Art of Janet Kozachek

A Very Special Opportunity

2011-08-13T18:30:00.003-04:00

After an unusually long hiatus, I am once again a studio artist. Although just as much a studio artist by default as by design, I am happy to be back at the work table again. The uncertainty of our economy and the political wrangling that personally affects my own work inspired me to accept every single contract that came my way this spring and summer - much like a bear putting on summer fat in anticipation of a lean winter. O even booked contracts that overlapped, subcontracting to keep the machine going. Spring and summer were booked full with about eleven teaching and exhibition commitments. This was a greater line up of activities than I had ever done before. Work was such that the fun things in life that weren’t explicitly tied to getting these contracts fulfilled were put aside. This meant putting things like blogging on hold. But now that my schedule has relaxed somewhat I can recap on some of the more interesting activities that the hot season offered.

Beginning in February of this year, I began work with the Very Special Arts organization. This organization, like so many organizations that support under served communities, the arts and education has also fallen to the grim reaper of budget cuts (hence my suddenly finding myself on sabbatical). Some of the politics behind these budget cuts with regard to the downsizing and in many instances, wholesale elimination of programs, can be found in a recent Washington Post Article.

Because there is so much misunderstanding of what organizations like the VSA accomplish, I would like to take an opportunity to offer what my small contribution was and what it meant to me. I liked the work. It was challenging and interesting. The most important part of my work was that it made people happy and engaged. I submit this as a largely neglected priority because many, but not all, of the powers that be in our government tend to forget about the liberal sprinkling of both direct and indirect allusions to happiness and the general well-being of citizens in our Constitution, Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights. More importantly, they forget what it means. This is perhaps why my work with the VSA made me feel genuinely a part of a democracy.

My contribution to this great organization was a course in hand built ceramics. We started off slowly with simple forms - balls, disks, tubes. These were made into wearable art such as beads and pendants and also became the components of simple musical instruments like rattles. There was no object without a use beyond the practice of obtaining greater physical dexterity. Small blocks became bases for handles and the handles became sculptural forms. When leather hard the bases were carved to become stamps. The stamps were used on tiles as well as vases. The vases pictured above and to the right were built towards the conclusion of the class and made use of a series of skills such as making a pinch pot, then adding a wrap around slab which was first stamped with the student’s designs. Another pinch pot was added on top of the stamped slab and a neck added to that. One of these vases was made by a student who had the use of only one arm and the other by a blind student.

I cannot say that these projects should be supported because they are part and parcel of an investment in our gross domestic product. But I can say that the look on the face of a student as she caressed her finished bottle with awe and a feeling of accomplishment was worth every penny of support.

Sleepless in Orangeburg, Breathing at Alfred

2011-03-26T13:16:00.003-04:00

Time changes hit some people harder than most and lasts longer than average. Not being a morning person by any stretch, getting up one hour earlier due to daylight savings time is enough to do bodily damage. Yes, I’m still recovering from the big switch.
The first three days into the time change saw me sleepless at night and in a zombie-like trance throughout the days. I tried to shake it off but to no avail. Most people don’t seem to take fatigue or sleepiness too seriously but my own recent mishap made me more respectful of the need for restful sleep. Coming home from work, I had hoped that napping would take the edge off of a drowsy day. But after waking up and still not being rested I decided to pretend to have a little more vim and vigor than I really did and went about evening chores with a falsely composed spring in my step. The result was that through a combination of fatigue and misplaced spryness I tripped on the back porch, careened down to the sidewalk, across the stairs and introduced my head to my sunroom via the glass windowpane. Luckily I was not seriously hurt and although I still have bruises, the face cuts did not need stitches and healed nicely. This was a good thing because I did not want to be known henceforth as Janet “scarface” Kozachek.
My activities have been slow and deliberate ever since my journey through the sunroom glass. I did mostly mundane projects at first - making casts of favorite garden rocks for use in ceramic ocarina sculptures and working on a new configuration for a pit firing kiln ( I dare not burn it until the accident-prone curse wears off). I have now graduated to carving some stone seals to re-introduce myself to tasks requiring some greater degree of alertness and a modicum of manual dexterity. The stones are small as are the carving chisels. Still, rock carving with these chisels can be hard on a middle-aged person’s hands so this small project has been a protracted process. Carve into a rock, do some paperwork, carve into a rock, have dinner, carve into a rock, do some dishes, carve into a rock, make lesson plans........
My inspiration for the small set of stone seals came from my nephew Alex Kozachek, who is a first rate ceramic student at Alfred University of whom I am extremely proud ( of course I am proud of all my nieces and nephews ). Alex will be following in his old aunt’s footsteps in the spring of 2012 when he will study at the Beijing Central Art Academy as well as the industrial ceramic center of Jing De Zhen (For those who have not been following this blog, I lived in China for about five years in the 1980's and studied for two of those years at the Beijing Central Art Academy - hence my knowledge of ancient and modern Chinese). An example of Alex’ recent work can be seen above. I love this piece which to me is a very fresh interpretation of celadon ware. I liken it to a deconstructed tenth century Chinese wine vessel.
Art that meets with aesthetic approval in China involves an invocation of the word “qi” which literally means “breath”but also alludes to the Daoist concept of a life force or nature spirit. A good painting or a good movement in marshal arts is said to have “qi.” The concept of this mystical life force, “a breath of life” if you will, may have ancient roots but its use in describing the quality of an art work can be traced to the sixth century art critic Xie He. In his canon, the Six Principles of Painting, the first word of the first rule is qi. So “breath” has a definite place of prominence in the philosophy of Chinese art. Since classical Chinese is quite different from the modern vernacular however, what Xie He actually meant in his Six Principles has been academic speculative fodder for years. I believe that in Xie He’s context qi is meant to be used as a compound word in affiliation with the second word “yun” which denotes a musical sound. For this reason the phrase “qi yun” is sometimes translated as “spiritual resonance.”
The etiology of the word “qi” itself is quite interesting. In the ancient form, the word is written as rice with steam coming off. (To see the rice in the stone carvings at right look for the stick figure with two lines on top and two lines on the bottom. The “steam” part of this character can be found in the wavy lines on top of the stick figure). In the form that is very ancient and close to a pictograph, a bowl with a generous helping of rice in it is also included in this sign. As a rather prosaic, earthy woman I like the visceral feeling emoted from this ancient form of Chinese with its link to sustenance and eating.
In western art parlance, sometimes the word “qi” or “breath” is bantered about without a clear sense of its meaning or knowledge of its origins. But it does imbue a certain sense of harboring ancient mystical knowledge on the part of the speaker. For myself, I enjoy the knowledge of origins and an exposition of the basics. And both philosophically and literally speaking, an imprint of my most recent seal carvings into the artist’s work will hopefully mean that they will never be without “the breath.”

Giving a Fig for a Small Instrument of Music

2011-03-06T22:15:00.002-05:00

The small bell at right is one of my latest ceramic instruments. I was attempting a different shape from my disk rattles in order to bring the shape closer to the Chinese Song dynasty rattles I had seen reproduced in From Mud to Music. My flattened disk shapes yielded a satisfying sound but The I was still curious about how a rounder shape with a round pellet would sound. My initial design featured a round casing with two sound holes cut into it in addition to the slit opening in front. Soon realizing that this bore an uncanny resemblance to Kermit the Frog, I tore off the casing and started over. This time I made only one center hole and burnished the exterior with a yellow ochre terra sigillata. It struck me that this shape with its amber surface looked very much like one of the brown turkey figs I harvest from my tree in the summer. Some of them in fact are lost to birds who like to peck a hole right in the middle of the fig then don’t even have the courtesy to carry it away and devour the rest of it.

My tiny fig rattle does not sound nearly as nice as my disk rattles. But it does have one surprise feature. The pellet inside is hollow and functions as a whistle. So what doesn’t rattle at least will toot.

Udu You Think You Are?

