Practice and Productivity…

Let’s just say, it’s been quite a year. Here’s the work I did for my spring show at Eastern Mennonite Seminary in February. You can find my artists talk/chapel at http://emu.edu/now/podcast/2011/02/24/generative-love-as-the-character-of-god-making-art-and-the-theology-of-failure-bethany-tobin/ For those of you that know me, you know that I gave birth to my first child, my daughter Anjali Rose two days later. If anyone wants to go into labor get up and down on a step ladder for eight hours hanging an art show. Since then, Steve, Anjali and I have had three happy months of a different sort of growth and creativity.

Since doing commissions most of the last two years, this group of work was the first chance I’ve had to develop my own direction in quite sometime. I’m trying to rework some unfinished ideas, but as this shows, with much that I’d like to see happen yet. For one I am still looking for an economic, non-hazardous way of getting text onto a variety of supports. The process and support then dictate what kinds of media I can use. Mixed media is unwieldy because you can get a great variety of textures and integrate images and script, but you have to navigate what media goes together and in what order. You can never escape limitations. I think I will need to choose one primary method and stick to it if I want to really get the hang of any technique. I haven’t found my groove yet. It’s a work in progress.