Martha L. Mcdonald

The Further the Distance, the Tighter the Knot

2010-01-10T20:42:00.000-08:00

Linden Centre for Contemporary Art
Melbourne, Australia
October 31 - November 8, 2009

Featuring Craig Woodward on fiddle, banjo and mandolin
Project Coordinator Cheryl Adam

The Further the Distance, the Tighter the Knot was a performance installation that used Victorian mourning rituals, Old Time American folk songs and knitting to explore my longing for home as a recent transplant to Australia.

Linden is a repurposed Victorian mansion, built in the 1870s as a family home. The piece drew on Linden’s history and architecture to reflect on ideas of home, migration and memory.

I filled the exhibition spaces with hand-knit memento mori, riffing off the domestic crafts Victorian women made to memorialize loved ones (such as jewelry made from human hair) while they were sequestered in their homes during long period of mourning.

Dressed in a Victorian-inspired costume that I designed and hand knit, I led the audience on a "tour" of my installation. Playing with the convention of the didactic tour guide you might encounter at a house museum, I slipped back and forth between historic narrative on 19th-century mourning rituals and personal confessionals about my yearning for the home and garden I left behind in America and how my memories of that home were being clouded by nostalgia. Singing folk laments about lost loves and longing for home, I knit and unraveled love tokens for the audience as polite Victorian mourning customs gave way to more cathartic expressions of loss.

I was interested in how labor-intensive hair work and embroidery helped 19th-century women cope with loss and survive their forced isolation but also in how the obsessive nature of these craft projects must have driven them a bit crazy. I spent 8 months in my studio hand knitting the costume and the objects, including a 35-foot banister cozy, and found the work at turns deeply comforting and totally maddening.

During the performance, I was in a constant state of knitting and unraveling to express this contradiction.

I was also interested in how these painstaking crafts forced me to slow down and reflect on the passing of time. I wanted to audience to experience that so at one point in the piece, I spent nearly 10-minutes unraveling a 12-foot-long knitted panel to the accompaniment of a solo fiddle.

My knitted interventions in the gallery ranged from simple representational objects referencing 19th century embroidered samplers and hair work like this vintage jewelry set...

...and this period hair wreath and bouquet...

…to more psychological environments where I performed a series of gestures in real time to reflect the isolation women endured during mourning and to meditate on the passage of time and the unstable nature of memory.

The piece began with me on the balcony and the audience on the front lawn. At the end of the performance, I led them out onto the balcony.

Then, like a bad tour guide, I snuck down the fire escape and out onto the lawn, abandoning the audience on the balcony. With our positions were switched, they were trapped in the house and I was free to leave. I removed my “widow’s weeds” and exited the property singing, my mourning complete.

(Performance and installation photos: Christian Capurro)

Thank you to Project Coordinator Cheryl Adam, Knitting Assistant Jessica Price, Hannah Neeson (who knit the skirt fabric on a knitting machine) and over a dozen volunteers for their invaluable knitting contributions to this project.

Camera and editing by Anne Scott Wilson.

Womenfolk: Songs from the Valley Below

2008-11-27T18:58:00.000-08:00

Out of Bounds: Art, Faith & Religiosity conference
Monash University, Faculty of Art & Design
Melbourne, Australia
August 22, 2008

a collaborative performance with Australian performance artist Catherine Bell

Womenfolk used folk songs passed down from Medieval times, the visual spectacle of Christian martyrdom and penance, and the sensory experience of church rituals to explore ways that contemporary utopian religious sects isolate themselves in self-sustaining communities, or "inner sanctums," in order to transcend the drudgery of daily life and secure a place in heaven.

The performance took place in a stairwell on campus, with the audience viewing the action from above, looking over the railing or through the slats of the stairs.

Photos: Andrew McLeod

Artist talk at MICA

2007-12-27T12:11:00.000-08:00

On November 9, 2007, I gave an artist talk to Fiber students at Maryland Institute, College of Art in Baltimore, MD. I showed performance videos and discussed my process for making costumes and how I use costumes to transmit stories and ideas in performance. Concurrent with the talk, ten years worth of my costumes were exhibited in the costume gallery. The two aqua costumes on the far left and the baroque undergarments on far right front were made by costume designer Gregory Nelson.

Dress Me Slow, I'm in a Hurry

2007-09-02T21:34:00.001-07:00

Baltimore, MD
October 25-27, 2007

Project Coordinator, Kelly Cobb
featuring Micheal Simmons on flamenco and classical guitars and mandolin

As the 2007 artist-in-residence at Evergreen, I was invited to make a site-specific work inspired by the house museum, its collection and its history. I was fascinated by Evergreen's idiosyncratic patroness Alice Garrett, who, in addition to being an esteemed art patron and high profile wife of a diplomat, sang, danced and staged lavish productions she called Songs in Costume in the 1920s in an in-home theater designed by Ballets Russes set and costume designer Leon Bakst.

