Another Gifted Artist Who Has DID
December 9, 2011
Since I began this site I’ve discovered so many wonderfully talented artists, of all disciplines. Eventually I’d like to create a special collection featuring samples of each artist’s work, a short bio, and contact information. I’ve put together the beginnings of a list, here, for a start.
Art in Paradise: Thicker Skin
Artist Lisa Foster crafts self-portraits that examine a difficult past.
Thursday, December 08, 2011 By James Heflin
Lisa Foster’s “A Willful Assembly”
The word “quilting” tends to bring up images of industrious grandmothers, so it’s probably not the first thing that comes to mind as a medium for a fine-art examination of childhood abuse. But for artist Lisa Foster, reproduction quilting fabrics have become central to her work examining that difficult subject.
I recently spoke with Foster as she hung her canvases for Fragments, Threads and Other Stories: Art Works by Anne Krauss, Susie Reiss and Lisa Foster at the Hosmer Gallery in Northampton’s Forbes Library. She told me that to her, quilting fabric was an extremely feminine, maybe even the most feminine, medium. At her blog, Foster says, “The fabrics soothe me and they soothe [the figures]. They cover their nakedness, heal some wounds, give them back some dignity. The fabrics are thicker skin.”
Though her art openly reflects her childhood abuse, she seems intent on creating work that is not dependent on knowing its context. She has succeeded. The human form may be a timeworn subject, but Foster’s canvases—which consist only of monochrome backgrounds and patchwork-filled figures—are captivating.
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Read the rest of the article: http://www.valleyadvocate.com/article.cfm?aid=14389
Visit Lisa Foster’s website: www.lisaafoster.com/
And yet more Art, Art, Art…
February 24, 2011
Ray Caesar, the Canadian artist who turned down Madonna
AMY VERNER
From Saturday’s Globe and Mail
Ray Caesar requests that we meet at a Starbucks in Toronto’s PATH, a system of bland subterranean walkways beneath the city’s financial district, where a sea of people in dark suits creates an energy that is at once frenetic and mind-numbing.
He’s wearing a black turtleneck sweater. His eyes are soft, his smile is gentle. At 52, his hair is more salt than pepper. You might mistake him for a mid-level office hack grabbing a coffee on casual Friday.
Could this really be the artist behind the eerily beautiful, otherworldly and rather disturbing canvases (dames with spider legs, girls eating flies) hanging on the walls of such boldface buyers as shock rocker Marilyn Manson? The same guy who corresponds with Madonna? Who was recruited to work with fashion demigod Riccardo Tisci? Shouldn’t he look more like Edward Scissorhands? Or at least Karl Lagerfeld?
Don’t be fooled.
Ceasar acknowledges head-on just how complex he is. He’s chosen the seemingly uninspired venue for our meeting, he explains, because he’s “slightly agoraphobic,” and his anxiety about being outdoors is eased when he can sit down to sketch at various points along this vast web of underground corridors. He also struggles with dissociative identity disorder: more commonly known as multiple personality disorder. He also insists he was born a dog.
More at the link… http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/ray-caesar-the-canadian-artist-who-turned-down-madonna/article1886463/page1/
Artwork by Shirley A. Mason, aka Sybil on view
February 23, 2011
Exhibit gives Lexington its first real look at artwork by ‘Sybil’
By Candace Chaney Contributing Arts Writer
For almost a quarter of a century, a simple home on Henry Clay Boulevard secretly housed a celebrity, unbeknownst to Lexingtonians.
Even friends and neighbors did not know the true identity of Shirley Mason until she died in 1998, when it was revealed that Mason was not just the quiet, pleasant lady next door who sold art out of her home and enjoyed gardening and prayer.
She was Sybil Dorsett, the subject of a 1973 book by Flora Rheta Schreiber and a 1976 TV movie, starring Sally Field, about Mason’s struggle with dissociative identity disorder.
Suffering cruel physical and emotional abuse at the hands of her mother, Mason coped by developing 16 distinct personalities, all which were successfully integrated after working with psychiatrist Cornelia Wilbur for more than a decade.
After Wilbur moved to Lexington to join the psychiatry faculty at the University of Kentucky, a healthy, integrated Mason followed, living the remainder of her days in peace.
Headley-Whitney Museum
Headley-Whitney Museum
Doves in Flight is part of the exhibit of work by Shirley A. Mason, aka Sybil.
Details:
The Hidden Art of Sybil & Her Other Selves: Shirley A. Mason
When: Through March 27. Hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Fri.; noon-5 p.m. Sat., Sun.
Where: Headley-Whitney Museum, 4435 Old Frankfort Pike
Admission: $10 adults, $7 ages 62 and older and students, free for ages 5 and youngerInfo: (859) 255-6653, Headley-whitney.org
Comments Requested
July 20, 2010
The Diva thinks this short video is very strong in some ways, but she has issues with the beginning and setting which may make for a dramatic set-up but don’t help with stigmatizing perceptions. What do you think?