Cynthia Atwood—Alphabet of Weapons

With Eyes Open

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Cynthia Atwood—Alphabet of Weapons

Cynthia Atwood—Alphabet of Weapons September 8 – November 15, 2017 Gallery Talk: Saturday, October 15, 2017, 1:00-2:00 P.M. Assembly Presentation: Thursday, November 2, 2017, 10:00-11:00 A.M. With Eyes Open exhibition series, curated by Todd Bartel Foreword and Essay © 2017 Todd Bartel All work represented in this catalog © Cynthia Atwood Photography of Cynthia Atwood's work by John Polak Photography, 2016, except pages 40-41, by Todd Bartel Edited by Eli Keehn Design and exhibition photos © 2017 Todd Bartel © Thompson Gallery, The Cambridge School of Weston Printed on demand by Lulu.com All rights reserved The Cambridge School of Weston 45 Georgian Road Weston, MA 02493 Cover: Cynthia Atwood: left: A is for Ask, 2009, wood, leather, cloth, 27 x 9 x 9 inches; right: Z is for Zealot, 2016, light bulb, electrical tape, extension cord, nylon cord, 154 x 28 x 91 inches; photo credit: John Polak Photography

Thompson Gallery 2

With Eyes Open Cynthia Atwood—Alphabet of Weapons, September 8 - November 15, 2017 Naoe Suzuki—Dreamcatchers (Red Wall Gallery), October 30 - December 20, 2017 National Association of Women Artists—With Eyes Open, December 19, 2017 - March 2, 2018 Niho Kozuru—Monocasts & Multipours, April 2 - June 15, 2018 Cynthia Atwood—Alphabet of Weapons is the first exhibition in the With Eyes Open series—a series of three exhibitions celebrating New England women artists. Cynthia Atwood’s Alphabet of Weapons is comprised of 26 metaphorical sculptures that explore psychological, emotional, and interpersonal ways that doing harm is socially learned.

ABOUT THE THOMPSON GALLERY The Thompson Gallery is a teaching gallery at The Cambridge School of Weston dedicated to exploring single themes through several separate exhibitions, offering differing vantages on the selected topic. Named in honor of school trustee John Thompson and family, the Gallery promotes opportunities to experience contemporary art by local, national and international artists and periodically showcases the art of faculty, staff and alumni. The Gallery is located within the Garthwaite Center for Science and Art, The Cambridge School of Weston, 45 Georgian Road, Weston, MA 02493. M–F 9–4:30 p.m. and by appointment (school calendar applies). thompsongallery.csw.org ABOUT THE CAMBRIDGE SCHOOL OF WESTON The Cambridge School of Weston, located in a Boston suburb, is a progressive, coeducational, day and boarding school for grades 9 through 12 and post graduate. Established in 1886, the school is dedicated to fostering individual strengths and deep, meaningful relationships through a wide range of challenging courses and a variety of teaching styles. csw.org

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Foreword & Acknowledgements

Bound by little domesticities‌we were being held in an ancient pattern through which rain, gravity, sunlight move particles of earth, energy, spores, leaves, or water from one place to another, composing and decomposing life...The idea of a world creating itself through small chores. The universe as a place of constant cooking and cleaning, merging and separation. Plant life taking nourishment from earth, fusing with the bodies of animals. Air entering bodies, changing, reentering the atmosphere. Genes fusing, replicating, differentiating. At one moment, particles suspended in fields of energy and at another matter and energy existing as waves. Everything dissolving into the whole and then separating, resolving into being.1 Susan Griffin, The Eros of Everyday Life

All skills, even the most abstract, begin as bodily practices.2 Richard Sennett, The Craftsman

I have come to appreciate the art of Cynthia Atwood as an art about everyday encounters and actions that reveals itself in extraordinary ways.

I first met Cynthia Atwood at Vermont College’s MFA in Visual Art Program, during the February 1999 residency. I was a visiting critic and an artist-teacher there.

Cynthia was finishing up her MFA, and her work immediately stood out for the ways it pushed at and contributed to the definition of sculpture.

In general, Atwood’s work easily connects with Surrealism, Dada and Feminism. More specifically, her sculptures belong to a 6

lineage of object making that includes artists such as Méret Oppenheim (b. Germany, 1913-1985), Louise Bourgeois (b. France, 1911-2010), Eva Hesse (b. Germany, 19361970), Mona Hatoum (b. Lebanon, 1952- ), Lee Bontecou (b. Rhode Island, 1931- ), Judy Chicago (b. Illinois, 1939- ), and Faith Wilding (b. Paraguay, 1943- )—one of Atwood’s professors at Vermont College.

Aspects of Atwood’s sculptures align with these artists’ sculptural tendencies, but her work stands apart and is ultimately difficult to classify, due to her open-ended attitude toward what constitutes sculpture.

Cynthia Atwood is an architect and engineer of sensuous sculpture possibilities.

She is a resourceful and opportunistic sculptor who engages with technology on an as-needed basis, and who often has to invent technology to achieve a specific vision. For example, her inquiry might begin with finding an armature to cover with batting and cloth, and the combination might involve other support materials that require power tools, hand stitching, painting and a glass smith. Atwood's attitude is open to possibility, and while she has favorite materials and processes—cloth, sewing, woodworking, and drawing, for example— she doesn't limit herself to any specific practice. She works with what is available and plays equally with anything at hand.

After earning her MFA in 1999, Atwood was one of several artists who commissioned me to continue critiquing their work. That critique group ultimately inspired me to form a small program, which I called unfoldingobject, located at Port Chester Studios, in Port Chester, NY. There, I held regular critique sessions for post-MFA students as well as private classes for high school students wanting to create portfolios for application to undergraduate

art programs. During this period, I developed strong friendships with many of the participating artists, and I had the privilege of seeing their various bodies of work evolve, until the program became part of a consortium. I joined forces with Kenise Barnes (Kenise Barnes Fine Art), Reyna Henaine (Henaine Fine Art) and Patricia Miranda (Miranda Fine Arts), and together, we formed Loft Arts—“a center for creative

inquiry providing dynamic, challenging and interdisciplinary programs in the arts.”3

Loft Arts enjoyed several seasons and exhibitions before closing in 2003. While this was not my first time curating, Loft Arts presented me with two opportunities to exhibit my students’ work before I left the greater New York area to work on founding the Thompson Gallery. During that time, Cynthia Atwood created a body of work—figures 1-8—that explored themes of everyday living and the body, which often investigated gender boundaries.

