biography | statement | poem

I was born in 1970 on a farm in Northwest Iowa. As far as I can remember, I’ve always wanted to be an artist, but people didn’t take me seriously. It was as though I was saying I wanted to be an Olympic figure skater, or an astronaut, or the President. But aren’t all of us born artists, and then grow up to be something else? I didn't want to grow up. Long before we left Europe, my family have been farmers, but art is in my blood too. My Grandmas painted on plates, sewed, knitted and crocheted, and my Grandpas turned seeds into grain and grain into milk. I’m a self-taught artist, taking after my Grandpa. I asked him if he had to go to school to become a farmer. He answered, “Yes, the best. It’s called the field.” They told me I had mental illness when I was in grade school, and I almost died from it when I was eleven. I’ve lost jobs, dropped out of school, become homeless, and hated myself for having this ineffable malady. At least I never lost art. I kept it safe and it’s kept me safe, too. Art is one thing I can’t fail at, because it’s not something I do. It’s part of who I am.

[Visit Bridget Riversmith's website at www.redrabbitriversmith.com]

My artwork is the direct result of spending entirely too much time nose-deep in picture books. Inescapably, this is the best way for me to communicate with the world (myself included). The art I make comes from dreams, fleeting impressions, and the residual greasy fingerprint left on my internal lens from fiddling and straining to focus on even more illusive things perched at the edges of my vision. I prefer to use common household materials and water-based paints — the kind of art supplies that can be found in towns under 20,000. My methods can be more than a little haphazard, and my skill level seems to wax and wane along with my mental phases, but I try not to give up too easily. Art is messy. I just keep with it, fixing and refining until things seem fully developed and at rest. I've been making art ever since I can remember. My first official art show was part of the Minnesota Fringe Festival in the summer of 2002. Since then, my artwork has appeared in pizza places, hair salons, coffee houses, galleries, and museums in the U.S., Canada, and Hungary. It can also be found on posters and CDs for independent musicians like Devil's Flying Machine, Haley Bonar, and Low.

On the theme of "Art and Healing"

It’s a reassuring thought to consider artistic expression as a tool for healing. However, I have to object to the idea that I am considered sick and in need of healing. Yet I was told at a very early age that that is indeed what I am. I was given a diagnosis, medications, and sent away from my family and friends, never to return in a fully human form – at least not without being subjected to invasive medical and social intervention in punitive reformatory settings. Artistic expression is the part of me that has not been deconstructed, deprogrammed, or disabled by these attempts at healing me. Art can be a powerful tool, and I have used it to carve out some shelter at the fringes of a world that has often been hostile and intolerant of me being here. Recently, it has served a passport allowing me back into the country of Normality, if initially only as a kind of exotic curiosity. Being labeled mentally ill as a kid had the effect of casting me onto the human scrap heap – the place where all are discarded who can’t or won’t fit the mould. I really don’t think being on the scrap heap is about being ill. But I see real disease in the minds of those that created it, and in the ones that keep on piling it higher every day. I think that artistic expression is the tool residents of the scrap heap can use to heal the disease that put them there.

What's with the Rabbit

Essay & poem by Bridget Riversmith

Red Rabbit is the product of a horrific memory from my childhood. He turned into a nightmare, then became a benevolent ally, and has since settled in as a ubiquitous character in my artwork, prose, and poems. This rabbit is red, because he has no skin. Cute is not a word I would use to describe him, however much he may, at times, appear to be so. He's definitely more jack rabbit than bunny. A trickster by nature, he can shift his shape, and slip between realities. Elusive and hyper-vigilant, he also suffers extreme curiosity, which repeatedly and inevitably draws him into the endless quagmire of adventure. All of his extraordinary capabilities have come at a very high price, for he is indeed dead.

Red Rabbit
he is a tricky one
who sheds his skin
to slip the traps
and hollows out his bitter bones
to dig a burrow in the cloud