A Musing Artful Meanders

Tea at the Museum

2007-12-29T17:42:38Z

"Art is the Queen of all sciences communicating knowledge to all the generations of the world."

~ Leonardo da Vinci

Having tea in a lovely museum...

That's where I would like to be on this dreary day... wandering hallways resplendent with art. Basking in an environment which celebrates the art of cultures from around the globe.
Museum moments I have known and loved:

A day in NYC at the Met: immense; diverse; revered; amazing.
Or amidst billowing clouds and elongated landscapes in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Rembrandt's rich, dark backgrounds... did he use mommia* as a pigment to create that warm depth?
Ayutalla, Thailand... Ancient temples, sculpture and wandering elephants.
Golden Buddhas in Bangkok.
The endless hallways of the Louvre... There is NEVER enough time in the Louvre.
The Gold Museum in Lima with it's wild, adjacent Erotic Ceramic Art museum. Where one can find thousand year old vessels made to look like corn or bats, and others of

Ceramic mice on a Mochica vessel

llamas, mice and/or humans making love? Mice doing a piggyback rodent dance. All exquisitely painted with engobes, burnished and fired in pit fires with perfect control.
Robert Irwin's Orb in the Chicago Art Institute, my first encounter was in 1977 on a cross country trip. Still vivid, a round glowing orb on the wall exuding light.
Boston's MFA, The Guitar Show
Shuffling through the sycamore leaves from Reading Terminal to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Marcel Duchamps' room amazed me. The impressionists.

As a young teen I used to get on a bus in Towson, Maryland to ride to the Washington DC mall and wander alone in the National Gallery for the entire day, before catching the bus back. Such freedom. Such inspiration and validation.

But today, instead of exploring a museum, I am in my studio, honoring the muse in my own way, making art.
Playing with image, surface and color.
Making an inquiry into beauty and communication.

*more on mommia to come in a later post...

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Inquiring minds sometimes ask...

2007-12-27T11:59:10Z

Inquiring minds sometimes ask: Why nests? Why eggs? Why twining twigs and grasses?
It began with birds... the chicken was definitely before the egg for me.

The chicken was before the egg

Birds have always been magical and fascinating friends. Once while I hid in the sheltering branches of a sizable yew during a childhood game of hide and seek, a flock of cedar waxwings surrounded the tree, feasting on ripe berries. Sleek olive feathers and waxy red tips on the wings... a slightly scary mask over beady eyes as they gobbled juicy red berries... all very memorable for a five year old.

Photo by Pete Myers

When I lived on a sage brush studded desert mesa near Taos, New Mexico I drew many, soaring ravens in pen and ink, and painted large still lifes with feathers and other treasures. At UNM my drawings often included entangled threads and grasses. So strange to think of now, that I have been nurturing this imagery for so long.

Then while in residency at the Vermont Studio Center I brought along an Audubon Field Guide of Nests, and simultaneously undertook a study of transparent acrylic, and the architecture of the nest of a Common Yellowthroat, an elusive, tiny, bright yellow bird. They are always thrilling to discover in the underbrush.

Refuge 12" x 60"

That was several years ago. I continue to be fascinated by the texture, intricacy and beauty of nests, and the creatures who create them. The eggs were later.
Time to head in to the studio. It's getting light out already.

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Endings and Beginnings

2007-12-24T05:17:03Z

Heart nest red

This new heart nest is beginning to take shape. I have to finish it before the end of the year... my new goal. One new large painting a month, in addition to continuing with commissions and sculpture.
This one needs more definition, more feathers, and work on the eggs.

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Dark of the year...