Several of these sculptures were included in the January 2003 Loft Arts exhibition, Unfoldingobject: Critical Selections.1. The work Atwood was producing at that time was wonderfully enigmatic and surprising as noted in the curator’s statement for the exhibit:

The materiality, sensuality, and labor reflected in the work of Cynthia Atwood (New Marlborough, MA) are, she states, “the expressions of the corporeal, Dionysian beast hovering underneath the nice and lovely.” Her unworldly, yet strangely familiar mixed media sculptures confuse stereotypical gender roles, carnal desire, and organic life forms by presenting mixed messages that remove the ability to categorize.4 7

Prosthesis, 2001

Corsage, 2001

collection of Georgeanne Rousseau

Horn, 2001

I learned to prize the word “strange” when it came up during critiques in my undergraduate years at Rhode Island School of Design. My teachers never overused this word—keeping it in reserve for the times when their students produced things that did not neatly fall into art-historical categories.

While Cynthia Atwood and I were planning Alphabet of Weapons, she reminded me of a comment I made to her during one of my critiques of her work at unfoldingobject:

I wanted to know how I could push the work more and you said, ‘You don't have to make the work any odder, it's already so strange.'5 During the critiques of the early 2000s, I frequently referred to Atwood’s sculptures as “alien,” “otherworldly” and “strangely familiar,” because her sculptures typically resisted instant revelation. They tended to unfold with meaning over time, the longer her viewers considered the work. Atwood's engineered objects anthropomorphize some part of the human spirit, with subtle, penetrating and often unsettling observations. Atwood's work is a strange encounter that becomes familiar as the viewer recognizes the humanist values and traits she explores. That is how Atwood catches us and opens our gaze wider; she shows us unconventional conglomerations 8

Worn, 2001

collection of Anne Fredericks

My Monkey, 2002

that reveal common truths.

The play between the familiar and strange activates Atwood's sculptures. Her Alphabet of Weapons visualize and expose quotidian emotions in unexpected ways.

Sometimes, these embodiments appear as abstracted, visceral forms, while others are embedded in recognizable utilitarian objects.

On the one hand, her abecedarius gives physical form to otherwise invisible bits of emotional intelligence, and it is a strange thing indeed to think you are looking at a new object and then realize you already know its content. At other times, viewers recognize a familiar form but see it in a new way the longer they look. For example, an ax is a recurrent object within Atwood's Alphabet, but the way she uses the reference is different each time. "A" is for Ask is made of layers of cloth, emphasizing the myriad ways that questions can be uttered and heard. In "E" is for Empire, Atwood uses an actual ax, which makes evident the threatening power of the actual tool. And "M" is for Money is carved out of wood and covered with torn cash. "I feel

like the ax is mine to use because it has been domesticated. The ax used to be a tool of war, an actual weapon. A gun is not mine, but the ax is.6" Atwood’s three axes are hewn differently and emphasize wholly separate ideas in each instance.

Low Tide, 2002

Symbiosis, 2002 collection of Barbara Harder

Set of Pinks, 2002

The events of 9/11 prompted Atwood to consider the nature of fear as provoked by the use of unconventional weapons, and she began wondering how to make a body of work that revolved around emotional ideas. After several years of contemplation, Atwood finally began working on Alphabet of Weapons in 2009, the same year she also initiated a Buddhist meditation practice:

My understanding of the Dharma and my practice of using it as a point of view for my life spurred my interest in the weapons we use against ourselves and others, even those we love.7 While Atwood did not make a conscious connection between learning how to meditate and meditating on emotional weapons, it is interesting to consider her work regarding her meditations, which through extended focus bring the complexity of myriad things into a simple, balanced view. When contemplating her Alphabet of Weapons, I frequently find myself comparing Atwood's sculptural ruminations to Nathaniel Hawthorne's dark romantic novels; both artists fill their work with psychologically complex observations of human characteristics.

In the winter of 2016, Cynthia and I

Coin Operated, 2003

were both invited to be visiting critics at a new low-residency MFA program at New Hampshire Institute of Art (NHIA), in Manchester, NH. We were invited by another graduate of Vermont College and former student of mine, Craig Stockwell, who attended Vermont College along with Cynthia in the late 1990s and who is currently the head of the Visual Art Department at NHIA’s MFA program. Working alongside Cynthia at NHIA, I learned about her upcoming exhibition of the Alphabet of Weapons, which was then scheduled to appear at No 6 Depot St., West Stockbridge, MA, in the summer of 2016. Knowing her work the way I do, and before ever seeing the Alphabet series on her website, I suggested to her that the Alphabet of Weapons would be perfect for the With Eyes Open exhibition series.

Although the Alphabet of Weapons was not created for the Thompson Gallery per se, it is nevertheless tailor-made for the space— the room’s dimensions and configurations are perfectly proportioned to display the works in succession. The Thompson Gallery was also the first venue to organize the installation in an alphabetical arrangement— apropos for a school setting.

One aspect of Atwood's sculptures gave me pause, however, as we planned her 9

November 2, 2017, assembly slideshow.

Cynthia wanted to project a slide with a single word, "eros," to help our audience appreciate a theme which pervades much of her work. I feared that our audience could all too easily get caught up with the topic of sexuality as they viewed the work during her talk if we were to focus on the concept of "eros" as an overarching theme. Without hesitation, Cynthia pulled that slide from the slideshow, understanding our teenage audience, but she also helped me to better appreciate that vital aspect of her work by directing my attention to several passages in a book by Susan Griffin, The Eros of Everyday Life: Essays on Ecology, Gender and Society: …in placing that plum in my mouth I have experienced joy. The fruit of many months of sunlight and earth and water has entered me, becomes me, not only in my stomach, my blood, my cells, but because of what I have learned. The plum has been my lover. And I have known the plum. Letting the plum into the mind of my body, I will always have that taste of sweetness in my memory.

