Spare Rib Revisited

A public art project in multiple cities that starts with interviewing the public. The interviews are created into poetry that becomes the starting point for public performance and a visual arts practice.

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10th Anniversary Queen of Luxuria Costume

As I move into the 10th Anniversary of performing as the #queenofluxuria I made this costume that is super comfortable and easy to travel with. I handprinted the fabric at Spudnik Press inspired by #queenofluxuria designs using screenprinting techniques. I drew out the pattern and made a sample top first. If you read the blog post below I mentioned the new costume I made for Edinburgh - this is it.  I find it interesting to observe that since I started working on this project two years ago it has been a greater challenge to find funding for it even though we are entering the centennial anniversaries of women’s suffrage around the world.  This project places women’s lived experiences in poetic language in public space at a time when the architectures of sexual oppression are being fundamentally questioned. I live in hope it’s all you can do and I hope my home city might decide to fund this project. Projects like this are more than the art, it’s about the community that is built and the connections that are made. If we are to empower the next generation of cultural makers we have to give them a language and the tools to transform the local.  I’ve been booked to perform in Berlin on June 8th and am developing a larger project in Switzerland. More news on that to follow shortly. Currently delving back into my studio and creating my mini-utopia. 

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Spare Rib Revisited canceled in Edinburgh with four days notice

I am working on a project called Spare Rib Revisited where I go to different cities and interview women between the ages of twenty to one hundred. This project is becoming a poetic archive of women’s lived experiences over the last hundred years from different cities and countries. 2018 is the centennial anniversary of Women’s suffrage in the U.K. and I was excited to receive a commission from a curator to create this project for Edinburgh. This was to be the third international city. He sought government funding for my project that was confirmed on September 20, 2017. With the budget confirmed a performance was scheduled last fall to be at Edinburgh City Art Center on April 26, 2018, we had advertised the project and had an audience booked to come. There was nothing more for the curator to do but sit back and let me do my work.  Being of Scottish origin it was my dream since I graduated from my Masters at SAIC in 1999 to return to Scotland to produce an art project in Scotland. I was so thrilled to do this project and had researched some fascinating women to interview and had made a new costume to perform in.

Ten days prior to my departure I received an email from the curator to state that he would only be paying 2000pounds for the residency and out of this he would be paying himself 500pounds for me to stay in his apartment for four weeks out of the six-week residency. Effectively cutting the budget the agreed budget of 3000pounds in half ten days before I was due to start the project. I had already booked the City Art Centre for a participant dinner at the end of my project which I had budgeted 300pounds for, this left me 200pounds to live on for six weeks after the flight was paid for. As you can imagine I was not happy that the terms of the agreement were being altered at this late stage. We re-negotiated the terms so that I wouldn’t be paying for the accommodation and that I would receive 2800 in installments through my residency a week prior to the departure date on Friday, April 13. We also agreed that he would be sending me a contract of the re-negotiated terms on Tuesday, April 16 four days prior to my departure date. On Tuesday, April 16, 2018 I received a letter from the curator to say he was canceling the residency and commission. This is a feminist project for and by women and a male curator has canceled this project with four days notice.

“Cura” in Latin means to take care and this is just another example of men deciding what culture is created for society and what culture is not supported to be produced. I have sat on a public funding committee since 2010 and have advocated for the minimum of 5000dollars on all the projects we fund. I have also established a funding structure for public performance in Chicago with Out of Site Chicago. I am an advocate of creating the conditions and financial support that artists need to make quality work and in my role as cultural producer for Out of Site apply the principles of “cura” in practice. In recent visiting artist lectures at Ohio University and Burren College of Art in Ireland I have shared my lexicon of care principles with students. 

I do believe we are in a cultural crisis where patriarchal practices and voices are dominating our cultural and academic institutions which in turn impacts our earnings as women artists. The most recent statistics of representation of women’s practice in top ranking museums stands at 10 percent and in lower ranking institutions at 18 percent. This is yet another example of censorship of women’s cultural practice and enough is enough. If you feel impassioned by this injustice please write a letter to David Patterson at [email protected] who is the Museum Curator who supported the curator in canceling the project and Amanda Catto [email protected] at Creative Scotland who authorized the government funding. There seems to be a deeper conversation that needs to be addressed here about who receives the funding and why. This exhibition is about immigration and a white Scottish privileged male is being given 15,000 pounds by Creative Scotland to design this exhibition which in turn frames the conversation and the discourse. Didn't anybody find that problematic? I have written documentation from the curator, that presents his views on immigration that I do not wish to print but highlights the problem. There needs to be a public conversation about the ongoing colonial discourse that is pervasive in our cultural institutions and the censorship of my residency is just another example of male privilege deciding who gets to make and shape culture.

Big thanks to everyone who has written letters so far. I finally received an email from Creative Scotland to say they were investigating the misuse of public funds and will be following up with me shortly. I’m still advocating for a reinstatement of the residency.

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As part of Another Country, Carron has been invited to create Spare Rib Revisited for Edinburgh from April 21 to June 2, 2018. She will interview eight New Scots women between the ages of 20 to 100 and develop this into artwork that will form part of a touring exhibition in 2019.

Carron will create an interactive performance at Edinburgh City Art Center on April 26, 2pm to 4pm. This project is generously supported by Creative Scotland and the City Art Museums.

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The Spare Rib Revisited poetry was performed as part of the repertoire created by Desk Elves for a performance in Grand Rapids at Murphy House on March 25, 2018. The poems for Hilda Weiss and Sylvia Hikins were performed as part of this set.

