Off to Russia soon--traveling with my family on the occasion of my new nephew's adoption. First time out of the country since the trip to Antarctica in 1999, which indirectly started this whole adventure in art, and the parallel is not lost on me. Need to plan an artist's itinerary. Soon after that, a week-long painting course with Bob Burridge, also expected to shift my skills and perspective (based on two short classes with him in November of 2004). Art could be very different very shortly.
Artistic turning points since the last entry: Bob Burridge classes, Studio Tour, introduction to blues and an end to musical anorexia, first visit to the Smithsonian Craft Show, hoop dancing. In that order? I think so. We could throw in Match.com, but that's a bit outside the scope of an art website so you'll have to ask me privately about that.
Bob Burridge (new window)--8 hours of instruction and I get that I CAN paint, and that with a bit of practice, I can probably manage to stay conscious for a entire week of his teaching. Sign up for his class at Jerry's Artarama in August 2005; make a decision to paint 500 small paintings to work on some of my own stopping points. By now, I've painted 150, which is better than nothing. Sold two and given away quite a number to good reception.
First year on the Chatham Studio Tour. Modest success.
Blues--Run up to DC over Easter visit my sister and take an evening with Bob Margolin, Mookie Brill, Bobby Radcliff, Billy Wirtz, and Joe Orr at the State Theater. Something shifted inside; no clue what how or why now and not before. I like this music. How did I make it to 46 without knowing that? (Progressed moon into Taurus and 5th house could have something to do with it.) CD collection has doubled since; almost all blues. Unfortunately for my art, I find a new way to spend weekends--Delbert McClinton at the Eastern NC Blues Festival, Abe Reid and Keith Frank (ok, Keith is Zydeco) at Shakori Hills (and catch the bug for hoop dancing at the same time); Abe Reid and the Holmes Brothers at the Carolina Blues Festival, plans to blow off Caldwell County in favor of the Durham Blues Festival.
Chatham Arts asked me to show at ClydeFest, so I had the weekend of the Smithsonian Craft Show free for the first time since I started carving (not having to prepare for the three-day Sanford Pottery Festival). ClydeFest was rained out near enough, but going up to the Smithsonian turned out to a very useful lesson in what it takes to show at the best venue in the country. My chainsaw carving as it stood at the time is never going to make it.
Talked to some artists who were very encouraging and helpful; saw others whose production gave me chills (ie, wouldn't mind taking $80,000 of orders but not if it means doing the same thing over and over). Interesting to note that any exhibiting artist who cared to give me much attention recognized me as an artist studying the venue, not a craft shopper. Somewhere in the drive home and then the next day's trip to Greenville to hear Delbert, I started thinking about making rustic furniture and other forms of art; the idea of adding my jewelry and textile work to this site shows up.
Nothing like seeing 120 different artists and their work to give a girl insight into her place in that community. I am not a production artist. I have made a few iterations of pieces that sell well--the fish, for example--but I'm off to something new pretty fast after that. Maybe if I ever "get good," I'll be happier about cranking out one form of art. Maybe not. Maybe I would be better served to find a different model for making an income from my creativity. Still working on this problem as I write.
Aspects: Increasing trouble with my hands suggests I'm not going to be making a living from a chainsaw. I am not interested in doing enough strength training to be able to handle big wood consistently. Tired of hauling my work around the county only to haul it home--chainsaw carvings need to be sold out of a shop, not a 10x10 booth (I bet I've noted this before in this blog). So I'll take the painting class and I showed up to a free Dona Kato demonstration and that left me inspired to play with polymer clay again. The dining room table is covered in clay tools and I have to clear the ironing board of in-progress paintings if I need a crisp shirt (my friends may have noted I'm in more knits than normal...).
Finally (?), hoop dancing has caught my attention in a way that I can't remember anything doing, exercise-wise, in a while. I saw Spiral and Beth dancing at Shakori Hills and walked away thinking, "I HAVE to learn to do that." Lots of people were carrying hoops but only Beth and Spiral were dancing; found out later that Spiral had just taught a workshop and sold hoops. New dancers weren't up to hooping in public so soon after learning, and I understand that now. A bit of web research and a few weeks later, I found a class in Chapel Hill, and now I'm a hoop dancer, too. Professional, too--just had my first paid gig!! at the BRAC party in Goldsboro, NC. (Base Realignment and Closing--Seymour Johnson AFB was NOT on the list.) My friend John Hogan, working the party as Ubi the Clown, suggested bringing my pile of hoops down. I tossed them out on the grass and started dancing to the Country band, and within 15 minutes, the hoops were all in use. At the end of the party, the Coastal Federal Credit Union event sponsors gave me a picnic basket because "You worked so hard! You never stopped dancing!" It's not Burning Man, but it's a start.
