Suda House

With the impending doom of the Plasticene, not one surface of either land or sea is free from the plastic debris that permeates our planet. Within these aqueous ecologies, it is a slow drowning death beneath the surface of a soiled sea. Its imprisoned residents, strangled by polyethylene artifacts, persist in a constant struggle to survive. Some succumb to their pliant shackles while others, oblivious of the tiny shiny micro plastics, ingest them only to unwittingly pass them on at humanity’s dinner table.

Climate change is a now reality. We are caught in a perilous maelstrom for which our children will pay the price of this inconvenient truth. Many have ignored the inevitable; some have taken action and a few have turned to higher powers with prayer. Hoping to be heard, voices of the small, starry-eyed innocents plead to the sky, calling out into heaven’s void for someone, anyone to help avert the inescapable end of earth.

Communiques out in the universe travel at the speed of light. Garbled, jumbled and broken up by noise and chatter, messages disintegrate and meaning is lost. Yet one message pierces the ricocheting signals, the plaintive wail of humanity echoing the same reverberating plea—a call for salvation of a dying planet.

The Sisters of the Pleiades, seven celestial women exiled by Zeus to a star cluster over 400 light years away, heard the plea and together they decided to answer the call. Risking discovery they secretly returned to earth to save their beloved ocean.

Camouflaged beneath the Gyre of Garbage in the Pacific Ocean, the seven sisters, hidden from surface dwellers by the floating plastics, kept to themselves, stealthily setting about to upend the damage done by man made pollutants.

The proof of the seven sisters daring return is unveiled in this series of never before seen photographs. Illusionary truth of one woman’s discovery that reveals the collective call for help and the power of women to change the course of the world. This visual call to activism, to join forces across the globe with the Seven Sisters of the Pleiades must be our new mission, our saving grace for the future of our children.

Saving Grace, a story can be followed on my Narrative page

As I sew these images adorned on the fabric of our stars and stripes, my mind does wander to our revolutionary seamstress, Betsy Ross. Entrusted with sewing the flag for our new nation, she was serving the cause as well as assuming the risk to help free us.

Ross instilled hope for a better tomorrow with the symbol she was creating with each stitch and to this day the flag of the United States is the iconic symbol of all that represents America.

Fast forward to 2020, and the call to action for face masks was heard and a cadre of everyday women, girls and even men, joined together to sew masks for our survival against our newest enemy—the corona virus.

Along the way, these hand made masks protected many from the virus, but the coverings could not silence the injustice that this smallest microbe was slowly and systematically eating away at what many thought to be a united nation.

Everyday, many saw their voices muffled and sheltered in place it soon became unbearable—the mask became a metaphor for years of silence and suppression. Democracy was not ringing loud and clear for all. We the people, we were suffocating until the cry of “I can’t breathe” which unmasked the horror of a flawed nation.

Greed, injustice, racism, our failed healthcare, privilege, no leadership and so much more, some blatantly obvious and many subtlety suppressed by a nation blinded by its cancers— the tired platitudes of we the people, all men are created equal, and the home of the free and the brave.

Unmasking America visualizes the voices of the unheard, the unseen, and each represents the under belly of a nation thrown into chaos by an invisible corona anointed squarely on one man who believes he is king. We can be the home of the free, but we must be brave and speak up.

We all must wear a mask to end this pandemic and loss of lives, but silence is not an option. Take action.

Women Bleed

Since 2016, I have been collecting images of women published on the front page of major newspapers. The criteria for my selection, is that these women and children must be in some kind of distress or suffering. Visual records of survivors whose lives are ever changed by the hands and actions of others.

Collateral damage in the cross hairs of events that they have no control over.

Soon I began photographing each with my digital camera, bringing the image through my mind’s eye. This way I experienced a simulated capture and thus I became a witness of my subjects’ suffering. The newspapers’ front pages reported the shocking crimes against women, the horrific loss of life, and further victimized each with a second act of abuse—to sell the newspaper.

