Category Archives: blog

I was there when the Berlin Wall was coming down

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Photo credit: FORTEPAN/Tamás Urbán

 

I was there for the new year celebration that followed the fall of the Berlin Wall. A fall that began 30 years ago this past Sunday. My auditory memory will hold the sound of the collective take down forever. A quiet, gentle hammering and chiseling murmur that grew louder, more determined, distinct, all encompassing and celebratory as I got closer to it. It was a several mile walk towards the amplified sound of the cooperative take down. The fresh scar between two sides that were once one was edged by color: the big and small fragments of it’s scattered graffiti for sale. We packed up crumbs of wall pieces, tiny drawings in bags as souvenirs for family.

I was a young student living in Europe. I slept on the floor next to the overused urine smelling bathroom of a night train packed with the camaraderie eager to arrive to this momentous happening. And ironically at the strike of midnight, I was also in a train —between East and West Berlin. While transitioning into 1989, I experienced two starkly different Berlin’s. West Berlin was similar to what I knew back then about places: signage, maps, color. But that didn’t stand out until I swerved in and out of the other side with train stop landings in a place that I remember as monotone, dusty and dark. If felt like another place in another time.

On that celebratory day I was also scared. Germans are much taller than small Latina me. They were overjoyed, many inebriated and climbing up on fragments of the wall and onto the horses of the Brandenburg Gate. In the sea of excitement, bottles of wine were swinging and chiming by a momentous, slow, drunk and happy moving mass of very tall people hovering above me.

The fall took a while. The wall came down fast and yet also slow. The erasure of space and place that a wall, even after it is physically gone, is permanent. Is it? It felt like it then. And while I’ve been back to Berlin since then. I want to go back to experience this again first hand.

I’ve had dreams of walls many times. Bad walls and good ones too. Ironically it was my plan to share on a different wall a few days ago consciously unaware but very aware of the exact 30 year mark of this experience of my life. I will share about that wall some other time. For now I’m consumed in a memory.

Martha

p.s. With the command here to add links, I’ve noticed I’ve blogged about walls before. Here’s a link to that: We Don’t Want Walls, We Want Games! Also revisiting this experience reminds me of how emotional I get when I feel the energy of people working together to accomplish something. The image of people working on the graffiti of this wall together and the auditory presence in me of the collective chiseling to take it down is in the spirit of Musical Table, the project that I’ve been leading for 25 years. There’s two next week. Join us to participate, if you can.

Thank you for the Regional Artist Project grant!

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I am thankful to have been awarded a Regional Artist Project grant to fund the launch of Living Section Retrospective Of My Fertility as a traveling exhibit. I am thankful for this photograph by my mom for Red and Wet and for a beautiful day dancing in the Florida sand just prior to the grant announcement. There’s also much else hidden within this accomplishment. If you’re curious, read on.

I had found out about this grant when inquiring with the Asheville Arts Council about opportunities to support my daughter in her pursuit of photography. There are several categories and a small amount of funds to distribute among artists in our community. I realized both Sophia and I could apply to our respective areas. Since I’m Sophia’s support in a process of emergence and independence, it was hard for me to see her be excited about this opportunity and yet resist it so hard. She didn’t get the application in. And getting mine in felt almost miraculous. Her challenges at that time, as a mother by her side, consumed me deeply. Once I got the application in, I found out that my blooming flower was not putting herself out there because she was protecting herself from rejection, something she felt she couldn’t handle at that time.

Months later I got invited to an interview. Several weeks later I got awarded the grant. And yet strangely by then I felt robbed of the celebratory moment —a feeling I tried to let go of and could not shed. The grant amount had been reduced from what I needed and requested and the expectation of matching the funds and all else felt a little overwhelming to me at that moment because of other financial challenges and priorities.

And then I noticed that Sophia was basking in what I wanted to enjoy but was struggling to. In an encouraging and excited tone she said “mom you can still do the project, just do a smaller version of it”. Not only did this young woman have wise support for her mother, she also had a revelation. “Oh! I shouldn’t listen to people anymore”, she blurted out several times and was also texting that to others who are close to her: “people have such bad advice”. As I inquired into what that meant, I learned that someone in a conversation had casually mentioned that “grants are impossible to get”. Apparently I was there too and while I don’t remember because that’s one, like the infinite number of comments that dissolve into air, for her that statement was huge and it got lodged in her heart and repeated in her mind over and over again. It locked her up. Zipped her in. Froze her mid process and kept her there until she was able to verbalize why.

