Author Archives: ehwfram

About ehwfram

I am an artist living in Vermont, inspired by the day-to-day details of life.

The Anchor of Routine

Have you read Mason Currey’s 2013 book Daily Rituals: How Artists Work? It outlines the daily routines and habits that enable/d and enhance/d the work of well-known artists, past and present. If you haven’t seen it, check your library — not only is it a treat to read about both the serious and the quirky habits of artistic icons, but it’s worth thinking about how their methods may relate to the way you set up your own day. It is the type of book that can be read from front to back in the usual fashion, or just as successfully opened to any page to read from at random.

Dreaming ©Dennis Edwards, Pastel, 33 x 48.5 inches The images in this week’s post are from the current exhibit Body Beautiful that will be up through October 12, 2019 at the Grange Hall Cultural Center. Viewing is by event, chance or appointment. grangehallcc@gmail.com or 802.244.4168

Although it’s been several years since I’ve read it in its entirety, every so often I will pick it up to read about an artist or two, finding reassurance in the reminder that even legends of the art world have, or had, a repetitive rhythm to their workday that incorporated other activities alongside their creative work.

And in thinking more deeply about it, I realized that there is a bridge between self-created “breaks” during the day (a luxury many of the artists written about enjoyed that now seems quaintly anachronistic), and fitting in the necessary chores of daily living. Certainly many male artists of a time were not concerning themselves with 2nd jobs, laundry, meal planning/preparation, or child care and schedules, but the big picture is it’s pretty universal to rely on a rhythm of start-and-stop-and-start-again. Perhaps what may appear to us as interruptions in our studio time are what actually keep the juices flowing.

Diana Takes A Brake ©John Opulski, Oil, 30 x 40inches

An intentional routine may be one of the better friends we have; it is what keeps us productive.
And it’s worth bearing in mind that this isn’t a phenomenon that only relates to artists, rather it impacts all creative work, regardless of arena. I was interested recently to hear Girl, Stop Apologizing author Rachel Hollis say that every high achiever she’s ever met has some type of morning routine. She noted that those individual routines vary widely, but to a person, every go-getter has one. Hollis herself has developed a solid, non-negotiable morning routine that includes the same 4 basic components: moving her body, doing something where she learns, laying out her intentions for the day, and practicing gratitude. For her it’s a 2 hour commitment, which means she gets up way earlier than most of us would choose, but it’s how she makes it happen and I totally get it when she says this system makes everything else possible during the rest of her busy day.

Little/Big ©Emily Waters, Oil on paper

For me, working out first thing and knocking off a few household chores before breakfast gets my brain in gear and leaves me feeling free to get down to the more important (and rewarding) business ahead in the studio. And I’ve come to recognize the numerous benefits of my afternoon walk at the insistence of my 4-legged pal, Quinn. It’s taken reading some of this research to fully realize that, yes, organizing my work days in a loosely predictable way around everything else that needs doing definitely serves as an anchor, keeping me on track while setting me up to be more productive artistically.

Rose Kimono ©Elizabeth Fram, Ink and colored pencil on paper, 18 x 24 inches

If you’re interested in this idea, here are a few more articles to support the theory. And I wonder, have you too settled into a regular routine that serves your studio work to best advantage?

I’ve Interviewed 300 High-Achievers About Their Morning Routines. Here’s What I Learned. by Benjamin Spall
Writing Tips: Why Is A Creative Routine So Important For Authors? by Joanna Penn
10 Famous Writers And Their Daily Creative Routines by Koty Neelis

Technical Trenches

If only my days were just drawing and stitching!

This past week I have spent way too much time on the phone with my server, trying to get things straightened around so that I can once again set up automatic delivery of my weekly blog posts to your inboxes. Let’s just say it hasn’t been fun, and I surely hope that with perseverance I’ll get it figured out one way or another. I guess the upside is that I’m learning digital technicalities that I never bargained on…although it’s all very superficial and, frankly, there are ways I’d much rather spend my time.

Scott ©2019 Elizabeth Fram, 18 x 23 inches, Graphite and colored pencil on paper. Love this paper – Canson Edition. It has both a rough and a smooth side to choose from. This is the smooth side. It takes varying pressures of line beautifully and erases cleanly. It also picks up color easily.

In the meantime, these images will give you a taste of what I’ve been doing both textile and drawing-wise. It goes without saying that I’ve been grateful for any and all work that gets me away from the computer!

