Architecture Bra

Today my old friend @slackmistress tweeted 'I always feel guilty when I wear a crappy bra. It's like I'm underachieving.'  I understand this completely, although I'd say for me it's less a feeling of guilt than general depression.  Nothing can make me feel like I'm living less than the life I'd imagined than slipping into undergarments I wore during pregnancy.  Sometimes it's just time for new gear.  
To hear the Slackmistress discuss such things comes as no surprise. As a child, one of the first times I was over to her house she showed me her Dad's Playboy collection.  We didn't get very far in our viewing, but I knew instantly that this was nothing my parents had in their bedside table.  In fact, my catholic guilt (see? I can still relate) told me that this was most certainly nothing I was supposed to see--although I still enjoyed the transgression of it all and especially admired Nina's bravura. 
Lately, instead of watching T.V. or reading, I'll surf the internet in search of inspiration. So tonight, in honor of the convergence of these two things both involving Nina, yet separated by some 30 years, I typed "architecture bra" into my Google search and hit the first image listed.

Dan Wollmering's The Architecture of the Convenient Brainwave has little to do with bras.  I'm guessing the file extension _BRA refers to Brainwave, but still, I like the suggestion it gives to the topic of bodies.  After some examination, I also began to see some similarities with a most inconvenient little project of ours, Big Pink:  hundreds of hand-cut sheets of pink insulation (thanks, CNC machine) stacked to create an undulating surface.  Looking at Wollmering's work I wonder if he too had a "what in the hell did I get myself into?" moment,  but of course, in the end, we love what we've made, much the same way one might love a child whose simply caused a bit of trouble.

"The Breath of Mastering Convergence" is another Wollmering piece exhibited at the same gallery which in many ways reminds me, oddly enough, of a figure that's appeared in several of my recent paintings. Ever since Celie was born, (or perhaps because of it?) I've been drawn to and drawing much more figural imagery.  While my previous work focused primarily on the making of transparencies, I lately enjoy the push and scale that figures give to the thing.  I fight against it, have conversations with it...

This I painted for my friend Jill and her husband on the occasion of their wedding. They live in San Francisco.  And below, for my son Fionn, two of the paintings I made in the months prior to his arrival. As is the case with so many things for the second child, both remain unfinished.