2011-03-02T21:11:00.002-05:00

In my last entry, I mentioned Barry Hall’s book From Mud to Music, published by the American Ceramic Society in 2006. I have been consulting ceramic texts both new and old in my quest for structural designs for my ceramic musical instruments, and this text was particularly thorough. From Mud to Music is conveniently partitioned into chapters based on the way an instrument makes its sound using the Sachs-Hornbostel classification system: Idiophones, Membrano phones, Aerophones, Chordophones, and includes a special chapter on instruments that combine two or more of these forms. The index, glossary, and resource lists are all quite excellent and very helpful.

When reading through texts such as this one, I like to try a selection from the product demonstration chapters to see for myself how the steps dovetail with the development of a usable form. Because I am in the process of writing my own book on Chinese painting and calligraphy, it also helps to look at well defined models in writing on art instruction.

This week I present my interpretation of the Side-Hole Pot Drum illustrated on page 204. The process of creating this hand built vessel from coils was clear and understandable. But because I do not own a potter’s wheel, I did have to make do with a cast plaster puki instead of a wheel thrown one. (The puki is the Native American term for the small bowl that is used to support the base of a hand built coiled pot). My example of a side hole drum, also known as an Udu, is shorter and more spherical than the drum of Mud to Music specifications but it does work. It makes a bass blooping noice ( my own onomatopoeic neologism) that probably only the most avid percussionist would adore. This sound is effected by tapping the top or side hole and allowing the air to escape the second hole. With practice, the sound can be varied by cupping the hand over a hole and altering the amount of air escaping. Doing so made a friend of mine who heard it over the telephone think that my udu was a string bass. Striking the side of the pot adds a higher timber and fluid tones can be made by tapping the holes with loose fingers.

The down side of my udu as a musical instrument is that it just sounds too quiet for me. A former percussionist colleague told me that his own udu was quiet and advised getting a microphone for it. Oddly enough, my husband claims that the sound is sufficiently loud and that it even has the ability to increase in direct relationship to the amount of time I spend practicing the drumming. Nevertheless, a microphone will soon be an udu companion so that I can perform well in drum circle.

The pattern on the drum was made from painted red, black and white clay slip and was influenced by neolithic pottery designs - in particular that of Yangshao culture. I was particularly fond of a large neolithic swirling pattern on a large vessel in the Chinese collection at Princeton University. When I saw something so bold and made so long ago I wondered if we have ever really improved on such a design.

Clicking and Clacking the Time Away

2011-02-25T15:36:00.004-05:00

A few years of work on developing ceramic ocarinas brought me to the book From Mud to Music by Barry Hall. I found it to be an excellent book and richly illustrated with examples of both ancient as well as contemporary musical instruments made from ceramic. One of the more enjoyable aspects of the book was that it also came with a CD featuring music produced from these illustrated instruments. I unfortunately damaged this book in an accident but might replace it. It is one of the few books that I have that I would actually buy twice.

Although my interest was in the aerophones, (ocarinas, flutes, horns etc) a small rattle illustrated in From Mud to Music in the chapter on idiophones caught my eye. The rattle was produced during the Song dynasty in China (960 -1279) and made from a simple spherical ball which encapsulated a pellet. The ball was opened in the front with a long wide slit that ran halfway around the diameter of the ball. A small handle perforated , ostensibly to be strung, was extruded from the opposite end. There was no information on this particular item as to how it was played, why it was made or what it sounded like. The simplicity of design made it feasible for someone with a short attention span such as myself to reproduce a facsimile of the instrument to satisfy my curiosity as to the sound.

The first attempts to make this simple bell or rattle design met with limited success. For one thing, I tried to “improve upon” the design by making two slits and leaving a center bridge. This center bridge proved to be unstable and tended to crack in the rapid rising heat of the pit firing I was then engaged in. So I eventually made my designs closer to the original, with a single wide smile of a slit in one side. These fired well and remained intact for musical use.

The other hurdle to overcome in making an idiophone such as a bell or clacker in ceramic was the temptation to test the sound out too much before the item was fired. Of course one does have to test these things to a limited extent because generally what doesn’t sound before it is fired will not sound after coming out of a kiln. But too much force of movement on the delicacy that is unfired (greenware) clay will cause a stress fracture to form or even a hole from the internal pellet knocking against the casing. But the dry clacking noise of the greenware ratlle was seductive. It reminded me of the percussion instruments of the Beijing opera. So I would clack it a little bit. Then I would wait and clack it just a bit more. Then it would break. I then had what could perhaps be described as an idiotphone rather than an idiophone. I now have three idiotphones and counting.

I did resist the temptation to click and clack my latest ceramic rattles while they were still in the unfired greenware stage so they have made it through the fire unscathed. The ones pictured to the above right were made with volcanic ash clay with a surface of burnished slip. I discovered that the higher firing created a bell like sound the pitch of which can be modified by moving an index finger backwards or forwards along the front opening. The shape of these disk rattles was still modified from the fuller spherical forms of the Song dynasty rattles. But the upcoming weeks will see another firing and more experimentations with shapes closer to that model.

Reduction Pit Firing Seminar

2011-02-21T13:20:00.004-05:00

This weekend marked the culmination of our first team taught seminar at Radcliffe Street studios in Eutawville, South Carolina. The seminar consisted of two all day Saturday classes in the production of volcanic ash pinched and coiled vessels, tile carving, slip burnishing, surface decoration and a reduction pit firing. All materials were supplied along with a free lunch and a coffee break with a vast array of home-made desserts thrown in as well. Students could partake of everything for the very generous bargain price of $135.00. I do believe that it was quite generous. But we really wanted to do this.

Because this was a new venture for my colleague and I, there were successes, wonderful discoveries and... well...learning curves to navigate around. The carving of the vessels and tiles in Santa Clara style was a great discovery for me and a joy for our students. The heavy, non-plastic clay was highly suited to carving - with effects that looked like sculpted sandstone. The sandy quality of the clay also left clean well defined cuts. So we counted a merit point for carving and a must do for the next seminar.

Jeri Burdick provided a variety of traditional slips to cover the pottery with as well as terra sigillata. One of the slips, a red iron oxide slip that was made from a recipe that I got from the Pueblo Tewa potters, unfortunately didn’t “take” and tended to flake off in the burnishing process (which should have been a strong hint for me to dispense with it altogether) then delaminated completely after the firing. The most successful slips were the two terra sigillata ones - a white and a yellow ochre. The yellow ochre had been freshly mixed but the white was Jeri’s very big-hearted donation of a vintage slip that had been aged ten years. Aged slip to a potter is like a rare vintage wine to a connoisseur. It was a good thing that Jeri had discovered this because if it had been me I probably would have hidden and hoarded it - maybe even put it into a safety deposit box. The slip was really like butter and it burnished to a sheen just by rubbing it by hand on the vessel. We did the traditional thing, however, and burnished the slip covered vessels with polished rocks. ( I still have not discovered the quintessential burnishing rock for my pots yet. The rocks have to be truly smooth and free of flaws. These are difficult to find among commercially prepared polished pebbles so I sometimes resort to polishing with a spoon ).

The kiln we prepared this past weekend was most definitely the prettiest one yet but there were some spaces that caused the flames to oxidize a significant number of wares despite our valiant efforts to reduce everything with a ton of cow manure - also Jeri’s contribution (Should our next seminar be a bring your own bag lunch and box of manure?) We didn’t find this out, of course, until our Sunday morning opening of the kiln.

There is nothing quite like an early Sunday morning opening of a pit-fired kiln full of lovingly produced goods. The photograph above shows the pottery contents in the kiln with the metal lid just removed There were about four explosions - two of them my own tiles. Under any other circumstance I would have been disappointed. But when teaching a class, better your own work doesn’t make it through the fire than your students’.

