Inside Mushroomville

The _Inbetween_Forest

The In between Forest began as a particular location in my imagination within the world I have created called Mushroomville. It is the place between the living and the dead. A member from either group can enter this forest to find and converse with the other. I imagine it densely populated with giant sequoias, bigleaf maples , dogwood and boulders strewn throughout for sitting or lying flat to gaze at the passing puffy clouds.

Then, the in between forest became my life and my state of mind. It is the years between the blurry lines of youth and old age, if one is so lucky to see old age. It is the period in a woman's life between fertility and the invisibility cloak. It is a land mine of rising and falling hormones tossing you about willy nilly and hopefully landing you on a calm beach somewhere called complete self acceptance. It is a place where you can feel exquisite joy in the moment and grieve deeply for inevitability of death. A place where prayer, hope and sorrow sit closely together.

And out of this emotional and mental place and two years in my studio came these paintings and sculptures. The joyful process of figuring out the puzzle of a painting in a quiet studio and being alone is one of the best feelings I know. It's a conversation that would start off light and joyful and by day's end often segue into self doubt and frustration. But still the painting waits for you and your next dialogue with it. How do you put your whole self into a flat thing or even a piece of clay? How do you take your emotions of deep sorrow and give it form? Or transform feelings of adoration into color ? Thoughts into thread? Do you ever succeed or is it just the exertion that comes across?

Either way it is the practice of trying that keeps me in my studio. The discipline of building a unique language that hopefully finds one or many that understands it.

Thanks for looking and seeing.

UPCOMING EXHIBITION
COLLECT! Exhibition and Silent Auction Fundraiser
featuring over 75 Bay Area artists!
April 10 - May 2, 2010
Opening Reception & First Look: Saturday, April 10, 5-8pm
A surprising and unique opportunity to see and purchase work by over 75 well-known Bay Area artists in one beautiful spot---Berkeley Art Center! Mirroring the strength and generosity of our artist community, these selected artists have graciously agreed to donate work in support of Berkeley Art Center for this 3-week silent auction fundraiser. COLLECT! opens to the public on Saturday, April 10, 5-8pm, and will close with a final bidding party (ticketed) for participating artists and serious bidders onSunday, May 2, 5-8pm. (For reservations and tickets, please contact Ann Weber.)
View work on-line, starting April 10 @ berkeleyartcenter.org.
Get your first look at this amazing array of local talent at the opening reception on Saturday, April 10, and start placing your bids! See you Saturday!
Participating artists include: Diane Abt • Mel Adamson • Mari Andrews • Kim Anno • Leigh Barbier • Rebecca Barten • Amy Berk • Janice Best • JoAnn Biagini • Jenny Bloomfield • Mariet Braakman • Jeanine Briggs • Jamie Brunson • Chandra Cerrito • Iris Charabi-Berggren • Sas Colby • Catherine Courtenaye • Kirk Crippens • Lori del Mar • Inga Dorosz • Amanda Eicher • Lisa Espenmiller • Rupert Garcia • Ingeborg Gerdes • Thekla Hammond • Katie Hawkinson • Randall Heath • Kathleen Henderson • Robbin Henderson • Anthony Holdsworth • Mildred Howard • Karl Kasten • David King • Lisa Kokin • Keira Kotler • Carrie Lederer • Mary Lonergan • Mel Lyons • Michelle Mansour • Reuben Margolin • Kara Maria • Tom Marioni • Kay Marshall • Susan Martin • Indira Martina Morre • Liz Maxwell • Masako Miki • Nancy Mintz • Camilla Newhagen • Zach Pine • Mel Prest • Linda Race • Mary Curtis Ratcliff • Elizabeth Sher • Peter Silen • Joe Slusky • Miriam Stahl • M. Louise Stanley • Livia Stein • Susan Steinman • John Toki • Andrea Voinot • Ann Weber • Katherine Westerhout • Richard Whittaker • Lena Wolff • Jan Wurm

Walk Alone William

march 31st,2010

Walk Alone William is a character from my self invented world , Mushroomville. He is steadfastly traveling on his path towards enlightenment and redemption. He does not speak ,but always listens with his empathetic ear,so much so that he is often slowed on his journey by his absorption of other’s pain and desire. When this happens he buries his head deeper in his book of prayer. The woman of Mushroomville try to intercept him as they need his grounded energy to quell their faceless anxieties.

I created this alphabet for my friend Leslie about 5 years ago.She was designing my website and in trade I would create an alphabet for her fabulous site(where you can procure all things small,detailed and beautiful to create collages, jewelry,cards,magical boxes,...it`s pretty great )

http://www.alphastamps.com

I think it was her hope she could create stamps from them.However they might have turned out more out of control than she had hoped. I am not sure.Only one turned into a stamp.The website she created served me well for many years. Thank you Leslie.

