Myrna Balk - Artist's Statement & Bio

Artist's Statement - The Demand Factor

As an artist as well as a social worker, my work has been influenced by my curiosity, my wish to experiment with new material, and my need to express my feelings about things in my life and in the world around me. While I often cannot put it into words, on some level, my art is informed by the work I have done with people and experiences both at home and while travelling to Asia four times in the last ten years. As I became more aware of international social atrocities, my work began to reflect my interest in human rights. The art that I do always precedes the text. In the end, the art and the text inform each other.

There have been times that I have done art work portraying empty, ill-kept playgrounds or the images of abandoned buildings. I did not always know exactly what this work was saying. Nor was I eager to show the work, thinking that they were personal. The meaning was not important. I love the process of creating art. I am finding that the older work actually related to the new work very directly. There has been a continuity of my intent even though it was no conscious. This work has helped clarify my voice about social issues. In this new show (The Demand Factor: Buying Despair), I now want to call attention to the fact that increased demand for buying sex is driving the business of sex trafficking and promoting the business of prostituting girls and women.

While in Kathmandu, Nepal, in 1998, 2000, and 2001, I first learned about sex traffickign from women who returned to Nepal after having been taken to brothers in India. When I returned from there, my new work focused on their lives, their pain and their resilience. As I learned more I began to look at the causes, and not just the victims. I now believe that we are all victims if we continue to let these things happen. For this new series, I have focused on the fact that very little attention is given to the role of the men who abuse and buy prostituted women and girls. The worldwide sex industry is sustained by the consumer of sexual exploitation.

I had wanted to include the work of some of the women and girls mentioned in the text that you will be reading about, but that proved unrealistic. Since they have not been able to tell their story, it is now up to me to tell their story. Actually, it is our story, our childrens', and our society's. The story stems from systemic issues of our society, such as pretending that things do not exist if we do not want to see or know about them.

In the last six months, there has been a transition in the focus of my thinking. This change came with help from others. Continued conversations with Janice Raymond, Professor Emerita of the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, who is the cofounder of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, and playwright Deborah Lake Fortson, founder of Tempest Production, Inc.

In 2002, Deborah, who was inspired by my work depicting the issues of sex trafficking and the drawings of the Nepali women and girls and wrote "Body & Sold", a play about trafficked women and girls from Nepal to India and about the plight of American girls who are trafficked and prostitued here. After some of the presentations of the play at the Boston Center of the Arts, we had panel discussions with audience participation. Time after time, as the panel praised the play for its authentic portrayal of the girls in the play, the audience asked "what about the men?". I too began to wonder. I began to focus more on the perpetrator and thus the title of the show became "The Demand Factor: Buying Despair".

The work in the show includes etchings, woodcuts, monotypes, dry point, cutouts and collages. Sometimes, I think about a new work for several weeks, more often for just a few minutes. I usually work fast, do few sketches, and work directly on the material. Even with etching plates or woodcuts, no two images are alike because I like to experiment with handmade paper and the use of different colors. The repetition of images, I realized only later, was an artistic technique service to highlight the vastness of the problems.

As I worked on this show, I felt even more strongly that we are all victims of a systemic problem in our society. Of course, the women and girls are the most obvious victims when they are raped and abused, but the budget cuts for schools, shelters, after school programs, art and physical education all affect the children and who they will become. We do not offer parents the health care, child care, job training or attention that would lead to more humane, productive lives for the parents and their children.

This show is not all inclusive, nor does it reflect every point of view. I hope it gives people something to think about, that they can explore on their own, should they choose to.

I am very grateful to the following people and organizations for their help. It takes a village for me to get things done.

Brookline Commission for the Arts, Arthur Birkland, Evin Driscoll, Ray Greenberg, Elizabeth Michaelman, Peggy Hogan, Judy Kanigel, Michilan Hagan, Deborah Lake Fortson, Janice Raymond, Sandra Hunnicutt, Michele Decker, Kattie Wheelis, Jorge Martinez, Olinka Bricento, Margy Rydzynski

—Myrna Balk
myrna@myrnabalk.com or click here

Bio

Myrna Balk grew up in University City, Missouri. She attended the University of Iowa where she majored in art and sociology. At Case Western Reserve University, she recieved a Masters degree in social work. In 1968, she first went to Nepal to visit friends who were in the Peace Corps. That was the beginning of her interest in Asia. She had numerous jobs in social work, including teaching at Boston University, Simmons College School of Social Work, and St. Xazaviors College in Kathmandu, Nepal. Her art work has been shown in China, Hungary, Nepal, India, Boston, Cleveland, and New York City at the United Nations.

After attending the womens' meetings in China, her art became more political. She has been awarded grants from the Cambridge Arts Council and Brookline Commission for the Arts. The Massachusetts Cultural Council has called her work "exemplary". The Beverly Ross Fliegel Social Work Award for Police and Change was presented to her in 2003.