Unlike our earlier test firings, the burnished wares were for the most part just barely reduced - as evidenced by very little blackening. The brilliant thoroughly blackened exceptions however were the small solid pieces placed inside the upside down cans that were used as shelf legs in the kiln. (Obviously there was all smoke and heat with no fire in those.) Hiding small animalitos figures in the cans was a technique used by the Santa Clara Indians to blacken the highly burnished slip. The biggest surprise from beneath a can and one which caused me world class covetous envy was a hand modeled shark tooth sculpture that Jeri had made and burnished with the aged terra sigillata mixed with a secret ingredient in her portion - copper oxide. The copper caused the perfect hints of iridescent colors to bounce off the polished black tooth. Though forged in a can, the shark’s tooth looked uncannily like the real thing and we joked that Jeri could now have a fossil shark tooth forgery business. ( From the point of the can discovery onwards I have been looking at canned goods differently - not by the contents but by the size and shape of the can. I imagine a tile in a tuna can and perhaps several statues neatly tucked inside a cafeteria size can of fruit cocktail. It doesn’t matter what’s actually in the can. I might have to eat it just to get the can. Even if its Boehner’s Baked Beans and Wieners economy size I might have to eat it. So be it).

Another pleasant surprise for me was that although the firing didn’t reduce as well as earlier ones, we believe that the temperature climbed higher than in our previous firings. The w idiophone musical instruments that went through this fire developed a higher pitched ring than my previously fired ones. This better vitrification was more suitable, too, for instruments that had parts that rattle or click against each other.

Although we didn’t plan to extend our seminar into Sunday afternoon, we had a few people who had bunked down in Eutawville join us in cleaning the vessels and applying butcher’s wax to those that were more porous. The photograph to the left shows one of my small pit-fired vessels after it has been cleaned and polished. And wouldn’t you know it? I discovered the unfired lid in the bottom of a box after the firing. I guess this means a second firing of goods so I can toss in the lid.

Buddy the Snake Finds a New Home

2011-02-16T13:38:00.001-05:00

“...educators for economic growth will do more than ignore the arts. They will fear them. For a cultivated and developed sympathy is a particularly dangerous enemy of obtuseness, and moral obtuseness is necessary to carry out programs of economic development that ignore inequality.”
- Martha Nussbaum Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities

Buddy the Bias Constrictor has found a new home. My colleague and I decided to donate him to the South Carolina State Arts Commission in Columbia. He is definitely happy resting underneath the large painting of swamp scene by Mike Williams. With amazing synchronicity, the colors matched perfectly - as if Buddy had been made for this painting. The bright greens and yellows echoed the colors of the flora and fauna of the painting. Even the ultramarine blue letters of the snake’s body were repeated in the blue lines of Mike William’s painting. I had seen this painting often so it is possible that I had subconsciously recalled the color palette. But for now I will consider it one of life’s happy coincidences.

Buddy may appear again in more capable hands. And there may be some more Freedom Snakes in the works.

New Snake in Town

2011-02-09T21:18:00.006-05:00

Meet Buddy. Buddy the Bias Constrictor. In the picture above he is posing in front of the Portfolio Gallery in Five Points, Columbia SC with his creators Janet Kozachek and Julia Culler Wolfe and their new violinist friend. The photo was taken downtown after our snake made his debut at the State House earlier that morning.

The idea for this snake emblazoned with the words “Don’t Tread on the Arts” came to me as a creative way to make a sign for the Arts Advocacy Day rally organized by the South Carolina Arts Alliance on February 8 at the South Carolina State House. An annual event, this year’s rally took on a certain urgency on account of the governor’s recent call to end funding for the South Carolina State Arts Commission and Educational Television. . As I understand by reading the allocations in the State Budget, these institutions receive only a very small portion of state funding. By far the lesser funded of these two institutions, The South Carolina State Arts Commission ( counting in at four one hundredths of 1% of total FY2011 state appropriation) is in fact an income generating body due to its affiliations with small businesses and the tourism industry - the major source of revenue for this state.

The worrisome thing about a call to abolish institutions which serve the economic well being of the artists, intellectuals, and educators who serve this state as well as the call to dissolve the vehicles for their expression is that it represents a disproportionate social and economic burden on them as well as on their representative voices in government. An action based on such a call would reflect neither good financial stewardship nor would it reflect a fair and democratic call for sacrifice in the face of fiscal austerity. In fact it is not only artists and educators who will suffer but everyone whose lives are enriched by their presence, their knowledge, and their creativity. It is troublesome, too, that this sets an unhealthy precedent for citing fiscal conservatism as a pretense for making decisions probably motivated more by political agenda or bias rather than financial austerity. The latter would be more believable if the Arts Commission and ETV were called upon to make a financial sacrifice (indeed the Arts Commission’s budget was already cut nearly in half two years ago) on a scale equivalent to other branches of government taking budget cuts. But if other institutions are pared down yet these two are eliminated then the bias is obvious. Hence the appearance of Buddy the Bias Constrictor, snaking his way to the State House to demonstrate so much unfairness.

Buddy is an art snake through and through. His exterior was made with left over muslin that once graced the walls of a retired crafter’s booth. His eyes were made from my one-of-a-kind ceramic buttons. Buddy’s stuffing was made with all the bubble wrap that came in packages of returned paintings and mosaics. At ten and a half feet that was a lot of stuffing. The octagonal bubbles in the wrapping served a dual aesthetic and practical purpose - making Buddy a lightweight snake sign to carry and creating a snake skin like texture in the surface when painted. The tongue was made from one of the red plastic plates I used as a makeshift paint palette for acrylics. Julia and I put Buddy together at her studio in Bamberg - my own unheated one being not quite hospitable these days. In between the gesso coat and the final acrylic painting we watched Episode One of the PBS series on the history of New York City. (I had missed these first few episodes on account of being on the road for my job back when it originally aired and thought that now would be as good a time as any to fill in the blanks. Loved that early New Amsterdam peg-legged governor.) When it came to painting the words on the snake, I was at the ready to paint the line “Don’t Tread on the Arts.” Julia came up with a slight variation which was by far better - substituting “our” for “the” making the phrase truly democratic. Julia then added the perfect finishing touch - a Swiss cow bell to Buddy’s tail that could ring in optimism and determination in the face of nay sayers.

Back home in Orangeburg, Buddy had to be sewn up by hand. But it was a labor of love - or at least a quiet and relaxing experience. Nothing like slow tedious work to sooth the ruffled soul. There wasn’t much time between the exhortation to attend the Arts Advocacy Rally and the making of this snake sign so Buddy was a little rough around the edges. I was concerned that he would make a poor showing among other artist’s signs that were sure to be creative. I could not have been more mistaken. When we entered the great hall of the State House with our snake, we were greeted with smiles, thanks, laughter and numerous requests to have photographs taken underneath our Buddy’s long form.

Then a spontaneous and incredible thing happened. There was a corridor through which the state legislators walked that was between two elevated platforms where the audience could see them walk by. With the head of Buddy held securely by my friend and myself, we threw his tail over the other side of the aisle. This created a giant snake arch. The legislators then proceeded to parade underneath the belly of the snake - a belly which read “Don’t Tread on Our Arts.” Some of them laughed, some only smirked. Others batted their eyes in amusement and disbelief. One legislator looked at Buddy with disdain or loathing - I’m not sure which but it was most certainly disfavor.

Some time later, Governor Haley made an appearance at the concomitant Red Dress rally to raise awareness of vascular and heart disease in women. Many of the gatherers chanted “Have a Heart Save the Arts” at that time, hopefully not aware that there were women with coronary disease present. (I didn't know myself what this second rally was all about until I read about it in The State this morning) Thankfully, I was too sick at the time to participate in chants but I did pass Buddy the Bias Constrictor along through the crowds.

The Governor herself was stunning. Despite the fact that I was painfully aware of being on opposite sides of the political spectrum I could not help but feel a slight wellspring of joy at having an excellent looking woman as governor of this state. Score one point for South Carolina, I thought, for having the best looking governor in the Union. I only hope that she will retain the best looking parts of South Carolina - our arts!

Happy Birthday Income Tax

2011-02-03T16:18:00.001-05:00

On February 3, 1913 the 16th amendment was ratified establishing the right of congress to impose a federal income tax. Income tax has been feeling blue for a number of decades now due to bad press so I thought that I would make a birthday cake and say “Happy Birthday.”

One of the reasons for establishing an income tax was to pay back government debt. Unfortunately as we are all now painfully aware, debt on both the federal and state level has become so high that income tax alone will not pay it down. But neither will resorting to cuts alone. From my readings in recent history, it appears that the most effective way of paying down debt is by taking a three-pronged approach; curbing waste, by making budget cuts and by raising taxes. That is how the budget was balanced before and it can be done again.

