Goodreads

Very happy to announce the catalog, ‘Anais Through the Looking Glass and Other Stories’ is now available on Goodreads. Please feel free to browse around and let me know what you think of the catalogue. Plus the book is for sale too!. Would love feed back.

See link here

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Anais catalogue accepted into UCLA Research and Arts Library - UPDATES!!

Woke up on Friday morning to the most amazing news. The catalogue of the, ' Anais Through the Looking Glass and Other Stories' exhibition has been accepted into the University College of Los Angeles Research and Arts Library. Feeling very proud and accomplished that my art work is side by side by Anais Nin's journals and fiction. Since I have embarked on this journey of telling Anais's story in a different language,  a visual language,  my language - a language that she helped me create with her influence and inspiration, she has had my back. She has opened doors for me that I had never imagined opening, pushed me onwards, introduced me to many other wonderful artists and writers along the way. (Some now good friends). So now I am here beside her. In helping her continue her legacy , she in return has helped to  established mine. Anais, I am forever thankful for what you have done for me.

UPDATE!!! ’Anais Through the Looking Glass and Other Stories’ has also been accepted by the British Library Arts and Research department, John Rylands University Library of Manchester; Bodleian Library Oxford University Arts and Research Library, Harvad Arts and Research Library and my old school of which I am very proud of, St Martins School of Art, London.

News In - The ’Anais Through the Looking Glass and Other Stories’ catalogue has now been accepted at the Royal College of Art!

Colette Standish's Erotic Meditations

A superb write up of Anais Through the Looking Glass and Other Stores by Tanya Augsburg : Writer, textbook author, scholar, critic, educator, and feminist curator. 

A taster of the article:

'Admitting one’s influences as an artist can be tricky. Some artists never get past the mental challenges of living up to, let alone potentially surpassing, the work of another artist. Literary critic Harold Bloom famously “diagnosed” this daunting dilemma as “the anxiety of influence.” Those who seek critical acclaim often choose to stay reticent, mindful of the premiums placed on so-called originality and innovation. As a mid-career interdisciplinary artist and poet Colette Standish is no stranger to taking risks. Nonetheless, she has done the necessary introspection that frees her to acknowledge frankly not only the sources of her aesthetic inspirations, but also how she encountered them.'

For a more in-depth read on the article that Tanya Augsburg wrote, please check here

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A Call to Eroticism - The Panel Discussion

“We don’t have a language for the senses. Feelings are images, sensations are like musical  sounds ”

— Anais Nin, 1932, Journal 1931-1934.

On Saturday, 31st March at the Center for Sex and Culture, to coincide with the exhibition, 'Anais through the Looking Glass and Other Stories', an important panel discussion took place.’ A Call to Eroticism’ . Five eminent artists and writers discussed and examined the need to keep Eroticism and erotic artists and writers like Anais Nin, our protagonist , current and relevant in todays contemporary world.

When Anais Nin was a young woman in the 1930s just starting out, there were no choices for women. Sex and eroticism in the public sphere was exclusively dominated by men. Anais created her own sexual choices and lived by them. Anais was not alone in creating her choices, there were many other brave and forward-thinking women who ventured into making their own choices: thus, creating the beginnings of erotic feminism. What Anais and her peers created back then has come full circle. Women today have many choices regarding their sexuality. Unfortunately, with the rapid grow of social media and the ‘Selfie’, some choices either get lost along the way or become overwhelming. In this age of immediate self-gratification, Anais Nin offers a subtler path: one of sensuality, eroticism and poetry.

All the writers and artists on the panel have written, or visually explored eroticism in their art. Some have been influenced by Anais Nin, some have not. What they all have in common is the need to keep eroticism in the realm of the senses and in the Arts. They are all pioneers in keeping  eroticism alive and are equally as important , if not more so in todays  climate, as Anais Nin herself.

I would like to thank once again, Laura Frost, Steven Reigns, Carol Queen and Dorain Katz for an exceptional afternoon of enlightenment.

For the full panel discussion on, 'A Call to Eroticism', check out the link here

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