Tag Archives: Journal Project

Too Far or Not Far Enough?

This week has brought with it an unusually large number of deadlines — 4 to be exact. So I have been scrambling to get everything done, and as a result this post gets a bit of short shrift in terms of content and execution. It’s a bonus that I can kill two birds with one stone by writing about one of the other projects I’ve been racing to finish.

The latest prompt for our Journal Project group is “Picasso”. Without all the Instagram tributes last week that marked the 136th anniversary of his birth (October 25th), I wouldn’t have realized how appropriate the timing was.

Last year I read Life with Picasso by Françoise Gilot, and while it was an interesting read in terms of learning more about how Picasso approached his work, it really soured me on the man himself. He may have been a creative genius, but reading Gilot’s recounting of their life together completely affected my thoughts about him as a person. However, personal failings aside, Maria Popova’s excellent Brain Pickings article “Picasso on Intuition, How Creativity Works, and Where Ideas Come From” steers attention back to the profound gifts he shared in terms of his work and his artistic wisdom.

I’ve had fun working on this piece, exploring and pushing the limits of color by playing back and forth between the dye and the thread. The biggest challenge has been to convey a complete image while seeing how much I could leave out — a task I might not have undertaken if time weren’t so short with so much already on my plate. I need to let it be for a bit to decide whether I’ve gone far enough or too far — and also to think about how I might explore this approach in future work. The experience brings to mind and illustrates one of Picasso’s many quotes:

“Inspiration exists, but it has to find us working.”

For a bit of trivia to round out what you may already know about the master, enjoy this list.

On a Different Note________________________________________________________________________________________

I owe a huge thank you to the Essex Art League for inviting me to speak at their monthly meeting this week. They are a wonderfully warm and engaging group of artists who made it a true pleasure to get out of the studio on a rainy day in order to share a taste of the many layers of process my work has progressed through since I first started working with textiles some 25 years (+/-) ago!

Art as a Responsibility; Art as a Superpower

As troubled as this world is and has always been, we owe a huge debt to those artists who have the ability and the courage to give voice and form to our collective conscience, pulling it back into the light in times of darkness. It is no small service that they remind us of our shared humanity during those periods when that treasured quality appears misplaced.

This inspiring Huffington Post article, “What It Means To Be An Artist In The Time of Trump”, published soon after the election, asks 21 artists how they envision their creative role for the next four years and what advice they would offer to other makers. Their responses speak to both a common distress: “pain, anger, sadness and fear” as well as the optimistic power of “hope, unity, compassion, motivation, and strength”. Above all, they acknowledge the importance of not remaining silent. Read what they have to say, it will make you proud to be part of their tribe.

In 2015, Toni Morrison wrote the following in an essay for The Nation, entitled “No Place for Self-Pity, No Room for Fear”:

“This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.

I know the world is bruised and bleeding, and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence. Like failure, chaos contains information that can lead to knowledge – even wisdom. Like art.”

I am not a political artist, but this past month I’ve found a small sense of solace in making the above piece to fulfill the prompt “fantasy” for the Journal Project, the group I’ve participated in over the past year. Believe me, I am not deluded enough to think the president-elect will show any remorse for his xenophobic, misogynistic, anti-environmental, self-centered, self-serving, and frankly hateful rhetoric and actions. (In acknowledgement of that fact, in addition to referencing America’s red, white & blue, the dyed color, pattern, and bleed are a subtle nod to hell freezing over.) I am, however, grateful for Michelle Obama’s graceful, grown-up response “when they go low, we go high” as a reminder that decorum and measured intelligence still hold sway and will always have champions.

In the tempestuous days ahead, we can look to artists to challenge us and provide prospective, giving voice to our shared humanity as they always have, while not letting us off the hook. A mere apology is by no means the answer, but wouldn’t it be a nice starting point?

Hands-On / Hands-Off

This past week marked the end of the second round of the online Journal Project that I am participating in this year. As a quick reminder, we are a group of 14 artists across the US and in Canada who are creating a 12″ x 12″ interpretation of a one-word prompt every 60 days. You can read more about the project in my post “Creative Yoga”.

This latest challenge was “hands”. My contribution integrates a shadow puppet with American Sign Language (the signs at the bottom of the piece represent “b”, “i”, “r”, & “d”), inspired by watching a sign language interpreter at our annual Town Meeting in March.

I have included images of my hands off and on in my work since college. In many ways, I identify with them as a more apt representation of myself as self-portrait, than I do my face. After all, I only see my face when I look in the mirror, but I watch my hands all day, every day, as they express the core of who I am through the things I make and tend.

Below are a few of the pieces in which my hands have stood in for me in one way or another, pointing toward issues I was moved to express at the time.

No question, hands can be a huge challenge to draw. But I found Jon deMartin’s article/lesson in the Winter 2015 issue of Drawing Magazine to be very informative and a big help. You can buy a back issue, in either in paper or downloadable form, here.

To end on a humorous note, enjoy these links on the subject of hands: You can tell a lot about a woman by her hands and Irish Hand Dancing…or something

Elizabeth Fram

Eye of the Needle

Tag Archives: Journal Project

Too Far or Not Far Enough?

Art as a Responsibility; Art as a Superpower

Hands-On / Hands-Off