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Repository 235: Changing Patterns
On the eve of my daughter’s graduation, big launch, and leaving the family nest, I am in a proud moment of grief and growth. I am feeling the most unusual mix of emotions. As always, art is my salve. Preemptively grieving last winter I was looking at a recent series of work by Colin Kippen. The work centers on disposable banal objects turned into brute, cement, permanent, and un-budging objects attached to the walls of a coffee shop in Portland….
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Repository 231: God Nose | The Radical Position of the Immaterial in Olfactory Art
Consequently, everything that concerns creativity is invisible, is a purely spiritual substance. And this work, with this invisible substance, is what I call “social sculpture.” This work with invisible substance is my domain, at first, there is nothing to see. Subsequently, when it becomes corporeal it appears initially in the form of a language. -Joseph Beuys Olfactory art’s immaterial qualities, you cannot see it, disrupts systems of representation. This silent and borderless focus is a radical reaction to the hyper-retinal,…
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Repository 228: Elephants and Smelly Art
I am honored to be a panelist on today’s Digital Scent Festival Panel on Scent + Art + Design. While the topic is humungous and seriously multi-faceted, it’s terrific to have this dialogue with a broader audience. Here is a resource list to help the curious get started on a pilgrimage to discover materials and practices. Thankfully some have vibrant online presences: A Library of Olfactive Material, Glasgow Scotland Aroma Workshop, Chicago Aftel Archive of Curious Scents, Berkeley, CA Experimental…
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Repository 227: Things to Do with Your Hands and Head
This week I am a panelist for the inaugural Digital Scent Festival. I have been asked to speak with two other panelists about scent, art and design. No small feat to do virtually, I’m excited for the challenge. It’s informal, so that’s the good news. Send me in advance questions you might want discussed. I will be sure to post highlights of topics covered. The event is May 7, 10 AM PST, here are the details and please RSVP. The…
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Repository 226: Mixed Reality | The Debilitating Forces of Moral Outrage & Conspiracy Theories in a Time of Pandemics
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.” – A Tale of Two Cities (1859) Charles Dickens As an artist in this pandemic, I feel at a great…
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Repository 224: The Flower, The Witch and the Pool Toy
Below is my artist statement for the exhibition I will have in Portland in March. Please save the date for the opening, and come say hi! Saturday, March 7, 2020, 6-8 PM, Luke’s Frame Shop (Albina Street location) The Flower the Witch and the Pool Toy: New work by Catherine Haley Epstein Her language does not contain, it carries; it does not hold back, it makes possible. When id is ambiguously uttered-the wonder of being several-she doesn’t defend herself against…
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Repository 220: Aromatica Poetica Review of Esxence
Realizing some Mindmarrow readers might not have seen the post on SM – I’m excited to share that the following essay is featured in Aromatica Poetica, a journal dedicated to all things scent founded by Leona Godin. She asked if I could review the Esxence event, where I was in April to do a workshop on art and the niche scent landscape from an American (and artist’s) perspective. She kindly edited and published the work, and I recommend you follow…
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Repository 217: Hilma’s Project
After a transcontinental red eye from the West coast, I dropped my bags in the West Village and took the subway uptown. On twenty-eight hours of no sleep, I arrived at the Guggenheim to see the “Hilma af Klimt: Paintings for the Future” show. This was a pilgrimage, as a woman artist who knows 100 percent that we have not been given our due in the art world, that our natural creativity and depth of thinking have not been explored…
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Repository 215: When the Private Must be Public | Interrogating the Home in Art
One had to build shelters. One had to make pockets and live inside them. -Lorrie Moore, Like Life. Vintage, 1990 If home is sweet home, then why is the domestic sound terrifying? Horror stories are rooted around a home, or collection of homes we call a town. Countless artists have avoided direct representation of the home unless it’s a subversive attempt to expose the dark, inner sanctum of the familiar. Naturally artists remove sweetness from the domestic. Sweetness is heavy,…
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Repository 213: Happy Birthday Jasper Johns!
The habit of regarding “art” as a thing apart from life is fatal to the development of taste. – Edith Wharton Dear Mr. Johns, I am writing to wish you the happiest of birthdays! It was a pleasure to see all of your work two weeks ago at the Broad Museum in Los Angeles. Despite the pomp of the Broad, “Resembling the Truth” was an intimate retrospective, full of important work from your private collection, as well as the major…
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