And while I tried to snap out of what I was not feeling. While I sat there guilty and confused over my lack of indulgence on the accomplishment, as if by magic she wanted to know of other grants. She was energized with the desire to find them now, not later! Seeing me go through the process, had made it attainable to her. She now knew it is not impossible but that it is possible. It was also at that moment that I emerged out of the dissolution that was clouding the joy I so desperately wanted to feel. And it was then that I understood that, as a mother in this role, this is the biggest and most beautiful acknowledgement of the work that I do.

And as for the rest, as some of you know, I emerged out of the mad sea, wounded. Feet cut up. Small steps. But steps nonetheless and alive. And truly alive because that experience several years ago gave me powerful lessons and analogies that guide me in the biggest creative process we all inhabit — life and living. And as for this grant –a step forward, I’m thankful for recommendations letters on my behalf which were touching to me and gift in themselves. I’m thankful for the professionals who provided quotes and back up materials. I’m thankful for the warm and helpful guidance from the staff at the Arts Council. I’m thankful for the many artists from my community (I was told over twenty of them) who reviewed my work and voted me in for this. What an incredible amount of work by so many people for a small amount of money distributed between several artists seeking support. It sure brings into question, and the reason for my struggle to celebrate —the process of funding visions.

What if serious artists were fully trusted and more funding was available so that the process was more fluid and all who are contributing meaningful, powerful work for humanity and our environment could be supported. What if the process was more fluid and attainable so that all who have the desire, commitment and the passion to explore ideas with potential, are funded! What if the process was more seamless and available so that those visionaries could actually truly focus on that work for which there is so little time?

With this I wish all who read this far a peaceful and celebratory holiday season. I hope I might have inspired someone out there who is afraid, to go for it! I hope I might have inspired someone with funds, to fund freely! Trust. It’s all trust. What if we simply trusted ourselves and others… what big things might we accomplish!

Photos of Living Section Retrospective Of My Fertility

visit Red and Wet launch blog – last year

Interested in hosting Living Section Retrospective Of My Fertility or Red and Wet – contact me!

 

Red And Wet, a Huge Exchange and Our Emergence!

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Let's follow up on this month’s day of love and affection by being part of a huge greeting exchange on the upcoming International Women's Day! Through our gifting of “Red and Wet” prints, let's join in solidarity and in celebration of our collective rebirth – this is our emergence!                       

UPDATE: We’ve launched this project on Women’s Day 2018! Beautiful! A seed has been planted. Greetings are being sent throughout the year and we will culminate as a huge love greeting in 2019!

 

💌 WHAT IS RED AND WET?

To follow our day of love and affection, passion and red gestures, I am launching Red and Wet.

In friendship and solidarity, I invite us women to share with each other and hold each other up on Women’s Day 2018. That celebration is coming up on March 8th! So between Valentine’s Day and Women’s Day, I am inviting us to be part of a huge exchange, love offering, greeting! We are also celebrating our Emergence!! Red and Wet will manifest as prints that we will gift each other in solidarity and support.

The prints were painted by me in 2016 while processing my fertility and my life, particularly as a woman at a time when I was resurfacing from the hardest and also the most gift giving years of my life. Five+ years is a long time and for me it was a crazy fall. A reboot because that’s what I had been asking for and it came in a way that made it’s way noticed for sure! How else would one take the plunge and swim in mad waters onto a brand new shore!? I was dying and yet I was being born. I think my story is the same or similar to so many of each of our stories collectively. It is also the story we women, as a group, are experiencing together at this moment in time.

We are emerging anew with a force that is uniquely ours and with the brilliance that we have always possessed! It’s happening! We are on it!

A couple of days ago, I stumbled upon a story that happened recently at an airport. You might have seen it too! A group of woman who didn’t know each other intuitively and fluidly created a protective and calming circle for a young pregnant mother and her out of control toddler during his massive tantrum and her own breakdown. One of the women, Beth, shared about their silent act on facebook concluding: “It was so gorgeous, there was no discussion and no one knew anyone else, but we were able to calm them both down, and she got her child on the plane. Only women approached. After they went through the door we all went back to our separate seats and didn’t talk about it… we were strangers, gathering to solve something. It occurred to me that a circle of women, with a mission, can save the world. I will never forget that moment.”

