art and media
in the present moment through art A N DY F RY E A K A L E B R O N S H A M E S , C H I C A G O B R U I S E B R OT H E R S
Everyone who plays roller derby knows how important being in the moment is. Michelle Graves, a jammer who skates for the Chicago Outfit, also spends time off the track as a visual artist with a catalog of brilliant work. And much of her work, she says, is about capturing the present moment. Graves considers herself a text-based interdisciplinary artist who is innately passionate about existence, language, the human anatomy, and explorations of the world. Creating her art out of a variety of different media – including paint, photography, graphic type, and other materials – Graves aims to make bodies of visual work that examine what she calls “an existential and physiological stream of consciousness”. Graves, who joined roller derby in 2007 and is a co-founder of The Chicago Outfit, has been making art long before she ever put on skates and almost as long as she could walk. “One of my first memories is of a drawing I made in marker, probably Crayola, in 3-year-old pre-school.” Graves said. “It was a drawing of my parents’ house, with a flower that was turned into a dinner plate. I remember holding the plate, looking at it in awe and thinking, ‘I made this.’” SteveJurkovicPhotography.com One series of work in which Graves both captures the moment and explores the use of language is in her work that she calls “Design Aesthetic Freestyle Writing,” which combines color, words, and their placement to elaborate different emotions and states of mind. In this set and in works like “Two Dots,” Graves puts to paint and surface visual ideas about existence, the modern daily grind, and being human in a swirl of words and colors that describe her subject and perhaps what is going on in her head. In simpler fashion, her freestyle piece entitled “To Know To Be,” Graves assembles words and color in a calmer arrangement, setting the visual pace. “Writing in a non-linear fashion gives me the freedom to design an intricate drawing and also allows me to emphasize specific words and phrases, giving the drawings a certain tone,”
56 | Fall 2013 | fiveonfivemag.com
Graves added regarding her work. “The tone can become different for viewers who read the drawings and bring their own associations to powerful words like acknowledge.” Graves also said that her stream-of-conscious work is deeply influenced by Alzheimer’s Disease that her grandmother passed away from. “While helping care for my grandmother, I realized that all she had left was the present moment,” she said. “It was a challenge to interact and communicate with her only dealing with the present. My way of facing the fear of this hereditary disease, besides helping take care of my grandmother, was to interpret dwelling in the present moment, to absorb the atmosphere around me and simultaneously output my thoughts on paper or a wall. I found this very similar to being in the zone. Or, the quiet moments where your body and mind move simultaneously in a meditative flow.” One other side of Graves’ fine arts repertoire consist of her “In A Box” compositions, which are a sort of threedimensional collage, assembled of photos and mementos, electric wires, words, and other graphics, arranged and framed within wood boxes. One work of the series, “Overanalyzation of an Experience,” depicts loose associations linking the loss of her brother at age 13 with the passing of her grandparents. “Acknowledging death is a form of acknowledging life, which makes being alive, experiencing and processing it to the fullest, the core of who I am.” Graves said. “Art has become the philosophical output of my processed experiences.” Photography and its applied use are also important to Graves as an artist. Retelling stories is as much a part of Graves’ interest as an artist as is the use of colorful words in her compositions. She became interested in black and white photography in middle school and, as she put it, “lived in the dark room in high school.” While Graves herself is just one example in the wide world of roller derby in which a player finds personal expression through art, her works stand as a compelling statement about the power of creativity and artistic drive.