Wall Drawing – Rosemary Meza-DesPlas

Sign of the Times at the Fitton Center for Creative Arts

Sign of the Times is a two-person exhibition at the Fitton Center for Creative Arts, August 16 – October 4, 2019. My artworks in this exhibition reflect the theme of gender-based burdens. Gender-based burdens plague women regardless of class, ethnicity, culture, religion, geographical location or sexuality. Within the societal stratification, burdens that impact women disproportionally include poverty, violence and political inequity. This weight hauled by women can have a palpable physical existence or take on a psychological shape of enormous proportions. Many women live day-to-day hindered by gender-based burdens; yet, they continue to persist.

I created wall drawings for this exhibition August 12 – 15, 2019. The title for the series of wall drawings is “You’re Not Angry, You’re Not Paying Attention”. The wall drawing is created with conte and has specialty fabric accents.

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Marks, Strokes, Scribbles: A Survey of Drawings at Fort Lewis College Art Gallery

Marks, Strokes & Scribbles: A Survey of Drawings is an exhibition featuring drawings culled from different bodies of work produced over the past twenty years. Drawing as a medium is an important part of Meza-DesPlas’ studio practice. While drawings can be produced as quick sketches, preliminary drawings for larger works and analytical notations, Meza-DesPlas’ artworks in this exhibition will reflect ‘drawing’ as the end product – in and of itself. This exhibition is comprised of hand-sewn human hair drawings, human hair drawings cast in resin, vinyl applique drawing installations, on-site drawing installations with conte, and mixed media works encompassing a variety of media such as graphite, thread, and specialty fabric.

Meza-DesPlas began to sew with her own hair in 2000. Hair is sorted into various lengths, dyed to emulate an array of values and tones, and threaded through small embroidery needles. It is sewn into canvas, mylar and various art papers. Between the years 2001-2004, Meza-DesPlas achieved a three-dimensional appearance by casting her hair drawings into a 3-layer resin. The utilization of hair as a vehicle for art-making is informed by socio-cultural symbolism, feminism, and religious symbolism. In 2018, she began to create hand-sewn human hair drawings with her gray hair. The Huffington Post Arts & Culture section featured her hand-sewn human hair drawings in 2015.

Meza-DesPlas is known for large drawing installations created on-site. These works created with conte are notable for their loose gestural marks which interweave and vary in density. By 2012 Meza-DesPlas started to experiment with vinyl appliques to create large scale drawing installations. Drawings were created on the vinyl appliques with archival micron pens or liquid graphite. Meza-DesPlas assembled the components, vinyl appliques, together to envisage conceptually on a larger scale. Her drawing installations have been shown at Actuel’Art Lagalerie, Paris, France; CICA Museum, Gimpo-si, Gyeonggi-do, South Korea; LuXun Academy of Fine Arts, Art Gallery, Shenyang, China; and ARC Gallery, Chicago, IL.

In Meza-DesPlas’ hands, drawing, as a traditional medium, has been expounded upon to arrive at non-traditional methods for mark-making. Her studio experimentations yield numerous avenues for what a drawing can be; thereby, the definition of drawing is smudged, erased and redrawn.

Marks, Strokes, Scribbles: A Survey of Drawings continues at Fort Lewis College Art Gallery in Durango, CO until October 10, 2019. Gallery hours are Monday – Thursday, 10:00am – 4:00pm.

Pictured below are images of the wall drawing installation at Fort Lewis College Art Gallery. Normative discontent is a term coined in 1980s about a woman’s dissatisfaction with her body image. The last series I worked on revolved around Audre Lorde’s The Uses of Anger. I showed these works in Brooklyn in February. These artworks explore the concept of anger as a tool for change by juxtaposing found imagery from social media, art history and mass media. My interest was in how social movements, Black Lives Matter, Women’s Marches, Times Up and #MeToo harness anger in order to forefront an array of gender-based burdens. The current artworks including this wall drawing are an extension of the artworks about ‘anger as a tool for change’ They are about ‘agency’ and are inspired by the lyrics of Beyonce’s song Formation (released in 2016). I am researching images of female politicians who are captured in the throes of anger; in particular, I am looking for commonalities in terms of physical gestures and facial expressions. In addition, I am cross-referencing the contemporary social media images with art historical images of women & agency. My interest lies in re-contextualizing the phrase “Ok ladies, now let’s get in formation” into a call for action, a rallying cry, a call to mobilize — a contemporary call for political activism. I was inspired by Rebecca Traister’s book “Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women’s Anger”, 2018 and “Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women’s Anger” by Soraya Chemaly, 2018. As a little girl, one is often told, do not yell or do not be angry — it makes you look ugly. The distortion of the face in the throes of anger juxtaposed with the silenced face is of particular interest here.

