virginia fitzgerald: art, inspiration, ink; the passions of the creator of the 'dressproject'
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| feel free to print and use for your personal enjoyment ~ peace |
Happiness lies not
in finding what is missing but
in finding what is present.
Jean Smith
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| feel free to print and use for your personal enjoyment ~ peace |
Wishing all a joyous and wondrous December!
& don't forget,
during this month that gets so hectic,
be kind to yourself & to others.
peace, Virginia
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| feel free to print and use for your personal enjoyment ~ peace |
When we focus on our gratitude, the tide of disappointment goes out & the tide of love rushes in.
Kristin Armstrong
thank you & peace,
Virginia
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| feel free to print and use for your personal enjoyment ~ peace |
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| feel free to print and use for your personal enjoyment ~ peace |
“Putting things off is the biggest waste of life: it snatches away each day as it comes, and denies us the present by promising the future. The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow, and loses today. You are arranging what lies in Fortune's control, and abandoning what lies in yours. What are you looking at? To what goal are you straining?The whole future lies in uncertainty: live immediately.”Seneca
peace, virginia
You're imperfect, and you're wired for struggle,
but you are worthy of love and belonging.
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| for your personal use - peace |
“When you recover or discover something that nourishes your soul and brings joy, care enough about yourself to make room for it in your life.”
I felt that this was a good quote for this month of love, as we must remember to be kind to ourselves, and shower ourselves with love as we would a valentine !! Self-love and self compassion are so important as only when we love ourselves, truly love ourselves, can we really love another.
as is! full stop!!
sending love, Virginia
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| 'lilith's room ...' manhattanville |
Today I had the honor of speaking to the students at Manhattanville College about 'lilith's room ...' and my #dressproject. Here is the slideshow that I created for the talk. A little visual review of how I am #vadressobsessed ~
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| 'this is me ... a work in progress' and 'flirt ...' manhattanville college |
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| link to bid on 'don't slip ...' |
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| link to bid on 'lilith contemplates the oceans ...' |
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| link to auction catalog |
for your personal use - peace
“Fall has always been my favorite season.The time when everything bursts with its last beauty,as if nature had been saving up all year for the grand finale.”Lauren DeStefano
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I have also learned the hard way that articles and such do not always stay available of the web, so here is the article in full. And even though some of the pieces that I was working on are not around anymore my reasons for creating and my beliefs about the dressproject are still relevant.
Sporting a paste-on tattoo of the Hindu goddess Shiva, Virginia Fitzgerald fashions a dress from hundreds of dog tags in her downtown Natick studio that resembles a child’s playhouse.
She moves barefoot past dresses she’s made from glass and eggshells, red licorice sticks and carrots.
A frock made of poems hangs by the door of the Pond Street studio where the Natick artist and mother of two young girls works on The Dress Project she created, carrot by seashell.
Over the last two years, Fitzgerald has created her own artistic line of “sculptural” dresses, stitching clothespins and ideas into the fabric of her deeply personal vision.
Though her daughters, Maya, 10, and Harriet, 7, stuck the tattoo on her back while playing, Fitzgerald said she identifies with its meaning. “Shiva is the goddess of destruction and creativity,” she said. “If anything, that’s what the dresses have taught me.”
For Fitzgerald, making the dresses is an expression of her own “experience as an artist, mother, wife and woman” in today’s world.
She has come to regard her dresses as “a multifaceted metaphor for birth, sexuality, a woman’s role to family and society: past, present and future.”
“As a child I was put in a dress. Lots of women grow up making connections between their prom dresses or wedding dresses and the events of their lives,” she said.
Whether using flower blossoms or pumpkins, for her the image of a dress “represents layers of the spiritual, emotional and physical presence of being female.”
Describing a dress formed from snaky ropes, Fitzgerald said, “Some people get scared. Some say it’s sexy. It makes some people think of S and M.”
Since its serendipitous beginning when playing with her daughters on a Maine beach, Fitzgerald’s Dress Project has grown into a vocation “with an energy and momentum all its own.”
In addition to earlier paintings, she’s exhibited her dresses in shows at Gallery 55 in Natick, Danforth Museum of Art in Framingham and recently at the Infinity Pool Court at the Natick Collection shopping center. In 2008 she won an award at the Concord Arts Association’s juried members show.
She expects to show new work in four fall exhibits at Bromfield Gallery in Boston this August; Natick Arts Open Studios on Oct. 4 and 5; ArtSpace in Maynard in October and November; and the Dana Hall School from Oct. 20 to Nov. 21.
Raised in Chicago, Fitzgerald was drawn to art as a child, sneaking up into the attic to draw pictures in old sketchbooks. “I was always the kid with the crayons,” she recalled.
Fitzgerald earned a bachelor’s degree in art at Kenyon College where she focused on printmaking and design. While later studying at the Studio Arts Center International in Florence, Italy, she began experimenting with conceptual sculptures including a chicken wire aquarium.
In 1992 Fitzgerald started a wholesale accessory and hand-painted design business, and after seven years switched to freelance illustration for announcements and greeting cards.
“I was playing with Harriet at Elm Bank. We’d finished blowing bubbles and she asked what can we do now. I said we could make art with it,” she remembered. After going home and making a little dress from Harriet’s already-been-chewed gum, Fitzgerald awaited further inspiration.
Not long afterward, Fitzgerald, husband Steve Rovniak and their daughters were vacationing at Wells Beach, Maine, when a swarm of ladybugs made her wonder childlike about what kind of dresses they’d wear.
“The floodgates opened,” Fitzgerald said.
For three days, she scratched dress shapes in the sand. She decorated them with seaweed and kelp and watched the tides “take the dress back to the sea.”
“It was bordering on performance art in a way,” Fitzgerald said. “I kept drawing in my sketchbook. Talk about an obsession.”
Soon, to protest “overzealous fencing” of a favorite spot in Illinois, she made a dress of sticks clinging to a chain-link fence. And she later exhibited her Rose Dress in Gallery 55 in downtown Natick.
In time, Fitzgerald began using new materials to make more complex dresses like her Eat More Vegetables Dress to promote healthy nutrition and her 3,000 and Counting Dress, which used faux dog tags to protest the Iraq war.
After seeing airport screeners confiscate bottles larger than three ounces from passengers, she made her Red Alert Cocktail Dress from bottles filled with red liquid. “That’s a perfect example of The Dress Project. I know where I’m coming from,” she said. “A lot of people have different reactions. They think it’s about recycling or protecting the environment. They should have their own responses. I’m just the conduit.”
She stressed her dresses aren’t designed to express one specific concept but to prompt male and female viewers to consider them on her own terms.
“I like people to walk around them. Viewers should be able to have their own personal experience,” she said.
-Pumpkins themselves are thought to have first been discovered in North America and were widely used by Native Americans. Actual pumpkin seeds have been found in Mexico and date back as far as 7000 B.C.Pumpkin seeds have been eaten throughout history for sustenance and medicinal purposes too.
https://www.jcsqualityfoods.com.au/news/everything-you-need-to-know-about-pumpkin-seeds/