This wisdom and intuitive knowledge is something that I have experienced in several occasions with groups of women in my various communities. Yes! how wonderful and powerful we would be in a huge group of solidarity!

Time to celebrate! So on our day this is what I propose! I’m putting these Red and Wet images out there, first time out in the light, with an idea of a collective rebirth for all of us together during this transformative moment. It has been a long process for us and right now we are at the cusp of emerging anew and yet emerging in our own unique ever present qualities which have in the past so often been overlooked, underused!

Through our exchange in solidarity, we will create a much larger gift of connection, a quilt of images – our collective strength, bond, wisdom! Our emergence!!

 

💌 WHY RED? WHY WET?

Red for love, urgency, warmth, fire, passion!  Red for fertile, blood, womb, life! Red for anger, action, drive! Red for STOP, Red for Fire! Red for flow, sacred, courage! Red for warning! Red for Unity!!

Wet because Red is fresh and alive! being born!

* feel free to add to this list of red and wet words (message me here) and/or let’s keep some of them in our collective imagination.

The drawings/paintings are red and were done with water colors.

 

💌 RED AND WET PRINTS

In postcard size and sets of four, they come printed on high quality matte paper. In an envelope or as postcards, send them to your friends, loved ones, healing ones, ones you admire, ones you want to know, ones you respect, ones you want to lift up, touch, reach out to. Send them! Receive them! Frame them!! Send them! Receive them! Frame them! Let the cycle of connection flow as it will flow…

I invite us to take photos, videos, selfies with the Red and Wet images before sending them and upon receiving them. Let’s tag them on social media as    # R e d A n d W e t O u r E m e r g e n c e   and  # W o m e n s D a y . Let’s specify which city we are sharing from. And let’s caption each image with a snippet of each of our stories, inspiration or wisdom to share, or how you want or need to be supported. Red And Wet may serve as a starting point for what we each add to our collective Rite of Passage!

 

For the full selection from the Womb, Flow, Cycles and Life Series click here

 

💌 HOW TO GET RED AND WET?

> Purchase through this link. Submit $18.00 * for four prints. *tax and shipping, within continental US is included <

If you want to contribute for those who want to participate but can’t afford it, that is possible too and thank you so much for helping make this collaborative celebration even more accessible!! The link for ordering and for contributions is here. If you want to participate but can’t afford it, message me.

> Large prints available too through this link.  Submit $32 for unframed and $62 for framed *shipping extra to be calculated. <

Ladies, we are making a huge dispersed yet cohesive and unified quilt of red painting/love greeting together! As this gets big, it will not only be beautiful and all shades of beautiful hot red! you will also assist me in making BeAutism a reality! That project emerged through my motherhood. It was a gift to me from my daughter. And manifesting it, will be our gift to society! These efforts that are in my heart and in my sketchbook is also how I am personally getting back on my feet. This project is part of my own personal emergence from my recent amazing fall and reboot. Check out BeAutism! You or someone you know might just have to be a part of it.

Red and Wet! we are going to let you flow as you want to flow. If you are feeling the connection to this effort, share about it with others: those that will want to be a part of this, those you care about, those that you think might be lifted by this. Share! If the flow gets huge, I want to dedicate a percentage of the sharing to an organization that supports women. Please let me know which are your favorite organizations, local, national and international that support women (message me here).

 

Giving the love and solidarity greetings to your friends! Order your Red and Wet prints here

 

Gifting other special women in your life a large print unframed or framed! Link here

       

 

💌 QUESTIONS

What if I can’t afford the prints but want to be a part of this?

Send me a message

 

What if I can only afford one print?

It’s too costly to print just one print as I have to pay the minimum amount of paper regardless of the size of the print. I think it will be beautiful if you join forces with a friend or friends and order a set of four together.

 

Can I contribute for the ones who can’t afford this?

Yes. You may contribute any amount. Thank you! Send your contribution here.

 

Can I send more than four cards?

Yes. They are sold in sets of four and multiple sets can be purchased.

 

Is it possible for me to pay extra to help others participate and/or to contribute towards BeAutism?