Making progress on this latest…

On the brighter side, consider a visit to the The Grange Hall Cultural Center this month to see their new exhibit Body Beautiful which runs through October 12th. Two of my life drawings are included — a first for me since I haven’t shown any of them publicly yet, except here at Eye of the Needle.

And finally, because it’s always a treat to be inspired by the natural world, take a look at @pottersarms on Instagram for photos of such color and lyricism that they will at times take your breath away. Keep scrolling for her magnificent photos of flowers, both alive and dead.

❖

I’m looking forward to heading to The Netherlands soon to finally see the 2019 Textile Biennial at the Rijswijk Museum. It’s been a long wait. I was overjoyed to learn that both Alone Together and Respite will be remaining in that part of the world with their new owners!

The Missing Ingredient

It’s been a frustrating week with this latest piece. In my effort to get it off the ground, the easiest (and most fun) part — aside from initially making the stitched-resist arches — was going to my favorite thread store to choose colors.* But doing that was a bit like having dessert first, and everything beyond that step has been an ongoing struggle.

Thread Choices

My first problem has been size. The chess pawns that will appear in the background are so small that it took me until Wednesday to figure out how best to stitch them so that they didn’t just look like amorphous blobs, completely losing their definition once one stepped back from the piece.

The second issue has been color. It should be a no-brainer to stick with light-valued thread so that the image has contrast and definition against a background of red and black squares. But the pawns on this side of the piece are going to be black, and I quickly discovered that simply using black thread not only zapped all the life out of them, but they soon became lost in their equally dark background.

I had hoped to keep things simple with just a running stitch outline. But it was too simple, and though I don’t have a picture, once I stitched in black behind this pawn, it became completely lost.

It took me a while to figure it out, but compromise was the missing ingredient. All week I’ve been trying different stitch patterns and different colors, wondering how in the world I was going to get these pieces to sit confidently in their red and black background while conveying that they are the darker half of the chess set.

Another failed attempt – but I’m getting closer by branching out to other colors.

The answer is twofold: artistic license and letting go.
Using a deep blue, which has more richness than mere black, has been both an escape hatch and my saving grace. Pairing it with a variety of other colors has allowed me to make a stab at fine-tuning the definition of a pawn, breathing some life into this tricky part of the image while still conveying the impression that these are the darker pieces of the chess set. The other solution is to let the red dye stand in for the red squares and only stitch the darker squares. Why bother to restate the obvious?

Here is my solution after countless stitched and re-stitched attempts.

I’ve only just begun, but it feels like I’m finally on my way. Time to leave this hurdle behind me in order to get ready for the next one.

*The Wooden Needle in Stowe, VT has a vast selection and variety of beautiful threads. It is really worth a trip if you’re in our area.

The Value of Nothing

I have just redone my website — please go check it out. Without a doubt, it took way longer to accomplish than expected but, ultimately, the project has been a positive instance of how taking a step back can help to sharpen one’s focus.

Concurrently and fortuitously, I’ve been slowly making my way through Jenny Odell’s How to Do Nothing — a gift from someone I admire, not least for the way she controls the technology in her life rather than it controlling her. It’s a dense read for me so I am absorbing it in small increments, but I am impressed by its message of resistance against the reality of 24/7 connectivity and data production.

The gist of what Odell has to share is that one can thoughtfully resist, not by doing anything specific, but by simply being present in our environment. She maintains that “only (by being) in regular contact with the tangible ground and sky can we learn how to orient and to navigate in the multiple dimensions that now claim us”, which in turn is a way to find relief from the chaos and anxiety that have become a business model for the so-called attention economy.

Showing this image is a bit like thinking out loud. I rarely plan so much in advance before beginning to stitch, let alone show a working drawing like this. But, as I’ve begun to move ahead, this piece it isn’t materializing at all in the way I’d hoped, and I’m not sure yet how I’m going to dig myself out from the ditch I’ve landed in. There is going to be a lot of trial and error in my future. Yet, it’s just as important to share the challenging underside of making art as it is the successes, as the finished product is only a small fraction of the adventure.

Redoing my website has been something of a necessary evil that has cost a lot of time at the computer as I learn and adapt to new software. But the greater lesson of the experience has surfaced through the act of tweaking my various statements and in uploading new images. Via that exercise I’ve become keenly aware that, while not consciously intended as such, my work is also a quiet form of resistance. The making of it and the end result is an “under the radar” place of refuge, a slow and methodical means of centering on small things that have the potential to carry significance if one is of a mind to see them from that perspective.

