The past several weeks have been a bit of a smorgasbord of projects. Through them all, I can’t help but think I’ve been subconsciously influenced by our reawakened garden which, especially during this glorious month of June, has visually been like a rich shot of espresso after months of presenting as the equivalent of a weak cup of chamomile tea.
Now that our show Tucked In: Resilience in Small Moments is closing at the Gruppe Gallery on the 19th (there’s still time to visit this weekend if you haven’t already!), I can move beyond the writing and back-end administrative duties associated with it to dip into a bit of artistic free-styling.
I look at our beloved perennials bursting back to life, each day’s view a bit different from the one before as they grow and bloom in a constant state of evolution, and I’m inspired. I think I’ll try to relax into that frame of mind in the studio for the next couple of months and see where it leads me.
There’s nothing quite like travel for a reminder of how much light and color affect a sense of place. In fact, I don’t think it’s too bold to say that, for those of us interested in such things, the elements of light and color define place.
Kailua Beach
Matisse knew that fact, as did Winslow Homer and Gaugin. On the more contemporary side, look to Dorothy Caldwell, Eric Aho or the interior designer Justina Blakeney* for color that portrays the essence of specific locales.
Berkeley
Our visits with family in Berkeley and Hawaii were nothing less than a full-on immersion in chromatic glory – especially for this northern New Englander. It was the kind of visual shake-up that makes me sit up straight and pay close attention.
Hawaii
That isn’t to say things haven’t been waking up here in Vermont over the past weeks. We arrived home to find our garden bursting with the colors of Zone 4: phlox, azaleas, lilacs, iris, rhododendrons and lupins…and let’s not forget the lush Green Mountains.
Vermont
I’m not well-versed in the science of light wavelengths and how they are affected by their relationship to the sun or the surrounding environment, but at least I can say that their variations make my travels – and coming home – all the richer.
*Thanks for the introduction, Sandy!
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For a similar experience – especially while travel is still iffy with COVID – consider tuning in to the Strong Sense of Place podcast. Each episode explores one destination by discussing in detail, without spoilers, five books that will take you there on the page. Hosts Melissa & David ferret out books that really convey the feeling of a particular place — color and light limited only by your imagination.
One of the things I’d like to work on this summer is getting to a point where I feel like I have at least some facility with landscape sketching. It’s kind of a logical thing to do in the warmer months when the temps are more amenable to being outside, but the truth is it’s a discipline I really struggle with and would like to improve.
In general, I’m not that inspired to make landscapes in the traditional sense. I am much more drawn to work with an element of abstraction that flattens space, integrates geometric forms, and allows materials to take center stage.
Winslow Homer, Sleigh Ride c. 1890-95, oil on canvas, The Clark Institute This painting is a wonderful example of the attributes I’d like to emulate.
I want to be able to capture the sense of a location by translating a moment through the various color combinations and shapes that grabbed my attention in the first place. It’s the quick marking of a specific time and place I’m after, not a formal finished artwork.
Plus, I can’t help but think of the possibilities of incorporating stitch…
We recently visited our daughter in Chicago; her condo looks out to Lake Michigan. Having grown up on the coast of Maine, I’m very familiar with the fact that bodies of water change by the minute / hour, so it was a fun exercise to practice capturing a similar view at different times of day.
At the moment my results are hit or miss, but I trust the key for unlocking the code lies in practice. Time to take the plunge.
“Tucked In: Resilience in Small Moments” made a bit of a splash itself this weekend.
Our artists’ reception was well-attended and it was lovely to be able to share and talk about the work in person. Thank you to Dianne Shullenberger, Leslie Roth and to everyone who came to see our work. And if you haven’t been yet, the show will be up through June 19th at the Emile A. Gruppe Gallery, Jericho, VT. Gallery hours are 10-3 Thursday – Sunday, or call for an appointment: 802.499.3211
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And one final suggestion within this week’s watery theme:
If you’re anywhere near Montpelier before May 29th, make sure to stop in at the Front Gallery to see Hasso Ewing’s exhibit, “inside&out”. Her swimmer figures “explore concepts of inner and outer worlds and the relationship between self and other…”. The show is thoughtful, humorous, and extremely uplifting.
