Category Archives: Subject Matter

Letters From Home

©Thomas Dambo at the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens

Among the many highlights of our trip to Maine last month was a visit to the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens in Boothbay. It’s a wonderful place, whether you’re a plant enthusiast or not.

©Thomas Dambo at the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens

Thomas Dambo’s larger-than-life trolls, dubbed The Guardians of the Seeds, pushed this year’s visit into the realm of the magical. If you’re headed in that general direction, they are definitely worth a detour!

©Thomas Dambo at the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens

Aside from enjoying the change of scene that comes with any vacation, I find being in a new environment has a tendency to shake fresh ideas loose, allowing them to rise to the surface. This trip was no exception. I had a bit of a forehead smacking moment when I realized that the iconic house shape I’ve been using over the past year is the same as an open envelope’s silhouette. Talk about a lightbulb moment! It looks like my work for the fall is now laid out for me.

House / Envelope

Many things represent my idea of where I grew up, and in combining some of them with the merged house/open envelope shape, I’m imagining the possibilities of a series of “Letters from Home”.

What better way to kick off the series than with a mussel shell, one of the more common sights on any rocky Maine beach? They served as foraged butter dishes for our lobster picnics, and I have collected more than my fair share of them over the years because of their purple-y color.

Working with those deep blues and purples has been pure pleasure this week; colors that vibrate against the red and orange of this shibori-dyed shape – originally intended as a house, now both house and envelope. What began as an experiment for carrying a symbol forward, now feels a bit like kismet, pushing the idea of home in a very personal way.

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Update:
I mentioned at the end of August that I’d let you know once the recording of the artists talk “Signify: A Conversation About Meaning and Technique” (a Zoom discussion I participated in surrounding this summer’s exhibition Hidden Messages: Old and New) was available for viewing. As promised, here is the link. I’ll warn you, it’s an hour long – so grab your beverage of choice. I think you’ll find the conversation interesting, down to earth, and in good humor.

Just the Facts

At the end of a long day one of my favorite ways to recharge is to sit on the sofa with my sketchbook, the pooch snoring beside me, and to zone out drawing whatever is right in my line of sight on the coffee table.

There is no pre-arranging or readjusting of the clutter and, unlike most of my drawings, I don’t plan around composition (although once underway I do allow myself some selective edits). In other words, there’s no sugar coating or prettying-up of these images — they are just the facts.

The subject is pretty much always the same – a mug of tea, cup of water, or can of seltzer that I was too lazy to pour into a glass, plus whatever jumble of books and magazines happen to be sprawled out across the surface. As I’m winding down for the day, this is a relaxing chance to practice without any concern for outcome.

I inherited our coffee table from my grandmother and it has graced our many living rooms for over thirty years. Of Middle Eastern origin, it’s basically a large brass tray with “pie-crust” edges and beautiful designs and characters incised onto the surface. I can’t begin to do justice interpreting those designs but, provided they aren’t completely covered with whatever we were last reading, sometimes I try to include a bit of them, finding they can potentially add another level of interest and perspective to a drawing.

The table top sits on interlocking legs that often appear at the bottom of these sketches, an element that may seem confusing if you aren’t aware of what they are. I especially like the way they create diagonals that echo the edges of the scattered books and magazines above.

Side note: This table carries emotional history as well as being pretty and practical. When our kids were learning to walk, they would grab onto the pie-crust edges and side-step their way around the perimeter. It’s a big oval with no corners, so I never had to worry about head bumps then — or once they were fully on the move. Funny how things change. I surely had no idea at that busy time of life that it would morph into a representation of relaxation!

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One last and heartening note about the practice of drawing: I was really taken with Terry Gross’ Fresh Air interview with author/artist Jonathan Santlofer a couple of weeks ago. Did you hear it? The episode surrounds Santlofer’s newly published memoir The Widower’s Notebook, and the way that drawing helped him begin to cope with the sudden and completely unexpected death of his wife. His story about drawing during that time is quite moving and, for anyone who draws regularly, I think you’ll agree it rings quite true.
I’m looking forward to getting my hands on a copy.

The Dramatic Ordinary

One of my goals this year is to read more artist memoirs / biographies. (Suggestions please!) While it’s interesting to get the detailed and distanced perspective an art historian can provide, there is nothing quite as enlightening as an individual describing their thoughts and journey in their own words.

I just finished Sally Mann’s 2015 memoir Hold Still: A Memoir with Photographs. On many levels it reads like a novel; Mann goes into great depth about her family history, and those folks were anything but boring! More importantly, she does a wonderful job of relating how all the varied people and parts of her life fit together and have influenced the direction of her work.

But on a more personal level, one quote resonated particularly strongly in relation to subject matter. She says, “Part of the artist’s job is to make the commonplace singular, to project a different interpretation onto the conventional”.

In creating the pieces I do, I spend a lot of time thinking about how ordinary events and circumstances are really more, in that they add depth and meaning to our day-to-day, making routine experiences worthy of notice and appreciation. My drawings and stitched work speak to those often unsung moments, acknowledging that their influence is greater than we would ever guess.

I think David Byrne said it best:

“Most of our lives aren’t that exciting, but the drama is still going on in the small details.”

Elizabeth Fram

Eye of the Needle

Category Archives: Subject Matter

Letters From Home

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Just the Facts

The Dramatic Ordinary