Yesterday an invitation arrived via email asking if I’d like to enter a piece of art into ARTIADE—The Olympics of Visual Art 2008 Beijing/Los Angeles. As an artist of no repute, one who maintains a constant art practice but without ambition, I was surprised to receive such an invitation. I knew nothing about ARTIADE until a visit to the website revealed a wondrous display of rather interesting art from the previous art Olympics in 2004 in Athens. Art is submitted from all over the world and an international jury selects pieces that reflect what artists are preoccupied with in different places. A brilliant concept and the invitation is an open one.

As for the invitation—well, my work is not as defined or as accomplished as what I see in the exhibit so my first thought was that I would not enter. I have nothing worthy of entering at the moment. That thought flitted through my mind. Then I had a better one. I received this invitation because Sarah Shallbetter at The Art Connection saw my art at the Joy Street open studios a couple of weeks ago and invited me to donate a piece to their organization which places art in hospitals and homeless shelters, places where the art might bring needed uplift. I was especially happy to say yes to Sarah’s offer because the art she appreciated was the very same art that had been rejected a couple of weeks before from a juried show. So the next thought I had was—Wow, this has come from that! So, let me just follow what comes to me. Let me say yes to yes, again.

So, without any other reason, with no viable work, I have decided to enter. This means doing new work and continuing to puzzle over what I can create visually and how. It’s a wonderful puzzle, one that never gets fully solved. I know what I want to share but what can I do visually that truly moves people?

Well, the more questions I ask, the more motivation I feel. A good thing. And all the while I carry on writing. Another yes.  Life is very, very fine when you just flow with it.

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.

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!

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.

Turns out the correct spelling for the Lord High Everything Else is The Grand Pooh-Bah. He is from The Mikado by Gilbert and Sullivan and because he is the Lord High Everything Else he is not the Lord High Executioner. That job falls to Juror who axed me and several of my friends from upcoming art show.

A note came from Sally this morning to say that Barbara and Steve have also been axed. Both were shocked but that night their dear cat Dewey, who’d been with them for twenty-one years, passed away. “A small stroke,’ said Sally. Barbara said it helped her put it all into perspective, as it would. We await news of other artist friends.

The thing is that last year we were all accepted and had a grand time at the reception. There was great diversity in the art chosen and it was all honest and full of heart. I’d already planned what I’d wear to this year’s do. That is how the mind works, let’s face it. A little bit of the old ego asserting itself, a big bit of F.U.N. The shock of our refusal hit hard—the fun had been taken from us.

But this morning The Grand Pooh-Bah whispered in my ear—don’t forget Manet and Le Salon des Refusés of 1863. I had my dates wrong in the last post. The official Salon of 1863 rejected 3,000 artists! Of which one was the truly, truly great Manet. None of us can even breathe the air Manet breathed but—but we do share this with him. We have been refused! AND we are not defeated! The Great Pooh-Bah whispered to Sally that we must have our own exhibit and so we shall. He whispered to me that it will be called Le Salon des Refusés II. 144 years after Napoleon allowed the first Refusés Salon, we shall have the second! In honor.

We will rent a room at the Art Center in January and in order to be included in the show you must have been rejected from the ‘official’ show. I think one half of the group must bring champagne, the other half caviar. We’ll go from there. The Grand Pooh-Bah speaks!

I was wondering as I stared in shock at my refusal notice what this all meant. How could I find the good in it? Lovely that it only took a day. I’m so glad I can count myself in such great company and that there is something better than being accepted.

For now, I leave you with Le Desjeuner Sur L’herbes, Manet’s brilliant painting that broke all the carefully modeled conventions of art and the restrictions of laced and bonneted society at that time with wondrous, loose splendor—and was the painting rejected by the official Paris Salon. His Olympia is my all-time favorite painting and I was lucky to make a pilgrimage to Paris a few years ago with my son, Nick, then 14, to see it in La Musée D’Orsay. We searched and searched that great little museum and just couldn’t find it. Nick said, ‘Mom, we’re not leaving until you see this painting.’ God bless him. We rounded a corner and there it was. I’m still reeling. It was that brilliant—fun and invigorating all these years later.

