Communicating through Making

 

“Art is a very high, rarified form of communication,” John Frame says in these videos that I discovered at Daily Art Muse. 

John describes his creative system in the first video as a triangle that combines intellectual, technical elements and emotionally authentic experiences, which are “woven together by intuition, which rests at the center.”

His multi-faceted, slow process of bringing creative visions to life, so clearly articulated in these videos, is  both comforting and affirming for all of us who love the creative process. These are made all the richer by the addition of his own original musical score. Clearly a maker whose intuition guides his creative choices, I am touched by the stillness and concentration that brings his ideas into realization.

It does not matter what tools or medium we choose to use to create. It does matter that we seek clarity, focus and connection with what is true and meaningful to us. When we do that as artists, our work becomes infused with strength and emotional content.

 

Listening to the Quiet

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

 

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.