Art by Jeanne Beck

Listening to the Quiet

2012-01-09T05:36:00.001-08:00

Many new ideas seem to be coalescing into positive directions for my work and I am gently and patiently allowing them to take form. It is a slow process -- but I am cozying up to slow, to small, to quiet. I am in Winter Mode.

Fall Equinox, 24” x 24”, 2011, gold leaf, tissue, found paper, acrylic paint on stretched canvas.

I’m envisioning Fall Equinox as the first of four paintings that will explore the two equinoxes and two solstices as moving energy. It’s the first painting I have completed and it’s allowing my experience in surface design to find a different expression.

Pages 7, 18” x 18”, 2011, gold leaf, spun polyester, acrylic paint, fiberglass screening. SOLD.

This is one of several small works that are studies for larger pieces. I offer them for sale at my open studios that are part of First Fridays at the Hungerford Building.

The Working Artist: Haricots Verts Are Green Beans

2011-11-01T05:25:00.001-07:00

Interestingly enough, the more I simplify my work on the fluttering pages pieces, the more I intensify my deliberations and focus – and the more new variations that present themselves for consideration.

As I work, I realize there is power in simplicity, that there is no need to put a “spin” on what I create as an artist. I don’t need to call my pieces “haricot verts” to make them appear more than they are.

Working with the ideas of repetition in this series that I call “fluttering pages” both constrains and expands my choices. I like their simplicity and directness, but also relish the interesting way they appear to have movement and dimensionality as one encounters them in real life. Expose them to air and they flutter, in high humidity, some of the pages begin to curl. Their surfaces feel map-like to me as well, something I hope to accentuate in future pieces.

What I make is the best that I can bring forth at a particular moment in time and I am happy to appreciate the considerable work and thought that goes into my choices. I can love my “green beanness”.

Book of the Ancients 5: Hand Written, 18” x 28”, 2011, gold leaf, spun polyester fabric, fiberglass screening, pigments, thread. Screen printed, collaged, constructed. Photography by Jim Via.

Detail, Book of the Ancients 5: Hand Written

This smaller work presents letters and words, excerpted from an unknown 19th century writer’s journal, that drift across the surface of the pages like falling leaves.

“Ancient” Memories

2011-09-10T12:25:00.001-07:00

When I started working with the “fluttering pages” idea, I envisioned translating ancient texts and lost languages into visual imagery. Then I began to realize that “old” is a relative term – in American culture much of what I remember from my early life in the 50’s and 60’s is now considered ancient times.

As I’ve worked on these two new pieces, I’ve been thinking about the fragments and details that we remember as we age. I have many vivid recollections about the various places I’ve lived and began jotting down all the addresses I could remember. To my surprise, I remembered many and incorporated these on Book of the Ancients 2: House Numbers.

Jeanne Raffer Beck, Book of the Ancients 2: House Numbers, 2011, 36” x 48”. Acrylic paint, gold leaf, synthetic fabric, fiberglass screening, thread.

Jeanne Raffer Beck, detail of Book of the Ancients 2: House Numbers.

Working on these pieces awoke many memories of place and my Pittsburgh childhood. I began to look at maps of the neighborhoods where I was born and lived until I was 11, when our family moved to New York State. Since my nuclear family is now all deceased, these recollections from my childhood are pleasing and surprisingly vivid.

Jeanne Raffer Beck, Book of the Ancients 3: Memory, 2011, 36” x 36”. Acrylic paint, gold leaf, synthetic fabric, fiberglass screening, thread.

It felt important to imply the recollections of early memories, so I stitched suggestions of recorded memories, perhaps from a personal journal, on some of the individual pages.

Jeanne Raffer Beck, detail of Book of the Ancients 3: Memory.

Inside the Dream Space of an Idea

2011-09-02T05:52:00.001-07:00

In my own process, I have been inhabiting a space involving memory: my own! I have been writing down the house numbers of all the places I have lived that I can remember, cutting them out of fiberglass screening and applying them to a new “fluttering pages of my life” work in process.

Synchronicity led me to read an essay this week by Carol Becker, in Buddha Mind in Contemporary Art. In her role as an instructor to young artists, she encourages them to “move inside the idea as if it were an imaginary space”. By doing so, she hopes to help them evaluate and perfect an idea as it takes form.

If we think of an idea as a dream space, then as artists part of our process may be to enter and inhabit that dream space as we create. Becker asks students specific questions as their work develops. Because I am quite interested in becoming a better mentor to my own process, I find her ideas and approach intriguing. These specific questions are taken from her article.

Move inside the space of the idea and ask yourself:

In what way do you live here?

What furniture do you need to inhabit this space?

What appliances?

How will this idea’s meaning be communicated, made visible to others?

Further along, one might ask:

Is this the work you intended or has it changed in the making?

If it has changed its course, what is its new course?

Here is a clip about artist Grayson Perry, who obviously inhabited a marvelous “dream space” at the British Museum to actualize his idea.

Perry’s focus for this two-year project honors the anonymous skilled hands over countless centuries whose finely crafted works are now preserved in museum collections.

Creative Being

2011-08-22T05:16:00.001-07:00

Jeanne Raffer Beck, Fluttering Pages 5: Memory, 2011, 18” x 18”, acrylic paint, gold leaf on synthetic fabric, screen-printed, mounted on fiberglass screening.

I woke this morning and started free-writing my creative manifesto. It’s a work in progress, like my art and my life, but I wanted to share it with you so you can start your own creative day with these thoughts. Please add to it if you like.

I am a creative being and my life is good.

My days are rich, full and filled with purpose as I engage in creating. My practice is my true north, my touchstone, my homecoming.

Every time I select and nurture an idea to completion, I enrich and expand both myself and the entire universe. My deepest satisfaction comes from knowing that I am bringing ideas into the truest expression that I can at each point in time.

What I create is not about outcomes, although I love the fruits of my labor and intentions. My creating is about learning to trust – in my vision and in my voice and my creative spirit.

Each day I practice creating and living with an open heart, one that marvels in and appreciates life. Everything around me is engaged in creating, in growing, in expanding -- and I am part of it all.

I savor and appreciate that connectedness.

I am open to the joys and experience that a creative life brings. I allow each day to surprise me and carry me off on an adventure.

I am never disappointed. It always does.

I appreciate the wisdom of my years that I bring to my creating and the vibrant, healthy body that I inhabit. I am blessed with humor and wit. I have a generous, compassionate heart that attracts other creative minds and fertile experiences.

Each day I practice being as kind to myself as I am to others.

I am blessed as well with compassion that allows me to see everyone and everything around me as interconnected and ever-evolving.

Whenever I feel alone, all I need to do is open my heart to feel the love of all creation surround and fill me. I am part of a great power that is continuously evolving and manifesting just like I am, each and every day.

My wholeness awaits me to affirm it with the beginning of each new day. My good fortune awaits my acknowledgement that it bubbles over into every aspect of my life.

I sleep deeply and well each evening knowing that I have given my best in my creative efforts. I wake fully refreshed in the morning to a new day filled with possibilities for more satisfying expression, more pleasure, more evolving and refining.

I am a creative being and my life is good.

Ikigai and Art Making: A Sense of Purpose

2011-08-14T12:59:00.001-07:00

Dan Beuttner discusses the cultures and lifestyles that seem to contribute to health and longevity in this Ted talk. He touches on two ideas above and beyond diet and activity levels, which we all basically are already aware of, that strike a strong chord with me as an artist.

The first is a concept the Japanese call “ikigai”, for which there is no exact word in the English language. It translates as “ a reason to wake up in the morning.” Beuttner references research that suggests longevity is linked with having a sense of purpose in life.

My own life as an artist, which began 20 years ago in my early 40’s, fills me with great energy and enthusiasm for living. Being a maker, a person who engages in a creative process because it provides deep satisfaction as well as continual challenge, is a choice that fills my life with purpose. Whether I live to be a centenarian is far less significant to me than being able to focus my attention on creating the joy in living and expressing that refreshes and revitalizes us all on every level -- physically, emotionally and spiritually.

The second concept Buettner discusses in this talk also emerged from interviews with Japanese centenarians who live on the islands of Okinawa. Each person born in this isolated area becomes part of a group of five or six other people throughout their lives who form a social network of support. The presence of this number of people to encourage, comfort and share with adds so much to their quality of life that these close groups have become recognized as a factor in healthy aging and longevity.

Most of us are not Okinawans. We have lived in numerous locations, had countless friendships, work associations and even intimate relationships over the course of our lives. Often this means we do not share a lifelong history with others around us, nor have the comfort and continued support that these long-term affiliations offer.

While many contemporary artists seize on this disconnectedness and alienation as their subject matter, I find myself moving towards the potential and promise of being human. I see creating and making as ways to infuse life-affirming, uplifting energy into the world. Our culture is barraged by images and words based on fear and violence; should our art mirror the ills of our culture or offer focal points that slow our whirling brains and give us a pause to reflect on the meaning and potential of our own – and all human -- existence?

I hope you will find Mr. Buettner’s research and images as intriguing and thought-provoking as I did. As a person who chooses to live to my fullest potential, it seems that perhaps the secrets to a long and happy life and a quiet, peaceful death are quite simple indeed. I hope that I am headed in that direction.

Bringing Forth a Thousand Joys

2011-08-05T13:59:00.001-07:00

If you are reading this, then welcome back to my blog, which has been quiet for the past month or so, while I’ve given myself a well-earned period of time to relax and refresh.

This morning I found this quote from James Allen, 1864-1912, a British philosophical writer who penned the classic As a Man Thinketh, which, by following this link, you can actually read online (oh how I love the age of the internet!):

“Mind is the Master power that moulds and makes,

And Man is mind, and evermore he takes

The tool of Thought, and shaping what he wills,

Brings forth a thousand joys, a thousand ills: --

He thinks in secret, and it comes to pass:

Environment is but his looking – glass.”

Which stirs up a delicious idea. What if I were to commit myself to bringing forth a thousand joys in my artistic life, starting this very moment?

Earlier today, after reading this quote, I picked up my composition notebook and headed outside, engulfed by the dazzling sun, observing and writing every sensation, sound and scene unfolding around me… the warmth on my freshly-washed skin, the buzz of cicadas, birds launching into choruses from surrounding trees as the breezes played with the leaves. Then I walked out to the garden and slowly picked the first few ripe tomatoes, the tangy scent of them lingering on my hands after I twisted them off their stems.

What leads us away from this daily bounty of glorious sensations? And conversely, what can bring us back to them?

I’ve been away from my studio for the greater part of the past month. I’ve not blogged. I’ve been mostly spending time at our cottage, where I tether my floating raft to the dock and paddle around on it.

But creativity is s bit like yeast. Add a little warm water, a pinch of sugar and it begins to bubble. It is time to return to shaping and molding, first in thought and feeling – and then with my heart and hands.

So today I am declaring this my task: to acknowledge a thousand joys, shaping my experience and my life by my thoughts.

Joy #1 – It is a pleasure and honor to share authentically as an artist, maker and creative spirit with words and images on this blog -- and sometimes strike a responsive chord in others. Through blogging, I can reflect, ponder, inspect, consider, celebrate and share my unique way of perceiving and responding to this incredibly rich and inspiring world.

Joy #2 – What hilarity to receive not just one but TWO wonderfully supportive comments on previous posts today.... just as I was debating whether to continue blogging anymore.

Would you like to acknowledge your own one thousand joys with me? Imagine the possibilities of THAT “going viral”!!

SDA “Confluence” Conference Snippets

2011-06-24T01:22:00.001-07:00

It would be a huge task to document all the exciting exhibitions, lectures, demonstrations and workshops that take place during a Surface Design Association biennial conference.

A quick sampling will have to suffice here, along with a wholehearted recommendation that you plan to attend the next SDA conference in 2013, which will be held in San Antonio, Texas.

Exhibitions

Click on the title above and link to a pdf file with images and descriptions of all the excellent fiber-related exhibitions in Minneapolis during the Surface Design Association “Confluence” conference June 9-12 in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Jiyoung Chung, Whisper: Jiyoung Chung's Joomchi, Minnesota Center for Book Arts, May 6 - June 24, 2011

Jiyoung Chung, a painter and mixed media artist, has developed innovative applications for a traditional Korean method of papermaking called Joomchi.

India Flint, theWindfallMaps, June 9-30, Katherine E. Nash Gallery, Regis Center for Art, U. of Minnesota.

India Flint, a costumer, artist and writer, lives on a farm in rural South Australia. She uses a plant based printing process that produces vibrant and unpredictable marks and patterns on cloth.

Merge and Flow Member Exhibition

Erin Endicott’s Healing Sutra #19, hand embroidered antique cotton fabric stained with walnut ink. won first place in Merge and Flow, the SDA Members’ Show, on view at the Katherine E. Nash Gallery in the Regis Center for Art at the University of Minnesota. Erin also won the first place prize in FiberArt International.

Dimensional Freeform Crochet Class At SDA Conference

2011-06-14T15:54:00.001-07:00

I attended the 2011 SDA “Confluence” Conference in Minneapolis, MN June 9-12 and arrived early to take a pre-conference class in sculptural crochet at The Textile Center June 6-8 .

The three-day class in sculptural crochet with Jodi Colella introduced me to crochet – as a left-hander, I had never seemed to be able to learn it. With my lefty neighbor and fellow student Beverly guiding me, I proudly succeeded in getting the knack of it.

Here’s a detail of a freeform crochet sample by Jodi, which definitely appeals to me.

Zooming out to show more of the piece. I enjoy the combinations of textures that her various freeform stitches create.

I appreciate how much potential the wire work has to compliment what I am already doing with my language imagery works and look forward to enjoying a bit of experimentation with the stitches and materials over the summer.

When I returned home, I discovered this TED talk featuring artist Shea Hembrey and found it so wonderful and inspiring that I wanted to share it with you.

Once I’m settled back in, I’ll post more images of last weekend’s SDA Conference in Minneapolis. It was a great experience.

Enjoying the Moment

2011-06-05T06:43:00.001-07:00

Could anything be more enjoyable than being with wonderfully artistic and accomplished friends at a great opening reception? On the left, Arena Art Group friend Paul Brandwein, a ceramic sculptor, and on the right, Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra violist Melissa Matson and her husband John. Melissa is a talented surface designer as well.

The reception at the Arts & Cultural Council on Friday evening went well, with much appreciated support from family and friends and lots of interest in my work from people in the community that were new to me. Three of the hanging Pages pieces behind us in this image may have a new home soon.

As a bonus to this lovely weekend, the summer issue of Canandaigua Magazine arrived in my mailbox with a five-page feature article profiling me and my art. Since it is only available locally, I’ve created a pdf file of the complete article; when I figure out how to post it to my blog and website, you’ll be able to read it.

Serendipitously, a writing challenge arrived in my inbox this morning from Jonathan Mead with this writing prompt:

Come Alive by Jonathan Mead

Life wastes itself while we are preparing to live. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

If you had one week left to live, would you still be doing what you’re doing now? In what areas of your life are you preparing to live? Take them off your To Do list and add them to a To Stop list. Resolve to only do what makes you come alive.

Bonus: How can your goals improve the present and not keep you in a perpetual “always something better” spiral?

I’d have to say my response to Jonathan’s question is a resounding “yes.” If I had a week left to live, I would live my life as I am living it now, filled with loving, supportive family members, stimulating interactions with artistic friends and the salty-sweet joys of creating.

Installation Views of “Off the Page”

2011-05-28T15:25:00.000-07:00

Area photographer Jim Via spent time at the Arts & Cultural Council Gallery with me on Tuesday afternoon and shot numerous images of the exhibition. I think you’ll agree that he did an excellent job:

Now I can go join my husband at our cottage and have a relaxing weekend on the water and let all the tensions go.

Final New Works for “Off the Page”

2011-05-24T02:41:00.001-07:00

Yesterday was “installation” day at the gallery for my solo exhibition “Off the Page: Reinventing Alphabets” that opens – today!

I’ll be posting some images of the beautiful gallery space and installation soon, but first, the pieces that I raced to complete this past week and include in the exhibit. I was working on these up to minutes before we loaded the vehicles and drove to the gallery.

Writing in Air III, 24” x 48”, collaged papers on synthetic polyester fabric, cut, manipulated and tacked to a gold-leafed, painted, stretched canvas frame. The usual disclaimer that the photograph does not capture the true colors. I’ll post a better image later once it’s been photographed professionally.

“Book of the Ancients”, 48’ 48”, gold leaf on synthetic fabric, painted, cut and mounted to fiberglass window screen.

Here’s your invitation to the exhibit:

Please come visit if you are in the area! The opening reception will be Friday, June 3, 5 –9 PM at the Arts and Cultural Center for Greater Rochester Gallery, 277 North Goodman St., Rochester, NY.

From the Front Lines or at the Leading Edge of Creation?

2011-05-15T05:34:00.001-07:00

Perhaps I could cast myself as a news reporter “reporting live” from a battle zone. Perhaps I could choose to identify with Richard Tuttle, the experimental artist in the “Never Not An Artist” documentary I just watched (done by the amazing Paul Gardner), drawing a line on the wall and then carefully tracing that same line with a length of wire to make a minimal and exciting work of art.

Whatever Walter Mitty fantasies pop into my head, there are eight days left to work until I must stop and mount my show – and of course there are still several pieces that I MUST complete.

Unlike the news reporter, I’m not in danger. although I do feel the tingles of risk and uncertainty. Unlike Richard Tuttle, I am not a famous experimental artist. Actually, in my imagination, which god bless it is free of all limitations of time and space, I am soaring with the focus and determination of a hawk hunting for its next meal. The work I’m making is challenging and stimulating me. It’s not perfect – is anything ever? – but it’s heartfelt and innovative and true to my artistic voice.

Substrate for the third “Writing in Air” piece, foiled and over painted.

I’m collaging the whole surface at one time on this 40” x 72” piece – a new variation in my process with this third “Writing in Air” work -- and now that it is dry today, will add suggestions of handwritten texts. After that, I’ll cut the large collage into rectangles, form the tubes and mount them to the prepared canvas.

These two details show how the large surface will break down into rectangles that will become each tube.

