American Women Ambassadors

A billion thanks to Ambassador Rowe, the United States Ambassador to the Solomon Islands, for recommending Ann Miller Morin's book An Oral Hisotry of American Women Ambassadors.

Also worthy of note, I attended a performance and a master dance class with Urban Bush Women and Jant-Bi. The experience was extraordinary. Urban Bush Woman dancer Nora Chipaumire, herself an exile from Zimbabwe, will be a MANCC artist-in-residence this coming school year, one of MANCC's administrative staff thought there might be room for her and I to collaborate. We'll see if it happens naturally.

I am forever grateful to the ambassadors who have sent me letters for my project. I realize that they have hectic schedules. Thanks again.

More soon on Ann Miller Morin's book...

Flyover + the American Outback

After having professors insist that I not go to a small town for fear that I was committing art career suicide, I found it comforting to find praise for Flyover, a blog that collectively covers strong small town art scenes. The site led me to Jennifer Smith's coverage of the Wisconsin Triennial and commentary on the work of Stephanie Liner. With my own tendency to combining women's bodies and domestic objects, the work appealed to my sensibilities. Check out her website at www.stephanieliner.com.

bell hooks

Now reading bell hooks' book Art on My Mind: Visual Politics. In a chapter, titled "Women Artitsts: The Creative Process," she writes about the need for a room of one's own (see also Virginia Woolf's 1929 extended essay). I flashback to my days overseas: with the excitement of travel and the desire to take advantage of the experience, I made little time for reflection. my Female Expat Project was originally created to encourage expatriated women to do so. From hooks' chapter:

I think often and deeply about women and work, about what it means to have the luxury of time-time spent collecting one's thoughts, time to work undisturbed. This time is space for contemplation and reverie. It enhances our capacity to create. Work for women artists is never just the moment when we write, or do other art, like painting, photography, paste-up, or mixed media. In the fullest sense, it is also the time spent in contemplation and preparation. This solitary space is sometimes a place where dreams and visions enter and sometimes a place where nothing happens. Yet it is as necessary to active work as water is to growing things.

Jill Ker Conway

I just finished Jill Ker Conway's memoir True North, and after my first year of full-time university teaching, it was the perfect summer read. Particularly refreshing were moments when Conway finds a core group of female friends at Harvard or later when she realizes what an important role model she became when she took lead administrative roles. I'd recommend True North to anyone.

Letters to a Young Diplomat: Plea for Participation

Picture of Eugenie Moore Anderson
In October 1949 President Truman appointed Anderson United States Ambassador to Denmark; she was the first American woman to serve as the chief of a mission abroad.

Ok, "plea" for participation sounds a bit desperate, but here's the deal: in times when our foreign policy is constantly questioned by other countries (and often rightly so), an art project highlighting a more human side to our activities overseas seems critical. Why art? At its best, art whittles down matters to powerful visual and forms that have residence. I leave you with one of my favorite art quotes.

There are moments in our lives, there are moments in our days, when we seem to see beyond the usual. Such are the moments of our greatest happiness. Such are the moments of our greatest wisdom. If one could but recall his vision by some sort of sign. It was in this hope that the arts were invented. Signposts on the way to what may be. Signposts toward greater knowledge.

Keith Ferrazzi on Networking

I was listening to podcasts online and stumbled on this one that seemed worth sharing: http://content.monster.com/articles/3473/18780/1/home.aspx

Below are a few of my notes from that interview, much of it from Keith Ferrazzi, Never Eat Alone What I liked about the podcast is Keith's focus on networking as natural. I love the Christmas package analogy because I do like meeting and helping other people. With this subtle shift in attitude, the conference or cocktail hour can become less anxiety-ridden and more pleasurable.

When you are at a conference / party:
-imagine that everyone's a Christmas package, and you get to unwrap them and discover their goals
-ask how can I help them be successful? what can I do for him or her?

Personal relationship action plan

How many people are going to be critical btw now and you achieving your dreams?
-probably 25 people (family, friends, etc)
-list 25 people
-list next 50
-list next 50
Then you'll have 125 people

Send a quick email to the top 25: keep in touch with them every other week.

It may sound contrived, but your family and best friends can be in that top 25, and we all know in the chaos of life, it's easy to fall out of touch. Sometimes, it helps to have weekly reminders to reach out to others. This is especially true when you are bouncing around the globe...

Best Expat Blogs

Interesting list at Expatica = http://www.expatica.com/actual/article.asp?subchannel_id=25&story_id=32358.

Looking forward to nosing through it later.