But I cannot know this sweetness, the full dimension of it, unless I am aware of the holiness of this meeting.

If I think that the plum tree exists only to feed me, I have lost the meaning that is mixed with every pleasure. The tree exists for the sake of its own being. And it is also part of a commons, its fruit the inheritance of bird and animal and soil alike. I must know this to receive the full value of communion.8 The ways in which Atwood enfolds Griffin's eros of "communion" into her reflections 10

on emotional weaponry is made evident as viewers recognize the layers of content by Atwood’s juxtapositions of materials and ideas in each work. In another passage by Griffin, which Atwood alerted me to, the author describes eros in this way: By the light of our desire to meet and communicate, language can be taken as proof of our commonality and of a commons in the mind. Nor is the life of the mind irrelevant in this critical tragedy bearing time. But what and how we think, we coerce, confine, distort, and damage or sustain, encourage, create coax ourselves and otherness into a fuller realization of being.9 In an email to me highlighting the above passage, Atwood noted: "I can easily replace the word "language" with art."10 As she creates sculpture, Atwood stays attuned to both the “commons” of the mind, with all its chatter and song, as well as the actions of the body, which navigates the mind’s decisions. Eros, therefore, is any sense of the body as it relates to another, but also how it relates to a place and activity.

Revealing these senses of eros in her work allows us to see and appreciate how Atwood approaches making her art.

Atwood creates to find the commonality between things and essences. And she shows us such complexity with well-distilled, visually simple composites of forms and materials in her sculptures.

I am grateful for Cynthia's trust in me as a curator and for her suggestions regarding how to hang her work. On several occasions, she opted to go with my vision regarding the installation. I think we were both pleasantly

surprised by the final juxtapositions that alphabetical organization provided.

Throughout the life of the exhibition, the frequency of speaking with visitors meant that in only a couple of weeks’ time, I had memorized the titles to each work. With great joy and animation, I typically started my tours iterating each title in order as we walked around the gallery, and always a conversation would ensue because of the interrelated forms and ideas between Atwood's sculptures.

I am also grateful for Cynthia's enthusiastic support regarding all my requests for quotes, context and background information as I pulled together the exhibition, the essay and the catalog for her show. I am grateful to Anne Fredericks, who loaned "C" is for Charm (pages 26-27) and to Lucy Holland, who loaned "L" is for Love (pages 44-45) to the exhibition.

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1. Susan Griffin, The Eros of Everyday Life: Essays on Ecology, Gender and Society, Open Road Media, New York, 1995, pp. 148-149 2. Richard Sennett, The Craftsman, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, 2009, p.10 3. Todd Bartel, Loft Arts Flyer, Port Chester, NY, 2001 4. Todd Bartel, revised exhibition statement, Unfoldingobject: Critical Selections.1, curated by Todd Bartel, concurrent exhibitions Miranda Fine Arts and Henaine Fine Art, Port Chester, NY, 2003 5. Cynthia Atwood, quoting Todd Bartel, phone call, July 24, 2017 6. Atwood, July 24 7. Cynthia Atwood, Artist’s Statement, see pages 116-117 8. Griffin, p. 151-152 9. Griffin, p. 153 10. Cynthia Atwood, email, November 26, 2017

Cynthia Atwood's Alphabet of Weapons initiates the With Eyes Open exhibition series with an inward-looking eye. In this first look at our broader theme, Atwood's sculptures invite her viewers to consider human emotion as weapons. In turn, Alphabet of Weapons widens our points of view to witness the ways people wield their internal weaponry, wittingly and unwittingly, and how our use of these emotional tools doublecrosses and undermines ourselves in the process of employing them.

Todd Bartel, Gallery Director

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Cynthia Atwood—Alphabet of Weapons

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Sticks and stones can break my bones and names can never hurt me.1 Common, c. 1862 Questions’re bullets.2 David Mitchell, 2006 For art to be any use at all to us, there must be a tension between the actual circumstances of perception and the continuity of conceptual habits…This purposelessness is at the heart of what makes art a possible ethical sanctuary; far from removing art from the spheres of political power and importance, art’s hypothetical and incomplete aspects are vital to both its conceptual freedom and its capacity to bear ethical orientation.3 Susan Stewart, 2005 I make objects that confront my body and that of my viewer with sensuous humor and some provocation.4 Cynthia Atwood, 2017 Cynthia Atwood—Alphabet of Weapons is the first exhibit of four in the With Eyes Open exhibition series. At its heart, With Eyes Open celebrates New England women artists and feminism. In the words of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: "We Should All Be Feminists."5 With Eyes Open was assembled to acknowledge a greater need for an intersectional point of view in an age of non-binary, critical gender politics and the general appreciation of feminist inquiry over the last 5 decades on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the recurrent displays of misogynist attitudes documented in the media throughout the recent presidential election. The women’s march of early 2017

was born out of such polar circumstances—a cultural rebuttal to the blatant sexism emanating from the Oval Office. We begin our series with Cynthia Atwood—Alphabet of Weapons: a body of 26 sculptures that challenges viewers to open their eyes to their unseen armory of emotional weaponry.

Initiated after several years of reflection on the events of 9/11 and the palpable fear America experienced in its aftermath, Cynthia Atwood began working on Alphabet of Weapons in 2006 in order to explore myriad human emotions and how they can be tooled to work against selfcare, civility, sisterhood and brotherhood.

Inspired by her reflections on the individual Weapons, in 2009 Atwood began a Buddhist meditation practice, which also inspired and informed the Alphabet. ”My understanding of the Dharma and my practice of using it as a point of view for my life spurred my interest in the weapons we use against ourselves, and others, even those we love.”6 The 26 sculptures of Atwood’s Alphabet of Weapons raise questions that can only be answered by the viewers of this timely body of work. How do you interact with and treat others, when you are faced with emotions that tug at and direct your actions?