Once the rectangles are all composed, this sample shows the cutting pattern I’m planning to use. More loops and flourishes than in the two previous pieces to suggest cursive “writing in air.”

Today I’ll complete the compositions for each rectangle and then begin printing, cutting, composing and mounting.

New Works

2011-05-07T11:30:00.001-07:00

The following are professional images of the works you’ve seen in process on this blog. Thought you might enjoy seeing the images done properly.

Pages: Crumpled, 48” x48”, 2011

Pages VII, 48” X 48”, 2011

Pages VIII, 48” x 48”, 2011.

These next three will hang together as a triptych on one wall.

The Fluttering Pages of My Life I, 48” x 60”, 2011

The Fluttering Pages of My Life II, 48” x 60”, 2011.

The Fluttering Pages of My Life III, 48” x 60”, 2011

I still am working on completing two more of these vertical “tube” pieces. The one below will be the image I use for my postcard.

Writing in Air, 24” x 48”, 2011.

If you live in the Rochester, NY area, please come hear me talk about my work and inspirations at the Memorial Art Gallery on Thursday, May 12 at 7 PM in conjunction with the FiberArt International exhibition that runs there through July 3, which includes one of my pieces in the collection.

Tinder and Sparks

2011-04-27T09:10:00.001-07:00

As a rule, there are in everyone all sorts of good ideas, ready like tinder. But much of this tinder catches fire or catches fire successfully only when it meets some spark or flame from outside, i.e. from some other person. Albert Schweitzer.

Stuart Low, a thoughtful, insightful arts writer from the Democrat & Chronicle, our Rochester newspaper, interviewed me recently because my work is included in the Fiberart International exhibit that will be opening at the Memorial Art Gallery on April 30.

The interview left me revisiting familiar questions, in an effort to flesh out clearer answers. Why DO I work in fiber? Why DO I work with language as imagery? What is it I wish to express as an artist? Why do I make the choices that I do? Talk about an encounter generating sparks.

As far as I know, my profile will be a brief segment in a larger article about the abundant number of fiber-related exhibitions that seem to be happening concurrently in this area. What light will his summation of our hour and a half talk reflect back to me; how will my work be seen through an arts writer’s eyes?

In and around the enjoyment of being interviewed and photographed and looking forward to a special opening night VIP preview reception for Fiberart International this coming Saturday evening, I just keep working in my studio. I appreciate these interactions and the ideas they stimulate; that energy ignites new ideas and refines existing ones.

The inspiration for the new tube pieces that I’m currently working on is “writing in air.” Here’s the first segment for the next one;. I almost hate to roll it into a tube and attach it to the substrate. Maybe it will stay an open cylinder instead so the substrate is visible behind it.

There is less dimensionality plus sharper value contrasts on this piece than on the first one. The added fragment of found handwriting also is working.

Here’s the prepared substrate for attaching the completed tubes.

Life as a Verb: “Whirr”

2011-04-20T04:57:00.001-07:00

whirr , definition of whirr , meaning of whirr - 1 ( verb ) whir, whirr, whirring, birr sound of something in rapid motion "whir of a bird's wings"; "the whir of the propellers" 2 ( verb ) whizz, whiz, whirr, whir, birr, purr make a soft swishing sound "the motor whirred"; "the car engine purred" 3 ( verb ) churr, whirr make a vibrant sound, as of some birds

I am “whirring.” Soft, swishing sounds abound. After two years of not updating my website, I finally have a site that I can manage myself. If you have a few minutes, please check it and let me know if you have any problems loading or viewing the pages on your monitor. Next I’ll learn how to upload images, edit text and manage the site myself.

Work progresses on “The Fluttering Pages of My Life”, so here is a quick update detail of my design wall with more contrast being added to the pebbly, textural surfaces. The rippling aluminum rods for hanging these will work beautifully to make the pieces gently undulate.

Work Continues for the Artist-Slash-Swashbuckler

2011-04-10T09:23:00.001-07:00

This week has been filled with sampling and re-visioning, which from the outside may look a bit tame, but inside it feels very much like a swashbuckling Errol Flynn swordfight.

Happily I am casting myself as Errol Flynn aka Captain Blood in this fantasy!!

The three pieces now have a name, "The Fluttering Pages of My Life”.

After a lot of samples and fancy footwork and sword parrying, I chose the idea of painting directional “swooshes” across the surface to suggest movement and motion.

I’m also adding subtle bits of invented text to help convey the idea that these are “pages”. Don’t ask how many other ideas I ruled out before selecting this one.

Using more strongly contrasting values in this sample also made me realize that I want to amp up the contrasts on these pieces. I need to complete these revisions before I add the swooshes, so I spent all day yesterday painting elements that I can collage to the current works.

Here’s another idea still to be tested out. I’m bending a set of aluminum hangers for both the top and bottom of each hanging in the hopes of creating a gently undulating surface, as in “rippling in the breeze.” Will I like them rippling when I get to my studio again on Tuesday and see what it looks like? Or will I decide to keep the pieces hanging flat?

Hey, there’s always the option of a giant fan in the room blowing the heck out of the work -- and my neighbor the sculptor is more than willing to teach me how to mechanize the piece with small motors so it undulates!

Work in Progress: Fluttering Pages

2011-04-05T06:10:00.001-07:00

After cutting out all the rectangular papers and laying them out for this triptych, I’m mounting them row by row to fiberglass window screening. The sides and bottom are unattached.

I’ve completed two of the three basic 48” x 60” structures. Here is the first one.

A detail. The individual painted papers are lovely; the random, pebbly patterning within the repeating shapes feels like flickers of light reflecting off the surfaces.

To complete the pieces and add the language elements, I’ve been taking some of the rejected rectangles and trying out a variety of ideas. One option is to draw a variety of language symbols on the surface. Above, graphite.

Here, colored pencil. Another consideration is whether to punch up the contrasts by punctuating the surface with some ripped or cut shapes of painted papers like the piece of painted tissue above.

Another option is to add some hints of gold foiling and draw into that. Obviously, options abound.

As of today, I’ve completed two of the three and will finish the third one today. Then I can relax and take some time to reflect on what will best communicate the idea behind these pieces.

Choreographing Ease and Flow

2011-03-28T10:42:00.001-07:00

The chortlings of migrating starlings descending on the feeders outside my windows this morning seemed to herald the approach of warmer days. Watching the small flocks’ aerial dances led me to search the internet and find this clip of huge flocks in Scotland . It seems to fit well with my morning musings on “ease” and “flow”, the words I’ve chosen for as my themes for this year.

How amazing to watch these synchronized movements and discover that the filmmaker who recorded their aerial feats again and again never once saw a collision among them. Could there be a more compelling visual demonstration of ease and flow?

As artists, we don’t ever attain a blissful, creative state minus any self-doubt or anxiety, but rather learn to trust in our own inner navigator to get us back on course when we flounder, and realign us with our own inner compass.

We just keep at it.

I’m reading Martha Graham’s autobiography, a treatise in focus, dedication, passion. On the first page of the book she writes, “To practice means to perform, in the face of all obstacles, some act of vision, of faith, of desire. Practice is a means of inviting the perfection desired.”

“First comes the study and practice of the craft which is the school where you are working in order to strengthen the muscular structure of the body…The body is shaped, disciplined, honored

and in time, trusted…

Then comes the cultivation of the being from which whatever you have to say comes. It doesn’t just come from out of nowhere, it comes out of a great curiosity. The main thing, of course, always is the fact

that there is only one of you in the world, just one, and if that is not fulfilled then something has been lost.”

Currents of Choices

2011-03-21T14:20:00.001-07:00

Another full moon on Saturday night – it is now officially Spring.

This past week my creative river has been flowing along briskly – no ice jams here! Choices and ideas keep growing and multiplying. Some get ruled out, others lead to new insights and options. I visualize and affirm “clarity” a lot!

In Eric Merisel's “Overcoming Creative Anxiety” course through Daily OM, he writes about creative choice-making:

Choosing provokes anxiety. Even such small matters as choosing which cereal to bring home or which television show to watch can cause a little tendril of anxiety. How much more anxiety is generated by trying to choose between spending two years on this novel or on that novel! Even more significantly, every single mark you make as a painter or word you put on the page as a writer is a choice: when you create you are constantly choosing, which means that a certain amount of anxiety is likely always to be with you as you create.

What reassuring words. We all feel tension when we create, whether we are painters, writers or wood carvers. But working through ideas and addressing the problems and surprises they bring is the heart and soul of studio work. Would you ever trade this for any other life? I wouldn’t.

I've been making lots of painted papers for my “fluttering pages” and laying them out to see what they will look like in combination. Since the three panels will hang together as a triptych, developing quantities of papers with variety in for color, texture, pattern and values are an important first step in the design process.

It took careful measuring, checking and rechecking every step of the way to complete this new work, but my desire was to mount and complete it for this blog post. While the idea for this started out to be rolled tubes, the substrate turned out so beautiful that I formed half cylinders from these and mounted them on the stretched canvas.

One of the original tube samples – this one has knotted strips.

My intention in twisting and manipulating the cut strips on the openings is to suggest lines of writing across the surface. I may paint the edges of the strips to accentuate them and make them more visible.

Here’s an informal shot of the completed work. The glare from the flash makes it difficult to see the details, but it does give you the feel of the piece. It’s Atta-Girl time; so satisfying to see a new idea launched, with new variations already standing in line waiting for their turn to be realized.

Flux: Hungerford Artists Participate in “Thaw”

2011-03-13T05:08:00.001-07:00

Over 20 artists that rent studios in the Hungerford Building, 1115 East Main Street, Rochester, NY, mounted “Flux”, a joint exhibition of their works as part of Thaw, a regional, multi-gallery event. Just like the artists in the building, the show is an eclectic mix of styles and mediums that works well together and definitely speaks to the talent that this converted old fruit syrup factory now houses.

The opening reception was Friday, March 4. The exhibit will be open to the public every Saturday this month, 11 AM – 3 PM. I got to take some pictures of the works yesterday during my shift there.

Entering and looking to the left in the space. It is a large, rectangular industrial space with a bank of windows along the back wall that really allowed both two and three dimensional works to be presented well.

John Wilson and Dory Driss's junk sculptures always are a feast for the imagination. John, a retired lawyer, told up welding about four years ago. The larger bird is his design, the smaller one, “Senator Byrd”, is Dory’s'. John fabricates Dorys’ designs as well as his own.

Hodaka Hasabee’s large sculptural ceramic vase looks lovely next to my work.

Sculptor Victor Pacheco is my neighbor across the hall and this poisonous frog is an exceptional example of his work. The surface looks like riveted sheets of fabricated metal although it is fabricated from resin-coated Styrofoam.

The shots above and below show the other side of the gallery. This shot was taken from the back of the space, looking toward the front entry.

A close-up of the beautiful collaborative vessel by ceramicist Richard Aerni and ceramic sculptor Carolyn Dilcher - Stutz.

Sculptor Bill Wolff’s work on the center pedestals. His studio is down the hall from mine. A close up of the small mixed media pieces and painted table top by Betsy Hoefen. Her son Bret has an inspiring blog about dealing with a rare form of cancer, called “Ride in a Good Direction”.

Rollin’ on the River

2011-03-04T04:29:00.001-08:00

I have been shakin’ it up like Tina on the stage of life this week. I had a private coaching session with Leslie on Friday after the fifth “Finding Your Authentic Voice” class to deal with some longstanding fears about putting my work out in the world.

Coaches ask perceptive questions and offer “assignments”; Leslie suggested several this week.

I’ve got a tiger by the tail again with the studio work and my days are filled with both joy and creative anxiety. Every day has been a studio day. I’m learning more about deep breathing and releasing to help clear the anxiety and also to help calm the joy and direct it into my work. The anxiety comes from all the stages of new work unfolding and the risks that engaging in creating bring (and always will, I now recognize, so I will keep gathering tools to navigate them)

One assignment for this week focuses on the idea of making space for my artistic self. Part of this represents an inner expansiveness of trust and self-acceptance that gives my artist self more permission and room to BE.

Each day I have made time to expand and breathe, and then expand a little more – I can take more breath in than I realize. When I release a deep breath, I empty out and then let a little bit more air out – deepening the release of breath. On each inhale and exhale, I repeat, “I am worthy.” Synchronicity again that we practiced this in restorative yoga this week, another new and essential addition to my artistic life that realigns my energy and releases tensions.

This is one new direction I’m exploring with my “pages” series, working with painted and gessoed and printed papers. It seems to be working – I will continue to make the little pages you see, then compose and mount them – I’d like them to feel like they are barely attached and fluttering. Lots to still figure out.

I received a beautiful card from Suki, an inspiring poet, writer and artist, with Tibetan prayer flags on it that echo my inspiration for the fluttering pages and other works I am developing based on the idea of “writing in air.”

Another assignment Leslie gave our group this week was to create a ceremony or ritual acknowledging our authentic voice. I chose to write and say a daily focusing/ blessing for my ceremony for the week (and am so proud to say I did it every day):

Welcome new day! I greet you with appreciation.

I bless and give thanks for my vibrant, active, healthy body.

I bless this home and its loving vibration.

I bless this beautiful world around me pulsing with life and hope and growth.

I bless my creative work and the soulful expression of my art.

I bless this day, trusting that it will bring stimulation, affection, nurture, interaction,play, joy, love and creative expression.

I know today and every day, the powerful creator that I am will find purpose and fulfillment, insight and clarity.

Everything in its perfect time.

Everything is unfolding.

It feels wonderful to say these words to begin the day.

Leslie suggested another assignment for me as well that I enjoyed doing, to take a brush and pan of water and make bold, gestural marks on my studio walls with abandon.

It felt freeing, expansive, dancelike. I carried this openness to figure drawing class (my second) in a fellow artist’s studio in my building and the focus and concentration on the shapes and form and movements of the body were deeply satisfying. This class meets twice a month. My drawings improved enormously over my first night. I am settling in and feeling comfortable and deeply appreciative of the human form. Drawing feels powerful, comfortable, connected. It doesn’t matter what I produce, it is intensively satisfying to observe and explore the marks that capture gesture and form.

Full Moon, Why Didst Thee So Unsettle Me?!

2011-02-21T11:36:00.001-08:00

From anxiety to insight and frustration to experimentation and ah-hah discoveries, this past week has been packed with irritations (I backed my car out of the garage on Friday, full moon day, whacked my driver’s side mirror hard enough to break the glass), fresh perspectives on self-trust and inner guidance (thanks to Leslie Avon Miller’s skillful coaching in the Finding Your Authentic Voice class, still in progress), erratic highs and lows (my work is exciting, my work is worm food) – not at all the typical pre-full moon week I love. Usually I’m yahooing and yee-hawing like a cowgirl riding at full gallop on strong currents of creative energy.

Not THIS full moon. Donna Watson from the wonderful blog Layers recommended checking out Eric Maisel’s class on creative anxiety. Resources for handling the creative process gracefully are a must for artists, so I signed up for it.

Pages 11: Crumpled, 48” x 48”, mixed media on stretched canvas.

Meanwhile, studio work continued with some worthwhile sample making, experimentation for new works and doing some editing on Pages 11: Crumpled, which is nearly complete.

Acknowledging that I have strong and yet objective internal voice that can help evaluate works-in-progress is a major step for me and one that has been strengthened in great part by participating in Leslie Avon Miller’s “Finding Your Authentic Voice” class, which is generating many deep insights.

The full moon seemed to spur questions about new directions in my work, whether to deconstruct language imagery more, down to the gestural shapes and forms of letters, or to give the viewer something more tangible – perhaps take writings that inspire me, like Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet, and imbue my surfaces with those lofty, inspiring ideas, not fully legible but able to be discerned in part.

I seem to be swaying back and forth, back and forth about whether to explore language imagery as a conveyor of ideas and meaning in a visual way or to pursue it as a series of beautiful gestural marks in their own right that don’t need to convey meaning to be appreciated. Or whether the two directions can juxtapose and work together.

Maybe this is the crux of the question that has been chafing inside me and heated up by intensity of full moon energy.

Are these two directions a dialogue, one that my work wants to investigate together, a crossroads at which I need to make a choice or a new-way path, leading me into something altogether unexpected and new?

Unsettling moon, yes, but one that is propelling me towards new realizations and new growth. By the time the full moon returns, may I have made great strides in developing these ideas into new works.

Sweet, Sweet Harmony

2011-02-13T15:57:00.001-08:00

Yesterday and today I got to spend full, uninterrupted days in my studio. I can’t remember how long it’s been since I’ve had that luxury.

The energy in the space has felt “off” for at least a month. I was so excited to paint the charcoal wall and add the storage area, but suddenly the space didn’t generate the flow of creative energy that I have become accustomed to as soon as I walked in the door. The “gallery” feeling still hung in the air. Something was indeed amiss.

So first, I took down all the work in the room still hanging, except for my one “gallery corner”, and got it ready for storage.

Every surface in the entire space was piled with “stuff” – sure doesn’t look inviting, does it?

So I put on calming, meditative music, took some deep, cleansing breaths and decided to slowly restore harmony to my kingdom. Gradually I could feel a shift inside, could seem to focus on where I want to store various items, what’s important to keep close at hand and what can be stored away in a container in the back. My mental confusion cleared and suddenly my studio felt the way it always has, a pleasure and delight to be in, a place of quiet focus, satisfying experimentation and making.

I’m revising and mounting several Pages pieces at the moment for my May exhibition, which now has a name: “Off the Page: Reinventing Alphabets”

The idea for this work is a crumpled page mounted on a stretched canvas frame. The first view gives you a clearer view of the dimensionality. Yesterday I tacked it down to consider whether it needs any further adjusting. I’m letting it rest as it is for a few days and then will return and decide whether it will stay this way or get revised.

Here’s the front view of Pages 9: Crumpled, 48” x48”.

A third work is ready to be mounted on the frame that I applied composition gold leaf to yesterday and then aged today with acrylic paint.

The third piece is an ochre ground that will be rippled and attached to the canvas, so it too will be dimensional.

By the time I left today, the studio felt much more ordered and harmonious. It will be a pleasure to return and continue working there on Tuesday.

