Tag Archives: Seven Days

Time & Space

Within hours of the total eclipse (which was all that we’d hoped for and more!), my husband left on his merry way for a much-anticipated 10-day mountain bike adventure with buddies. About a nanosecond after the door closed behind him, I got out my day planner/journal to brainstorm for an extended stay-at-home “art residency”. When have I ever had such an impressive, relatively chore and commitment-free span of uninterrupted time to spend totally immersed in my practice – not to mention giving myself permission to ignore pretty much everything else?
Exactly never.

It’s been a wonderful 10 days!
I’ve made serious progress on a new “Full Bloom” piece, worked daily in my sketchbook – including life drawing sessions on Emma Carlisle’s Patreon – and have made a point to write every morning à la Julia Cameron (if you only knew how many years I’ve been meaning to try that).

I finally tackled Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act, visited 4 exhibitions, and had some lovely one-on-one time with several friends. I was able to take a serious bite out of my much-needed website update and began the initial experiments for a couple of new projects that I’ve been mulling over for weeks.

In the evening, I watched art documentaries: The Woodmans, Georgia O’Keeffe: By Myself, and several Waldemar Januszczak episodes on the Renaissance. My 4-legged studio assistant kept me on the straight and narrow by making sure I got out for two walks every day, rain or shine. And there has been time to just think!

Figure Drawing Luminance Pencil Faber-Castell Marker

It’s been a very sweet experience with the huge gift of a wiped-clean schedule that gave me the freedom to do what I wanted, when I wanted, for as long as I wanted. It’s crazy how liberating that can be.

Glorious Clutter

Even so, I doubt I could keep up this pace forever and it will be so nice to have my husband home again tomorrow. But if you can swing it, I can’t recommend this experience enough. The benefits of a traditional art residency are many and I totally get that often, for many, the only way to achieve this kind of time and space is to leave home – which admittedly also carries the stimulation of being in a new and different space. But if the circumstances allow – even if for just a weekend, I would definitely encourage you to consider setting up a “residency” for yourself at home some time. You’ll love it.

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Here are several things worth sharing that crossed my path this week:

Maine Calling’s podcast episode on The Role of Art in Community. Be sure to check out Pamela Moulton and Peter Bruun’s websites to see their work.
We lost a shining star last Saturday when Faith Ringgold died at 93. Having only known of her painted art quilts, I was amazed to learn of her powerful early-career work. Holland Cotter’s April 15th NYTimes article “Faith Ringgold Perfectly Captured the Pitch of America’s Madness” highlights what a titan Ringgold was. This is a gift link so you should be able to access the article without encountering a paywall.
And finally, the two exhibits I’ve been part of: “Up & Down, In & Out: Embroidery and its Kin” and “Visions of Totality” are closing this weekend at Studio Place Arts and the Highland Center for the Arts, respectively. If you haven’t have a chance to visit in person, the following reviews will give you a nice flavor of both.

Seven Days, by Pamela Polston, April 10, 2024

7Days SPA Review

The Barre Montpelier Times Argus, by Mary Gow, April 6, 2024

Times Argus Banner Times Argus Visions of Totality Review

Museum Hopping

I haven’t visited enough exhibitions since the first of the year, but last weekend was a start to getting back on the right track. If you are looking to stir the creative juices, here are two suggestions — one online and one local.

First, the Shelburne Museum doesn’t open again until May 13th, but don’t let that deter you. They have an impressive and diverse line-up of online exhibitions to bridge the gap until then. Each intriguing in its own right, I’m slowly making my way through them all. But Action Figures: Objects in Motion is the one that first caught my eye…such a treat!

Shepard Hardware Company Jonah and the Whale Shelburne Art Museum

Shepard Hardware Company (Buffalo, New York, ca. 1882–92), Jonah and the Whale Mechanical Bank, ca. 1890 Painted metal, Collection of Shelburne Museum

Secondly, an in-person trip to the Vermont Ski & Snowboard Museum in Stowe may not be the first place that comes to mind when looking to get an art fix, but go and be surprised. Scott Lenhardt’s art for Burton snowboards is fantastic! What I loved most was being able to see more than just the finished product. The compilation of sketches, saved margin notes on designs in process, and overviews of the overall progression from rough idea to finished painting is catnip for anyone interested in behind-the-scenes particulars. Lenhardt’s work is full of wonderful details and raw imagination, and the sheer volume of his output is, well, awe-inspiring. To round out the exhibition, don’t miss Pamela Polston’s article about Lenhardt in Seven Days.

