Mei-mei
Artist
Cay Bahnmiller
(American, 1955-2007)
Date2000-2003
MediumLatex, oil, Sharpie, oil crayon on found sheet metal
Dimensions38 1/2 × 37 × 14 in. (97.8 × 94 × 35.6 cm)
ClassificationsSculpture
Credit LineGift of Gordon Newton, 2018
Object numberUAC6580
DescriptionIn her poem Hello, the Roses, Beijing-born New Mexico poet Mei-mei Berssenbrugge describes the flower in terms both scientific and metaphysical. A rose is a complex thing, yet we experience it almost instantaneously; Berssenbrugge’s poem suspends time at that instant, allowing us to minutely consider both the rose and the act of perceiving it.Cay Bahnmiller’s artworks, vigorously painted and cobbled from urban detritus, are not roses, but they too burst with multiple layers of detail and energy which we can examine at our leisure. Take, for example, her mixed media piece at the DIA, Der Imker (The Beekeeper); a white figurine in 17th century frock coat and tights perches upon a red toy shovel, poised at the center of a dark mass of found object clutter — casino chips, a bit of cornice, an ornate switch plate, spools of thread — glommed together and slathered with grungy, multicolored paint. Attached to the piece is a number of laminated poems by Emily Dickinson, one of Bahnmiller’s many sources of inspiration.
Bahnmiller kept her heroes close at hand. A Metro Times article lists more than a dozen names she dropped during a 2003 interview, from UN secretary Kofi Annan and Alfred Hitchcock to Bessie Smith and Sigmund Freud. The artist dedicated the sculpture now in the Wayne State collection to Berssenbrugge, but “Mei-mei” is just one of the revered names scrawled graffiti-style across the paint-streaked sheet of bent metal (possibly a repurposed sign of some sort). There are other poets: Arthur Rimbaud, the teenage Symbolist and enfant terrible; New Yorker Ted Berrigan, known for his avant garde sonnets; defiant Russian Osip Mandelstam, victim of Stalin’s gulag; French balladeer and screenwriter Jacques Prévert; and Francis Ponge, “the poet of things,” also known for his close observation of everyday objects. Mid-century singing sensation Dinah Washington is cited too, and even a villain appears: along one edge Bahnmiller has scrawled, “Hang Pinochet.” (Alas, Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet died of a mere heart attack at age 91, having never paid for his crimes.)
There are more names woven among the brushstrokes, some partially obscured, or perhaps misspelled; but to extract and parse every scrap of text in the painting might be to miss the point. In an article in Michigan Quarterly Review called “Lost In Translation,” the artist’s friend Beth Aviv wrestles with the task of transcribing Bahnmiller’s handwritten correspondence: “In rendering Cay’s letters from script to type I record the words, but lose her velocity of thought,” she writes. Better perhaps to step back and take in Mei-mei in its entirety, and try to hear in it Bahnmiller’s voice, which Aviv describes in thorny rose-like terms: “so sweet and so vicious.”
Text by Sean Bieri
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Born in Detroit in 1955, Cay Bahnmiller lived in Argentina as a young child, and took to making art while attending elementary school there. She earned a BFA from the University of Michigan in 1976, and was in her first show three years later. Bahnmiller was passionate about Detroit. She lived in the Cass Corridor, associated with the many artists there, and was particularly close to Gordon Newton, who was described as her “dear companion” in her 2007 obituary. In 1990, Bahnmiller took a hiatus from exhibiting her art; it lasted 13 years, but ended with a powerful show at Susanne Hilberry Gallery that featured over 70 works concerned with social and personal justice. Bahnmiller’s friend, local writer and bookseller Cary Loren, said the artist could be “harsh, edgy, nearly impossible to deal with,” but that she was “generous, brilliant, witty,” and “seemed to exist in another time, a more meaningful and deeper reality.” Bahnmiller was one of a number of artists from around the world whose work was featured in the 2019 Cranbrook show Landlord Colors. Cay Bahnmiller died of an overdose at the age of 52.
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