Urban Wall Art/Creative Muse

 

 

One day last summer I took my usual drive down East Main Street in Rochester to my studio building and this wall mural seemed to just have suddenly appeared on the Fedder Building (I’m sure it took longer!). When I did actually notice it, I did a total WOW-what-IS-this. Now I pass by her every day as I drive to my studio. She has become something of a personal creative touchstone in a neighborhood of old warehouses, rundown buildings and homes divided into numerous apartments.

She is one of many murals that have been painted around the city of Rochester since 2012 through WALL/THERAPY, which its website describes as “a community level intervention using mural art as a vehicle to address our collective need for inspiration.”

And inspire my three-story lady does. Perhaps she is not quite the face I might have imagined for my creative Muse, but that is exactly what she accomplishes for me each day I gaze up at her while I drive  past. She does more than just lift my spirits, though, she radiates a transforming presence in an area that needs an infusion of creative energy. Seeing a building wall thus transformed reminds me of the potential visual art has to surprise, uplift and delight through all of life’s circumstances and challenges.

For a view of the other wall murals now currently creating a new landscape in urban Rochester, please visit the WALL/THERAPY website.

Off the Wall!: New Small Sculptural Works

 

Jeanne Raffer Beck, “Dialogue”, 4” x 4” x 13”; wrapped wire, handmade pulp & paper, poplar base.

My first small, free-standing, sculptural wire and paper piece debuted in my studio a week ago. Most people see these forms as bonelike and ancient. I’m still debating price, which led to some surprising and enjoyable conversations about what people might pay for small works like these. The poplar base and slight rusting on the hanging forms and paper-wrapped wire holder all work together well. Two more single pieces are in progress, which you can see in the picture below.

in the meantime, I’ve been creating and stockpiling organic shapes for the multiples I’m creating now. If the finished piece is successful, I’ll enter it into Memorial Art Galllery’s biennial juried exhibition.

By the time I closed shop yesterday afternoon, the whole space looked a bit like an assembly line. Yesterday was also our building wide Second Saturday at Hungerford but with storm warnings and snow, traffic stayed light. Still, I enjoyed great conversations with the people who did visit and made the most of the quiet; couching sheets of abaca paper and applying them wet over the remaining 6” x 9”  wooden panels for my 24 pieces. As the paper dries and shrinks, it will totally adhere to the wood surface.

Many thanks to my good friend Christina Laurel for sending me the darker value chai tea bag papers – a great surprise that arrived in a little package in the mail this week. Friends help take the chill away in winter!  These will join my other carefully saved papers to be collaged on their surfaces when I return to my studio this week and start to compose and collage.

Seeing, Feeling, Expressing

Your vision will become clear only when you look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakens. --Carl Jung

After enjoying hundreds of visitors who came to my studio last night for First Friday, I realize just how much of an equation there is between making art and sharing it. That exchange feels magical when what we make is well received by others. We encounter that energy in concerts, in live performances and sporting events. Athletes, actors, dancers, musicians all perform to audiences and whether small or large, our creativity comes full circle when shared. 

For many of us who are makers, our creative selves are always reaching. I’m feeling an internal desire now to focus on emotional content in new work.  What is it that makes some pieces evoke a deep emotional response?

Colors, shapes, lines and textures can communicate feeling, either what the artist feels internally or their responses to the world around them. The Abstract Expressionists of the 1950s believed the best way to express pure emotion was to create nonobjective or totally abstract artworks. They saw the use of colors, shapes, lines and textures as vital to expressing deep emotional states.

What feelings or emotions do you wish to express through your works? How do you choose color, shape, line and textures to communicate those? 

Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen. ~Leonardo da Vinci

Exploration: Sculptural Forms

 

Three-dimensional forms are my current focus – O.K, more like a fixation.  I’m working on a new series to combine wire armatures and handmade paper – using either freshly couched, wet sheets  or dipping armatures into paper pulp. The high shrinkage of 4-hour beaten abaca pulp from Carriage House Papers  lends itself to this process. The results are incredibly durable, even though they look very fragile.

 

. Jeanne Beck, Layers, 6” x9”, wire and paper sculpture mounted on hardwood covered with handmade paper, tea bag papers, gesso. I’m researching sources for a thin drop-in frame for these. Any suggestions for sources? My husband hopes you will please share them to get him off the hook for more R&D assignments!

Freshly dipped wire forms, drying on a wooden rack in my studio. The drying process takes three to four days. The moisture rusts the ungalvanized wire I use. Some pieces may be dipped, partially dried and dipped again several times to accumulate layers.

 

My resident R&D department has been helping to design stands to provide another presentation option for these small works.

 

My vision for this series – much like my current fluttering pages pieces – is to work with repetition. I visualize rows and rows of them hanging together.

I’ll  work this week to complete 11 more pieces. That will allow me to see how they look as multiples. If successful, then I’ll create 24 in this first series to hang 6 across and 6 down. If not successful, then back to the drawing board. Ideally, working with multiples will allow galleries and collectors flexibility for purchasing and presentation. More ideas for combining and hanging these together are evolving.

Special thanks to two excellent workshop teachers, Mo Kelman and Melissa Jay Craig, for providing so much excellent information and assistance in starting down this trail. Melissa is teaching 3-D papermaking again at Women’s Studio Workshop this summer, if you are interested.