Sketch for ’04 Powers ©2003 Scott Lenhardt, Ink on paper I took very few photos at the Lenhardt show because I got so caught up in the work. But this ink drawing is a good example of what I’m referring to when I say his art is full of wonderful details and raw imagination.

Meanwhile, there’s a lot going on behind the scenes here in the studio. I held a flash sale for my collectors on Valentine’s Day that went well enough that it’s likely I’ll repeat it next year. Maybe by then you’ll be on that e-mail list too! Anyway, with that goal under my belt I’m now juggling between pieces in progress, the nuts and bolts of getting finished work ready to exhibit, and preparing for a couple of upcoming studio visits.

This shows the early stages of a new piece. It’s destined for paint soon, but there’s something about the white-on-stitching that makes me want to explore it further as an end unto itself. This is not a new line of thinking for me, as you can read here and here. There are always more rabbit holes to follow.

Part of my to-do list this week has included framing “Eroded Boundaries” and “Caged Again” for the upcoming show Beacon of Light, which is due to open on March 15th at Studio Place Arts. More about that as we get closer to the show’s opening.
In the meantime, I’m tickled that “House on Fire” was selected for the exhibition SHE, at the online art gallery Art Fluent. You can view that show in its entirety here.

That’s all for now; back to work.

Face Value

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.

Dignity ©2022 Elizabeth Fram, Ink on paper, 11 x 8.5 inches My hardcover Daler-Rowney Classic sketchbook takes ink and pencil equally well. The 8.5 x 11 size is big enough to stretch out upon without feeling unwieldy. It’s a trusty workhorse.

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.

Face It closes on March 5th. Check out the Seven Days review to whet your appetite for a visit before the show ends.

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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.

Lisette ©2022 Elizabeth Fram, Watercolor and graphite on paper, 12 x 9 inches I started experimenting with Strathmore Toned Mixed Media paper last year. It’s been a whole different learning curve to begin with a background that is medium-toned, rather than stark white. It comes in 3 colors – this is the tan. With a vellum surface that is akin to hot-press, it allows for erasures without damage. It is heavy enough that it doesn’t need to be stretched and doesn’t buckle from layers of washes – at least with the amount of water I use. It’s acid free and 30% post-consumer fiber; again, a good workhorse and convenient for traveling out of the studio. It’s what I brought with me to life drawing last week.

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?

Work in Progress ©2022 Elizabeth Fram, Stitched-resist dye and embroidery on silk Slowly but surely this piece is coming along. This week has been all about working with the hair. It needs more color, so I still have a way to go – plus, I haven’t even started with her shoulders. I’m having a bit of a love-hate affair with the background pattern & color. In the long run I think it will elevate the piece, but it has surely made the process more challenging.

Politic (Not Political) Choices

Working on these hybrid garden paintings-with-stitch has given me plenty to think about lately. Not least is how rejuvenating it can be to switch gears and to be firmly planted – no pun intended – in learning-mode for a bit. There are times when I feel I’m burning the candle at both ends by trying to toggle successfully between dyeing, embroidery, drawing (with ink, graphite & colored pencil), and now painting with watercolor. But the larger my grab-bag of processes to choose from, the more flexibility I have. The key is to remember that the most important, though unseen, element is limitation – and to use it judiciously.

Thinking along the same lines of choice, options seem to be opening all around us. This week Vermont became the first state in the country to have passed the 80% vaccination mark, a fact for which we can all be grateful and proud. As Senator Patrick Leahy so aptly noted, our success was due in great part to the bipartisan efforts and cooperation of our state’s leadership.

Politics don’t usually surface in my work, other than in my 2016 post Art as a Responsibility; Art as a Superpower, and my election-centric COVID house “Until The Bitterness Passes”. Overall, I feel I can have more impact by expressing strong opinions directly in letters to Congress, contributing to get-out-the-vote efforts, and never failing to show up on Election Day.