Cynthia Atwood (b. 1952 New Briton, CT) lives and works in her studio home in the Berkshires, where she has been producing art for the last 30 years. She earned her BFA in printmaking and painting at the University of Kansas (Lawrence, KS) in 1976 and her MFA in Visual Arts/Sculpture at the Vermont College of Fine Arts (Montpelier, VT) in 1999. Atwood runs a sewing business, creates art, and has taught art through programs such as the The Body Project in Great Barrington, MA—a project for women of all ages addressing body image and adornment—and as a visiting critic and 15

artist-teacher at New Hampshire Institute of Art’s MFA program. In 1997, she was awarded a New England Foundation For The Arts Sculpture Fellowship, and in 2005 she was awarded an Alfred and Trafford Klots International Program for Artists Residency.

Atwood regularly shows her work in local and regional venues here in New England, including Montserrat College of Art, Beverly, MA, and the De Cordova Museum in Lincoln, MA, and has exhibited outside the region in Arizona, California, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Oregon, and Baghdad, Iraq.

Atwood describes herself as an “engineer,”7 “…motivated by attraction to materials and the pleasure…in handling them.”8 Viewers are encouraged to wonder about the armatures and the combination of elements that makes up any one of the Alphabet sculptures, which are thoroughly synthesized objects retrofitted for particular associative possibilities. Each sculpture works as a stand-alone concept while also enhancing the overall ensemble.

Viewers are encouraged to look for and contemplate juxtapositions and relationships between objects and explored themes.

Atwood creates sculptures that fuse several traditions into single objects, often incorporating any combination of a wide variety of building techniques: drawing, painting, sewing, woodworking, metal work, subtractive construction, and the revealed or concealed use of found objects: …I practice my avocation congruent with a sewing business. The use of sewing techniques in my business and in my studio practice has brought an integration of the real and the surreal into my everyday life.9 Atwood learned to sew when she was nine years old from her mother, “who sewed every 16

party and prom dress, who looked at clothes I liked in stores and said, ‘I can make it better.’”10 Sewing is a prominent activity for Atwood’s studio practice. Beyond the tradition of sewing, which she embraces, sewing also enhances a potent metaphor in her work: a psychological makeup of an individual’s identity is like a tapestry or quilt or garment that we don and shed, picking it up to use again when it suits us. Atwood’s studio practice is punctuated by the inward search for clarity and sewing allows her to conjoin pieces of the interior puzzle. She embraces this “domestic” practice, “because weaving, the work of thread has always been present in domestic life. Just making a stitch relates to that legacy.”11 Atwood acknowledges that “sewing is no longer ‘only’ a gendered tradition.”12 I use “woman’s work” to represent the concepts I work with in the studio. My mother sewed, I sew; this tradition has long grown into the contemporary art studio and is now shared by both genders.

“Woman’s work” began with the village women who were responsible for spinning and weaving of cloth. The church gave women one of their first opportunities to “express” their skills in public by embroidering vestments and altar cloths.

For me, these domestic skills are deeply ingrained and come out of the home plot— family. I approached the Alphabet from the point of view of home and relationship, and the extended “world” family. This aspect deepened over the seven years that I worked on the Alphabet.13 Domestic process is intrinsic to my life. I do make a home, cook, clean, and I sew for a living. This same thread travels into the studio and is integrated into the whole.

There becomes a moment when sewing is ritual, an aspect of domesticity that is the thread that holds the world together. The

work is not necessarily about domesticity; I just think that domesticity is inherent in the work.14 Classifying Atwood’s work is problematic because there are no artistic traditions today that everyone practices simultaneously— as was the case in Medieval Europe, for example—and her work is an amalgam of a great many attributes and independent interests. Louise Bourgeois—an artist Cynthia Atwood greatly admires and studies—puts it this way: What modern art means is that you have to keep finding new ways to express yourself, to express the problems; there are no settled ways, no fixed approach.

This is a painful situation, and modern art is about this painful situation of having no absolutely definite way of expressing yourself. This is why modern art will continue, because this condition remains; it is the modern human condition... it is about the hurt of not being able to express yourself properly, to express your intimate relations, your unconscious, to trust the world enough to express yourself directly in it. It is about trying to be sane in this situation, of being tentatively and temporarily sane by expressing yourself.

All art comes from terrific failures and needs that we have. It is about the difficulty of being a self because one is neglected. Everywhere in the modern world there is neglect, the need to be recognized, which is not satisfied. Art is a way of recognizing oneself, which is why it will always be modern.15 Concomitantly, Atwood points out that while the term “soft sculpture” is apt to some extent for the kind of work she creates, it is ultimately not an appropriate designation for the subjects she addresses within the work:

I realize that the designation “soft sculpture,” on its surface, simply describes the difference between soft and hard materials. Could these terms describe masculine and feminine polarities, more and less, which we have been trained to connote? Bronze is more important than fabric? Is this an unconscious form of sexism? Perhaps these terms are passé and narrow and sculpture is just sculpture. I can only work from a woman’s perspective. I use soft materials to make a hard edge. I give my work skeletons—bones that are either found or fabricated. The work is padded, stretched and folded. I immerse myself in the materials, the hand of them, hard and soft together. Every detail, even the smallest, has import. The source of materials is important, the glove lost and found again - a hole chewed in it, the locust thorns my brother collected for me and sent from Kansas. Every moment of hesitation is a moment for a new choice/perspective in the process of making. Formal decisions become content.16 While Atwood embraces many feminists, writers, artists and theorists, she points out that Alphabet of Weapons belongs to a humanist category: “’feminism’ is too small a category for this work, it is plural.”17 9/11 is what really instigated this body of work. I knew the world wasn’t going to be the same any more and I knew I wasn’t the only one who felt that. I moved from trying to comprehend the gross use of airplanes loaded with passengers as weapons to the subtleties of the ways we hurt others and ourselves. This is what inspired this body of work. I started thinking about how to focus on fear in a body of sculptures. Fear harmed us as much as the actual incidents of 9/11— 17

and is more long term and much more insidious. The idea of fear, and doing things out of fear—because you do not have an alternative to have something other than a psychological response— combined with objects not normally associated with being weapons, together propelled the project. The combination quickly became personal, and that allowed me to think in new ways.18 Integral to her work is a fascination with the “fantastic”; Atwood herself credits Surrealism as one of the important threads of modernism that fuels and informs her work. For Atwood, Surrealism allows for the juxtaposition of the strange with the familiar—the perfect vehicle to present abstract reflections on common emotional tools for harming others found within unusual settings and housings. But the exuberance of the forms she creates are not as much about Surrealist art per se as they are about examining the human condition with an acute interest in the relationship between invisible, interior consciousness and the visible, outward expressions of the body, including vocalizations and bodily gestures.

