THE NAKED MIND

“The Naked Mind” is a term borrowed from the writer Terence McKenna to describe the octopus’s peculiar visual expressivity of thoughts and feelings via their coloring, texture and movements. Should they wish their thoughts or feelings to remain private, they “ink” the water to conceal this information. McKenna referred to them as having a Naked Mind. Unlike octopi, our thoughts are concealed by facial control, our feelings by numbing our bodies. We also mask our thoughts and feelings from ourselves, but why exactly? 

The answer lies in the human psyche, which is often fractured by trauma, and is incapable of rehabilitating on its own; it requires our full attention to heal. But because we’re provided with no means of coping with trauma, we minimize the importance of our feelings of unworthiness, shame, or fear and for most people, this is where addiction fills the void. McKenna states that no one is coming to rescue the soul of mankind; he believed it was up to the artists (poets, dancers, painters, writers, musicians, all creative individuals) to lead the way. “As the planet waivers on the brink of extinction, anything less,” he said, “is a dithering while Rome burns.” 

This exhibition explores a spectrum of choices made to unveil and understand the effects of trauma on the human psyche. The nine artists included attempt to demythologize its stigma, intertwined as it is with the process of creativity. The impulse to generate imagery as a means of transforming emotional turmoil into tangible objects serves as a vehicle for deeper self-reflection. This approach became the seed idea for The Naked Mind project. We began with discussions around the mental health crisis and its devastating effects on everyone’s lives in this country. 

Two and a half times as many people committed suicide in 2018 than were victims of homicide. We questioned why this isn’t being discussed in the arts. We agreed that psychology and (for some) spirituality are as illuminating and informative as political analysis, and provide a more complete understanding of the human condition. Incorporating trauma into the creative process has produced very positive transformations in some of our lives, and the works included in this exhibition stand as testaments of resilience and survival. As artist and renowned cultural critic, Lorraine O’Grady explained in Simone Leigh’s groundbreaking “Loophole of Retreat” conference at the Guggenheim Museum, “How brave and honest we will be when we begin to look inside. And what then, from this aloneness, and this view, this truth, can one bring back as news or enlightenment to the community?”

Artists in the Exhibition

Liz Young

Eve Wood

Cathy Ward

Georganne Deen 

Samantha Harrison

Christine Wertheim

Laurie Steelink

Rhonda Saboff / Parker Pine

Lara Allen



ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Lara Allen

Lara Allen’s work has its roots in punk rock culture of the eighties when at the age of 18 she formed the band Manwich in her hometown of Cincinnati. At 23 she moved to San Francisco where she played and recorded with numerous bands in the underground music scene including Caroliner Rainbow, Heavenly Ten Stems and Secret Chiefs 3. During that time she developed a visual art practice that resulted in her going to the San Francisco Art Institute where she made work in themes of historical American culture — pulp fiction, rag-time and amateur photography — while continuing to make and perform music. Eventually she left San Francisco to attend Yale where her painting practice took on dimensions of text, performance, and music that brought together years of divergent practices. 

Georganne Deen 

Born in Ft. Worth, Texas, Deen’s interest in mental health began in her teens when an older sibling was subjected to barbaric treatments for depression. At East Texas State University she connected with a group of irreverent artists dedicated to the experimental narrative, underground comics, and their incendiary, highly nuanced documentation of human nature. This was the fertile ground from which her project emerged. In 1980 she moved to California to attended California Institute of the Arts, and continued developing a vocabulary both personal and universal to communicate the psychic complexities of the inner life. Deen has had solo exhibitions at The Power Plant, Toronto, The MAC, Dallas, The Dunedin Public Art Gallery, New Zealand, Van Horn, Dusseldorf, Christopher Grimes, Santa Monica. Group exhibitions include LA County Museum of Art, The Drawing Center, NY, ENTWISTLE, London, The Aldrich Museum, Conn, Jeffrey Deitch, L.A. Mary Boone, N.Y. Villa Merkel, Esslingen Germany. Her work is held in the collections of Beth Rudin DeWoody, Palm Beach, Peter Norton, New York, Wilhelm Schuermann, Berlin, Olbricht Collection, Essen, Germany, Collection Ringier, Switzerland, Tom Patchett, Santa Monica, Fernando Fernández Garcia, Spain, Neuberger Berman, New York.  

Samantha Harrison

Harrison lives and works in Los Angeles, California, USA. She has a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Otis College of Art and Design. Predominantly a painter, she is currently exploring textile art. Samantha’s work focuses inward, toward the self, capturing in text the compulsive thoughts that run inside the mind. This is a process of excavation and exorcism, so that these thoughts can be witnessed and examined. This is an introspective work that takes the things we hide from ourselves and others out into the open so that we may participate in looking and sharing. An endeavor of making what is painful beautiful.

Rhonda Saboff / Parker Pine

When I was growing up in the early 1950's, my Brooklyn born Father influenced my interest in art and music. He was a scrap metal dealer (latin name: ’junkman’) and took me in his big red truck to the scrap metal / junk yards in South Central LA where I would spend the day collecting discarded treasures. This informed my interest in the world of found objects as treasure. His employees in the 40's & 50's were Mexican & African American tradesmen who would bring their bongo and Conga drums to work and let me play music with them at break-time. That sealed it for me.

