Introduction from book Virginia is for Lovers Out of the darkness I see a speck of light. This grows as my heart races and the speck begins to morph into a larger ball of light. As I float closer, I finally see the shape take form. It is her face. The face that always seems to be tilting between smiling and crying. It is fragile and beautiful and enviable. It is the same as it was the first time I saw it. Everything in just the right place. Like a beautiful story where everything comes together perfectly in the end - gratifying. She smiles at me. She is eating a pomegranate, seed by seed. Such patience. She is tranquil. I want to touch her, but I seem to be grasping at air. Her eyes glance up and she shakes her head at me. Not allowed. My heart sinks and I suddenly start pushing back, away from the light and back into the abyss. Oh how I miss Ginny. She was in a word, amazing. We met in graduate school, collaborating on various projects, spending hours talking about art, love, longing, failure, pain, hope and yes - suicide. There were times when I felt very connected to her, and others where it seemed I was sitting across from a stranger. She sometimes lunged forward in joy, she sometimes lashed out in anger. To me, this is what her work felt like as well. Certain works are so vulnerable and beautiful, you just want to reach over and hold her. Others are so shocking, intense and strong that you are left speechless, just staring. To consider Ginny’s life and art practice, these words come to mind: artist, exhibitionist, performance, endurance, gifted, tough. I once told her that she was the kiwi and I was the egg. Kiwi has a rough exterior, but inside it is sweet and tart. Eggs have an exterior that appears hard, but are quite fragile, inside something very soft. Some years ago, Ginny left a copy of Kurt Vonnegut’s book Bluebeard in my studio, with a tiny note, “For Lori to read. Love Ginny.” The quoted passage below was circled in her copy. If acquainted with her in the least, this passage opens a small window into what her work was like. If acquainted with her well, this passage speaks volumes about her approach and concerns with her work and life. That’s what I think. And of course a scheme like that doesn’t make sense anymore, because simply moderate giftedness has been made worthless by the printing press and radio and television and satellites and all that. A moderately gifted person who would have been a community treasure a thousand years ago has to give up, has to go into some other line of work, since modern communications put him or her into daily competition with nothing but world’s champions. The entire planet can get along nicely now with maybe a dozen champion performers in each area of human giftedness. A moderately gifted person has to keep his or her gifts all bottled up until, in a manner of speaking, he or she gets drunk at a wedding and tapdances on the coffee table like Fred Astaire or Ginger Rogers. We have a name for him or her. We call him or her an “exhibitionist.” How do we reward such an exhibitionist? We say to him or her the next morning, “Wow! Were you ever drunk last night!” After graduate school she did not make much work, and emailed saying, “I really am having trouble negotiating my work in the light/shadow of youtube.” To imagine that talent not continuing to create was astounding, but with work so personal I tried to imagine how hard it would feel if the desire was no longer there. If I were forced to make work during an artistic block, I would compare it to walking in shoes filled with concrete. And if she was happy going about her day-to-day without making anything, then wasn’t this best? After she passed away, her mother shared work she had been making. Not telling me or sharing with very many, there were videos. She had carried on after all. To find this out after her death was a relief and heart wrenching all at the same time. I don’t profess to have been a best friend or an old friend, but I was lucky enough to have known Ginny and the amazing artist that she was. The idea of her dying and her work not carrying on, somehow just left me feeling empty. Something had to be created that would act as a device of sharing who she was in this world. That device is this book. Remember her, and share this book with others, and Ginny will go on forever. Lori Gordon |