Page 17 - the NOISE August 2014

FroM FAr LeFt: suzanne doucette-stebila’s Jessie Girl, Anime Masey, Lazy Masey, and Girl in the Red Dress with Cat, are all among the artist’s work featured at both stebila studios this ArtWalk as well as during Flagstaff open studios August 23 & 24.
SARAH GIANELLI
pressure than enjoyment); and abstracted acrylic nudes built up on wood panels from dashed offff sketches from her life drawing classes at Coconino Center for the Arts.
“I don’t want to be in a box,” she says. “I don’t fifit in any par- ticular space. I do this because I love it. If I sell something that’s wonderful ... I feel like I’m going to die any minute; I eat breakfast every 20 minutes, life is going by so fast — I’m going to do what I love. And really what I love is people and faces and expressions.”
Ms. Stebila returned to what she loves, and her innate activ- ism, in her “Give Peace a Chance” series, which consists of por- traits of random people on the street and iconic fifigures such as the Dalai Lama, President Obama, and John Lennon, hold- ing up the peace sign, with the lyrics from the song stenciled on the canvas. In a few, she took liberty with playful touches like painting Lennon’s lips hot pink and eyes bright blue.
“It’s really all about having fun,” she says. “When you’re young, everything — how your hair looks that day, did the color come out right, do I look fat? — everything is so myopic. But eventually you hit a point when you don’t get so serious about anything anymore, because you don’t care. It’s a trans- formation from the myopic. You realize you can’t continually try to perfect yourself, because there is no perfection — you’ll just drive yourself crazy. If I’m not having fun with a painting, I gesso over it and start a new one because I am not going to torture myself over an image that someone may or may not like. It’s the same with the human body — I’m not going to torture myself for an image someone may or may not like.”
Visit stebila studios, shared with her husband, assem- blage artist John stebila, during First Friday ArtWalk, August 1 from 6-9PM at the Aspen Loft Artists, 7 E. Aspen Street, Studio #12. stebilastudios.com. Both artists are also a part
of Open Studios. Read more of Ms. Erikson’s poetry at bloom-
sister.tumblr.com
BY
not only for her talent but her ability to live true to herself and her vision. Audrey Hepburn, although making her living because of how she looked, took that advantage and helped thousands of children through the Children’s Fund.
These women are heroic in nature, and this is how I saw Jessie. She is an intelligent, beautiful young woman actively working towards change through her poems and blogs. She’s working toward a master’s in speech pathology ... She always
felt insecure because she didn’t think she could be so smart and pretty — and obviously, she’s beautiful. Just things that girls think that have nothing to do with reality. In my paint- ings they get to see themselves in a difffferent light; they look at it and are like ‘wow that’s me?’ It can really be very empow- ering — especially for a young lady.”
Creosote Queen is a set of two, wall-sized portraits Ms. Ste- bila painted simultaneously side by side, that hung in con- junction with Ms. Erikson’s poetry, written specififically for the paintings. In both, the model’s arms are bent overhead, hands splayed out in suggestion of a crown, but in one Ms. Er- ikson’s eyes are open, and in the other, closed. Looking back and forth between the paintings to assess their similarities and difffferences, gives the effffect of what the artist felt while working on them.
In an excerpt from the corresponding poem, being in my body #13, the poet writes an ode to the desert and its protec- tive embrace from the men who think they own me / think they can touch me or talk to me as they please / men on the street, men in bars, even the men that I loved, longed to give myself up to / so I could see the lines of my own body / suddenly strong, suddenly both beautiful and strong / like those low slung moun- tains, painted purple but still more than just some vision / more than just the projection of man’s imagination ...
“For Jessie to have laid herself bare, for all to see, through her words, was heroic,” says Ms. Stebila. “And that was how I wanted others to see her. And for someone who felt she
was unattractive to be able to express herself through words, and for me to express her words through painting, was just beautiful.”
“The paintings came at a time when I was learning to love myself for a lot of difffferent reasons,” says Ms. Erikson, for whom Ms. Stebila has been like another parent since she was six years old. “At the time, I was writing a lot of poetry about body image and self-love, and also investigating the feelings that had kept me from being as active as I would have liked and really living in my body.”
She began the series of poems called “being in my body” to explore these issues, and began sharing them online in an effffort to spread the idea that growth and self-improvement could come from self-love rather than self-criticism.
“Sue’s paintings tell me I have grown, I bring something to the world; that I don’t need to imagine myself as anyone else,” she adds. “These are things I can tell myself, but the paintings serve as a concrete and permanent reminder. I can always go back and say, I don’t feel so good about myself today, but here is evidence that I did feel good at another point in time, and I can get back to that place.
“One thing I’ve learned through being painted and through this process of learning to love myself is that it is not just about seeing myself through someone else’s eyes but also seeing myself through loving eyes, and that’s actually not something someone else has to do for you. It’s helpful to see someone else believes enough in you to make art about you that is not only beautiful but also recognizes you. But it’s not just on the artist. It’s not just simple flflattery. As the subject, you also have to be willing to believe, to actively engage with the beautiful parts of yourself, in order to really reap the benefifits.”
In addition to her “Jessie and Maisy” paintings, Ms. Stebila will have other works on display, including some lovely tex- tured landscapes of aspens viewed from below, and a sequoia in the snow (which she admits to doing more out of peer
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