Laurie Steelink

Steelink is a multimedia artist and curator living in San Pedro, California. Born in Phoenix, Arizona, and raised in Tucson, she is a member of the Akimel O'otham Nation on the Gila River Indian Community in Arizona. She received a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute, and an MFA from Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University. She served as archivist for the Gilbert and Lila Silverman Fluxus Collection in New York, and Director for Track 16 Gallery in Santa Monica and Culver City, California. In 2012, Steelink founded Cornelius Projects, her own project space in San Pedro, which functions as a manifestation of her art practice. As artist and curator she has an interest in facilitating situations that bring together diverse groups of people. In October 2018 Steelink curated an exhibition titled, "Coming Into Being; Gathering the Elder in Me" at Angels Gate Cultural Center in San Pedro, California. Drawing on her Akimel O'otham ancestry and her adoption at birth into a Euro-American family, the installation combined past bodies of her own work, ephemera and family artifacts. She regarded the project as a kind of anthropological inquiry into herself. Steelink's recent body of work is an amalgamation of past reactivated and deconstructed works with newer elements that address her indigenous ancestry and by extension, the decolonization of her Eurocentric education.

Cathy Ward

Born in Kent, England, Ward attended a Catholic Convent served by The Sisters of Mercy, an experience both mind altering and life changing. Redefining a personal spirituality plays a core role in her continuing psychological regeneration. This is reflected in her work which often springs from encounters with life experiences of love, loss and death. Recognised for her intuitive, psychedelic drawings, Ward was awarded resident artist for the ‘Madge Gill-Medium & Visionary’ retrospective exhibition at Orleans House Gallery, London. She continues to exhibit internationally primarily with underground, outsider and visionary venues. Solo exhibitions include ‘Sub Rosa’ 2018 at The Horse Hospital, London; ‘Phantasmata’ 2017 and ‘Solo’ 2015 at The Good Luck Gallery, Los Angeles. Group exhibitions include: ‘Romantic Detachment’ at PS1 MoMA NY; ‘Talespinning’ at The Drawing Center, NY; ‘Bridging Two Worlds: The Land of The Living and The Land of The Dead’ at Morbid Anatomy at Greenwood Cemetery, NY; ‘Art & Spirit: Visions of Wonder’ at The College of Psychic Studies, London; ‘Waking The Witch-Old Ways, New Rites’ with Legion Projects and ‘Searching For The Miraculous’ at The Curfew Tower, N. Ireland. A monograph ‘Liberty Realm’ was published by Strange Attractor Press & MIT Press 2020.

Christine Wertheim

Christine Wertheim is a poet, writer, and artist, who has produced numerous books including three poetic suites "The Book of Me," "mUtter-bAbel," and "+|’me’S-pace," each fusing graphics and text to explore the potentialities of the English tongue, and the relationships between suppressed infantile rage and global violence. With her sister Margaret Wertheim, she is co-creator of the "Crochet Coral Reef" project that has been shown internationally, including at the 2019 Venice Biennale, Hayward Gallery (London), Museum of Arts and Design (NYC), Science Gallery (Dublin), Track 16 Gallery (Los Angeles), and the Smithsonian. She teaches in the department of critical studies at the California Institute of the Arts.

Eve Wood

Eve Wood has exhibited widely including Susanne Vielmetter (represented), Ochi Projects, Angles Gallery, Western Project (where she was represented for five years), Sloan Projects, Baik Art,Torrance Art Museum,The Western Carolina Museum of Art, Vincent Price Museum, Weatherspoon Museum, and more. Her work has been reviewed in The Los Angeles Times, Modern Painters, The OC Weekly, The LA Weekly, Art Issues, Artweek, Art & Cake, Artillery Magazine, ArtUS, Art Press and more. Her work is included in many collections including Beth DeWoody, and Bennett Roberts. 

Liz Young

Liz Young, a 2016 Guggenheim Fellow, received a BFA from Otis College of Art and Design. She has exhibited her work in galleries and museums, nationally and in Europe. Her work has been supported by Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), MOCA in Los Angeles, Santa Monica Museum of Art, The Luckman Center, Exit Art and Hallwalls in New York, Molndal Konsthall, Sweden, Long Beach Museum, the Skirball Center, Kappa Museum, Prague, and the Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department as well as commercial galleries including Western Project, Andrew Shire, Deep River and POST. Young has received grants, both local, state and national awards; a City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs grant, California Arts Council grants, a Surdna Fellowship and a J. Paul Getty Fellowship. She has also participated in residencies at the McColl Center for Visual Art in Charlotte, North Carolina and the Ucross Foundation in Wyoming as well as the Headlands Center for the Art and the MacDowell Art Colony. Her works are in many private and public collections including LACMA, Lef Foundation, Greve Foundation, and the Norton Family Foundation. Liz Young has taught at the California Institute for the Arts, The Los Angeles County High School for the Arts, Art Center College of Art and Design and Claremont Graduate School.