Reacting against the tendency of some feminist artists, such as Judith Berenstein, to use the penis as a symbol for violence, my art is more in line with Edith Golden’s “Male Landscapes”. In my sculptural installation, “Purity, Piety, Receptivity, and Grace,” I subvert Minimalist sculptural forms and their adherence to purity of form. I layer vivid fluorescent pink paint and gestural drawings of penises in an intuitive manner on used shower curtains. The use of domestic materials as the canvas for these erotic paintings references my identity as a mother. Intuition, emotion, and sensuality are often discouraged and repressed in American culture, and in recognition of this phenomenon I pour fields of cement on top of these vibrant and fertile intuitive paintings, in effect censoring them. The finished sculptures form pillars or columns that are meant to invoke the institutional structures that suppress emotions, sexuality, and freedom, specifically the Cult of Domesticity, the value system from the 19th century that defined women’s role in the home as pure, maternal, sexless beings. There is a rich history of feminist art depicting female sexuality and a rich history of feminist art engaging with motherhood - my work intersects with both.
