Molly Schafer
Initiation, 2008. Watercolor and graphite on paper. Fabric, rawhide, golden thread, my cat's fur, threaded beads, ornate gold detail, black feathers. 3' x 2'.
There are two elements to Initiation - the drawing/painting and the handmade object. In both I weave together parts of myself with parts of an animal. The idea of seams is important in my work. My intent is to create an image for the viewer to wonder over. For example, is this a headdress or an attack? Through formal properties and juxtapositions I deny resolution. By doing so the fantasy comes apart at the seams, unraveled just enough to reveal that the meaning is in the combination.
These seams are made visual through disjointed overlaps of realities, transparencies, and refractions. Automobiles may pass behind a fantastical performance, while mass-produced, kitsch ornamentation is used to pay tribute to drawings of ancient figures. Odd combinations, such as drawings of realistic anatomy combined with handcrafted decorations, echo the hybridity of the beings depicted in my images. This work is not about creating a separate fantasy world but longing and wonderment for other possibilities.
Throughout my work I repeatedly use the image of the centaur, the feral, and the early hominid. Although the centaur is half human, half animal the two parts remain separate inside one being. The feral is also a combination of animal and human, of wild and domesticated. But without resolving into one or the other, the feral exists as something new. As is my work, it is a combined state of neither and both.
Through drawings, video and sculpture, I collapses time and space to create a narrative across eras that explores the mutability of biological form. My quasi-pre-historical, romanticized narratives create a dramatic record of desire and aggression that questions the boundaries of gender, species, and self-identification.
Themes of hybridization and connection run throughout my work, both visually and conceptually. Creating complex amalgams of animal and human, fantastic and realistic, handmade and mass-produced; my narratives entwine mystical experience, natural sciences and daily life. I use fantasy as a strategy to locate the narrative in a borderless, undefined space.
I repeatedly use the image of the centaur, the feral, and the early hominid. These slightly altered states of human being intrigue me as they offer options for existence; a mode of being more connected to our animal selves. This drawing “Barrier Island” is a self portrait created upon return from my solitary stay on Assategue Island. Assateague is a barrier island off the coast of Maryland renowned for free-roaming feral horses. Camping there with no human contact, I became absorbed into the ebbing and flowing of sea water and wildlife. By falling in tune with the daily rhythms of the place and, by extension, the natural world I was no longer a separate being but part of the island.
Hi Molly,
Thanks for posting. Your description of your work is quite compelling. You address a lot of the same themes that Jenny Kendler’s does in her posting. Kendler invokes the concept of the “feminine sublime” to describe her connection with the natural world. I wonder if you could say a bit more about your notion that the altered states offer different options for existence–do you think this is something that could translate into broader interpersonal, social relations, or is your fantasy world necessarily solitary? For example, Saya Woolfalk also engages in a fantasy, utopian world, but hers is a collective one populated by women/androgynes.
Cheers,
Susan
Dear Molly,
I’ll add another connection to your work on this site: Shana Robbins. She recently staged a performance in Iceland with a cameraman as her only witness.
Might you talk about how you documented the experience? What role does video play in your work?
Looking forward,
Cathy
Susan and Cathy -thank you for your comments. It is excited to find a place where there are such interesting connections between the works.
I am very familiar with Jenny Kendler’s work as we sometimes work collaboratively and are both members of Henbane, an artist’s collective along with Stacia Yeapanis (also posting to Losing Yourself). I believe our other members- Amber Hawk Swanson and Meg Leary should be posting soon. We are all very excited about Losing Yourself and feel it relates to the idea of the feminine sublime and the dispersal of the self. Henbane had an exhibition last year titled “Henbane: Dialectics of the Feminine Sublime.” It is a topic we continue to explore as individual artists and as a group.
To answer Cathy’s question about documentation- I documented the experience myself. When I needed to be in a scene I placed the camera on a tripod and pointed it in my general direction. Not ideal but it was important for me to be a solitary human. Shana Robbin’s work is inspiring, I like that seals were her only audience. I felt similarly on Assateague and tried to privilege just being there over recording the experience. In this respect Marisa Dipaola’s project also interests me.
Video plays various roles in my work. A majority of my videos have been mash-ups of drawing, storytelling, video to create an enhanced narrative. Several times, as with the Assateague video, my fantasy world was getting too delicious to not join in myself. After Assateague, my idea of myself, and my likeness have become a recurring elements in my drawings. This did not feel like a conscious choice, I was just totally absorbed into what I created.
And to respond to Susan-
I think more in terms of fantasizing than a fantasy world. I’m less for suspending belief and more for wonderment and longing. And I do need rules, or limitations to work within. Like in any good fantasy novel parallel dimensions somewhat mirror each other and in that respect in my current body of work there are limited characters. Chiefly a female, a warm furry creature, and an out of sight/ out of frame presence. These characters or elements are based on the Assateague experience where it was myself, my cat, and the unknown (horses can sneak up on you in the sand, hide behind dunes). These elements can also be seen as: sense of self, love/benevolence, and the unknown which can represent a potential threat. These elements are fluid and as in nature, everything is connected and therefore part of the same whole.
I do want people to consider those connections especially relating to the world and the non-human.
Thanks for the great questions!
Molly
“I’m less for suspending belief and more for wonderment and longing.”
This is a great description, Molly. It emphasizes how an engagement in fantasy is not always about escaping reality, which is a common assumption. It’s about how fantasy, whether in out heads or in the fiction we ready or watch on TV, reflects real life and affects real life. This is an idea I want to express in my work as well. Creating a fantasy world or being immersed in a fictional world on TV is all part of processing the world we do live in, not escaping it. It is about identifying what it has and what it lacks, and about expressing or changing expectations about what is possible. This goes back to the feminine sublime, I think. If fantasy or fiction is the other, we take it into the real and end up with something hybrid. So that self (or worldview) gets created in that synthesis.
Thanks Stacia! And you are absolutely right on. My recent move to put myself in my work seems to really help people understand all of this.
Hi Molly,
I enjoyed looking at your work, especially after spending time in the country. It brought back an idea that the sacred feminine is within the natural world and an often untapped wealth of strenth and resource.
LisaW