For some context, Hasso was the creator/curator of “the Sheltering-in-Place project” at the Highland Center for the Arts in the summer of 2020. That exhibit was the impetus behind my very first Covid house, “Relative Distance”, and for the 17 houses that then followed as I continued making them to “personify” my observations and emotions during lockdown.
Hasso proved then, as in this current exhibit at the Front, that she is a master at producing immersive, magical environments. In a section toward the back of the gallery, she invites us to enter “a watery inner world that brings the viewer inside to find peace and to escape from that which lies just above the surface”. It’s truly a balm in the midst of our chaotic, overly politicized world. Don’t miss it!
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Last note: If you’re a fan of Wordle — check out Artle!
“The studio is a laboratory, not a factory. An exhibition is the result of your experiments, but the process is never-ending. So an exhibition is not a conclusion.” ~ Chris Ofili
Last week, on my way to deliver my pieces to the Gruppe Gallery for our show “Tucked In”, it felt a bit like moving day. The back of my car was filled to the brim with work made in 2020/21 to mark many sides of Covid as I had experienced them: ten dyed and embroidered houses supported by foraged branches and a dozen framed portraits of friends who’d graciously shared selfies of themselves at a time when getting together socially, let alone for in-person drawing sessions, wasn’t possible.
One view of the exhibit, with Leslie Roth’s “Tick Eater” in the foreground on the left.
More than 15 months ago, Dianne Shullenberger, Leslie Roth and I began to scheme about putting together this exhibit of the work we’d been making since lock-down began. In the face of so much despair dominating the past couple of years, we wanted to offer some good news.
This selection represents half of the portraits I have on view.
A frequent topic of discussion between us had been how grateful we all felt that we’d had our art practices to help us get through this crazy time. It seemed important to share with others that hopeful perspective and the sense of resilience we gleaned from our work. The end product of those discussions is Tucked In: Resilience in Small Moments.
Another view that includes my houses, a couple of portraits, and one grouping of Dianne Shullenberger’s watercolors on the right. These photos don’t get close enough to show the finer details of all the work in the exhibit. I hope you will come to the gallery to take in those nuances in person.
It wasn’t just the fact that going to the studio offered regularity and purpose – although it did and that was huge – but our work also became an outlet providing solace and even something of a protective shield of normalcy against the chaos brewing outside our studios where everything seemed so topsy-turvy and out of control. This show is a feel-good manifestation of how we each, in our own way, found and tapped into pockets of positivity in the face of a global pandemic — through our homes, our gardens, our friends and our wildlife neighbors. The common denominator being our art practices.
And while what you will see at the Gruppe Gallery through June 19th is a culmination of the work of a specific time, it is also an example of how (certainly in my case, by branching out into 3-D work) those months were, as Chris Ofili’s quote references, a time of experimentation. His words remind me that every exhibit is just another mile marker along a path, not the end of a journey.
Please join us for the reception on Sunday, May 15 from 1-3pm if you can.
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I don’t consider myself a birder, but I am definitely a color-lover.
I have been reading The Feather Thief by Kirk Wallace Johnson. It’s part natural history lesson, part true-crime, nestled under the umbrella of the world and art of fishing flies. I keep running to Google to check out alls sorts of unfamiliar birds mentioned in the book.
These spectacular photos, and this link, will give you an idea – as they did me – of what the fuss is all about.
I was saddened to read last week that Jerry Uelsmann has died.
During college, we probably spent at least 95% of our time learning about art and artists of the past, but Uelsmann was a living artist who broke through that wall of antiquity.
