The Ancestors are Going on the Road!
I've been busy this summer & one of my big accomplishments has been a grant from the Ohio Arts Council.
I’ve been awarded a grant from the Ohio Arts Council through their Artists with Disabilities Access Program (ADAP). If you follow along here in the art stories, you’ll know that I’ve been dreaming the stories of my ancestors and seeing signs of them everywhere in my day-to-day.
One of my earliest interests in the fields of fine art and art history was sparked by a visit to the Natural History Museum in Cleveland. It was around the time I was 5 years old. I was already beginning to think I would like to be an artist someday. I saw my first neolithic statuettes, beads, painted rocks and cave art. Like Keith Haring, I felt those long ago people reach through their handwork and touch me. I could imagine the time before me, before my great grandparents who came here to the Great Lakes, before their great grandparents became Christians in the place we now call Poland (Vandala) all the way to my very first family. Somewhere deep in the past there was a woman who painted her hand on a cave wall and she was the first artist. My first ancestor.
I followed this love for the pre-columbian into college, visiting the New York Natural History Museum every chance I got to sketch the spirals, skulls, female figures and animal images I found there. I enthusiastically wrote art history papers laying out the logical points for why I became convinced that the “fertility statuettes” from long ago were actually self portraits. I made my own, standing naked in my practically-collapsing brownstone looking down at myself while twisting sculpey clay in my hands. I found that like my ancestors, I had a difficult time depicting my head from touch only.
These themes have stayed with me. My mother often points to a shape in a new piece and says, “you’ve always drawn that shape. It’s always there.” It’s a circle, painted with my pointer finger. Sometimes connected, sometimes unconnected. It’s the womb where my ideas and dreams and paintings grow.
The latest side quest into ancestor worship started at the end of 2023 with with the archetype of the witch- the Baba Yaga (Babcia Jaga.) “Baba Yaga Goes For a Walk With Her House” is the first example of what will be a body of work re-telling the stories of my grandmother through my own perspective with elements left deep in my subconscious, handed down by our first artist-mothers. I’d like to tell the story about the young Roma girl who turns into a wolf, chases away her betrothed and lives happily ever after among the wild canines. Also the story of my beloved Princess Wanda, the mother of the Vandals, who were my people before we were Polish. I seem to be a set of nesting dolls with piles of ancestors stacked inside me, threatening me with an inverse gravitational collapse as they clamor to have their stories told.
With this wonderful gift through the ADAP grant, I will be able to travel to Loyola University in Chicago, which houses North America’s largest collection of neolithic relics. I also plan to spend time at the Cleveland Natural History Museum and (of course) re-reading the old stories. It is my hope to publish a book with photographs of the paintings and some of my own retellings. The White Rabbit Galleries in Barberton has graciously agreed to host a show for this project. We will sell the books to benefit the galleries to help their many artists in residency and I hope this offering to the ancestors finds their favour.
It is important to me to thank the Ohio Arts Council and Governor Dewine for this opportunity. Also the incredible staff at the ADAP, who diligently proofread, advise, review and guide the many applicants and the review jury who donate hours of their time judging the grant proposals. Namaste, friends. May the ancestors bless you and keep you.