Coincidentally, while I was digesting the overlap between Odell’s thoughts and my own, photographer Michelle Saffran’s seasonal studio newsletter arrived. In it, Michelle writes very eloquently about elements of her process as they’ve been unfolding lately. And, as you will see, her queries streamline seamlessly with Odell’s observations and my own inclination toward finding beauty in what might be overlooked as ordinary.

Michelle has given me permission to share her words with you here and I hope they hold as much meaning for you as they do for me. Please visit her website to see examples of her striking work.

Over the last year or more I have been walking the land, smaller than an acre, around my house and photographing whatever I notice. I wander without agenda, during all seasons, times of day and weather conditions. Often I am drawn outside by shifts of color from the waning sun or from an overhead bank of storm clouds. Other times I head outside because I want to see – see what? I’m not sure. The area is as familiar to me as my own face yet each time I approach it I see something new. There is something unexpected that comes from the routine of looking at the same thing over a protracted period of time. I wonder about the meaning of this work and why it is important to me. It does seem important, even if I don’t have the words to say why. The images that emerge from this act of walking and looking mean more than recording a specific piece of land. Yet when I try and pin down a purpose to this work my mind scrambles and can’t hold onto thoughts, something just beyond my consciousness is driving me. I can’t quite put my finger on it. ~Michelle Saffran

Back to School

It’s that time of year again.
And while not formally, in my own way I too have gone back to school in an effort to keep my drawing from getting too rusty while I wait for our life drawing sessions to start back up in September. The school I’m referring to is proko.com, a deep well of lessons, videos, demonstrations, and anatomy resources created by drawing instructor Stan Prokopenko. It’s a terrific source of solid information with the added advantage of bending to the convenience of my erratic schedule.

My goal has been to concentrate on hands, which I find one of the most challenging elements to draw. But, as I methodically make my way through promo.com’s free library of lessons that span from rock-bottom basics through figure drawing, portrait/head drawing, and the anatomy of the human figure, it’s quickly become obvious that rather than just polishing up some rough edges, I’ve only just begun to scratch the surface of the expanse of what I need to learn and the work I have ahead of me. It’s daunting, but it’s also very exciting and should keep me busy for a good long while if I stick with it.
For other resources on drawing hands, see this post.

The other thing I really wanted to accomplish during this time that our sessions are on hiatus is to experiment with different papers to see if there is one that stands out as most appealing to my sensibilities and style of drawing. The fact that the subject matter in these practice drawings is relatively repetitious has opened the door to discovering nuances of difference between the various papers I’ve selected. Key questions I’m keeping in mind are: is the paper hard or soft? can I lay down a very light line and still achieve a decent dark? how much will marks smudge? and is it possible to erase without damaging the surface of the paper? Another issue to address will be how each paper receives color, but I’m just going to worry about graphite for now.

If you’re interested, Prokopenko and fellow art instructor Marshall Vandruff have an amusing and enlightening podcast called Draftsmen that touches on a variety of drawing-related subjects.

❖

I love when the stars seem to align.
We visited the Museum of Fine Arts in Montreal last weekend and one of the first pieces I came across was Cuban artist Yoan Capote’s Abstinence (Freedom) from 2014. It was particularly resonate for obvious reasons.

The piece is quite moving for its meditation on questions of freedom and migration — bronze hand casts of anonymous migrant workers sequenced to spell in sign language the word “Libertad” (Liberty). It also drills home the inherent expressiveness of hands, and in turn their capability to stand in for us as individuals. Capote describes the work as a “metaphor about the absence of voice or the incapacity of decision of common people in front of different aspects of society”.

Abstinence (Freedom), detail, Yoan Capote

Abstinence (Freedom), detail, Yoan Capote

Quite a poignant statement, don’t you think?

One Thing Leads to Another

Alyson Stanfield > Beyond the Studio podcast > Andrew Simonet > Artists U > Making Your Life as an Artist

A huge thank you to Alyson Stanfield of Art Biz Success, who recently put out a call to her Facebook connections for recommendations of podcasts and audio books, and then shared the link to the responses with her newsletter subscribers. I felt like I’d won the lottery in unearthing this treasure trove of new (to me) artist-recommended podcasts to listen to and to learn from while I work. After subscribing to about a dozen(!) of them, I struck gold with the very first episode I heard.