Looking back, his work definitely had a formative impact on me. While I was intrigued by the ideology of the Dada movement and iconic surrealists like Dali, I found it hard to connect with much of their work. Jerry Uelsmann was a contemporary exception; his imagery spoke to me and stayed with me. His “artful juxtapositions”, as his NY Times obituary termed them, were both approachable and curious. Looking back, I think it was Uelsmann’s photo montages that first nudged me toward grasping the importance of looking for and creating unexpected connections.
I’ve always loved this image. This old dorm room poster is tacked to my office wall, where I still enjoy it every day.
The mystical quality of his photos pulled me in, appealing to my college-age self by feeding the desire to find meaning that comes with growing into adulthood. Yet even all these years later, his images still touch on something fundamental.
Intellectually, the intent behind his imagery still remains just out of reach, but one can understand enough of his visual language to feel encouraged that translation is possible — perhaps through the vocabulary of dreams. The various elements within each finished image have enough relatability to give the resulting montages an essence of personal relevance despite their mystery. Ultimately, he poses riddles that connect to something within our deeper selves.
I still refer to this wonderful monograph for inspiration and escape.
Uelsmann was a pioneer, conjuring in the 1960s what he appropriately termed “the alchemy of the darkroom”. Photoshop may have made that form of magic accessible on a more universal scale, but I’ve yet to find work that contains the same haunting aura of myth which makes Uelsmann’s work so memorable.
First things first: This week marks the opening of Transitions at Axel’s Gallery in Waterbury, VT. This show explores change – through both material and concept, as seen through the eyes and hands of members of the Vermont chapter of the Surface Design Association. It runs through the end of the month.
I’ll be at the Artist Reception Saturday, April 9th, 4-6pm. Please join us!
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Now for our regularly scheduled programming…
I owe a debt of gratitude to the friend who mentioned last month that she was reading Walter Isaacson’s biography of Leonardo da Vinci. When the book first came out in 2017, I made a mental note to add it to my TBR list in anticipation of the time when demand at the library would calm down. But of course I forgot. Thanks to her recent reminder, I finally followed through.
It was a fascinating read.
While no one would ever question Leonardo’s genius, Isaacson uncovers just how far-reaching and fascinating his mind truly was as he balanced art with science. One reviewer of the book alluded to how fans of traditional biographies might take issue with the heavy emphasis on art history, Renaissance Italy and Isaacson’s focus on painting and other artistic techniques over a dissection of Leonardo’s personal life. But that criticism never occurred to me; I think the author had the proportion of one to the other exactly right.
It’s true, this book concentrates more on Leonardo’s creativity and his work than on the finer details of his personality. But even so, Isaacson includes more than enough information about Leonardo as an individual to give one a healthy sense of him as a person, what was important to him and how his personality affected his outlook and, in turn, his work.
A page from Leonardo’s notebooks, with illustrations and notations about the embryology of the human fetus.
In the final chapter, the reader is offered a compilation list of 20 “lessons” encapsulating Leonardo’s unparalleled creativity, with the suggestion that they are skills we too can access. I’m paraphrasing several below which struck me as particularly worth passing on.
Be relentlessly curious
Go down rabbit holes – drill down for the pure joy of geeking-out.
Procrastinate (gather facts and let them simmer) – creativity requires time for ideas to marinate and for intuitions to gel
Collaborate. Innovation is a team sport; creativity is a collaborative endeavor
Take notes on paper. Leonardo’s notebooks are still around to astonish us
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It is a huge bonus that Isaacson’s biography contains plenty of accompanying illustrations of Leonardo’s drawings, paintings and pages from his notebooks — all of which provide a fuller glimpse into the way he kept track of and teased out ideas. With that in mind, if you’re able, please make a trip to the Highland Center for the Arts in Greensboro to catch their current exhibition: Frank Woods Minor Works.