Manet painted Olympia, a high-class prostitute, apparently waiting for a client. He gave her the dignity of  the conventional lady of the house, a radical view in its time and now too, I think. Manet was asking us to look at repression and judgment. The painting has hints of Ingre’s Odalisque, the ideal woman, painted a few years before. Olympia was painted in 1865. Apparently the model, Victorine Meurent, went on to become an accomplished painter in her own right. But we do not know her name or her work. That’s another story. It could have something to do why so many of us, all these years later who have been refused in our little show, are women and still finding our way. Curious that the lone Juror is a woman. I will tell you this about our wee troupe—wherever we are as artists, and I think we are all in a grand place simply because art has seeped into our souls—we do know how to throw a party. Stay tuned. The Grand Pooh-Bah is coming.

I just got word that all five of the pieces I submitted to the Arsenal Arts Center Member’s Show here in Boston have been rejected. Yikes. I’m shocked! I love the stuff I do. Both my writing and my art. But the single juror does not.

I’m experimenting as an artist. My main focus is writing but at the end of the day I sit down to explore art. It’s a fabulous puzzle—what we can communicate and how. The two creative ventures feed each other. It’s caviar and champagne. Daily.

The Impressionist’s rejection in the Paris salons of 1895 did waft through my mind for an instant. It can be useful to know your art history! My paintings were acts of visual play, authentic explorations, not art changing like the Impressionists. But then—this isn’t Paris. Well, bloody hell—there you have it. One person said no. And I love these paintings!

Does it mean anything at all? Perhaps The Grand Poobah is having a word with me—

Stick to your true desire. Stay with your passion. You have something else on the go. Don’t get distracted.

Or maybe he’s saying—Never submit your sense of things to the judgment of another.

Or perhaps he’s occupied with other things. I am too.

My friend Sally just called—also rejected. Hers was the perfect response—’Oh, well. We’ll carry on and we’ll have our own show.’

That took the stinger out. Who knows what the bigger picture is? Only The Grand Poobah knows and he isn’t saying—just giving hints. They’re subtle but rather affirming—as they always are. I’m listening. And carrying on—with everything.  Spirit and determination intact.  So there!

Yup, that’s me. I’m an artist of no repute. Once I had a kind of reputation when I worked for many years as a graphic artist. People knew me and I got paid for making art, though the art was constrained in size and scope by the written word it was meant to ‘illustrate’. I’ve moved on now that a lot of my financial responsibilities have lessened. I feel so lucky to have had the work life I did—all that freedom! But it’s time to swim in deeper, colder water.

When I started this blog I thought I might use it to promote my work. Mostly I spend my time writing but art is in my blood too, something I’ve done daily since childhood. I never intended to be a ‘fine’ artist. Art has always been simply a means to express myself and to connect with the mystery of being here, to tell stories even. I love doing it and if I’m away from serious efforts for a few months, as I sometimes am, I begin to miss it in a way that causes me to throw other things aside and begin again. The same is true of writing. I must do both, just who I am.

I knew little of the blogosphere when I began here. I don’t read many blogs and so don’t build a lot of readership though I love to find other artists out there. I hope more will begin to discuss their work, to bleat and chat online about their own art journeys because we don’t see those journeys in the work itself. And I’m kind of curious—is it just me? And, well, there are so many different kinds of art. I wonder sometimes what people are thinking. Just curious, you know?

Now I’ve been at this a year I see my wee blog is something that gives me pleasure for the connections it sometimes creates and for the ways it enables me to think on the page. It’s like holding my thoughts up to a mirror. I see them a little more clearly and get to quicken my step a bit.

Here’s what has changed in this last year for me as an artist—

—I began teaching drawing to a wondrous group of women on Saturday mornings. It has made me think about the artistic process in a more conscious way and there is an amazing creative synergy working with other people. We’ve all grown as artists.

—I started painting. Just because I felt inspired to. Small things that are getting larger. Without ambition but for all the reasons I have always made art—for the ongoing exploration of what is possible.

—I continue writing because it calls me like my mother. ‘Get in here!’ I write things that make me laugh. I show up with devotion.

—I see there is a need for a reputation! Yes. Yes, I do. The work is piling up and the next art is the one where I discover the way to bring it into the world again, with the bucks.

So, that is what I’ll explore here now. It’s kind of important to all artists even those of us who aren’t trying to be ‘big show’ artists. But I’m not trying to be small either. I’m just doing what I do and I’m curious what that means.

Last year I wrote a lot here about my art class. This year I’ll fold that into my own art story here. What I do with the art class opens up my own creative path. I’m not really teaching them anything, just sharing how it is with me making art and they are sharing with me—their frustrations, their pleasures, their explorations. We’re expanding together like laughing gas and the results are showing up in my work. The Tao says everything has an ebb and a flow. This is the flow.