Emily Babette

I am writing this post as I am going into my third week of quarantine due to the Covid-19 pandemic, which is sweeping the planet. It feels like a very appropriate time to sit down and share some thoughts and meditations on home.. from home. I have an on going body of work where I explore the concept of home and domestic spaces from a feminist point of view. Additionally, my point of view has been developed from my peripatetic childhood, as I spent my formative years nomadically moving with my family between Canada, Australia, and the US. Typically we would dwell in a place for no longer than one year, and often far less. In 2018 I became a naturalized citizen of the United States, after living in this country for eighteen years under the status of "legal alien." This shift in the legality of my  permission  to dwell here, permanently and as a bonafide citizen with full rights, led me to ask the questions: "Is the United States now my home?"...

A task of the artist is to find a suitable place or locale for one's finished artwork post-completion (if completion even exists). Art can  seem most  at home in the artist's studio where it was made. Yet most artists make work with the intention of bringing it somewhere else to dwell, even if it's only for the length of an exhibition. Interestingly, a descriptive word which stops artists dead in their tracks is the word “decorative.” A word can be no greater abhorred by a majority of visual artists. If a critic or peer describes your work as “decorative,” most of the time this  adjective  is not happily  received.  Curiously, artists who make work to sell in commercial galleries intend for their work to be bought by collectors, which generally means the work will end up “decorating” a wall. What a paradoxical predicament.  Exploring this notion further, I am now led to think of the physical wall in which the art piece is installed. ...

Inner Realms, September 7-28 2018, Hibbleton Gallery, Fullerton, CA. Opening Reception September 7th from 6pm - 10pm From mid-July until the opening reception on September 7th I have been putting together my third solo show, Inner Realms. This was my first solo show outside of any university affiliation and an important opportunity to highlight some of the most ambitious pieces I’ve made in the last couple of years. Additionally, it was also an opportunity to weave together diverse yet interrelated pieces into one gallery space.  The title Inner Realms describes the internal psychological visions of my subjects expressed by means of personal dress and decor. Fashion becomes costume, gesture becomes performance, and the gaze becomes a window into a tailored psyche. American sociologist David Riesman draws a distinction between those who “passively accepted commercially provided styles and meanings, and a ‘subculture’ which actively sought a minority style … and interpre...

As I am getting older the concept of time is becoming a more frequent subject in my thoughts than ever before. Summer has been slow to announce it's self this year in Southern California, taking it's time to increase it's intensity incrementally, degree by subtle degree. Alas, I do feel that it is finally upon us at last... and we are in for the long and lethargic drudge through the blistering summer months.  There is something so very nostalgic about the summertime for me. When I was a child in Canada, Australia or Connecticut summers were synonymous with holidays, freedom from school, and long lazy afternoons pleasurably spent wasting time . My, how times have changed... I do believe it is the predicament of the creative person to feel as it there is never enough hours in the day and never enough production happening within those hours to be satisfied. Unlike the long dreamy summers of my childhood, where a day spent rearranging all the books on my bookshelf alph...