MEDIA: Stained glass, Mosaics, painting
MAP TO CHRISTY’S STUDIO: 7807 East Lampkins Ridge Rd.
CHRISTY’S WEBISTE: christywiesenhahn.com
CONTACT: christyweezer@gmail.com or 812-361-1071
Christy Weezer is a multi-disciplinary visual artist that paints, works in glass, mosaics, and public art in skateparks. Although her academic background was centered in painting, her medias expanded when she took a stained glass class in 1995 and then learned the methods of painting on glass in the past 7 years. In her Bloomington studio, she focuses her work around series that move through mediums as well as finding their way into the design of concrete skateparks found throughout Indiana, 10 states, and in Denmark.
In her recent ‘Her Hair’ series, Christy uses the painting technique called Grisaille, a layered painting process that has been used since the middle ages. The ‘Her Hair’ series invokes the mythological language of Medusa which has inspired artists throughout the centuries and across the world. Medusa’s story as a woman made into a monster, ostracized, and her ultimate murder by a so called hero is easy to translate into the experiences of women of any time. Her most identifying features are her hair, made of snakes, and her gaze which turns men to stone. The first Medusa imagery to emerge into Christy’s work happened in 2018 when she started replacing her hair in self-portraits with snakes. The self-portraits played on her social anxiety, and what it would be like to live with such marks. How to hide and move freely within society while trying to tame uncontrollable forces, represented by the snakes, that have their own wild urges and hungers. Through self-contemplation and conversations with other women artists, Christy found these portraits to represent wider meanings based on the viewer’s life experiences. Rape survivors spoke to her about the stony gaze, how they couldn’t connect or trust and created stone walls around them to protect themselves. Each showing of this series has proven to move the discussion further as viewers discover their own connections with the myth and imagery.
The idea of the ‘hero’ in the Medusa story has been grappling Christy’s current thoughts on the topic, specifically who we choose to designate as heroes. Each subculture has their own version of heroes that are somehow given a pass with bad behaviors because of their star status. Because she works within the historically male skateboarding culture, it’s easy to be perplexed by the people who have been designated as the ‘ones’. Heroes are protected, sins are defended and not mentioned out of blind respect for these deeply flawed figures. Legends are created, told, and retold and listeners have to be reminded of their importance. Her goal is to find the honest story, the story of the slayed and the hero slayer, and to tell bits of their story.
Christy’s studio is on Lampkins Ridge Road, just past the mall on the eastside of Bloomington. Lampkins Ridge has 3 studios total on the road, Christy’s is located between Meg Lagodski and Cheryl Gregg. When you visit her studio, you can expect to see the processes of painting on glass, cutting glass and building mosaics for skateparks.
Skateparks