When you go to check out, there are two options. Use the donate button to contribute any additional amount. Thank you!

 

I am ready to get this process flowing. Where do I go to order my prints?

Order your prints here

 

What if I am outside of continental USA. How much is the shipping of the prints to me?

If you are outside of the US, I will contact you with an additional amount as per the post office for the shipping of the prints to you. I will send the prints once I receive the shipping payment.

 

What if I can’t meet the deadline of March 8th?

No worries! This is merely a start of our celebration. We will keep this flowing, with a culmination on Women’s Day 2019. You can order you choice of prints here at anytime and join the flow of Red and Wet support and solidarity.

 

Is this about mothering? I am a women but not a mother

I am, of course hypothesizing questions that might come up. Our gathering of support is to all women who want to participate whether you are a “mother” or not. It is meant to be expansive and bring us together regardless of our particular womanhood and wherever we are in our cycles of life as a woman in transformation! As a solidarity activity it is meant to include all women as uniquely as we each are.

 

 

Let's follow up on this month’s day of love and affection by being part of a huge greeting exchange on the upcoming International Women's Day! Through our gifting of “Red and Wet” prints, let's join in solidarity and in celebration of our collective rebirth – this is our emergence!

 

💌 ABOUT ME AND OTHER GAMES OF CONNECTION

Thank you for reading through this and checking this idea out! Let’s play!! Let’s start a group of inspired women who want to celebrate our brilliance and manifest our emergence!

To learn more about me, I invite you to visit my artist statement and glimpse a little of that through WNC Women! Living Section Retrospective Of My Fertility

If you’re intrigued with what I am proposing, you might be interested in one of my blog posts that might give you more insight into my body of “play” > Game-on! Let’s play!

Other previous huge collaborations not mentioned in that blog post but that are in the spirit of what I am proposing are here:  Dispersed Memorial / PROXY_Florence /  Flag of US  Feel free to browse and explore!

 

Photo of me by Jesse Kitt Photography, one of those wise, intuitive, inspirational, collaborative and supportive women in my life!

 

 

We don’t want walls, we want games! And What if Asheville was really On Bikes?

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Can our desirable city live up to it's Top List status with growth that is not only sensitive to the people living and moving in it, but is also exemplary to other growing cities. Can we shift the widening paradigm default for a solution that improves and inspires.

Me on Bicing, Barcelona’s bike sharing infrastructure.

 

I live in a small growing US city that every few weeks makes it to the top list of places to visit and top places to live nationally and internationally. As I drive past construction sites daily, watching our city grow, I ask myself, what if we took our desirable status and did something exemplary at the level of the collective space within which we live and move about. What if we did something “top list” worthy urbanistically? Can we grow with intention?

 

The game we no Longer want to play

One of our prominent streets, Merrimon Avenue, the thoroughfare that connects my neighborhood to downtown as well as to the next small town, is currently a topic of discussion locally. That is because our state’s Department of Transportation is trying to implement the usual – blindly widening this street the same old way that it is done in city after city! An approach that makes it easier for cars to move through faster without any regard to anything else. A solution that further alienates and eliminates the already discouraged and slim existence of pedestrians and bikes.

This modus operandi, is not only dangerous and unhealthy, it also severs neighborhoods! Slicing them into pieces and distancing neighbors. How many times has this been done in our American cities?

When I imagine walking the two-minute walk from my home to the pizza movie theater that is across Merrimom, already a challenge to get to, I imagine the real life version of the 1981 video arcade game Frogger. In this game a frog hops through moving hazards at different speeds in it’s path as the small living being tries to get across. And yet in the game, the frog is able to pause from log to log to strategize the next life or death move. In our real-life size version of Frogger, there is no place of respite and any miscalculation is fatal. I am still impacted by a sight on my way home in my teen years – a coworker of my parents lying dead under a blanket. She had failed to make it to the other side of the street. No more chances!

The widening of this street would once more be a travesty, not to mention also an unfortunate waste of efforts and a throw away of our tax dollars. The widening of Merrimom, would create a deadly wall of cars! We don’t want walls! Games we do like but we want a different kind of game. We want a game of connectivity, inclusion, participation, community, access, leisure, accessibility… A game where we flow naturally, safely and fluidly so that other exciting experiences and even challenges can be taken up. A game that moves our bodies, a game that produces oxygen, a game for us to interact and connect in! A game that includes us all and that gives us options.

