountain Without a Shadow, or, Unfinished Business I once walked past your front yard. You waved me in.   Something appeared on the horizon when you looked out your living room window that day. You had to show me.   A mountain, overnight, bricked itself in the firmament, cemented tight by cloud.   “Look!” you say. “I did not see that yesterday, but when I woke up today, there it was!”   I felt the boulder stack more than I could see it, but yes, it was there. The way you can see a brain tumor in faltered speech.   You poured us each clear spirits in Mason jars and invited me to sit outside on lawn chairs. Together we watched the sun compete with stone.   The sun did not appreciate this new roadblock, it lamented.   "What do you think you are [...]

By |2018-05-28T12:56:59+00:00April 2nd, 2018|

Strand of the Ancestral [catalog]

ELEVEN VOICES was a group exhibition of South African and African Diaspora Artists presented by the Deering Estate in Miami curated by Kim Yantis of the Deering Estate and Rosie Gordon-Wallace of the Diaspora Vibe Cultural Arts Incubator. Artists include: Nicholas Hlobo Anton Kannemeyer Anja Marais Judith Mason Claudette Schreuders Rowan Smith etc. The full catalog of the exhibition is available now online.: VIEW CATALOG From the Catalog: A LONG, THIN STRAND OF THE ANCESTRAL by Anja Marais In 1994 as an art student, I stood in front of a painting and it left a crack in my young mind where the light started to seep in. The Pretoria Museum of Art was particularly quiet that day and I found myself alone in a room with a work by Judith Mason. A quiet escape from external harshness. It was a lush painting. Each brush stroke spread [...]

By |2018-04-05T10:59:37+00:00January 19th, 2018|

Ucross Spring Attendance [Art Residency ]

I came to the residency with a folded piece of paper with my "How to" questions inked on it. Questions that I wanted to think about while working for a month in my Wyoming studio that overlooked the creek and the snowy hills. Questions in how to conduct myself as an artist, a woman, a humanist in these ambiguous times: How to be cerebral without intellectualizing? How to be spiritual but not religious? How to be intuitive but not sentimental? How to feel without emoting? How to be an observer without being an intruder? How to be kind without enabling? How to be ambitious without succumbing to narcissism? How to be motivated without being obsessed? How to forgive without becoming a doormat? How to be tolerant without justifying mediocrity? How to love without being submissive? How to be still without being petrified? How to be [...]

By |2018-04-05T11:02:12+00:00March 15th, 2017|

Sedona Summer Art Colony and Redreaming the World

Arriving at Sedona Summer Art Colony 2016 This July I was in the inaugural group of artists invited to the Sedona Summer Art Colony in the foothills of Sedona's Red Rocks. I arrived with a plan of how I would use this secluded month towards my upcoming art project. I had a Plan A, and if I had enough time I even had a Plan B. Needless to say these notions were out the window within 24 hours. I got swallowed whole. The vast landscape squashed my ego, my importance, my mind. The openness unshrouded the sky, leaving my head vulnerable to the heavens. My lungs strained wider for the indifferent dry air. My pale soft body mocked by the ancient red rock formations. Stupendous decaying boulder teeth protruding out of the Earth's skull. My identity dissolved into the abyss of the desert. Poof. Sedona [...]

By |2017-09-27T12:52:20+00:00August 8th, 2016|

The difference between things born and things made.

The difference between things born and things made: You see art that is made with deliberate effort and then you see art that is an effortless production of daily living. You see art materials that are still virgin from a shipping container from China and then you see art materials that have ripened and eroded slowly in the hands of the artist.

By |2017-07-12T13:01:37+00:00October 16th, 2015|