-Simulacra//Simucation-(Mother Tongue Project Panels)
Many of the early panels projected what I assumed to be the polemic between traditional female roles regarding creation, motherhood, nurturance and gender-based sexuality/responsibility as opposed to postmodern, media enhanced goals and ideals. I attempted to visually express that the solutions contemporary culture offers to this feminine dilemma are mass produced methods of appeasement and simulated nurturing.
-Finger of Fate-(Mother Tongue Project Panels)
This panel is in dialogue with Mary Bernstein’s panel upon which a quote from David Bohm written “There is confusion between self-image and the body”. It also repeats the hand images seen in so many panels. The two elements combined appeared to me as the bloody truth.
-Preservation-(Mother Tongue Project Panels)
This panel responds in combination to the numerous panels depicting fetus’s and Mary Bernstein's panel “To Preserve or not to Preserve”.
-Desire is Manifold-This was my original response to Dana Salisbury’s “Milk and Eggs”. Her use of what appear to be actual x-rays, breast-shaped, plaster forms, flute and straw communicated what I assumed to be a sense of anxiety, yet acceptance with a female role ... especially as it relates to medical necessity. I repeated some of the compositional arrangements of this panel and made a personal attempt to respond to its’ content.
Tara Verheide has made 15 panels for the The Mother Tongue Project. This artists' project has been informed by many sources, particularly the ideas of physicist and philosopher David Bohm. Bohm investigated the nature of individual thought and its tendency to defend its own assumptions. He experimented with verbal dialogue groups in an attempt to create a stream of meaning out of which would emerge a new understanding. Inspired by his philosophy, Mother Tongue applies techniques of visual interchange to stimulate and make visible the flow of the dialogue process. New panels are created in response to other artists' panels. For more info on Tara Verheide's panels shown here and for her other pieces visit the artist's gallery on Mother Tongue.