 

Widening of our streets like Frogger

 

 

It is up to us!! We are on it! Go Asheville!

This week was our deadline to get out our letters in opposition to this insensitive and dangerous proposal. Several groups and community efforts researched and studied options for our city that were ignored by the NCDOT. Our local bike advocacy group, Asheville On Bikes, active on efforts to make our city more bikeable and walkable and my inspiration for the title of this blog post, created a list of talking points, which highlighted several state safety guidelines and the work by our community that were also dismissed in the NCDOT proposal.

One proposal by the City of Asheville redraws the yellow and white lines on asphalt. A simple idea that transforms what is currently four lanes into two lanes in two directions with a middle lane designated for turning cars. This opens up space to be redistributed proportionately to the current missing bike flow and scarce pedestrian movement. That idea would be an improvement over the current situation and over the proposed NCDOT version.

We are on our way to stop this problematic attempt by the NCDOT to shove a generic and failed cookie cutter option down our thoroughfare. I am thankful for all of the efforts from within our community and the many letters that I imagine were written to stop something that is clearly not good for our community. And yet, I hope that we achieve much more! As a designer and visionary, I can’t help but want to swing things in the opposition direction! What is the vision for our city?

We are a community of caring creative artists, entrepreneurs, visionaries, health minded intentional people… What if we took our collective voice, sensitivity, knowledge and love of our city towards a redesign idea that finally breaks the current widening paradigm? Can we get back to basics and overcome the dominion of the car? Can our city grow with intention and sensibility and in the process be inspirational? Can we use our national and international top list status to set into motion something visionary, forward thinking, unique and exemplary so that street by street, city by city we achieve something bigger – a better balance all around (nationally as is much needed) in restoring the reciprocal ecological relationship between individuals and the environments that we occupy! 

Below is my letter in opposition of the current NCDOT proposal. I also share a couple of my student’s city visions for further inspiration as well as a teaser of my research on the ecologies of cities and their relationship to our movement within them with links to more information. And since you are in my website, I also invite you and link you to some other of my projects on the topic of city visions and ideas for creatively improving our built environment. Links at the bottom of this post include the talking points by Asheville On Bikes.

 

Reciprocal relationship between the human body and the city body – BiCi_N 2007

 

My letter in opposition to the NCDOT Proposal:

Dear Kim Bereis,

I am a professional with a background in architecture and urban design. I am also a resident of Asheville. I live off of Merrimom Avenue.

I am in opposition to NCDOT’s proposed widening of Merrimon Avenue (project U-5781 & U-5782), as currently proposed. It doesn’t take into consideration pedestrians, bikes, and the fabric of neighborhoods linked to each other. Your proposal also ignores the recommendations of hard work by the people of this community who have proposed visions that do take into consideration all of the modes of movement that make a city inhabitable and safe.

I drive on Merrimon and I also attempt to walk to businesses near me. I do not ride my bike as I find it unfeasible and deadly at the moment. Walking to nearby businesses is a scary and difficult task but I attempt it. We need a renovation that addresses that problem not make it worse. Widening the street, making car traffic faster while not providing proper spaces for other moving participants is a travesty, extremely dangerous and damaging to community life. I have a personal friend who lost her son, who was walking, to a driving car. Today my daughter wanted to walk to a park. I was afraid for her and discouraged her.

The safety issue also extends to our health. Car controlled cities dampen the natural physical movement of residents. Our city is fairly small. So many of us could get to work and places by bike and walking and in that process exercise. This is not only healthy to our bodies, it also reduces the amount of cars on our streets, reducing emission gases which in turn also makes our cities safer. Unfortunately walking and riding a bike on Merrimon at the moment is not inviting or safe. In the NCDOT proposal it becomes impossible. Let’s instead imagine the safety and health improvement all around if our city was truly accessible to all forms of flow. We can easily change that.

I am thankful that there are community efforts with better proposals and with a thoughtful regard for people living here. Local planning experts and Asheville on Bikes have researched and explored this fully. I ask that their recommendations be incorporated into a redesign for our city that makes improvements not make our city less accessible, less desirable and more dangerous. I oppose the AS IS proposal by the NCDOT and would prefer nothing be done. I ask that this community and our work be engaged on this and let’s do something really great. Let’s do a project that will not only be safe for us residents but also be inspirational to other of our cities.

