within the familiar - waiting

Beach off of Shore Rd.

Dennis, MA

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We were way overdue for a few days on the Cape. Walking on beaches, both new and familiar, is always good for my soul and well being.  My art class assignment this past week was about time and motion - how do artists explore and represent time? how do we evoke "sensation" in fixed images?

The dictionary says that time is the "indefinite continued progress of existence......past, present, and future regarded as a whole".

For me  - the ocean is time.

The beach laid out in front of me is time.

Is that because I see them as a symbol of time? Like a clock or a fossil?

Or is it because I watch their movement - waves, tides, wind blown sand - which evokes the passage of time?

Or am I creating for myself a visual narrative and thus telling a story? Hence, time.

Or is it all three? 

And that's what makes the experience so powerful for me?

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in the garden.....finally the smell of dirt!

My first winter sowing experiment

March, 2014

Providence, RI

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Needless to say I am getting quite antsy to get back into the garden! Over the fall and winter I was reading a lot about winter sowing, a mini greenhouse germination process developed by Trudi Davidoff about 15 years ago. There are now many web sites about it and many devotees - especially in the colder zones where we have such a limited growing time.

Anyway I decided to try it out - some seeds, some soil, and a little help from mother nature ....

how difficult could it be?

I put out my first containers today. It has finally become reasonably temperate and I felt that I was safe to do so.  I have read that a lot of people begin their winter sowing in January and February and just let the seeds decide when to germinate. Not sure I am that desperate to get my hands in the dirt ...

My first containers are:

Zinnia - I had harvested seeds from last year so we'll see if that experiment was worthwhile

Greek Oregano 

Creeping Thyme

Garlic Chives

Dill

Over the next few weeks I will be adding:

Coleus

Black Cherry Tomatos 

Sweet Pepper Mix

Staro Chives

Winter Squash

Pumpkin ... (I miss my Columbus pumpkin patch!!)

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And, yes, opening that bag of garden soil today and breathing in its pungent, rich smell was a slice of heaven for me. 

in the studio - portraits

Case of American frames

Henry R. Luce Center for the Study of American Art

Metropolitan Museum of Art

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I visited the American Wing at the Met in January. I had not been in that wing since they renovated and reopened in 2012 and I was blown away by it. Needless to say I did not see all of it - as I now accept my 2 hour (okay sometimes 3) limit of museum viewing before my eyes and brain are overwhelmed and I need a break! 

My favorite gallery was the Henry R. Luce Center for the Study of American Art. 

Wow!

It is a visible-storage facility - that you can wander the aisles of - that displays more than ten thousand works of American fine and decorative art. Objects are arranged by material (paintings, sculpture, furniture and woodwork, glass, ceramics, silver, and metalwork) and within that by chronological order. Amazing.

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I was also taken in by the miniature portraits and the colonial era portraits - both often done by “itinerant” (love that!) artists. Seeing all the portraits told me that I needed get back to the figurative form again and, luckily, after feeling quite stuck it helped me to get back into the studio!

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I wanted to experiment with portraits and play with multiple collage techniques and see where it led. So far I have finished 5 of them and have a new one started. They are not great - but I have learned something from exploring and finishing each one. It is a very interesting journey and I am not sure where this experimentation will take me ... if anywhere. But I am really enjoying it and having fun!!

 

Woman in Market Place
8"x10"
Cut paper collage on Illustration Board

When looking at a lot of the early Colonial portraits many of them showed crackling - I am sure from age as well as the quality of the paints used. I actually liked the texture that gave the faces - kind of like a landscape.  

So for this piece I wanted to try and create a portrait as if it was an aerial view landscape. 

Futurist Man #64
8"x10"
Cut paper collage on Illustration Board

 Sticking with the cut paper theme I wanted to try a portrait of a man in an early colonial pose .... 3/4 view, hands in foreground, head in background. However, I had just read an article about the exhibit at the Guggenheim, "Italian Futurism, 1909-1944: Reconstructing the Universe". 

I didn't know anything about the futurists but looked up some of the painters and decided to try this one in that style. Why not?

Pieces of a Woman
4"x6"
Cut paper on clear acetate film

Just an experiment working on acetate.

Map Study #2
5"x7"
Antique maps, thread, pencil on kraft paper

Both of these next ones came out of the same idea - to collage a map in the portrait and to somehow incorporate stitching as well. I actually began #2 first and began by tracing a sketch that I had done a few months ago. Once the sketch was on the brown paper I then laid in the map pieces and stitched them down.
Then I got lost - and was not sure how to proceed......

That's when I took the original line tracing and began to play with it. I actually drew the map lines on the front of the drawing and I used colored pastels on the back of paper.
I sprayed both sides with fixative and then put a coat of acrylic medium over the top. The colors are a bit diffused and it has a parchment quality to it.

I did finally get inspired to return to the original map with the stitching and worked through that.



    

Map Study #1
5"x7"
Graphite, pastel, ink on tracing paper. 

 

Today I began this new one. I wanted to try more with the maps/stitching technique. But wanted to do in on canvas and probably use paint and other elements.
It is about 11"x14".
I didn't have any canvas so I took part of an old black canvas curtain and since I also didn't have any gesso or white acrylic - I used yellow. Remember - its an experiment.
Definitely not sure where this one is headed.

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In the immortal words of Al Swearengen ....
"Every step a f*cking adventure".

in the studio - school assignments and a mental map

NY Public Library

February 2014

*has nothing to do with this post but it seemed appropriate

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I am currently taking an online class called Live!: A History of Art for Artists, Animators and Gamers. It is through CALARTS and it seems like there are currently over 1,000 people from around the world in the class. At least that is how many people posted their first assignment last week. We are supposed to critique at least 3 assignments each week and I am finding it kind of daunting to choose one out of so many. I can get lost for so long just looking though them! One person began a thread called "Show your Art" and the community of people that posted what they are personally doing is amazing.... both in the sharing, and in the support that everyone is giving each other. So wonderful to see. For me it is both humbling and inspiring to see so many peoples' work - so diverse and so uniquely their own. Seeing so many artists actually made me feel more comfortable in saying; "I am an artist". 

Beautiful.

This week's assignment was a tough one. We were asked to create a mental map - selecting 10 images, books, films, or music that provided a historical context for our interests in art as a whole or in our current art work. We were to select works that are important to the way we think. Then we needed to organize them in a sequence that made sense to us. 

How to tell my story in 10 sequential images…. visual storytelling. I wasn't sure where to begin. And  then would these works create a linear sequence or would they overlap or would they create a loop? Is it one giant history painting or is it a more like a Chinese hand scroll?

Two sleepless nights, lots of doodles and stream of conscious writing, as well as falling down the hole that is the internet...... 

But I really thought this would be a good exercise for me accomplish so I plowed on.

It is not perfect as I am sure I have forgotten some things and left out some others and I am equally sure that the endgame is quite fungible. But here it is:

http://quietisthemuse.blogspot.com/p/mind-map.html

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