Insights and Ideas

2011-02-04T18:30:00.001-08:00

Last year around this time I participated in one of Leslie Avon Miller’s online coaching classes, called “Refresh Your Creative Practice” and amazing insights sprang from these sessions about my creative purpose and direction. A week ago I started this new year’s offering, “Finding Your Authentic Voice”, already aware of how stimulating Leslie’s classes are and how they inspire my growth as an artist. This statement and image are from her blog:

Our first assignment was to develop a metaphor for our authentic creative self through a partnered visualization with another member of the group. My metaphor is already inspiring new ideas:

I am the alchemist who transforms life experience into artistic gold.

I am slowly easing back into studio work and productivity again after lots of organizational work and am revisiting some of the work that was in my exhibition last summer and revising its presentation.

Here is a 48” x 48” substrate with composition gold leaf applied and then worked back into to age with various acrylic paints. It’s absolutely lovely as it is and I may choose to create several more of these and complete them as mixed media/paintings.

I created the gold-leafed stretched canvas substrate with the idea of mounting this dimensional piece to it. I think it will work – won’t know until I finish hand tacking this to the canvas surface, which is a time consuming task that I haven’t yet started. I’m also working on a third piece like this one but on an ochre ground with white and variegated gray letterforms and some hand stitching.

I meet tomorrow with three jurors and the director of Rochester Contemporary Art Center to coordinate the jurying for the Northeast Regional Juried Contemporary Fiber Exhibition, an idea that I initiated and have worked very hard to make happen for Surface Design Association members. With 100 entries and nearly 300 works to consider, the response has been gratifying and exciting.

By next week the organizational side of my life will quiet down for a bit and I’ll be able to work at least three full days in my studio again – looking forward to it.

Staking My Claim to 2011

2011-01-29T11:57:00.001-08:00

It’s My Year of Celebrating Artistic Accomplishments! You’ll see this image of me in my studio on my newly redesigned website, soon to be completed.

It’s My Year of Celebrating Artistic Community! We had an amazing two-day, 60th birthday celebration at our Arena Art Group’s 60/20: Art in Motion event at Rochester Contemporary Art Center on January 13 & 14. Between 400-500 people attended – a great turnout for snowy Rochester in the middle of January in the midst of a streak of single digit temperatures!

Our group’s electronic experts turned the interior of the Rochester Contemporary Art Center gallery space into a virtual exhibition, with a multitude of projections that some of us began interacting with while cameras recorded our moving-people-art.

The beautiful art works flashing on the walls to specially chosen music spanned the 60-year history and membership of this contemporary regional art group. The people who attended loved the event. What a grand celebration to launch an exciting artistic year ahead

It’s my Year of Ease and Flow!

Each year I select a theme. Last year’s theme of “connection” led to wonderful new associations in my art community and excellent exposure for my work. It helped me connect more deeply to the ideas that generate my art and to the directions I’d like to take it next.

This year I am envisioning everything I desire unfolding easily and harmoniously – a wonderful flow of adventures, accomplishments and new art projects that will flower with the same intuitive ease as buds opening and blooming.

And we’ve only just started 2011…

Hail-to-the-Old-Made-New, the Tried-and-True, the To-Be-Continued and Yet-to Be-Discovered: Part III

2011-01-20T04:54:00.001-08:00

Kai Chan

Kai Chan, born 1940, China.

How can Canada and United States be so close geographically and somehow manage NOT to share their artist treasures internationally?? This post will introduce you, as I was three weeks ago, to Kai Chan, a Toronto-based artist also known for his sculptural jewelry and interior, exhibition and theatre design. His sculptural works utilizing everyday materials are being featured currently in an exhibition at the Textile Museum of Canada. Other exhibits of his work recently ended at Varley Art Gallery Markham and David Kaye Gallery

Mirage, 2007, silk thread, nail, 178 x 229 x2 cm. Chan explores the three dimensional qualities of thread in his fiber constructions.

Kai Chan, G, 2004, 211 x 442 x 4 cm, toothpick, straw, wood chip, watercolor, thread, nail.

Kai Chan, G, detail, 2004. Chan uses a jewelry drill on each toothpick to allow him to string them on lengths of thread.

The catalogue that accompanies the exhibition notes, “The toothpicks hang together like items on a list, like notes on a musical scale. The shape of the toothpick is like a brushstroke, one end being broader than the other.” (from Kai Chan, catalogue for “Rainbow Lakes”, an exhibition in 2001 at the Art Gallery of Mississauga).

Since I am beginning this year contemplating new innovations for my own work, Chan’s explorations of simple materials and processes in the works that reference language marks, list-making and scrolls are informing my own deliberations.

Hail-to-the-Old-Made-New,the Tried-and-True, the To-Be-Continued and Yet-to-Be-Discovered: Part II

2011-01-10T04:44:00.001-08:00

The recent trip to Toronto introduced me to two Canadian artists whose work I had not seen nor read about before, Betty Goodwin and Kai Chan. Here’s an introduction to Goodwin.

Betty Goodwin

Betty Goodwin, born in Montreal, 1923 – 2008. She passed away three weeks after the death of her husband Martin, to whom she had been married for over 60 years.

Betty Goodwin’s work appeared at AGO in the “At Work” exhibit along with Eva Hesse and Agnes Martin. Goodwin, who passed away in 2008, had an extensive collection of sketchbooks and notebooks, which have been donated to the museum along with 200 of the artist’s works. Approximately 100 sketchbooks, carefully opened and placed under glass, were on view during the exhibition.

These were the focal point of her exhibition. Only four of her actual pieces graced the walls of the gallery. It seems that Betty carried her sketchbooks with her constantly, jotting down ideas and insights over the entire span of her 50+ year career as a working artist.

While I looked forward to savoring Agnes’ works and Eva’s test pieces more closely, the introduction to Betty’s work and ideas was an unexpected surprise. I had never heard of her before.

Born and raised in Montreal, Goodwin’s body of work included printmaking, paintings and drawings, sculpture, installation and mixed media works. She was primarily a self-taught artist.

An accompanying video interview with the artist was part of the exhibition and provided a wonderful background on both her life and the inspirations for her subject matter.

Betty Goodwin, “Parceled Vest One” and “Tarpaulin Two”

Many of Goodwin’s most famous works involved depictions of cloth and textiles – including her celebrated Vest and Tarpaulin series – that although discarded objects, still feel hauntingly human. During this time she printed vests, gloves, shirts, gloves and parcels.

A later series, Swimmers, focuses on drawn and painted figures that appear to be lifelessly adrift or drowning. In the video interview, Goodwin explained that her husband nearly drowned along the Greek coast during a vacation there. Even though he was saved by a passerby who heard her screaming for help on shore, the traumatic experience drew her to paint a compelling series.

One of Goodwin’s large scale “Swimmers”, worked on numerous pieces of overlapped and attached pieces of paper.

Please visit http://www.artseditor.com/html/features/0209_goodwin.shtml

http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/article/864577--betty-goodwin-the-great

for more in-depth articles about Betty Goodwin’s work or purchase The Art of Betty Goodwin at amazon.com.

Next: Kai Chan

Hail to the Old-Made-New, the Tried-and-True, the To-Be-C0ntinued and Yet-To-Be-Discovered: Part One

2011-01-02T09:36:00.001-08:00

What better way to close out 2010 than to enjoy a post-Christmas jaunt to Toronto? We headed out December 27 – a pleasant four-hour drive -- and spent three nights and four wonderful days absorbing culture and excellent food.

I visited the Art Gallery of Ontario for the first time since it was renovated (by architect Frank Gehry) and spent most of a day there absorbing two exhibits, “The Shape of Anxiety: Henry Moore in the 1930’s” and “At Work: Betty Goodwin Work Notes, Eva Hesse Studiowork, Agnes Martin Work Ethic”. A partial view of the front of the Art Gallery of Ontario.

Accompanying documentary videos brought these artists to life and provided great insights into their processes, studio practices and personal philosophies as makers.

The “AT WORK” exhibition featured Agnes Martin’s “The Islands”, a monumental series of 12 paintings on loan from the Whitney Museum of American Art, which were accompanied by pieces from the AGO’s permanent collection.

AGNES MARTIN

This was the first time in many years that I had the opportunity to view such a large number of pieces of Agnes’ work together and to appreciate the subtle shifts from piece to piece.

I have great respect for Martin, for her philosophy as much as for her work. She left NYC at the peak of her career, built a house with her own hands on the northern New Mexican desert and spent the rest of her life painting each and every day in solitude. I consider her a great role model for both her devoted work ethic and for the deep listening to her internal compass that guided her art making and life choices.

EVA HESSE

Eva Hesse dazzles the imagination with her stellar productivity and accomplishments over the brief span of her life. Eva was born into a Jewish family in Hamburg, Germany in 1936 and emigrated with her family to New York City to flee the Nazis in 1939. Her mother committed suicide when she was 10 years old.

Eva died of brain cancer at the age of 34, but in the decade-plus that she did produce work, she was highly productive; her passion for exploration with latex, fiberglass and plastics is evidenced in both the “test pieces” and larger-scale sculptural works that were exhibited at AGO.

My interest in Eva and her work began when I read an except of a letter sent to her by Sol Lewitt, who was a close friend of hers. Let me conclude this post by including the entire text of it here. As artists, I’m sure we can relate to the sentiments and concerns that it addresses.

Dear Eva,

It will be almost a month since you wrote to me and you have possibly forgotten your state of mind (I doubt it though). You seem the same as always, and being you, hate every minute of it. Don’t! Learn to say “Fuck You” to the world once in a while. You have every right to. Just stop thinking, worrying, looking over your shoulder wondering, doubting, fearing, hurting, hoping for some easy way out, struggling, grasping, confusing, itchin, scratching, mumbling, bumbling, grumbling, humbling, stumbling, numbling, rumbling, gambling, tumbling, scumbling, scrambling, hitching, hatching, bitching, moaning, groaning, honing, boning, horse-shitting, hair-splitting, nit-picking, piss-trickling, nose sticking, ass-gouging, eyeball-poking, finger-pointing, alleyway-sneaking, long waiting, small stepping, evil-eyeing, back-scratching, searching, perching, besmirching, grinding, grinding, grinding away at yourself. Stop it and just DO!

From your description, and from what I know of your previous work and you [sic] ability; the work you are doing sounds very good “Drawing-clean-clear but crazy like machines, larger and bolder… real nonsense.” That sounds fine, wonderful – real nonsense. Do more. More nonsensical, more crazy, more machines, more breasts, penises, cunts, whatever – make them abound with nonsense. Try and tickle something inside you, your “weird humor.” You belong in the most secret part of you. Don’t worry about cool, make your own uncool. Make your own, your own world. If you fear, make it work for you – draw & paint your fear and anxiety. And stop worrying about big, deep things such as “to decide on a purpose and way of life, a consistant [sic] approach to even some impossible end or even an imagined end” You must practice being stupid, dumb, unthinking, empty. Then you will be able to DO!

I have much confidence in you and even though you are tormenting yourself, the work you do is very good. Try to do some BAD work – the worst you can think of and see what happens but mainly relax and let everything go to hell – you are not responsible for the world – you are only responsible for your work – so DO IT. And don’t think that your work has to conform to any preconceived form, idea or flavor. It can be anything you want it to be. But if life would be easier for you if you stopped working – then stop. Don’t punish yourself. However, I think that it is so deeply engrained in you that it would be easier to DO!

It seems I do understand your attitude somewhat, anyway, because I go through a similar process every so often. I have an “Agonizing Reappraisal” of my work and change everything as much as possible = and hate everything I’ve done, and try to do something entirely different and better. Maybe that kind of process is necessary to me, pushing me on and on. The feeling that I can do better than that shit I just did. Maybe you need your agony to accomplish what you do. And maybe it goads you on to do better. But it is very painful I know. It would be better if you had the confidence just to do the stuff and not even think about it. Can’t you leave the “world” and “ART” alone and also quit fondling your ego. I know that you (or anyone) can only work so much and the rest of the time you are left with your thoughts. But when you work or before your work you have to empty you [sic] mind and concentrate on what you are doing. After you do something it is done and that’s that. After a while you can see some are better than others but also you can see what direction you are going. I’m sure you know all that. You also must know that you don’t have to justify your work – not even to yourself. Well, you know I admire your work greatly and can’t understand why you are so bothered by it. But you can see the next ones and I can’t. You also must believe in your ability. I think you do. So try the most outrageous things you can – shock yourself. You have at your power the ability to do anything.

I would like to see your work and will have to be content to wait until Aug or Sept. I have seen photos of some of Tom’s new things at Lucy’s. They are impressive – especially the ones with the more rigorous form: the simpler ones. I guess he’ll send some more later on. Let me know how the shows are going and that kind of stuff.

My work has changed since you left and it is much better. I will be having a show May 4 -9 at the Daniels Gallery 17 E 64yh St (where Emmerich was), I wish you could be there. Much love to you both.

Sol

What better inspiration to kick off the New Year?!?

Next: Betty Goodwin

Made It! The Curtain Went Up for Hungerford Unwrapped

2010-12-08T08:42:00.001-08:00

Hungerford Unwrapped was a success – hundreds of people visited the many open studios in our building-wide open studio event.

Here are images of my studio AFTER the event (alas, my camera disappeared somewhere into the mountainous piles that I hid behind closed doors).

Yes the piece above got SOLD – Relic 3, 24” x 48”, 2010.

The view as you walked in the doorway.

The “gallery space” on the right. I was delighted how well the piece in the middle turned out (it’s 48” x 48” and very stunning with gold leaf behind the lacy white). In the corner is one of my new hanging stands. Several people who attended said the charcoal walls drew them right in the door.

Along the design wall, a framed Relic piece hangs, along with two Pages pieces that are suspended from the ceiling on acrylic rods. These hanging pieces will all be displayed on steel hangers soon.

The second new steel stand displays a Pages piece in front of the east windows. I decided not to crowd the studio so each work could be appreciated. Many visitors described the works as having an Asian feel.

Happily, no one could see what lurked behind the closed door to my utility and storage area!

The piles of relocated “stuff” were way higher than this shot reveals. This week I’m making steady progress in reorganizing, as the comparison shots above and below make very clear!

Please don’t tell my husband but I’m envisioning how much nicer this space would look painted a different color than white!

The new storage area isn’t the least bit pretty but it holds a lot – and there’s room to move around in there as well. I still have more more organizing and rearranging to do but every day the studio feels more open, spacious and inviting.

My Life as the Star in an Old-Timey Cliff Hanger

2010-11-27T07:11:00.001-08:00

Countdown –six days until our Hungerford Urban Artisans building-wide open house next Friday. Since I’m the heroine in this cliff-hanger drama, I am trusting the work crew will show up Monday and fly through completing my storage space construction and replacing my two door entry with one so I can restore order, hang work and open my doors by next weekend.

Like the plucky undaunted heroine that I am, I feel very relaxed and confident in the midst of my exploded space. Whatever may happen, I’ll figure out a way to make it all work.

A large source of this positivity springs from my still managing to create through the rubble. Right now I’m revisiting old work that didn’t quite succeed and making improvements – and enjoying the results.

This is one of my first painted silk pieces from 2004. The colors ended up dull, so I am adding some clear, saturated hints of color and highlights with dry brushing; still working on this but it’s close to done.

Another very old textural stitching study that went awry is now looking quite rich and lovely with the addition of brushed paints and paint sticks. I’ll be mounting this on a stretched canvas frame.

Send out positive thoughts that I’ll be able to move everything into my wonderful new storage area by Wednesday and open my doors to throngs of art appreciators by Friday evening.

Open Studios Invitation

2010-11-18T05:36:00.001-08:00

Still getting ready for…

Over 30 artisans in our building will open their studios for this First Friday event in Rochester, NY. I plan to have works in process on my print table on Saturday and demonstrate the improvisational screen print techniques that I use in my own work.

When: Friday, Dec 3, 5-9PM, Saturday, Dec 4, 12-4 PM

Where:1115 East Main Street (near Goodman), Rochester, NY

I’ll also invite people to leave samples of their handwriting. I’m working on an idea for people to write down phrases or single words and mount them on my design wall wherever they choose. They’ll be part of composing it.

Meanwhile, I decided after 9 years, it was time to repaint my studio walls. My husband volunteered to help and I picked this deep charcoal color for accent walls.

We’ve painted two charcoal and the rest white. The white post above also just got painted charcoal to tie in the two walls.

But, do I pull out all the stops and paint the wall on the right charcoal as well -- or will that make the space feel dark and closed in? It already is mighty gray in the Northeast!

Meanwhile, it’s time to plan what works to hang in the space and where – and just how much of the storage stuff along the left hand wall to leave and how much to store in the wet room area through that open door on the right.

I’m arranging for a storage area right next to my studio through the wet room. That should REALLY take away a lot of the cluttered feeling in the space. I can’t wait!

Hello, Charcoal Wall

2010-11-07T14:45:00.001-08:00

In what is a bold-for-me choice, I am following an impulse to paint one or two walls in my studio this deep charcoal. If I hate it once it’s done, I can repaint it. No doubt without my husband’s help the second time around, however.

I’ve debated a host of color options but I keep coming back to the idea of a smoky dark wall – or maybe two -- against ivory colored walls.

I’ve tested golds and ochres and even some greens – but no go. The golds were too overpowering, the greens seemed nice but the charcoal kept calling me back. And you KNOW what we all say about listening to that little voice inside. I hung this small piece up to gauge how my work would look against bright versus dark backdrops. The dark definitely makes it pop.

Aside from all these intense color contemplations, I finished my latest Pages piece. Professional photography would give this a whole lot better definition, but this Coolpix snapshot at least gives you the basic idea of what “Clean Slate, New Chapter” looks like. It’s 20” x 20” and mounted on window screening which has been stretched and stapled to a canvas wrapped stretcher frame. I hope people will understand the idea and take the time to appreciate it because it is so subtle. This will hang at the Rochester Contemporary member exhibition until the beginning of January.

I’m working on a grouping of these where the pages will begin to fill with marks and the meaning begins to reveal through the writing.

I haven’t the foggiest idea of whether this is going to work but I’m having fun envisioning these evolving!