Sincerely,

Martha Skinner

 

 

Urban CiTy SCAN:

This is my research which looks at the body of the city in its intimate relationship to the human body in movement. Can we analyze the data of the human body and city body as interrelated and intimately connected? This is our reciprocal ecology. Watch What is BiCi_N video below and visit Urban CiTy SCAN for more information.

 

 

Reciprocity

A city vision by my students Jason Butz, Francis D’Andrea and Carla Landa in my Self-Sufficient City Studio

Reciprocity can either serve as the foundation for a new city, or as an intervention in current cities. It envisions as a self-sustaining community.  It takes the waste that inhabitants produce and use it in alternative ways before it is turned into a recyclable state. A symbiotic relationship is created and a flexible network begins to bridge the gaps in the cycles we help to break.

 

Go The {Park} Way

A vision by my students Adam Wilson, Elissa Bostain, Matthew Brown in my Self-Sufficient City Studio

A system that transforms car emissions into fertilizer through photosynthesis, thereby reducing greenhouse gases and the process of global warming while increasing the green spaces in the urban fabric of the sustainable city of the 21st century.

 

 

More….!

> Where is This Going? Reasons We Oppose The Merrimom Widening Project – By Asheville On Bikes <

> More Visions from me: at City Visions, also visit Small is Big and a bonus treat of inspiration… our superABSORBER project! <

> Get in TOUCH! <

 

Buy ARTivism!

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For the first time in my life and career, I have works for sale and today I encourage you to buy art and support works, my “body of play” that promote and create connection, celebrate life, subvert and transform societal and environmental issues that need transforming and which are outrageous acts of boundless unity.

And this is how I’m making a living because this is my full-time “activism” and contribution to society. In appreciation of your support through purchases, connections and positive energy towards fulfilling the flow of currency that sustains, let’s keep these works, these “plays” going!! And let’s get them far! They’re off hatching, sprouting, transforming negative into beautiful! obstacles into opportunities! disruption into inspirational!   Inquire within

 

ORIGINALS FOR SALE:

Flag of US – 48″ X 96″ painted wood and oil pastels


Letters from Iran – 56″ X 96″ on dibond

 

SIGNED PRINTS FOR SALE:

NY A/V
NY A/V Concept Drawing – 10.5″ x 27″ on archival matte paper

 

Impromptu Drawing of US: We Are *Almost All Immigrants Concept Drawing – 11″ X 17″ on archival matte paper

 


PROXY_Florence Concept Drawing – 10.5″ x 27″ on archival matte paper

 

> Contact me through this LINK for inquiries <

I Am a Seed

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Some of you asked! And yes!!!!! a group is forming! There’s one more chance for us to gather for Living Section Retrospective of My Fertility!

Join us on November 29th from
2-4 at the Weizenblatt Gallery! *

My first solo show and launch of my next project!

Thank you to all who were there for the opening. It meant so much to have you there! Didn’t want to leave you out of this new invitation. There’s also a few new things on the Seed Wall!

Emerging on the other shore after being grabbed by an angry sea!

💛 Love!

Martha

* p.s. If that group time doesn’t work, there are two small groups forming for December 13 at 11:30-1:30 and at 2:30-4:30. Otherwise, Gallery hours are: M-F 10-4 Please avoid lunchtime – between 12:30-1:30. Mars Hill University is 15 minutes drive from north Asheville. The exhibit end on December 15.

The Weizenblatt Gallery is in the Moore Fine Arts Building in Mars Hill University. 79 Cascade Street, Mars Hill. North Carolina

For more on Living Section Retrospective of My Fertility
visit WNC Woman’s November 2017 issue and the publication of my artist statement

and
visit the Mountain Xpress article by Thomas Calder – Interacting with art – Martha Skinner explores different ways to create

For more on I Am a Seed
visit TEDxGreenville’s portfolio about Martha

or go directly to my TEDx talk at:
in youtube – The Exponential Power of Design

For more about the angry sea!
…. .. … .. also watch the YouTube Tedx video above

For an introduction to my new project
visit BeAutism in my website

Bonus: Video of exhibition at this link

 

More thanks!

