This Flower - A Katherine Mansfield's Story
Toti O'Brien - 1995 - USC - The Venue - Site Gallery
see comments below
Toti O'Brien - 1995 - USC - The Venue - Site Gallery
see comments below
Toti's work based on the autobiographical writings of Katherine Mansfield had a fascinating duality - actually a doubleness rather than a polarity. Child and Mother, live performer and suicided author, western language and easter images; each aspect or personage echoed, reflected or acted as a foil for its partner. The body as expressively deployed by Toti alternately twisted away from the viewer and seduced the audience. The whole body grimaced and laughed not only the fact. In retrospect I'm struck by the "Japonisme of the visual elements; fans, parasols and transparent dividers of space. All the props war fully absorbed into the vocabulary of body movements and into the grammar of the piece. The rhythms and repetitions or the performance were punctuated by several startling images: a red parasol onto the stage out of nowhere. Where is the boundary between our own reaction and Tti's empathetic projection of Katherine Mansfield's life and work? At the end of the performance I felt I had lived it and died it, too (Ruth Weisberg, artist, dean of Fine Arts at USC)
I was captivated by your work. What awed me most was how you were able to capture both the feeling of fragility an tenuous strength of the human spirit, more specifically the female human spirit. I was very touched by the way you were able to lose yourself in your performance, to totally concentrate and by the strength of your concentration to draw me (the viewer) into this world you were exploring. Any self-consciousness on your part would have broken the spell, but your concentration was complete. There was a quality of poetry in the work i that the feeling you were able to convey was greater than any specific action, words or ideas. You have developed a way of saying more and saying it more intensely than ordinary language. Somehow you captured the experience of the child, the young woman and the mature woman and made me feel each, remembering and experiencing them while watching you. Your performance evoked the lonely majesty and power of what it is to be a woman in each of these stages. Congratulations on this wonderful piece of work. (Lynn Crandall, art organizer, collector, writer)
I was captivated by your work. What awed me most was how you were able to capture both the feeling of fragility an tenuous strength of the human spirit, more specifically the female human spirit. I was very touched by the way you were able to lose yourself in your performance, to totally concentrate and by the strength of your concentration to draw me (the viewer) into this world you were exploring. Any self-consciousness on your part would have broken the spell, but your concentration was complete. There was a quality of poetry in the work i that the feeling you were able to convey was greater than any specific action, words or ideas. You have developed a way of saying more and saying it more intensely than ordinary language. Somehow you captured the experience of the child, the young woman and the mature woman and made me feel each, remembering and experiencing them while watching you. Your performance evoked the lonely majesty and power of what it is to be a woman in each of these stages. Congratulations on this wonderful piece of work. (Lynn Crandall, art organizer, collector, writer)