Angered at how women’s pain photographed and used for profit, I struggled with how to present these issues and how, as a woman and an artist, I could honor them. I tried weaving the images into a shawl so that I could wear their suffering and feel the pain. I tried printing on fabric, using embroidery, and I even considered for a fleeting moment, a quilt or tapestry. These constructs were too quiet, too soft and they brought no voice to the women. Every time that I opened the paper, my heart bled with the pain of their suffering. I ached with a helplessness that I could not make a difference and deliver my statement of intent of women bleeding from unwanted acts of violence.

The turning point came when a politician said, “She was bleeding from her eyes, her nose....her whatever.” It became clear to me that if our own culture could condone this remark as only one man’s reckless use of words, without calling for an apology, we all were complicit in allowing another woman to be wounded even if it was just by his words. The weapon of words was a dagger and the age old message of impurity and shame associated with menstruation cut into us all.

My weapon of response was to image the most private and personal of objects that women use when they bleed. I applied the appropriated images onto sanitary napkins with a digital transfer process. The pad heightens the viewers’ awareness that women bleed as well as embraces the duality that we bleed monthly because of our biology. Our body’s blood cleanses the womb and if there is no blood—-it means the blood will nourish a new life. We bleed when we give birth. And we bleed when we are hit by weapons of war and by the violent actions of others. We weep a deep primal loss that words cannot console whenever we bleed.

With these images of women on a feminine hygiene product, I make a statement about the blood. I make a statement about the intimacy of loss. Hopefully I have created a new contextual awareness that the crimes committed in the world, because of our collective cultures and traditions, continue to make women victims. With this work, I stand up and say we are not willing to be victims, and you must see that the world’s women are bleeding by the hands of others. This vicious cycle of abuse must stop, or the future of humanity will have its women’s blood on its hands.

All proceeds are donated to Days for Girls, a non-profit providing menstruation kits to girls through-out the world. These reusable kits and feminine health education ensure that young women can remain in school.

Photographs are not truthful, but representational, an illusion to what was once real. Photographs capture the light, preserve the moment and describe the thing itself. “...photographs not only signal a different relationship to and over nature, they speak....to a sense of power in the way we seek to order and construct the world around us.”

These photographs represent my constructed world, both real and artificial, and my desire to find order. These abandoned body casts, created by a sculpture class, were placed in my yard, and I periodically sought to rediscover and photograph them over these past twelve years. Over time, these images have become personal artifacts, reflective tableaux of my life experiences and manipulated evidence of my archaeology.

A personal archaeology that is continually in a state of transformation and metamorphosis as is anyone’s essence of being. I show you only the moments recorded, the “photographic evidence”, yet the real truth lies within the nature of things. The duality between growth and decay, object and illusion, the real and the artificial. This is the mystery of life itself and all these dualities exist within these photographic artifacts.

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. She to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe,.....her eyes are closed. ”

I do stand in wonder and awe of life, and it is with a wide-eyed curiosity, that I continue to photograph these metaphorical bodies, to get under the skin of grace, to describe what is beneath the surface, and to hopefully discover each time I press the shutter, the beauty I see by just being alive.

...he rolled over and fell asleep. No noise, no care, no work undone, no imperfection unmastered, no love scene unresumed, no problem unsolved, ever kept him awake. He could roll over and forgot. He could roll over with such grand indifference and let everything wait. When he rolled over the day ended. Nothing could be carried over into the next day. The next day would be absolutely new and clean. He just rolled over and extinguished everything. Just rolling over.

Anais Nin from Ladders of Fire

Night after night, seeking sanctuary in makeshift beds because I could not forget, could not let things wait. Tossing and turning, fighting the fabric to not suffocate, to not be lost in another’s painful psyche, to renew myself in solitary sleep, and to not be extinguished by his indifference.

For me everything did carry over into the next day. Denial carried us through and soon

my craving for dialog subsided and my unmade beds became witness to the layers of detachment that soon separates.

And one night I just rolled over to face a new day without him.

Each photograph is printed on 100% archival poly silk, formed inside a floating frame to provide the illusion of an unmade bed. Each fabric image measures 16”x12” framed to 20”x16”. Each is titled and signed on the reverse with numbered editions.