As I researched Alice's archives, I discovered that while she was a consummate entertainer, Alice was not a very good singer or dancer and was deeply conflicted about her artistic aspirations. As an artist who has developed a performance form based on my passion for the music, obsession with costumes and an untrained stage persona (rather than undisputed vocal talent and acting skills), I felt a powerful affinity with Alice and developed the piece around our similarities and differences. Dress Me Slow was my own version of Songs in Costume. I sang songs drawn from Alice's repertoire of Irish an Spanish folk songs; wore costumes I designed and handmade inspired by the intensely colored costumes Bakst created for Alice; and shared monologues exploring Alice's conflicted artistic aspirations and my own ambivalence as a artist.

Throughout the piece, I was in a constant state of changing from one costume to another as a metaphor for the multiple identities that Alice navigated in her life—ambassadress, socialite, social reformer, art patron and performer.

IRISH COSTUME:
The Irish costume was inspired by the Irish selkie, or mermaid. The belt suggests the ubiquitous Irish seaweed, with the brown i-cords on the belt, around my neck and in my hair referencing the ropey kind of seaweed. The "gloves" riff off cable-knit Irish fishermen sweaters.

Knit head-to-toe without a pattern, the costume is an exploration in increasing and decreasing stitches to create the bell-like bottom of the dress and gloves and the curling tendrils of the seaweed belt.

SPANISH COSTUME:

The Spanish costume is a traditional flamenco dress rendered in a confection of red, purple and hot pink. It was inspired by a painting in the house by Miguel Covarrubias depicting Alice dancing the flamenco and a photo of Baltimore opera singer Rosa Ponsel as Carmen.

The ruffles were hand dyed before construction and the bodice was hand painted (see process shots below). Kelly Cobb, Instructor in the Fiber Department at MICA and project coordinator for Dress Me Slow, taught me gradation dye techniques to achieve the fade effect. Kelly dyed the embroidery floss and bias tape to my specifications and I embroidered the lyrics of one of the songs I sang on the ruffles. I hand painted fabric for the flowers, which were constructed by a group of friends at a flower-making party. Kelly designed and constructed the wig.

EXOTIC COSTUME:

The Exotic costume was inspired by Leon Bakst’s boldly colored, wildly patterned designs for the Ballets Russes.

Under the guidance of Kelly Cobb, I designed the fabric from drawings I made of plants and birds while walking the grounds of Evergreen during the magic hour each evening. Kelly taught me how to hand paint the designs onto silk for the harem pants and Turkish vest (see process shots below). MICA Fiber student Hanna Brancato screen printed the sheer scarf as well as a theatrical backdrop in the design. All scarves were hand dyed.

(Photos: Aaron Igler)

PROCESS SHOTS:
Gradation dyeing the Spanish costume

Silk painting fabric for Exotic costume

(photos: Kelly Cobb)

Dress Me Slow, I'm in a Hurry (video excerpt)

Lament

2007-09-02T21:10:00.000-07:00

Institute of Contemporary Art Soft Sites exhibition at Bartram's Garden
Philadelphia, PA
July 31, 2006

Made in collaboration with Katie Holten, Lament took the audience on a tour of an 18th century botanic garden to explore the extinction of plants and our loss at their disappearance.

I led the audience through the garden, telling stories about plants that vanished either because they couldn't survive in the the wild or because they fell out of fashion and people stopped planting them.

Dropping seeds like Hansel and Gretel, I led the audience into a wooded glen, where I sang a lament at the rivers edge. Then I paddled away in a canoe and disappeared.

Lament drew on the Victorian language of flowers--a means of communicating through coded messages that allowed people to express feelings they were not free to speak aloud. I shared the symbolic meanings of flowers in Bartram's garden and embroidered them on my costume.

I wanted to make something that could live on after the performance. Using the same blue floss and white linen of the costume, I embroidered some stories I told in performance and made a book with photos from the performance and the embroideries. The embroideries were inspired by Victorian handkerchiefs, on which women often stitched secret messages for their beloved, and by vintage needlework samplers, which feature blocks of inspirational text or sage advice. Victorian women sewed samplers to record life events, rites of passage or life history. My embroideries record the loss of flowers.

