My work, My Play – A Drawing
I follow the trajectory of my life as a drawing —a career that spans the age of my daughter who is 24. This is how a mother keeps time.
It all began with “Eggs Without a Yolk”, an overexposed super8 film about infertility while studying architecture at Cooper union in NYC. A few years later, I was in fact pregnant but the doctors thought otherwise. Three months into it with dizzy spells and other symptoms that sent me to a gastroenterologist and other specialists, it was revealed that yes, I was indeed carrying a child – to their surprise and the happiest day of my life.
I had just completed the last of several internships in NYC mostly with women as I was intuitively seeking mentorship that didn’t exist for women in the world of architecture. The pregnancy coincided with another huge desire of mine. I was in the intensive interview process for a teaching fellowship at the University of Michigan, one of three awarded yearly in the school of architecture, an opportunity that would launch my teaching career. Fast-forward several months: I got it – I got the job and I got the baby. My life as a visionary guiding young people to develop visions of their own and represent them in ways that touched and engaged others emerged and began parallel and intertwined with postpartum, a move, and my life nursing and nurturing a brand new being.
Drawings in two, three and four dimensions, slivers of life, CiTy-Scans and cross sections across time, through culture and the physical spaces that contain life. The work I created during these years is as much a reinterpretation of drawing in which architectural conventions are rethought as much as it is an examination of humanity. Installations and participatory documents come to life through collective participation. My work, which I prefer to refer to as “play”, is created through connection and exchange. As spaces, performances, experiments and community projects, in playful ways they address, highlight, subvert, societal and environmental issues that need transforming. The process by which they emerge is a celebration of life.
I assembled the Living Section Retrospective of My Fertility in 2018 to celebrate a cycle that had ended. I had taken a leave from work in 2011 to take on the intensive role of supporting my daughter as a teenager when she needed me so much. This led to the loss of the 19-year career as professor and with the dissolution of my marriage too, that of my award winning, innovative practice FieldOffice. I had the opportunity to present my work in Hawaii where I was grabbed by a huge wave and submerged into a fight with the sea. I thought that was the end of my live until I let go. The sea brought me back to land on a different shore. From there it has been a survival story climbing up a cliff, hanging from branches. Moving steady upwards away from the next wave and the analogy for that cycle of my life.
The exhibition ironically coincided with the onset of a new set of symptoms, dizzy again and other such things that are not fully understood in regards to the completion of a woman’s fertile cycle. It encapsulated the reclusive and intensive focus that I was submerged into with my daughter. My art became breath and heartbeat and the light during a demanding survival process. Being there for my daughter has been being there for me. My biggest inspiration is my daughter, and my biggest wish is to inspiring her. I want her to see it’s possible to start with, transmutate, and end with everything and nothing all at once. And one can emerge from all of life’s challenges.
My exploration of drawing as an ongoing reinvention of media and space shifted to what could be accomplished at the spur of the moment, alone, and with the simplest of materials in the crevices of life at my disposal anywhere and everywhere. My body of play expanded inwardly while continuing to reach out with moving documents that engaged others through a continued interplay of physical and virtual space. Interactive, alive and changing, my projects are ongoing vehicles for connection transforming as life itself. I am in the drawing. The drawing is my process. Currently you might find me in the alley of my little town of Marshall, NC transforming asphalt into drawings that are also performances and installations and as such vehicles for connection between neighbors and the passerby. I’m also in the public space of web3, engulfed in philosophical, conceptual, technical and spiritual discussions of AI, AR, generative art, decentralization, blockchain as I explore new ways to inhabit and transform space while expanding the possibilities of collaboration and connection. To quote from my Tedx talk, “we’re all part of a huge collaboration” and the tools for facilitating that are at our disposal.
About Martha Skinner
Martha Skinner, born in Colombia, is an international multi-media artist. With a Masters in Architecture & Urban Culture, her career as an artist, researcher, professor & public speaker spans 25 years.
Martha converses with our built environment through visualizations of the cycles of life to address temporal, social and environmental issues of our delicate ecology. She utilizes this methodology in her work to filter, transmit, capture, and commemorate the intangible qualities of the passing of time with playful representations of the relationships between humans and the environment in which they are situated.
Martha’s work has been recognized by various awards and internationally-recognized publications and exhibitions. Her most recent works are permanently affixed to the blockchain, as she explores the relationship of Web3 with infinite dimensions.
Highlights of Martha’s career include:
- 1999 Walter B. Sanders Fellow at the University of Michigan
- Creator of Notation A/V, a seminar about the merging of drawing and moving image and creator of CiTy-SCAN, The City as Bodies in Movement (body of research), and 10^10, The Exponential Power of Design
- TEDx speaker (2015): The Exponential Power of Design
- Creator of several Living Maps of cities which include NY A/V, a moving document and installation on Broadway Street (acquired by the NY Historical Society, and featured in the book “Installations by Architects” and as part of an international travel exhibition. Also received Best of Category Award from Concept Category of ID Magazine.
- Professor at Clemson University (2001-2014) & founding partner at field office (1997-2010)
- Exhibitor at 10th Venice Biennale, 4th International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam & Black Mountain College Museum, {Re}Happening and NFT Liverpool
- Five awards from I.D. Magazine, & a Next Generation Award from Metropolis Magazine
- Receipt of a People, Prosperity and the Planet Award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
- 2nd prize – Sun Shelter Competition
Martha currently resides in the U.S.A. with her daughter.
Urban CT-scan – The City as Body(ies) in Movement BLOG