Revisiting Goldilocks

2010-10-30T10:40:00.001-07:00

This experimental sample is rice paper and light modeling paste applied to stretched canvas and painted with diluted acrylic washes. Still in progress…

It occurs to me that Goldilocks and I have a lot in common. Her testing of chairs, porridge and beds and exclaiming, “This one is too hot, too big, too hard, this one is too cold, too small, too soft -- and THIS one is JUST RIGHT”, are pretty well how I grow as an artist.

How DO we find our own “just right” ?

There are creative people who produce lines of products and sell their work for a living. They have Etsy stores and exhibit in arts and crafts fairs and hold studio sales.

There are other artists who seek out galleries to represent them and sell their work.

There are artists who spend years fleshing out a single work and others who can produce a competent, saleable piece in a few hours.

Some artists disdain the whole idea of sales and make work that is ephemeral. It can’t be bought or sold because it will eventually cease to exist.

Since there are multiple types of art and artists, it follows that no one set of standards for success suits us all. We have to try a variety of ideas on and just like Goldilocks, reject some and embrace others and get the heck out of the cottage when the bears arrive back home. What is right is only about what is right for each one of us.

More work on this sample to explore what makes surfaces look aged. Still working on this one as well!…

What’s “just right” for me at present is grazing space; the absolutely delicious act of chewing on ideas just for the pleasure of it.

Mechanical/Expressive

2010-10-23T06:04:00.001-07:00

Another sample week, energy brimming, ideas flowing, senses finely tuned and humming.

A week of sampling leads to discoveries – both to express and resolve ideas and anchor them in physical form AND to see aspects of our creative selves revealed in them.

Are we what we create? No, but we do infuse what we make with our energy and perspectives. The act of taking a thought and giving it form captures where we are at a specific time in relation to our ability to express pure ideas. Our works become snapshots, images of a moment in time. Our time.

Expressive language marks on painted paper. The experimental watermedia techniques I love on textiles work a bit differently on paper and canvas, but I am enjoying the experimentation.

So what did my studio time reveal to me this week? That I have two distinct and strong sides expressing themselves currently. One is gestural and expressive, the other more mechanical and structured. Do you have similar pulls from one type of work to another?

I am giving both these polar opposites time and permission to go for it. I’m also (gasp) working on paper and canvas with acrylics. This gives my expressive, gestural mark-making side new options.

You’ll see this piece evolve as I continue to learn from painting directly on canvas. The right and left edges are working for me but not the center portion.

Note how the same piece looks like a landscape with this horizontal orientation. The size of this is 12” x 12 and I hope to resolve and complete this. It would be my first actual “painting” on canvas.

My “pages” pieces have also been calling me and I’m also working on a new construction with the working title, “Clean Slate, New Chapter.” In this piece the shapes are geometric rather than fluid, the process more mechanical than about direct mark-making. The surface is also more three- dimensional, so casting light on it from different directions will create the shadows that I envision as part of the work. You’ll see the finished piece (I hope) soon.

That’s the update this Full Moon Morning about where my studio time has taken me this week. Do you suppose the moon was created to remind us about the ebb and flow of life, the rhythms and cycles of quiet and activity? I’d like to think of it as my own rather large Timex! Thank you, full moon, for cranking up the heat on my creative burners and fueling a new flow of ideas and variations.

Where is your artistic work leading you?

2010-10-17T07:38:00.001-07:00

When you live in the Northeast US, there’s a definite shift as autumn arrives and the explosive reproductive energies of summer cease. The cooling temperatures signal a drawing down of life energies into root systems. Green grasses begin to bleach, dry out and turn skeletal; pods form, bursting with seeds for the next season’s growth.

As the days grow shorter and colder, Nikki and I have been sharing about ourselves via e-mail. She combines textiles and organic porcelain sculptural works to create pieces that have a wonderful presence.

She wrote that my blog shares a lot about my physical processes, and she greatly enjoys reading about those, but she wonders about my inner self. What is it you want from your art, she asks -- where would you like to see your work going?

Such powerful focus questions. And they deserve to be considered by each artist.

Yesterday, I wrote her back a long response. Now that I’ve had a day to think more, I want to try again.

What is it I want from my art? I want to infuse each work with palpable energy, joy and confidence (that is a tall order!). Being a maker is a compelling process and adventure. Being true to my vision provides a deep connection to a powerful energy inside me and creates a yearning to keep returning to it.

Being a maker also provides the challenge of alchemizing an idea into form. Choosing to birth an idea is an amazing, unpredictable process. Who wouldn’t want to navigate those hairpin turns again and again when we KNOW the destination is so worth it.

Where would I like to see my work going? Nikki says her work is more internally driven and feels complete without an audience, even though she is pleased when others respond to it positively.

In contrast, I feel that my creative work is a form of communication, an invitation to connect. It feels more complete when I put it out into the world, when it stimulates questions or interest in the ideas and creative process that so engage and inspire me. I want to work on ideas that will make my work more interactive, more of a conversation with the viewer.

Do I desire visibility and exposure? Absolutely. My goals are lofty and I believe that whatever we desire we can create if we let go and just allow ourselves to believe it can (releasing and allowing is an ongoing learning process!). I desire my work to be exhibited in museums, art galleries and curated invitationals. I’d like it to be reviewed positively by art critics and editors and fellow artists. I’d like it to stimulate fascinating collaborations and be included in private and public collections.

Might we just say that I want it ALL, bejeweled and sparkling in the sunlight, even though I know that if I attained every single item on that list it would just cause me to set new, even loftier goals?

Will I be just as happy if I never achieve any of them? Definitely. The joy in my doing and the resulting growth and experience are expansive, exciting and rewarding in themselves. But why not dare to be bold, think big and believe in our worth and uniqueness and trust that the whole universe will rally to support and attract and open every door for us effortlessly? If it happens for others, it surely can happen for us.

So now you have seen a glimpse of my inner workings, my dreams and hopes and desires. I am ever a work in progress and delighted with all that suggests. Ever growing, ever evolving, ever exploring my inner and outer worlds.

What of yours, then, of your own dreams and desires for yourself as an artist? I hope they are grand and glorious and delight you to contemplate.

Bouncing Back

2010-10-10T05:18:00.001-07:00

Not feeling well and resting a lot can lead to introspection. While I’ve been anchored to the couch, there have been disappointments – rejection from Quilt National – and validations – I’ve been juried into the Arena Art Group.

So there has been a fair share of sorting and self-inventorying – what is really important to me as an artist? -- while I've been waiting for my energy – and my voice -- to return.

But they’re both back! Here comes the sun…both literally and figuratively; we’re having gorgeous golden fall weather again after days upon days of grey skies and rain.

Saturday I also returned to my studio and spent an energetic and productive day clearing remnants of previous projects away and setting up to start new ones. This is one of my best tricks to engage my creativity again, cleaning and setting up my studio so it’s fresh and inviting. The cheese in the mouse trap.

While I’m also in the middle of a total website redesign, launching a new regional juried exhibition and other projects – yes, real life -- the call inside is to metaphorically climb into a sandbox with my inner preschooler and play.

What will that mean? Where will it take me? My creative spirit is sensing the call of adventure – and loving it.

The Not Knowing is Magical; after all, what kind of adventure would it be if the heroine set out already knowing the destination?

Benched!

2010-10-03T08:44:00.001-07:00

There’s nothing like sitting out “the game” on the bench for a bit for some worthwhile contemplations from the sidelines.

Sometimes we get so focused on outcomes – the winning or losing – that we need a change of perspective. Clearly my body decided the one week vacation in Aruba wasn’t enough rest.

I’ve been laying low for a full week now hacking and blowing from a head and chest infection. Friday my voice disappeared, so I have spent the weekend in silence, whispering when necessary.

Not to be deterred from important priorities, as part of my “survival kit”, I am carrying a handwritten note with my latte order written on it so I can still get my Starbucks fix.

However (are there choirs suddenly singing hallelujahs??), today I am Feeling Better. Still can’t talk, however the familiar morning rush of ideas reappeared this morning and I actually feel like creating. I could dance in appreciation!

This energizing African folk dance troupe on YouTube will hopefully inspire you to join me. Can you feel the joy and creativity? I definitely can!

It’s time to get back in the game!

A is for Adventure

2010-09-28T12:19:00.001-07:00

…and Aruba is where we found some this past week, the trip my husband’s much-deserved reward for a complete recovery after three months of illness and tests, then two surgeries and a post-surgical infection, (yes, poor guy, but he has a loving, supportive wife that saw him through.)

Aruba greeted us with white sands, blue skies and the rhythmic sounds of waves hitting the shore.

We stayed at the Bucuti Beach Resort, a Dutch-owned hotel in the low-rise district on Eagle Beach.

However, Aruba also greeted us with showers and incredible thunder storms that brought the most rain the island has had in one week in the past 60 years.

So the weather would be sunny, then cloud up -- and then…

thunder and lightning and pounding rains!! Of course, Aruba is a semi-arid island with an average rainfall of about 15”, so they don’t have much in the way of a public drainage system.

Which meant that basically everything flooded, from houses to roads. It felt very adventurous to try and drive around.

Back at the hotel, we’d enjoy the sun one hour, run for cover the next as storms assailed us -- and then a few hours later, be back on the beach stretched out in beach chairs again with everyone else.

This was our romantic little bungalow on the beach, where I could snuggle up on the veranda and watch the storms, then run back out to swim in the ocean when the skies cleared.

I spent so much time in the ocean that I can still close my eyes, feel myself floating in the water and hear the rhythm of the waves on the sand. Ahhhhhh…

Fiber Lovers Day at SU

2010-09-16T08:36:00.001-07:00

My long-time desire to forge meaningful connections among fiber artists led me to take on the job of NYS rep for the Surface Design Association two years ago.

I’ve been working on program ideas that could increase interest in SDA membership. On Saturday, September 11, SDA New York successfully launched a pilot program, “SDA at SU Fiber Lovers Day” at Syracuse University that was open to all who were interested in attending.

Partnering with the wonderful Eileen Gosson on the Surface Pattern Design faculty, we planned a day packed with tours, exhibits and presentations.

Mary Giehl, faculty, chats with the group about the fiber program in the SU surface design classroom.

Sarah Saulson, faculty, introduces the SU weaving facilities.

Illuminated weaving by SU undergrad Elin Sandberg.

MFA student Holland Webster gave a brief talk about this installation, which she and a fellow grad student completed over the summer, based on a study of pods and pod shapes, for the 150 foot hallway of the Shaffer Building.

Installation detail. The student work was inspiring.

After a break for lunch, presentations in the afternoon included grad students Jooyoung Ha, Caitlin Foley and Holland Webster and SU Fiber and Surface pattern Design faculty Sarah Saulson, Anne Cofer, Mary Giehl and Eileen Gosson. Jan Navales, shown here, a local artist, also spoke about making a living in fiber art.

We closed the day with attendees introducing their work, then enjoyed the reception and opening for “”Pliable Planes: Cloth and Beyond” at the Warehouse Gallery.

It was an exceptional day. Wish you could have joined us!

Exciting Week

2010-09-09T09:36:00.001-07:00

You’ll find a well-written, thoughtful article about my Pages pieces at The Textile Blog. I can’t thank John enough for selecting me and doing such an excellent job at communicating the ideas that generate these works.

The second reason this week was exciting is that I accomplished a long time goal. I entered Quilt National with three cohesive works. I finished the third one on Tuesday morning, had them photographed on Tuesday afternoon and sent my submission out via UPS on Wednesday for delivery by the Friday September 10 (yes that is tomorrow) deadline. So much for taking it easy.

Never mind that most of my work is no longer finished as quilts. I’ve been focusing on textile constructions this entire year, but then Relic 4 appeared. I’ve posted another detail of this work before but here’s a reminder image. I decided to finish it as a wall hanging and enter it.

Relic 4, detail. This piece is silk backed with canvas and is 48” high and 43” wide.

So then I needed two more works to provide a stronger entry. Which meant that although I vowed to take the rest of the summer off and just play after my solo and my husband’s surgeries, I ended up working even harder to meet this deadline. It turns out that working at making art IS my play.

Relic 5 detail. The work is 54” high and 64” wide. It’s a rocky surface peppered with layered graffiti, weathered and faded in places. It’s dyed, painted and printed silk habotai backed with cotton canvas.

QN’s policy is that works submitted or accepted not be displayed anywhere prior to the Quilt National opening. They will disqualify work that has been exhibited anywhere other than on the artist’s website.

Relic 6, detail. Three stitched, silk broadcloth panels hang side by side; together they are 31” wide and 57” long.

A second detail. This piece is absolutely lovely and I know it will sell quickly. Some of the screened texts on it are from writing samples that readers of this blog have sent to me. Thank you – there will be more of these.

So I’m posting details rather than the full pieces until the jurors make their choices. Notification will be in early October.

Sunday Art Buffet -- Tasty

2010-09-01T04:19:00.001-07:00

To top off a marvelous weekend with cousins at the 80th birthday party for my Aunt Helen in Springfield, Massachusetts, we veered off the main highway and drove up Route 7 on our way home to check out Mass MOCA.

Fortune smiled on my art loving self, because that route also led by The Clark Museum in Williamstown, so we drove in to check out the “Picasso Looks at Degas” exhibit, where works by the two artists were displayed side by side and emphasized the extent to which Picasso studied, responded to and was influenced by the elder artist’s work.

Entrance to The Clark. We arrived at 10 AM when the doors opened and by the time we left an hour later, the parking lots all around the building were completely full.

From there we drove on to North Adams and Mass MOCA, an amazing complex of factory buildings that opened in 1999. The buildings were restored and refurbished to house large scale installation works by contemporary artists.

Currently on exhibit there is a retrospective of Sol Lewitt’s work and “Material World”, an invitational in which seven artists were invited to transform the second and third floor galleries with installation pieces. All the artists selected are known for their use of modest, everyday materials. Each has produced a massively scaled work that responds to and interacts with the industrial environment of the space.

White Stag, 2009-2010. Paper, wood by artists Wade Kavanaugh and Stephen B. Nguyen. Twisted, crumpled and draped rolls of paper created this old growth forest, an enormous installation that spanned two floors.

Big Boss, 2009-2010. Rope, paint, by Orly Genger. The exhibit brochure reveals that the artist knotted (in an adapted crochet stitch) and painted over 100 miles of rope. Responding to the male-dominated world of sculpture, Genger’s work pumps up this traditionally female-identified craft process to the level of Olympic physical prowess. It is forceful and --surprisingly -- simple and familiar at the same time.

It becomes evident in viewing all the works that just how intensely physical the act of making them must have been.

The Sol Lewitt retrospective, which I expected to just appreciate as a viewer, turned out to be inspiring and informative to me as an artist, both in the sheer volume of the artist’s productivity and diversity of explorations and the philosophy and thought that led to his separation between artistic ideas and their execution.

LeWitt numbered his “wall drawings” rather than naming them. He engineered specific directions for each work’s creation, which are executed by artists and students at specific sites. The process is labor intensive and exacting and ephemeral. Often the walls are painted over and the paintings disappear when an exhibition closes. Mass MOCA is displaying this retrospective installation of 105 of the artist’s work for 25 years.

My personal favorites are the graphite pieces that LeWitt created both in his earliest works and then returned to at the end of his life. The final works appear luminous; they are comprised of carefully measured bands and densities of hand-scribbled lines using just graphite pencil lead.

The exhibit brochure copy describes these works as “transcendent.” I can’t help but agree.

Vacation Week

2010-08-21T13:40:00.001-07:00

My final studio day before heading off to our cottage was a productive one. My new piece is almost ready for the language imagery that will complete it – before I left for vacation, my thoughts took a sudden, playful fork.

A quick attempt to get some ideas put down on cloth. In previous Relic pieces, I marked the surfaces with ancient inscriptions. Then I began to realize that “ancient” is a relative term – today many people consider the 1950’s ancient. My mind is toying with creating a surface that reflects one young man’s desire for the world to remember him.

BUT FIRST – Off to the Lake!

Our small slice of summer perfection – a quiet week at our cottage in Central New York on Panther Lake, a lake so small it looks like a pinpoint on the map!

Perfect summer weather made our time at the cottage a joy. In between kayaking and paddle boating and swimming, I kept the creative fires stoked by reading contemporary drawing books and doing some experimental sketching.

I alternated between making lines and shapes with various pens and graphite and charcoal pencils…

…and even had time to explore the area for interesting hand-lettered signage.

A great vacation!

Essential Design Tools

2010-08-14T06:23:00.001-07:00

How do you work through your design ideas as you are composing a work? The best resources I have for stepping back and looking at my work objectively are my Coolpix digital camera and photo software.

In the years before I used this dynamic duo:

I took Polaroid pictures and hung them on my design wall.
I turned away from the wall and held up a pocket mirror and looked at the work in it backwards.
I removed my glasses and squinted.
I looked at it in the dark so just the value contrasts stood out.
I turned it a quarter turn and viewed it from each orientation to see what it revealed about my composition.
I carried my piece from room to room, laid it over a couch or chair and then let my eye catch a glimpse of it each time I passed through.

Now, I shoot images of the work on my design wall and can immediately load and view them on my computer to evaluate where I am.

I’ve spent this week working on the fifth Relics piece. Here’s some details of its evolution to date:

One layer of monoprinted dye on the silk – this is a detail – the full piece is 65” long x 55” high. At first a vertical orientation, I changed it to horizontal.

First layers of added dye painting. It definitely does not look aged yet.

Beginning to define the lines and crevasses.

Adding more color.

Deepening and darkening areas. My intention with each layer is to age the surface and create more visual depth and definition. I’ve shifted now from dyes to paints. This is a detail of where I left this new piece yesterday.

I am still adding line work and defining the crevasses. Once that’s done, I will be ready to add the language elements to the surface that suggest ancient inscriptions -- or possibly play on the “ancient writing” theme with some 20th century graffiti.

Whether this piece ends up on the “sample” pile to be made into smaller works or actually proves to be successful on a large scale, it is teaching me a lot.

Process Notes: Painted Archaeologies

2010-08-05T06:42:00.001-07:00

One of two new pieces on my print table, still wet from creating an underpainting on the monoprinted surface.

