Lovetts Gallery invites you to enjoy the work and narrative of interdisciplinarian artist Janet Davidson-Hues. All works featured are available for purchase and can be displayed flat or hung on the wall. Also, please note that these works are sculpted to resemble book, but are not actually books.
Mother Tongue
Acrylic/Styrofoam/Plaster/Collage
9”x 13”x 3”
This piece is an homage to my mother and my great aunt, both Mildreds, who played an important part in my life. My mother loved me unconditionally.
My great aunt was a woman ahead of her time, an artist/actress/writer/world traveler/independent woman. She had flare and melodrama was a part of her personae. The image of this anonymous woman used in this piece reminds me of her, posed with attitude and scarf flowing down her bulls-eyed back as she gazes into the distance, unaware of what impending doom/disaster awaits her. “I was alone. I waited like a target.” (Anne Sexton). She waits with tattooed arm (oh, wait, that’s me….it’s a long story so let’s just say, I have a tattoo on my upper left arm that says anyway.). The plus sign with the center space housing the irreverent lips and tongue 
becomes a cross with the addition of several horizontal bars on the bottom. The reference to lips and tongue is meant to suggest language and communication, although it is a loaded image.
The women in much of my work are unknown to me. I rather like inventing a personal history for each. On occasion, I use images of myself or friends and relatives. Mother Tongue is from a series, Do You Read Me, which uses anonymity and beauty in the eye of the beholder as a point of departure. These books incorporate, and present the images of unidentified women as even more anonymous because the individual’s features are intentionally distorted through digital manipulation. The use of the supposedly glamorous woman as a stereotypical representation of sexual objectification sets up a curious paradox: female characters in my dramas are the subjects as well as the objects.
Chopstix
Acrylic/Styrofoam/Plaster/Collage/Found Objects
9”x 13”x 8”
In this series, (part of the Do You Read Me? series) I have included historical images of Japanese women as a way to embrace other cultures, knowing that all women experience discrimination. I became interested in the ancient Japanese ritual of married women presenting themselves as unattractive by painting their teeth black and shaving off their eyebrows in order to indicate that they are married and therefore unavailable. These rituals, though performed centuries ago in another culture, seem to retain an uncanny relevancy yet today in contemporary American practice. Think about it...
This digitally manipulated woman is In search of SALVATION…Her identity is blurred as her facial features are blurred. The chopsticks jab into the Styrofoam surface of the book form, (I think of it as piercing the skin), spearing into a target upon whose edge sits a bird. For me birds are messengers, carriers of thought and ideas, who can take flight whenever needed (might be nice). 
There is something spiritual about them as if they are avian embodied souls, those who have already passed on into another life. I also use targets to suggest perception, vision, patience, skill, hunting (as in searching), injury, and death.
At one point in my investigation of the book as art object, I began irreverently ripping out pages of books, eliminating all information, knowledge, and narrative, rendering the books useless and impotent vessels. There was something beautiful about the ragged spine that was evidence that this relic once had value. I make books that aren’t really books, but rather seem to be books or suggest books, so it seems ironic enough for me to use actual book spines in the faux books.
J & B
Acrylic/Styrofoam/Plaster/Collage
9”x 13”x 5”
“J & B” is from my series, Do You Read Me?, which uses the idea of the bathing beauty as a stereotypical representation of the objectification of women, in this case, a little girl, me, at about age 6 and my friend Berner when our families vacationed together at Ocean City, MD.
I have long had an interest in swimming, water, and subsequently bathing beauties. I’ve investigated diving, drowning, stroking, splashing, washing, ablution, baptism, birth, and have discovered that water is maternal; the preserver of life (a ready-made play on words for me...); the symbol of rebirth, regeneration, and fertility; and waves are metaphorical images of childbirth and orgasm.
