Hataya Tubtim & Michelle Glass: Everyday Monuments

April 9, 2016

Everyday Monuments was a collaborative, multi-site, installation and tour that utilized embroidery and fiber arts to reimagine Pasadena’s existing monuments and honor significant people, places, and events of meaning to our local residents. 

Fellow makers were introduced to basic embroidery techniques and the histories of Pasadena’s existing monuments through a series of workshops. Residents learned about the locations and the people, places, events, and the human stories they commemorate. Guided discussions included walks around the neighborhood to visit nearby monuments. Participants then created embroidered text, sayings, and designs about the monuments or works that honor significant people, places, and events in their own lives. Workshops took place throughout northwest Pasadena and culminated with an event at Pasadena’s Civic Center. 

BIO

Hataya Tubtim

Hataya Tubtim is an artist who is interested in people and their existence in the places they inhabit. She is fascinated by spontaneous empathy, how homes are built, how relationships broaden our humanity, and how our ‘self’s’ are created through any of these processes.  She wonders if communities can really transcend our immediate spaces (both internal and external) to form that global village that I heard of.

In 2008, Tubtim began to work in the San Joaquin Valley, on a project called Laton Live! Reunion/Reunión. Under the guidance of Suzanne Lacy and in collaboration with 8 other artists, (and other guest artists), she spent 9 months in Laton, Ca, talking and working with community members and initiating various projects. The work culminated in a spring, nighttime festival celebrating and remembering the town’s history and culture.  Although she had lived most of her life in California, that was her first experience in the rural Valley. At that time, her closest point of reference was her father’s roots growing up in rural Southeast Asia, and the impressions I had when visiting my family there. After these reflections and the completion of the Laton project, she had the opportunity to return to the Valley. Tubtim and her collaborator, Michelle Glass, have been working in Arvin, Ca since the fall of 2011.

Her practice originated in the studio through drawing, design, and painting, and has migrated to public spaces. She has experimented with performative activities but continues to examine the ideas she encounters through traditional processes. As she reflects on her experiences, Tubtim hopes to discover more about my connections to others.

Michelle Glass

Michelle Glass is a Public Artist working in Social Practice. She is compelled to work in this field because this type of art is about the human condition.  It is her belief that reciprocated experience can only be found in the spirit of Place, which is much more difficult to obtain from an object alone.

Glass’s work is deeply rooted in her personal history. As a child, she lived in East Los Angeles, before moving to the rural town of Moorpark, CA.  Growing up within these two perspectives, she became aware of contradictions among rural, suburban, and urban environments, the wealth and poverty of communities, and racial barriers. Her work strives to build equity and social justice and is relevant to the challenging issues we face in our modern times, including human rights, education, poverty, health, and the environment.

She is intrigued by inter-connections of time and place, the physical world, land, the body, and the dialogue that occurs among them. 

Glass collaboration with members of a community allows her the ability to release ownership of the object into the environment.