 | girly urban collage sculpture
raw secrets crushed hearts messy fierce tender punch! gender graffiti race truth paintings drippy blocks textured peace edgy depth glamour space red white black peach clear oakland brooklyn boston the bronx peek-a-boo pop sexuality fresh inspired healing social changing layered diary curious glimpses femily oakland /emily howe |
ARTIST STATEMENT for FEMILYaka EMILY HOWE
Making Art: Paint, Collage, Flow
I paint to pour out my messy and to honor my truths and secrets. Doing art helps me go quiet inside and just understand it all. In art, I feel my inner self; I flow, I giggle, I get it. I do art because I can’t not. I think about my pieces all day and am drawn back back back. I work at home and in spurts, woven between life and instead of tv.When I cut really fast with scissors or paint messy messy messy I am reminded that I am free. Old stuck paintbrushes make the best textures. Second best are wiggly, painty fingertips. Onion bags are my nets. Couscous for grainy. The New York Times. vintage wallpaper. the insides of business envelopes. gathered and found images. I begin a piece by selecting one.catchy.image that moves me. Or by smoothing out a saucy, seductive painty background. Or by collecting found objects from the street or curiosity shoppes. I know my work is going well when I am filled up all day, outside my studio. when i see the outside world through new eyes. again.
You, the Viewer
My favorite is when I make art objects that speak. Feel. urge. require. pulse. Push you, my viewer. Touch you. Help you go quiet far into your sweetest, most curious center. I want you to look, to engage, to feel me, to feel the you that is you. also, to catalyze your mind into new inquiries about gender, identity, social change, possibility, your secret truths, a longing, your littlest voices…The point is to let the pieces stir you awake from the numb, to let yourself be wooed by the unexpected, to wonder and go peaceful. It's about feeling inspired or (yes!) uncomfy. I want my art to make you say “wow, I wish I made that” and then later go kick off your own you-style art project. My favorite is when my art goes home with you to your apartment entryways or radical nonprofit boardrooms or above the vintage couch in your very own Helen Gurley Brown studio.
Risk & Heart: New Art
My newest pieces, especially the 3-D Urban Wall Sculpture, are chock full of brave colors & thematic breakthroughs; intensity, red, messy, spirit, risk, and fluorescent colors have come to visit. 1980's: POWPOW! Also, a few new texture paintings, intense, like dark corners. Dainty, steady, and true drawings of raw anger and wrenching heartbreak; to heal and grow and flow again, I amplified these secret feelings to come out and really say "HELLO"! And "ONWARDS!" I put my dreams in there and scoot scooted them out into the Universe and then *surprise!*...they came back to me, truer than ever...Now, new art objects are joy, love, & delight: hat box ladies, girly/urban art projects, street-art influenced pieces. Recent Big Leaps & Successes: I am crushed out on art collaborations like Femme Cartel: Girly/Urban Art, which I founded with close buddies and fierce, visionary backers; projects on the horizon include those too secret to mutter even softly. ;)
Themes: Gender, Consumerism, Urban Spaces
Yes, my art gives you The Beauty; but moreso, it also gives possibility for social change and fresh twists on old thinking. Collage juxtapositions offer fresh or silly takes on retro women’s gender roles...Pushing back against Hollywood beauty standards, women with major curves are given priority. Quirky women, tattooed girls, unique women of Substance and intrigue. Gender roles, femininity, sexuality and the girly/urban dominate most of my work. I give a femme angle to street art looks. I update the MonaLisa with mysterious contemporary urban ladies. Considering masculinity, my pieces on 1960's strongmen poke fun at the American macho while giving you that "ooh-la-la!" feeling--for the boys and the girls doing masculinity. Other masculinity projects include a wallpapery drawing of just beards---no faces, underwear men drawn on beer koozies, paintings of sportsmen or national hero dudes cast in surprising settings that make you do a double take at what, at first glance, might have seemed like pure glitz and whimsy.
A Deeper Look: Found and Street Materials.
When I re-use everyday materials and packaging that are headed for the landfill, my pieces expose our “throw-away culture”. I stand up for Mother Nature...and for creative possibility. My work also comments on feminine consumerism by giving new life to feminine found objects: kitchen cast-offs, tossed jewelry or perfumes, pages of old timey women’s magazines...and by highlighting the outlandishness/repressiveness of the female beauty industry...all while looking as prim & pretty as a tea set.
With my work, I give you my roaring optimism, my love for gender, my passion for social change, my crush on urban spaces. Also, d a n c i n g h a p p y l o v e y i n s p i r e d r e s i l i a n t l i g h t n e s s.