2007-12-22T01:17:27Z

Dickens

This is a world of action, and not for moping and droning in.
-Charles Dickens

Winter solstice: darkness prevails. It would be easy to mope and drone.
Instead, listening to the resonance of Bach's Cello Suite #4 in E flat... rich and energetic cello, soaring and looping like a bird in flight... Perfect for dismal winter day on the darkest day of the year.
Following the advice of Alyson Stanfield who has a fabulous art business consultation website. I went wandering on the web looking for old friends and their blogs. That and a card from Carel Pieter Brest Van Kampen led me to two fabulous sites:
Carel's http://rigorvitae.blogspot.com/ Carel's vibrant work has amazed me and the rest of the world of art and science since long before I met him. He is an amazing piano player too!

and Birdspot, the sketchblog of Catherine Hamilton, with delicate pencil drawings that I would love to see in the real world.Two completely different artists who see deeply.
Meanwhile I am doing my own looping with the new heart nest, twining delicate ribbon into the grasses, over a deep red and gold surface.

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Dark of the moon... clearing the slate...

2007-12-09T04:31:07Z

“There are two mistakes one can make along the road to truth...not going all the way, and not starting.

- Buddha

Cleaning the studio, wiping the palette, sweeping up the shreds and shards and debris.
Making a quiet space in the center of my own chaos. Getting ready for the next phase.

So many projects in process. Half started, just started, barely started, nearly finished. To step back in and regain the momentum is challenging, but I've done it so many times. It's not even a leap of faith anymore... re-entering the groove.
Co/So selected Hope Entwined V for the show in January. It will be good to see it on Newbury Street.

Hope Entwined V acrylic 3'x 6'

And here I am in the studio at 2 am again. It's so hard to leave. Working on color layers, crackled, textured, sanded and over-layed... What shines from within?
My clay is prepared, the sculpture stand clean... the drawing done, the maquette in place.

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Commissions

2007-11-11T22:02:19Z

Nest in Paradise

The bird of paradise alights only upon the hand that does not grasp.: John Berry

I'm not sure who John Berry was or is... or which of the several John Berrys in Wikipedia were the source of that quote. Grasping is different from reaching.
Commissions... often an onerous chore.Working for someone else's muse. This one was not (a chore.) Although the on-going day to day work of getting it done is always surprising.
It was a celebration of life and beauty and sharing, and mysterious metaphor. A surprise anniversary gift with secret significance. Such a pleasure to spend time with these beautiful flowers. Bird of Paradise. So exotic and different.
A fun part of the process was seeking out the true colors of the flower. Sometimes the buds, which are quite sword-like, are purple and magenta with pale green highlights. Improbable and wild, even for a tropical mother nature. I traveled all over Cambridge, Mass with Andrew Towl, who had tried to find a blooming flower for me, which ultimately we happened upon at a Whole Foods florist shop after giving up in the fancy professional greenhouses. And now the painting is on a wall in Brandon, Vermont.

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Concerning the spiritual in MY art

2007-10-27T18:39:19Z

"The true work of art is born from the 'artist': a mysterious, enigmatic, and mystical creation.
It detaches itself from him, it acquires an autonomous life, becomes a personality, an independent subject, animated with a spiritual breath, the living subject of a real existence of being." - Kandinsky

When the art speaks to me, tells me what it is... then I know I'm on the right track... When it speaks to someone else then I know I have succeeded.
Diva of the Eclipse emerged from the clay last night. Perhaps she should be Magdalena of the Cliffs...
She IS a cliff.. those undulating landforms of slick rock and sandstone. Using the white clay has been a nice change. So smooth and easy to carve... Working small is liberating... she's about 12" as opposed to life sized..
But I immediately think of making her immense: large enough to lean against like the warm desert rock from which she emerged. She is white now...pure clay. But that will change soon enough. Sandstone and slick rock will emerge
Bones of the earth.

Diva of the Eclipse

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New Clay Divas under the Harvest Moon

2007-10-25T20:24:23Z

Beauty is a form of genius- is higher indeed than genius as it needs no explanation. It is one of the great facts in the world like sunlight, or springtime, or the reflection in dark water of that silver shell we call the moon - Oscar Wilde

Venuswithbird.www

Here is the full moon AGAIN, that luminous orb making visible a cycle of energy that pulls the heaving tides as well as the blood in my veins. It energizes me...
I am trying to regulate myself. Sleep at more normal hours and still get work done. To conquer the rhythms that make it easier for me to work from 9-3 am than 9-3 pm.