The appellation of “minor” is somewhat misleading; there is nothing minor about Frank’s work. I was thrilled and inspired to see an exhibit of working drawings and sketches that, while perhaps initially created as a platform upon which larger work would be built, have much to say in their own right. It’s always a privilege to get a feeling for an artist’s process and to have a bit of access into how s/he works through ideas. Having such a window into an artist’s mind – especially one whose work I respect as much as Frank’s – or Leonardo’s for that matter – is a gift indeed.
Last, but not least – apologies for the repeat blog delivery a week ago. I definitely don’t want to gum up your inbox. Without straying too far into TMI territory, let’s just say MailChimp automatic delivery has been something of a challenge lately.
As I write this, my fingers are crossed that the issue is now fixed. But I won’t know for sure until after this post’s scheduled delivery time (Friday @ 4:00am ET). Meanwhile, your patience is and has been greatly appreciated.
I’ve been thinking lately about how, despite the ups and downs that come with wending one’s way through a global pandemic, there have still been some truly unexpected bright spots over the past two years.
Considering all that is happening around the world these days, it would be foolish to take anything for granted. And perhaps the enormity of the world’s current problems explains why it’s the little moments in life that offer the greatest reprieve and joy right now.
Two particular highlights that have come my way in the past 12 months were a total surprise. In both instances, I thought I was making a relatively small contribution to lighten someone else’s load, but truthfully, I’m the one who walked away with gifts far greater than earned or than I would have thought possible.
Thank you to my local art supplier, The Drawing Board, for coming up with the brilliant idea of a monthly watercolor subscription last year. When I signed up I wasn’t sure I needed a new half-pan of paint each month – but it seemed like an easy and fun way to support a local enterprise at a time when no one knew what was lurking around the corner for any business.
The thing is, I got way more out of that subscription than I ever would have dreamed. Soon I couldn’t wait to see the regular envelope which included not only the promised paint, but also other supply surprises (paper samples, brushes, a sponge, drawing tools, etc.). As Covid dragged on, each arrival became something of an event that was just as exciting and as eagerly anticipated as when the Scholastic book order arrived in elementary school. Remember those days?
On top of that, I’m super glad to have added Daniel Smith’s Genuine Serpentine, Rose of Ultramarine, Amethyst Genuine and Mayan Dark Blue to my palette. I’m not sure I would have tried them otherwise, but they are remarkably versatile and now an integral part of my kit.
The other highlight I wanted to share with you comes in the form of a daily email from artist Janet Van Fleet, who is participating in the March Arts Marathon to benefit the Central Vermont Refugee Action Network. Every day this month she sends donors a brief recap with images of her art career as she ‘looks over her shoulder’ at her creative journey. It’s a tremendous commitment and amount of work on her part, but for those of us who follow, it has been a delight that marks how thoroughly engaged Janet is with the world, its joys and its woes. The whole exercise has made me realize how often artists’ creative paths are overlooked, and how important they are to understanding the development of someone’s work.
To a great degree, I think the practice of art is a form of translation. One of the qualities I most value about it and the people who create it, is the ability to conjure unexpected and enlightening connections — associations that strike both a universal and a personal chord with viewers. Visual analogies are a strong means for making ideas and emotions relatable and palpable.
Please visit Janet’s website to see the breadth of her work. Look closely and you will see she is a master of metaphor. She tackles weighty subject matter without ever losing sight of the sheer joy of life. That’s a pretty impressive juggling act.
Her short film, March of the Teapots, will give you a sense of her marvelous imagination. And I trust it might be an unexpected gift for you today.
The past two years have been a long haul, but think about it — who or what has made small moments monumental for you? Whatever the answer, I’ll bet you didn’t see it coming.
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I recently discovered the sprightly work of M. Louise Stanley. If you curious about someone who combines her sketchbooks with old master works, laced with a healthy sense of humor, be sure to visit her website. You can also find her on Instagram @m.louisestanley.
A little of this and a little of that – in one big stew for you this week.
