BY HAND

I clipped this photo from a magazine years ago. I didn't write any information on it so I'm not sure whose hands these are. I have a book of photographs of Georgia O'Keefe taken by her husband Alfred Stieglitz between 1917 and 1930 (they married in 1924). Many of them feature her hands either alone or in relationship to her face. This photo reminds me of them but seems too cute for that pairing.

I admit I was totally gaga about Georgia O'Keefe when I was in high school and college probably because she was the only contemporary woman artist familiar to the mass public and I was definitely part of that mass. Later I felt overexposed to her work and preferred other women artists as role models but she was my introduction to the idea that a woman's work could be as sought after as a man's.

I think I saved this photo because it shows hands as form rather than as tools. Our hands are such incredible instruments that we use everyday in a range of strong and delicate ways, from mundane to sublime, taking in the world through touch and sending our response back out. And in that give and take we find comfort, strength and understanding.

I work closely with my materials and even when using tools my hands are usually in direct contact. I feel lucky to have chosen media that allow me this intimacy. I like that I have built my hand skills over the years so certain motions seem to reside in my hands seemingly independent of my thinking mind. I like how the rhythm of these motions can be seen in the subtle variation of mark and surface. I also like bold unexpected moves - ones where I have to trust my hands and their memories to make the right mark, cut. tear or stain.

Work that I like often has a tactile sense, evidence of the hand of the maker. If sight is the sense that encompasses a breadth of information and smell is the sense that evokes the strongest memories, touch is the sense that makes the general specific and grounds us in the particular.