Amy Stacey Curtis preparing for more photos during a recent collaboration.

 
91362012_10157302347361947_861713814175875072_o.jpg
 

Amy Stacey Curtis preparing for more photos during a recent collaboration. I include this one because of the tenderness of her assistant helping with the cape attachment. Also,I had asked that her beloved and talented assistants wave the 100 foot Cape of Gratitude to create some folds and shadow and they are prepared at the end of the cape to do so. They were on it and suddenly we had a lovely purple river flowing down this corridor at Bates Mill...billowing and rippling...only the action of 100 feet of satin almost pulled Amy off her feet. She was so graceful about it but we took a moment to recover.
No Amy Stacey Curtis's were harmed in the filming of this : )
And Happy Birthday Amy, today March 31...and thank you for sharing your journey with us.
Please see Amy's full blog post at www.theartistplan.com

Amy Stacey Curtis, I'll be celebrating your birthday all day long...

 
91441551_10157301220531947_2559908200425979904_o.jpg
 

It was my microbiologist daughter, Anne Madden, who taught me to wash my hands for the time it takes to sing the Happy Birthday song twice through.
During this COVID19 social distancing I find myself noting whose birthday it is on any given day and washing my hands repeatedly throughout the day singing Happy Birthday to them.
It's a funny little practice that has risen from functionality
(it makes me slow down the process and wash more thoroughly and more often) to spiritual ritual. I enjoy it. It brings that person(s) closer to my attention. Closer to my heart. And that helps reduce all this distance and isolation.

Amy Stacey Curtis, I'll be celebrating your birthday all day long singing 'Happy Birthday Dear Amy, Happy birthday to you!' in the spirit of your recent singalongs....ALL DAY...after I go for a walk. Before I make coffee. After I clean the rug...again. Before making lunch. After. Well...you get the idea.

Happy Birthday to our brilliant superhero of the heart and healing, you bedazzled beauty made of sweet stuff AND that highly polished intellect.Wow.

This is another photo from our recent collaboration.
Please see Amy's full blog post at www.theartistplan.com

This is a favorite image from the Bates Mill event for me. Amy Stacey Curtis meets that lens unapologetically.

 
91199091_10157297466881947_5773780894573658112_o.jpg
 

This is a favorite image from the Bates Mill event for me. Amy Stacey Curtis meets that lens unapologetically. Without filter, and I don't mean an app. Her intensity and her determination show. No attempt to 'make pretty' and I love that. I also love that her cape is being tended to by volunteers / assistants / friends / devotees that helped make this happen...and for whom Amy is expressing gratitude.

Please see Amy's full blog post at www.theartistplan.com

http://www.theartistplan.com/colossal-cape-collaboration/

An artist who doesn't create things so much as experiences for her viewers...

 
91198248_10157295116161947_4722753262816591872_o.jpg
 

“Since completing an 18-year art project in Maine’s mills, Amy Stacey Curtis has been tackling a new ambitious project, battling a severe neurological illness and disability possibly caused by untreated Lyme Disease. When another neurologist tried to determine if she’s schizophrenic, he asked if she thinks she’s a super hero, three times. She didn’t tell him about the cape she wears to give her strength. He wouldn’t get it. It flows behind her, long and purple, with a gold and red butterfly, sequins and rhinestones…” - Amy Stacey Curtis

This is the bio Amy offered as her introduction before she presented at a PechaKucha Portland Event last year. And as the emcee I was flustered and honored, with my heart pounding, to introduce her. Here is an artist I have exceedingly high respect for. An artist who doesn't create things so much as experiences for her viewers. She creates for us opportunities for discovery, insight, perspective....sometimes exalted, insightful, occasionally painful and often humorous. Anyone here ever try and erase those un-erasable letter outlines in her MEMORY show? As a participant I was offered an embodied experience that some things, like memories, never erase completely away no matter how hard I rub with one of those gum erasers she provided us?
She offers with her blocks and balls and outlines and graduated cylinders a powerful platform for startling metaphor. Her work offers the extraordinary gift of our experience as a living, breathing aspect to her work.
Always moved by her articulate, keen, mathematical precision she has also showed a level of heart that is equal to her talent as she has wrestled with illness. Many talents may be crushed by less dire medical/health circumstances than what Amy has faced. Her journey of the last few years, for those at all familiar, has been a journey of deep penetrating terror and bewildering debilitation. And for someone to emerge from that cocoon spun of suicidal prompts into the light of day into her beloved mill, expressing gratitude for all that have supported her on her way ( and there have been many) ARE her wings.
Showing up at the mill I was moved not only by Amy's devotion to that space but by the level of attention,bordering on devotion as well, of her friends and volunteers. They dearly love Amy as an artist. As a person. And it is mutual.
Amy Stacey Curtis, my superhero, who offers the 100' yardage of her cape as a garment to provide each one of us with the same comfort now.

http://www.theartistplan.com/colossal-cape-collaboration

It was like introducing the Pope. Or Lady Gaga. Or both...

 
91243815_10157294506206947_5387799055629811712_o.jpg
 

I was the emcee at a recent PechaKucha Portland and I was honored to introduce a personal hero, the art world icon Amy Stacey Curtis. It was like introducing the Pope. Or Lady Gaga. Or both.
She had forwarded the following bio and I was crushed exquisitely with its personal truth, it's implied devastating pain and it's winged humor. Didn't think I could love her anymore but after reading that bio I in fact did.
Her bio for that evening:
“Since completing an 18-year art project in Maine’s mills, Amy Stacey Curtis has been tackling a new ambitious project, battling a severe neurological illness and disability possibly caused by untreated Lyme Disease. When another neurologist tried to determine if she’s schizophrenic, he asked if she thinks she’s a super hero, three times. She didn’t tell him about the cape she wears to give her strength. He wouldn’t get it. It flows behind her, long and purple, with a gold and red butterfly, sequins and rhinestones…”
This image is of Amy and her devoted team prepping for a photoshoot at Bates Mill last month. And I was honored to photograph my super hero in her cape....which she wore to symbolize the abundance of support and assistance she has recieved throughout her illness.
More about this soon.
Deep gratitude to Amy Stacey Curtis for her trust.

http://www.theartistplan.com/colossal-cape-collaboration/

The Extraordinary Amy Stacey Curtis standing in her beloved Bates Mill...

 
amycape1.jpg
 

The Extraordinary Amy Stacey Curtis standing in her beloved Bates Mill with a 100 foot super hero cape trailing behind her woven of the love and support she has received while battling and recovering from recent illness.
Honored to bear witness to her beauty.

http://www.theartistplan.com/colossal-cape-collaboration/