Talk of raising income tax has been so persistently taboo for so long that it would be difficult indeed to elect a conscientious leader who can be frank about taxes and how we won’t be able to get ourselves out of debt without raising them. This is probably because in the public forum, the link between taxes and the common good has been disconnected by public figures seeking short term gains for themselves over long term gains for the public. It has been these figures that promulgate the notion that a good portion of taxation is nothing more than the work of pick pockets - justifying their point of view by the presentation of half truths. If I say to a voter, for instance, “would you like to keep all the money in your pocket or give it to the government?” of course the answer will be “no thanks.” But if the question is phrased more realistically as “Would you like to keep all the money in your pocket or would you like to contribute one dollar of it so that your children can go to public school and you can have a public library, a police force and emergency services?” then the answer might be different. Yet on account of propagandizing, the latter more rational connection between income tax and public services is lost. Truly, it often seems that a call for the “common good” is met with a vituperative voice or two ringing out the words “communists” or “socialists.”

One popular way self described fiscal conservatives turn the public against taxes is by instilling the idea that taxes are wrong if someone other than oneself benefits. By this logic I should take umbrage at the fact that although I have no children I must still pay taxes to educate the children of others. I don’t take offence at that. In fact, the county where I live built a children’s water park by means of a penny sales tax that I contributed to as a retailer. I am happy that they have their park. I don’t hunt and prefer cat ownership to dog ownership. But part of my tax dollars support an annual Coon Dog Hunt. I am happy that they have their Coon Dog Hunt.

Everyone feels ambivalent about income taxes. It can feel unsettling to hand over hard earned money and not have a clear idea about how well it is being spent. But it is wrong to manipulate such feelings for political gain and to fuel unrealistic expectations of service without pay. I would rather see vital state jobs preserved even if it means that my taxes will go up - provided that this burden is shared equitably and that other methods of generating revenue are pursued as well. Better that we all pay a little more (albeit on a sliding scale depending upon income) in order to build ourselves back up, have our health care, and to generate more taxpayers rather than swell the ranks of the unemployed and uninsured.

Needless to say, the tax codes need to be reformed and taxes need to be made more equitable. And of course there needs to be more transparency and accountability in government spending. But this should be done with responsible conversation and public debate rather than by courting tax payer rage and hiding the obvious.

You make us groan and argue amongst ourselves, but you give us education, protect us from downturns, help us in our old age, give us our libraries, our military servicemen and women, our roads, bridges and hopefully one day - our health care. So Happy Birthday to you Income Tax and many Happy Returns.

A Certain Sense of Self/ A Certain Love of Place

2011-01-25T15:10:00.002-05:00

Recently our governor gave a state of the state address in which she told us that we cannot afford to have a State Arts Commission or Educational Television in South Carolina. Her words and the intention behind them made me realize just how great is the sentiment that the arts and humanities are expendable when times are tight. I gave some very serious thought as to how I would personally address this issue once again and decided to do whatever I could to impress upon our State Legislature why these government entities should not be abolished. I have been doing so with the help of friends and colleagues. But for everyone who feels that the arts and humanities should be preserved and also (perhaps especially) for those who do not, I am writing an essay/story in three parts: An Exploration of Self Worth for the Artist, The Social and Economic Necessity of Art, and The Reasons Behind The Lack of Support for the Arts and What To Do About it.

I would first like to address the commonly held dictum that the arts and humanities are things we cannot afford in times of duress. I have often found that “can’t afford” is a code for “don’t want” “don’t care” and “is not my interest or priority.” Although there are times when people and institutions truly cannot afford something, more often than not it is merely more socially acceptable and appears less callous to claim not to be able to afford it. It can’t always happen, but people have a funny knack of somehow getting and affording what they really want - even art and music. I saw an interesting example of this when I attended a great lecture by Walt Micheal last summer about people in Appalachia in the 1960's. What impressed me most about one of the people living in dire poverty back then was a collection of banjos that he had made by hand from armadillo shells!

Some will say that art is not important if you’re starving. I can tell them that this is not true. When the Soviet Union collapsed my family found that we still had extended family in Ukraine. I recall my family sending them packages of food. Our Eastern European cousins always wanted us to leave space in their food packages for cassettes of music. Could not a state budget hold art this dear? Can they not know that a fed body means little when it carries a starved mind?

A Certain Sense of Self, A Certain Love of Place

I lead a simple life. On the way to and from my jobs and my errands I would turn on the car radio and listen to National Public Radio. I loved Radio Reader in the morning on my way to teach a seminar. I loved Car Talk and What Do You Know on the Weekends. Most of all, I loved driving home after a successful residency to the strains of jazz and classical music on public radio. Much of my work over the past twenty years in South Carolina required a lot of traveling to teach art in public schools through the Arts In Education program of the South Carolina State Arts Commission. My most popular course was Chinese Traditional Painting and Calligraphy. I traveled across the state for two decades - usually listening to music on public radio or listening to CD’s of music that I had purchased after hearing it on public radio. My biggest contribution to the state and to artists around the world was probably the creation of the Society of American Mosaic Artists - which was funded initially with subgrants from the Orangeburg County Fine Arts Center which received its funding from the South Carolina State Arts Commission. But that was such an immense undertaking that I will discuss it separately.

I developed a deep love and appreciation for South Carolina in my travels. I enjoyed the rich countryside and the simple nineteenth century architecture of small towns. I painted these scenes in hotel rooms or back home in my studio. From time to time, I applied for grants and fellowships to assist in the exhibition and production of this work. Some of these were South Carolina Arts Commission based. After my late night work was done, I watched Educational Television.

So considering my history, my aspirations, my work and about 90% of my leisure activities, it was difficult not to take my governor’s call to shut down the Arts Commission and ETV personally. It was especially devastating because although our past governors had advocated reduced spending, there has never been a call for the complete dissolution of the branches of state government devoted to the cultural and educational advancement of its citizens.

And yet I felt an odd sense of resignation - as if a flippant disregard for everything that has been dear to me as an artist over the last twenty years is something to be expected. It was a kind of resignation that I have often heard in the artist and scholar’s lament that in hard times “the arts are always the first to go.” I wonder how we became so passive and cynical. And I wonder how we got to the point where it has become an accepted inevitability that when our ship is sinking, instead of patching the holes and giving everyone a bucket to help bail us all out, we just throw everyone overboard instead - perhaps artists and intellectuals first.

We can talk about how to fix a broken system. Spend more. Spend less. Have the “right” party in charge of everything. But none of that will matter if we don’t fix ourselves first. And that means acknowledging that we can neither legislate humanity nor pretend that humanity is an expendable commodity. It begins with a sense of self, one’s presence in the world and one’s right to be here. It begins by understanding that some people contribute more, some less. Some contributions are more popular than others. Others are paid more, others less. But in human terms payment does not define worth and all contributions to a common good are valuable.

There will be a vote tomorrow by the House Ways and Means Committee in South Carolina. I hope that they will make the right choices. If we all have to cut back on expenditures so be it.
But like my cousins who left a little space in their box of food for art, I hope that our representatives have the wisdom to allocate that same kind of space in our state for the arts and humanities too.

Buttons and Baubles

2010-12-16T11:19:00.003-05:00

‘Twas ten days before Christmas and all through the state, artists sold baubles in time for the date.

It seems that my fellow artists in South Carolina have been working hard at being Christmas elves during this final seasonal push to make a living at art. Generally at this time, it appears that production craft artists have the edge on fine artists - with scores of small gift items at the ready. Nevertheless, in keeping with the economy, the season, and to give a big “Thank you,” to friends and patrons, I’m throwing a studio party this Saturday, replete with lower cost craft items and discounts on fine art.

As usual, I’m a bit later than my peers on this - but the date is still a personal improvement over the January “Russian Christmas” sale of the previous year. Friends surprised me by turning up at that one. Perhaps they were rested up from the holiday season.