A newly completed work is a rich resource of “coulda shoulda wouldas” – not in a critical sense, more in an “imagine if…” context. A great jumping off place for a new work is to respond to the one that’s just been completed. If you did it again, what would you do differently? What would make it richer, more compelling, more articulate?

Having just put the finishing touches on the fourth piece in my Relics series, I am working through my responses to this one – both the likes and dislikes – on two new pieces.

In these, I hope to explore variations on color, composition and marks that can best convey the feel of ancient writings scrawled or carved on aged, worn, eroded surfaces .

Here’s a snippet of Relic 4. I can’t show the whole image because I’m considering entering it in an international juried exhibition that prohibits any images of accepted works being reproduced or exhibited prior to the show opening.

The Subject is Line

2010-07-30T19:07:00.001-07:00

Whilst still struggling with EXACTO knife cutting and rubber cement gluing, I am starting to warm to cutting and composing with paper.

Here’s my response to this week’s Design Course line assignment, which is to vary line weight and size, overlap some lines, create definition and an illusion of space and try to create a sense of depth. If not altogether a smashing success, at least my piece has variety and visual interest.

I’m quite looking forward to our group crit next Thursday evening (sadly, our final class) and seeing more clearly how I could improve the line work in this piece. I’ll share that feedback with you if you are interested – or you can share your own reactions to this exercise now and see how your reactions compare to the instructor’s and other class members’.

As an accompaniment to doing these line exercises, I’ve also been reading Steve Aimone’s latest book, Expressive Drawing: A Practical Guide to Freeing the Artist Within.

The spontaneous and playful part of me loves the exercises, images, references and quotes in this book. I look forward to setting aside the EXACTO knife a bit for a paint brush and a large piece of paper and painting big, spontaneous, expressive marks.

What Next?

2010-07-23T06:28:00.001-07:00

A fertile, production period of time has drawn to a close and my creative life feels almost eerily calm and quiet. No more white- water-rapids-ride of productivity. Now there’s more like a steady current beneath my vessel. I feel alert, attentive, all my senses keenly tuned – ready and waiting for “what comes next.”

During this hiatus, I am looking closely at the work that I’ve produced this past six months and feeling for the strongest pulse. Where the most excitement is, that’s the direction to pursue next.

While this self-inventory is in process, I’m taking some time in my studio to do some samples and make some new tools.

Sample detail, monoprint with wax resist and painting.

I also am exploring the cola pen, made by cutting and folding a piece of aluminum cut from a cola can and taping it to a stick.

Several examples of “cola pens” I’ve made.

Cola pen writing sample on Bristol paper with DyNaFlo paint.

To stir up the inspiration soup, I’m also participating in a four-week pilot design class from Rebecca Howdeshell that she will soon be offering online. Here is also a link to Rebecca Howdeshell Studio Art, which explains her artist concept and displays some of her beautiful art work.

In conjunction with the class, my attention has been drawn even more to line. All good, all strengthening my observation.

Notice the lines of these tree branches reflecting on shallow water with the rock shapes beneath. One of my favorite images from our recent trip to the Adirondacks.

I am greatly enjoying the class. Rebecca is an excellent teacher -- she will soon be publicly offering online design classes as well as a portfolio review service. Check back on her blog or mine for an announcement soon.

Entwining Alphabets at Adirondack Center for the Arts

2010-07-17T06:30:00.001-07:00

Adirondack Lakes Center for the Arts in Blue Mountain Lake – a small but vibrant facility.

Gallery director Cornelia Tobey did an excellent job of installing my work in the gallery space.

Having three large windows dividing the wall space inspired innovative hanging of my Pages pieces.

The split colors of the gallery walls had been of great concern to me – but serendipitously created a visual illusion that I can use intentionally in future works. Notice in the angled corner piece that the white letterforms leap forward at the top where the wall is dark; once the wall behind the work shifts to pure white, the gray letterforms pop and the white ones recede – even though the piece is identical from top to bottom.

Fellow artists Debbie Bein and Judith Plotner (along with her husband Stan) attended my reception. It was wonderful to meet them both in person.

We turned the opening into a getaway weekend and stayed at The Hedges for three nights. This Adirondack family great camp dates back to 188o and was restful and relaxing.

Once I returned home, I immediately started working on two applications for future solo exhibitions. This experience intensified my desire to show my work collectively because solos heighten the creative process and link it to a specific space and time.

A solo opportunity is not just about the location or scale or sophistication of the exhibition space. Solos are catalysts for growth, experimentation and new work.

My work leaped forward this past six months in response to this opportunity, in part because in my heart I treated it just as if it were an invitation to participate in the Whitney Biennial or the Guggenheim.

That same attitude will propel me forward as an artist and I can hardly wait to discover where my next solo exhibition will be!

New Small Work: “AKA Letters at the Edge”

2010-07-07T13:26:00.001-07:00

I finished this small work last week, too late to include in my current exhibition. Contrasting the positive letterform shapes with negative space ones (that strip along the right is cut from portions of the same alphabet as the positive letter form shapes) has a lot of potential and I’ll be working with this idea again in the future.

The light marks on the darker horizontal band are hand stitched. Every step of making this piece felt playful and relaxed.

AKA Letters at the Edge, 2010, 20” x 20”, silk, applied silks, synthetic fabric, monoprinted and screen printed, painted and stitched, mounted on stretched canvas. $350.

Resurfacing At Last

2010-06-23T05:08:00.001-07:00

I am returning to the blog world after a hiatus and plan to resume my posts again . Hopefully you’ve missed my creative musings and explorations.

The Catalyst for my Immersion – “Entwining Alphabets”, a new solo at Adirondack Lakes Center for the Arts.

The opening reception will be July 10, 6-8 PM. If you live in the area, I hope you will attend.

The New Work

I’ve been wanting to return to work on the Pages series. The idea behind them has been to create a series in which the letterforms gradually free themselves from pages and get to dance (or so I see in my imagination!).

Here are some of the new works I’ve completed. Others are still in progress.

Pages 6 diptych, 33” x 90”. Threadwork construction with dyed and printed silk letterforms.

I also completed a second set of these that are almost identical to this one but shorter.

Pages 8, 31” x 48”, distressed and manipulated synthetic fabric; dyed, painted and applied silk letterforms.

Pages 9, 31” x 48”, distress and manipulated synthetic fabric; dyed, painted and applied letterforms.

Pages 10, 44” x 65”, dyed, painted, screen printed silks, constructed with thread.

The Process

The creative intensity of this past six months became most apparent to me once I shipped off the boxes of new and existing work for my exhibition. I’ve felt like a quivering bow trying to hold steady as it sites its target and waits to release its arrow.

This exhibition has been a wonderful catalyst to immerse in my artistic process. I laughingly have referred to it as “My Guggenheim” and have treated the opportunity as though it were an invitation to exhibit in the finest contemporary art museum.

The immersion to actualize some of the ideas inside me has been an amazing gift. The intense creative energy, depth of ideas, exploration and growth have been heartfelt, personal and hard to explain in words (imagine that!).

Simultaneously, as I’ve focused on making new work and preparing for the exhibition this past six months, we’ve also dealt with my husband becoming ill and finally having a major surgery in mid-May. He is fine and recovering well – the two experiences in tandem have heightened my appreciation for my wonderful life and opportunities to grow and express as an artist and maker.

Handwriting: Part 2

2010-05-17T09:19:00.001-07:00

Many people who came to the Spring Open Studios in my building last weekend provided writing samples for my handwriting project. I enjoyed engaging them in this budding art project.

Ghosts of old English classes must haunt us all. Almost every person resisted at first because they thought their handwriting wasn’t “good enough”. Then they were sure they couldn’t think of anything to write.

Write about anything, I encouraged them. What I’m collecting is each person’s unique language marks.

Here’s a sample of one person’s handwriting with wide spacing between the lines and some lovely flourishes to the script.

Here’s another sample that seems to bubble over with energy and humor – isn’t it amazing how clearly the writer’s personalities come through just from how they make their marks?

I’ve also received wonderful writing samples in the mail – thank you to all who have already responded to my request. Since this is an ongoing, long-term project, there’s no deadline. Please send me a writing sample any time. Send more than one, if you’d like. The more wide open you are to letting your thoughts go in any direction, the more easily your writing will flow.

Starting with the handwriting samples that I have already gathered, I am creating silkscreens with portions or full segments of the authors’ texts and printing them onto fabrics and papers. These will be incorporated into finished works; my desire is for people who view them to feel a powerful sense of the uniqueness of each individual.

Physically "connecting" marks created by human hands from all over the globe feels like an alchemical process, one that can help communicate our connectedness. It delights and amazes me that our handwriting is so expressive and individual.

Handwritten: The Writing Project

2010-04-28T03:56:00.001-07:00

I’d like to invite you to collaborate with me in a handwriting project.

As you know by now, I collect, create and use handwritten ephemera from a variety of sources in my work.

Each person’s handwriting is unique- and incorporating them onto my layered surfaces has depths of meaning for me as an artist that are slowly beginning to reveal themselves.

If you are willing to lend a pen and a few minutes of your time to assist me, just follow these simple directions.

Preparations: Tear several sheets of copy paper in half so they look about the size of a paperback book page. Choose a favorite pen with black ink (bold or fine line, your choice). Write in whatever is your native language.

Warm up a bit by writing on a piece of scrap paper. As you write, leave a margin around the outsides of the page. Please just write on one side.

Let go of any and all worries or concerns about content, grammar, spelling or anything but letting your hand move and the ideas flow. Write with feeling and sincerity. Ignore any mistakes, just keep writing. Try to fill the page.

Want to keep writing? Grab a new piece of paper and keep going.

Ready to try this? Start with the phrase,

“ Wouldn’t it be wonderful if….” and write for two minutes without stopping. Write anything and everything that pops into your head. It isn’t important where that first phrase leads you or what you write about as long as your hand keeps moving.

Then please mail the originals in a handwritten envelope to 2480 Cooley Road, Canandaigua, NY 14424.

Please share this invitation with everyone you know – I’d love to be flooded with handwritten mail from all over the globe.

First at the Finish Line

2010-04-23T09:57:00.001-07:00

I finally decided how to resolve and complete this work that will be part of my “Entwining Alphabets” exhibition in the Adirondacks this summer. The photograph below is by Tim Fuss at Pixelwave in Rochester. This is the first time I’ve worked with him; he did a fantastic job and captured the details with crystal clear resolution.

Letter Rhythms 2, 2010, 42” x 48”

My husband and I spent this past weekend attending the opening of Fiberart International 2010 in Pittsburgh. There are two venues for the work juried into this exhibition. My piece is part of the works on display at Society for Contemporary Craft; the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts is displaying another portion.

Here’s me talking about my work at the opening during the Saturday program. The day started with a talk by juror Rebecca Stevens, then offered participants and artists the opportunity to walk through both venues and converse with many of the participating artists attending. I had a great time talking with people about the ideas behind my work.

Now that I’m home, the next priority is my upcoming exhibition in the Adirondacks this summer. I worked through the design process for the postcard and this is what it will look like:

Now, back to work!

The Promised Land Chronicles, Part II

2010-03-23T10:17:00.001-07:00

Graffiti from a wall in Winston-Salem, NC

After ruling out Wyoming and Montana for a possible retirement area after last summer’s cross-country adventure, Bob and I headed south this past week for a tour of Virginia and North Carolina. We checked out western Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountain cities, Roanoke and Lynchburg, then drove into North Carolina to visit Winston-Salem, Chapel Hill, Raleigh and Wilmington. We had planned to visit Durham but ran out of time.

My favorite spot was Winston-Salem, where there’s an expanding downtown area that offers interesting shops and galleries. The city seems to have an active downtown association and a growing number of special events, like an international film festival, wine festival and a farmer’s market. With lots of old industrial buildings under renovation to become high-end residential and artist loft spaces, I can see this could be an enjoyable area to keep on our short list of possibilities.

Here is the year round gallery space on North Trade Street for Piedmont Craftsmen. Once a year they hold a huge member art sale in the town’s convention center.

It is getting harder and harder to find these small restaurant gems, but we seek them out diligently wherever we go. We had a lovely lunch here at 6th and Wine in downtown Winston-Salem and afterwards I stopped in at Studio 2.

Almost every city we visited has been overrun by unattractive strip malls, chains and big box stores. The face of America may offer consumer convenience, but charm and individuality have disappeared, so enjoying a lively, expanding downtown arts district like Winston-Salem’s is refreshing and offers hope.

I’m not sure it’s the “promised land” I dream of finding in this country, but we definitely enjoyed sunshine, mild weather and beautiful scenery all along the way.

Uh-Oh/Ah-Hah/Mmm-mmmm Good

2010-03-09T09:44:00.001-08:00

The Mmmmm-mmmmm goods FIRST. This short video is slightly over 20 minutes long. If you’re rushed and multi-tasking, do return at a quieter time; there’s a lot of food for thought in it for us creatives. Consider Elizabeth Gilbert’s monumental success as a writer as if it were your own and then listen to her speak. It is insightful and entertaining.

Another mmm-mmmmm good moment, I have returned to my sketchbook practice this past week and am starting my days with a page or two of images, ideas and sketches. The larger book is mainly references from other artists’ works and my responses to them; the smaller one is my studio/idea/application journal. I am jumpin’ up and down happy to be able to quiet down inside enough to work in them again. Does this signal a quieter, calmer creative time ahead?

For the past few months I’ve scribbled and scrawled furiously in one of my old black and white composition notebooks, the ones I journaled in for years. They capture the ideas but aesthetically they’re lacking!

The Uh-Oh. On the home front, the stitching on the second new Pages construction is complete (nothing to see yet, it’s still in its water soluble cocoon and will stay there for a while) and I’m working on two new ones. But the graphite pencil I used to mark the water soluble fabric has left the threads gray (it washed out just fine in the sample, evidently more manipulating and handling led to smudging on the larger piece) and will require stain remover to wash out. So brainstorming began again to find products that will make a mark on the water soluble and NOT stain the threads that I stitch over the surface.

The Ah-Hahs. Various fabric marking pencils have foiled my attempts to get them to mark the surface, but then – an ah-hah! – I flipped the water soluble fabric over from the smooth side to the toothy one and voila, THAT surface takes the pencil marks just fine (this is the moment where I said “Duh how come you didn’t try this sooner” out loud but honestly isn’t it always the simplest solutions that are the most elusive?!?!)

So big thumbs up to EZ washout marking pencils (they do wash out of the thread, I did another small sample yesterday just to make SURE) for saving the day. PLUS another option emerged from my storage area – Saral transfer paper in blue and yellow (the blue is easier to see than the yellow), although you really can’t see through it when you lay it down to mark on a surface, so the pencils go back to the top of the list.

Seeing Rightly

2010-03-03T10:46:00.001-08:00

“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye."

(The fox to the little prince)
--Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, 'The Little Prince.'

Cutting, marking and stitching continue as the second piece in the Pages triptych takes form. Using the water soluble fabric does require the use of imagination to fully visualize the results once washed away.

Dyeing varying values of new grays has also been also part of this week’s studio agenda, which you can see below next to the finished piece, as well as painting and cutting gold/ochre colored letters in varying sizes. The floor scene below is where I’m auditioning the addition of ochre/golds against grayscale values in numerous variations.

Seeing with the heart truly comes into play when exploring ideas and variations because the process is far more about feeling for the right progression rather than intellectualizing.

The gold/ochre/burnt sienna variations are the fruits of a studio afternoon spent playing with numerous painting and printing options.

These are samples from practicing hand painting each letter individually: the pieces feel more three-dimensional and I will continue to practice direct painting them to get smoother value transitions.

It has been a full and interesting week, with a snowstorm AND a full moon.

Beautiful view from my front door on Saturday morning – what a paradise – but also, what an inducement to snuggle in and keep working.

Best of all, thank you to this rising full moon – bella luna - on Sunday evening for firing up my creative burners and providing mega-energy to keep going.

Refreshing Your Creative Practice, Week 5

2010-02-23T12:18:00.001-08:00

Labor Pains

This is the final week of the online course. There will be one more phone conference but the group members seem to all feel the call to choice-making and action. Leslie raised the question this week for us all to consider: What do you need to reach your goal?

My goals sounded clear enough; launch new work for an exhibition in June. Implicit in that outer goal are more challenging ones, however; believing in my inner guidance to direct me as I create and in my artistic abilities to produce good work. So what I need to reach my goal is confidence in my artistic abilities.

Since I set up that action plan, I’ve been working steadily on the first new piece. Sometimes it has been fatiguing. Repetitive work takes perseverance. That’s the physical part of the process.

However, it has been the emotional end of birthing this first new piece that has presented the greater challenge. My original design on the sample didn't work on the larger piece. At the very final stages of completing it, I tried a number of options and ideas and all I did for two days was rule each one out. That’s when the doubt and anxiety started to climb.

This weekend turned into a veritable labor and delivery scenario. I was scared -- scared of failure, scared of mediocrity -- of disappointing others and myself. Making the final choices to finish the piece and trusting my choices felt like the labor of childbirth --but unfortunately the images of pink, healthy babies got thrown out the window and scenes from Rosemary’s Baby crept in.

My inner critic kept telling me I had built up the expectations too high in my and others’ minds for this firstborn piece in this series -- and this child would arrive scrawny and and red-faced and screamin' ugly.

But I persevered through the labor and birthing process, through the fatigue and fear and not knowing what the outcome would be once I washed away the water soluble materials to view the finished product. I did all the positive self-taught that Leslie has reminded us to do during this course and gently worked to soothe away the distress and anxieties. I took on the the job of being my own midwife.

Birth Announcement

I did it!! On Sunday evening, February 21 at 9:oo PM, a new work entered the world!

Here it is stretched out on the floor after washing and pressing. Although the darker letters may look black in this picture (wrong lighting), they are actually shades of light to medium gray.

I woke up yesterday morning with ideas to flank it on both sides with two pieces that can work individually or create a triptych. My thumb is out of my mouth, I don't feel emotionally needy and desperate and I'm confident in the work and the ideas that are driving it.

