I created Nora’s Ark: Pa’t Too as a performantz based on the mythic tale of The Flood, with obtuse scrambling of facts and frictions, props and costumes of biblical proportions, and some rigorous puntification, all rendered into a contemporary whorl-d. The workshop at Maryland Art Place in Baltimore had engaged participants with wildly diverse talents, which I eagerly used as the deeply irreverent event went swimmingly against the tide.
The premise wondered what if I (yes, me!) was the one chosen to run that encompassing Ark to triumph? What ark-e-types to include in the Two’s Company Revue? How to weather a Media Storm of schlock-heroic proportions? And truly what was the appropriate vessel to a-Sail la Vie?
Courbet’s Origin of the World came to mind as I mused and then mightily amused myself by sewing an enormous recumbent woman to inflate with mountainous breasts, ever-open legs, a zippable vagina, and a capacious womb with a view. Curiously, the idea landed right before Easter brake. I had a week to conjure, cut, and sew Ann Ark of Epic Proportions. And on the seventh day, I wrested her out of the studio, into my suitcase, and returned to the piece with a metaphor I believed in. Women will all/ways deliver.
Ending the performantz, the castaways reverse birthed by entering thru the pussy as Nora’s Ark rollicked ‘n rolled, full of hope, hype, and heart to a climactic finish/lion. Now on occasion, she comes out of retirement to show for all the world to see: To Sea! A Woman that was The Future. And still is.
Womb with a View is currently on view in “Fool Disclosure,” Pat Oleszko’s survey exhibition at SculptureCenter in Long Island City, NY, through April 27, 2026.