The newest items are hand made, one-of-a-kind buttons. I made about a hundred of these in various shapes and sizes, with both overglaze and underglaze decorations. A number of them were fired twice with gold and mother-of-pearl enameling - what could be more button-like?
I thought of each button as a miniature round canvas - painting them with both abstract and decorative designs. With a teaching schedule that ran to the end of last week, many of these had to be made after work in the wee hours of the evening. I was doubtful that I would make it but here they are freshly popped out of the kiln today.

Mid-Autumn Monster Plants and Gender Mojos

2010-11-18T14:33:00.002-05:00

The middle of November in the center of South Carolina brings a much anticipated event: the annual migration of house plants from outside to indoors. Not everyone survives the journey, especially those who were the victims of their own success and grew too large and unwieldy for their containers. One such plant is the Devil’s Ivy, aptly named because it cascaded ten feet down from its container then rooted itself into the ground for another five feet. Pulling these botanical wonders back indoors for the winter is a task that is happily put off. The trick is to play chicken with the frost and wait until the last possible moment to lug the heavy ones in. Sometimes the frost wins. Plant life or death for the winter months can also be pinned to the vagaries of having out of town work or a cold on frost day.

The truly problematic plant this year was an overgrown tree philodendron which needed to be repotted in something about three times the size of the original container- something so huge it devoured an entire bag of potting soil. The aerial roots on the plant tangled themselves so profoundly inside the pot that the plant simply could not be removed. The only thing to do was to destroy the pot to free the plant. The plant of course had to be preserved not only for it being such a grand specimen of a tree philodendron but because it came from my late mother-in-law’s home. ( I had over the years become the keeper of all specimens of greenery from friends and relatives who left them at my doorstep like orphans. Okay, some I adopted myself off of street corners and I have even been known to cultivate plants rescued from the cracks in sidewalks).

I tried to pry the plant loose from the pot at first with a wonder bar but to no avail. My husband decided that my continued efforts would break the pot anyway and so he suggested that I just clobber it with a hammer. Easy for someone who did not purchase this vessel to say. But I reluctantly and somewhat tepidly started to fracture the fiberglass pot with the wonder bar. The pace of my efforts seemed to go too slowly for my husband’s patience and he decided to take over the job.

Getting a huge axe, my significant other took the plant outdoors and bid me not to look lest his concentration fail. This caused a feeling of deja vu. I distinctly remember times in my youth when my overlooking the proceedings of males bonding over car repairs was frowned upon. What is it about the scrutinizing gaze of the opposite gender that causes such discomfit? Is it the fear of relinquishing forbidden knowledge? Or is it a feeling that a task can never be accomplished well under the scrutinizing, critical stare of the other. With regard to the other being a member of the opposite sex, this has been known to take on disastrous consequences. I recalled here reading in a book on the history of musical instruments about the bull roarer, a primitive instrument that only men were allowed to play. Women were not even allowed to look upon it under the threat of death! Needless to say, that is a rather extreme example, but certainly points to how serious superstitions about the scrutiny of the opposite gender can be.

One would think such fear of derailing competence the other gender’s watch might be would be confined to the woman’s gaze upon the man’s work. Yet this very noon, as I write this, I found that try as I might, I could not do the necessary repairs on a broken drawer while under my husband’s critical scrutiny and had to wait until some quiet time alone before I could analyze the components, find the right tools and do the job.

But getting back to the seasonal removals of plants, the monstrous tree philodendron was finally released and given a new home. The other large polypodium ferns may just have to survive the winter outdoors - so many leaves, such tangled roots, so little space!

For now, I’m posting my drawing from my notebooks of a cat watching a tropical plant in Italy. And when I finish making my first bull roarer, I’ll post an image of that as well.

Two into One

2010-11-14T12:42:00.002-05:00

Two Into One

“Whatever the thing, it is always a case of dividing one into two and not combining two into one”
-Qi Zhen Hai

For the past week, I have been preparing documents for an application which entails telling a life story in art and publications. These documents span just over twenty-five years - a quarter of a century! Despite aching muscles from hovering over paper cutters, desktops, and photocopy machines it has been a humbling overview thus far. Yes, I had done a lot of work, but I wish I had done more, done better and organized it all more efficiently.

What has been particularly interesting this past week was the occasion to review very early exhibitions. Had I known twenty-five years earlier that I would be called upon to provide documents of these events I would have been a more diligent archivist. The original invitations and documents from some of these early exhibitions long lost or discarded, I’ve been filling in the blanks by retrieving images from these bygone eras and putting them together in a presentable format with the help of my sister’s superior graphic design skills.

The first replaced piece of history concerns the very first one-woman exhibition I had in the United States. A naive newcomer to the art scene in America, I had no clue as to how a gallery or museum should be approached a gallery about exhibiting a body of work. So my first exhibition was at a dance studio - the Aparri School of Dance in Princeton, New Jersey in 1985 to be exact. I had not even included this exhibition on my resume, but I am now rethinking this documentation because in recent years I’ve been working more frequently with dancers. Now this early liaison makes for a more cohesive narrative.

Mila Gibbons, the director of the Aparri School of Dance passed away a number of years ago and her lively school is no longer in operation.. Madam Gibbons was a fascinating international character and a fluent speaker of French and German. She was old Princeton. Someone who might best be described as a Princeton Brahmin, if such a term even exists. Madam Gibbons had an old-fashioned Victorian sense of propriety that in retrospect was rather quaint. She could meet you for a weekly tea over the period of, say, about a decade, without ever even alluding to previous marriages or unhappy family relationships. Madam Gibbons carried herself with the deportment of a dancer, gliding through a room with consummate posture and head held high. I never saw her in a state that was not well-groomed, well coiffed, and impeccably dressed. This venerable matron could be described as my first mentor in the world of art exhibitions.

And what a pleasant exhibition it was. It provided me with the experience of putting together a body of work for an American audience and some cash in my pocket for my relocation to Europe.
What I would give to have that hand-lettered invitation!

Fortunately, I do have pictorial records of the work from that time. Perhaps the most intriguing examples of paintings from that show was the series of works on paper called collectively “Two into One.” These paintings were completed in China shortly before my husband and I left the country to teach in Holland. I had not put them onto silk scrolls like my more traditional brush paintings and had neither the time nor inclination to frame them. My father came up with the ingenious idea of creating an installation for them made out of four tall wooden doors affixed to one another to form a pillar. This stood in the middle of the Dance floor with the leaves of “Two into One” pinned to it.

The paintings of “Two into One” were executed with inks and watercolors onto thin, transparent cafe-au-lait colored rag paper. The paper was created in Hebei province, China and had a deliciously warm cotton blanket like softness. The Beijing Art Academy professor Li Xiao Wen taught me how to use these homemade papers in 1984-1985. With a judicious use of inks and pigments, professor Li was able to create effects on this paper that looked similar to batik. The secret was to paint on both sides of the paper. Professor Li showed me some of his own paintings with lines and highlights on one side of the paper with darker inks and pigments washed onto the obverse side. The effect was that the darker pigments would seep through the fibers of the paper and react with the lighter pigments on the other side to create a crenulated look. I used a variation on this technique to create the paintings I have shown examples of here.

My “Two into One” series of paintings raised some eyebrows in China. It perhaps took some nerve to call the group by a title that had a volatile history. On one thematic level, they were simply naive and childlike depictions. I painted them thinking of the colors and shapes of children’s wooden building blocks. They were for the most part about adult relationships, however. To be specific they represented conditions of war, love, study, worship, commerce, play, meditation, and dance. In addition to the paintings, I carved a series of small stones with comparable images that I printed onto the page below the paintings. A fellow ex-patriot further embellished these with some lovely poetry.

One reason that there was some consternation about this little series of figurative paintings in Beijing was because the heads were floating above the bodies. The second reason had to do with the descriptive phrase “Two into One.” This phrase had a significance with regard to the Cultural Revolution that China in the 1980's was still coming to terms with. During the late sixties the subject of whether “One Becomes Two” or “Two Becomes One” was hotly debated. To a western person, the fact that people were persecuted and may even have lost their lives over what appeared to be a circular argument that would enervate even the most stalwart Sophist, seems a tragic waste. But at the time it was serious business. To oversimplify, “One Becomes Two” was a code for the dialectic philosophy of Marxism while “Two Becomes One” could allude to western style capitalism.

