dilettante, devotee, amateur.

I make art not because I am a degreed artist nor because I am a curator. I make art because I have a love and admiration of it and - by the word's pure definition - I am an amateur.

These photos are of bits and pieces of a work in progress. This work, tentatively called Weft/Warp is made from the comb like parts of old looms which, originally, are wood with metal tines and are used with the open side facing down. However, once they enter my realm, they quickly abandon their original function; they are turned on end and meant to be seen as the independent objects that I saw when I first laid eyes on them. What struck me about these things as objects were the regimental way in which their individual parts could be seen as a whole if viewed from the proper angle. I continued that exploration by painting each of the tines a bright "fashion color" - a topic about which I am very curious. Once assigned a color, the individuals stand out when viewed from front on, but when looked at from an increasingly oblique angle, they "fall in" to their line and quickly are read as one solid form, as the spaces between are foreshortened and therefore become imperceptible. This implied whole made of individuals separated by color is an obvious metaphorical response to so many issues in our world today. I don't have to be didactic here for you to perhaps get what I'm implying. In fact, for once, the inference is of no interest to me. I hope it's clear, but if not, that's okay. This work functions on a lot of levels and for that I'm happy. Ultimately, I like the resulting form and the colors please me. I used to criticize such a shallow response to art. No longer.

I get it.

let's start at the very beginning...

So, it all started here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZDHfVitXLQ&feature=related

Well, actually, it started when Maria von Trapp sold her story to a German publisher for $9,000 and signed away all rights to it. Her story, which varied greatly from the eventual musical, was made into a film in Germany in 1956 which, in turn, was dubbed in English here in the United States. It was this film that caught Mary Martin's eye and that led her to bring the story to musical theater through the music of Rogers and Hamerstein. From that stage show, came what we now know as the Sound of Music. Interesting how similar this film seems to the mega-hit we know today.

my favorite things.

movie still from The Sound of Music, 1964











album cover from the RCA Victor original soundtrack of
The Sound of Music, 1964

I am about to reveal one of the biggest pet peeves of my childhood. Although it wasn't big to anyone else, it sheds light on the kinds of things that I spent my time thinking about and just exactly what kind of adult I would become. It has to do with this album cover and what I saw as the dishonesty of the graphic representation of the characters portrayed there.

The Sound of Music. I was obsessed with it. I listened to it repeatedly on the "Hi-Fi" in our downstairs family room. I portrayed the entire story in puppets (which was no easy matter when it came to the puppet show portion of the story...think puppets doing puppets...I only have two hands). I knew every single word by heart. I still do.

So, imagine the heartbreak I felt when I realized that the marketing department of RCA Victor had desecrated my beloved Maria, the Captain and those 7 dahhhling children for a sexier, more modern color palette on the original soundtrack album cover. Hello? Maria never wore a pink dress. The Captain would have never worn a khaki jacket with offset lapels, let alone contrasting trousers. And the children, oh, the children. Well, suffice it to say that those drapes from which their play clothes were made were not, I repeat, not a color that might have been called "Banan-appeal"...what was this, the Sound of Music Vegas Revue?

This was, however, my first introduction to creative license and the steps that companies will take to make things more attractive to the buying public - not that that musical needed it. I suppose that in 1964, when the film was made, it might have seemed too sentimental or traditional for some record buyers. I can just hear the discussion in the meeting right now:

First Record Executive: "So, let me get this straight. We're going to have this chick on the cover running up a hill with 7 children behind her?"
Graphic Artist: "uh...Yes, that's right."
Second Record Executive: "Hmmm...and you say she's holding a guitar?"
Graphic Artist: "Yes, in one hand and...um...and a carpet bag in the other."
First Record Executive: "A carpet bag? You've got to be kidding. A carpet bag and a guitar, isn't that a little 'folksy'? Where'd she come from, a nunnery? Is the chick at least a looker? I mean, does she have nice legs...anything we can work with, here?"
Graphic Artist: "Well, you don't really see her legs in the movie, so I don't know, but I suppose we could..."
Third Record Executive: "Nevermind about that for now. What about the guy? Where's the guy in the picture?"
Graphic Artist: "Well, he's sort of over off to the side...looking stern."
Second Record Executive: "Stern? People don't want stern. People want happy. This is really not good. um...What are they wearing?"
Graphic Artist: "Well, the girl is wearing a brown jumper, the man is wearing a grey Austrian suit with loden green lapels and the children...you're gonna love this...the children are wearing play clothes that the governess girl - you know the one with the guitar? - made out of green and white patterned drapes! Isn't that just too much?"
First Record Executive: "It's not too much...in fact, it's not enough."
Second Record Executive: "He's right...this is definitely NOT groovy enough for our time. People want something hip, something sexy. They don't want children dressed in upholstery."
Third Record Executive: "Okay...here's what we're going to do. Make the chick's dress bright pink and try to accentuate her curves. And raise the hem on her dress. Let's see a little leg."
First Record Executive: "I like it. And the guy...well, let's give him a bit of style, too. Something...I don't know...think 'Elvis'. But that still leaves the kids. What to do about the kids?"
Second Record Executive: "Well, the oldest is a beauty and has a great little figure. Let's put all of the other kids downhill from her, put her front and center with her arms back so we see...well, so that she's the one we see. And, PLEASE, don't use the patterned curtains on the clothes - even if that is how the costumer designed them. Let's change the color. Let's change it to...hmmm...I know - change it to the color of the sun...people are really diggin' the sun these days."
Graphic Artist: "But, excuse me...um...sirs...that's not the way the movie looks and this IS, afterall, the soundtrack for the movie, isn't it?"
First Record Executive: "Don't get wrapped up in the details, kid. People will never notice. Well, most people won't...unless you're some third grade girl in Texas who becomes obsessed with the movie...but how many of those could there be?"
[everybody laughs]

enter.

Mary Mikel Stump
post/lintel
wood, gesso, graphite, acrylic paint, plumb-bob, string, branch, metal tubing


















enter. (verb)

1. to go in.

2. to be admitted into a school, competition, etc.

3. to make a beginning.

4. to move upon the stage (as in stage directions.)

Well, there you have it. ENTER. The word itself implies moving through some sort of portal, be it real or metaphor. That one little word is my own personal battle cry for this, my 46th year on the earth. As an artist who practices in quasi-obscurity, it's hard to not seek solace in the saying, "...if you build it, they will come." Guess what? It just isn't so.

After subtle encouragement from the universe, I have promised myself that I would make efforts to show more often and respond to more Call for Entries. Whether the work is accepted or not is insignificant. This is about setting goals and carrying through. This is about doing the things that it will take to encourage myself to continue to grow as an artist. This is about looking at the work through a critical eye - either mine or the eye of the critic or curator who accepts or denies it. This, ultimately, is about what Robert Henri called The Art Spirit. Henri (1865 - 1929), who led the Ashcan School movement in art, and attracted a large, intensely personal group of followers, would not relate directly to his students while they were working; instead he would return to the classroom when it was empty, observe the various works of his students, and leave them notes to encourage and give direction to their work. Mostly these notes were poetic, metaphorical, oblique to the actual work. That is what we cannot give ourselves when we try to be our own critics. So instead, I have set forth on a course that I hope will give me small "notes" by which I can navigate my creative practice.

I decided to start by entering the work pictured here, post/lintel, which is by far the most formal of the body of work from which it comes. It refers to the most basic of structural relationships in architecture - and metaphorically, the most basic of human relationships in society. The post and lintel system is one in which two upright members, the posts, hold up a third member, the lintel, laid horizontally across their top surfaces. The lintel must bear loads that rest on it as well as its own load without deforming or breaking. It also refers to our ever changing relationship to the natural world, as we change our perceptions of nature by the ways in which we increasingly view it through our manipulation of the world, manifested in the built form. I could go on and on about what the work means - illuminating each little detail. I could talk about how the use of white obscures the detail of the built form and reduces it to a mere series of subtly changing values. I could talk about the colors selected and the way they layer upon each other on a basic tool of construction like the plumb-bob speaks to the thickening of our influence based on the next "trend in building." I could talk about the relationship between that plumb-bob that exists in the "interior" space of the work and it's physical connection to the "exterior" in the way it "pours" out the back of the sculptural structure. However, when it is all said and done, my descriptions, explanations and justifications matter not if those things are not apparent to the viewer.