In her general artist’s statement found on her website, Atwood notes: I am interested in the unrecognizable, the repressed. What is beyond our immediate reality? What is the mystery of our associative, psychological state in regards to our perception of what is underneath our skin? Often there are details of clothing in my work, zippers, piping, buttonholes, referring to the fashion we cover ourselves with, our facade. My work is an exaggerated reference to the body. It reflects the paradox of intelligence opposing bestiality, the body couture. Our facade is an obsession. The materiality, sensuality, and labor invested in my work 18

are expressions of the body.19 Alphabet of Weapons builds off the common idiom of language and common tools of destruction, but those tools are emotional as opposed to physical. Atwood’s abecedarium is surprising and often eye opening—exposing things we may not necessarily know we do, or, worse, exposing sentiments we would otherwise try to hide.

As Atwood hauntingly points out: The way we hurt each other in relationships is represented in the Alphabet of Weapons and we internalize these deployments.20 We’ve learned these weapons!21 Alphabet of Weapons reminds us that violence is not only found in the obvious objects of destruction, but is often couched in the small things we do and say: Sticks and stones can break my bones and names can really hurt me.

Todd Bartel Gallery Director, Curator Thompson Gallery

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1. Note: Gary Martin suggests that one of the earliest occurrences of the original phrase—“Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never break me”— appeared in The Christian Recorder of March 1862. Gary Martin, The Phrase Finder, http://www.phrases.org.uk/ meanings/sticks-and-stones-may-break-my-bones.html, retrieved July 24, 2017 2. David Mitchell, Black Swan Green, Random House, New York, NY, 2006, p. 223 3. Susan Stewart, The Open Studio—Essays on Art and Aesthetics, University of Chicago Press, Chicago & London, 2005, pp. 16-17 4. Cynthia Atwood, July 25, 2017 telephone conversation 5. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, We Should All Be Feminists, Anchor Books, A Division of Random House Books, New York, NY, 2012 6. Cynthia Atwood, Alphabet of Weapons Statement, retrieved October 2, 2016 email 7. Cynthia Atwood, August 17, 2017 telephone conversation 8. Cynthia Atwood, general Artist’s Statement 9. Cynthia Atwood, Bio, http://www.cynthiaatwood.com/ about-the-artist, retrieved, August 17, 2017 10. Cynthia Atwood Interview, Republic restaurant, Manchester, NH, January 14, 2017 11. Cynthia Atwood, July 25, 2017 telephone conversation 12. Atwood, July 25, 2017 telephone conversation 13. Cynthia Atwood, Alphabet of Weapons Statement, October 2, 2016 email 14. Atwood, July 26, 2017 email 15. Louise Bourgeois Interview with Donald Kuspit (1988), Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art: A Sourcebook of Artists’ Writings, Second Ed. Revised and Expanded, Ed. Kristine Stiles, University of California Press, Berkley, Los Angeles, London, 2012, p. 41 16. Atwood, August 28, 2017 email 17. Cynthia Atwood, October 2, 2016, email 18. Atwood, July 25, 2017 telephone conversation 19. Cynthia Atwood, general Artist’s Statement, http:// www.cynthiaatwood.com/about-the-artist, retrieved, August 17, 2017 20. Atwood Interview, (Manchester, NH), January 14, 2017 21. Atwood, July 24, 2017 telephone conversation

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Alphabet of Weapons

“A” is for Ask, 2009 wood, leather, cloth 27 x 9 x 9 inches 22

An axe, once a weapon of war, has become a domestic tool. Asking has the potential, for good or bad, to cut us open. We could be asking or another asks us. This axe has many soft blades—pages of the story of asking—veins and an interior, the way asking can strike the body. The handle is covered with white kid skin from a woman’s dress glove.

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“B� is for Berate, 2009 wood, leather, stones, marble base 6.5 x 14 x 10.5 inches 24

This piece represents an actual weapon from South America—bolas/bola; plural: bolas or bolases; from Spanish bola, "ball," also known as boleadoras. A bola is a type of throwing weapon, made of weights on the ends of interconnected cords, and is used to capture animals by entangling their legs. I made a wooden handle with a thumb-hole and leather thongs, each cord attached to a stone and all covered with pink suede. I made it attractive, something I would be interested in picking up. It has surprising weight. The thought of entangling my own legs. It is a sensualized and feminized version of a weapon. The word “bola� is nice in the mouth.

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“C� is for Charm, 2010 wood, fabric, mixed media 30.75 x 21.375 x 7.75 inches collection of Anne Fredericks 26

An oversized charm bracelet in its jewelry box. Charm can be warm and real or manipulative.

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“D� is for Desire, 2015 fabrics, upholstery foam, wood 54 x 22.5 x 8 inches 28

We aim at what we want. And then we want another something. We struggle at an edge of tension with our wanting. We would not be alive without desire. This arrow is curved and has a spiral trajectory.

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“E� is for Empire, 2010 styrofoam, fabric, demolition axe 48 x 16 x 11.5 inches 30

Do you have an axe to grind? Empress Josephine, wife of Napoleon, popularized the fashion of the “Empire waist.” In his time, Napoleon was an empire builder as other countries still are—for me this includes America. At times, we exercise our aggression in the guise of democracy, a “fashion,” so to speak. These were my thoughts when I began this piece. As I worked on it, they continued to hold true, but other layers were added. I realized that I personally carry an inner aggression that appears in other guises and believe this is true for humankind.