The paintings of “Two into One” were executed in a style that was very different from the one I came to China to learn. Towards the end of my tenure there I think that a western aesthetic began to reassert itself and these paintings were like a Chinese tale told in translation on the road back west. The only time they were exhibited in the United States was through the gracious support of Mila Gibbons at the Aparri School of Dance so long ago. The collection has since been dispersed - sold, traded or given away. In seeing them again I wonder if they were two into one or one into two? Were these figures defined by their enclosures or was the space defined by their dual actions? At least it does no harm to wonder.

The Progress of Subclinical Harpies

2010-11-09T12:37:00.006-05:00

For a recent article about my mosaic work, I was asked to submit some images of a “work-in-progress.” The author, JoAnn Locktov, was such a thorough and engaging interviewer I was happy to oblige her with this. I turned my attention to my unfinished mosaic made from broken plates, a broken ocarina and various manufactured as well as found pieces. After adhering the central pieces with thinset mortar on to the base, I judiciously placed the other pieces loosely around those to indicate a process of thinking about where they might be cemented. It was the first time I had been asked to send out images of a work in progress and I have to confess it was a little difficult to decide just how unfinished it should be. Too unfinished and it would look confusing to people. Too complete and it would not have educational merit with regard to process. But after reaching what I determined was a mean between these two, I photographed the piece and sent it off to my on-line publishing friends.

It was good that I sent the photos off when I did because as any mosaicist knows, it can sometimes be difficult to actually stop working abruptly on a mosaic. While making this “work in progress” I found that as I progressed a little more, then a little more hour by hour the piece was rapidly approaching completion. And in fact, I did bring the project to completion just shortly after I sent off the documentation of the unfinished work. Ironically, the “work in progress” photos were never published but the finished work was. And since I can not undue physically what is now finished I will instead tell a story about the progress of this mosaic.

The mosaic pictured above is called “Subclinical Harpies,” so named for a poem from one of my now voluminous unpublished manuscripts. It is a mosaic that began, progressed and was completed from a series of accidents and surprises.

The first step towards this mosaic began with a surprise visit from a friend. G had a way of turning up unannounced, which miraculously always seemed to work out because I never had pressing deadlines at the time. So one fine autumn day last year while I was doing some mundane task and waiting for the phone to ring with promises of remunerative work, she came sauntering up the path to my back door. We fell into conversation straight away as if it had not been about a year since we last spoke in person. We had tea and snacks and got caught up with each other’s social and work lives. I confessed that the Great Recession had slowed down my teaching gigs considerably as well as my commissions. But I was proud to also show G that the downturn had some unexpected benefits. The newer, slower pace afforded me the time to experiment with new designs and products. My development of one of a kind musical instruments arose out of the down time. I showed G one of my favorite ocarinas - one with a shape like a partridge wing with coral, pink, light green, ivory colors interspersed with silver gold enameling and mother-of-pearl. But when I handed this lovely instrument to G it slipped from my hands and fell crashing to the floor. Instantly, as all good friends are apt to do, G “apologized” profusely for having somehow mysteriously “caused” the accident. I assured her that it was entirely my own clumsiness and after an awkward pause I picked up the pieces. The ocarina had split along its length cleanly into two pieces. The perennial optimist G, suggested that I consider this little accident as an omen and admonition from a higher power that this ocarina split in two was destined for bigger and better projects. I looked at the two halves carefully and saw that they looked bird-like. I had been wanting to make relief sculptures of harpies I told G, and these would form the base. And as G had inspired more than one above average art project, I felted compelled not to disappoint with the pink harpies.

Several months later I did create female heads and feet to make harpies out of these forms. It took several months, of course, because I had to wait until I had the time and interest to make enough other small items to fill a kiln with. They also required two stages of firing; one for the underglaze and another for the overglaze gilding and enameling.

After the harpies were complete I cemented them to a wedi-board base with thin-set mortar. I also created a frame of ceramic bull-nose tiles painted with the same pink and ivory colors found in the ocarina halves turned harpy bodies. A series of fortunate accidents brought more items into “Subclinical Harpies.” My husband obliged me by letting one of his mother’s ivory Wedgewood plates slip from his hands. The pieces were made into an arch above the harpies. The arms from a broken porcelain doll became the harpies histrionic gesturing appendages. A friend supplied me with a broken plate hand painted with violet and green grapes. It formed the arbor around the arch and the grapes emanating from the ceramic wine glasses on either side of the harpies. I gave the harpies hand made tiles replete with words in ancient Chinese to rest upon. The harpy on the left stands on a tile tilted to the side which reads “Life from a swamp,” and the one on the right rests upon the tile that says “In all the world there is no other.”

As with most of my mosaic work, as the material progress continued, a theme developed as well. The themes that grew from the work were about illusions, accidents, fragmentation and a peculiar reference to chemical paradise in the form of alcohol. On this last reference I had another tool in my arsenal. When I had accidentally broken a tooth and required oral surgery I was given post operative hydrocodone tablets. My post operative pain only required using one of them so I had a whole bottle of these unused tablets. They were a vibrant pink and although I knew that most of this color would be washed away by the grouting process I decided to incorporate the pills as tesserae in the mosaic. I had some compunctions about doing so. Would the message be too offensive to some people? Would addicts try to dig the pills out of the mosaic should it be hung in a public place? And what if I fell off a stool - breaking my foot and ending up waiting several hours in an emergency room with no respite scolding myself for not having saved at least one tablet of pain medication for such an event? Strange how such little objects used for purposes they were not intended for can cause such thoughts to fly. But use them I did although most of the dye was washed out with the grouting.

So that is how a work in progress quickly turned into a finished work. And since these days it appears to be unpopular to be seen as being too progressive, finishing unfinished work is perhaps for the best.

Halloween Blog, or Why Chinese Bats are Cute

2010-10-31T17:13:00.003-04:00

When I first started my series of miniature paintings, “Twenty-six Days of the Bat” I began by reviewing two sources: images of bats on the internet and my own small collection of Chinese embroidery bats. People generally have mixed feelings about bats. They are those scarey little things of Halloween and vampire lore. But in China bats have always been depicted as a beautiful and auspicious animal. In large part this is due to the fact that the word for bat, fu, also happens to be a synonym for the words for good fortune and prosperity. Hence, a bat will bring good tidings.

After looking at images of bats more carefully, I realized that there is a second reason why Asian bats are “okay” but western ones are scarey. Bats can be broadly divided into two distinct groups, the megachiroptera and the microchiroptera, or megabats and microbats for short. The microbats are more familiar to us in the west and generally have faces with a squished in spade- like nose, little eyes, pointed teeth, and long ears. Conversely, the megabats are large and have a face like a little terrier dog and a look that is somewhat endearing. They are also known as Fruit Bats or Flying Foxes These Flying Fox bats are the ones native to Asia and are about as innocuous looking as puppies with wings. How could they not be the subjects, then, of paintings on vases and embroidered garments made with great love and care?

My bat paintings are half on the megabat side and half on the microbat side. The microbat group were painted naturalistically and the megabats were painted in the stylistic forms and colors of folk art. Happy Halloween!

My Bonnie Bonnie Beaufort

2010-10-20T13:55:00.002-04:00

My Bonnie Bonnie Beaufort

The second leg of my trip around South Carolina to replenish galleries with new work took place yesterday in Beaufort. I hadn’t been there in six years and I had almost forgotten how beautiful this charming port city is. The reason for my journey was to deliver my new South Carolina architectural paintings, known by consultants, agents and patrons as the Domiciles, to the Pinckney Simons Gallery. In past years, I used to deliver new work to their branch in Columbia, a short forty-five minute commute from my studio here in Orangeburg. But since that branch closed two years ago and everything became consolidated in Beaufort, I had been somewhat remiss in traveling the longer distance there. But after seeing the richly decorated gallery and having a great day in the downtown district, I was glad that I went.

There was much paperwork to update and records to scan, but we got everything done in good time. I managed to pick up a portion of work that had been in storage from Columbia - some of which I had not documented and will post an article about after I finish my archive updating. It felt good to bring in the bright new work and reclaim the familiar old friends.