I am in the process of developing a new group of relatively small clay sculptures for a show at Gallery in the Field. Using a new white clay is interesting. It works very differently. #66 has sand for grog. A finer grained clay than my old faithful #30 red. #65 is the same stoneware without any grog. Buttery like porcelain but easier to build with. It has a austere purity to it.. clean as a snow drift.
Less of a primadonna medium than porcelain.

Fran asked for an artist's statement. Always a good touchstone to reach within and find out why.

Venus with Bird with surface finish

Here is the artist's statement I just wrote about the new clay pieces:

My first artistic efforts are very clear in my memory: I would sit in the sun on a huge, flat rock fashioning objects from pebbly red clay dug from a ditch in the meadow below my mother's garden. I made my first glazed goddess figurine at age eight, and they have revealed themselves to me ever since. Their manifestation is variable. Sometimes they are Madonnas, sometimes Venus figurines, more lately they are Divas. Powerful and mysterious women, connecting the spiritual and material world with grace and humor and song.

That first glazed goddess was made at Hampton Elementary school out of clay brought in by an art-on-a-cart art teacher. Here I am so many years later, carving these graceful figures, waiting for them to tell me who they are, what they are holding; what are the attributes of these Madonnas?

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Show Daze

2007-10-10T20:06:30Z

Three days in a booth at Paradise City Arts Festival in Northampton, Mass.
What a wonderful city... what terrific art... what an exhausting process...

My Paradise City Arts Festival Booth

Preparing, choosing, loading, hauling, unloading, hanging, standing.
Then after three days of sitting and standing, and more sitting and standing... The process begins again in reverse.
Lots of WONDERFUL feedback, and some nice sales. It's hard to let the paintings go away though.

The creative quality and integrity of the work of other participants was uplifting. To be surrounded by such beautiful, well-made and diverse art: wearable fabric; hangable fabric; jewelry; sculpture; painting in every medium; prints of every sort.... the energy was tangible.

Northampton is a great town. Many diversions and amusements there, in keeping with the complex interwoven layers of cultures in this town populated by professors, students, farmers, business people and the people who are drawn to a melting pot of ideas and learning. From lovely craft and art galleries, great bookstores; elegant boutiques; every imaginable sort of restaurant; to Walmart.

The show organizers were very positive about my work. They put me on their "Showstoppers" page in their 40 page glossy magazine writing: "This Vermont artist brings a realist's eye, a painterly touch and a draftsman's expertise to her drawings and paintings of nature," along with a few other flattering sentences and a photo of Homecoming.

And to top it all off, on the last afternoon as I was chatting with an onlooker, a woman standing in the aisle caught my eye. She was staring at me intensely. In a heartbeat I realized it was Lorna Hinton Kepes, who I last saw about 15 years ago when we had a similar chance encounter on the peak of Mount Abraham on the Long Trail. Prior to that our last meeting was in Arroyo Seco, New Mexico in 1975. A lifetime ago... We were young, full of hope, with every intention of saving the world.
It's good to see her and find out that we're both still working on it.

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Re-centering

2007-09-22T23:44:00Z

Heart nest (with butterfly?)

See how nature -- trees, flowers, grass -- grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence...
We need silence to be able to touch souls. - Mother Teresa

Back in the studio after these months of travel and teaching.
All so very good, all so very fascinating.
All so very visually and intellectually cacophonous.
I am overwhelmed by the complexity and contrasts... Sounds, scents, colors, cultures.. . From the Libyan Sea to Lake Powell, Chora Sfakia, Crete, to Bullfrog Utah. And in between, the abundant garden, the intensity of kid's workshops in my studio.

Now trying to settle down, sift through the summer's stimuli...
to see what's most important in the remaining reflection as the ripples smooth.

Trying to touch my own soul, reach right down into the center of my being and find a core of truth.
Just the simple act of dipping the brush into the paint and putting it on the canvas... a ritual of reconstruction, of growth and acknowledgment. A meditation.

One positive step, soon to be followed by another.
Meanwhile, autumn is catching me by surprise.

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