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The Poems for Sylvia Hikins, Rose Hernandez and Judie Anderson were performed at International Women’s Day celebration in Chicago on March 10, 2018 at Women Made Gallery.

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On January 17, 2018 I gave a performance lecture at Burren College of Art, Ireland performing poetry and discussing the contextual nature of my practice. As part of the residency at Burren College of Art I was invited to give an interactive performance on February 7, 2018. I was delighted to find a replica of the Book of Kells next to my studio. I knew the Books of Kells was connected to Iona as it was part of my consciousness growing up but I didn’t realize it was created there by Saint Columbus in the 8th Century. 

From Ireland, I was invited to perform in Sarajevo’s Winter Festival in Bosnia and am very grateful to Ibrahim Spahic and Dr. Naida Mujkic for the invitation. I did four performances in Sarajevo, two in the local High School, one for the sponsors of the festival and then they joined us at the Elderly People’s Home where I performed for about fifty senior citizens.

I was only in Sarajevo for three days but it is a fascinating city and I met a lovely group of poets who have invited to translate and publish the Poem for Judie Anderson entitled Six Bells into Slavic. I stopped off in London and LA on the way back to Chicago after a mind-expanding trip.

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Visiting Artist Lecture

The day after Detroit I flew to Columbus, Ohio and gave a visiting artist lecture on Monday, November 13, at Ohio University in Athens. One of the graduate students said she had never heard care, feminism, age and social practice discussed in the same lecture. After the lecture, a few faculty members and students went for lunch and we had a fascinating conversation about digital architecture and how it is impacting speech and thinking. The conversation grew out of the Poem for Judie Anderson that I played a video of my choir performing at the beginning of the lecture. Then a tutorial visit was arranged with one of the graduate students that I might hire for Out of Site before heading off to the airport. It was a long but productive weekend where I met so many lovely people and had lots of interesting conversations.

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A Transmission from the Land of Luxuria by The Queen of Luxuria

On November 11, 2017 The Queen of Luxuria was invited to perform at Hatch Art in Detroit. This video is a document of part of this performance that ran from 7pm…

I’ve been taking the Spare Rib Revisited poetry on the road and performed at Hatch Art on Veteran’s day in Detroit. It was a diverse crowd from 8 or 9 years old through to seventy-two years old. We started by sharing our important life moments and then I selected poetry that related to what people shared. One woman shared a horrific story of how she and her daughters were recovering after her ex-husband had sexually abused her eldest daughter. It was such a tragic story, it was so moving.

Earlier in the day, I had decided to start with the poem for Hilda Wiess as the piece resonated with the artwork in the space. The Gallery Director, Chris commented on it after as the poem is about the second world war and is structured to sound like a sewing machine and the artwork was embroidered/appliqued banners on second world war blankets and it was Veterans Day. It was a confluence of site, sound, and memory coming together in the space.

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Developing sculptural ideas through printmaking for Liverpool project phase two.

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Liverpool Participants from left to right: Amina Baraka, Delia Brady-Jacobs, Sylvia Hikins, Ann Roach, Amirah Scarisbrick, Pat Ambrose and Elizabeth Keating.

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My last week was jam packed trying to finish the interviews, performing and then we hosted a dinner party at Lovelocks Cafe in Liverpool that served delicious food and highly recommend this local business for private parties. Five participants came and the conversation was very lively and considering the city is small nearly all of the participants didn’t know each other. Only two of them recognized each other from a bus trip twenty years ago. These are women who have worked their whole lives in their respective neighborhoods advocating for justice, improving race relations after the riots in the eighties, advocating for women’s health resources and rebuilding their local communities with safe housing for all.

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Transmission from the Land of Luxuria, by Carron Little aka The Queen of Luxuria The Florrie (The Florence Institute, Liverpool, U.K.) Tuesday August 1, 2017

When I’m working on these projects in different cities I ask the organizing agency to organize a performance at the beginning of the residency so the public can come and observe how I transform the personal stories into lyric poetry. It is also a great opportunity for people to sign up and choose to participate in the project. We Make Places were a bit slow on the uptake of this but they did eventually organize it in the last week of the residency at The Florence Institute otherwise known as The Florrie in the Toxteth neighborhood of Liverpool around the corner from where one of the participants lived who needed accessible access. I devised an interactive performance where people shared their important life moments and I selected poetry that related to their experiences. The room was full and people came who had seen me perform in other locations around the city.

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Carron will be in Liverpool from July 21 to August 2 interviewing women between the ages of 20 to 100 about their important life moments. The interviews will be transformed into poetry and over the next year Carron will work with a choir to compose the poetry to song. This will be one component of an interactive public art performance in 2018. Big thanks to We Make Places for supporting this cultural initiative. 

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Off to Liverpool this summer to interview eight women and write poetry. This is part of a two phase project creating the research and development this year and producing the public performance in 2018. 

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On Saturday June 3 at 2:15pm Carron Little will be performing a selection of her Spare Rib Revisited poetry on que4.org. It’s a Chicago radio station and if you are on the northside you can tune in at 1680am or hear it live stream at que4.org. Enjoy listening...

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Print for Abilasa Leuenberger, 2016 I’m currently working in the studio getting ready for my trip to Liverpool where I will be working on Spare Rib Revisited to create a two phase project. In the summer of 2017 I will be interviewing women and doing the research and in 2018 I will be creating an interactive public performance.

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Sculptural Idea for Blerta Berisha

A watercolor painting developed from my sketchbook for this piece that was transformed into a fiber sculpture. Every element of these sculptures has been hand stitched. 

The watercolor is part of a private collection.