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Normative Discontent (left side), 9′ x 6′, 2019, wall drawing installation at Fort Lewis College Art Gallery, conte with specialty fabric on wall

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Detail of Normative Discontent (left side), 9′ x 6′, 2019, wall drawing installation at Fort Lewis College Art Gallery, conte with specialty fabric on wall

Normative Discontent (right side), 9′ x 6′, 2019, wall drawing installation at Fort Lewis College Art Gallery, conte with specialty fabric on wall

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Detail of Normative Discontent (right side), 9′ x 6′, 2019, wall drawing installation at Fort Lewis College Art Gallery, conte with specialty fabric on wall

Installation view of Marks Strokes, Scribbles: A Survey of Drawings at Fort Lewis College Art Gallery

History of the Wall Drawings

In 1998 I created an on-site wall drawing installation titled Marianismo at 500X Gallery’s project room (Dallas, Texas). The narrative drawing, created out of conte, covered three walls. At the time I was looking for an artistic challenge in terms of scale and dexterity. Drawing the figurative forms larger than life size in a loose gestural manner over the course of four days was an exhilarating experience – the drawing came to life through a mere weaving of lines. I was like a circus performer working without a net; I didn’t know if I could complete the drawing installation in a timely manner and I purposely worked without correction tools (no erasers or such). This stunt of high intensity drawing would become part of my artistic repertoire.

Marianismo, 500X Gallery

500X Gallery, Dallas, TX

The wall drawing installations have been created at numerous galleries since 1998: Conduit Gallery, ARC Gallery, Durango Arts Center, H. Paxton Moore Gallery, Gallery at UT @ Arlington, University of Arkansas at Little Rock Gallery, and Actuel’Art Lagalerie. The earlier installations had some collage components but the latter ones are solely conte crayon.

11-13-2009_015 — Conduit Gallery, Dallas, Texas

University of Texas @ Arlington, Texas Gallery

I was literally leaving my mark everywhere. These ephemeral drawing installations existed approximately thirty days before being painted over. The impermanent nature of the work was appealing to me. While my marks were painted over at the conclusion of each exhibition, they did live on forever beneath a layer of white gallery paint. I reveled in the idea that my mark-making existed somewhere underneath all these walls – my marks frozen into strata.

Gallery 414, Fort Worth, Texas

Detail of drawing

H. Paxton Moore Gallery

El Centro College

El Centro College, Dallas, TX

The line work in the wall drawing installations looks similar to the line work of hair. An artist friend offer this observation to me one day as we looked at one of my on-site installations.

11-13-2009_008 — 500X Gallery, Dallas, Texas

Rosemary Meza-slide — H. Paxton Moore Gallery, El Centro College, Dallas, Texas

These large scale drawings are physically demanding; some artworks require intensive drawing of 8 to 10 hours a day for several days in a row. The necessity of scaling up the human figure for these on-site installations is sometimes a daunting task. I do not use opaque projectors; I use a line gesture to capture the initial image onto the wall surface. Redrawing to change proportions, I leave my early marks as a visible map of the drawings’ development and progression.

Actuel’Art Lagalerie, Paris, France, 2011

Wall Drawing 1 — ARC Gallery, Chicago, IL, 2017

438FC582-480A-435C-A04F-0A0C6C09B719 — Durango Arts Center, Durango, CO, 2018

nevertheless: She Persisted @ Durango Arts Center

Crop Wall Drawing

“No country can ever truly flourish if it stifles the potential of its women and deprives itself of the contributions of half of its citizens” First Lady Michelle Obama.

The title of this exhibition “nevertheless: She Persisted” refers to a phrase by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. In defense of silencing Senator Elizabeth Warren, McConnell said, ““Sen. Warren was giving a lengthy speech. She had appeared to violate the rule. She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted.” Subsequently, the phrase was embraced on social media and became a battle cry for women across the U.S. in 2017. Women did not want to be told — to sit down and stop talking.

The works in this exhibition are grouped into categories to reflect gender-based burdens. These are hardships disproportionately shouldered by women in society. These gender-based burdens include gender-based violence, political inequality and gender-based-poverty. This weight hauled by women can have a palpable physical existence or take on a psychological shape of enormous proportions. Many women live day-to-day hindered by gender-based burdens; yet, they continue to persist.

The goal of “nevertheless: She Persisted” is to raise awareness of gender-based burdens. By fore-fronting gender-based burdens, inequities surrounding violence, poverty and politics and their impact on women can continue to be highlighted and discussed. Ongoing visibility of these issues is a necessity in order for change to occur – whether it manifests in small steps or larger advancements.

New Wall Drawing Installation @ ARC Gallery

“Carry This Burden, Now and Till the Moment of Your Last Breath” is on view now at ARC Gallery, 2156 N. Damen Ave., Chicago. It is a wall drawing installation composed of conte on wall, specialty fabric mounted on vinyl. The exhibit continues until September 23rd. Wall Drawing Installation in Progress Wall Drawing Finished 2 Wall Drawing Detail 4 Upper Body Detail of Arm Detail of Right Hip