ARTIST BIO / STATEMENT
BIO
Dale Eastman is a multi-media artist and a writer who originally trained as a seamstress. Frequently, she combines these practices in order to explore the subtle or overlooked connections between different aspects of our lives. There is an embodied tension in much of her work--death and resurrection, the piece vs. the whole, the beginning and the end--which is an organic outgrowth of having been one of six strong-minded, creative siblings. One of her earliest memories of art making is of having tied hundreds of rusted ankle bells from Africa along with hand-sized, dried magnolia leaves to twelve 8' long pieces of thick string. The dozen pieces of string were hung 4' apart from each other around a large room. The wind from an open window in the room set the bells and leaves aflutter to a rhythmless rhythm as the installation emitted a scratching, lyrical noise. Only two people witnessed the artistic/musical event; unfortunately, no photographs or videos were taken.
ARTIST STATEMENT
Too often art is seen in terms of an end product. As an artist who sometimes devotes a year or more to one piece, my practice grows out of a desire to be consumed by a bodily act that also takes me out of my body even as it reminds me how intimately and physically connected I am to the outside world. I am as guilty as anyone of allowing too many things around me to go unnoticed, of forgetting to press up against the questions that confront me every day. Art gives me permission to look closer, to stick around much longer than seems polite and to eschew the quick and the glib. Natural, electronic and found items usually present themselves to me first, nearly always unbidden, and as I explore the feeling any particular material evokes, an idea and eventual form for the piece slowly takes shape over weeks, months, even years. In this way, my work often feels time-based. The work, I've also come to realize, is a search to engage with something deeper than the thin shell of life, and with something much wider than my current vision....an experience I hope to share with my viewers.
My artwork has been in numerous group and solo shows in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Dale Eastman is a multi-media artist and a writer who originally trained as a seamstress. Frequently, she combines these practices in order to explore the subtle or overlooked connections between different aspects of our lives. There is an embodied tension in much of her work--death and resurrection, the piece vs. the whole, the beginning and the end--which is an organic outgrowth of having been one of six strong-minded, creative siblings. One of her earliest memories of art making is of having tied hundreds of rusted ankle bells from Africa along with hand-sized, dried magnolia leaves to twelve 8' long pieces of thick string. The dozen pieces of string were hung 4' apart from each other around a large room. The wind from an open window in the room set the bells and leaves aflutter to a rhythmless rhythm as the installation emitted a scratching, lyrical noise. Only two people witnessed the artistic/musical event; unfortunately, no photographs or videos were taken.
ARTIST STATEMENT
Too often art is seen in terms of an end product. As an artist who sometimes devotes a year or more to one piece, my practice grows out of a desire to be consumed by a bodily act that also takes me out of my body even as it reminds me how intimately and physically connected I am to the outside world. I am as guilty as anyone of allowing too many things around me to go unnoticed, of forgetting to press up against the questions that confront me every day. Art gives me permission to look closer, to stick around much longer than seems polite and to eschew the quick and the glib. Natural, electronic and found items usually present themselves to me first, nearly always unbidden, and as I explore the feeling any particular material evokes, an idea and eventual form for the piece slowly takes shape over weeks, months, even years. In this way, my work often feels time-based. The work, I've also come to realize, is a search to engage with something deeper than the thin shell of life, and with something much wider than my current vision....an experience I hope to share with my viewers.
My artwork has been in numerous group and solo shows in the San Francisco Bay Area.