Welcome to the latest issue of Feed the Monster: a monthly art journal for creative, curious, imperfect and sometimes disheveled humans.
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Life has not stopped since the opening reception of Life’s Work: A Visual Memoir. In fact, there’s been an acceleration of intensity and stressors (don’t get me started) to the point where I wasn’t sure I’d be posting this month. In the four and a half years since starting Feed the Monster, I somehow haven’t missed sending any out. But this month I almost did.
In between all the “life stuff”, people have told me the most remarkable things about their responses to the show. The opening reception was profoundly overwhelming with people getting weepy, or having to leave because they were crying, and perfect strangers approaching me to thank me for what I’d done. For those who haven’t seen the work, I can only explain this by saying that Life’s Work tells the story of my mother’s Lewy Body dementia, and my relationship with her, without pulling too many punches. Some people really felt it.
Though the opening was only two hours long, I left feeling in shock, and it took no less than five days to get my bearings and feel like myself again. On one level, my response-to-the-responses was simply the mother of all vulnerability hangovers. Yes, it’s true I’d been posting the artwork on Instagram for a couple of years. Clearly, hanging it on a wall in a public space and having real, live humans responding to it is another thing entirely. Plus, I’ve never done anything on this scale, or with this apparent impact. I did experience a divine convergence and a breakthrough both artistically and emotionally with this project, and for that I am thankful. It couldn’t have happened at any other point in my life.
Of course, now I haven’t made art for months.
During the last four years I’ve found that people react most strongly to Feed the Monster when I’m open about my imperfection and vulnerability as a human being. It allows people to feel they can safely do the same… it appears to help them feel less alone. It’s a comfort, even. People respond to seeing themselves reflected in the stories of others, and I saw that happen in real time at the opening of Life’s Work: A Visual Memoir.
If I’m developing any superpower in my advancing years, it’s the ability and willingness to reveal my fallibility… to expose parts of myself that once felt too scary to admit to. You wouldn’t think that’d be such a big deal, but apparently it is.
A special thank you to Kegan McFadden, executive director of the Victoria Arts Council, for making the work look so good in that space. And to Connor MacKinnon, gallery technician extraordinaire.
The Victoria Arts Council main gallery is at 1800 Store Street, Victoria BC. Hours are normally noon to 5:00 pm, Wednesday to Sunday—except for this week… the VAC will be closed Friday July 1st and Saturday July 2nd.
The show runs until July 17th.
As always, thank you so much for being here. This is a brief one—if I’m lucky the “life stuff” will have calmed down by next month and I’ll have better control over my brain cells.
B.A. xo
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Wow congrats on what sounds like a huge success on every front!
Ah BA would have loved to attend. Congratulations! It's always such a thing getting a big project done.