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Posts Tagged ‘Woolf art’

Woolf on a plate

Posted in art, art exhibits, Woolf online, tagged , , , on Wednesday 20 May 2009| 7 Comments »

The Dinner Party VW place settingAm I the only one who did not know that Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party includes a Virginia Woolf plate? Take the poll below and let me know.

The Woolf plate and its setting, one of 39 included in Chicago’s ground-breaking iconic feminist work of art, is ripe with symbolism.

It features a three-dimensional plate formed to look like a blooming flower with seeds in the center. According to Chicago, the plate itself symbolizes Woolf’s belief in unrestricted expression and the fecundity of her creative genius.

Beneath the plate, a thin chiffon fabric runner symbolizes Woolf’s fragile mental state, while underneath that, a stitched and painted light beam glows, symbolizing To the Lighthouse.

For more details about the symbolism of Woolf’s plate, go here. You can also find her friend Ethel Smyth’s plate here.

And if you are like me and have never seen Chicago’s masterpiece in person, you can view it online here as a long-term installation in the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art in the Brooklyn Museum.

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Woolf shoes hold porcelain stones and meaning

Posted in commodification, fashion, Woolf as Commodity, tagged , , , , , on Thursday 7 May 2009| 2 Comments »

shoesSince I have been writing on the subject of Woolf clothing and accessories lately, here comes another addition to the author’s imaginary wardrobe. This time, it is shoes.

But these are not just any shoes. These are shoes with artistic value. These are shoes with meaning.

I found this information online a few days ago, and now it has reappeared via the VWoolf Listserv. Rather than wait for the third time to be the charm, I decided to blog about these shoes on the second sighting.

The shoes are ceramic, and they are one of 10 pairs created by West Footscray artist Rowena Hannan for the “She Who Explores” exhibition at Deakin University in Australia until May 23.

The pair created in Woolf’s honor detail her relationship with husband Leonard and lover Vita Sackville-West. The sole of each shoe features the beginning and ending of letters.

Poignantly enough, Woolf’s shoes are filled with small porcelain stones, reminders of the stones she slipped into her coat pockets before drowning in the River Ouse. There is something quite sad and lonely about the way these shoes sit side by side, looking as empty and worn as Woolf may have felt before she headed across the Sussex Downs on her last walk.

“It’s about dialogue, essentially between lovers or people that are intimate,” Hannan is quoted as saying in the Footscray, Yarraville, Braybrook Star. “The shoes are supposed to be about the letter, or the dialogue, that’s between the beginning and the ending enscripted on the bottom of the shoes. The shoes reflect their relationship and who they are as people. It was a lot more about research than anything else. If you dig deep enough, you find out some amazing things about people.”

Deakin University’s Web site describes Hannan as using “porcelain to transform mundane objects into repositories full of suggestion and evocation.”

For more, download the exhibition program.

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Woolf has a cow

Posted in art, commodification, tagged , , , on Wednesday 29 April 2009| 3 Comments »

light-withinThe Boston Cow Parade features colorful cow sculptures with fanciful names. A blue cow of special interest to Blogging Woolf is “The Light Within (for Virginia Woolf).”

The 125-pound fiberglass cows travel the world, raising money for charity. Anywhere from 32 to 450 cows appear in the parade and remain on display in the host city for two to four months.

Each year eight to 12 of the artist-designed cows are reproduced as collectible figurines and offered for sale. Sadly, Woolf’s cow is not among them.

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