Transforming a Yellow Spot into the Sun

 

There are painters who transform the sun

into a yellow spot, but there are others who,

thanks to their art and intelligence,

transform a yellow spot into the sun.

PABLO PICASSO

 

Isn’t this a wonderful quote from an incredible artist? I found it in The Zen of Creativity: Cultivating Your Artistic Life by John Daido Loori, which I spent this past weekend reading. I had just finished an intense period of creative work last week when a wonderful new friend passed along her copy of this book to me. The timing was perfect; I was tired and stressed and somehow the thoughts and ideas that Loori shared helped me release some of the tensions that had built over the past month.

Here’s what happened. In June I had three works to enter in an international juried fiber exhibition with an August 31 entry deadline. I looked forward to taking the whole month of July off from studio work.

Then two of the works sold (who could complain about that?!) and the third one went out on consignment to an art consultant. That gave me four weeks to create three new works to meet the submission deadline. Each piece normally takes me close to a month to complete.

Somehow I did it! A key ingredient was serendipitously finding an excellent studio assistant to help. In less than four weeks, I completed three new pieces in the Book of the Ancients series and made the entry deadline!

The works in this series continue to be inspired by remembered bits of personal history,  considerations of how and what we remember over time. I’ve returned to the photographer who is able to capture the truest representation of the luminosity and colors within each work.

Jeanne Raffer Beck, Book of the Ancients 8: Remembered Teachers, 2012, 36” x 48”, composition gold leaf, spun polyester, fiberglass window screening, acrylics. Screen printing, gel medium transfers, cut, stitched and constructed.

Detail, Book of the Ancients 8

Book of the Ancients 9, 2012, 36” x 48”, composition gold leaf, spun polyester, fiberglass window screening, acrylics, oil stick. Screen printed, cut, stitched and constructed.

Detail, Book of the Ancients 9

Book of the Ancients 10, 2012, 36” x 48”, composition gold leaf, spun polyester, fiberglass window screening, acrylics, oil stick. Stenciled, cut, stitched and constructed.

Detail, Book of the Ancients 10

Photographing New Works: Your Opinion, Please

I work with three photographers. One doesn’t have a studio to photograph my larger works so I have to pay for his travel time and set up in my studio; another has a studio but it’s a two hour drive away. I took this latest work to a third photographer who has his own studio and he shot it a bit differently. Here’s your chance to take a close look and share your opinions about how it turned out – I would greatly appreciate it if you do!

We had to jury rig a hanging device for the piece. Since he is a Photoshop wizard, he was able to remove all signs of the orange clamps from the final image. Because of the slope of the hanging mechanism, the piece listed a bit to the right.

Jeanne Raffer Beck, Book of the Ancients: Memory 2, 48” x 48”, 2012

That’s the final image above. The reflectiveness of the piece by photographer #3 is less visible than the one in the piece below done by photographer #2. Here is the question:

Jeanne Raffer Beck, Book of the Ancients 3: Memory, 36” x 36”, 2011.

Which photograph best holds your attention and interest and makes you want to see more?

Hungerford Artists Open Studios and ACC Member Showcase 2012 this First Friday

 

Please join me and my guest artist, Christina Laurel, as we show our work together this Friday, August 3, 6-9 PM at the Hungerford Building First Friday Open Studios, 1115 East Main Street, Rochester, NY, at my studio, #366 on the third floor,  5 –9 PM.

Christina Laurel, Black and White Fan #14, mixed media; collaged, layered, found and prepared papers.

In addition, one of my silk and thread constructions, “Pages 7”,  is in the Arts & Cultural Council Member Showcase 2012 Exhibition at 277 North Goodman Street, a short walking distance from the Hungerford Building. You’re invited to this opening as well this Friday evening  5 – 9 PM.

In total, ACC received 204 submissions from 73 member artists. The exhibition jurors selected 20 pieces from 19 artists, so I am delighted my work is among them. The exhibition runs August 3 – 30.

Oklahoma’s FiberWorks 2012

 

I spent this past week in Oklahoma City as this year’s FiberWorks juror, lecturer and critique presenter.  FiberWorks, a juried annual exhibition produced by Fiber Artists of Oklahoma, is now held at IAO, an expansive new gallery in a downtown neighborhood where various studios like Paramount once stored and distributed movie films.

This exciting and diverse annual exhibition, mounted by its talented founder Sue Moss Sullivan for 34 years, showcases the full gamut of traditional and contemporary fiber art and fine craft.

A great crowd gathered for Friday night’s opening and I enjoyed giving an opening lecture to a supportive, interested audience.

The gallery is extremely spacious and well-appointed, with excellent portable walls and numerous pedestals, a spacious lecture/reception area in the back, kitchen, storage area and office space. It is a dream space and IAO is truly an asset to Oklahoma City artists.

On Saturday morning, we had a strong attendance of artists in the show who gathered for a juror’s walk-through and critique of each work in the exhibition.

