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.

Diptych 1
13″x30″
800.00

Untitled
6″x30″
400.00

Untitled Diptych 2
12″x30″
800.00