1989 Artemisia Gallery Chicago

• 1980s

During the 1970’s and early 80’s, I combined metal repoussé with video, film and photo documentation of my performance tableaux in Greece, Egypt, Asia, and Iowa. A recurrent theme then and now is the questioning of cultural myths about women.

Gilmor’s aims are more far-reaching, and found objects – including notes, shovels, rocks — represent just one element of a project that includes photographs, video and performance. Mixing the mythic and the prosaic, Gilmor is out to mine the resonances or archetypal figures and situations in contemporary worlds. Wall altars seem familiar but just out of reach. Her monumental floor pieces, resembling tombs or gravestones, tend towards more complexity: One has dozens of nude figures with animal heads hammered in relief on its metal surface; another incorporates a small television monitor with a videotaped performance. Both formats evince Gillmor’s fascination with both Christian and pagan – especially early Egyptian – imagery. The recurring figure in many of these works is a woman with the head of a cat derived from an Egyptian Goddess.

David McCracken, “Group Show proves Artemisia’s Insight”, Chicago Tribune Friday Oct 20, 1989 Section 7 page 50

Wall Frames 1980s

• 1980s

In the late 1980s after working on my first community-based projects with small groups in homeless shelters in New York Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, and Iowa I needed time alone in the studio to think about how to process what we’d done so far. The long-term vision was to make major public installations showing the work from the shelter and giving credit to all involved. This body of work I call wall frames. I used the old roof torn off my home and related found materials to encase found notes on metal and images from past work. The frames are really the pieces. The shrine turned house turned framing device became more and more related to issues public and private, of identity and dislocation.

Sculpture mid-80’s

• 1980s

By the mid-80’s I wanted to undermine the precious quality of the embossed metal surfaces, so I began to use found materials and old roofing metal with increasingly smaller amounts of the metal repoussé. My concepts remained an investigation of shrine like vernacular architecture and the construction of the self, particularly as related to women in contemporary culture. During a residency In Cortona, Italy in 1986, I found new forms to reference while working in an abandoned grade school studio. Forms either began much smaller or much larger than I had been working. Many of the cross-like forms became so large I could almost inhabit them. They began to take on my proportions as well. I now feel like this was a beginning for my containers for the self series fifteen years later. I continued to combine the distressed metal with video, film and photo documentation of more recent performance tableaux in Italy, Egypt, Asia, and Iowa.

1984 NAME Show – Chicago

• 1980s

During the 1970’s and early 80’s, I combined metal repoussé with video, film and photo documentation of my performance tableaux in Greece, Egypt, Asia, and Iowa. A recurrent theme is the questioning of cultural myths about women. These shrine-like sculptures are reminiscent of the vernacular folk architecture of rural Greece and Mexico and intended to create a ritualistic ambience not unlike that of some bizarre roadside shrine. In these works I am interested in the construction and deconstruction of myth and in the deeper relationships between myth, experience, and culture. For me these structures and installations functions as shrines to the mythic potential of ordinary life, embodying its most peculiar, ridiculous, and meaningful (less) qualities.

Following the 1976 All-American Glamour Kitty Pageant event and subsequent installations, and paintings, I adopted a cat-masked Isadora Duncan-like altar ego based on my research of ancient imagery associating “the feminine and the feline” with women and goddess archetypes. During the late 1970’s and early 80’s I took students to ancient sites in Greece, Egypt, Turkey, and Italy. There we staged a series of photo tableaux images and live performances. These performances were partially concerned with the construction and deconstruction of myths about women. In these images, the cat-masked ‘goddess’ image often refers to the female psyche as a strong creative force seeking to use art and ritual as a link between the physical and the spiritual, between the conscious and the subconscious, the body and the mind. The performances themselves juxtaposed long still tableaux with periods of frantic gesture and dance as a metaphor for cycles of order and chaos, death and rebirth. Most of the ritual performances were repeated at the same site various times over a five-year period. There is also a peculiar and humorous quality to their melodramas at ancient and contemporary ruin sites. In later work these animal hybrid goddesses also served to parody gender-related roles.

“Gilmor’s aims are more far-reaching, and found objects – including notes, shovels, rocks — represent just one element of a project that includes photographs, video and performance. Mixing the mythic and the prosaic, Gilmor is out to mine the resonances or archetypal figures and situations in contemporary worlds. Wall altars seem familiar but just out of reach. Her monumental floor pieces, resembling tombs or gravestones, tend towards more complexity: One has dozens of nude figures with animal heads hammered in relief on its metal surface; another incorporates a small television monitor with a videotaped performance. Both formats evince Gillmor’s fascination with both Christian and pagan – especially early Egyptian – imagery. The recurring figure in many of these works is a woman with the head of a cat derived from an Egyptian Goddess.”