For the most part, art is a refuge for me. I feel I can do the most good for myself and for others by speaking to more intimate, everyday observations rather than using my work as a platform for interpreting or protesting the issues that get under my skin. I have great respect and appreciation for political art but I feel that others are better qualified and more adept in their use of it. And sometimes a quieter statement can have just as much impact for receptive eyes.

Every now and then though something surfaces that registers with both sides of my voice. This month two such projects came to light. The Violet Protest is an avenue you too might consider if, like me, you would like to creatively express your disdain for and frustration with the partisan stagnation in Washington. It offers an opportunity to use your textile skills to contribute (in a very manageable way) to what will be a “colossal visual gesture of friendly protest to every member of the 117th US Congress”. Please read more about the project and its purposeful creative “limitations” here, and be aware that the deadline of August 1, 2021 is coming along quickly!

Another venture in which I was recently invited to participate is the “We Are All Connected Art Project”, spearheaded by Beatricia Sagar. It too speaks to this moment in history. Participants articulate aspects of their COVID experience within the confines of a 3″ puzzle piece. Again, limitations provide possibilities. As individual pieces by diverse artists are joined together, the whole is so much greater than the sum of its parts.

The puzzle piece I received to embellish for the “We Are All Connected Art Project”

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Palate cleanser:

Colchester Bat Barn Photo: Ken Picard

After a year of constructing houses balanced on tall legs, it was a treat to happen upon a photo in Seven Days of a monitor barn raised on stilts. In his article in response to a reader’s query of what in the world it might be, Ken Picard supplied the answer: a bat barn. I am totally smitten with it!

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And finally, a couple of visual confections for you:

Where The Sun Shines Every Day Pip & Pop

Where The Sun Shines Every Day © 2021 Pip & Pop, Installation: Sugar, modeling clay, polyurethane foam, crystals, gems, glitter, artificial plants, beads, pompoms & various craft materials. Room-size installation 22′ x 26′ x 9’10”

I made my first in-person gallery visit recently to the BCA Gallery in Burlington and it was the perfect “first”! Their current exhibit “Bubblegum Pop“ joyfully captures the uplifting sense of release that accompanies reemerging after so many months of uncertainty and lockdown.

Lastly, Raku Inoue’s floral imaginations will delight and inspire you. Instagram: @reikan_creations

Palm Reading

Life drawing has plenty of challenges, but capturing hands has been one of the biggest for me. That said, I really feel that including them in a portrait tells a much fuller story than head and shoulders alone. In many ways, they can be seen as a portrait (or self-portrait) unto themselves.

Several resources that have helped me begin to understand the basic, universal structure of a hand and the intricacies of all its joints and angles, are:

The Human Figure, Life Drawing for Artists by John H. Vanderpoel ©1935
How to Draw Hands – The Ultimate Guide by Matt Fussell, online article
and my personal favorite: The Hand, by Jon deMartin, Drawing Magazine, Winter 2015, order a digital copy here

As with most things, there’s no substitute for practice. And beyond keeping the basic building blocks of palm and fingers in mind, I find the most helpful approach, once the overall gesture and contour have been blocked in, is to forget altogether that I’m drawing a hand and to concentrate instead on breaking down the whole into smaller and smaller components, constantly comparing shape to minuscule shape, while repeatedly looking back-and-forth between multiple landmarks of both positive and negative space. There is just no substitute for comparing placement and size to other elements already drawn. Even though it’s natural to get ahead of yourself, thinking you understand what comes next and where it should be, invariably if you don’t double-check, your work will need to be readjusted.

That’s not to say I don’t have a good kneadable eraser that gets plenty of use, but it’s a strategy that does seem to help achieve a more successful outcome.

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There is still time – barely – to go see Janet Van Fleet’s exhibit “Vanishment” at the Vermont Supreme Court Gallery in Montpelier. It closes on June 28th (today if you’ve received this post via email). If you can somehow squeeze in a visit, you won’t be disappointed. This particular body of Van Fleet’s work addresses the dire impact humans are incurring on other species. Profound yet accessible, it is also visually striking. Read Pamela Polston’s comprehensive review in Seven Days for an overview.