The She Project: how she inspired a community - Hardcover

Lauren S. Ohlgren

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1934367494 ISBN 13: 9781934367490

Publisher: Growing Art Press, 2007

Synopsis

The concept was simple. A community-wide project designed around spontaneity, expression and creativity. And on Mother's Day weekend of 2005 all women were invited to play. Why Women? To celebrate the fact that when women gather, whether by design or by accident, they have intimate conversations. They swap recipes, share lipstick, talk about their underwear. The She Project celebrates the universal intimacies that women share and their infinite perspectives and responses - to ideas, challenges, and the world they live in. Who is she? We watch her; we see her and we see ourselves in her, know her in our hearts. We giggle with her in cafes, check-out lines, on playgrounds, at the movies. She is a part of us - and watching her, we know ourselves. She is YOU! Proudly published by Growing Art Press: Improving lives through publishing rarities

About this title

About the Author

I love living in Oregon. In a community that is not only rich in the arts and sciences, it's also the perfect balance of being in close proximity to the ocean, the mountains, the rivers, and the city - taking away the need to pick one over the other for a place to reside. It also provides a large palette to draw inspiration for making art, with every day a new weather pattern, with every mile showing a different landscape view. I admit that I love the nuance of gray-we have a lot of it-and all the variations that I can find in that murky middle ground between two pure colors. Like most artists I create because I can't not create. It's a process that is often ongoing in my head; images manipulating in rapid fire succession throughout the day, slipping into night and into my dreams. The following morning, I wake with a new sense of direction, the images playing themselves out before me. It's like having an answer to some obscure question that I haven't necessarily put words to. I journal. I work in textiles. I work in Encaustic. I used to focus on the smooth, flat surfaces of silk; now I have morphed to working on wood, in 3-D, as metal, bisque doll parts and found objects find their way into my work. I also love to give people access to that world, not through observation of my own work, but through the direct experience of creating themselves. I teach, or rather, guide others how to create visual travel journals, giving them the tools to capture the images, therefore the memories, of their travels. For artists and non-artists alike, I remind people how to 'see', and to set aside judgment of what art 'should' look like. These journals, I remind them, should look like they came from your hand. It was at this time of developing the workshops that the idea of the women's community wide project, The She Project, came to be. I wanted to inspire others to create for themselves. Just play, I tell them, and do it before the mind gets in there and ruins the whole experience. With 120 women signing up to play the first year, the project gained momentum. We are now entering our 4th year with The She Project and recently published a beautiful book of the first year's pieces. Spending her childhood in Wisconsin, Lauren Ohlgren has lived in communities throughout the Northwest from Alaska to Colorado. She currently lives in Corvallis, Oregon with her partner and has 2 grown children.

Edition details

• Publisher: Growing Art Press
• Publication date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1934367494
• ISBN 13: 9781934367490
• Binding: Hardcover
• Illustrator: Sue Crawford, Crawford Design
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 198