“At a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what’s happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate. That’s the world’s greatest lie.”

― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

Accepting what was happening to me, no matter the disappointment or seeming loss of control I believed I had, I was determined to bring a new life into the world. It was irrelevant to me—-my age, the endometriosis, the old egg theory—-nothing was stopping me to create what I knew was my fate—-to become a mother.

So my body became a science project.

Probing, prodding, needles, medications, thermometers—all means by which conception might occur within an older woman intent on procreation. Even though, at my age, I could be someone’s grandmother, seeking my motherhood soon became elusive, and month after month demoralizing that what was considered so natural and easy, was out of reach because I waited. Every attempt seemed to be just another act of futility and soon the images I was making became dark stage sets for the seemingly impossible.

As time passed the agonizing paradox of why I waited reared its ugly truth.

Wait until you complete your education, wait until you secure a meaningful profession, wait to acquire the financial means to be self-sufficient, wait to marry a partner with the same goals and ideals, wait while you build a home and a future together for adding another life to us. Soon waiting every month to see if the last medical experiment was successful, only to be disappointed to see the color red—-I was done with waiting.

Soon I realized that the true paradox was when you are ready, your body is not.

And all because I waited too long.

Wrestling with this frustration of waiting, I made images late at night to absolve my hopeless fate of being childless. I would go into my basement-studio and build metaphorical tableaus of what was being done to me. I became a mad scientist, struggling with the duality of experiments in fertility versus the contradiction that my own body now—- had both life and death locked in a precarious battle. The old woman’s disease, menopause, was lurking in the shadows. Holding the change bay, I avidly researched procedures, demanded of doctors “why?” and pushed them to try “what’s next?” Daily, this became my myopic, impassioned struggle for a chance at fertility in a body on the verge of drying up.

After five years my daughter was born healthy over two and a half decades ago, to a determined and willful 41 year-old woman intent on giving the world the gift of a new life.

Fate did not win.

These photographs express the absolute anger, frustration and single-mindedness I felt. Fearful that fate may had dealt my life a gut wrenching blow, I persisted with absolute resolve. Those five years pushed me to look deep into my soul and now, more than ever, I do believe…

“…when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”

― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

A goddess is a mythical woman. A symbol of a female’s power—who often possesses a frailty. Mortal women possess many frailties, temptations and a finite mortality. Living life, creating life and dying are the swimming strokes—the stages mere mortals flow through in their pursuit of a full existence. It is a journey sometimes made alone, but often with others, who desire the same dreams. A goddess needs no one but the mortal woman wants more than breaking the surface. She knows the pedestal is a lonely place. She wants to swim in the water which is her life.

Aquarella

The phone rings….. He answers……They agree on a time.

Time. It took so long to get there.

They meet at the ocean. Parking, people, populated far beyond its boundaries. The noise and confusion symbolize a place growing too fast.

Block out the bothersome. This city is home now, no going back, yet it’s not the reason for staying.

The ocean is. It’s the source for her work, and he’s become a swimmer because she is one.

He always goes in the water first.

It’s cold and the shock of it as she enters makes her realize that the obvious simplicity of the water was not enough source material for her images. She had to demand the same complexity for the imagery that existed within herself.

They start out. Swimming together. She sees him next to her.

Time. It took so long to make them….the photographs.

She now realizes the myths were only veils. Exposed. They reveal imagery rich in ritual and research. The tale they weave is as old as the ocean, but it is not the old man and the sea anymore. Woman has her own visual history, and she is as competent in myth making as any man, but often her voice is too soft to be heard, and her stories are lost.

As she takes a breath and feels her power and strength in the water she knows the images were for her. She had to tell the stories.

She had to make the myths real.

Now….she doesn’t need to swim faster or farther than him anymore. She wants to swim with him, because the ocean is more than just a symbol of her struggle, it represents one for both man and woman, and in the water men and women are the same.

Swimming along side him, equal stroke for stroke. Pacing. Knowing each other’s personal strengths and weaknesses, stopping to sight the marker, and then setting shared goals.