The lure of staying with a series like this is believing that by creating a container for exploration, one will move through the expected variations and then begin fleshing out the unexpected, the exciting.

Sketching ways to combine and install these long narrow hangings, it’s becoming apparent to me that the ideas I’m getting for these are becoming more sculptural. It’s exciting.

There are no guarantees that any of these new ideas will work and it feels a bit like I'm using my hands to feel around in the dark, but I know that even in the dark if you wait long enough to get used to it, faint outlines will appear and you can navigate.

Refreshing Creative Practice, Week 4

2010-02-16T05:05:00.001-08:00

Planning. Focus. Commitment. Action. All excellent words for the working artist, but not everyone knows HOW.

For the fourth session of Leslie Avon Miller’s Refreshing Your Creative Practice telecourse, she presented a goal setting rubric to help artists commit to action. The acronym for it is SMART.

S.M.A.R.T

Specific

Measurable

Accountable

Resonates

Thrilling

Here are the components for a plan:

Build on strengths

Cultivate excitement

Starve problems

Feed solutions

This week’s assignment? Write a series of action steps and time lines to accomplish a specific, measurable goal. Each person in the group interpreted and responded to the idea of planning in a slightly different way, one of the best things about sharing a process like this in a group.

Since I have a very specific exhibition scheduled at the Adirondack Center for the Arts in June and July of this year, my plan revolves around my commitment to create new “Pages” constructions for the exhibit.

To refresh your memory about this series, here is Pages 3.

Just choosing the name “Entwining Alphabets” for the exhibition has started a flow of ideas and imagery that are helping to clarify my work with letterforms.

So here is a condensed, edited version of the short term goals in my S.M.A.R.T. plan:

SPECIFIC GOALS AND TIME FRAMES:

Create 10-12 new constructed silk Pages pieces for Adirondack Arts Center gallery exhibit titled "Entwining Alphabets" by June 1, 2010

1. Set up and follow monthly production goals: Complete two pieces by March 1; 2-3 pieces by April 1; 3-4 pieces by May 1; 3-4 pieces by June 1st. I can do this because I have worked out many of the issues for this series in the six pieces that I've already completed in this vein and know that it takes approximately 5-6 days to construct each piece.

2. Practice positive self-talk DAILY about my work and myself. Believe in my talent and artistic ability and use affirmation, law of attraction, positive thinking to keep myself balanced and centered as I work. Affirm that I am a gifted artist, that I continuously attract the right and perfect opportunities and meaningful associations with others as I grow and expand and mature in my work and vision. I am a conduit for powerful work.

3. Continue to sample each idea/variation before beginning a full length work and commit to staying with the idea as I start creating (I have this tendency to "what if" myself over the edges of high cliffs as I'm working -- at the moment they feel like brilliant inspirations, but often create new problems. I need to get these "brainstorm" ideas down for future experimentation but also complete the current vision before leaping into the next one.)

4. Get all these pieces professionally photographed in small groups as I go.

5. Select one work or detail for postcard. Order these by April 15; have them shipped to arts center by April 30.

6 Prepare mailing list and labels for up to 200 contacts for arts center and mail to them by April 30.

7. Send out pr notices to local and regional publications about the exhibition along with a hi-res image by May 15.

8. Review and revise artist statement and portfolio and prepare to ship these with my work.

9. Pack and ship all work to arts center by June 4, 2010 with hanging instructions.

REWARDS

Because this is a very disciplined and product oriented list, I need to add rewards to indulge my playful, inventive side over the next few months. Here's how I will do this:

1. Give myself one day a week to "play" in my studio with painting, calligraphic marks and experimentation that will fuel new ideas for this series and others.

2. Make sure I continue to do my jazzercise classes to keep my body energized and to satisfy my "inner dancer." Take walks and get outside whenever possible.

3. Write and share my progress each week and applaud myself for every step forward.

4. Set up a weekly "artist date" for stimulation and a break. Saturday morning I went to a demo by a print maker at a local college and enjoyed seeing her work and process, so different from mine but definitely stimulating. This week I’m attending a Syracuse University fiber art alumni opening and exhibition.

5. Socialize! Seek out and enjoy quality time with fellow artists.

Making work for me is the most exciting and challenging activity of my life. Combining my art practice with healthy lifestyle choices and happy interactions with family and friends is a prospect that both excites me and fulfills me.

I envision this year as one in which I SOAR -- not alone and predatory like a circling hawk, but in a supportive, bonded community like geese!

Refreshing a Creative Practice, Week 3

2010-02-09T19:09:00.000-08:00

Momentum. What a lovely state of being. The ideas pour out, my notebook pages fill with notes, sketches, quotes and insights. It seems that an image or idea serendipitously arrives daily to add another log to the creative fire. While inside me this vortex of energy pulses with strong intention and direction, on the outside I am engaged in the most menial, repetitive and tedious of activities, cutting out letters that will become a new Pages piece. It is the first one I've started in over a year. Interestingly enough, I am picking up again exactly where I left off, the time consuming task of cutting all the elements that I will use in this piece.

A piece by Mark Fox that is part of the current exhibition "Topographies", at the Albright Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo.

This piece by Polly Apfelbaum is also part of the same exhibition.

For week three in our Refreshing Creative Practice course Leslie slowed down the pace during our teleconference call with a guided meditation. As we relaxed and got centered and comfortable, she suggested that we imagine ourselves projecting ahead in time 10 years and visualize meeting ourselves. Extraordinary exercise to contemplate yourself ten years in the future, consider what you will look like, where you will live and what you will be doing and feeling. Me at 70? -- a radiant and strong presence. I looked and felt vibrant, energetic and confident. A future self to inspire the current one.

Members of the class have responded to Leslie's invitation this week to share the names and works of artists who inspire them on our class blog. After recently visiting the Topographies exhibition at the Albright-Knox Gallery in Buffalo, I'm currently quite inspired by Mark Fox, Tara Donovan and Polly Apfelbaum. The works included by these artists in the exhibit were all 3-D installations that involve repetition. The interaction between the materials and the space and the dimensionality of the works have been in my thoughts since I first encountered them. It was the first time I had seen Apfelbaum's and Donovan's works in person. They touched a chord.

Polly dyes and cuts each piece individually for the hundreds and hundreds of pieces that comprise her floor installations. I find that information wonderfully reassuring right now!

Refreshing a Creative Practice, Week 2

2010-01-31T06:45:00.001-08:00

I had a private coaching session with Leslie (see previous post) on Monday that is a bonus to our online and phone conference call class. Since I am so aware of how fast time flies, I made a short list and e-mailed it to her before we started talking to try and help keep me focused. Here’s my list:

2010 Desired Result: Completion of powerful new work that resonates authentically and uniquely.

1. Use art to explore a new paradigm of cooperative living that is INCLUSIVE and not EXCLUSIVE
2. Connect to my deepest, truest artistic inspirations with confidence and courage to act on them.
3. Connect and refine the visual imagery that continuously repeats through my work; inscribed marks, cracks, aging and worn surfaces, fragments of personal histories and the connections/intersections between them all.

Leslie and I talked about these and my vision for artistic “inclusiveness” and suggested that I was in a way sending out an invitation to the universe about this desire. We talked more specifically about this inclusiveness and what it looked like. It seemed to involve connecting to a group of like-minded people who desire to pioneer a different way of being artists in the world. She suggested that I am not alone, that others will resonate with my ideas, that I don’t totally need to invent this myself. At the close of our time, she gave me an assignment, to work on a piece of art that is an invitation to others to join me in a paradigm of cooperation rather than competition, a network of artists who share with one another in strength, believing in aspiring to excellence and willing to support each other’s abilities and talent.

I agreed to let the ideas begin to flow, to consider the theme of an invitation to connect and to start working out the ideas with some small samples and studies.

That was Monday.

On Tuesday, Leslie gave us our time assignment. That threw me a curve, since all my time is spent in some way relating to art, either mine or others. What could this assignment about time offer me, I wondered?

I wrote, “new body of work” at the center of my circle. That’s what I want my time to revolve around. Then I wondered what to put in each spoke as a perspective. Did I want Ernest Hemingway in mine? Or Picasso? Here are the archetypal characters that emerged as I wrote and a few of their attributes that I listed:

1. Child self

Loves to be outside near water, finds “secret places”, collects rocks and shells and fungi and other magical things, delights in doing, loves and wants everything she sees, band-aids on knees and mosquito bite scabs on her legs, loves attention and ruffled party dresses and praise and is always excitedly tugging a sleeve to say “look at this, look at this”

2. Scientific genius

Collects data, samples, trials, lab full of equipment and tubes and Bunsen burners, white lab coats, Albert Einstein hair and mustache and glasses. Serious, scholarly, combines bizarre ingredients into strange concoctions that sometimes explode, sometimes fizzle, sometimes invent a cure for polio.

3. Famous Artist

Peak of her powers, fabulously unaware of fame and devoted to her work, a consummately skilled technician with great clarity and vision and confidence. She spends a lot of time in her villa in Europe, walks exotic beaches,eats fresh delectable foods, surrounded by incredible colors, vistas and people.

4. High-powered Diva Artist

Commercially successful, lives in a huge urban loft in a major metropolitan city, slender and physically stunning and lives a life filled with verbs: Network, socialize, position, manage, leverage, influence, advance, publicize, promote, project.

5. Buddhist master

Often found in a beautiful Japanese water garden, being mindful and smiling. Every sound magnified, aware of each stirring leaf, each moving insect and bird and animal, every sense alive, mind and body still, receptive, poised. In her hand a brush and before her rice paper and sumi ink. She sits a long time and then makes a flowing, powerful mark on the paper. In each stroke there is a whole story.

6. Isadora Duncan dancer

The dancer lives in a large, open studio surrounded by other dancers. One full wall is mirrors, the other windows. As the music starts, the choreographer works with each person present to build the dance step by step. Hours and hours fly by in repeating, refining, practicing, perfecting, polishing. The body is the canvas.

7. Centenarian

This is an old woman who speaks Polish and Yiddish and wears a babushka wrapped around her head. “Oy” she laughs, I do not need to work at anything. I just sit in the sun and enjoy. The children come and play with me and we tell stories. On day I’ll fall asleep and I will wake up in a new place. That’s life.”

Wonderful characters all and as I named them and began to describe them, I realized they ALL live inside me, that I can choose any one of them as a perspective from which to consider “creating a new body of work.” They became incredibly real.

Next I did our writing exercise in my journal. The second half filled two pages.

I am willing to let go of:

distractions
interruptions
discouragement
doubts
insecurities
self-criticism
unhealthy foods
judgmental language about myself or others
comparing myself or my work to that of others
imposing limits on myself or my work.

I am willing to say YES to:

attracting the right and perfect venues for exhibiting the body of work I create
creating new connections with those who wish to support and exhibit my work
attracting associations with other artists who are passionate and committed to process and making
honoring these various new aspects of myself that I’ve discovered
being willing to work steadily
enlisting the support and feedback of other, trusted artist friends that I will draw to my inner circle
developing new associations and potential collaborations
inviting new methods, materials and mediums for expressing my ideas
inviting new insights and perspectives on my work
nurturing a healthy, fit and energized physical body
affirming my own worth and right to be visible, valued and recognized
opening to the idea of limitlessness – limitless time, limitless resources, limitless creative and physical energy, focus, inspiration, clarity, presence and productivity
dancing each day
smiling and celebrating my beauty, power and creativity each day.

As I was working on this exercise, streams of ideas began to flow about the idea of creating an invitation. Since I already had added the escape clause that I didn’t need to complete it this week, I felt free to experiment and “be” with the ideas and process, so I chose to work with my Scientific Genius and my Buddhist Master to generate and explore ideas.

Here are just a few of the ideas I generated, wrote down and have started to flesh out both at home and in my studio. I’ll try to explain more about them in the next post but here’s the bare beginnings.

The idea I like best will take a lot of work and time to sample from this rough sketch if I choose to commit to doing it. For this idea, I write the letters that spell the word “connect” in large dots with sequential numbers on each dot like a children’s activity book. It “invites” the viewer nonverbally to try and connect the dots. When you do, you get the word connect. My image invites the viewer to connect the dots that form the word connect. Thank you to both my scientist and Zen master for this idea; it also appeals to my child self.

For the next idea, I enlarged a number of letters from the dictionary word “connect” and made them into silk-screens and screen printed them on lutrador. The light silvery printed areas are the dictionary definition of the word. Next I’ll cut the words and letters apart into strips and then reconnect the strips with various joins and materials so the word “connect” will be able to be read. Whether this will actually work or not remains to be discovered. A scientist doesn’t formulate outcomes; they just present a hypothesis and then seek to prove or disprove it!

I also sampled two other ideas using French knots to create letter outlines and satin stitching negative spaces surrounding each letter. More interesting samples.

I still have four or five other variations to sample still for mixed media ideas and will share more next time!

Refreshing A Creative Practice

2010-01-24T05:48:00.001-08:00

What better activity for the first month of a year than to join a small group of fellow artists in refreshing our creativity with exercises and discussion? Artist and coach Leslie Avon Miller is providing that opportunity with a six-week online class that I joined called “Refreshing Your Creative Practice.” I discovered Leslie first as an artist and then found out that she is also a coach, a very intuitive and fine one. I signed up to help loofah and polish my creative skin and CONNECT with my creativity in new ways for 2010.

Our small group met for the first time through a teleconference last Tuesday. We are talented and diverse. What powerful, accomplished, expressive women to share with – a gift in itself.

We introduced ourselves, shared a bit and then at the end of the session we received our first “assignment”-- create and carry out a personal ceremony of any kind to unite with our creativity and then post about the experience on the private group blog.

As I started working and focusing on this partnership between my creativity and myself, she began to take on an actual persona of her own. So I let go and let her. Here’s the post I wrote for that assignment:

Me and Cree Celebrate 60 Years Together

Me and Cree, my creativity, aka, "the happy couple"

Me and Cree (she says everything is abbreviated in the 21st century and it's lucky that any of us still know how to speak in full sentences) had our first real out loud chat after Leslie posted this assignment. We've been together all my life and I love her dearly, and she me, but we never officially spoke about our union. However, since we've been a couple almost since the advent of color television, this celebration isn't a new marriage, it's a 60-plus anniversary renewal of vows and all-around excuse to Make Stuff.

We started the ceremony in my studio. This is our special place and where we spend the most time together. I took charge (she says she admires it when I do that). "We need to make a symbol of our relationship that we can look at again and again, one that will remind us both to be lighthearted and also of how much we mean to each other."

"You love James Castle's work," Cree said. "Outsider Art! Let's make Us out of whatever we can find right here." So we pried apart empty packaging, drew and cut out shapes and created the two of us. We savored dividing the words, "I Am She Who Is Loved" between our paper doll bodies. That was day one.

Once I made the choice to let out my inner outsider artist, I had to drag out whatever items I could find at hand to utilize. That was fun – and messy of course!

First I created “US”, the happy couple, drawing and cutting out paper doll-like shapes from random packaging, fasteners and collaged magazine papers. Look, we can dance!

On day two we improvised a backdrop. The negative shapes that remained in the reclaimed packaging from which we cut out our bodies seemed important to include.

It all relates, Cree announced as we worked, "The positives, the negatives and all the in-betweens come together into a perfect whole when we are together."(Cree is a bit of a philosopher at heart.) I wrote passionately on the surface all the deep feelings I have for this most Beloved presence in my life and then layered over them. Secret words only to be shared by the two of us.

On day three Cree stood back and squeezed her eyes almost shut and squinted at our creation. "We look beautiful," she declared, "but we are lacking the Wondrous Patina Of Age that is ours in Real Life." And so we weathered and aged ourselves. We had commandeered an old frame and mounted our testimony to Us inside it and hung it on the wall.

"Shouldn't we have some hair or clothes?," I asked her. I could imagine inventing some wonderful outfits for all the various occasions we might choose to celebrate. "Maybe another time, " Cree said. "For now, we are Perfect Just As We Are."

And as we worked, the gray cloud cover began to dissipate and the sun beamed through the studio windows. Honest.

Shyly, I pulled out my journal. "I wrote this for you this morning," I said. Cree clapped her hands and laughed in that amazingly contagious way she does. " I was there too, of course, and wrote it with you!"

And so, in unison, we stood before our paper selves and read these words aloud:

"Bless this union, universe; may it ever continue, deepen and grow in our perception and understanding of grace and beauty.

May our work together bring forth abundant and authentic expression.

May our creative practice flourish and our hearts always be open to touch and be touched by others.

May we share our joy in Making freely and fully with others.

May our works be received, supported and valued by others of like mind.

May we smile at the end of our labor, look at each creation and be able to say sincerely, "It is Good."

May we always appreciate the love and companionship that we share together.And when we come to the end of our time together on this earth, may we fly away easily with joyful enthusiasm for all that awaits us next."

"That was truly magnificent!" Cree said. "My little paper hand will hold yours forever."

"Mine, too."

Contemplations and Marks

2010-01-18T16:05:00.001-08:00

Have you launched into 2010 and the new decade with a triple somersault Olympic high dive? Not me, I am easing into these new waters.

These stones from my collection remind me of times spent walking creeks and streams, gathering the most special ones to bring home. Rearranging them and appreciating their unique marks and colorations is a pleasant activity on a gray, mid-January day.

Artistically, I’ve been considering hand stitched marks this past week. I’m trying to finish this piece that I began before the holiday season.

At first it seemed to me that it might benefit from something reflective on the surface. So I tested out silver foils and silver metallic paint accents –they were too heavy or opaque. Neither passed the testing stage. Then I experimented with different stitched accents on the surface testing a variety of rayon, metallic and cotton embroidery threads in both color and grayscale ranges from black to white.

I’ve settled on adding some long, straight varying length stitches in black and white as accents. At least today I think they will complete this piece (tomorrow you might find me ripping them all out!). Then the work only needs the facings hand stitched down after completing the hand embroidery, so completing the first new piece in 2010 is nearly accomplished.

While slowing down is allowing more time for contemplation in my design choices, it also sometimes feels panicky. A part of me has thrived for many years on constant motion and variety. Slowing the pace creates time to ask questions that are not easy to answer.

