Tulsa Artists' Coalition Annual Members Show at Hardesty Arts

Previous posts about Interior Frequencies

Yesterday, my family and I made it out to see the TAC Annual Members Show at the Hardesty Arts gallery. This is my absolute favorite exhibition space in town. There were COVID precautions in place, including limiting the number of people there at a time. Interior Frequencies was the only mosaic in the show, but it still had a very good spot. I’m happy about that.

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The gallery did a really interesting thing to help educate and engage the audience. They put out a basket of tiny pompoms of different colors. Each color represented a metric by which art is judged (see below). Gallery goers are invited to apply these metrics. Vials are installed next to some of the artworks to collect the pompoms as people judge the works by the color-coded metric.

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I don’t know what process was used to select which works would be featured for this, but mine is one of them and has already earned plenty of pompoms. I think it’s a great idea and my family and I participated in this exercise ourselves.

Here are some highlights of the show. Enjoy!

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The Lynching Andrea Martin. Mixed media on canvas.

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I Can’t Breathe! John Owen. Pencil. Comprised of 500 names of victims of police violence. See detail.

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I Can’t Breathe!, detail

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The Koi Pond Karen St. Clair. Oil.

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Sanctuary Alyssa Fields. Oil.

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Interior Frequencies Jacqueline Iskander Mosaic: Glass, colored cement.

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Soothsayer Colleen Stiles. Paper mâché, driftwood, vines, acrylic.

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Soft Rain Ripples Alex Dulle. Blown glass.

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You Are Life (Savannah Series) Clara Titus. Animal bone, ceramic.

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You Are Life, side perspective

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You Are Life, detail

Accepted!!!

Previous Posts About Interior Frequencies

My Wednesday started with the excellent news that the above work, Interior Frequencies, was juried into the TAC (Tulsa Artists Coalition) Annual Members Show. This show will be held at the Hardesty Arts Center in the Tulsa Arts District, which is a gorgeous exhibition space.

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Interior Frequencies (2020) (2020) 31” x 62” | 79cm x 173cm. Each 9” x 12” | 23cm x 30 cm. Kismet glass, colored cement. Left to right: Depression, Invisible, Guilt, Hopeless, Conflicted, Self-loathing, Shame, Dread, Rage, Loss, Humiliation, Overwhelmed.

I’m so thrilled with this! And quite surprised! Wall space is, of course, limited, and they chose to give a large space to mosaic! This is so awesome!

The exhibit will run Oct. 2 - Dec. 16.

Interior Frequencies, in situ

I made a space to hang this work in my studio area. It was a bit of a challenge to work out the measurements. I must have done a good job as they were all in their places on my first try.

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Interior Frequencies

Previous Interior Frequencies posts

Several people have asked me why I was just doing negative, or sad, or dark emotions. In trying to answer them, I kept struggling for the proper word for these kinds of emotions because I did not resonate with negative, sad, or dark. What they are is uncomfortable, I realized.

These uncomfortable emotions are more interesting to me than comfortable ones. We don’t have to work to recognize, understand, and navigate our comfortable emotions, like joy for example. In this series, I wanted to examine the color and movement—frequency pattern—of my own experience of these emotions.

Using just vertical lines and color to express complicated emotions was, by the end, very limiting, although at first it was quite liberating.

Generally, as I approached these interior states, I recognized a difference between ones that are more inward, like guilt and self-loathing, and ones that have an outward aspect, like loss and rage. I used shorter lines for the frequencies that are more inward and longer lines for the ones with some outward aspect.

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Interior Frequencies № 5: Depression Not having suffered from depression, I worked with my younger daughter to understand how to express it. The ochre spurt just left of center represents a pang of self-loathing, and the one bright yellow spot to the right signifies a brief moment of joy. The very short frequency lines speak to a sense of non-existence.

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Interior Frequencies № 4: Invisible My sense of being invisible is that I am there but I feel that people are not seeing me—not seeing the person that I am. Maybe I am just feeling like I don’t belong so I shrink into the background and invite being ignored. Or maybe they are just relating to me as someone I am not and never have been. The frequency lines are short here because feeling invisible is very private and makes me feel small.

