Artwala Road

Yesterday I sent an email to my students reminding them that we are going on a field trip tomorrow morning to The Natural History Museum at Harvard to sketch. My wonderful student and now friend, Maureen, wrote back that she would be there and—’I always have such grandiose ideas.’

I LOVE that. The bigger the better! Seems like so many of us have been rather small thinkers and with good reason. I consider this a concern of women. When we Baby Boomers were girls it didn’t look like grandiose ideas could apply to us. I remember being ten and suddenly getting it. I thought that God was a man, Jesus was a man, the Prime Minister of Canada was a man, Santa Claus was a man, Mark Twain was a man. If it weren’t for Lucy Maud Montgomery and the Queen of England I would have shot myself right then and there. I decided that I, too, would be a writer because I couldn’t be Queen. Though, at the time, I was holding out hope that Prince Charles might cast an eye my way.

That was then. I’ve had plenty of grandiose ideas myself over the years but too often I haven’t believed that all is possible. No more. So, tomorrow, we nurture those visions in the company of one another after breakfast at the local diner. Stay tuned.

November 30th, 2007 | Category: Drawing Club | Comments (4)

I popped down to the Art Center this afternoon to deliver some prints of my art for their shop. Yes, this is the same art center which rejected my paintings from their members’ show. No hard feelings at all. The program director is a truly wonderful woman, perhaps too wonderful. She said, ‘You are going to submit work to the faculty/studio artists show, aren’t you?’ I said, ‘No, I don’t think so.’ I explained that I don’t have much spare art lying around. I try to keep things moving and they seem to, one way or the other. I said I’d just been playing around this fall but I think I know the direction I will focus on now in my art. I’ll be going back to my paintings with words. I didn’t say I’d lost a little hope that my work might pass muster after the last couple of rejections.
‘Well, if you don’t have anything,’ she said, ‘take these things for the shop back and submit them.’

‘But, but…’

In my last post I cavalierly asserted that I like to say yes to yes. Well, here was a yes and I was saying no! Aha! I caught myself. Which probably means doing some new work. My other big project nears an end but is my impassioned focus right now. Still, one thing feeds another and the more the merrier, as they say. Onwards.
After that meeting I took a look at the show from which I was rejected. It was small, which means it was highly selective. I don’t want to judge but I can say it was a safe show. For the most part the work was well done and serious in nature. What I missed was the freewheeling mishmash of work that comes from a more inclusive attitude and incorporates a greater variety of visions. I missed the fun. There’s real energy in that. But that is coming in January with Le Salon des Refusés. Stay tuned.

On another note—next June there will be some sort of ‘happening’ at the Center around ‘telling our stories’ and I’ve been asked to somehow incorporate that into my drawing class next term. I’m so excited about this. I love people’s stories and think that art can be a wondrous way to communicate the common and uncommon journeys we’re on. Let’s cut to the chase and make our art about something. Let’s stand up naked. This will be a new way of teaching, with a creative focus. I woke up a four in the morning last night full of ideas. They will firm up in the next few weeks, no doubt.

Meanwhile, the paints are coming back out of the drawer and onto the drawing table. Yes to yes. And thank you. I really, really appreciate the kindness my friend, the program director, exhibited today in insisting I step up and try again. It’s nice to be wanted, for sure.

November 30th, 2007 | Category: Dear Reader | Comments (4)

The Joy Street art show last weekend was a modest success as recorded here already. A few paintings and prints were sold and the show gave me the opportunity to dive into a series of paintings I might not otherwise have explored. Having a venue for work spurs productivity, for me at least. These paintings are not my main focus but I am an artist all the same who continues to make art in the midst of other work and to take it seriously—in a light-hearted sort of way.
Then this morning I discovered a note buried in my junk mail file from artist Sarah Shallbetter who’d seen the show. She is program director for an organization in Boston called The Art Connection which donates art to nonprofits including hospitals and homeless shelters. So far they’ve donated 3,000 paintings. She asked if I might consider donating one. Yes, I’d love to!

I like to say yes to yes. It always leads to good things. And I’m happy, of course, that Sarah thought my art might brighten the walls of some worthy place. Art is there to lift us up and I can’t really think of a better use for it. So, even though the work didn’t sell, it may have found just the home it needed. Another affirmation that all is perfect. And that the rewards of rejection, if we can call it that, are great!

November 26th, 2007 | Category: Dear Reader | Comments (6)

In the open studio show I participated in this weekend I teamed up with with my friend, photographer Mark Peterson, and met hundreds of people who streamed through to view our work. Mark’s studio mate, Kristen Breiswith, also exhibited some prints of her beautiful paintings that Mark made. An interesting development in art, I think, is the way new technology has created the ability to make really sharp reproductions that are affordable. It didn’t mean that people were splashy with the dough though. Art still seems to require courage when it comes to buying.

I visited the studio of one young woman artist who looked like she was somewhere between six and twenty-six, her hair in pigtails, her tight black skirt way above her knees, her legs bare save for knee socks, her feet clad in heavy black boots, her lips smeared with dark lipstick, her face pale. Her work had a kind of punk quality that veered between anger and serene beauty—scrawly, spidery ink lines on old manuscript pages and antique photos. A disregard for the past, for preservation and a statement that the present moment and the hand trumps all. She had one gorgeous six foot long piece of paper on the wall covered in black charcoal lines so deep and insistent that the whole paper was shades of black save for a few holes of light. A dim vision I couldn’t help but love because it is feels true sometimes even if another vision has a greater truth for me. It was so triumphant, obsessive, narrow-focused and emphatic, so over the top, so real and, because of all that, so important. I told her I loved it and she thanked me shyly and said it was all about the light. I said that without the light it would be nothing. She said she’d made a couple of others but got so carried away the light had been obliterated.

It didn’t look like many were buying her work but—but if she hangs in there, if she stays obsessed and raw, if she finds a way to live, she has what it takes. It was real work. There are not so many people who have the courage to be truly present in their work or life for that matter.

Many, many people loved Mark’s incredible photographs and an art agent is very interested in taking him on—the best possible outcome for his day as his photographs deserve to be in the bigger world. I was happy to sell several paintings and prints. Thanks, friends! And a few others! At the end of the event we heard that it had not been a good day for most of the artists in terms of sales. It’s not the best venue for seeing art.  It’s dazzling to see so much all at once but it’s still an important chance all the same for artists to share what they’re doing. Considering how little art is valued in this culture it’s fabulous how many are making a practice of it. Under the surface of this culture we live in the human spirit forges on.

November 19th, 2007 | Category: Dear Reader | Comments (2)