I’ve laid a blue wash over the entire piece, suggesting waves crashing on the shore and washing over the whole beach. The life preserver becomes a device to suggest possible drowning, (as in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, “I was out further than you thought, and drowning, not waving.”) When I was a child, I could swim, but had to be pulled into safety by a lifeguard when the undertow in the ocean was very strong and I was unable to beat it. I would swim in and be washed out further, then swim in again, and be washed out further and further. I did not yell for help, but the lifeguard thought it necessary. I wasn’t scared. I thought I could do it myself. This event happened at the same beach, Ocean City, MD, the annual beach destination of me and my family.
And no, this piece has nothing to do with Scotch.
Pardon My French
Acrylic/Styrofoam/Plaster/Found Objects
19”x 25”x10”
I have a collection of Statue of Liberty, all sizes and materials. I wanted a Liberty head and face to be emerging from my Styrofoam book form which is painted to resemble a patinated metal 
surface. The absurdity of the Styrofoam book masquerading as metal is not lost on me. An interest in occult philosophies and religions directed me to France as a point of origin, and since Miss Liberty was a gift to the United States from France, it made sense to think of the piece in the French language. Je ne pas la Statue de la Liberté. (This is not the Statue of Liberty). This is a reference to Magritte’s This is not a pipe.
I had a bit of an epiphany when viewing the film The Passion of the Christ in the scene where the Roman soldiers were beating Jesus and put a crown of thorns on this head and shoved it so far on his head that the blood gushed. I realized that the Statue of Liberty’s crown is sharp and pointed,
much like the thorns. That was the very first time I thought of the two crowns as related. I wanted to emphasize the brutal nature of the thorns and the spikes so I encircled her crown with barbed
wire and stars (pentagrams, another clue in the mystery) to make the point (pun intended).
I included a miniature handbag dangling from the architectural structure. Lady Liberty is a typical woman, never going anywhere without her purse, suggesting her humanity.
Afterthought
Acrylic/Styrofoam/Plaster/Collage/Found Object
9”x 13”x 4”
This piece immortalizes my aunt when she was a little girl at the age of 7, sitting on a pony in her pink dress, wearing cowgirl boots, and her hair in ringlets. I have awarded her a gold star and 
designated her as an afterthought, which has more to do with me than with her.
As a little girl, I lived on a diary farm in Maryland and more than anything wanted a pony, which my father never got for me, even though he owned a racehorse and we had considerable acreage. As an adult, I have tried to mend/tend that hurt by surrounding myself with photos of my father’s race horse and other horse objects, even sometimes wearing the original silks jockey shirt from then. A few years ago, I went to a high school reunion and took my husband out to show him the farm where I grew up. I was amused and amazed that the property was no longer a diary farm but had become an equestrian center…..ah, the ironies of life!
One Step at a Time
Acrylic/Styrofoam/Plaster/Found Objects
13”x 19”x 9”
As I continue to examine the book as a repository of culture, memory, and narrative, I insist upon breaking linguistic silence, pursuing a language between gesture and thought, word and image. The juxtaposition of innocence and experience in “One Step at a Time” serves as a juncture between youth and adulthood. To represent childhood, I have chosen to use the image of an historical early 20th century little girl with her hoop, showing that she was an active child rather than passive as most girls of that vintage were portrayed. I paired it with some contemporary adult words as a rhyme of sorts….word play if you will….optional/marginal/virginal/vaginal/literal/clitoral…all 
words that individually are potent references to women.
The antique rusty ice skate paired with a model of the interior bones of a foot call to mind Duchamp’s readymade, In Advance of a Broken Arm, and suggests fragility and risk, as well as fun and games. The foot reference is recurring in my work as I equate the foot with escape, progress, movement, and pedestrian activity such as leaving. As a child, I loved to ice skate (another example of active versus passive) and my mother used to skate on a pond near her childhood home in Bethesda, MD. I often see myself in my mother. I start out being myself and end up being my mother.
Janet Davidson-Hues is a inter-discipline contemporary artist working in Lawrence, KS and represented by Tulsa art gallery Lovetts Gallery.
