Carrie Hott
Go Get 'Em
Using a cactus and a high heel shoe that is covered and painted again to look like itself, Go Get ‘Em creates an abrupt visual scenario through the collision of the emblematic ‘pump’ and the thorny, uprooted cactus.
Blow Away Stowaways (installation view)
Two actual household fans are ‘covered’ with cardboard, tape, and molding paste and painted again to look like themselves. As each fan blows a tumbleweed towards the other, Blow Away Stowaways, creates a humorous visual representation, using an iconic thistle that is indigenous to Russia, of futile attempts to control and understand nature and our environment.
You Are An Excellent (AND LUCKY!) Woman
This ’still-life’ arrangement includes an actual ‘O’ self-help magazine, which is painted over in shades of beige, a painted representation of a one dollar bill, and pieces of a broken mirror. The set up represents a scenario that includes sources of comfort and security in combination with seven years of ’bad luck.’
Carrie,
I think that “You Are An Excellent (AND LUCKY!) Woman” speaks to the theme of the show in terms of articulating how in popular culture there is an emphasis in recovering and valuing the self that is gendered. It seems that most self-help texts are targeted to women. These texts provide women with methods of “coping”, but don’t critique the larger social forces that make their lives so difficult and put their senses of self in crises.
The use of the mirror here is also compelling. It is a tool used to survey the self, in the piece it is shattered, now tinged with “bad luck”.
In addition to the gendered discourse of self-help I am interested in your selection of “O” magazine, is there a statement being made here about race as well?
Carrie,
I like the idea of painting a shoe “to look like itself.” Your work plays at the articulation of gender, just touching the tip of a pile of broken glass.
As does Jillian, I’d like to know more about your props and why you choose them. How does “Blow away stowaways” relate to your work on identity?
Hello Jillian and Cathy,
I’m so glad that you used the word ‘props’; that’s exactly how I think of them. My interest in the use and creation of props from existing objects actually stems from my painting practice and my continuing investigation into the language of painting and representation. I see a theatrical prop as a stand-in or symbol of what it represents, much like painting often serves the purpose to form a representation of recognizable subjects. When an object is covered and painted to ‘look like itself’, the object is represented and remembered at once, while also allowing for an interpretive space between the representation and the memory of the object that we ‘know’.
Using the props allows me to create these set-ups that I think of short stories, which are propelled by the cultural and symbolic significance of the objects included. The ‘O’ magazine, for example, is a purposeful reference to the ever-growing pop psychology self-help industry as you said (which I am continually fascinated by). Self-help, as a social movement that relies on both capitalism and a society that emphasizes the individual experience, definitely targets women in that there is an expectation for women to value their identities, but continually improve and ‘work on’ themselves to reach their ‘hard earned’ potential. Here, the ‘O’ magazine and its headline seemed like the perfect choice to reflect these ideas as it’s contrasted with the lucky found representation of the dollar bill and unlucky broken mirror. There is not a specific statement about race in this piece as much as there is about women in general and the ubiquitous presence of ‘O’ culture in contemporary American women’s lives.
‘Blow Away Stowaways’ is a slight tangent from the other work, but I included it because of the iconic and perhaps gendered associations with the objects represented. My interest in the tumbleweeds grew out of my discovery that they are not indigenous to North America. As such a western, and even masculine icon of American life, I became fascinated by its history of having arrived originally in shipments of Russian wheat. I then wondered if the fans, as domestic, stationary, objects are in the domain of the feminine when placed in the scenario with the ‘wild and roaming’ tumbleweed. In addition to what I write above, ‘Blow Away’ is meant to be encountered as an absurd representation of a push and pull of control between these two opposing sensibilities.
Thanks for giving me the opportunity to elaborate!
Nice work Carrie! I enjoy it both visually and conceptually.
SR