A billion thanks for the web's best-of sites because there is just too much stuff to wade through on the internet. For all of my art lovers, here's one of my favorite art ones = http://newsgrist.typepad.com/

Stay tuned for more.

obituaries + movement

Notebooks from a Creative Capital Foundation workshop has me writing one, three, five and ten year goals. Then it asks me to write an obituary. Although it sounds like a morbid task, it does put every goals into perspective. Now I'm nosing through the New York Times obits only to find one on Isabella Blow. When her rich grandfather escapes gambling debt by fleeing to Kenya where "he joined the Happy Valley set of alcoholic, aristocratic semi-exiles." It's no wonder when expatriates are thought of as privileged vagabonds. I flash back to a squirrel seen yesterday—specifically to his skip, skip, leap, skip and his simple joy found in movement—maybe in less cynical terms, that is what all the moving is about...

Howard Zinsser

Another expat contacted me about her interest in my project and mentioned her interest in writing about her expat experiences. I recommended Howard Zinssers' How to Write Your Memoir. Since I loved his book On Writing Well, I'm guessing that I can recommend his book on memoirs. An interview with Zinsser about memoirs can be heard at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5340618.

Enjoy...

Letters to a Young Diplomat: Letters Sealed

Having stuffed envelopes for far too long today, the letters to our current female US ambassadors are sealed and ready for delivery. Admittedly, I am terrified that none of them will participate--I realize that they have hectic lives--but I'm hopeful so that their voices might be gathered in one spot rather than scattered in a handful of publish and unpublished memoires.

The value of artworks is that they develop ideas / critical thoughts / momentous events into powerful forms. Inshallah, my piece for the fall show, resulting from these letters, will be one such form.

More to follow...

Letters to a Young Diplomat

Websites for inspiration:
guide2womenleaders.com/index.html
artonpaper.com/LTYA/
www.sfgoth.com/~immanis/rilke/letter1.html

Florida State University gave me a 2007 summer grant to continue work on my Female Expat Project. In preparation for an exhibition this fall, I'm emailing and sending letters to all of the current female U.S. Ambassadors a letter by a fictional, inspiring young diplomat. I'll also post that letter here. Modelled after Rainer Maria Rilke's "Letters to a Young Poet" and Art on Paper's "Letters to a Young Artist, the project documents what role women play in the power structures of the 21st century. Please email me at jdietrick@gmail.com or simply post to the blog if you have a response. These responses will be used to create glowing plexi pieces housed in furniture with the possible addition of sound. I'm so excited.

As I wrote in the letter of introduction to our ambassadors, I hope that you will consider participating to help document our shifting definitions of place for future generations of women overseas to enjoy the recent, huge shifts in these definitions.

Thanks,
Joelle

Dear Ambassador:

I am writing you as a young woman interested in the Foreign Service. Although I was raised in a small city and have only traveled throughout the United States, other cultures have always fascinated me. Coupled with my interest in international relations and a commitment to community service, this interest in a life overseas inspired me to research careers in the Foreign Service. During this research, I encountered your name.

At the prompt of our teacher's assignment, I am writing to you in the hope that you can find the time to write a letter in response. I'm specifically interested in the joys and challenges of a life overseas, and if you would do anything differently. Although regret is a useless emotion for an individual, when clarified for a future generations, it is informative. I hope you are able to find time in your busy schedule to send a few words of wisdom.

First, I have a few questions about gender. If the people with the greatest amount of power in the 20th and especially the 21st centuries are those people who can thoroughly understand and gracefully navigate the global scene, what role are women playing in these high-powered roles? Have you found any challenges in the Foreign Service because you are a woman? Do you notice any difference in how your male and female colleagues manage their work and personal lives? Is there a glass ceiling? Are you always taken as seriously as your male counterparts in other countries?

Lastly, with anti-American sentiment on the increase, does you position in the Foreign Service ever make you uncomfortable? Friends of my parents, who have lived overseas, say that people in other countries often clarify their anti-American sentiment by explaining that they dislike the government, not Americans. As a representative of our government, can you clarify how this sentiment affects your work and sense of self?

In contrast to the politically correct statements made my most government officials, I hope you can speak candidly in your response since such honestly will helps guide me to make important decisions. I tried to look up memoirs of diplomats and other books related to the Foreign Service. Not a single one was written by a woman. Please let me know if there are any that you can recommend.

I look forward to your response. Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,


Joelle Dietrick

Jeff in Madagascar

Ok, it has nothing to do with women roaming the globe, but this picture had to go up.
Thx to Jeff + Nikki.

itinerant

At the prompt of Noah Wardrip-Fruin's visit to Naomi Spellman's class at the University of California, San Diego, I ordered his book Second Person: Role-Playing and Story in Games and Playable Media. Although I'm not a big gamer, the emphasis on play and analysis of the virtual / actual overlap attracted my attention. Since Noah teaches at UCSD's School of Communications, local favorite thinkers / artists—like Lev Manovich and Adriene Jenik—are in the book..as they should be. Having just dipped into the book, I've only read Teri Rueb's description of her artwork Itinerant involving a small pocket PC with GPS and headphones. As a participant moves to a specific section of the city, their new location, tracked by GPS, triggers the playback of sounds that have been "placed" in that area. Excerpts from Mary Shelly's Frankenstein and Rueb's text about an uncle (I think fictional) who wanders the world with restlessness and is ostracized by their family.

