The Effigy

Performance stills,
Saints Peter and Paul Church, San Francisco,
1990

During graduate school, I worked with Mark VanProyen, a California-based artist and highly regarded art critic.  As his assistant, I was given class time to present whatever topic and learning experience that I deemed helpful for a group of selected freshmen.  The freshman participants were originally from around the globe and attended the San Francisco Art Institute at the time.

I chose the topic of ‘context’.  The project became one of raising awareness and evocative questions related to the power of ‘where’ we choose to present our artworks.  Does the context then become part of the artwork?

For the class project, I gained permission and access to a cathedral in North Beach of San Francisco.

One ‘rule’ for the performance was that ‘No words were to be spoken’.  The group was then given a white cloth, loosely-filled, rudimentary effigy form to integrate and engage.

The effigy was headless.

With candles, rhythms, ranges of tone in the spontaneous hums and coos of participants, and seeming bird calls echoing in the cathedral, the performance evolved.  Somewhere In the dark spaces of the cathedral…and unknowingly to the group…a few participants were sewing.  In finale, the effigy was ‘mended’.  No longer headless.  

A complete, human-like form was held high, then carried away.