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“F” is for Fear, 2010-2016 custom leather chair by Mill Upholstery, granite, rope 145 x 27.75 x 28 inches 32

Fear hangs over our heads. How to learn to sit with fear?

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“G� is for Grasp, 2015 lost and found glove, fabric and thread 19 x 8 x 3 inches 34

On the wheel of Karma, feeling comes before grasping. We can practice feeling, letting it roar through us without acting. Acting on the feeling holds the possibility of more problems, more stoppages, more barricades. The hand grasps—it can hold on, or let go. This glove is from one of a favorite pair. I was hiking and stuffed the gloves into my pocket and later found that one was missing. The next week I hiked the same trail again and my friend found my glove. What are the chances of this! The glove had a hole chewed by an animal and was unraveling. I took it home and put it into the studio pile. Two years later it found its place in the Alphabet.

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“H� is for Hiss, 2009 rubber, fabric, mixed media 30 x 15.5 x 6.5 inches 36

The sound of the offensive or defensive. The fangs of the sound. I used a rubber snake and wire for the armature of this piece. I covered it and then re-covered it with a snakeskin voile fabric.

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“I� is for If, 2011 linen, fabric, thread 15.5 x 23.5 x 2.5 inches 38

One of the biggest weighted words ever. A conjunction creating conditions.

If only I hadn’t done that. If only she wouldn’t do that…

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“J” is for Jealousy, 2016 fabric and strap clamps 42.5 x 24 x 9.75 inches 40

J is for Jealousy tied into knots.

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“K� is for Knife, 2016 broken hammer handle, Apple Wood blade, fabric 19.75 x 21.5 x 7 inches 42

K is for Knife is a broken oak hammer handle attached to a curved blade of applewood, the illusion of keeping this impossible weapon in a sheer pocket. This piece alludes to a piece of text from Judith Simmer Brown’s Dakini’s Warm Breath—The Feminine Principle in Tibetan Buddhism. In the “mythology” of this Tibetan lineage, a Dakini is a consort representing feminine wisdom. Her knife can cut accurately and cleanly—with wisdom, or, if the cut is made with too much emotion, it incurs harm because the aim is not true.

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“L” is for Love, 2016 fabric, thread, porcupine quills 18.5 x 24.5 x 1.25 inches collection of Lucy Holland 44

A poem I received from a friend who saw this piece: A word out of place Barbed beast arched springing loaded Throws quills of soft love 45

“M” is for Money, 2015 papier-mâché, wood, paint 18.5 x 15.50 x 2.5 inches 46

Money cuts to the quick. This axe is modeled after a hewing axe.

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“N” is for No, 2016 set of three linen tea towels 14.5 x 16.5 x 1 inches 48

We say “no” to quash. We say no when we mean yes. When we are two, we learn to say “no,” and then what?

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“O” is for Obfuscation, 2016 cotton and thread 6.375 x 11.375 inches 50

We disguise our meaning. We dance around it. What are we trying not to say?

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“P” is for Pout, 2014 fabric and thread 11 x 8.5 inches 52

Although pouting (a silent barricade) can apply to both genders, I think of it as one of the culturally entrained weapons of the female gender. A puny weapon for the powerless.

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“Q” is for Quill, 2016 linen, thread, porcupine quills 16.5 x 13.25 inches 54

“The pen is mightier than the sword� and I admire the defensive action of the porcupine whose hooked barbs create protection.

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“R� is for Revenge, 2015 readymade, vintage fly swatter 22.5 x 4 x 3.5 inches 56

The satisfaction of killing an irritation.

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“S� is for Secret, 2016 fabric and zipper 16.25 x 17 inches 58

Keep it zipped.

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“T� is for Terror, 2016 wood, wool, paint, porcelain teeth 7 x 11.5 x 5.5 inches 60

The pink wool of domesticity has its own teeth or can be bitten.

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“U� is for Undermine, 2016 altered shovel, tape, leather 36 x 27 x 2.5 inches 62

We do this to ourselves and to others— digging a hole underneath us both.

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“V� is for Venom, 2013 metal, wood, fabric, plastic, glass drops made by Master Glass Artists Dean and Eliska Smiley 32 x 20 x 21 inches 64

"V" is for Venom is a baroque growth that drips with bile?, honey?

Sometimes we can’t resist a beautiful thing that draws us in and then poisons us.

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“W” is for Worry, 2016 gourds, linen, glue, pigment, rope, quartz 96 x 91 x 5.5 inches 66

It started by handling ”worry beads.”

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“X” is for Cross Purposes, 2016 styrofoam, wool, upholstery needles 26 x 26.5 x 5.5 inches 68

X, a letter that crosses itself. A cancellation? A confusion of purpose? Injured by sharpness? An unconscious resistance?

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“Y” is for Yes, 2016 set of three, linen tea towels 14.5 x 16.5 x 1 inches 70

Part of the dichotomy.

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“Z� is for Zealot, 2016 light bulb, electrical tape, extension cord, nylon cord 154 x 28 x 91 inches 72

Zealots adhere inflexibly to narrow and restrictive ideas. But their zeal creates a bright, energetic aura that can be both attractive and dangerous, almost like electricity.

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Artist's Statement

In my studio I am motivated by attraction to materials and the pleasure I take in handling them. I make objects that confront my body and the body of my viewer with sensuous humor and some provocation. I am interested in the unrecognizable, the repressed. What is beyond our immediate reality? What is the mystery of our associative, psychological state in regards to our perception of what is underneath our skin? Often there are details of clothing in my work, zippers, piping, button holes, referring to the fashion we cover ourselves with, our facade. My work is an exaggerated reference to the body. It reflects the paradox of intelligence opposing bestiality, the body couture. Our facade is an obsession.

The materiality, sensuality, and labor invested in my work are expressions of the body.

