I saw the art documentary Our City Dreams last night — interviews with five female artists who live and work in New York City. All alone in the house, a little scared in the dark, the dogs growling at blowing leaves, pregnant: it was ironic to watch a movie where women live alone and work and laugh at the idea of trading any work time for the time it would take to tend to children.

I can’t kick Kiki Smith. She’s one of those artists I should have probably outgrown, but I love

- her unabashed obsessing over death

- her drawing style

- installations with drawings and objects

- thin paper attached to the wall without frames

- her ability to make whole drawings about missing her dead cat

- pieces of paper that seem unprecious (old, faded, fold marks, wrinkles), attached together to make a bigger whole.

So much of what I draw has died. Once in a therapy session and I told the woman that I drew mostly dead things and she said well maybe someday you’ll draw things that are alive. As if my drawings reveal that I need therapy more than the next person, or as if death is not something we should see, or as if art is not about questions.

I tire of Kiki Smith’s black crows and other typical imagery of death, and I think it could be more specific. But each time I see her work I feel it personally.

July 13th, 2009 | Category: overheard | Subscribe to comments | Leave a comment | Trackback URL