(Dancing is as demanding of studio space as chainsaw carving, as my newly broken living room lamp will attest. Need to solve the "loud music for dancing, outside, sleeping young children next door" concurrency problem. Or maybe change the lamp.)
Church is almost out so it's time to eat and get to carving for the rest of the afternoon. Hope it's not another year before another post.
The family-business part of the trip went smoothly, and Timothy became an American when he (or his parents) set foot in the US on disembarking from the plane. He has adjusted to family life after 18 months in an orphanage smoothly.
The artistic part of the trip was interesting. I visited the Armory, the Diamond Hall, the Cathedral of Christ the Redeemer, the Pushkin Museum, the Central House of Artists, the New Tretyakov Gallery, and the Gorky House Museum.
The short answer: Visit the Cathedral, and the Gorky House Museum.
What the guide books don't tell you: * The Russians have not solved climate control in their museums. Admittedly, it was July, and for Moscow, hot. The Renoirs and Monets in the Pushkin were being protected with room dehumidifiers; no evidence of air conditioning. * Russian museum stores don't take credit cards. * The Cathedral will not allow women in wearing lipstick, shorts, or sleeveless shirts. They would be happier if women's heads were covered, but they will allow this at least when service is not in session. * There are no exit signs in the Diamond Hall, and few elsewhere. One can only speculate about fire protection, and whether the guards would be responsible to the visitors first. The Cathedral of Christ the Redeemer was built in 1880, bulldozed by Stalin, and rebuilt in 1995. The impact is perhaps less on anyone who hasn't been in Moscow for any length of time and observed the lack of "Western" services, attitudes, and ability to master basic concrete. (We lived in Moscow 1971-74, which was the very beginning of detente.) "HOW did they do it?" was the question on my mind at first, and only later did "What is this religion about?" surface. Because the plans for the original cathedral still existed, there were no architectural fights. And the building is still new; it may be that structural problems will appear with time (apparently, the site is problematic: marshy). But it is a magnificent structure, decorated in the Russian Orthodox style (probably not any four square inches in any one color, unless carved gold on the iconostases). I found it overwhelming, simply pondering the "how" question.
Later, the "religion" question became more clear. The Russians have been separated from their religion for almost 90 years, and the very first thing they did when they had the freedom was to rebuild their Cathedral, to the tune of $200M US, give or take. (Some discussion about whether this was all private or some state money; given the reported condition of organized crime and graft, one could consider that public and private funds have the same source.) The Russians have not implemented credit cards or western retail practices, they have improved their automobile ownership but it is not anywhere near US standards, they dress better than they did under the Soviets but there's a way to go yet. But they built a cathedral that in its own way can stand up to any of the masterpieces of religious architecture.
First, the undercut question. I carved Braddan Flame earlier in the summer and it's been sitting on the front porch where I can see it from my desk for a few weeks, sanded and finished and just about ready for color. Last Sunday morning, it struck me that the braids would be more clearly defined if I undercut the crossings. Wow. Showed a friend what I intended to do and he nodded but clearly didn't see the potential impact; guess that's why I'm a sculptor and other people aren't. We may or may not have discussed the impending deadline and when does one call a work done because it has to get into the show? My experience with Centerfest and Work in Progress does not incline me to try that experiment again--the public does not respond well to work that's not finished all the way.
So I carved more. Didn't take long. And the braids absolutely JUMPED off the wood, with MUCH greater impact than any of my previously-carved knot work. Wow. I've been carving knots for two years now and I only just saw what else the carvings needed? Sigh. So I ground the new cuts and sanded and finished and sat the carving where I could see it, and then again this Sunday, another modification jumped off the wood and into my eyes. More piercing. Could well, in hindsight, have skipped this step--I used a drill and the piercings are too obviously round. Killed a die-grinder in the effort to make the holes flow with the carving and two days later, I can see where more adjustment is needed. Next time, use the saw from the get-go. Progress. Nevertheless, openwork makes the carving come alive. Still need to figure out the color scheme for Braddan. Want to carve this again, too, with more arcing in the knots.
Took $400 and a week's vacation to indulge my color addiction with Bob Burridge's Loosen Up and Paint Like Crazy class at Jerry's Artarama in Raleigh last week. I had tested my reaction to Bob with two short classes at the Art Expo in November last year and knew the full-week class would be good; didn't expect the results I discovered.