I want to thank Elizabeth Lang, Jeff Kinzel, Severn Somerville Eaton, Cannon Crawford-Wilson, Thomas Calder and Mountain Xpress, Sandi Tomlin-Sutker and WNC Woman, Jesse Gumucio-Kitt and Jesse Kitt Photography for your support getting this body of “play” up and running and for helping me get the word out.

… as well as Randy Shull, Julie Becton Gillum, Alice Sebrell and and Black Mountain College Museum, Rebecca MacNeice, Kimathi Moore, Scott Doc Varn and Harmony interiors, Stephen Nerlick, Chad Adair, Charles Skinner for sharing equipment! Thanks Diana Brewster for your continuous help with my website and such expertise!

Thank you to the huge list of collaborators, participants, students, ambassadors… on all of these projects over time!

Thank you to Kenn Kotara for the invitation to do this and Mars Hill University for hosting me! Thank you to the students who helped out. And in particular thanks to Shannon McBride!

Special thanks to Jon Griffith who accompanied me, helped me and supported me until the last minute of the crunch and put up with my huge mess to pull this together.

Special thanks to my grandmother Carmelina (in beautiful memory), mother Marina Skinner and my daughter who doesn’t want to be mentioned but has been such integral part of this process! thanks to these three women for their daily inspiration in this process of life and in this sliver of time that we celebrate!!

Photos by Jesse Kitt during the November 1st opening of the retrospective

 

Projects in Living Section Retrospective of My Fertility:

 

NY A/V 2001 – 2005                                                   – photo 14

BiCi_N 2008                                                                 – photos 3, 8, 12

PROXY_Florence 2009                                              – photo 12

Drawing in Between the Line 2007                          – photo 3, 8

Dia de Los Trastos 2008                                             – photo 3, 8

Motion Mapping 2005, 2006, 2011                          – photos 4, 5, 6, 7

Side Walk 1995

from the Inhabitable Drawing Series

 

10×10, A Table 2011

Flag of US 2017                                                             – photos 9, 10

from the Faces on Top of Faces Series

 

Dispersed Memorial 2001                                          – photos 6, 11

Memory Cards – Impromptu 2011                           – photo 13

Letters From Iran 2009                                              – photos 2, 4, 7

Se[ct]ism Cut 2014

CiTy-SCAN 2008                                                          – photos 3, 8, 12

from the Living Section Series

 

The Power of 10^10 2010

I Am a SEED 2015

from the Exponential Power of Design Series

 

Animal Crossing Characters as Humans and Orchids on a Tree 2017

Still Life 1995

Side Walk 1995

BeAutism 2017

from the Seed Series

 

 

Living Section Retrospective of My Fertility

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NY A/V

Currently I am digging the fragments of my full-scale inhabitable drawings in preparation for a reconfiguration of these documents and their insertion into the Weizenblatt Gallery at Mars Hill University, a solo show of a career which spans the age of my daughter who recently turned 19. This is how a mother keeps time.

It all began with “Eggs Without a Yolk”, an overexposed super8 film about infertility. 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.

The pregnancy coincided with another huge desire of mine. As my child was forming, 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.

The exhibit that I’m preparing contains the projects that I developed during those 19 years: 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. My work 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.

The assemblage of this body of “play” ironically coincides 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. This retrospective of my fertility follows a divorce and the letting go of the 19-year career – something that I lost in the process of nurturing my daughter as a teenager when she needed me so much. A cycle ends and this is not a somber thing as society makes it out to be. It is yet another beautiful transition and birthing. I invite you to this celebration and to the launch of my new project!

Place: Weizenblatt Gallery, Mars Hill University School of Art, 79 Cascade Street, Mars Hill, NC 28754

Date: November 1 – December 15, Opening Reception on November 1st 6-8 pm. Gallery hours: M-F 10-4, closed for lunch 12:30-1:30

Meet the artist: November 29th, 2-4 pm

view photos of the exhibit

dispersed memorial

Photo by Dustin White

 