Without goals and ambitions and deadlines and images of large accomplishments to motivate productivity, what desires and dreams remain? Life filled with activities and appointments and schedules feels purposeful and engaged –although sometimes too much activity can also be a smokescreen that keeps deeper questions of meaning and purpose at bay.

Perhaps my January contemplations will lead to balancing and transitioning from a mindset of apprentice to journeyman. Can it be that I actually know what I am doing and do it well?!?!?

The first stages of learning about art feel much like the labor-intensive work of digging a foundation and erecting a house from raw materials; the materials, techniques and how-to’s dominate. The later stages involve honing and refining one’s vision and process with each original design and then completing them with carefully chosen details.

I have spent many years doing the heavy, rough construction and carpentry work of building one skill after another. Perhaps the desires and dreams that will propel me forward at this stage will be more subtle and less dramatic, but hopefully will be as stimulating and satisfying in their own right.

“Filaments, filaments, filaments…”

2010-01-08T11:33:00.001-08:00

For the past two years, I’ve picked a theme word at the beginning of each year representing an idea or quality to focus my intentions on for the year. This year’s word is “connect” and although it presented itself as The One only three days ago, the choice has already brought a surge of energy, new resources and surprising insights .

“A Noiseless Patient Spider” by Walt Whitman ( The Complete Poems, 1975)

It launched forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,

Even unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you O my soul where you stand,

Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,

Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them,Till the bridge you will need be formed, till the ductile anchor hold,

Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O, my soul.

Musing on the image of my own soul patiently sending out filaments to form bridges led to furiously writing down waves of ideas about how I wish the theme of connecting to run through my life. Rewriting the list in my journal, they already number 23 –quite a manifesto! -- and more ideas keep flowing, so the list will no doubt keep growing.

If you feel the same desire to connect on many levels, you may find my focus this year of personal interest. If so, please share your insights and comments. Connecting with you through this blog is a continuous source of insight and growth for me!

Here are several more great quotes on this theme:

“Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread in it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect.” –Chief Seattle

“Writing fiction has developed in me an abiding respect for the unknown in a human lifetime and a sense of where to look for the threads, how to follow, how to connect, find in the thick of the tangle what clear line persists. The strands are all there: to the memory nothing is really lost.” –Eudora Welty, One Writer’s Beginnings, Chapter 3 (1984).

This bears repeating. The strands are all there. Hope you’ll join me in looking for the clear lines of connection this year.

Welcoming 2010

2009-12-30T06:45:00.001-08:00

One of my favorite Christmas gifts, a wonderful garden “junk” sculpture by area sculptors John and Dorie Mitchell, who have a studio in my building.

The first decade of the 21st century is drawing to a close and a new one is about to begin. A marker like this gives us an opportunity to reflect on the past and consider the future. From personal and family milestones to world news and events, the majority of us recognize at these endings and beginnings how quickly time passes.

And each January 1, we have an opportunity to review, revise or reconnect with our desires and dreams, then launch 12 new months of new exploration and experience. Some people make resolutions – most often quickly broken – but others take a gentler approach to welcoming a New Year, setting up an attitude of positive expectation and welcome without making it too specific. A much wiser choice for most of us!

In my previous blog I invited readers to e-mail your names and addresses for a “goodies drawing” to help you launch a creative New Year.

Thirteen of you entered the end of the year “goodies giveaway.” When it came time to draw winners’ names, what I didn’t anticipate was discovering that I couldn’t just pick a few and ignore the rest (maybe I’ll get better at that by next year!). I truly feel a desire to share my good fortune this year with those of you who faithfully read my blog. So – surprise! – you are ALL winners! First thing this morning I’ll head down to the post office to mail out 13 small gifts, one to each person who entered.

The goodie drawing feels like a metaphor for what it takes to live an artistic life. Part of being a maker is having the courage to put ourselves and our work out into the world, to take risks of exposure without any assured outcomes– trusting that good will emerge from those actions in some way, even if the results aren’t immediately apparent or what we had hoped they might be.

Thirteen of you entered this little drawing without any assurance that the outcome would be positive, but perhaps with just an inkling of hope that your name would be picked. In my book that’s a winner’s attitude that we all can cultivate as artists and makers for 2010. What do we miss out on when we don’t step out on that limb or put our hat in the ring???

This afternoon we’ll head out for the rehearsal dinner for my stepson’s wedding tomorrow in Buffalo, NY – Bob and Sarah love the idea of getting married and celebrating their anniversary each year on New Year’s Eve – and then my husband and I will drive up and spend the weekend in Toronto. We’ll visit an exhibition of Alexander Calder’s circus while we’re there (can’t wait to see it live), view a Cape Dorset artist exhibition and stop in at IKEA on the drive home to check out new furniture for my office, which will get a makeover in 2010.

So I’ll look forward to resuming art blogging when I return to my studio and my work next week. In the interim, may all your hopes and wishes bring you wonderful adventures in 2010!

Gifts of the Season

2009-12-18T04:38:00.000-08:00

After a successful and enjoyable open studios event at my building two weekends ago, my attention has shifted to readying for the holidays AND preparing for a New Year. I treat this final month of each year as a time for reflection and appreciation as well as celebration. So in addition to decorating, buying gifts, sending cards and baking, a great deal of cleaning and clearing has continued. Now I've moved on to my office, sorting accumulated files and folders of paperwork relating to writing, teaching and exhibitions from as far back as 2002.

These acts of clearing are having an amazing effect on me. I am letting go. In 2010, I won't be teaching, I won't be developing new lectures, I won't be writing magazine articles. I will truly focus my energies in one direction, adding to my body of work.

The holidays are a time to be more intentional, allowing ourselves to indulge in appreciative thoughts and generous actions that warm us and all those whose lives we touch. So, it is in this spirit that I offer all of you who read my blog some gifts for the heart this holiday season.

#1 --Take a few moments to watch this video about Martin Neufeld, aka The Hugger Buster. This street performer practices Artful Hugging. May we all follow his example and open our arms more often to share caring touch with our fellow humans.

#2 - To return a smile to your lips and peaceful appreciation to your heart, try listening to this short guided meditation from Australia to practice loving-kindness. I woke up hearing these two words in my head this morning and when I googled them, found this lovely short loving-kindness meditation audiotape from the Buddhist Education and Information Network.

#3 - I appreciate every one of you who take the time to read my blog, so please enter my end of the year "goodies" drawing. Just e-mail your name and snail-mail address to me at beckwriter@aol.com. I will draw several names and mail out happy surprises to start your New Year with a smile!

Most of all, I wish bright and happy holidays to you and your loved ones -- may you hug and be hugged extravagantly and well!

A-MAZE-ING Hungerford Open Studios

2009-11-30T10:00:00.001-08:00

Notice that I’ve been way too quiet?!? It’s because I’ve been working on these lovely little 9” x 12” matted compositions ( the 9” x 12” ones are a mere $30!!) for this approaching weekend’s open studios in the Hungerford Building in Rochester, NY. That’s where I have my surface design studio.

Artists in our our newly formed Hungerford Artisans Association will be opening our studios for two days and sharing our work and processes with any and all who come to visit.(When you click on this link you will see a beautiful photograph of our building done by resident photographer extraordinaire Lou Allen)

LOCATION: Hungerford Building, 1115 East Main Street, Rochester, NY. Enter Door #2 or #5 to get a map that will guide you through the building. My studio is #366, third floor.

DATES AND TIMES: Friday, December 4, 5 – 9 PM; Saturday, December 5, 10 AM – 4 PM.

I will be selling original cards and matted works for $10-$30, along with special "Inspiration Packs", clear zip-loc bags each filled with one pound of fat quarters and half yard pieces of dyed , painted and surface designed silks or cottons ($15) to inspire new creations. Taxes are included.

While you stroll through the artist studios on three floors, you can listen to musicians playing and have a bite to eat at the Red Osier booth inside door #2. Maps will help guide you through our winding corridors and lead you on the treasure hunt to find the artist studios.

To reward you for finding us all, there will be drawings for a number of handcrafted prizes. All you have to do is visit the studios, fill out your entry form and deposit it on your way out. Hope you can come join us for A-Maze-Ing Hungerford!

It will be a busy weekend in Rochester with lots of great art events, from the Rochester Contemporary member exhibition opening (yes I have a piece in it!) to the Alternative Fair at the First Unitarian Church on Winton Road – so gallery hop on First Friday or spend all day Saturday in the city and enjoy all the wonderful events taking place this weekend!!

Mid-Career Retrospective?!?

2009-11-20T05:38:00.001-08:00

I’m doing an archeological dig in my fabric storage area, unearthing dyed, printed and painted pieces I haven’t really SEEN for years.

At first my goal was to fill garbage bags to bulging and donate them to Goodwill. I love the idea of one person’s discards becoming another person’s treasures and hoped that art students would find them and transform them.

But as I sifted through piles of dyed, painted or printed silks and cottons, ideas started popping in my head – the old marks, patterns and combinations began to inspire me.

It occurred to me they might inspire other textile artists, too. I decided to weigh and bag assortments of these pieces and sell them as “inspiration packs” for $15 each.

I’m viewing this as very own “mid-career retrospective” as I fill plastic zipper storage bags with one pound assortments of fabrics from my explorations of mark, color and pattern over the past 7-8 years. Some are dyed solids, some are patterned and all of the packaging is totally random – the one unifying factor is that they all weigh one pound.

At the December 4th and 5th A-Maze-ing Hungerford Open Studios event (announcement about that soon!), I’ll be selling these for $15 each (includes tax), along with some wonderful cards and matted pieces that I’m making as well. You’ll see some of those soon.

Uncork the Bubbly!

2009-11-13T15:59:00.001-08:00

I received a wonderful letter in the mail yesterday from Fiberart International, one that started with “Congratulations!”

After a brief pause to shed a few happy tears, I read that my “Seeds of Compassion” piece has indeed been accepted as one of 87 pieces that will be exhibited at Fiberart International in Pittsburgh, PA in 2010.

The letter says: “Jurors Mary Ruth Smith, Rebecca Stevens and Vibeke Riisberg met in mid September to evaluate over 1,600 works of art by 703 artists from 30 countries – the largest and most diverse groups of entries ever in the history of Fiberart International.”

Arrangements for the traveling exhibition currently include the Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester (hey that’s MY Rochester!) and the San Francisco Museum of Craft & Design.

Am I proud and thrilled and beside myself with joy?!?!? You better believe I am!! This turning 60 is starting to shape up into a spectacular year!

The Return of Quiet

2009-11-12T01:45:00.001-08:00

Several people wrote to ask me about my SOFA experience; I’m finally settled back in from the trip and have time to write.

Nope I didn’t get a ride on the express train to fame and fortune! I had a wonderful time, met terrific people and enjoyed six days in one of my favorite cultural cities. I presented a talk about my work on Saturday morning and was interviewed by a Chicago reporter for the Art Enquirer.

Here’s a link to the article in the Chicago Fine Arts Examiner. At the bottom of the page there’s a link you can click to a slide show that includes this one of me standing by my work.

On Thursday I toured the fiber department at the School of the Art Institute with Friends of Fiber Art , enjoyed seeing the facilities and students in classes learning felting in one studio and improvisational screen printing with cut paper resists in another one. We followed that up with lunch in the new contemporary wing of the Art Institute.

Thursday evening was the VIP opening of SOFA, with plenty of free wine and hors d’ouvres and mingling. Artists stood by their work in the various booths to meet and greet and answer questions.

On Friday I attended the lectures sponsored by Friends of Fiber Art, where a panel of artists represented by Snyderman or Jane Sauer galleries spoke about their work, including Barbara Lee Smith, Carol Shinn, Jon Riis, Geoffrey Gorman, Marilyn Pappas and Marcia Docter. On Saturday morning the Surface Design Association presented Jan Hopkins and Lesley Richmond, who spoke about their techniques.

I finished up my live SOFA presence on Saturday afternoon and spent Sunday in the Contemporary Museum of Art and the Art Institute. There was an amazing retrospective of outsider artist James Castle’s work at the Art Institute – it was a real highlight of my weekend to move from the totally commercial, sales-driven atmosphere of SOFA to Castle’s completely private world of play and exploration. Read more about James Castle here.

Now that I’m back home, it’s time to get ready for a building-wide studio open house with the Hungerford Urban Artisans on December 4th and 5th.

I’m tired, happy and ready to go back to my quiet studio and return to work. Whatever new opportunities and adventures may lie ahead will present themselves and unfold in their own right and perfect ways. I can’t control or predict how my life as artist will continue to develop, just know and trust that it will.

In the interim, I get to return to the quiet, contemplative world of my studio, where I feel most centered and at home.

Countdown to Chicago

2009-11-02T05:11:00.001-08:00

Two more days until I leave for Chicago. The opening VIP reception for SOFA is 5-7 PM Thursday and my talk is Saturday morning at 10:30 AM.

Preparing this lecture for SOFA has challenged me to consider the intentions and ideas that fuel my work, the meaty whys. Previously I spoke more about the hows, the techniques and tools that I use in making.

Artists’ techniques and tools will always intrigue us, but considering other artists’ ideas and the inspirations that fuel their work stimulates us on another level. Hearing other artists speak hopefully opens a window to seeing the world through that person’s thoughtful eyes. Listen carefully and it can reward our attention with new insights and connections; a dynamic ripple effect.

In contrast to the intense activity to prepare for this trip, my own studio practice evolves more slowly.

This Relics piece is 20” x 44”. It will be mounted on a 24” x 48” stretched canvas frame painted black.

Here’s a detail where I’ve screened subtle additions of vertical columns of text and added more layers of paint to the surface.

The previous Relics piece has been framed and is now on display at the Rochester Print Club Annual Member Exhibition, where it just won a Jurors Choice award.

For the next two days I’ll revisit the images for my talk, revising and honing the content. No one could possibly gain more from listening to my lecture than I am receiving in preparing it. Working to articulate the ideas that inspire our work – and it is a hard process for every person, no matter how well they write or how articulate they may appear -- helps to coalesce our focus and directions.

Being thoughtful and slow is a choice, just as are the times we choose to play with ideas and processes and be totally spontaneous and experimental. Both have value. It is worthwhile to learn to be comfortable moving back and forth between them both.

Slow Art

2009-10-24T10:52:00.000-07:00

My enjoyment in working light over dark continues as this new work above ( full view) slowly develops. It is a contemplative process that doesn't lend itself to exciting blog posts. I may post less frequently but all this slowness -- including posting less often -- is a calming tonic and becoming more contemplative may well be the "next step" for me as an artist.

Although I am working into this surface one small area and very light layer at a time, I decided today to add some language details to a few areas using black paint. The next text may be screened on in light gray.

Yesterday I worked into the piece with some washes of yellows, golds, and light browns over some of the lighter gray areas. I have not yet decided whether I will add more or stop here. They do seem to be adding some interesting highlights.

You can also see where I am fleshing out some details by painting on black lines to heighten the contrast and accentuate some of the smallest shapes. Working this way continues to be thoroughly enjoyable and unhurried. I am surprised to find I feel totally open to allowing this to develop as it chooses.

Rapt Attention

2009-10-15T16:35:00.000-07:00

The Merriam-Webster online dictionary says the definition for "rapt" is "wholly absorbed." That describes these past two studio days. I have been wholly and totally absorbed in working. Now that I'm ready to stop for the day, it's time to sit quietly for a bit while some paint dries enough to pack up these pieces and take them home for the next stage -- stitching.

This fabric ground has been up on my design wall for a while as I questioned what direction to take it. When clearing up at home, I found letters that had been abandoned on an earlier project and started to experiment. After weighing the results for a week, I've decided the composition is complete and I can start the process of stitching it.

I thought the above piece was finished. It's the third piece in the "Seeds" series, titled "Seeds of Awakening." But the original piece, with just one value of bright yellow/gold centers, seemed flat and lacked movement. So up it went on the design wall for contemplation.

When my friend Betsy visited, I asked her for feedback. She suggested that I add some seeds in varying values on the surface. She was totally right -- and I spent today cutting and applying painted papers that will be permanently stitched to the cloth surface. Don't you agree there's a lot more depth and movement on this piece now? -- I'm enjoying the idea of combining paper and fabric, something I haven't done before.

So Seeds of Awakening will rest quietly at the studio over the weekend and then get one more critical review on Monday. If the composition still seems resolved, then it can get stitched and completed -- again! I've also worked on several other pieces today, and hope to get them far enough along by next week to share them with you soon.

Romancing the Mark

2009-10-14T06:07:00.001-07:00

Perhaps this is an unintended pun, since it could refer both to my studio mark-making explorations yesterday and to my current interest in painter Mark Tobey’s works.

Yesterday I returned to the soft, quiet work of exploring new ideas inspired by Mark Tobey’s “white writing.”

White Writing, 1951, by Mark Tobey, gouache and watercolor on paper.

Tobey, 1890-1976, an American painter who spent many years in the Pacific Northwest, loved to experiment and his abstract, calligraphic work now is considered to have influenced subsequent art trends, especially Abstract Expressionism. It reassured me to discover that he was more interested in experimentation and exploration than self-promotion of his work.

Tobey studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and worked for a time as a fashion illustrator and portraitist in New York City. He converted to the Bahāʾī faith in 1918 and from that point on explored non-Western spirituality. (Must mention here that I consider my own artmaking a spiritual practice, one that deepens and connects me more and more to a universal force and presence of creative energy)

Tobey’s mature painting style evolved after a visit to East Asia in 1934, during which he spent one month in a Zen monastery in Kyōto and studied Chinese calligraphy in Shanghai. (Another note here, I love the calligraphic, painted mark and it is a dream of mine to go to Kyoto as an artist-in-residence some day.)

The influence of calligraphy first became apparent in the tangled brushwork of his cityscapes of the 1930s, and Tobey went on to develop a unique style consisting of a web or network of calligraphic marks painted in white against a gray or coloured ground. This “white writing” soon displaced all realistic representation in his work. (excerpted from the Encyclopedia Brittanica).

While my own efforts are not imitative of Tobey’s signature all-over, abstract linear network of calligraphic marks, I am learning from them.