And so it goes...my experiment to put myself...uh, I mean my work...out there to see what is resonant and what is not. It's an exciting practice.
I can't wait to see what comes of it.

Know Thyself.

Mary Mikel Stump
Corsicana Home for Widows & Orphans
2005
wood, glass, thread, wooden spools, wire, found photographs








[details]
























"Know thyself'? If I knew myself, I'd run away!"
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

My grandmother was an orphan. Having lost their parents at a young age, she and her sister grew up in a home for widows and orphans in a small east Texas town. This work is about them.

She used to speak of blowing bubbles out of wooden spools as a source of entertainment, as toys were scarce there and when I found these photos from a girls' school in San Antonio, it made me think of how odd it is that these photographs - tangible residue of memorable experiences - were then abandoned and left to decay on the shelf of a junk store.
Memories are like that, really. They are held dearly, then let go - as ephemeral and fragile as the bubble in which they reside.

It is through the practice of art-making that I come the closest to knowing myself. Not the "self" that I want others to see, but the honest bits of self to which even I don't have access. Is it the fact that we are not self conscious during the creative practice or that we are so distracted by the task that we don't notice it coming out?
Either way, I'm grateful for the portal in and the time and inclination to go through it.

hallowed halls.

A hall by any other name would be:


anteroom, entrance hall, lobby, reception, corridor, and my personal favorite [*she plants tongue in cheek here*] - foyer (especially when it's pronounced, "foiyay").

The word foyer came into vogue circa 1855 and it referred to the use of the fireplace or hearth in the anterooms of theaters where patrons would go in between acts to get/stay warm. Charming.

One of the things I love the most about our antique house is its central hall - or foyer, if you will. This space, which will from this point on be referred to as the Entry Hall (because I just can't do the "F" word), is literally the backbone of our house. In their day, not only did these halls provide for the circulation of people that would be separate from the formal living spaces, so as to not interrupt the social gathering taking place in parlors and dining rooms, they were once "central" in the ventilation of these old homes. In today's homes, the large central hall might seem like an extraneous or even extravagant "waste" of precious square feet, but historically they were designed as an open corridor from the front of the house to the back, aligning with a central front and rear door that provided increased air flow and ventilation in the hot and humid Southern climate.

I recently finished reading The Bucolic Plague, by Josh Kilmer-Purcell about his transplanted "Best Life" in Sharon Springs, New York. The Beekman Mansion, which he and his partner purchased in 2007, was built in 1802 and the author goes into great detail about the life they are living there. I have to say I was disappointed he didn't describe, in detail, the house itself. Kilmer-Purcell's brevity aside, he did provide copious details about the Entry and the cross axis of the central halls...one that runs North & South and one that runs East & West. That's when it hit me. What originally sold me on our house - built over 100 years after the Beekman - was the dynamic energy provided by the Entry Hall and stairwell. It is still one of my favorite "rooms" and it isn't even a room. It is precisely this type of space in these vintage homes that provide a graciousness that doesn't happen in the architecture of suburbia now. For example, if our cone of vision is between 40 and 60 degrees, that means that we are not really experiencing a space until we are 5 feet into it, as we cannot see the things in our peripheral vision. What that really means to us is that a tiny little entry area that is only 5 feet long might as well not even be there, since as soon as we come through the door we are already in the next space, visually speaking.

When we look at these spaces through our "21st century, air-conditioned and heated modern- convenienced glasses", we judge these spaces as expendable. However, if we look at them as they were intended to function through "new-fangled pursuit of sustainability glasses", what we see is that the sometimes-architects-but-more-often-carpenters who built these homes knew exactly what they were doing - that everything had a purpose and was deliberately placed...either for social or operational mechanisms.
They just got it.

Each morning while I'm having my coffee in our northeast facing breakfast room, I think to myself how lovely the light is. The cleverness of the Fourqurean family and J.W. McBride, the carpenter who built this place for them in 1921, is not lost on me 89 years later.