I  felt honored to meet this talented group of artists and artisans and be so involved in this year’s exhibit. It was a busy week filled with lots of friendly artists and interesting conversations.

Check the Fiber Artists of Oklahoma website in a few weeks to see images of some of the works selected for FiberWorks 2012.

Memories and Recollections: Autobiographical Imagery

 

How would you tell the story of your life visually?? That’s a question I’ve been asking myself as this excavation of personal memories as visual imagery continues. Memory is a quirky thing – full of random bits and pieces, some crystal clear and others a bit muddied or vague.  All fuel for artistic inspiration.

My Pittsburgh childhood in the 1950’s holds both urban and suburban recollections. One vivid memory is the streetcar or trolley car. We would dress up and take the trolley downtown to shop at the downtown department stores like Joseph Horne’s, where uniformed elevator operators with white gloves would call out each floor and its products – “Fourth Floor,Ladies dresses, Lingerie”, until we reached our desired destination.

 

My grandparents ran a lunch counter and soda fountain much like the one shown in this early Pittsburgh historical photograph, called the H & H Dairy Bar. The two H’s stood for Herman & Helen Haupt. Men wore hats, suits and white shirts with ties and women wore stockings with a seam up the back, dresses and high heels every day.

As a young girl, when I visited my grandparents, I slept in the front bedroom of their apartment above their store. The wires for the trolley cars ran level with the second story window ledge. As I lay in bed I could see the sparks fly from the wires as the trolleys sped by and hear the clattering of their wheels on the tracks. The trolleys lulled me to sleep.

I’ve been mining this rich vein of recollections from my personal history and contemplating how they might fit into my work.

Living Twyla Tharp’s “The Creative Habit”

 

Twyla Tharp writes in this “practical guide” to living a creatively engaged life about a “blank space” that every creative person faces: “the task of starting with nothing and working your way toward creating something whole and beautiful and satisfying.”

I’m beginning a new cycle of creative exploration. I know I am because I feel like an infant again rather than someone who has been working with creative process for close to two decades. In this beginning place, where I’m heading is a mystery, spurred only by the raw material of an idea, an image, a phrase or thought.

So I do the only thing I know how to do. Begin somewhere. Make samples. Let the ideas simmer and expand. I don’t start with a completed vision of a masterful work of art, only a crumb of an idea that teases and tugs at my consciousness.

 

Growing from this scrap of a beginning takes work. Lots of it. Not the straight line, numerically-ordered, step-by-step, “man she knows what’s she doing” type of work. More like the “crawling on one’s knees in the dark feeling with one’s hands to find a way forward” work. But I do have an inner compass that guides this, one that trusts both the process and my skills enough to make me believe that I will indeed find a sure footing, an engagement with an idea that will lead to more focused action and work.

Twyla Tharp starts a new dance piece with what she calls “scratching”. “A dance doesn’t hit me whole and complete. Inspiration comes in molecules of movements, sometimes in nanoseconds…You can’t imagine the work, you can only generate ideas when you put pencil to paper, brush to canvas…when you actually do something physical.”

I’ve learned this. So I improvise. I create small studies. I listen to the thoughts that pop into my head just as I am waking. They whisper golden suggestions. “Create a thread map of the neighborhood you lived in as a child” was yesterday morning’s.

Today’s was “write your blog about this beginning place and how you don’t know whether you will fail or succeed, but you know you are committed to keep creating because this is who you are and this is what you do.”

 

First Friday Open Studio: Behind the Scenes, Before the Crowds Arrive

 

Since not everyone can come to Hungerford for one of our First Friday Open Studio nights (just had this one Friday, May 4), here’s a virtual tour of my studio waiting for the fun to begin:.

First stop, the door to my corner studio on the third floor of the building. Just freshly painted green, with blue panels on either side. Of course it will be open wide to welcome everyone as soon as I’m done shooting this picture. By next month, a sign – and possibly some bright Mexican tiles along the green trim – will be added to welcome you!

Once you open the door, there’s a small entryway. My husband just painted it too so now it serves as an additional small gallery space. On the right, a quick view of my new “Big, Bold Life” painting.

Look to the left, and you see “Fall Equinox” and two 12” x 12” pieces from the “Notations” series.

Just inside the entryway, the wall on the right has another painting, “Spring Equinox”, plus one of my Book of the Ancients pieces and three small framed works.

Facing you is the dark charcoal accent wall with another “Book of the Ancients” piece.

Most everyone who comes in loves the space and comments on how wonderful the natural light is.  I love it too, but on First Friday open studio nights I wish I could wave a magic wand and create more wallspace!

Close up of the pieces in front of the east wall bank of windows.

If you stand in front of that east wall bank of windows and face the west end of my studio, you’ll see the entryway on the left again and my design wall, which gets commandeered as another display space on First Fridays.

So there you go – in just an hour or so after I shot these pictures, the halls began to fill and interesting, delightful people got to visit the many unique studios and meet the artists who work in them. What a great way to spend a Friday evening.

Do come join us if you’re ever in the Rochester area!