Steps Across Her Face, 2012
This reading was performed inside Edith Abeyta’s installation, Pitys Reconstructs the Word, at the Palos Verdes Art Center.
The face is a personal landscape, both revealing and inscrutable. This surface – informed by heredity, rich with senses and experiences, conveyor of intimate communications – is a constant, and is also ever-changing.
To a trained geologist, a landscape may reveal something about what has happened in that place over time. When looking at a woman’s face, there are some things that can be seen immediately and others that may never be known, especially without asking. For this project, several women were asked to share something about their faces. The words are purposely separated from the names they belong to, so they are both personal and also unknown.
Many thanks to Edith Abeyta for inviting me to present this project, and to the contributors of the words within the book, including: Edith Abeyta, Edith Adams, Chela Banuelos, Slater Barron, Ellen Butler, Mary Dessert, Gabrielle Dorr, Erika Cobain, Beth Elliott, Annette Hatala, Olga Lah, Susanna Meiers, Linda Varela Oldenburg, Jean Shriver, Sky, Morag Stokes and Donna Upadhyay, and others.