Sometimes he signals to her that it’s OK to go ahead. He brings a different perspective to her ocean now, only because she had swam it alone on her own terms, struggling through it, finding her way out to the marker and back.

Swimming. Swimming. Swimming.

Time. It took so long to get here.

After bringing a tank full of water, female models, props and personal narratives to the 20x24 Polaroid camera in the galleries of the Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego in the fall of 1983, I returned to my studio with the question, “What’s next?”. I could travel to the East Coast once a year to use the large format instant camera or using the 6 x 8’ tank, filled with water I could continue my vision of women in water photographing with the 4x5 film camera. The prose statement below mirrors my open water swimming in the ocean, reflecting the status of women in the 1980’s through metaphors of the Goddess and mortal women’s pursuit of both careers and motherhood swimming in the torrent waters of trying to have it all.

The Aqueous Myth

Summer . Hot . Air crisp with its own energy.

Still time to swim in the ocean.

Six o’clock. Kathleen at the usual place. The beach sand still warm. We hide our gear in the cove. Both in black speedos with latex caps the color of the garibaldis. Grease on her nose; no fog in my goggles.

Standing there facing the waves.

Sighting the buoys. The sun low, streaking across the blue green liquid. Feeling it with our feet. Letting it lap up our ankles. Warm soothing. El Niño again.

Seeing the rhythm of the sea.

Snapping on the goggles. Dive. Gasp. A breath. A second one. Suffused with the water.

Stroking. One, two, three, breathe. Kick, kick, kick, always kicking. We set out in the open ocean. Our heads underwater. Garibaldis---orange, wispy winged, floating fish---pop out against the rocks. The entire bottom bends back and forth with the current. We have no choice, but to become part of the motion.

Schools of fish scatter as each hand enters the water. Your palm pierces the surface. Pushes, pulls you through. You part globs of sea weed as it looms ominously in your path, sometimes scared it hides an evil creature intent to do harm.

Streaks of light penetrate the liquid that surrounds you and casts catheral-like colors on your body. Seductive. Sensuous. Soothing. Worshipping the ocean like a religious ritual. Revering and fearing its power.

Swimming.

Seconds. Minutes. A buoy. The farthest from shore. Goggled-eyed swimmers approach as we tread. Bubbles rise to the top revealing divers below. Filling our lungs, we plunge down deep to see. Silver, fluorescent colored, sleek moving sea bass, perch, tuna crabs and tiger sharks. Permanent residents of paradise. Simmering and suspended.

Surrounded by this embryonic fluid, it becomes the source. Symbols. Stories. Myths manifest, giving life to images. Illusions. Watery realities existing only in one’s mind. Suffocating. Clawing to the top. Resuscitated. Setting our sights on the pink hotel golden in the sunset.

Swimming. Swimming. Swimming. Realizing. You are an alien to this underworld. A bald headed, round-eye, slick skinned creature without fins and gills, blowing bubbles, never venturing to far from the sea’s surface. Each breath reconfirms you can never become part of this reality. You can only observe it.

For over a decade in the 1970’s I was active in photography, completing my education at the University of Southern California and California State University Fullerton and participating in the early beginnings of the Los Angeles Center for Photographic Studies along with exhibitions anywhere they were willing to show photographs.

With the advent of the woman’s movement, the unrest to end the Vietnam War and a pursuit by young “baby boomers” to question authority, love the one you are with and keep on truckin’, my early artwork assimilated all this collective energy including challenging what was photographic, especially rejecting the prevailing traditions of the silver print.

In recognizing this collective energy of that time, along with the desire of image makers in Los Angeles to be recognized for its contributions to contemporary art since 1945, the Getty Museum has supported arts venues throughout Southern California with its sponsorship of Pacific Standard Time: Art in LA 1945-1980.

My early work from Then and contemporary work from Now was on display at the DNJ Gallery, Santa Monica, Bergamot Station from November 19, 2011 - January 7, 2012. http://www.dnjgallery.net/artist_shouse.html

I am creating a chronology of artworks including special projects and transition images which further supports my practice as a working photographer.