Alphabet of Weapons After 9/11 I felt fearful. I knew that the world was going to change, and that the change would manifest over time and in ways I could not anticipate. The creation of fear, and its erosive qualities, was both the aim and a result of the attacks on 9/11. America’s defenses were up. My heart is still uncomfortable with this righteous paradigm. The urge to make work about fear stayed with me after this time. I wanted to make work that was the steward of my heart, not my thoughts.

In 2006, I began thinking about making an alphabet of weapons. A literary structure was a new way for me to work, to play with my love of language and combine it with my attraction to materials. The alphabet is a customary structure; it is an idiom that people understand and gave the viewer a frame for considering An Alphabet of Weapons.

I use “woman’s work” to represent the concepts I work with in the studio. My mother sewed, and I sew; this tradition has long since grown into the contemporary art studio and is now shared by both genders. “Woman’s work” began with the village women who were responsible for the spinning and weaving of cloth. The church gave women one of their first opportunities to “express” their skills in public by embroidering vestments and altar cloths.

For me, these domestic skills are deeply ingrained and come out of the home plot, family. I approached the Alphabet from the point of view of home and relationship, and the extended “world” family. This aspect became more prevalent over the seven years that I worked on the Alphabet.

I began the work in 2009 using the alphabet as a ground for thinking about weapons, playing with meanings and alternate connotations. The same year, I also began a Buddhist meditation practice. My understanding of the Dharma and my practice of using it as a point of view for my life spurred my interest in the weapons we use against ourselves and others, even those we love.

Working at random through the alphabet, I found that many of my choices are double edged, such as “C” is for Charm, an oversized charm bracelet in its jewelry box: charm can 108

be warm and real, or manipulative. The piece “V” is for Venom is a baroque growth that drips with bile? honey?; sometimes we can’t resist a beautiful thing that draws us in and then poisons us. There is a root of humor in my work – I play and want to play with my viewer.

Some of the pieces represent actual weapons. “B” is for Berate is modeled after the South American bola—a series of leather thongs with metal beads on their ends, used to strike a human. I made a wooden handle with a thumb-hole and attached thongs, each with a rock on its end; all are covered with pink suede. It is a sexualized and feminized version of a weapon. The word “bola” is nice in the mouth.

“K” is for Knife is a broken oak hammer handle attached to a curved blade of apple wood, the illusion of keeping this impossible weapon in your pocket accomplished by a sheer pocket without the rest of its garment. This piece alludes to Judith Simmer Brown’s Dakini’s Warm Breath—The Feminine Principle in Tibetan Buddhism. In the “mythology” of this Tibetan lineage, a Dakini is a consort representing feminine wisdom. “Her knife can cut accurately and cleanly, with wisdom, or if the cut is made with too much emotion it incurs harm because the aim is not true.”

Last spring, when I knew I would be showing this work, I put a list of my alphabet to date on my refrigerator and many friends offered ideas for the letters, which still needed concepts. As a result, I have had wonderful moments of conversation which moved the work forward. At a picnic last September, I was talking with a young woman who was interested in hearing about the work, and she said the most wonderful thing: “This work is about activism, a way for people to think about consciousness.” I don’t think the word “activism” is quite right, but I wanted to quote her because she inspired me to realize that the work is ethical.

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Biography

Resume

Cynthia Atwood b. 1952 New Briton, CT

EDUCATION 1976 B.F.A. Printmaking and Painting, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS 1999 M.F.A., Visual Arts/Sculpture, Vermont College of Fine Arts, Montpelier, VT

TEACHING EXPERIENCE 2009- Vermont College of Vermont College of Fine Arts, Artist Mentor 2014- New Hampshire Institute of Art, Artist Mentor/Advisor AWARDS 2000 The Cambridge Art Assoc., National Prize Show, Sculpture Prize selected by Carl Belz 1998 Levin/Lutz Merit Prize, Vermont College of Norwich 1997 New England Foundation For The Arts, Sculpture Fellowship RESIDENCIES 1996 Art OMI, International Artist’s Residency, Ghent, NY 2005 Klots Residency, Rochefort-en-Terre, Brittany, France

2016 2012 2008 2007

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2001 2000

1995 1994 1993 1990

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SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS An Alphabet of Weapons No 6 Depot St., West Stockbridge, MA Notebook Pages The Little Gallery, Front St., Housatonic, MA Listening Devices, Carrie Haddad Gallery, Hudson, NY Transparent Couture and Other Pleasures, The Trustman Gallery, Simmons College, Boston, MA Cynthia Atwood: Stitch, Morgan Lehman Gallery, New York, NY Cynthia Atwood, Columbia Green Community College, Hudson, NY Cynthia Atwood - Sculpture, Segreto Contemporary Art, Santa Fe, NM Body Couture, William Blizzard Gallery, Springfield College, Springfield, MA Accessories, Ute Stebich Gallery, Lenox, MA Sculpture, Koussevitzky Art Gallery, Berkshire Community College, Pittsfield, MA Cynthia Atwood, Butler Sculpture Park, Sheffield, MA Entryways, Akus Gallery, Eastern Connecticut State University, Willamantic, CT Hunter - Gatherer, Atwood Gallery, Worcester, MA

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2007 2005 2004 2003 2002 2001

