Daily Drawings and Water Witches

Here are a few new drawings from last week:
Water Witch Running through Green
pencil, machine stitching and fabric paint on paper

Water Witch Floating
pencil, machine stitching and fabric paint on paper

Water Witch Mirage
pencil, machine stitching and vintage fabric on paper

I’ve been working with this Water Witch motif for a few years now… since these L.A. Mirages from 2003. So long that they’ve taken on a bit of a persona and go about performing actions as any other character might.

Part of the initial reason for the birth of the water witch in my work was because Los Angeles was so dry and I was always craving and wanting to divine water and rain. So, the divining rod, also called the “water witch” seemed the likely trope for such urges.

The other reasons for the motif and my preference for the name “water witch” over "divining rod" were political. There is the more obvious governmental politics behind Los Angeles moving and stealing water from other locations, but I was more interested in acts of divining in terms of gender and art politics.

While I was working on the very clean photographic L.A. Mirages and similar video work (where my hands never got dirty), I began to step-up the other part of my materially-based practice of painting, drawing and fiber (what I’d moved away from in graduate school).

In moving back to materials and studio, I felt like (because I’d been trained to have this response) that I was doing something “witchy” and outside the mainstream of contemporary art practice. In other words, I was doing things that had become feminized within the field of art. I had turned myself into something of an “art witch” as I heretically toyed with ideas and materials and styles that were considered outside acceptable practice for someone of my background and training.

Despite the heaviness of all that… these are fun and playful little pieces for me.