Artists Amanda Adams and Nicole Mueller state that their mission for their podcast, Beyond the Studio, is to help figure out the business of being an artist by “div(ing) deep into the work that happens beyond the studio”. I went back to the beginning of their archives and listened to their inaugural bookclub episode with Andrew Simonet. Simonet was a moderately successful (his words, not mine) choreographer and theater director for more than 2 decades and has transitioned into becoming an author as well. He knows something about the challenges of creative work.

Pennsylvania Peach ©2019 Elizabeth Fram, Ink and colored pencil on paper, 11 x 8.5 inches Like colors seem to have a way of seeking each other out. The cover of this recent issue of Art & Antiques magazine could have been designed to pair with this peach at its peak ripeness and the cheerful summer napkin that kept its juice off my chin as soon as this drawing was finished.

Along the way, he founded Artists U which is based in Philadelphia and is “an incubator for changing the working conditions of artists”. The goal of Artists U is to help artists build a sustainable life and practice. I encourage you to go to the site to read more about them, and then, without delay, download the free book and workbook Making Your Life as an Artist. I don’t care what discipline you work in, this is one of the best, short reads/resources for moving forward with your work that I have come across to date.

One thing definitely leads to another, and the generosity of information-sharing lifts us all.
So with that in mind…pass it on!

❖

This week My First Peony made its way back from it’s 3+ year stint at the US Embassy in Riga, Latvia, where it was part of the Art in Embassies program. It came back in perfect condition, wrapped exactly as instructed (an occurrence that, unfortunately, rarely happens when work returns from venues far and wide). I feel privileged, especially at this point in history, to be a part of a program that values artwork for its ambassadorial capacity.
If only this piece could talk…

Best Read, Summer 2019

What have you been reading this summer?

This book won’t be for everyone, but it is by far my favorite of the summer.
I found it strikingly beautiful…in its simple yet lovely prose, its sense of place and imagery, and its depth of emotion.

I can’t improve upon this review in The Guardian.

Tin Man’s epigraph:

I already feel that it has done me good to go South, the better to see the North.

~ Vincent Van Gogh in a letter to his brother Theo, May 1890

Safety Net

I’ve been sifting through my Evernote files in order to do a bit of digital housecleaning. As tasks go, revisiting the diverse array of items collected there can be both enjoyable and interesting because it often results in new and unexpected ideas.

Work in progress © Elizabeth Fram

Tools like Evernote and Pocket make it easy to file all sorts of data and images without the burden of storing paper. I never know when something I’ve saved — inspiration, business tools, specifics about art supplies, notes from my reading, calls for entry, etc. — will be useful, but sooner or later a need invariably crops up. That said, every so often it’s fruitful to review the whole lot, culling the bulk for what still resonates.

Skimming through a series of quotes saved from various readings, I found one to be particularly apropos to the new piece I’ve begun this week. At this early stage I don’t have much more than a sketchy idea of the endpoint I’m aiming for, so I know there will be plenty of trial and error ahead on the horizon. But leaning on previous lessons-learned will help me get the stitching off the ground, and I can consider the exercise a fresh opportunity to deliberately practice older methods while hopefully discovering new ways to mesh ideas with process.

In discussing the idea of “deliberate practice”, Joshua Foer writes in his book Moonwalking with Einstein,

Deliberate practice, by its nature, must be hard.
When you want to get good at something, how you spend your time practicing is far more important than the amount of time you spend. In fact, in every domain of expertise that’s been rigorously examined, from chess to violin to basketball, studies have found that the number of years one has been doing something correlates only weakly with level of performance. Regular practice simply isn’t enough. To improve, we must watch ourselves fail, and learn from our mistakes.

What a perfect testament to the desire we all have to keep trying. Some pieces make me feel a bit like I’m at the foot of a mountain that I haven’t yet figured out how to scale. The wisdom and encouragement of the above quote is reassuring, like a climbing harness or a safety net, lending support as I wrestle with the possibilities of where I want to take this piece and, perhaps more importantly, where it will eventually lead me.

Work in progress © Elizabeth Fram The stitched-resist dye in this new piece is the perfect example of deliberate practice. At this point I’ve stitched and dyed this pattern many, many times, but this time my goal was to separate the two sides of one length of cloth with opposing colors while still having the piece read as a whole. It’s a first shot at a seemingly simple idea, but tricky to accomplish, and one that will benefit from further practice.

