Week Three: A visual diary from artist in residence Rosemary Liss

My last week in the stable’s studio meant thinking about presentation: how do we gather all the bits and pieces in our lives and present them to the world? Does it even matter? Who gains from this performance?

Had the pleasure to attend Roots, a pop up dinner at Fia Cafe. The meal was a collaboration between Eric Heilig of Northeast Project and Keith James Coleman of Fia. The menu focused on using local products to explore a story between home and native land: between the Irish landscape and a Pomeranian heritage.

I saved the best for last and enjoyed the low-key splendor of Assasination Custard on my last full day in Dublin. This cafe has two tables and the biggest heart. Each dish was prepared with so much beauty and love. I want to craft a life around the simplicity and dedication of this space and the humans that run it. Here I enjoyed smoked anchovies in the freshest raw milk stracciatella around.

Studio play with foam. An object to rest your head, to comfort the arch in your back or to place the world upon. You decide I’m just here to give you the options.

I dragged this formation of concrete, earth and rubble back from the NCAD community garden and placed it among the softest parts of me. “Everything at Once” vegetable dyes on found fabric.

Details from my installation “We are all Mothers or How My Yeast Needs Your Sugar or How My Bacteria Are Doing Just Fine” in the long room. “Night Moves #2” Cheese cloth, ph test strips: urine, saliva, vaginal fluid, wine with gauche on gelatin strip.

I never want to see my work in a white box, I want all its characteristics to play against and with a real kind of environment. “These Seven Words” Beetroot Juice, cheese cloth with gauche on gelatin strip.

Hanging a show in this space provided the perfect world of old and new. Our microbiomes change daily so what feels important to keep and what is best discarded along the way?

I collected jars of my urine not as an experiment, but out of fear of the supernatural, of the unknown, of the void below my bed. I only bring this up as proof that art making comes out of the mundane. We just elevate our life cycles to give ourselves purpose. “Night Moves #1” Purple cabbage brine on cheese cloth with PH test strips: urine, saliva, water, red raspberry tea with gauche on gelatin strip.

I wonder if the dimples above my tail bone are as good at selling fruit juice as the ones above the curve of my mouth. “Sudden Formations, Slow Deteriorations” Found wood, rice paper wrapper, sourdough starter.

Every morning I look at my stomach and think about how much work I put my body through each night. How much movement goes undetected or detected depending on the strength of my acid and enzymes? Here’s to routine and regularity.

A stranger told me it looked like New York City on a table top so now thats what I call her. I struggle with naming my work so I send gratitude to those that do it for me. 

This sums up my practice. Sometimes its spritual or edible, but mostly its just practical.

Installation and final evening.

Sometimes work changes spontaneously to fit the unknown like the hooks that pierce and change your beliefs about time and space or being vulnerable in these delicately powerful human forms. 

Details remind me that I mostly work crouching. Once I stand up and stretch my body remembers my stomach is empty.

Sometimes I find I enjoy documentation of my work better than seeing it in the flesh because I get to continue to change and manipulate how it is viewed. Cropped here the focal point becomes texture on texture.

I learned about objects through chairs in old books about the history of art. I forgot all the names and dates, but someone told me recently about wanting to recreate a piece about a shared meal, but with human interaction. The chairs faced each other. Here I just face the chairs and you can too.

Thank you to the Fumbally for hosting me. Thank you for creating a space that bursts with inspiration and vibrancy. Filled with piquant smells, vegetal tastes and ever expanding/multiplying organisms. I am now filled with motivation to go home and build these spaces and sensations of regeneration and continuous growth within my own community. As soon as I entered the Stables I recognized myself and felt like I had returned to something I knew. While I am not longer in Dublin, I still feel full of its warmth. I feel that I will never starve. I may be separated by a terra-liquid of land and sea, by a digital mass of distance, but you still feed me and I have only love in return. From one little fruit fly to all the rest. We are all just looking for something sweet and sour at the same dang time.