Muse: Shooting Venus

Constructing the Shell

We often get questions about the Birth of Venus [After Botticelli] shell. Despite living in Chicago with lots of theaters and prop houses, we figured the search to find the perfect shell was more effort than just making one ourselves. At 9’x6′ it consumed my apartment’s dining room and brought with it a host of delightful and unexpected experiences.

Shooting Venus

After having scoped out our lakefront location weeks in advance, Niki, my friend Joe, and I meet at the agreed upon location around 4:45 a.m. The sky, still dark, and the September air crisply in the 50s, we arrive at the beach. We discover a parking lot full of cars, a row of yellow school buses, and a mass of scurrying people in the dark. An immediate stab of fear is replaced by confusion once we notice a promotional tent and a few people in running gear. Judging it safe to proceed, we begin unloading and taking everything down to the water’s edge.

An hour passes as we position the giant shell in the water, deep enough to look naturally embeded in the environment, but shallow enough not to sink in the shifting sand or fill with water from the breaking waves. Amidst our busy preparation and an ever-blushing sky, we fail to notice the swelling crowd of 200 or so runners up on the beach ridge stretching and looking down our way with curiosity – a few moving down onto the beach to snag a photo.

As the sun rises to the horizon, we begin the shoot. Niki, with sweater wrapped around her head (looking precisely like little Edie from Grey Gardens), steps behind the camera to secure its position. I place my clothes in a plastic bag, tape the fabric hood on my head, step into the shell. I find my position with right hand over chest and left nearly covering my groin. I lock my gaze with the camera lens and wait for the click and wind of film. A split second of confusion is replaced with disbelief. “O-oh say can you see, by the dawn’s early light…” peels from a loud speaker near the runner’s tent. The three of us burst into uncontrollable laugher as the Star Spangled Banner seems to mark the beginning of our sport/shoot.

As our composure returns, we witness a slow moving line of runners stretching out and moving north from the tents along the lakefront path. Warmed with humor, we resume our shoot, taking advantage of the best light and waves Lake Michigan can provide. At the end of the shoot we pack up all but the shell. One last glance, looking down from the grassy beach ridge, we wonder about its new life, how many people will pass and appreciate it, how long it will remain.

The disco ball, however, hangs in my dining room.

Untitled Quad
12″x60″
1200.00

If memory of dates serves me correctly, during the summer of 1998, a good friend asked me to serve as her birth coach. I agreed, went to all of her Lemaze classes, learned how to coach her breathing through each round of contractions, and then applied that in action the day she had the baby. During contractions, I counted to 10 as she pushed, and at the height of the birth, she bore down as I counted “One…two…three….” A nurse announced that the head was crowning, and surprised by the sight of the baby’s head forging out of a vagina spread so thin and virtually unrecognizable, I froze and forgot to keep counting—at least until the mother yelled at me to get to 10 so she could finish pushing and take a momentary break. Shocked back into my duties, I surrendered my confoundment, stopped gawking in amazement, and returned to counting.

Shortly thereafter, still feeling a sense of marvel for what I had experienced, I found myself standing in my studio, creating charcoal drawings on narrow 6×30 inch offcuts of hefty stock printmaking paper. I began to explore my simultaneous sexual disinterest and aesthetic attraction/appreciation for female genitalia. Frankly, I found labia beautiful—I just didn’t want to have any form of sexual interaction with them. As I worked, sensuous lines and shapes emerge from the black depths of solid charcoal on paper. One drawing led to another until piles of charcoal dust and eraser shreddings coated the no-longer-white baseboards and carpet in front of my feet.

During that time, I remember most the late night process. As the downtown traffic had grown to a still and adjacent windows were dimmed or doused, I alternated furious erasure or dark coal scrubs with a few steps back to pause and assess the next move. This repeated for hours on end many nights a week until eventually, 20-30 drawings emerged, some of which were combined to create a larger singular whole—or hole, depending on your level of mischief. The completion of the series was marked by the packing away of the drawings for my pending move to Chicago in July of 2000. For the last 20+ years, the drawings have emerged but a handful of times.

Today, as they are once again brought into daylight, they are inextricably connected to a recent pattern of Kansas/Chicago synchronicities. With a fresh eye, they seem—at least from my perspective—less exploratory of the notions that initiated the series, and more a declaratory affirmation of the Divine Feminine much needed in the world today. They reemerge to be rebirthed into the world—all puns intended. For a limited time, the drawings are for sale and priced as marked.