The Petrified Rose

Edith had come to Mushroomville as a way of getting back at her son, Simon, who no longer had time to lunch with her. Up until eight months ago, Simon had faithfully met his mother three days a week at the club for their midday meal. After her son fell in love with Jeffrey, Edith felt that she had become so small in Simon's life that she may have actually begun to shrink, and would measure herself daily to make sure this wasn’t true. A stern but loving mother, Edith was also organized, exacting and rigorous with life’s details. Before her son’s betrayal Edith often reviewed her good qualities and felt as if she was almost perfect. With this new emptiness, doubt had begun to inhabit Edith's well ordered hours.

Hazel Key, her bridge partner and former neighbor, had sent Edith a letter last spring from a place called Mushroomville, stating how happy she was. Hazel was vague about the accommodations but included just enough information to allow her friend to fantasize about this adventure which would most certainly trigger her son`s painful regret. Hazel had also written that there was one difficult obstacle to overcome before her arrival in Mushroomville: each adventurous soul had to find her own personal and meaningful portal into this new world. Hazel had entered through the cabinet beneath her kitchen sink, but for Edith, an entrance through some dark and functional space would certainly never do. Decorum demanded a portal no less than a well paved path through a rose garden or the silently sliding, gilded elevator doors at her favorite department store.

Olivia

Olivia found herself in Mushroomville, after discovering a passage through the janitor’s closet at her elementary school.She had befriended Landford, the janitor, in the second grade when she asked what it felt like to be a floor sweeper ,and he thought that was a poetic phrase for what he did.He let her hide out in there when the kids called her blockhead and tried to hide her glasses.Quietly sitting by herself in the dark ,she entertained herself by listening to the sounds inside her head while she ate her lunch.Afterwards she would lie down on the cool concrete floor, soothed by the pleasant, gurgling tones of water rushing through the school plumbing.

Olivia lived with her grandma and grandpa above a corner store that the old couple operated from early morning until late at night.Alone on the back porch lying on her slender cot, the teenager often thought about her mother and wondered why she didn’t live with her.Inhaling the scent from her mother's slip, Olivia liked to rub her fingers back and forth across a postcard containing the image of steep mountains interrupted by smooth plateaus,supporting tiny log cabins.The majestic landscape was populated by a few women raking leaves. The caption on the back of the card described the setting as " Autumn in Mushroomville."

Underneath, in her mother`s handwriting, was the message "when you are 14, try to find me."

Sunday, April 24, 2022

Spring 2022,

its been a while since I posted anyhting here. I like this space as it serves as a visual and written diary of a life thats going by way too quickly. What has been going on in my studio? more quarantine paintings that morphed into paintings about the decline of my mother's health and eventual death last June. I continue to make my bedroom drawings from where else but my bed which is like a luxurious island of comfort and creativity. And i am back working with clay.

Sunday, October 11, 2020

Fall 2020

Townspeople, 9”x 12”

Saturday, June 2, 2012

June 2,recent work in studio

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

your news!

Leigh makes really cool art!

love you

Inside Mushroomville

Townspeople

The misfit army mural at sf Clayworks , December 2017

Studio, January 2017

Little Sleeping-Thinking Head

Florine's mother

End of April,2016

April, 2016

February 2016

January 2016

November 22,2015

The _Inbetween_Forest

From my show ,the _inbetween_forest

The _Inbetween _Forest

The old woman

Yellow lips

Sunday studio

Studio, May ,2015

The Reluctant One

The therapist wife

The soup makers

The couple

Mona Lisa

The woman who sails too close to the edge

Le coure exterieur

Black Nose

Women of sports

January 2015

The actress

November

The purple Whale

Drawing in bed, mid October

Drawing in progress

Alcatraz

Standing By

The magic healing gem

The Ruminator Extraordinaire

The mother

Home studio

The roommates

Base Camp at Buggenheon

Weeper

Drawing in progress

Vivian

Carrot Top

the Family

Florine in Russia

corner of the exhibit for Cerberus at Buggenheon( Joe Cunningham and Leigh Barbier)

florine absorbing her influences( Louise Bourgeois and King`s canyon)

florine after degas, 36" high

vermont studio center,one of the best experinecs I have ever had

the pumpkin eaters

Florine giving birth to a city

Florine and her ancestors

Florine observed,observing

Flrine with leotard hoody and prehistoric forest

Florine grows 6 breast after being penetrated by a tree limb

Florine trying to get inside the head of her sensitive man

Florine with bonsai

Florine of Santorini

Florine in Crete

Florine massaging her gimpy knee

Florine performing leg lifts

recent work, april 15th,tax day

April 1st,

eyes wide open

detail

Simone gathers her belongings and begins her journey into the circular forrest

miss january

three sisters

vivian for bernadette

me in mother`s house

woman for mom

green lips for carrie

blue hair mystery woman for howie

the Makers

the Makers,detail

detail,the Makers

Leona before Beau

Beau before Leona