David McCracken, “Group Show proves Artemisia’s Insight”, Chicago Tribune Friday Oct 20, 1989 Section 7 page 50

Along The Road 1980s

• 1980s

Sculpture Installations 1980s

• 1980s

In works such as ‘Great Goddess House Shrine’ (1982), Jane Gilmor set ancient feminine symbols from Catal Huyuk in a copper repousse altar, which enclosed a video of a ritual she performed. She suggests that the altar’s first use as a sacred site for sculpted images of the Great Goddess could be reconfigured —resacralized as a place for modern-day video images of the Goddess within herself.

Kay Turner, Beautiful Necessity: The Art and Meaning of Women’s Altars Thames & Hudson, 1999, (pg 74, ill pg 74, pg 91)

The photo tableaux and wall shrines by Jane Gilmor present such a startling collision of kitsch with myth that one may not know whether to chuckle or recite incantations. A masterful mélange of the modern and the ancient, Gilmor’s motivations lie in the “construction and deconstruction of myth;” her great goddesses enact sacred rites in the ruins of temples, counterparts to the rituals that must have once taken place there in honor of mythological deities. The feline headed personae, reminiscent of vestal virgins or a kitty chorus for a Greek tragedy, appear on her sculptural assemblages and shrines engaging in their enigmatic sacraments, in miniature, in relief, in photos, and on video. These works question all that we associate with modern religious pomp and circumstance, the solemnity of which seems a far cry from the objects created and performances staged by Gilmor, which blend a ceremonious melodrama with a healthy dose of satire

Paul Brenner, assistant curator Great Goddesses: Sculpture and Photo Tableaux by Jane Gilmor Real Art Ways, Hartford, Ct. 1988

During the 1970’s and early 80’s, I combined metal repoussé with video, film and photo documentation of my performance tableaux in Greece, Egypt, Asia, and Iowa. The forms of the smaller wall shrines and the larger works using video and film are inspired by the roadside shrines of rural Greece, Turkey, and Italy A recurrent theme on both the relief metal surfaces and the video and photo images incorporated into them is a questioning of cultural myths about women. These shrine-like sculptures are reminiscent in form to the vernacular folk architecture of rural Greece and Mexico where I traveled and documented roadside religious structures in the mid and late 1970’s. Indeed these objects are intended to create a ritualistic ambience not unlike that of some bizarre roadside shrine. In these works I am in the deeper relationships between myth, experience, and culture. For me these structures and installations functions as shrines to the mythic potential of ordinary life, embodying its most peculiar, ridiculous, and meaningful (less) qualities.

Metal Reliefs early-80s

• 1980s

Jane Gilmor satirizes the search for meaning in metal repousse wall reliefs using imagery of exaggerated body parts, animals, goddesses, and architectural components. Falling figures and swimming in the metal surfaces derive from personal experiences combined with myths from the Mediterranean.
Elise LaRose, review Outside New York, A.I.R. Gallery, Women Artist’s News Winter 1988

What are the deeper relationships between myth and experience? This series of small painted aluminum reliefs are psychological narratives. Although my art does not usually tell specific stories, these works often do. One of my recurrent themes is a questioning of cultural myths about women. I often use animal-human hybrids to parody our sex-related societal roles. The figurative elements of these works are influenced by contemporary and ancient Greek, Byzantine and Minoan votives and icons.

Both the content and use of materials are intended to create a ritualistic ambiance. My interest in the physical manifestations of spiritual concepts often incorporates elements of satire and melodrama, but in the end my work is united by a belief that art can help make meaning of one’s experience. The reflective aluminum surface is a private metaphor for relationships between illusion and reality. The works are small so they might be a more intimate experience for the viewer. Hopefully that private experience brings insight, humor or confusion.

More details:

While taking students from Mount Mercy College to Greece, Egypt and Turkey in the summers of 1977 and 1978, I was introduced to another form of outsider or folk art. While working on my performances at ancient Greek ruin site, I discovered primitive homemade shrines along the back roads. Though we find these in the Midwest now (2009), as a result of the influence of Central American immigrants, I had never seen anything like them at the time. Along the side of a road, usually where someone had died in an auto accident, family members would build small shrines of stucco, usually taking the form of a house or other area architecture. Inside the shrine were pictures of the deceased with candles, food or cigarettes, and metal ex-votos in the shapes of figures or body parts. The primitive but powerful forms of the shrines themselves and the metal repoussé and ex-voto’s once again reminded me of the power art has to make meaning of one’s experiences.

Aware of the tradition of icon making in the Greek Orthodox Church, I searched for an old icon artisan to could show me the repose process. Instead, I found young men making copies of medieval icons and silver ex-votos (arms, legs, feet, figures) in tinfoil. The process was essentially the same but much easier. And, of course, their imagery was influenced by popular culture. In 1981, I began a series of small repousse aluminum reliefs (36 gauge) telling various stories about my life in relation to ancient Greek mythology and myths about women, in particular. Works such as “Our Bodies Worry Us” deal with issues of identity and dislocation.

