innovative our classes good a
non-violent action be used against Isis
you’ve been a better artful the biggest
Dorothy Gale Dorothy Gale is a young
girl who lives on a farm in the vast
gray dry dusty Kansas landscape you may
have heard of her she’s the one who
lives with her Aunt Em and Uncle Henry
and living and working on this farm day
in and day out this is Dorothy’s world
but then one day something crazy happens
to Dorothy a huge tornado roared onto
her farm and it picked up her house off
of its foundation and tossed it into the
air with Dorothy inside of it Dorothy
happened to fall asleep during this uh
but when she woke up she walked over to
the front door and she opened it she
stepped down out onto something yellow
and she looked around and realized that
she was no longer in great Kansas
anymore she was in fact in the most
beautiful colorful landscape that she
had ever seen so how does Dorothy
actually cope with this um some of us
might recall that at first she’s
bewildered but she also just wants to
get the hell out Dorothy wants to go
home and be with Aunt Em and Uncle Henry
again but as Dorothy travels along this
yellow brick road and a pair of brand
new shoes she begins to make friends
lifelong friends she also helps solve
socio-political issues while she’s in Oz
and and she does all of this without
ever forgetting her roots where she came
from the people who loved her most and
most in the in the tools that they
taught her Dorothy’s life in Oz was now
the foundation that she was building
upon I am fascinated by this very idea
my artwork is about the ways in which
our formative experiences such as
surviving a tornado or going to a new
country for the first time or
experiencing the death of a loved one
continue to impact our daily lives which
can include our behaviors our health and
the way we perceive and interact
with the world now my approach is to
take stories from my childhood and make
art out of them and so I build and I
paint and I draw and I perform works of
art that try to explain why it is I’m
feeling the way that I’m feeling about a
situation and when in my lifetime I may
have learned to feel this way and how
society prefers I do or do not share
these emotions with you the outside
world and so I feel a kinship with
Dorothy and I have for some time over
the years my mom saved for me toys and
photographs and I’m particularly drawn
to surprise surprise the ones that
remind me of my love for the movie The
Wizard of a US and so I look at these
Polaroid images in these toys and I pull
iconography from them which might
include ruby shoes yellow bricks blue
and white gingham patterns and I infused
them into the artwork in an effort to
share my thoughts and emotions with the
viewer now the first time that Dorothy
tries to leave oz she’s told that she
needs a pair of magical shoes in fact
it’s the shoes she’s been wearing this
entire time some of us might recall a
beautiful image of judy garland standing
in a pair of ruby slippers such as you
see right now and chanting the words
there’s no place like home for me in
this instant though it’s the moment when
Dorothy realizes she has both the tools
she needs and the experience necessary
to achieve her goal which was to go home
that continues to influence me so now
I’d like to share a short story of my
own with you just over a year ago my mom
passed away it was unexpected and when
we left the hospital I had on my person
a backpack full of the clothes that she
wore to the hospital before she passed
away which included a pair of purple
croc shoes now just not long after this
I decided that what I wanted to do was
transform this humble pair of sandals
croc shoes into a pair of shoes that
looked
worthy of delivering my mom to heaven or
home as she thought of it and so over
the course of three months I applied one
piece of glitter at a time to this pair
of shoes until they looked worthy of the
part when I was finished i placed the
shoes on a children’s wagon alongside
some yellow bricks and some fabric
swatches that I’d cut out of the clothes
that my mom had worn right before she
died and my husband drove us to the
property where I grew up that mom dad
and I called home for 19 years and I
pulled this wagon around the property in
an outfit inspired by Dorothy Gale and I
began to take those fabric swatches and
form them into poppy flowers and I
placed them around my person in the
grass alongside of me I then picked up
my mom’s ruby slippers I place them over
my heart and I laid down and took solace
in the moment this ritual took place
just a few months after my mom died and
had its core it was my attempt to feel
spiritually and physically surrounded by
my mom again and so part of this ritual
was indeed filmed just what you’re
seeing right now and then it was later
exhibited in a gallery in a show called
give pause for thought which was a call
to action for the viewer and the film
was exhibited with yellow bricks which
signified my mom’s memories her ruby
shoes and some living materials which
included native Oregon bleeding hearts
grasses fragrant smelling sweet alyssum
and lobelia flowers and it was all
brought together to share with the
viewer the notion that the transition
from life to death these plants were
allowed to die over the course of four
weeks in this gesture for me further
illustrated that my mom is no longer
here on this earth tending to her own
so what do I mean by that we each
present a face to the outside world that
is but the tip of the iceberg and where
each influenced by our past and subtle
or more obvious ways with each new
challenge and memory we place an
individual yellow brick in our yellow
brick roads and this constant work of
becoming an evolving and building as
human beings requires us to learn new
tools for coping because when we don’t
have these tools for coping we can fall
prey and victim to our own L unhealthy
behaviors and sadly this is something
so switching gears for just a moment
wheelbarrows what about them there’s a
bunch of them so wheelbarrows in my work
then signify the hard work that it takes
for each of us to build and maintain our
yellow brick roads as we pave our ways
through life in this exhibition in this
instance there were two wheelbarrows
this is give pause for thought when a
small one is large one has yellow bricks
in it one has grass in it so knowing the
context of this artwork you might be
thinking well maybe it’s a
mother-daughter portrait maybe it’s the
combined efforts of family members to
help a struggling loved one for me the
artwork is always open to interpretation
but it was in this moment in this
instance that I realized that
wheelbarrows don’t just signify hard
work they began to personify my
individual family members and so this
TEDx installation in fact is a family
portrait of sorts the wheelbarrows that
you see are painted with colors that are
inspired by Flamel coats that my mom dad
and I wore while we did chores together
out on the farm and I’d like to take a
moment to tell you that even though my
parents didn’t always have the tools or
the coping skills that they needed they
were two of the most wonderful loving
hard-working people I’ve ever met and
it’s because of their efforts that I got
to grow up and that we lived on a
beautiful farm in rural
Oregon it’s because of their conviction
and guidance that I was able to develop
the tools that I needed to leave the
farm like Dorothy and explore the world
in my own unique way now before I left
mom and dad taught me to love big and
think first and fight hard for what you
believe in they taught me that all the
hard work all the blood poured the tears
shed the first try is the second tries
the failures the successes all the do
overs that none of us ever want to tell
anybody about all of this hard work and
effort is worth it because it leads us
to those aha moments when the way we
perceive and interact with the world is
forever changed they lead us to those
moments when we open the door with
Kansas that are back in Oz in front of
us these are just a few ways in which my
childhood continues to influence my
adult life but truly for each of us the
tools that we were given as kids
continue to influence their impact the
choices we make as adults and the
choices we make as adults they affect
our relationships they affect our
families our communities our national
and international politics and future
generations working hard and meeting
challenges within with an open mind and
actively improving ourselves these are
ways in which we can improve our world
and so this installation that you see
this TEDx installation symbolizes the
ruptures that can take place in our
daily lives from which we have the
opportunity to learn grow and move
forward with new tools in hand it pays
homage to our complex emotions and
resoluteness as fellow human beings to
create revolutions within our personal
lives but then echo and create the
foundation for revolutions within our
families our communities and beyond
thank you you