Generally, I have no trouble parting with my work, but I had a twinge of sadness at relinquishing my triptych of three square buildings, two of which were from Blackville. I have pictured two of them here. The one above is from an abandoned cotton mill in what I believe is Orangeburg County. The buildings had an almost old world, creamy beige adobe finish. There were a number of similar structures at this site and I will be slowly painting them. The sky in the painting pictured above has a touch of genuine turquoise pigment in it, which gives that gem-like glow in the center. The other painting of the square building featured at right was from a street in Blackville. The colors have been altered somewhat to make the facade a more buttery yellow and the sidewalk slightly rose colored. I sometimes see buildings like that in dreams where I am traveling through old towns from the late nineteenth century. Those dreams are not far from reality however, because my travels on assignments do take me through the centers of small towns with these two-story store fronts with facades like miniature golden temples of bygone eras.

These paintings and many other will be part of the open house gallery walk in Beaufort this Saturday, October 23.

Dark Bird in the Day of the Double Nines

2010-10-18T20:17:00.002-04:00

Dark Bird on The Day of the Double Nine

The picture of the bird at right is a charcoal drawing that I made recently from an observation of one of the prize roosters at the South Carolina Fair. Because I drew him from life and he was a very active chicken, I was precluded from adding many accurate details. It is more a portrait of an impression of this remarkable creature - as they all were. This one was drawn with black charcoals and white chalk on a piece of orange paper - suitable for the October Halloween season. I’m not particularly fond of using charcoal. It is messy, dusty and difficult to control. But it also goes very black and can have a nice velvety effect in a drawing. The bird that inspired this drawing was one of the Polish chickens I saw at the County Fair, and again at the South Carolina State Fair. I do believe that some of these chickens were making the circuit from County to State competition. Can the run for National Chicken of the Year be far behind?

I had originally intended to write a China story to go with this picture. The story was about the Manchurian coal and factory town of Changchun, where I lived with my husband in 1983. But it will have to wait for a future post. In the mean time it is tucked away in one of the chapters of my book Another Soul. Instead, this writing recalls something closer to home yet reminiscent of China.

Things did not go as well as I had hoped at the State Fair on Saturday, October 16. It took a long time to get there, I had a flaming sore throat the whole time, and my photographs came out blurry from the low light exposure (They are still usable but will have to be filled in by painter’s imagination). What compensated me for the trouble was the opportunity to have an outing in the good company of a lady friend and my husband. The weather was fairly nice and the exhibits were fun and captivating. Oddly, the two lady artists in our group spent more time looking at the beautiful colors and patterns found in feathers and fur than we did looking at the art exhibition. In part this can be attributed to our running out of time. We had agreed to meet up with my husband, who had gone into Columbia to sit in a quiet café and grade papers instead of enjoy the fair, at the front gate at 6:45 PM. 6:30 PM rolled around quite unexpectedly as we were admiring a particularly decorative bird with an explosion of colors on his wings that looked like the intricately woven patterns of a Persian Carpet.

So in a mad fifteen minute dash we ran through the art exhibition, pausing briefly to admire my painting on paper “Multi-Tasking Mania,” and Nat’s photograph of large yellow floats on a shrimp boat. We then waited outside to meet up. We waited ten minutes, fifteen minutes, then thirty minutes but our ride did not arrive. Forty-five minutes later my flustered husband arrived on foot explaining that he had been in gridlock traffic and had to park about a half mile away. So we trekked out on this cool autumn evening that was a mixture of unfinished business, glorious discoveries, and mishaps. After dinner in Columbia and a late return home I was at least partially resolved to trying the State Fair again. The chickens were still calling to me and I was still curious about all the art I missed.

The next day I was nursing a cold while doing lesson plans for an upcoming residency in Beaufort. The program I was planning included highlights from Chinese language and culture. I decided to check the lunar calendar for upcoming Chinese holidays that I could introduce. I was amused when I found out that Saturday, October 16, was the Day of the Double Nines. Chong Jiu Jie, falls on the ninth day of the ninth moon in the lunar calendar. Because odd numbers are yang (forces that are male, fire, light heat etc), the double nine is a very heavy yang day. It is therefore a day of imbalance during which precautions must be taken to guard against injury and illness. It is difficult for me to read about deeply ingrained superstitions and not start thinking of the possible concordances with real life experience. Of course the superstition made perfect sense to me and it was easy to redefine our own day of the double nines by imbalance; a fire of a sore throat, too many fire birds and not enough watery art, a long wait on a cold night. Obviously we should not have had the representatives of the Yin (the women) separated from the Yang (the man). Otherwise he would have most certainly not ended up caught in traffic. Had we known better we should have all done the traditional thing and eaten cakes while drinking chrysanthemum tea. Next year we’ll be prepared.

Two Chickens for Final Hours

2010-10-13T15:05:00.003-04:00

This is a quiet but happy day. It is an ordinary one here in Orangeburg. I go about the day, setting out my palette of colors to finish the next painting, letting the electrician in to fix the errant lights and old sockets, sending off pictures for an article and writing one of my own. Throughout it all, because I’m at the computer on and off, I check to see how many miners have been pulled out of the San Jose copper mine. Over half of them at this count. Wow! What a feat of engineering, personal and social skills! I’ve posted my miniature paintings of roosters and chickens in celebration - phoenixes they are not but at least they are exuberant.
Days of more celebration lie ahead, as well as the usual difficulties with such a big media event. But for now, it feels great to be so happy about something.

Drawing to Conclusions

2010-10-12T11:38:00.002-04:00

In the middle of August I began my painting a day countdown to my September exhibition, which then became a painting a day countdown to my October exhibition. I am now counting down towards my November exhibition. The November exhibition, however, is not really an art show per se as it will not have an opening. It is just basically an increase in the autumn/winter inventory in Beaufort, SC. My painting pace can be moderately slower now as the work towards show season comes to a conclusion and the season of making smaller works for December begins.

Everyone knows of course, the story in the news about the miners in the San Jose copper and gold mine coming to a conclusion ahead of the previously estimated schedule. I marvel at the engineering skills that have gone into their rescue. It truly has been a fascinating story. And in the midst of so much news of chaos, it was always good to read something about coordination and ingenuity. It did make me wonder what it must have been like, though, to be camped out at the mine’s surface for what seemed like an interminable wait. I had been making a miniature painting every evening to count off that waiting time as well. It is a visual tale about waiting told through images of animals - bats, felines, and finally canines. I tried to make each image as different as possible; naturalistic, decorative, and abstract. It was such a good exercise to make these little experiments at the end of the day that I might continue even though the original inspiration for making them is just about concluded.

The last two of the miniature paintings that I’ve posted above and at right were made in part from imagination, in part from notes, and from something in my immediate surroundings. The dog in lavender was painted from a sketch I made years ago of a marble relief sculpture of a dog at the Bargello museum in Italy. The painting at the left began as a simple abstract composition. I later added this small parade of blue canines after studying a batik decorated with a parade motif that I think was taken from a Han ( about 60 AD) stele.

In consideration of Halloween coming, I will post more images of the bat paintings now that I have a small treasure trove of them.

Blessed Above the Rest

2010-10-08T13:43:00.002-04:00

Blessed Above the Rest

I was about to watch “The Way We Were” as my bi-monthly film treat but decided to switch last minute for a more serious documentary, Michael Moore’s “Capitalism: A Love Story,” since a fellow artist at the recent annual Artist’s Booking Conference in Columbia recommended it. Always one to have a very odd detail stick in my mind, I recalled the amusing clip from the film of a dog jumping up and down repeatedly from a kitchen floor to snatch glances at the food on top of a table. The family eating this food seemed to ignore the importunate little beast. The little dog inspired me to start my next series of miniature paintings, “Eleven Days of a Dog,” numbers four and five pictured here.

Although the jumping dog in Michael Moore’s film was very funny, the point he was making was of course an unhappy one. The meal on top of the table represented a wealthy life belonging to fewer and fewer Americans and the little dog our determined hope that we too may someday be able to partake of this wealth. There was a pervasive message in “Capitalism: A Love Story” that corporate elites, along with media hype and political maneuvering have indeed manipulated that quintessentially American optimism to their advantage.

