November 4 – 11, 2011

“Mother May I learn from you, but find my own voice, transforming difficulties of the past into opportunities for the future?”

Mother May I is an organic installation that explores music, craft, heritage, communication, and expression.

Individual sound waves, generated through pre-recorded ensemble works, are being recreated through cross-stitch – one of the world’s oldest forms of counted embroidery – into large exhibited panels. The panels will in turn be used as graphic scores to create new audio works.

To create the cross-stitched waves, Fleenor has been working alongside her mother, a 3rd generation cross-stitcher, creating the panels as a way of working through their differences, similarities, and past relationship.

This work in progress performance/installation will feature one component of the multidimensional work which will continue to unfold over the next year – the creation of a genetic and environmental map that includes a collection of wave panels and experiential processing tags. The tags are intended as an anthropological excavation and distillation of emotional, psychological and sociological experiences, that imprint and transmit through the individuals they affect.

Mother May I is made possible, in part, with support from the Seattle Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs, 4Culture, Jack Straw Productions, Advocates for Abundance through Action in the Arts, and The Frank Agency.

Artists

Sound Clips

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  Beth Fleenor - Mother May I, Wave 1 Beth Fleenor