Martha Skinner’s work has been surveyed in books such as Installations by Architects and Architects Draw and exhibited internationally. Honors for Martha include exhibition of her work in the 10th Venice Biennale and at the 4th International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam, five awards from I.D. Magazine, a Next Generation Award from Metropolis Magazine, second prize award from The Van Alen Institute and receipt of a People, Prosperity and the Planet Award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Her work has been recognized in publications such as Discover Magazine, ID Magazine, Metropolis Magazine, Fast Company, Business Week, Architectural Record, A+U, Transmaterial, and WordChanging. She received the Walter B. Sanders Fellowship from the University of Michigan, The Abraham E. Kazan Fund Prize from The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art and was selected by the Prime-Time Juried Exhibition for the launch of the New Media Gallery at the Asheville Art Museum. Most recently she was selected to present her ideas in a TEDx talk, titled the Exponential Power of Design. She is founder of a creative collective with that name and co-founder of fieldoffice. Martha taught for 19 years at Clemson University and at The University of Michigan and collaborated with other universities. Martha is a U.S. Citizen, born in Colombia and living in Asheville, N.C. She has lived in Colombia, France, Italy, The Czech Republic, and Spain. Her work can be found at marthaskinner.com

motion mapping

Photo by Beth Headly

 

Inhabitable Drawings series:

NY A/V 2001 – 2005

HK A/V 2006

BiCi_N 2008

PROXY_Florence 2009

Drawing in Between the Line 2007

Dia de Los Trastos 2008

Motion Mapping 2005

Side Walk 1995

 

Faces on Top of Faces series:

Musical Table 1995

10×10, A Table 2011

Impromptu Drawing of US : We Are Almost All Immigrants 2017

Flag of US 2017

Map of My Face 1993

 

Living Section series:

Dispersed Memorial 2001

Memory Cards – Impromptu 2011

Tierra Querida Eres Una Ilustración de Dr. Zeus 2016

Letters From Iran 2009

Se[ct]ism Cut 2014

CiTy-SCAN 2008

 

The Exponential Power of Design series:

The Power of 10^10 2010

I Am a SEED 2015

 

SEEDS series:

Eggs Without a Yolk 1998

Animal Crossing Characters as Humans and Orchids on a Tree 2017

Out of The Box and Moving On a Line 2011

Still Life 1995

 

And launching:

BeAutism – the idea emerged in 2015 and is coming to life in 2018!!

A gift came to me through this lifetime experience of 19 years, through my daughter and through my body of “play”. BeAutism is a movement, an art project, a constellation of connections, a web, a matrix, a map, a database, in BeAutism, the idea of “disorder”, in this case that of autism, will be subverted to present the reality of what is just a different and beautiful type of mind. BeAutism is a different kind of documentary: a visual and auditory investigation into an invaluable segment of our world’s population. As an art project and a living map, this undertaking will illuminate the power of autistic minds—great minds—while creating a network of connections and possibilities for these intricate, sensitive, focused, perceptive individuals, who are often overwhelmed by our current societal constructs and thus are so often misunderstood.

Photo by Jesse Kitt of me next to my daughter’s painting. For my projects visit my site marthaskinner.com

 

“We’ve never had anything like what Martha is preparing and we’ll never have it again”. – Kenn Kotara, Gallery Director

 

Contact: Martha Skinner (864) 650-8570 skinnermartha@gmail.com

GAME-ON! Let’s play!

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musical table

Last week prior to Thanksgiving I was drawn to a call for entries called Game On. My motivation to dig out old projects for this helped me realize an aspect of my “work” that I don’t normally emphasize. While I’ve always been aware of the playful collaborations  that I initiate, and I like to talk about play and exploration as opposed to “work”, it is not usual for me to refer to my projects as games. I was amazed at how many of my games I wanted to submit. And in the context of that particular week, it was refreshing to assemble these.

Though I wanted to submit more, I submitted three: Dia de Los Trastos, 10×10, A Table, and Small Environments. It was a great reminder that those playful collaborations have always been about the opposite of what we’re hearing about so much these days. They are about inclusiveness and in playful ways, break down imposed boundaries of all sorts that separate. They reminds us in subtle innate ways about our inherent connection while also nurturing respect and love for our environment. 

dia de los trastos

dia de los trastosDia de Los Trastos

musical table10X10, A Table

 

Thankful for all who have played and I’m inspired for bigger collaborations, bigger games still yet to play. 

In the spirit of exchange and connection and with the byproduct of drowning out rhetoric that separates, I look forward to huge collaborations.