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Interior Frequencies № 11: Guilt Guilt feels green to me. It is an interior state that I try to evade and rationalize. I may be able to intellectualize my way around it for a period of time, but it always comes back, just eating away at me. Short lines represent this very inward and private state.

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Interior Frequencies № 10: Hopeless This one speaks for itself.

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Interior Frequencies № 7: Conflicted In my limited experience of feeling conflicted, I’ve found myself going back and forth between two things for which I have equal intensity of feeling. I chose these colors because they feel emotionally pensive to me.

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Interior Frequencies № 3: Self-loathing I set out to select the worst color palette that I could mange. I wanted it to be pukey, like vomit, to represent an intense feeling of disgust. I actually found it difficult to create an ugly palette. The frequency iines are relatively short but unrelenting, just like self-loathing.

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Interior Frequencies № 8: Shame The colors felt like shame feels. Shame is deeper than humiliation and more than just feeling ashamed. It is an insidious thing that is inflicted by others. It affected my sense of self-worth, of value, of feeling like I deserve to exist. Until it is recognized and understood, it grows and seeps into all other areas of life.

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Interior Frequencies № 9: Dread It was difficult to feel the colors of dread, but I eventually chose these and I do find them dreadful. As for the frequency pattern, I experience dread as a feeling that pulsates, retreating into the background and then resurfacing, over and over.

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Interior Frequencies № 2: Rage I did not achieve that of out-of-control, blinding kind of rage, but I think this feels more rage-y to me than mere anger. The colors are self-explanatory. The lines are long because rage has a big outward expression. The black in the middle represents my inner state at the time, which virtually does not exist.

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Interior Frequencies № 1": Loss I found these colors easy to choose as they feel like loss as I have experienced it. The lines are long because of loss’s outward expression. At the height of it, I feel like I have lost part/s of myself, represented by the missing pieces. This sense continues but diminishes with time.

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Interior Frequencies № 6: Humiliation This emotion has both a strong outward experience and inward experience for me. When I feel humiliated, I try to hide it and remain cool on the outside, but inside I feel like the red snake of it is burning me up.

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Interior Frequencies № 12: Overwhelmed Not sure about the colors. At this point, with this being the last one, I was having trouble feeling the color of overwhelmed. I think several palettes would have worked. Perhaps even more contrasting colors. This state feels like it has an outward expression. For me, it comes on pretty suddenly; maybe it is simmering for some time without me being conscious of it, or it is the immediate onslaught of particular circumstances.

Interior Frequencies № 12: Overwhelmed

I never thought it could be so much fun to not keep a line straight!

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Interior Frequencies № 12: Overwhelmed, side perspective

And so this series comes to an end.

Interior Frequencies № 11: Guilt

Why green? I have no idea. It is the color that I associate with guilt, which I did not know until I now. What about you?

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Interior Frequencies № 11: Guilt, side perspective

The next and last one will be Overwhelmed.

Interior Frequencies № 10: Hopeless

As I am nearing the end of this work, I have the opportunity to view the pieces together and see how they can be arranged to achieve the greatest degree of balance and aesthetic interest. With the last three, I am yielding to a desire for that balance and aesthetic interest in deciding on the colors.

So, I find that as much as I wanted to not be attached to an outcome, I am now being influenced by some kind of desired outcome. Just a little. Also, throughout the process, I so often wanted to use blacks and grays, but I forced myself to try harder to express the emotions in varying colors. Black was a problem for me because of the black background, which I wanted for all twelve.

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Interior Frequencies № 10: Hopeless, side perspective

I’ve got some other musings on the fruitfulness, and/or lack thereof, of this project, which I will share at the end. And I will be happy to be at the end of this project.

Next: Guilt.

Interior Frequencies № 9: Dread

Dreadful.

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Interior Frequencies № 9: Dread, side perspective

Next up: Hopeless.

Interior Frequencies № 8: Shame

Now that I am nearing the end of the series—four more to go—I am thinking about how to arrange them as a group of 12. More importantly, I don’t think that I can get the lighting the same for each of them, and the lighting really affects the black background. Hmm… I’ll have to ponder that.

