I am a visual artist who uses a variety of media to explore feminist themes and the self. My approach to both art and poetry is the same; collage. I find images or words I am innately attracted to, cut them out, arranging and rearranging until I find the perfect picture. I am heavily influenced by the found object; discarded magazines, the sky in a piece of junk mail, the still frame of a paused movie, the shape of a scrap of paper, any likeness or shape that calls to me. I consider the images of prehistoric goddess figurines, paramount and central to my own art, as a found object; Something someone was compelled to create that was lost or discarded, then found again. My poems are inspired by the found word; fortune cookies, passing billboards, my teenage diaries, made up and mis-heard songs, overheard conversations, grocery lists, and all other manner of words heard or seen in serendipitous encounters. I use collage to create a sacred space for these images and words, ancient and new. I feed myself found words and images; digesting, reconstructing, honoring form and phrase, creating a sacred place for each, and then gluing every one down in its rightful place. R.L. Edmondson Vance approaches feminism with a layered process. I'm forever looking deeper into the work, which reminds me of the layers of femininity, womanism, and the culture to which those identities subscribe. These collages make me question if hands mean "giving or taking" and if feet mean "coming or going"? Vance representing the ancient female figure by using digital medium, posits accusations that ideals of femininity haven't fundamentally progressed yet may be presented in a new way. An intentional irreverence to refinery comes to mind here; a slapdash heap of Amazon boxes, whiskers quickly cut out, geometric shapes of patterns that aren't quite anchored in any particular way all paired with the fecund, succulent depiction of the jungle and the rotund female figure demands the viewer to consider how time and place neither distracts nor diminishes certain brands of beauty. In many of Vance's collages, we only get a partial view of other animals and beasts while we get the entire feminine figure, centered and framed, demanding our attention. This curious cropping and positioning allows us to marvel at the form and perhaps even worship it. Vance's drawn or painted artworks call to question the function of a symbol, whether color or iconography, we wonder if pink is related to womanhood, if snakes and Eve are actually sinful, and whether or not hands indicate an inherent generosity. How do we hold an image? An idea? We manipulate our expectations and fantasies around the truth of others; a frame of sorts. As we look into this artwork, it's impossible to forget that we are removed, removed, removed from both the subject and the artist. The genesis of our humanity is perhaps easier to hypothesize than the origin of our ideas surrounding who we really are. Preconceived notions and expectations projected onto both the woman and motherhood are represented here with an unrelenting symmetry or structure, which some might refer affectionately to as the matrix. This translucent celebration doesn't forget where it came from, which seems to be a brightness, a nebula of yellow. What do we have to offer our mothers? Despite whatever offering that gave to us, here we are with hands again. This memento mori reminds us that this is the life we are given and that we must deal with the identities we originate with as we move forward into our own deeper understandings of ourselves and we are somehow pulled inward toward our own introspection.