Teri Rueb is one a handful of artists doing great work with GPS systems. The incorporation of this technology in stories about Female Expats navigating the globe make sense. More about Teri's work is at terirueb.net.

world's top 100 most livable cities

For those of you bouncing around the globe, deciding where to go next, a useful website listing the World's Top 100 Most Livable Cities was just posted.

Thanks to www.illumineerima.com for the head's up.

Enjoy.

New Nomadism

I wish I could go to this conference. http://www.symposiumc6.org/home/
April 26-28, 2007
The Art World is Flat
Globalism—Crisis+Opportunity
Chicago

bomb shelters

Check out this video shot inside a house with objects flying back into space. http://www.spyfilms.com/FTP/METRIC/EMPTY(web).mov Related to my artwork's flying figures (think dislocation and new ideas about space), the video was meant to see. Make clear connections to Zabriskie Point, Michelangelo Antonioni's 1970 film where objects explode at the end.



Wandering into my friend's bomb shelter also served as recent inspiration. The contrast between my floating figures and figures burrowing deep into the ground works well. The discovery also informs the show I'm curating this fall (Oct 1-Nov 11) at FSU's Museum of Fine Arts called Locating Secret Psychological Space. A post with info about the show is soon to follow.

Writing Home

April 25 | Town Hall Readings: Writing Home

PEN American Center
588 Broadway, Suite 303
New York, NY 10012

When: Wednesday, April 25
Where: The Town Hall: 123 West 43rd St.
What time: 8 p.m.–9:30 p.m.

More info: http://pen.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/1305/prmID/1411

Thanks to Yanira Castro for sending me the link.

errant

Word of the Day for Tuesday, April 3, 2007
errant \AIR-uhnt\, adjective:

1. Wandering; roving, especially in search of adventure.
2. Deviating from an appointed course; straying.
3. Straying from the proper standards (as of truth or propriety).
4. Moving aimlessly or irregularly; as, an errant breeze.

Errant comes from Middle French errer, "to travel," from Late Latin iterare, from Latin iter, "a journey"; confused somewhat with Latin errare, "to wander; to err."

saatchi showdown

It's voting time. 10 stars. You know you wanna...


http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/showdown/index.php?showpic=7503

the business of art

I listed to Alyson Stanfield's interview with Paul Dorrell and was pleasantly surprised to get great insights into artist-dealer relationships. http://www.artbizcoach.com/resources/dorrell.html

I would guess that her workshop is equally useful.
Enjoy if you are in the area.
Joelle


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Alyson B. Stanfield
303.273.5904
alyson@artbizcoach.com

FLORIDA ARTISTS SET THEIR ALARMS ON MARCH 25 TO GET IN ON
SELF-PROMOTION SECRETS

March 16, 2007--They're not going to come knocking on your
studio door. Ever. No matter how incredible your art is you
have to get out of bed (and get out of your studio) and
share it with people. If you've been throwing darts and
praying for the best for your art career, think again.
Successful art careers don't just happen, but are the
result of hard work and savvy skills. Alyson B. Stanfield
of ArtBizCoach.com is flying in from Colorado to share
self-promotion secrets with artists in Central Florida.

Artists should make plans to attend the Shameless
Self-Promotion for Artists workshop on March 25 from 9:30
a.m. to 3:30 p.m. at the Art Center Manatee in Bradenton.
If you roll out of bed early that Sunday, you'll learn:

--Nine things every artist needs for promoting their work.
--Why the process of writing your artist statement is
critical to your marketing (and how to make it pain-free).
--How to build a network of people who are essential to
your success.
--Creative ideas for marketing your art.
--What promotional materials you'll need and the rules to
follow when creating them.

You should absolutely stay in bed on Sunday if:
--You think you know everything already.
--Have no desire to make a living from your art.
--Believe that if your art is good enough, you'll be
discovered.
--You have a highly contagious virus.

On the other hand, you should set your alarm and join the
other shameless self-promoters if:
--You are fired up about sharing your work with the world.
--You're ready to put into place the tools you need to
advance your art career.
--You realize you can't succeed on your own.
--You're highly entertaining and can provide comic relief
at the breaks.

The workshop is $75 and includes lunch. Get registration
details at
http://www.artcentermanatee.org or by calling 941-746-2862.