Gardens and Gateways

    My current work includes a collection of inter-related mixed
    media books, paintings and prints created beginning around
    2000 and continuing to the present.  Each of the included
    segments interweaves my areas of interest as an artist.   My
    process is to employ my own drawings, photographs and
    prints in my work.  

    I also use collected materials, ephemera from previous projects,
    and found images.  Media include ink, paint, wax, sewing,
    collage and found objects.   Objects like tin niches (small places
    of worship) seem to echo the temple and garden entryways I
    have photographed and become a kind of gateway within a
    piece.                                                                                               
                          
    As a printmaker I have always been interested in the technical
    overlay of print methods and images.  I like to experiment with
    ways in which printmaking media may begin to come together
    with painting.  As well, the concept of the artist book as an
    object held in the hand or viewed closely thus creating an
    intimate interaction between artist and viewer, are all at the
    center of my visual exploration.  

    The un-named
    One series of large scale prints was begun in summer 2001 as
    an exploration into the myth of Persephone and her descent
    into the underworld.  Then the events 9/11 took place. The
    work was completed as a memorial to the thousands of
    anonymous people who were lost in the underworld of
    burning steel.  

    I have recently begun to re-work these images in terms of the
    un-named and faceless people who are caught in the violence
    of war or political situations beyond their control.  Are they
    sisters, fathers, mothers or children?  How much loss they
    must have experienced.  

    In my own life, the birth mothers of my daughters, though
    never to be known, are always present for me like ghosts of
    memories.  In her introduction to Karin Evans’ book, “Lost
    Daughters of China”, Anchee Min takes on the role of stern Ai-
    yi or auntie, telling the “raw truth” of their histories.  She tells
    the lost daughters that for their birth mothers, who for
    whatever tragic reason had to relinquish them, they will be
    forever “a broken arm hidden inside the sleeve.”

    Reclaiming the female body
    I have searched for an image that conveyed essential woman,
    not determined by notions of age or physical beauty or the
    gaze. Variations on a simple crouch or squat seem most
    compelling.  It is a stance of our daily life functions of giving
    birth, of elimination and of bathing.  This simple visual
    metaphor seems an appropriate starting point for reclaiming
    images of ourselves.

    These images are intended to transcend specific age and reveal
    the constant, internal and evolving self found in the private
    space of thought, body and the personal. The women’s bodies
    in each piece are close to life size and can be placed on the wall
    in order to create a dynamic exchange with the viewer.
                                                                   
    Buddhism
    On my first trip to China, I brought along a small book of one
    hundred poems by Han-shan from the T’ang Dynasty. These
    writings by the reclusive, yet deeply socially aware Buddhist
    monk who is thought to have lived anywhere between 627 and
    750 A.D.  I have returned to this volume many times.

    Here translated by Burton Watson is #29
    I spur my horse past the ruined city;
    The ruined city, that wakes the traveler’s thoughts:
    Ancient battlements, high and low;

    Old grave mounds, great and small.
    Where the shadow of the single tumbleweed trembles
    And the voice of the great trees clings forever,

    I sigh over all those common bones—
    No roll of the immortals bears their names.

    Han-shan’s poem echoed as I visited famous spots such as
    Xian’s Terracotta Warriors, the Forbidden City, and the Great
    Wall and most strongly when walking down an unknown
    street in a city or looking out a train window across fields lit
    with many little fires from farmers’ brush piles.  It was the
    unnamed souls of Han-shan’s poems, whose presence is strong
    in these places that have resonated most deeply for me.  China’
    s history in the recent centuries makes this sentiment more
    poignant.  

    Ancient images of the Buddha and the goddess, Guan Yin,
    who gives solace to the hurt and provides the blessing of
    children, evoke a place of contemplation and peace. As well I
    find the ever-transforming garden to be a compelling and
    hopeful visual metaphor.

    The works I have created contain layered levels, like pages,
    that become gateways to new images the same way garden or
    temple gateways invite exploration and evoke an ancient place
    often visited perhaps over multiple centuries by anonymous
    wanderers.
Anne Beidler---Artist Statement