INSIDE-OUTSIDE

Rebecca Vander Sys

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Art

Department of Art

Central Michigan University
Mount Pleasant, Michigan
November, 1999

Accepted by the Faculty of the College of Graduate Studies, Central Michigan University, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Masters degree

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am deeply grateful to the members of the Thesis Committee: Sally Rose, Nedra Frodge, Jerry G. Smoke, and the late David Fisher. These faculty members provided valuable guidance, encouragement, and inspiration throughout the entire project. I am also very thankful for the support, cooperation, encouragement, and inspiration from my family and friends.

ABSTRACT

by Rebecca Vander Sys

For years I have struggled with these issues:

• What I see is not what I end up with,
• What I see happening is not what another person sees happening,
• What I feel is the opposite of what another person feels,
• What a person says is different from what they feel or mean,
• How you care for someone does not determine how you are cared for,
• How my feelings can change so amazingly much.

My goal is to visually express the idea that people have an inside and outside layer of personality, an outer layer shown to the world and an inner layer kept private, and that these layers may change from day to day and year to year. I incorporate multiple media and the experiences of life to explore variations on this theme.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER

1. INTRODUCTION
2. BACKGROUND
3. EHXIBIT
• Black Box
• Sunset Face
• Cactus Face
• Faces of the Past
• Door Face
• Veiled Time Face
• Faded Face
• Profile Face
4. CONCLUSION
5. REFERENCES

INTRODUCTION

I chose the mask as a unifying form. For centuries, masks have hid or changed a face for religious and ritual purposes, protection, funerals and theater (McKay 6). A mask represents the human face and tends to draw in the viewer. The masks in this exhibit show inside images different from those on the outside. The outside mask is the face that is revealed to the world while the inside mask is the face that is kept private, so private that in some cases it may not even be explored by the individual to whom it belongs. It seems that we all have various layers of personality and emotion and that each new experience becomes part of that composite. As a metaphor for this aspect of our selves, I have chosen to use composite images and multiple layers in creating these masks.

BACKGROUND

Artists who have pushed the limits in their fields, M.C. Escher, Jerry Uelsmann, Bea Nettles, Barbara Hewitt and Deidre Scherer, have influenced the pieces in this exhibit. Escher takes an image and creates an illusion by repeating and distorting it. As he explains, "In my prints I try to show that we live in a beautiful and orderly world and not in a chaos without norms, as we sometimes seem to. I cannot help mocking all our unwavering certainties. It is, for example, great fun deliberately to confuse two and three dimensions, the plane and space, or to poke fun at gravity." (Escher 7) I admire his work and his impressive example influences any illusions used in this exhibit.

Jerry Uelsmann's ideas about photography have been strongly influential. Uelsmann wanted to extend the creative process beyond the fall of the shutter. For Uelsmann, the exposure is only the beginning of the photographic process. His ideas develop in the darkroom, his "visual research laboratory," where he relies on "intuition" and "in-process discovery" to combine multiple negatives (Uelsmann 445, 446, Bunnell 1). He considers the aim of art to be this type of discovery and not the solving of formal problems. Uelsmann often uses his own negatives in more than one print, or even several times in the same print. He claims that initially he "had a hang-up about using the same negative several times," but he came upon a book by Picasso that had "infinite variations on a theme" and it freed him to use his own negatives repeatedly. Uelsmann applies the term "negative" more loosely than the majority of today's photographers. For Uelsmann, photography is simply the use of "light sensitive material" (Uelsmann 447).

Fabric artists have also been an inspiration. In her 1971 work "Road and Rainbow," Betty Hahn used stitching to add color accents to a gum bichromate image (Rosenblum 576). Because I have a background in photography and fiber arts, the combination was intriguing. Barbara Hewitt designed a large fabric cyanotype jacket on color fabric. Both her use of color fabric as a base for a photographic image and her creation of such a large cyanotype was inspiring. Kathleen Deneris' quilt "Eden Lost" combines cyanotype and appliqué, an innovation that pushed my conception of both fiber and photography. (Laury 117) Bea Nettles has worked extensively with composite images. Her photo media "cookbook" and alternative photo processes have been a great help in exploring this new technique. In January 1999, I saw Deidre Scherer's exhibition at the Dennos Museum in Traverse City. Although she does not work with photo processes, she uses multiple colors and fibers to create expressive images. In addition to her exhibition, Scherer's lecture and slide presentation where she described her processes and ideas about connecting women to fiber arts was very inspiring and a strong motivation to use fabric medium.

