Fabric shrapnel litters the floor in carefully arranged shapes, as if they are memorial objects to denote a sacred space. Whether it’s a piercing red triangle that cuts into the floor of a white-walled room, or the thin blue lines of a square to demarcate zoned-out areas, Marie Yoho Dorsey is incredibly sensitive to the surrounding environment, energies, as well as line and form.
“Everything started with the shredding of the fabric, which came about during my first residency at the CAMAC Center in France. They had lost all of my luggage so the only thing that I had was this fabric and scissors. I didn’t even know what I was going to do with it when I first brought it. I was really humbled at that point because I had nothing, so I figured this was really a moment of truth for me. If I could make something out of what I had, I figured I was cut out to be an artist instead of saying, ‘I can’t make my work because I don’t have this or that,’” she laughs. “I really thought I would challenge myself, so that was a defining moment for what to do with the fabric.”
Arranging, rearranging, and hands-on making are important to Yoho Dorsey. I ask about her use of the word “arrangement” to describe her work instead of the typical use of “installation” because there are subtle but crucial differences between the two.
“The ‘arrangement’ part comes from my background in ikebana, which translates to ‘live beauty.’ We traveled a lot as a family when I was a child, so we lived in Japan when I was young. My mother is Japanese and my dad is an American, but it always felt like the world was our home because at the time, neither of them felt comfortable in either of their countries. After Japan, we lived in Saudi Arabia, then Guam. I had a chance to go back to Japan because my mother was working there, and I wanted to experience it again since I was older. Quite by accident I fell into an ikebana class in the Sogetsu School,” she says.
Ikebana is the traditional Japanese art of flower arrangement that’s more than just shoving a bouquet into a glass vase. It involves the careful placement of these flora to create a balance between heaven, earth and man, using formal elements of graceful lines and striking color combinations in their compositions.
“Women like my grandmother took ikebana, tea ceremony, and cooking — so it was sort of one of these schools that sort of finished you off to be a good wife. And it’s an art form all of it’s own. I didn’t know anything about it, but it was fortunate for me that this kind of ikebana was very progressive in a sense. There are different schools of ikebana where you follow very strict course of study, but this was a very free form of expression. So to come back to the idea of arrangement — that always stuck in my mind. We were always making arrangements,” she explains.
Most artists need to have a plethora of materials to inspire them, but for this artist, ideas start brewing when surrounded by blank walls in an empty room.
“Everything sort of happens when I go to these residencies. Just being away and being anonymous in a place where you don’t have a routine is what works well for me. The space to me has always been important, so I’m always trying to carve out or create this charismatic space for myself. There’s nothingness, but then there’s something about that silence that triggers something. It’s about having this room where you can think your thoughts,” Yoho Dorsey says. “It’s like you’re allowed to.”
Going to these residencies, she kind of knows what she’s going to do, but it’s more about reacting to the space. From painting the walls to cleaning the space out, the artist has certain rituals to preparing her room for getting down to work.
Overall, the term “arrangement” imbues everything within the space with a sense of purpose, from the stripped-down color choices to the elegant lines and shapes. Yoho Dorsey’s piece “Red Tide” from her time spent at the MacDowell Colony, an artist residency in New Hampshire, is striking in its simplicity, made as a response and subconscious idea of living in Florida.
“I was also thinking about the insignificance of us, and this overwhelming sense of landscape when you’re faced with something like a hurricane,” she says. “I tend to strip everything down to the essentials. The art and craft of ikebana taught me that because everything gets so complicated so quickly. Working with a huge palette of color actually overwhelms me, so I use a very simple palette. I’m very much seduced by design — the layout and the straight lines. It makes me feel in control somehow.”
She focuses on utilizing malleable materials, lighting, and forgiving processes.
As an interdisciplinary artist, she not only works on fabric arrangements, but also works with drawing, printmaking, photography and even performance.