When I began applying opaque paints, particularly white, to the surface of this darkly dyed, subtly patterned silk, I felt as though I was absorbing and responding to Tobey’s experimentation with my own.

Building lighter layers over dark is proving to be an interesting study. I spent yesterday working on the above sample – it’s about 11” x 24”. I worked slowly, growing more comfortable with size 00 to size 2 round and liner brushes and focusing on how much opacity and what kinds of marks I want in the areas where I apply the opaque colors. Yesterday on this sample I used varying dilutions of opaque white textile paint, comparable to Tobey’s gouache.

It is hard to maintain the softer hand and keep the white paint from becoming too thick and heavy. You can see above that where the white is applied more thinly and has softer edges it feels more integrated than the areas where the white is fully opaque. Still, some fully opaque spots over the larger surface might be interesting.

Varying the pure white to tints of ochre and tan and gray is next on a new practice piece and then I will begin working on the full size one again, which is about 44” x 50” right now.

Here’s the sample piece pinned to the larger piece. It seems to me at this point that there’s already a shape on the surface of the larger piece that I can work into and define with the opaque washes around printed or hand painted text. There are also some subtle hints of browns, golds, and lavender grays already on the surface that can be accentuated. I want to be careful not to cover them with the white and lose the interest they add to the surface, so the white may need to be more confined in specific areas than it is on the sample.

The whole process is an absorbing experiment and although I keep trying to move away from this to start working on new fabric grounds and other experimental ideas, the light over dark painting keeps pulling me back.

If I can manage to calm my impulsive nature and move forward mindfully, I believe this could be a very interesting piece when complete. It certainly is fascinating to consider and work on.

What A Week!

2009-10-10T06:46:00.001-07:00

Have you missed me? Wondered where I’ve been and why my blog has been so quiet?

First, the deadline for my Powerpoint presentation and written lecture – titled, “Written: Word as Image” --had to be electronically submitted to SOFA by 5 PM on Monday, October 5. I have around 3,500 images in my files, so reviewing, selecting and organizing 90 or so was dizzying.

Writing the accompanying text was also. I have never focused so intently on trying to distill down and express ideas about my inspirations.

Happily, I made the deadline -- at exactly 5 PM on Monday evening. Somehow writing that presentation triggered hard, soul-searching work that churned up a lot of emotions, memories and personal questioning. In part because that intense self-reflection coincided with another milestone event in my life.

I turned 60 on October 6th. How did I get here so quickly?!?!?

Delving into the evolution, meaning and directions in my creative life, summing it up and putting it down in writing at this particular milestone in my physical life felt significant. A rite of passage. But to what?

When I woke up on the morning of The Day, instead of the gloom and doom I had been feeling about getting older, I felt energetic and excited with possibilities. Surprise. Gone was anxiety and back was the optimistic me.

A new decade ahead. Ten bright, new years to explore, experience and express – for me to envision and create as I choose. In short, exactly the same as before.

Front of my new business card – it’s been almost eight years since my last one! Isn’t this lovely?

As I prepared and shipped the pieces that will be exhibited by Maria Elena Kravetz Gallery, finalized my new business card and portfolio page designs with my (absolutely wonderful) graphic designer Ian Caspersson, there was one more important activity I needed to include to launch this new decade.

Yepper, this birthday girl went shopping! My studio wardrobe doubles as my exercise wardrobe, if that gives you any idea of its level of sophistication. Kind of like my own line of Garanimals – all the tops and bottoms interchangeable, loose and stretchy!

Definitely NOT what I want to wear in Chicago (OK I do want to, but I won’t).

In between all my SOFA preparations, I spent this whole week living my own personal episode of What Not to Wear, trying on – and buying - clothing and accessories way outside my comfort zone.

So if you come to SOFA Chicago and see a more stylish version of me, don’t walk by – it really IS me.

What a week and what an exciting launch for a new decade.

Another Experimental Friday

2009-10-02T11:29:00.001-07:00

For a while now I've had the idea to cut some stencils as a tool for creating language marks. So I purchased some lovely 18" x 24" oiled stencil board at my local Hyatt's along with a #4 stencil cutter. Rather than use those for my first effort, I grabbed a piece of watercolor paper and began a practice session in cutting with the X-Acto.

My skills in this area are nonexistent, so I started by basically drawing a shape, cutting it and then drawing another shape and cutting that, paying close attention to the negative spaces which become the more dominant linear patterns. Focusing on those became almost hypnotic and very enjoyable.

Once I got the hang of cutting and started to relax, it turned from work to fun. The cutting creates interesting, but very strong, defined lines. But what would it look like printed?

Of course, I had to find out! I couldn't resist trying it out on the piece of fabric stretched on my print table that was SUPPOSED to be for a whole different type of composition.

I printed the stencil using three variations. First, I placed the stencil under a blank silkscreen and screened a colored acid dye paste called "paprika" on it and let it dry. Once the dye dried, I removed the stencil and screened clear paste through the screen. This created different patterns as the dye on the screen broke down.

Second, I took the stencil, laid it under the screen and printed through it with more paprika dye.

Third, I took the wet stencil, turned it over and direct printed the dye from it onto the fabric surface. Each print varied this way and yet formed a repeating pattern.

Then I dappled or brushed other colors onto the surface into the wet dyes before I left it to dry. The piece of cloth above is about 44" X 70," to give you an idea of the scale.

THIS piece of cloth was soaked in a citric acid solution and dried before it went on my print table to increase its acidity and help the dyes fix to it when processed. In addition, the dyes have the auxiliary ammonium sulfate also mixed in. According to my Pro Chem technical experts, Nancy and Vicki, the two will not interact unfavorably, since one has been soaked into the fabric and dried before applying the dye and print paste with the other auxiliary.

If this all sounds way too technical for you, take heart, it's really fairly simple. Acid dyes need additives that increase their acidity and heat for these particular dyes to bond permanently with the silk.

Now all we need to have happen is for the dyes to remain true to what they look like on the dry piece above once they are steamed and washed.

Whether they do remain as saturated as they are now or not, the possibilities of the stencil as a tool for adding partial or repeating elements to my compositions is definitely appealing.

So at the moment the fabric is steaming. I'll rinse it, wash it and dry it and cross my fingers that it will look good once it's done!

Filling the Well

2009-09-29T05:34:00.001-07:00

Last Friday I drove to Buffalo for an Artist Day. Don’t you just love the days when you treat your artist self to new experiences and perspectives?

First I visited a fellow artist and friend, Barbara Murak, who has has been exploring working with a new embellisher as well as with encaustics. We discussed how she is working with these tools and how they’re helping actualize some of her ideas for new work.

Barb is an amazingly creative and giving artist who is currently an artist-in-residence at Roswell Park Cancer Institute, where she uses art play to provide a respite from cares and concerns for patients and families in chemo waiting rooms and ICU units.

We both have busy lives, so our visits are few and far between, but whenever we do get together it seems we could talk on and on about art and making and life for days! Around lunch time, we headed off to a terrific little cafe in the Buffalo neighborhood where I used to live 40 years ago. It has become a flourishing creative community with the vitality and energy that I’m seeking to find on a smaller scale.

After lunch we drove to the new Burchfield-Penney Art Center, a huge space where Barbara currently has two pieces in their Craft Art Western New York 2009 Exhibition. Ah-hah! A venue to put on my list to enter next year if I can use my studio address to apply (it’s a county specific opportunity). It offers the diversity of mediums that I find so stimulating together.

Image #297 Drawing (Tracings from Buffalo, NY), by Ingrid Calame, 2008, colored pencil on trace Mylar, 18” x 26”.

Next, we walked across the street to the Albright Knox Art Gallery, one of the finest contemporary art museums in the country, to see a new exhibition of work by Ingrid Calame. Read about her work and process in this New York Times article link. You’ll understand my fascination when you read about her inspirations and ideas for drawings and paintings through this link.

Ingrid spent three weeks in Buffalo in 2008 as the first artist-in-residence at Albright-Knox. During that time she visited Buffalo buildings and chose three sites to use for her work.

Ingrid traces cracks, spots, stains and other markings in public spaces. Once Ingrid identifies a space she wants to record, she and her team of assistants roll out large rolls of clear Mylar and painstakingly trace the exact lines of the marks below.

Back in her studio the artist uses these tracings to compose layered Mylar colored pencil drawings like the one above, as well as oil paintings on aluminum from details.

Because I am so process-oriented, the consideration of how Ingrid is drawn to certain sites and and the histories these marks suggest all help inform my own work. It also validates my fixation with old walls, decaying surfaces and the cracks in my cement studio floor and hallways throughout my building!

The Desires List

2009-09-27T05:49:00.001-07:00

I’m taking back the steering wheel! While Mercury and the movements of other planets may influence a general trend of feeling and experience in our lives from time to time, I have to jump back up on that rock of my belief system that we are co-creators of our existence. It’s up to me to employ all that I know about the law of attraction to manifest the life that I desire through all the influences that are happening around me.

In short, when I respond, I feel dis-empowered. When I take positive action, I feel that I am actively creating the life experiences that I desire. So I am taking charge again, with or without Mercury’s assistance!

Sometimes the hardest part of “revisioning” is getting the clarity to figure out the right questions to ask that will shift my awareness. Rather than allow my focus to linger on all the sorrows and frustrations of life, the challenge for me is getting my mind to channel energy into identifying what I truly desire. That direction of thought helps me be forward looking, expansive and open to new possibilities and connections. Which is a state of awareness that is so fertile that what I seed as intentions attracts results amazingly fast.

So you may be asking yourself, where is she heading with this?

I am developing a list of desires that I can take immediate, positive action to actualize. How exciting!

Desire #1. Find an artistic community where I can live and thrive and enjoy lasting friendships. I am envisioning loading up my own Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria and setting sail for a “new world”, finding a wonderful and reasonably priced culturally-rich and diverse community that welcomes artists -- and relocating there. My husband retired this year and we are completely free to live wherever we choose (although our children want us to live someplace desirable to visit!)

As soon as I identified this desire, a google search presented me with an article from Art Calendar magazine titled “10 Great Towns for Working Artists” by Kim Hall. A definite starting point.

Do you have suggestions? A place for us to put on our list of possibilities for a visit? I don’t want the stress and congestion of a major urban area, so the biggie cities are out. No Chicago, Metro NYC or LA. Forget golf courses and outlet centers and fast food restaurants – we want open, clear skies and the pleasures of the natural world nearby, not suburban sprawl. A walking town -- where a car is optional, not mandatory.

I’m not rushing this process. I want to drive into a small city or town and feel a surge of excitement, an “I love this place and can see myself living here” reaction. So there will be some travels ahead.

In the interim, I will make more time to absorb and appreciate the cultural offerings right where I live. Maybe the community I’m seeking is right in my own backyard and we just don’t know each other yet. I’m open to any and all avenues for this desire to begin to attract options into my life!

Have Mercy, Mercury

2009-09-24T12:10:00.000-07:00

Now, granted, I don't follow or practice astrology but that doesn't mean I don't acknowledge that the interactions of the stars and planets have an impact on me. So when I received a newsletter from Carolyn Myss this morning written by astrologist Richard Ohotto explaining that Mercury is in retrograde and what that actually means, I found it quite interesting in view of all the flukey mishaps my studio work has been plagued with for the past four to six weeks.

I've felt a bit like a penguin trying to fly. Or a squawky chicken trying to soar like an eagle. Misreading directions, frequent lapses in memory, focus and concentration and very drawn into myself. A serious case of the "RE's":

Retreating
Reviewing
Reevaluating
Reworking
Rethinking
Refining
Releasing

Obviously these are exceptionally valuable practices and normally I would welcome them. But my fantasy was that I'd be a high-kicking, leaping artistic NINJA these past two months. Surprise, instead of feeling sharp and focused and productive and high energy, I've felt very inward and contemplative and almost deer-in-the-headlights dazed.

Yesterday, when two more pieces of steamed, dyed cloth didn't work out AGAIN, I just gave into the RE's. Restoring order. I've cleaned the studio and moved my computer to a quiet, cooler area away from the glaring morning sun. I've washed out containers and mixed new dyes, washed all the dye rags and steaming sheets and folded and put them away.

I'm also Revisiting processes and Revising my efforts. I put another layer on the small lutrador composition and now will add some stitched details before framing it that will vary the weight of the lines. While it's a lovely piece, it drew my attention to expanding my vocabulary for painting cracks and fissures. On this piece as well as my previous one, the cracks have been somewhat uniform in weight. The real cracks that I adore on the cement floors all over my building are definitely more irregular, with wide and narrow areas.

In my now wonderfully clean and uncluttered space, I've quietly been using this silk sample to explore painting cracks by working with opaque paints on a dark surface. There are three thicknesses of pigment on this surface. I'm slowly, quietly testing out laying down lines with thick paints and thinned ones. It's small, quiet work that doesn't require me to compose surfaces or contemplate layers of meaning and the relationship of design elements.

I'm noticing that laying on a thick line right from the beginning feels much denser and less appealing than building up successive layers using thinned paint. The small rectangular shape on the sample above is thinned opaque paint. Thinning with water makes it semi-transparent. The shape below it, the larger triangle shape, is a bit less diluted.

A simple endeavor. It's what I feel I can handle at present!

So, if you too have felt a bit "off" this past month or so, and are open to the idea that your life could be influenced by the movements of the planets, then take heart. According to Mr. Ohotto, this inward, slightly unbalancing (my word for it, not his!) period of time when Mercury appears to be traversing backwards instead of forward will end on September 29.

And then, perhaps, my inner Ninja Artist may surface!

Another Day, Another Layer

2009-09-22T11:28:00.000-07:00

There are some good things happening on the surface of this piece that I showed you last week. I have more work to still do before it is complete, but it's getting more interesting than it was earlier. It's drying for the day and tomorrow I'll come back and decide what happens next. I do know there will be areas that will get darker. That hopefully will increase the value contrast and create more dimension. The cracks and surfaces around them are still looking two-dimensional.

The mini-vacation from the studio I took over the weekend seems to have refreshed and revitalized me. I'm just stopping for lunch at 2:30 -- it seemed from the moment I walked into my studio this morning I was filled with purpose and energy and ideas, so much so that I had to force myself to stop, sit, eat and write this.

Here's a detail from a new piece of silk that just got a first layer of dye screen printed and painted onto it. I tried experimenting with brush work marks that may not prove successful, but I will keep on working with the ideas until I get them to work. It's still too wet to move so I can't hang and photograph the whole piece to show you. On this piece, I'm starting the first layer with two new neutrals that are warmer toned. I'll get a feel for how they work once the piece is steamed and washed out tomorrow.

The Welcome Return of the What-Ifs

2009-09-17T11:05:00.000-07:00

After two sluggish days recovering from a flu shot, which I KNEW I didn't want to get (but yielded to the persuasiveness of my well-intentioned physician), I feel healthy and energetic again. It's great to be back working in my studio; that internal burner is heating up again as one what-if after another starts playing through my mind.

For my reentry warm up, I painted the 24" x 48" canvas frame above and laminated my silk composition to canvas to hold it flat. I'll add some machine stitched details to it, and if all goes well, can mount and complete the piece by Saturday.

I also just painted some silk screens, shown above on my work table along with the drying frame, to try out several what-ifs for layering new surfaces with language imagery. One screen has a light gray patterning on it for monoprinting, the other has dark gray marks and drizzles and lines that have a more painterly quality to them. I'm hoping the results will be helpful in developing some new ideas I have for building layers ; I'll print them when I return on Saturday.

Here's another what-if in process that may or may not prove successful -- painting and printing on lutrador. I want to see what happens as I layer and collage a variety of materials, from silk gauze to rice paper and gel medium transfers, to various surfaces. I have felt inspired to experiment more with mixed media collages recently. I had learned a number of collaging techniques from a wonderful area artist, Alice Gold, at the Memorial Art Gallery many years ago. It was rekindled when I taught next to Fran Skiles class at Fabrications last year-- I loved the results and realized how much more I can do with layers on fabric.

One last experiment is underway today that is a variation of the process that I learned from my first screen printing class with Jane Dunnewold.

Here's a fast print on cotton with aquarelle crayons and acrylic medium that Jane demonstrated in that screen printing class long ago. I'm also trying another screen using conte crayon and will trying overprinting this. I'll share the applications of these experiments with you soon, hopefully.

Of course the ideal outcome will be for each of these techniques to be successful as one layer on multi-layered surfaces and expand the types of marks I am able to make on fabric.

Endless Persistence

2009-09-15T13:24:00.001-07:00

This morning I received a thank-you email from a fellow New Yorker. She wrote, “Best of luck ( the kind that comes from high intentions, hard work and endless persistence!) for all your endeavors.”

Luck has always fascinated me. I believe in it, the random happy accidents and good fortune that come our way and delight us.

I also believe in focused, daily work to achieve goals. Suzanne’s note suggests that the BEST luck may just come from setting our sites on the target we desire most and taking good aim before we start pulling triggers. And if we miss the first time, to try again.

Is it any accident that this little note found its way into my inbox to cheer me up after I have spent a number of days working on details, details, details until I wanted to throw my hands up and holler “uncle”?

It reminds me that all the work I do, no matter how small or inconsequential or tedious it may seem, all revolves around my VERY high intentions about my art and creativity.

As I worked last week on idea after idea after idea to try and knock back the shiny gold lettering on the long vertical piece I’m working on, I knew I would eventually find an answer. Using what had originally been the other half of this piece, I tried overpainting the letters in numerous ways, spraying black on the lettered areas – even tested layering a dark sheer over that area --- but in the end, an application of raw sienna and deep berry metallic Shiva paintsticks provided just enough of a matte overlay to dull the sheen of the gold a bit. This gives it a bit more of an antique feel and helps integrate the letters better into the colorations of the aged surface.

Today I’m adding some machine stitching to the silk – those all important cracks and fissures to punctuate the surface - which I’ve backed with canvas. I’m debating some additional hand embroidery. In addition, I’ve purchased a larger canvas wrapped frame (thanks to a good sale at Michael’s on the gallery wrapped frames) to paint and possibly age and will try to complete and mount this piece on it by the end of the week.

Completing it and liking the results would feel extremely satisfying. Completing it and SELLING it would be extraordinary.