"Transcend," new works by Wendy Mike.

Transcend: be or go beyond the range or limits of; surpass, ORIGIN Middle English from Old French transcendre or Latin transcendere from trans ‘across’ + scandere ‘climb.’

Transcend is also the title of my new installation in the orthopedic hospital just built in north Colorado Springs. I did not intend this commission, which features five life-sized rock-climbing figures, to dominate my life and this solo show. Yet it has. I resisted this title at first; finding the word overused and perhaps trite. Yet the more I thought about it, the more accurate it seemed. When I found that transcend has at its root a word for “climb,” I gave in.

Lately it is as if I have been living in the eye of a hurricane; move too far out of the center and get blown away. My art-making and yoga practices have kept me grounded. The demand for maintaining an absolute and exacting presence; to truly “be present” has been at times exhausting, and at times exhilarating. As chaos, rage, heartbreak, mounting seen and unforeseen responsibilities swirl around me, I must focus, center, carry on. Transcend.

Compositionally, working on the installation Transcend has caused me to push the boundaries of the human form. Rock climbing demands some pretty gnarly postures from the body, requiring great strength, concentration and discipline. Creating the forms for the installation, the two maquettes and the figures themselves, has caused me to push the human form to its limit, hopefully resisting caricature or stylization. It has been a kind of wild adventure that I might not have had the foresight to attempt had it not been for this commission. Still devoted to the human form, the challenge has been to further crack the code of anatomy: how it all works and fits together in some intense postures.

The figures I create are not, for me, “idealized.” They are actually quite generic – the same body over and over again. I’m not commenting on body image; I’m after a possibility, a potentiality. How far can I push the body? How compelling can it be without crossing the line into being either grotesque or innocuous? The skeleton is, after all, decisive. It dictates the finished form. No matter the body type. These are not individuals, likeness or portrait. They are what is underneath/within all people. Bone and muscle stripped down to its essence.

My creative process is largely intuitive; I rarely understand the art I make until after it is finished or at least underway. Inevitably making art involves taking risks, striving, pushing the limits, being challenged and curious, stumbling into whatever is compelling that will stretch and grow myself and my work. Having something bigger than myself to obsess over has been my key to well-being. What’s given me perspective on the contents of my head is getting outside of it. Ultimately I make art because the experience makes me come alive. Howard Thurman said, “Ask not what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive. And then do it. For what the world needs is people who have come alive.” Attending to one’s happiness and well-being, if one is privileged to do so, becomes a kind of political act, a sociological imperative.