The embroideries were shown at Fleisher-Ollman Gallery in Philadelphia in September 2007 on the occasion of the book release. http://www.fleisher-ollmangallery.com/news.php

Photos: Aaron Igler

drown'd in mine own tears

2007-09-02T21:03:00.000-07:00

Philadelphia Live Arts Festival
September 6-11, 2005

Directed by Greg Giovanni, video by Nadia Hironaka, design by Jonathan Berger
Featuring Elizabeth Boggs (harpsichord), Helena Espvall (cello), and Michael Simmons (classical guitar)

drown’d used knitting to explore the pain of waiting and acceptance. The piece was built around the myth of Penelope, wife of Ulysses—champion of the Trojan War and hero of The Odyssey. Penelope endured 20 years of waiting for Ulysses to come home. When he didn’t return after the war, suitors demanded she remarry. She tricked the suitors by telling them she’d pick a new husband when she finished her weaving. For four years, she kept the suitors at bay, weaving by day and unraveling by night. In quiet protest, she spoke thru her handwork.

drown’d recreated Penelope’s action of creating and destroying through the knitting and unraveling of a giant afghan. The afghan provided a sense of scale—dwarfing my Penelope, who persevered despite the daunting task.

At three intervals during the performance, I broke from Penelope’s story and stepped in front of the curtain to conduct a knitting demonstration. Dressed in a floor-length hand-knit dress, I shared the rudiments of knitting a scarf, which I was “constantly knitting.” By the third knitting lesson, I emerged with a 40-foot-long scarf.

During the knitting lessons, I passed on purls of wisdom, using knitting as a metaphor for accepting your life, mistakes and all, while reflecting on how I used knitting to cope with the recent death of my mother, my first knitting teacher.

I taught myself to knit in order to make this piece and I became obsessed in the process. I knit dozens of hats and scarves. I even knit my husband a surfboard bag. That bag was the basis of the knitting teacher’s dress. I have a hard time following patterns so I knit instinctively, making it up as I go along. I wanted to make the kind of dress that an obsessed knitting teacher would wear—one that screamed “handmade.” Purldrop knitwear designer Erin Weckerly crocheted Penelope’s coat. A crew of knitting friends helped knit the backdrops on size 50 needles.

top 3 photos: Aaron Igler
bottom 3 photos: J. J. Tiziou

Petals from the Same Flower

2007-09-02T20:25:00.000-07:00

Rosenbach Museum & Library
Philadelphia, PA
April 11-May 22, 2001

Costume by Gregory Nelson and Candy Depew, installation by Depew
With Elizabeth Boggs on harpsichord and Michael Simmons on guitar

I was commissioned by the Rosenbach to make a piece in response to their collection of rare books, 18th century furniture and decorative arts. I was fascinated by the way the brothers used their collections to reinvent themselves: They grew up the sons of middle-class Jewish merchants who went bankrupt but as the brothers amassed a fortune from selling rare books in the 1920s, they assumed the lavish lifestyle of English country gentlemen. I took the audience on a tour of the museum, focusing on objects that were pretending to be something else (chinoiserie mirrors, Empire furniture, Shakespeare forgeries) to examine how we use our objects to redefine ourselves. My costume was an exact replica of an 18th-century dress, constructed using a historic pattern but rendered in decidedly contemporary fabric.

I combined historic facts about the Rosenbach brothers' idiosyncratic collecting habits with stories about my own collections (ceramic nuns, fiesta ware, vintage bathing suits) to explore the obsessive nature of collecting and the culture of excess.

The piece was a collaboration with costume designer Gregory Nelson and installation artist Candy Depew, who designed and printed the fabric of my dress. Depew created a “period room” combining wallpaper and topiary of her design with objects from the brothers' collection where the performance culminated in a recital with harpsichord.

Photo: Aaron Igler

The Garden

2007-09-02T20:24:00.000-07:00

The Brick Playhouse
Philadelphia, PA
June 4-6, 2000
Directed by Joe Shahadi

This piece combined an Elizabethan folk song about a king who has to "cut his wife open" as she dies in childbirth to save their baby, with stories of my teenage brother's and my mother-in-law's death, and descriptions of my garden each season of the year to explore death and rejuvenation.

Girls on the Rocks

2007-09-02T20:21:00.001-07:00

HERE Arts Center
New York, NY
August 2003

Directed by Greg Giovanni; Costumes by Gregory Nelson;
video by Nathalie Applewhite and Paul Haslett
with Michael Simmons on guitar and Lynn Major on cello

Girls on the Rocks explored my relationship to the lonely mermaid and siren—half-women/half-beasts who are outcasts, not fitting in on land or sea and longing for human companionship they can’t have. The piece was staged as a Zeigfield follies cabaret featuring an insecure mermaid in a leggy showgirl costume desperately trying to win over the audience in silence (the mermaid traded her tongue to get legs); and a smoky torch singer siren with an ostrich feather fan brooding over the loss of Ulysses, the one that got away.

Throughout the piece, I played with ways I seduce an audience with my voice—singing a coquettish duet with myself on video; imitating the terrifying wail of an air raid siren (the modern vestige of the mythological siren); and performing a lush, mournful lament.

top photo: Adam Wallacavage
bottom 3 photos: Jim Rose