1999 1998

1997 1996 1995

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SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS Panorama 2015 6 Depot Gallery, West Stockbridge, MA Six From Spazi Lauren Clark Fine Art, Gt. Barrington, MA Mythologies Landmark Gallery of Fine Art, Landmark College, Putney, VT With A Grain of Salt, Citizen’s Residency with Beck Balken at IS 183, Art School of the Berkshires, Interlaken, MA Rites of Passage, Whiney Arts Center, Wendell St., Pittsfield, MA Friends, Columbia Green Community College, Hudson, NY Merhaba,Baghdad Qasim Sabti Gallery, Baghdad, Iraq RossGallery, Central Piedmont Community College, Charlotte, NC Exposing Scarlet: A Visual Response to The Scarlet Letter Mills Gallery, Boston Center for the Arts, Boston, MA Metamorphosis—A Journey of Dolls, The Drawing Room, Portland, ME Obsession II, Haddad Lascano Gallery, Gt. Barrington, MA Painting & Sculpture, Haddad Lascano Gallery, Gt. Barrington, MA Dinnerware Biennial Exhibition, Dinnerware Contemporary Art Gallery, Tucson, AZ Unfoldingobject: Critical Selections.1, Miranda Fine Arts & Henaine Fine Art, Port Chester, NY, (curated by Todd Bartel) Terrors and Wonders, Monsters In Contemporary Art, De Cordova Museum, Lincoln, MA Women, Art, and Ideas: 360, B.K. Smith Gallery, Lake Erie College, Painesville, OH MFA Thesis Exhibition, T. Wood Gallery, Vermont College of Norwich, Montpelier, VT No England No Amsterdam III, Real Art Ways, Hartford, CT New England Foundation for The Arts 1997 Sculpture Fellowship Recipients, Chapel Gallery, West Newton, MA Sculpture in the Garden, Berkshire Botanical Garden, Stockbridge, MA Artists of The Berkshires, Krasdale Gallery, White Plains, NY Nature of the Sacred, Nacul Gallery, Amherst, MA Voice to Voice, with Dean Pulver, RICA Gallery, Housatonic, MA Wood, Berkshire Artisans Gallery, Pittsfield, MA, (curated by Warner Freidman) Sculpture at Naumkeag, The Trustees of The Preservation, Stockbridge, MA Cynthia Atwood and Lisa Bartle, Welles Gallery at the Lenox Library, Lenox, MA New England New Talent, Fitchburg Museum, Fitchburg, MA Contemporary Sculpture at Chesterwood, Stockbridge, MA Cynthia Atwood and Dawn Southworth, Montserrat Gallery, Montserrat College of Art, Beverly, MA Religious Icons, Gallery 69A, Worcester, MA New Art In The West, Vorpal Gallery, San Francisco, CA Designed To Wear, Oregon School of Arts and Crafts, Portland, OR California Mystique, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, CA SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY Cynthia Atwood—Alphabet of Weapons, Thompson Gallery, Weston, MA, exhibition catalog, Todd Bartel, 2017 113

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SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY (continued) Terrors and Wonders: Monsters In Contemporary Art, catalog from the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, Lincoln, MA, 2001, Monsters Here and Now, Jennifer Uhrhane, pg. 17

Exposing Scarlet: A Visual Response to The Scarlet Letter, catalog from the Mills Gallery, Boston Center for the Arts, 2004 (excerpt)

SELECTED ARTICLES AND REVIEWS Eyes Wide Open­—Celebrating Women at Thompson Gallery, Lisa Mikulski, ArtScope, September/October 2017, pages 46-47

Exquisite Corpses—The Year’s Most Controversial Art Show—for the Artists Who Made It, Ian Paige, The Portland Phoenix, July 20-26, 2007, page 16

From Mysterious Fantasy to Stark Reality, Cate McQuaid, The Boston Globe, February 15, 2007, Arts Section

Cynthia Atwood, Transparent Couture and Other Pleasures, James Foritano, ArtScope, January and February 2007, page 19

The Modest Nude, Eve Grubin, The Modesty Zone, April 9, 2006

Cynthia Atwood: Stitch—Critic’s Picks, R.C. Baker, The Village Voice, Dec. 28 Jan. 3, 2006, Vol. L, No. 52

Tempted by a Dream: Luminous Shadows Cast by The Scarlet Letter, Susan Boulanger, Art New England, Volume 26, Issue 1, December/January 2005, pg. 18

Cynthia Atwood, O'Brien, Barbara, Stitch Exhibition, Morgan Lehman Gallery, 2005

Report from the Berkshires: New Art in Western MA Galleries, Johnathan Fardy, Art New England, October/November 2005, pg. 13

Written in Scarlet, Thomas Garvey, South End News, October 14, 2004, Vol. 25, No. 39

Red-letter Days at the BCA Reveal Society’s Secrets, Cate McQuaid, The Boston Globe/Visual Arts, October 10, 2004

Exposing Scarlet: A Visual Response to The Scarlet Letter @ BCA, Nona Howard, Some Other Magazine, September 2004, Volume 1

Self Expression, The Women's Times, August 2002, Resource Guide page 1

De Cordova Museum and Sculpture Park, Lauren O’Neal, Art New England, December 2001/January 2002, Volume 23, Number 1

When Horror Can Be Healthy, Miles Unger, New York Times, Arts and Leisure, Oct. 28, 2001, Section 2, page 32

Muy Caliente en Sante Fe, Shari R. Morrison, Art Talk, October 2001, page 42

Women Art, and Ideas: 360, Images of Opression, Technology and Beauty, Rita M. Grabowski, Northern Ohio Live, March 2001, pages LT8 & 9

Sculpture Show Goofy, Enjoyable, Gloria Russell, Springfield Union News, Sept. 10, 2000, page G-2

Belz curates strong Cambridge Arts Association Show, Cate McQuaid, The Boston Globe, May 27, 2000, page F-1

Dispatches: Berkshires and Upper Hudson River Valley, Jane Ingram Allen, Sculpture Magazine, Jan./Feb. 1999, pages 78-79

Playing Artistic Mind Games: RAW’s New Visual Arts Curator Makes his Vision Felt, Patricia Rosof, Hartford Advocate, Oct. 7, 1998

New Exhibits Celebrating Artists’ Vitality, Ingenuity, Gloria Russell, Springfield Sunday Republican, March 10, 1996

In A Building Mode, New Sculpture by Cynthia Atwood, Laura Chester, Women’s Times, July/Aug, 1994

Alice in Naumkeag, Michelle Gillette, Berkshire Eagle, July, 1994

Connecticut, Jude Schwendenwein, Sculpture Magazine, Oct., 1993, page 54

Atwood’s Found Wood Sculptures: Between Nature and Civilization, Jude Schwendenwein, Hartford Courant, April 25, 1993, page G-7

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