Our show’s up at the Visual Arts Centre of Clarington. I think it looks great but now’s the time to find out if it has any impact. I’ve never had any children, but suspect that making art is like raising a child. Each project starts with an inkling that’s hard to define, accompanied by a knowing that I have to move toward it. At first I hold it very close, an internal nurturing, until it’s ready to be named. Ready to exist in the world as the idea. From then on it’s a lot of work that feels sometimes joyous and more often a struggle: feeding, finding, developing, learning, encouraging and constantly doing until … one glorious day … the piece takes over and tells me what it needs. Then it’s no longer my idea, it is an artwork in its own right. And then finally it’s finished, ready to take its place in the world. At that point all I can do is let go and be curious about the response. I made a piece for this show called About Time: a life-sized sculpture of a naked older dancer pirouetting defiantly on a plinth inscribed with the words sometimes used to describe older women: dowdy, confused, withered, lonely, invisible, unsteady. I had a lot of hope, but no idea how it would be received. The first response it received was my biggest gift of the show so far: a woman came into the gallery to pick up her grandchild from pottery class. She looked at the sculpture and then at me and her eyes filled with tears as she said, “I never thought I’d see a body like mine up on a pedestal”.