Art experiences have included a wide range of media. Norman Averill, a Northwestern Michigan College ceramics instructor, suggested I find one medium and stick with it. I have not followed his advice at all, though he made a major impression in other ways. He explained things in practical terms and always encouraged students to make their own tools and create their own methods. This thinking appeared again in metals classes with Diane Hubert, also an instructor at Northwestern Michigan College, who encouraged students to make their own tools and approach art from a problem-solving perspective. Training in photography includes a variety of black and white, color, digital and alternative methods learned from Dave Fisher, photography instructor at Central Michigan University. I have also taught ceramics at the junior high level for several years.

Although I enjoy working with many media, fiber arts continue to exert a strong and recurring pull. Since the age of 10, when my mother first helped with making a skirt, sewing has been an important and continuous part of my life. Throughout high school I made all the clothing I wore. Some years later, while job-hunting in Marquette, Michigan, the owner of a small leather shop hired me immediately when he discovered I had sewn everything I was wearing. I worked there several years and later owned a garment leather business. During this time, I designed leather garments such as coats, pants, vests, and handbags. Later I did piece work for a fabric sculptor and sewed boat covers. In this exhibit, I have sought to combine the experience from years of sewing and working with fabric with formal academic ideas regarding art.

As a young person growing up on a large family farm, I found books to be a particularly appealing escape. This love of books later resulted in choosing library science as a minor in school. As an adult, I looked to books not only for escape but also for guidance when raising children, when struggling to figure out relationships, when a marriage was crumbling. I sometimes think I am addicted to books. Given this relationship with books and art background, a bookmaking class lead by Sally Rose, an instructor at Central Michigan University, was a natural step. These influences are evident in the form of the hinged book-like shape of the masks in this exhibit.

Personal relationships have influenced this exhibit as strongly as the varied art experiences. Symbolism in each piece reflects a deeply moving experience and nearly every component of every mask is a metaphor for some aspect of the experience. The stabbing face, the crazed mirror, the veil, all convey an idea of life lived during some period. In turn, the process of creating these pieces as artful expressions has helped clarify the significance and power these experiences have held over me.

EXHIBIT

Because the format of this work is not traditional, I used a journal/sketch book to brainstorm, organize thoughts, and turn ideas into a physical reality. I knew for some time the exhibit theme would be Inside-Outside and that I would use fabric and photography. However, early in the project I did not know exactly what form I would use. The first attempts at finding a form happened during a paper making class on Beaver Island with Sally Rose. I made several six-inch figurines by pressing handmade paper into a plaster mold. I employed a variety of techniques to express the Inside-Outside idea: two colors of paper in each figurine; a body with a keyhole that revealed an interior different from the exterior; attaching different fibers and other materials to each side of the figurine.

The next attempt in developing the Inside-Outside idea resulted in the Black Box piece, which appears in the exhibit. This was the first time I experimented with masks. In the Black Box piece, two masks appear one above the other with each mask expressing some aspect of the person represented. With these masks, the inner qualities of the person represented appear on the outside.

The next generation of masks branched into a new area an the form used for remaining masks in this exhibit. The masks would be two-sided with the Inside-Outside metaphor used more literally. At first, I did not know how to I would put fabric over the form of a face or how to make the inside of the mask visible to the viewer. One evening, as my son played with a netted onion bag, I said it looked like a good idea for a costume. Stitching fabric to the cheeks or nose could work with some framework for attachment. Three days later, I realized that a wire mesh would serve as the foundation for the masks.

I tried using metal window screen as the mask foundation but the screen would not hold its shape. Next, I tried a hardware cloth but it was too stiff to form fine features. It was, however, stiff enough to hold a basic shape. I cut a piece with arched top and straight bottom edge and the shape of a face emerged. The arch would be an abstract reference to the sacred quality of our humanity. Openings for eyes or a mouth gives further impression of a face. Most of the masks attach to a mirror using a hinge along one edge. Hinged, the mask opens like a book and uses the mirror to allow the viewer to "read" the inside and enter a private realm. These, then, became the basic shapes and structures of the masks.

CONCLUSION

This project has been a process of discovery and I am constantly searching for new ways to express the ideas represented in the exhibit pieces. The pieces use varied media, particularly photography and fiber arts. Though once advised to pick one medium and stay with it, I find that using a variety of techniques and media works best. The examples of other artists who have pushed the boundaries of their own medium or who have incorporated multiple techniques have inspired me to experiment and explore. The project has also been a vehicle for personal discovery as it relates to the creative process.

REFERENCES