"To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, that is genius....I shun father and mother and wife and brother when my genius calls me. I would write on the lintels of the door post, Whim. I hope it is somewhat better than whim at last, but we cannot spend the day in explanation." - Emerson, Self-Reliance


Mary Mikel Stump
Whim
[2002]
old window, paint, prismacolor pencil, candle, found objects

admitting you've got a problem is the first step.

me:
My name is Mary Mikel and I am addicted to birds.
imaginary 12 Step group:
[in unison] Hi, Mary Mikel.



This is how the beginnings of my 12 Step Program of choice would go. Well, actually, you could insert the word "lamps", "chairs", "tables" or "unnecessary objects" for the word "birds" and it would pretty much go the same way.

I must confess it, though...of all my vices, birds would be the hardest habit to kick.

I guess it started early for me. I've got a lot of connections with the bird form. I'm not proud: I'll admit to playing that John Denver/Olivia Newton John song, Fly Away on my record player over and over again.

When I need support or guidance, my grandmother comes to me in the form of a roadrunner. My spirit guide is a raven. I love the sound of the doves and owls that live in our back yard...and even the grackles that perform what my son used to call the "afternoon bird show" in our town.

When I had a hard time getting pregnant and staying pregnant, it was the sparrow who had made a nest for her eggs in my gardening clog that first told me that "this one would stick" - and she came back again when I was pregnant with my second son.

It's ironic, really, because I don't even like to fly, so it's not that I'm wishing to leave the nest, it's just that there's something so magical about birds. These tiny little creatures who can go higher and farther on their wings than we can on our feet. They signal the passing of the seasons when they fly in formation overhead. They give us hope each spring and their nests are some of the most beautiful sculptural forms that I've seen.

There's little more that you need for entertainment than a bird bath and a bird feeder. Those two things make for the best people watching that birds can provide. Truth be told, the more I know of people, the better I like birds.
They may fly in and out of your life, but they are nothing if not consistent.

running with scissors.

A few years ago, a friend gave me this little book of The Amazing Paper Cuttings of Hans Christian Andersen for Christmas and it has become one of my favorites. I can't imagine making one of these with hours of concentration and planning, let alone doing it spontaneously while I tell a story. Andersen, the Danish storyteller who is best known for writing fairy tales such as The Little Mermaid, The Ugly Duckling, The Emperor's New Clothes and The Steadfast Tin Soldier, also made hundreds - perhaps thousands - of paper cuttings. Often he made the cuttings while he was telling a fairy tale, then gave them to the children listening to him. Although he would not use the papercuts as a means of illustrating the story he was telling, Andersen employed the same imagery found in his stories - that of swans, clowns, toy theaters, windmills, angels and other whimsical images. It's hard to know how many of these jewels he actually made, since many were not completed and many did not survive...due to not only the fragility of the medium (paper) but also the playful nature of the recipients.
So, this is what they did for entertainment in the evenings in the mid 1800's. This is how they entertained and occupied their children. hmmm...I'm inspired.

PEEL : BANANA : SHELL : ______

"Analogies, it is true, decide nothing, but they can make one feel more at home."
- Sigmund Freud



drawing by my son, Whitaker Reid, Fourth Grade

It's that time of year. The time of year when every teacher across the state hands the standardized tests to their students and just crosses their fingers that some-how,way or where their students were listening throughout the previous 9 months. Now, I've learned that analogies have found their way into said testing. I don't remember being tested on analogies - if I had been, I would have loved it. These little word puzzles are the way I do my communicating about 85% of the time. It's hard to get through a conversation with me without being subjected to at least one, "It's like..." It's the only way I know to make sense of situations. Freud's right - it doesn't really solve anything, but it sure makes the conversation feel like home. It's kind of like...oh well, nevermind. Below, you'll find some winners from a Washington Post humor contest of a decade ago...enjoy.


He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.

Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.

He was as tall as a six-foot, three-inch tree.

The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn’t.

Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.

John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.

Even in his last years, Granddad had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long it had rusted shut.

Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.

The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.

The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.