“I started doing very quiet, humble performances in the work. Just the act of sitting, laying, or walking in and out of a door — there’s something meaningful to me there, and potentially for the work later on,” Yoho Dorsey says. “Photo-documentation is important for my work, especially for my piece at my residency Anderson Ranch during my ‘Exchange’ performance. The work is ephemeral already because I do a piece, then pick it up and leave, but this time I had someone come in and photograph I choreographed the movements.”
Serving almost as safe spaces for audiences, between the installations and performances room is provided for reflection and introspection.
“I’m drawn to memory, hidden history, and stories — in a space. I was working on a piece about memory, and with the 15th anniversary of 9/11 I wanted to make my response to that. In Wikipedia, I was looking through definitions of memory and I found a whole list of types of memory you can have: light bulb memory, short-term, long-term. I started reading from that list and recording it, and I put the word ‘9/11’ after I said ‘flashbulb memory,’ and that reference to 9/11 only comes up once in the piece. Suddenly, I’m thinking about creating this space where there’s audio, large-format print, or possibly video of something unrelated to 9/11, something from my own memory that sort of links back to, ‘Where were you when it happened?’ I have a show over at the Art and History Museums at Maitland in 2017, so I’m thinking about showing it in that space. It will probably morph and transform, but I think it’s a perfect space for this piece,” she explains.
Emphasizing the use of very specific materials also translates over to printmaking, where she uses a fragile gampi paper in her pieces.
“Drawing first came into my practice about 10 years ago, specifically drawing on intaglio plates. I was trying to figure out how I could extend my drawing past what it was, to transcend it somehow,” she says. “The idea of transcendence came about when I started printmaking. I’m taking something to the edge of its collapse, then trying to extend it somehow. ”
Using cloth materials, from the cut fabric to silk flowers to the hand stitching, shows the importance of the hand — not just her use of handwork but also the labors of others.
“For me, it’s really important to really suffer for your art,” she says with a smile. “I’m getting away from it a little bit because I’m finding out that the satisfaction needs to happen before anything else, but before I could reach that mountaintop, I felt like the only way the work was satisfied was to really work it, sew on it, so there was evidence of that hand-toil.”
In many of her prints, Yoho Dorsey goes back and hand-stitches designs onto the surface. Much of the content of her work is based on the environment, whether its an organic environment, manmade space, or environments in the past and present (but not so much about the future).
"I find that going back to essentials, like a circle. My most successful pieces go back to that, or the landscape, so I draw from that. I started getting interested in patterns and Sashiko-style embroidery, which is very tender. After Nagasaki — where my mother was involved and I lost two great uncles. When people talked about those lost in the war, they would say that they just didn’t come back.
“After the war, materials were scarce, so when they reinforced material with another material on top, they figured why not make it fashionable? So they started making these patterns with the sun and the wave, so that’s where it all started. I thought it was so beautiful with humble origins, so I started attaching that to the images,” she says.
Not solely dedicated to minimalistic processes, it’s interesting to note her use of complex line work in her prints.
“I work out the complications in my printmaking, and the simplicity comes out in the installations. I work in tandem with both processes, but maybe for me that works,” Yoho Dorsey says.
In a world where time seems to be going by faster than ever, it’s nice to see work that slows people down with a one-on-one experience between the viewer and the space. Sometimes artworks can get a lost in spectacle, where intimacy isn’t appreciated or even considered.
“It’s a necessity to have that intimacy, and if not that intimacy, at least the space around,” she says. “You really have to demand that it has that, and it really extends out to the negative space around the piece and the energy around it, whether it’s good or bad.”
To see more of Yoho Dorsey’s work, please visit her website: yohodorsey.com
Urban Dictionary defines Femme Fatale as “a woman with both intelligence and sex appeal that uses these skills to manipulate poor helpless men into doing what she wants. May cause death.” Keeping in line with this concept, Caitlin Albritton's "Femme Visuale" series aims to highlight local women artists and show off some lesser-known talent that's been hiding in the shadows. In the art world, if it ain't big and loud, it ain't being seen (looking at you, Koons). Art as a grand spectacle leaves little room for modest, sincere, or quiet voices, especially women's voices. And I promise, we won’t bite.
This article appears in Nov 24 – Dec 1, 2016.