First, a story…
The first year my husband and I were married, we moved from one coast to the other and I took a drawing class at the local community college to get my bearings in a new state and town. In class, I became friends with a woman who was then probably about the age I am now. She was very warm and smart and, since she loved art as much as I did, we had much to talk about. She had a relatively thick accent and before long shared with me that when she was a child, she and her family had escaped from the Nazi invasion of Ukraine.
Aldona’s Amber
The school year ended and soon after so did my husband’s internship. As we prepared to move back across the country, Aldona gave me this amber necklace in parting. It was a special gesture of friendship and all the more meaningful as she said it had come from her homeland. It was a piece of her.
Over the last couple of weeks, as I’ve anxiously watched Russia’s horrific invasion of Ukraine, her gift has taken on even deeper meaning. I look at the hardened gems of amber in this necklace and think what an apt and sadly beautiful metaphor it is for the strength, resilience and resolve the people of Ukraine are exhibiting in the face of Putin’s threat to their sovereignty and their lives. I never dreamt this necklace would carry such significance beyond the memory of a friend from a specific time and place, but it certainly does.
On a less somber note:
Except for framing, the piece I’ve been working on for the past 8 weeks is now complete. Once the portrait was finished, I decided to add the “x” purely as a design solution, not with any particular meaning in mind. It grounds the head so that it doesn’t appear to be just floating in space — an effect that had been amplified by the shibori-dyed background. ‘Head in the clouds’ was my working title for much of the process as it described her translucence as she took form. But now, with the added element of the “x”, Rooted in Dreams seems more appropriate.
Shopping Tip:
I recently learned about Swanson’s Fabrics in Turners Falls, MA from artist Cari Clement. It’s the kind of place anyone who works with textiles should know about. The shop’s mission is to offer affordable materials and sewing supplies while simultaneously aiding/encouraging sewing enthusiasts to release (or at least reduce) their overflowing stashes. With the added bonus of keeping all that extra fabric out of the landfill, Swanson’s is the definition of a win-win-win enterprise.
And finally… With Daylight Savings starting this weekend, along with the recent spate of sap-running days, Winter has begun the first verses of its swan song. But before it fully releases its grasp (another 8-15″ possible on Saturday!), immerse yourself in a final taste of snow and ice at the Cultural Center of Cape Cod’s online exhibit “Winter Magic”. My piece Floe is included.
Not to be too overly dramatic, but I long ago reached the point during this pandemic where any in-person human interaction has become the highlight of my week. Over these past couple of years I’ve come to appreciate my trips to the post office, the library and the grocery store in ways I never would have thought possible.
So I’m not exaggerating when I say it was absolutely wonderful this past Saturday to attend the Artist Social at Studio Place Arts for the Face It exhibition. Plenty of (masked) people turned out and it was so fun, not only to chat with folks I haven’t seen other than on Zoom since last summer, but to even meet a few people for the first time as well. The lift I got from it has lasted all week.
On top of that, the previous Monday I attended my first life drawing session since March of 2020. Things are definitely looking up!
In chatting with the executive director of SPA when I dropped off my work for the show, she mentioned how she felt the time had definitely come for an exhibit of portraits. She went on to say that she’d chosen the subject selfishly because she knew that working in the midst of them would be both comforting and normalizing.
It was a brilliant idea and, frankly, her reasoning is largely why I continue to draw, paint and stitch faces. Even though I often don’t know my subject, I still get a sense of human connection from studying and trying to execute something as personal and unique as facial features. Taking the time to really see someone else is something we’ve all missed, and I hope we won’t take the ability to do so for granted once the masks finally come off.
Speaking of connection – are you familiar with the word “pareidolia”?
It’s the formal term for the tendency to perceive shapes or an image out of randomness, such as seeing something in a cloud formation.
This brief article refers to it specifically as seeing faces in everyday objects, tagging the occurrence as an instinctual evolutionary hold-over geared toward protecting us from danger. I don’t know about that; I’ve always thought the images I tend to notice had more to do with my imagination compensating for boring moments.
