Participants

                                                                                                                                                                           top left to bottom right: Sara, Allie, Gail, Noelle, Wendy

Participants of The Bloomington Breast Project

The original idea for this project grew out of an ongoing body of work which I call "Dis-Memberment and Re-Membering". My focus in this sequence is the separation and reintegration of traumatized parts of my body (existence) into new contexts (life patterns). The ongoing format of this body of work is in ever-changing installation events which I almost always experience as very cathartic. In the course of working on one of these installations one of my oldest and closest friends developed breast cancer. The experiences she went through struck me particularly hard and this inspired me to refocus my dis-memberment project on the breast. Simultaneously I began to realize that I must be sharing the story of trauma and healing particular to the breast with millions of women around me. That most probably I would not have to go much farther than my neighborhood block and my hometown community to find tremendous sharing of this issue. Further more, that there would probably be a world of unimaginable angles to the subject. To invite these angles to manifest themselves seemed quite congruent to me with the unfathomable emotional size of the subject matter. So I decided to invite women with whom I share a story and a living community to join in on my working process, studio and workshop, and to take our collective process as ongoing installations to the public life and community we all come from. This open ended, communal change to my original project now feels congruent with the process of healing.




Karen Baldner

Even though I was the originator of The Bloomington Breast Project I am now only its choreographer. Since participants have joined the process has taken on a life of its own. It is no longer focused on the issue of breast cancer but expands with every participants intentions, whose reasons for joining are as varied as they are often surprising. Here is what some of them have to say:

Mary Robinson: "I come from a family where I was taught to be concealing about my body. I think our society as a whole has an unhealthy attitude toward our bodies. Breasts are often perceived only as sexual objects -- to be either hidden away in shame or exposed for consumption. I want to get past this attitude."

For Gail Hale breasts have seemed like the quintessential symbol of the feminine throughout the ages and as such a vehicle to define identity. As she struggles to define her own identity the Breast Project attracted her as it seemed problematic in its absoluteness of gender identity.

Allie Kleinholz: "My breasts helped guide me through my years of solitude. And now that I have rejoined life they guide me through this process. They are my hope, my solace, my identity. The Breast Project interests me because of the sisterhood it provides."

Wendy Bernstein: "In high school I signed a photograph of myself to a friend of mine: 'Your bOsOm buddy' (across the appropriate part of my body). I've always enjoyed my breasts. My mother's and grandmother's breasts fascinated me. Throughout my life breasts have been a source of warmth, comfort and security, and in turn my breasts have served the same for others."

For Sara Steffey McQueen breasts are about abundance.. The Breast Project provides a forum for this abundance and the collaborative process further widens the expression of abundance .

Noelle Watson : "I really like my breasts. And so participating in this project seems to me an act of blessing and validation : to celebrate the sexual pleasure I feel in my breasts; to mourn the loss of children I never breast-fed; to honor the women in my life who died or now live with breast cancer."

Gail, Karen, Sara and Allie