Giving shape to a nebulous idea doesn’t come easily. I appreciate Foer articulating the importance of mindfully failing in order to succeed — an attitude that lightens the overall process.

If you’re interested in what Foer has to say about how important memory is to creativity, link back to this post.

“Composing Form”

This seems to be an unusually good summer for local exhibitions. So many, in fact, that I’ve had to schedule them into my calendar to be sure I don’t miss out. Last week I went up to the Helen Day Art Center in Stowe to see Composing Form (June 22 – Aug 24), an inspirational group show of contemporary, mostly figurative, ceramics.

Vernal ©Sergei Isupov, 2016, Porcelain, slip, glaze, 17.5 x 9 x 8 inches Isupov’s portfolio is quite impressive. Be sure to read about his Fire Sculpture

I have a soft spot for clay. My first real 9-5 job was as a potter’s apprentice one summer. I had great dreams of the pots I would make and of how my knowledge of ceramics would grow. While I can’t say I didn’t learn from the job, my take-aways weren’t at all what I had expected. The reality was my biceps grew more than my throwing skills — from wedging a tremendous amount of clay for others to throw, and from lugging 40-pound bags of it to those other potters’ cars.

Question of Honor / Lucretia (After Lucas Cranach the Elder) Teapot ©Kadri Pärnamets, 2015, Porcelain, slip, glaze, 11 x 10.5 x 5 inches

I stopped working with clay mid-way through college, but my romance with the medium still lingers. A hand-building class was my refuge almost a decade ago while our builders completed the protracted process of finishing our house after we had moved in. I have two clay dog sculptures purchased to mark the times between the loss of one family pooch and the welcoming of another, a not-so-subconscious effort to find canine comfort during those lonely days. And one of my favorite ‘always close at hand in the studio’ books to flip through when I hit a wall or need a break while working is 500 Animals in Clay: Contemporary Expressions of the Animal Form.

The varied pieces in Composing Forms create an imposing sense of presence in the gallery. If you go, be sure to pay attention to how shadows contribute to that force. The work is exquisitely detailed with underlying nuances of mystery, paired with acute observations. Perhaps more than any other quality, it will come as no surprise that I was particularly attracted to the incorporation of drawing/painting into the pieces by Sergei Isupov, Kari Pärnamets, Sin Ying Ho, and Robin Best.

Background, L: Horsepower ©Sergei Isupov, 2009, Stoneware R: Bullseye ©Sergei Isupov, 2009, Stoneware, Front: Shift ©Jerilyn Virden, 2019, Handbuilt earthenware, Hollow construction, Glazed and sanded, 8 x 22 x 12 inches

We are so fortunate to have these artists’ work to enjoy for the summer. Don’t miss out.

Drawing Ghosts

I’ve been searching online and on Instagram to see how different artists are incorporating graphite into their work. For the most part, what seems to surface leans strongly toward photo-realism. In fact, sometimes you have to look twice to be sure a given image isn’t a photograph.
Frankly, I’m not interested in that approach.

I’m much more intrigued and inspired by the fact that, as a medium, graphite makes it possible to accentuate line for line’s sake. I’m not concerned with achieving a smoothly polished drawing. Rather I prefer immediacy and rawness, qualities that I think make for a far more exciting result. The work of Stefan Zsaitsits is a perfect example. Explore his site to see the scope of his skills in portraying a beautiful image while never letting you forget that it is made from line. Graceina Samosir is another artist whose use of graphite is really exciting.

For the past several months I’ve been using Legion Stonehenge, a paper I bought for its sturdy and smooth surface. The problem is, even with the same tools I’ve been using all along, I’m finding it is much more difficult to get the fuller range of values that was possible on the lesser quality Bienfang heavyweight drawing paper I was using before the Stonehenge. Somedays I feel like I’m drawing ghosts.

I tend to use a .03 lead that leans toward the harder end of the spectrum because I want to maintain a very fine point throughout a concentrated build-up of crosshatching. I need to be sure those individual lines maintain their integrity. But I’m not fond of the resulting washed-out appearance.

I’m going to see what will happen by trying a selection of different papers. Hopefully one will have just enough tooth to get a richer drawing without compromising the sense of line I want to maintain. Our life drawing sessions are on hiatus for the next 6 weeks, which will give me some time to experiment.

❖

Humor and familiarity. One artist (Gerard Mas of Barcelona), two different bodies of work — both on My Modern Met. See and enjoy for yourself: wooden animals emerging from tree trunks & reimagined Renaissance women.