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Interior Frequencies № 8: Shame, side perspective

Next is Dread.

Interior Frequencies № 7: Conflicted

So, in my experience of feeling conflicted, which has not been much, I’ve found myself going back and forth between two things for which I have equal intensity of feeling. The intensity of feeling is so equal that the two things almost feel like one thing, making it difficult to separate them and finally choose.

I chose these colors because they feel emotionally pensive to me.

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Interior Frequencies № 7: Conflicted, side perspective

My next one will be Shame.

Interior Frequencies № 6: Humiliation

Hmm. I wish I could explain this. Again, I am just going with what feels right at the time. This was going to be Shame, but it felt more like Humiliation.

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Interior Frequencies № 6: Humiliation, side perspective

The next one will be Conflicted.

Interior Frequencies № 5: Depression

I’ve not suffered from depression myself, so I relied on my younger daughter’s experience to guide me on this one. The dark ochre bump represents a pang of self-loathing, and the small yellow speck represents a brief bit of joy.

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Interior Frequencies № 5: Depression, side perspective

I’m treating this series like an assignment. I allow no more than a week to finish each one, I’m using this linear frequency-like format, and I’m using a single type of glass and its palette. This is a very restrictive approach that is—surprisingly—giving me a lot of freedom.

For example, the next one is Shame. I went to choose the glass and tried to work out a palette with reds, pink, bright green, which I thought were the proper colors. But it just did not feel right. Instead, I chose a cool palette of purple, blue, teal, and bright green. It jus felt right to me at that time. So, I went with it.

Then, I started designing the lines, and I was a little stuck. I gave it another try and came up with something that felt right, that made sense to me. Because of the time limit, I made myself just go with it. I know that it may not look like shame to anyone else, but I’ve given myself permission to just go with what comes to me. It’s really liberating.

Whatever this exercise produces, I’m feeling like it is a very good experience for me.

So, on to № 6, Shame. I have decided to do 12, so I am halfway there.

Interior Frequencies № 4: Invisible

Previous Interior Frequencies posts

Not much to say about this one.

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Interior Frequencies № 4: Invisible, side perspective

Now, on to Depression.

Interior Frequencies № 3: Self-Loathing

Previous Interior Frequencies posts

This one was the most fun so far! I wanted a palette that was ugly, actually pukey. That’s right, inspired by vomit. What can I say? When I think of self-loathing, I think of vomit. Or maybe it just makes me feel sick. Not sure. Self-loathing is a very ugly thing, an internal disgust with ourselves that roils within. If only we could just vomit it out.

Well, my apologies for going off in such an unpleasant direction this morning. About the lines, or frequency waves: I can’t offer any kind of meaning or symbolism; I just went with how I was feeling when I created the design.

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Interior Frequencies № 3: Self-Loathing, side perspective

Next up: Invisible

Interior Frequency № 2: Rage

Previous Interior Frequencies posts

What color(s) does rage feel like to you? These reds and black are one version of rage. But there is a kind of white, blinding rage that I am still thinking about. With the palette that I have, I’m not sure yet if I can express that. But I may end up trying. Eventually.

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Interior Frequencies № 2: Rage, side perspective

Now, I’m moving on to Self-Loathing.

Interior Frequencies

All Interior Frequencies posts.

Interior Frequencies is a sub-series of my Frequency Series. I wanted to explore emotional states using this simple linear format and the Kismet palette. I’m using Kismet because it is well-suited to this linear approach and has a fairly good palette. Cutting it in half and placing it on its side offers a smalti-like reflective quality.

I am interested in the exercise of expressing challenging emotional states in such a minimal way. My goal is to just do this for myself, for the exercise of it, and not to produce something that I think is beautiful. This is quite a different thing for me and I am relishing operating outside my usual box.

Interior Frequencies will be a single work comprising of a maximum of 12 pieces. Or maybe 9. Or maybe 6. No less than 6. We’ll just see how things go.

Here is the first in the series, titled Loss. Next up is rage.

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Interior Frequencies № 1: Loss, side perspective