Terrorist Kitty and Erma 80s

• 1980s

1980’s Performance/ tableaux

My work with photo tableaux and performance began in the mid 1970’s with the All-American Glamour Kitty Pageant and my subsequent adoption of a cat-masked Isadora Duncan like Great Goddess archetype performing and reclaiming ancient ruins sites in Greece, Egypt, and Turkey. I use tableaux as a framing device in arranging symbols to convey or to question meaning. In the early 80’s, collaborating again with my colleague in theater, Kathi Pudzuvelis, a new character entered into these tableaux — Erma. Based on my sixth grade math teacher, Erma is the quintessential “modern” (not postmodern) woman. The cat Goddess often appears to be shadowing her as if questioning the nature of stereotypes being created by these images. Erma’s state of confusion and skepticism is also intended to raise questions that might force us to “deconstruct” these images.

Erma first appears in tableaux set in Cedar Rapids, Iowa bowling alleys and laundromats. When not present in person, photo dolls, like those used in some of the Greek performance tableaux of the 70’s, fill in. From the Early 80’s on photo dolls of the cat Goddess, Erma and my friend Betty Booda, West Coast artist Ann Gerber Sakaguchi, (representing the Eastern tradition) traveled with me everywhere. The Isadora Duncan Cat mask costume came along as well.

In 1986, after taking on the Midwest and Japan, I lived in New York City for a year. On the Lower East Side, I literally lived among the ruins of the Manhattan Bridge as it was being partially rebuilt. Continuing my investigation of contemporary cultural icons (Statue of Liberty, Mickey Mouse, and the new breed of “terrorist”) I created a series of images that seem strangely ominous today (particularly the image of Terrorist Kitty” with the Trade Towers in the background, 1986). Images of the statue of Liberty also figure prominently in a series of tableaux done later using Erma, and the cat goddess at a Grotto folk Art Site on the Mount Mercy College campus. Addressing the tenth anniversary of the U.S. Bicentennial as well as contemporary postmodern criticism in arts and architecture, Erma looks confused!

Comments from reviewers:

The photo tableaux by Jane Gilmor present such a startling collision of kitsch with myth that one may not know whether to chuckle or recite incantations. When Erma confronts the Great Goddess, one can’t help but wonder what each must be thinking about the other. A masterful mélange of the modern and the ancient, Gilmor’s motivations lie in “construction and deconstruction of myth;” her great goddesses enact sacred rites in the ruins of temples, counterparts to the rituals that must have once taken place there in honor of mythological deities. The feline headed personae, reminiscent of vestal virgins or a kitty chorus for a Greek tragedy, appear on her sculptural assemblages and shrines engaging in their enigmatic sacraments, in miniature, in relief, in photos, and on video. As both Goddess and worshipers, these characters parody the animal associations with gender that we have come to adopt at face value in contemporary society. These works question all that we associate with modern religious pomp and circumstance, the solemnity of which seems a far cry from the performances staged by Gilmor, which blend a ceremonious melodrama with a healthy dose of satire.

Recent tableaux present Erma, the typical “modern” woman as tourist and woman-of-the-world — bowling in white gloves and shadowed by a Great Goddess. In performance photos from “Erma Deconstructs Time, Religion, and Liberty,” a Great Goddess in the Guise of the iconic Statue of Liberty stands monumentally beside the screen, which presents a changing chronicle of Erma’s experiences. All the While Erma herself enacts ritualistic movements and a clock operates as a referent for Erma’ life. By incorporating satire and melodramatic gesture, the viewer is challenged into recognition of these stereotypes, and a subsequent questioning of their validity.

Gilmor conceives myths as “created throughout our lives by day-to-day experiences and by the culture in which we live.” Our routine behavior can be seen as ritualistic; material objects in our culture have developed the status of shrines: significant others are ‘worshipped’; we create, in a sense, a unique religion of which we alone comprise the congregation. It is the realization of this mythic quality of our lives that Gilmor strives for in her work.

Paul Brenner, assistant curator Great Goddesses: Sculpture and Photo Tableaux by Jane Gilmor Real Art Ways, Hartford, Ct. 1988

Gilmor’s art is consistent in its preposterous counter play of the fashionable and the enduring stem (stemming from Baudelaire) in that her sense of the enduring is not connected with the beautiful. Instead, it is curiously intermeshed with what she also sees as slightly bizarre ancient myths, rituals, and fold customs. She forces our recognition of the interventions of these enduring forms into contemporary culture, mass media, social fads and social ills. The success of her work comes from the precise mixture of archeological and/or anthropological research, a slightly shocking juxtaposition of this information with remnants of our multi-media world and usually a reasonable dose of humor. To do this she needs to keep a sharp eye on both the past and the present in the world around her, and have both the engagement and the distance of the concerned commentator.

Sherry Buckberrough, PhD. professor and Chair, Department of Art History University of Hartford, West Hartford, CT. 1991