Artist Curator Writer
This piece iterates an ongoing exploration of the hip joint, the space in and around where the head of the femur sits in the socket of the pelvis known as the acetabulum. The yogi reaches through time when she reaches for a deep bind, exploring layers of tension in the body. The pose here is pasasana, or noose pose, and is the first pose of the 2nd series of Ashtanga yoga.
I’m participating in an Artist 2 Work incubator program designed by Professor Ellen Wetmore of UMASS Lowell. So far we’ve had lectures from professors on value proposition, basic marketing concepts tailored specifically for artists and the art market, branding, and targeting the luxury market. I’ve learned many new things and relearned things I’ve forgotten that I knew.
Our first homework assignment was to write a value proposition. She asked for 2 sentences and I wrote a paragraph. Typical. Separately from the class I read advice on applying for grants that seemed sound- have 3 people review your grant proposal before you submit it, and include at least one person who does not speak the lingo. The rationale is that not everyone on the board of folks reviewing your grant will be fluent in art speak, and you need to reach them too. So I had my husband read my value proposition, and at first I though he just didn’t get it, but by the next morning I realized that I just wasn’t being very clear.
Good advice, that.
My prints and multi-media pieces inhabit the space between yearning and falling, between striving to realize a potential, and the habits/patterns/programs that enmesh us in ways of being that do not serve our higher selves. The LIQUORS sign becomes a stand-in for addictions of all kinds, and the hopelessness that trails them. The asana, or yoga poses, represent an embodied, intuitive knowing that links human potential with universal themes; dendrites and star charts, our mitochondria like tiny suns inside our bodies. In the time bound dance between despair and enlightenment, time, pattern and color all have their part to play.
I recently went to Wellesley to see the Kathe Kollwitz/ Krieg Cycle exhibit at the Davis Museum & Cultural Center. I’d write about that, but Altoon Sultan already did that here. While I was in the vicinity, I went to Altoon’s current exhibit at the David Hall Fine Arts Gallery downtown. I went with children, and so didn’t have quite as much time to really look as I would have liked. It’s a bit distracting when your middle daughter starts rolling around the gallery on a wheeled chair, even if the owner is exceedingly nice and even encouraging.
Still, I have admired her from afar for some time and it was wonderful to see these exquisite little works in person.
I was also given a large full color catalog with a full length essay about her work, which I will read as soon as I remember where I put it. It was been that kind of week. Two weeks, really. But today I’m back in the studio and it’s been so long since I updated my website/blog, that I’m feeling slightly ashamed.
Not for lack of working, however. Here is a new piece:
It’s similar to what I’m working on today, only now it’s a diptych, with more orange. An interesting confluence, to me at least, is that the way Altoon’s hooked wool rectangles hang from pins on the gallery wall causes them to be not perfectly straight. The gelatin plates I’m using are the same way, and as they age they become more and more irregular. All in the interest of subverting the tyranny of the rectangle.
The diptych idea popped into my head about a month ago, but it requires a bit of a set-up to line everything up, which I finally did today.
One more thing. I’ve become hooked on listening to the Modern Art Notes Podcasts while I work. They had a really interesting one on Picasso’s sculpture at the MoMA, and today I listened to an older one on Marylin Minter and David Ireland. If you like modern and contemporary art, they are a great way to learn while you work.
February 2015 was the longest month ever, enough said. But it’s March now, and as the days lengthen, and my daughter’s art class starts up again, I find myself in Boston with more frequency.
A taut exhibit in a corrider at MFA Boston has me exploring contemporary Chinese Art. This show is from the collection of Carolyn Shu and Rene Balcer. The above piece is one of the Face Mazes of Lu Shengzhong. This is just a teaser, I’ll have to get back next week to document it better as the MFA does not seem to be hyping this show so much. I’ve learned to forgive the MFA its excesses because it comes out with gems like this, and I figure it has to pay the bills some how.
This is a reflection of myself in a piece by Teresita Fernandez, a MacArthur Grantee whose exhibit at MassMoCA (which might still be up) was just… it induced perspectival epiphany, among other things. There’s a talk by her somewhere that was also quite good. Forgive me but I didn’t make a note of the title of the piece. It’s over where the side entrance used to be, if that helps. On the first floor, contemporary side.
Hommage á Monsieur Matisse, collage and monotype
This small collage was made after a trip to the MoMA to see the Matisse Cutouts, which were glorious. It’s not yet glued here which is interesting to me because Matisse himself didn’t glue down his cutouts.
A good day in the studio yesterday. Sometimes it feels like you spend all day to get one interesting thing at the very end. It took the whole day to get there. Not that I’ll throw out the others, but suddenly it all crystallized. That, that indefinable thing that I didn’t know I was looking for until I saw it.
One place where I have not done well as an artist is dealing with rejection. I sort of suck at that. Today I received a rejection to a show I was hoping to get into. What I normally do with rejection is is to stop trying for a while. This is not a productive or useful response. Today what I will do is read a chapter from The War of Art, and then decide what to apply to next.
The important thing isn’t that I please others. The important thing here is that I am absolutely true to my inner vision.
I reject that rejection.
Lately my sketchbook has been a place to catch spare ink, notes from podcasts, and stray thoughts I don’t have time to tend to just yet. The page below is bit of a breakthrough in my thinking. The letters are from a liquor store sign in a nearby town, carved onto a plate and stamped here.
Below is the same idea with the LIQUOR sign, but I didn’t like the scale and the obviousness of the whole thing, it seemed too too. N’est-ce pas?
Colored pencil, pen and ink, birch bark, duct tape, akua ink.
And here is the Islamic pattern, although I goofed it up with too many circles. Gouache paint, colored pencil, stray ink from a plate my oldest daughter carved.
I need to call it something else, do more research into these patterns and who made them.
I took the journal apart to photograph, intending to put it back together. It’s one of those wire bound journals that the pages are forever falling out of. Which turned out, in the end, to be rather useful. However, middle child decided the wire was intriguing and gave it an entirely new shape. It might be time for a new studio journal.