One: Came out of the November class all charged up with color and ability and tried to paint little pictures of chainsaws and bombed. Chainsaws are tricky; many more surfaces and angles than coffee cups and if the parts aren't right, the painted sketch doesn't read as a chainsaw. Suspect I got distracted by the Tour and then Christmas and didn't paint that much.
Two: Read an article by Betsy Stroud in Arts Calendar about her response to the truism that one has to paint 1000 paintings before really feeling comfortable with paint; if so, then paint small because you'll get there faster. The article reminded me of Bob's admonition to paint six 5x7s every day as a warm-up, and I realized I needed to be practicing or I'd likely waste much of the full-week class getting used to paint and paper again. I set myself a goal of painting 500 5x7 paintings by August.
Somewhere after 130 paintings, I found myself stalling and bored. Wasn't sure what the problem was but I certainly wasn't enjoying painting anymore and I didn't like the work. Thought maybe I was just being resistant to the path and reread George Leonard's Mastery. Got distracted by summer and Blues festivals and then there was Moscow and there are always reasons not to paint, if you want to find them. Forced another 30 or so out of my brush and onto the boards just before class so I wasn't stone cold, but still no great paintings.
Three: Class week. The 8-hour Loosen Up class devoted roughly two hours each to hearts and coffee cups, florals, landscapes and abstracts; the week-long class devoted a day to each with the addition of a morning on marketing and an afternoon on collage. (Bob also teaches week-long classes on each segment, or at least abstracts and collage.) Monday was mostly settling into class and playing with the sample paints and figuring out what else I should have brought from home; didn't care for much I painted. Bob talked about value--1-10, light to dark, and gave us red plastic to check the values in our paintings; I realized this was one of the problems I had with my work. Sure enough, checking my inventory showed I'd completely missed value contrast--lots of color, but when viewed through a red filter, it all went to one tone. Oops.
Started working in black and white on Tuesday, with color overlay, and gained a bit more insight into moving the eye around a painting. Showed a few of my paintings to Bob and talked about the troubles I'd experienced; he suggested working with palette knives because I wasn't doing very well with brushes and sometimes people who are sculptors underneath do better with a more physical approach to paint. By the end of the day, I was working as much with my hands directly as with the knives, and much happier with the work.
Something shifted in the course of our work on Wednesday and I realized I didn't much care for painting landscapes, and if I was having trouble fitting my florals on the page with enough room left for a vase and tabletop, then I just didn't have to paint a vase and tabletop. Wow. Why has it taken this long to see that? Class got more interesting again, and I started a series of paintings about hooping; swirly things with sparkles and lots of movement. Will do more on this. Bob recommends working in series, even on bigger paintings (not just the daily six 5x7s), to keep an idea moving and allow oneself room to play with variations without fear of ruining any one expression of an idea. Observe how my sketch starts out puny and as I add more and more paint, the movement gets bolder and fills more of the page. I have seen this happen before. With paint, one CAN add more. Doesn't work with carving, but now that I think about it, my carvings are often improved by removing more. Interesting. Clonmacnois is much better today, thinner, than it was when it left Ridgway in February.
Friday was supposed to be collage day and I found myself increasingly miffed as the morning was lost to marketing talk, most of which I knew well enough to know it didn't yet apply to me. I am placing all the 3D work I can create, so finding galleries is not yet a problem; no body of work in flat are (yet) so I can't do anything on that front. Swallow irritation at people asking the merit of gallery vs. street fair when they've never sold anything.
After lunch, a few of us turned to collage but most of the class spent the time finishing up paintings they'd started, and Bob spent his time circulating rather than teaching. I forged ahead, playing with tissue paper I bought, running out into the store for acrylic gel (have a gallon at home and didn't think to bring it; borrowed my bench-neighbor's clear gesso but it quickly became apparent I would use her whole bottle), tearing up the paint-stained paper towels I'd saved all week. Bingo! Created more work (square-inch wise) with more fun and more energy in two hours than I had in any half-day all week, and I like the (not quite yet) end product much more than anything else I did.
Someone asked, Have you done this before? and I said, Not since third grade. It was Saturday before I looked at my collection of idea books and color play and realized these are essentially collage, and the need to make collage has been bursting out of me since June 2002. Wow. Suspect the impulse originates from the same energy that makes me a sculptor; I do not do flat art but am still constrained by the tremendous amount of effort that goes into carving and preparing a surface to take color. Plus, I just can't carve on Sunday mornings (three churches abut my property) and I need a quiet art form.
