SUSAN WHITE

This is an image of a recent work that I made as part of a benefit for the Joplin Art Community.

Artists in KC were invited to select a piece of debris that was retrieved from the site of the tornado in Joplin

This spring I had two pieces in an exhibition at Cara and Cabezas Contemporary, a gallery in Kansas City.

They have an intern who periodically writes a blog entry about some of the work.

Here’s a link to the piece that Hallie wrote about my works

Mindgames:  three fifteen am and four twenty am.

http://faceandheads.wordpress.com/2011/06/17/susan-white/

Along with Kati Toivanen I’ll be giving a talk at the Nerman Museum on March 24.

This video excerpt is from a work I made upon my return from a residency program in Tokyo last August.  Unable to speak the language with any effect I realized the experience of gaining information in a sensory manner, a kind of cultural osmosis. On Breathing is a response to blending into the atmosphere in Japan.  The audio track is from Liquid Air, composed by Meredith Monk who often uses organic sound,  as a way of communicating beyond words.  I found that Liquid Air was an apt articulation of  my experience of breathing in the culture of Japan.  This work was exhibited in December in one of the exhibitions celebrating the  125th Anniversary of the Kansas City Art Institute.

I think the phrase, hinge in history, is beautifully descriptive of a certain period in time.  I wonder if it appropriately describes the intersection of   two projects in which I’ve been involved recently, Plunder the Influence, and the publication of  Blank, by Jaded Ibis Press.

Plunder the Influence, was conceived of by Adriane Herman, an artist and educator who lives in Maine. It is all about the experience of books, and their influence on the development of the work of those involved in the project.  To click on this link, is akin to wandering through the stacks of the personal libraries of those willing to let you look into their lives. It heralds the tactility, the physicality, the smells and sounds of books, carried around, lent or given to others, dog eared, underlined, treasured or discarded.

Blank, in contrast, is a conceptual product of the virtual world. Conceived of by Debra di Blasi, an artist, writer and publisher of Jaded Ibis Press, Blank was written by Davis Schneiderman and is purely conceptual.  Davis has provided titles to the chapters, and I’ve created pyrographs mounted over images of sky, both of which suggest windows into the reader’s imagination.  The chapter titles allow the reader to conceive of the book they’d like to read, unencumbered by burdensome text already provided by the author.  It’s interesting that Debra di Blasi and Jaded Ibis Press reside in Seattle and are harbingers of the new face of the publishing industry, opening up a world of possibilities for what it means to be a book.

Adriane Herman, a friend and artist, has a wonderful project, Plunder the Influence, as part of an exhibition at The Glickman Library at the University of Southern Maine.  Along with many others, I contributed to Adriane’s project.  Click on the link below to step into  Plunder the Influence. It’s endlessly interesting.

www.adrianeherman.typepad.com/plunder_the_influence

Check out the link for this interview  with Debra about Jaded Ibis Press….She’s doing amazing things….http://blogs.forbes.com/michaelhumphrey/2011/02/11/the-21st-century-novel-jaded-ibis-sees-a-mashup/I’ve created artwork for Blank, by Davis Schneiderman, recently published by Jaded Ibis,and referred to in the interview.

This is a still image from the video “On Breathing” from December, 2010.   The spiral image  behind the figure was designed by Corrie Van Sice as part of our collaborative piece, Rock Paper Scissors, exhibited at the Bemis Underground/Bemis Center in 2008.

I created the artwork for the book, BLANK, conceived and created by Davis Schneiderman and soon to be published by Jaded Ibis Press.

Check out this link  to get a sense of the book, and be sure to click on Davis’ wonderful video!

http://www.jadedibisproductions.com/BLANK.html