New Art Exhibit for "Good Things"

We are pleased to feature the works of artist Maryam Baig-Lush (here's a link to her blog) in our gallery during the run of Good Things.  Here is her bio:

Maryam Baig-Lush was born and raised in Pakistan, where she received her B.A in Political Science and English Literature.  After moving to the United States, she received a B.A in Art and Performance and an MFA in Arts and Technology at University of Texas at Dallas.  Baig-Lush has guest lectured for Exploration of the Arts (UT Dallas), Drawing Dimensions/Foundations (UT Dallas), Theatre Lab (Richland College) and Keller High School.
 
As an actor, her performances this year include; Pamela in Noah in My Bedroom (AmeriStage New Works Festival), Isabella in a commedia piece set to Rossini’s Petit Messe Solonnelle (Arts District Chorale at the Dallas Museum of Art), the Servant Girl in The Old Woman in the Woods (The Drama Club at the FIT Festival), and Varvara Nicholaevna in The Black Monk (The Undermain.) Baig-Lush also just wrapped up shooting two feature films, Heartland and Cross Currents, and her next performance art show will open at the Green Zone in Jan. 2010.

This is her artist statement:

I map a fantastical journey…one that I was not allowed to join. One, that a little giraffe of a thought has propelled itself into, without consulting me. I have cemented dreams and hallucinated realities before. But this time I am to be a mere observer, an embedded journalist of sorts, who will take notes and speak importantly into a tape recorder. I am to follow that thought’s journey. I am to sniff footsteps upon the sandy moon and trace memories etched in the belly of the deepest ocean. And pray that I can run into the one who has abandoned me.

How did I meet the one who has thrust me on this odyssey?

Christmas was dragging its feet through a sad afternoon when we shared our first and only drink. A simple one really, gin and tonic, lime rimmed and cooled by three ice cubes. You nearly drowned yourself in an attempt to show how much we had in common. I laughed and told you that I would call you ‘Slushy’ from that moment on. I stuck you under my gold threaded napkin and continued to talk about Lady of Shallot. Little I knew that ‘the curse had come upon me.’ I chuckled at your feeble efforts to peek at me from the corners of my plate. And finally wore you on my right index finger. At once, it seemed as if all visions of past and present merged themselves into a creamy haze of childhoods lost. I began dreaming. Of friends you could have, of places you would want to go, of visions you might demand.

I must have spaced out on my hosts, for I was told to put away my toys and eat my lamb. I respectfully obliged, sticking you in carefully in the pocket of my red jacket. I ate the succulent lamb, the crisp green beans and the Bavarian pie that M. had baked from scratch. But I did not pause for even a second. I did not pause for even a second. I did not pause for even a second. For I had begun to weave stories you might want to visit.

I finally reached for you later when I was ready to present you with my thoughts. But my eager fingers swirled around nothingness in the pocket of the red jacket. You were gone. You were gone without a word, gone without a forwarding address, gone without telling me why.

Now I scratch skies across paper, filling them with colours of dusk and dawn and rain. I grind charcoal and oils and pastels to create planets which could be home to you. I hum words and melodies to soothe your journey. I adopt friends whom I think are yours. And I hope. I hope that one day these roads I map, these horizons I format, these planets I birth will shine a way for you to come home. If you think it is home, where I am.

I miss you, Slushy.