Where to from here? Don't know. Waiting a day or two and then registered for Patti Brady's class on collage at the next Art Expo. Patti works for Golden Paints and she'll be teaching how to use the various materials Golden makes for collage. Also signed up for Jeanne Carbonetti's class on creativity; have taken her courses before and like how she teaches. Need to make more collages in the next three months so that I arrive at class with good questions; don't see making them at a 5x7 size and don't know what will turn up. Played with adjusting the color of tissue paper and Nigel got into the act by shredding my colored paper towels for me. Today, I am full up with show prep--three shows to install over the first two weekends in September, and nothing finished today. 95 degrees on the front porch when the sun is out so I'm coloring in the dining room. Stay tuned.
Despite all the excitement engendered by Bob Burridge's class, I haven't put brush to canvas or paper since August. I have been making art, however, and finished a number of carvings in time for the fall season. The work has shifted a little, into furniture and now driftwood sculpture. I have also started experimenting with rustic furniture made with mortise-and-tenon construction. It doesn't solve the weight problem completely--larger logs are still heavy, and a bed made of 4 @ 5" diameter logs is a pretty solid structure. Furniture construction methods let me move away from the limits of wood grain, to some extent, and I am excited about some of the possibilities showing up in the woodpile.
The second weekend in November is Jerry's Art Expo, a 4-day extravaganza of classes and trade show hosted by Jerry's Artarama, an excellent chain of art supply stores. I've attended classes and shopped hard for several years and have come to think of it as an Autumn Break, a chance to take a couple of days off work and explore something other than production carving. Last year, I experimented with 8 hours of Bob Burridge, as a test for whether I wanted to take his 40-hour class. In 2002, I took Michael Wilcox on Color and Jeanne Carbonetti, Making Pearls. Love her books and thought she was a great teacher. Which is true.
This year, after discovering I loved collage in Bob's class described above, I registered for Patti Brady's Second Skin class, eight hours of learning about the different products manufactured by the Golden Paint Company that can be used in support of collage and my type of sculptural painting. Jeanne Carbonetti was back with a new class based on a forth-coming book, and I thought it would be good to get another dose of her supportive encouraging teaching style. I also prepared myself not to go crazy at the trade show and thought hard about what I had bought vs what I've used in the past.
1.75 out of 3 is still a pretty good batting average, no? (I know there isn't a half-hit.)
Patti's class was good. We played with a number of different gels and mediums, making sample boards and testing effects. Although some painters stay away from using the gels (one more thing to worry about), I think they will work well for me, largely because I am a sculptor first and I NEED depth and shape in my paintings, much more so than I have been able to convey with light and dark alone. I did have to laugh at myself, though: I OWN the entire sample kit we played with. I bought it last year. I've never opened the bottles. So I just paid a significant chunk o'change for someone to tell me how to spread paint. So be it. 0.5 for the day.
The trade show was mostly as good as usual; I am less overawed by the range of products having seen the same displays for several years in a row. I knew what I needed; knew what I had plenty of; promised self not to buy more if I already had some even if the prices were astoundingly low, and got out of there with only two impulse purchases, a tie-dye kit and a henna body art kit, total unplanned damage $15. This is not bad. I can use the henna for hooping next summer. Give the trade show the 1.0.
That leaves us with the second class: The Art of Creativity. The format was talking and demo during the morning (coldly: paying good money to watch someone else's paint dry); hands-on painting in the afternoon. I only realized that I was showing signs of being in trouble during the morning much much later. I was resting my head in my hands at one point when my neighbor said, Don't go to sleep now! and I thought, I'm not sleepy; I really want to go pound my head against the door jamb. Later, I stood up and moved to the back of the room and stretched and thought maybe I had just been sitting still for too long. I think now I simply needed to get away. My body did not want me to be there.
It got worse after lunch when we started to paint. I am not a watercolorist. Both of my paintings went flat and muddy in no time at all and then the chorus started singing in the back of my head: You're not an artist you can't paint it's a waste of time to try give it up. Familiar territory, but particularly unfortunate when it crops up in a classroom setting. Jeanne came around and was encouraging and offered suggestions and I tried to stay in the game and play, and even started a third painting, but by 3:00, I couldn't take it anymore and slipped out the door. Went over to the trade show in the ballroom; paid for and collected my products, and took everything out to the car. Then I went back to class.
By then, it was time to clean up and sit for the closing talk, and I made it through that OK. Grateful afterward that I had already paid for everything so I could jump in the car and come home, missing the afternoon traffic. It was only when I was unloading the truck at home that I realized I'd left my paintings in the classroom! Boy, I REALLY didn't like that class!