But lately I seem to conjure more faces (as opposed to other images), which I attribute to all the portrait work I’ve been doing, figuring that I’ve become more finely attuned to the physical characteristics of the human face. Evolutionary phenomenon or not, it makes life a bit more interesting, don’t you think?
I have been thinking a lot about the entity of pattern these past two weeks.
Mostly, that is because of this new piece I’m working on and my ongoing exploration of combining embroidery with an assortment of resist dye techniques, but it’s also due to a talk I listened to during the recent Surface Design Association online conference.
I left you last time having just completed the white-on-white embroidery of this piece. Look back to that post to refresh your memory as to where things stood at that point. It took me some time to decide how to dye this piece in the next step. Unfortunately, too many layers of material prevented the dye from seeping throughout as much as I had hoped, so the only answer was to take a second pass with a new layer of dye, creating an additional pattern. The blue grid you see here was drawn as a water-soluble guideline for the stitches that would be the basis for that design.
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines ‘pattern’ as something that is regular and repeated within the context of design, behavior, or the way in which something happens. It also pairs the idea of pattern/design with the word decorative, a much-too superficial viewpoint, if you ask me.
Once the stitches were in place and tightly drawn up, the whole piece was dipped in dye. You have to appreciate unexpected amusements along the way …doesn’t this look like a brain?
During the SDA panel discussion mentioned above, the artist Chandra D. Cox opened the door to thinking about pattern in different and more consequential terms: as a means for expressing identity.
Chandra D. Cox, Ashanti, 2003. Acrylic on wood, 72 x 18 x 5 inches. Photo: Michael Zirkle. Reference: Surfacedesign.org I find the pieces in this series incredibly moving. In her statement, Cox writes: “The concept behind these painted structures is meant to symbolize the end of one culture and the beginning of another…The forms are three dimensional, minimalist and ubiquitous. The silhouette recalls a “shotgun house,” a style of southern vernacular architecture with cultural roots tracing from Africa to the Caribbean and American soil…The portals placed on their sides suggest ships and allude to ‘the middle passage of human cargo’. The center is open representing a doorway. A narrow aperture recalls the arrow loops of a castle, through which, emaciated from starvation, newly enslaved Africans were forced into the belly of awaiting ships. This entryway becomes the site and repository of a history and memory, the threshold to a new beginning.” Excerpted from First Person: “I Remember Where I Come From”, by Chandra D. Cox, Surface Design Journal Winter 2021, pg 44 & 45.
In her series “The Doors of No Return – I Remember Where I Come From” Cox employs a variety of traditional African patterns to reference and pay homage to her ancestors. She writes: “The pattern designs (I use) serve as both aesthetic adornment and an emblem for African textiles as conveyers of identities and secret messages”. She goes on to note that “This ancient cultural practice of messaging through pattern (has) withstood centuries of enslavement by adapting and transmuting the encoding”. (Think of the quilts that were used to covertly point the way on the Underground Railroad). She further acknowledges adaptations of pattern as present-day signifiers of identity and territory in urban culture.
I’m much happier now that there is pattern covering the whole piece.
Considering that pattern is ubiquitous, I am fascinated by the deeper perspective of it existing beyond embellishment. I’d love to learn more about it as a marker of identity. If you are aware of any books, articles or links on the subject, please let me know. Examples that most readily come to mind include Scottish tartans and the knitted patterns worn by the fisherman of the Aran Islands, but there must be innumerable other instances.
Bringing the image to life. These very first steps are a chance to begin to play with color in tandem with the patterns of the background dye and the original embroidery.
Meanwhile, the Shibori patterns I use in my work are all adaptations and appropriations of the discoveries and artistry of Japanese masters. In that light, I’m interested to learn more about the patterns of my English ancestry, perhaps discovering a well to draw from in the future. What is there to uncover about the identities Anglo-Saxon designs portray beyond, say, the wealth (or lack thereof) expressed through the materials used to create them? Such an interesting subject.
