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| "Head" - mixed media, 9x12" |
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| "Tongue" - mixed media, 9x12" |
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| Friends looking at my work |
This Saturday I had my first-ever, non-university sponsored,
public exhibition of my work at Tangent Gallery, Sacramento – and it was
fabulous! I couldn’t have come about
this experience in a luckier way. While working
on my Pornocopia series, I would
oftentimes wonder where, if ever, I could actually show these pieces. After-all, I was working as directly as possible from pornography, and I left no “petal or stamen” fig-leafed. Adding to this anxiety was this false notion I've had of myself that I’m
terrible at networking with new people and breaking into “scenes” – i.e. the
local art scene. But it's as they say, you only need to know one person.
It happened one day that a friend of mine asked me to accompany her
to an event that Tangent Gallery gallery was hosting. We arrived, looked at some work, and then entered
into what would turn out to be a LONG conversation with one of the gallery’s curators. About half way through this conversation,
which I was only intermittently taking part in, my ADD got the best of me and I
began to leaf through an assortment of 
brochures and flyers located on the
entry table. There, to my surprise
(because seriously – around here you almost never see this in respectable
galleries) was a “Call for Submissions” brochure. I snatched it up, saw that I had only missed
one out of the six shows they were seeking entries for, and then began to
frantically give my friend the “I’d like to go now because my pants are on fire”
sign. What had made me want to get back
home, immediately, was the gallery’s upcoming “Fertility” themed show – exactly
the opportunity I had been hoping for; a place and time in which my pervie porno pieces would be welcomed.
When the day came that these pieces of mine were accepted into the show, I
knew that the real labor had just begun.
I still had to figure out how to mount my images (mixed media which
included shiny layers of plastic), and how to do
it with little more than the ten bucks I had in the bank at the time! It wasn’t
until the day before the art was due for installation that I decided upon black
photo mounting boards… not the best choice.
The day of the show my pieces seemed to capture a lot of attention,
however these photo boards sucked much of the life out of the images. Nonetheless, the lesson was learned, the
feedback was to die for, and everyone important in my life showed up to congratulate
me and share in my experience. This show
is surely just the start of many more good things to come – I just have to do the
work and stick my neck out a little more often.
brochures and flyers located on the
entry table. There, to my surprise
(because seriously – around here you almost never see this in respectable
galleries) was a “Call for Submissions” brochure. I snatched it up, saw that I had only missed
one out of the six shows they were seeking entries for, and then began to
frantically give my friend the “I’d like to go now because my pants are on fire”
sign. What had made me want to get back
home, immediately, was the gallery’s upcoming “Fertility” themed show – exactly
the opportunity I had been hoping for; a place and time in which my pervie porno pieces would be welcomed. 
!
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