So what really happened? In hindsight, I think it was simply that I am not at the place where I need to know how Jeanne comes to a painting, A, and B, her path is VERY different from mine. Clue: I am a chainsaw carver, she is a watercolorist. A counterargument can be made: process is process and it works for every thing. (That's what I believe her next book is about. And what this class was supposed to be about.) Didn't work for me, is all I can say. My body was rebelling from the moment we sat down--that's what the head-pounding was about, and that's why I needed to move to the back of the room. (Historically, I'm one of the front-row sitters in almost any class, including Organic Chemistry.)
Jeanne paints in a very fluid, alchemical style, and the painting tells her what it wants to be. Watercolor does that. Watercolorists like that. I love the way watercolor looks when it works, but I am not that way. I paint Celtic knotwork. The Book of Kells was designed, not intuited. (Not on the final vellum, that is, and they didn't have paper in Ireland then so who knows how they did the prep work.) (This is an avenue for future research, BTW.) When I start and run on intuition and let the painting tell me where to go, it goes to mud. Quickly.
After resting up a bit at home, I took the leftover watercolor paints we'd been given and tie-dyed coffee filters to use as raw material for collages and knotwork paintings. I felt better. Sleep and an hour of hooping helped, too. Jeanne teaches a great class, and when I took it in 2002, I was propelled to an entirely new understanding of myself as an artist. But it's 2005 today, and I don't need that information anymore. It's a bit scary to be out here on this edge, coming to understand there aren't too many teachers left and that I have to make my own way into this particular part of the woods.
I've spent a lot of time this morning thinking about what comes next. I don't have any good answers yet. I need to plan more, this is obvious. It's coming as well to the rustic furniture--that needs a lot more thinking-through, all the way up to assembling before gluing--than a straight chainsaw carving (which also needs planning but it doesn't show when you don't, as much). Stay tuned.
So credit 0.25 for the lesson, and the colors I can use for staining coffee filters. Miffed that I left three half-sheets of good watercolor paper behind. Could have used them in collage, or gessoed over the painting and tried again. Might not have seen the whole problem if I'd had them here, though.
One of these hours I have to get outside and make sawdust. Good to have tangible production at hand to pull me out of too much rumination.
I've tried making knots from the balloons used to make animal sculptures and covering them with papier mache. It works, but it takes a long time and a lot of expensive products. It would be easier if the balloons were filled with something rigid--they wouldn't need as much reinforcement from the covering layer. (Balloons will hold their air for a long time if the balloon is sealed, as it is somewhat by papier mache, but the seal isn't perfect and it won't last for as long as I want the painting to last.) Urethane foam-in insulation came to mind. The product comes in a pressurized can with a long straw that could be inserted into a balloon and pumped into a balloon.
My theory is sound. However, the practice needs work. It turns out that the insulation product generates a tremendous amount of gas in the process of forming the bubbles that make the insulation; that gas rushes to the end of the balloon and fills it up long before the balloon fills up with foam. (In a more normal application, this gas would simply blow off into the atmosphere. The gas has a strong odor of acetone.) The first two attempts were mildly successful--I got some foam into the balloon and was able to mash it along the length of the balloon and bleed off some of the gas. In order to make the shape I wanted, however, I did need more foam in the balloon.
The third try proved the limits of the experiment. I didn't stop the foam quite fast enough, and the balloon exploded. If you've ever wondered how the bomb experts on CSI (or in reality!) do their job, I might recommend this experiment. I was covered in urethane foam, as was my work area; there's a neat void behind me where I absorbed the impact, such that it was, and clearly demarcated lines of bubbles where my sweatshirt wasn't. Fortunately for the work-in-progress around me, urethane foam blown through the air loses a lot of its stickiness and lifted off fairly easily once it cured.
The sweatshirt is ruined. I'm saving the pants for subsequent work with foam. I (and my neighbor) are grateful that her 10-year old son was not around to see this. We hope that he doesn't get too curious about how I've prepared these canvases.
I may try this again--I'd like to make permanent balloon sculptures. I will definitely need the assistance of another person. It's possible that if we prick the balloon at the far end and temporarily seal it by twisting that end, we can bleed off the gas and allow the foam to fill more of the balloon. It's dicey, and there is still the variable of how much the foam will expand.
Latex insulation doesn't expand enough to be any fun at all, and so the ease-of-clean-up is completely offset by the uselessness of that product for my purposes.
Catch up on record-keeping, chores, and day-job during the week and get ready for another round next weekend, and then I can get back to running the saw.