Some parts of the film, like the comparison of American society to the Roman Empire in its decadent final era, were a little cliched - even though sometimes it is indeed difficult not to feel that way. Also, Michael Moore’s repetition of his theatrical attempts to confront the powers that be in their corporate headquarters as he did in his previous films wore a little thin and probably should have been dispensed with. The only victims here were unfortunately the security guards trying to do their jobs. Nevertheless, the message of the film was brave and hard hitting.

One interesting segment of “Capitalism: A Love Story” was Michael Moore’s bringing to the forefront a question of the relationship of capitalism to Christianity. According to Mr. Moore and the priests he interviews, Capitalism is not in accordance with Christian principles and is in fact inherently evil. He then seems to propose that in the post World War II decades, and in particular with the advent of the Reagan era, corporate powers and the right wing appropriated Christianity to serve a capitalist agenda. I am not certain that I agree with that time line. Capitalism has had a stronger tie with Protestant Christianity than Catholicism and that tie can probably be traced back much further than the last few decades. It may even have a relationship to doctrines dating back to the sixteenth century. I am speaking here of such things as the doctrine of predestination in the teachings of John Calvin. According to the strict adherents of Calvinism, only a certain portion of the population were selected by God for salvation. The rest were simply damned to Hell and no amount of faith, good works or fine intentions could change that. There was apparently not much room for upward mobility in that faith.

The idea of a select few being graced by God and the damnation of the rest dovetails at least conceptually with the idea of plutonomy. Plutonomy, the rule of a small elite group of wealthy people over the rest of a society, was the description of the preferred state of America that was leaked in a 2005 Citigroup memo to its wealthiest clients. The film “Capitalism: A Love Story,” drops this memo on viewers like an atom bomb with a big red circle on the phrases in the memo alluding to fears of repercussions if the hoi ploi revolt and exercise their one person one vote rights.

It is this over arching belief in being blessed above the rest that seems to be a factor at work in what “Capitalism: A Love Story” illustrates as a mind set of the very wealthy powers that be. Whether this is manifest in a secular or religious way there may be more than a conceptual alliance with the early doctrine of pre-destination and the way this old alliance with capitalism played out in America over the last few centuries. I am condensing a long, complicated history, and drawing upon reading I actually did a long time ago so it would be best to read Jonathan Edwards, Cotton Mather and other early American theologians for better direct references to this old alliance I’m referring to. But basically it works like this: Given a determination that only a portion of the people are selected for divine grace and entry into Heaven, it became socially expedient to know in this life who God’s preferred were. It could be socially awkward to say the least if you were to wake up one day and find out that a friend or associate of twenty years was among those destined for eternal damnation. But how could one know who was in the Heaven club and who was not? Some early American theologians solved that riddle by maintaining that grace in the afterlife was manifested by material prosperity in this life. In other words, to quote the famous blues singer Billie Holliday, “Them’s that got will get. Them’s that not will lose. So the Bible says and it still is news.”

Many modern protestant sects have disavowed the Calvinist doctrine of pre-destination and some have even claimed it to be a blasphemy (Although some recent Southern Baptists have apparently tried to reinstate Calvinism). Yet sometimes ideas so powerful can linger on - becoming hard wired somewhere deep in the social consciousness. We can see it in various modern permutations like in the so-called prosperity gospel that caused people to spend beyond their means. We might even see it in everyday innocent remarks on the occasion of mishaps like, “What did I do to deserve this?” Volumes could be written on this subject but because I only intended a short review I will just say that the idea of Cohabiting Capitalism and Christianity (how’s that for alliteration?) may have a longer and more complex history than that proposed in “Capitalism: A Love Story.”

But perhaps Michael Moore knew some of this and could not delve into it on account of the topic of Capitalism itself being so broad. And there were plenty of other occasions in the film for enlightening material - like the low wages paid to airline pilots and the practice of companies betting against the death of their employees by taking out secret life insurance policies on them called “Dead Peasant” insurance. My favorite part of the film, however, was a clip of the late Franklin Delano Roosevelt a year before his death, calling for a second Bill of Rights for the American People, guaranteeing, among other things, a home, an education and healthcare. We’re still waiting to be blessed with that.

The Test

2010-10-05T21:15:00.004-04:00

To mark the occasion of my two-hundredth blog, I thought I would write something a little longer than usual. My thoughts in this essay follow the recent Pew study of American’s knowledge of religion . In keeping with the theme, I have posted a picture of one of my recent paintings, “Archangel II.” at right.

On a recent autumn morning before heading off to work my husband told me that he had just taken a test posted on the CNN website on the knowledge of religion and had made a perfect score. I looked at the test and noticed that they gave it the somewhat intimidating title of “Religious IQ.” The article that accompanied the test was the usual forlorn one that Americans write about their sorry level of knowledge as evidenced by their nearly universal poor performance on a “test.” The test that my husband took was the somewhat attenuated version of the 32 question test of religious knowledge used in a recent survey on religious knowledge in America by the Pew Foundation. Nevertheless, according to CNN, most Americans cannot even get more than half the questions on the short version right. I usually have serious doubts about the ability of such tests to actually prove much of anything but out of curiosity I took the test. I made a perfect score.

What was interesting to me here, however, was not that fact that both my husband and I made perfect scores but by the completely opposite reactions we had to our “achievement.” It seemed to make my husband confident about his stature as an educated man and he could barely conceal his glee over the affirmation of intellectual prowess. For me it was merely a possible indication that I done more reading about religion than the average American. But when I read that my score and predilections, according to the Pew survey, put me in the category of 4 % of Americans, I actually got gloomy. I hope this doesn’t mean that ninety-six percent of Americans will disown me. I thought to myself. Just to be certain, I read more about the questions on the extended version of the religion test. I got all those questions right as well. It confirmed my suspicion that I was indeed doomed.

I tried to go about my work that day, but there was a distinct cloud of unease hanging over everything due to the AM religion test that sent my husband off to work in a cheerful mood and me down to my studio in a funk. I suspected that there was more to this than just gender differences and personality. And, after a little more reading and re-examination I assured myself that what was at the bottom of all this uneasiness was an experience of how, in both past and present circumstances, both personal and general, tests have been interpreted. For most of my suspicions about the way surveys and tests are conducted in the United States come not from the test itself but by the way some “expert” or other fills in the blank at the end of the sentence, “The results of this test indicate that you are ........”

My skepticism about the interpretation of tests began ages ago, with an experience in Princeton High School. To start with, I recall a guidance counselor calling me in to her office to tell me that I had scored high on a test for engineering skills and that it indicated that I was “not a normal girl.” ( My mother happened to be very good at taking small machines apart and putting them back together again so perhaps I had inherited some of her “abnormality.”) My later career identity tests rattled the nerves of the guidance counselor even more for the results indicated that the most suitable career for me would be navy officer with army officer running a close second. Neither came to pass, I’m afraid.

But in addition to the humiliation of test pigeon-holing that teenagers then and now are subjected to, students at Princeton High School had the dubious honor of being used for informal psychology “tests” by students in the psychology department of Princeton University. I recall some of their more ridiculous research on peer pressure and self-esteem. I call it ridiculous because questions were posited to students without the students themselves being allowed a chance to explain their circumstances, motivations or actions. There was only one possible explanation for any youthful decision - and that was determined by the researchers. To give an example, I remember that a question was posited by the researchers as to whether or not we might downplay a high test score if everyone else in the class had not performed well. No one answered right away, but one brave boy raised his hand to say that under certain circumstances he might. Without waiting to hear what those circumstances might be, the Princeton University psychology students barked out at him, “That’s peer pressure.” and proceeded to worry him about his low self-esteem. It might be worth noting here that since he was the only student who dared to raise his hand while the rest of us were trying hard to look stony-faced and not even twitch it could easily be deduced that he was in fact the only one to NOT cave in to peer pressure. Had I myself been a bolder student I would have proposed to the Princeton University students that they were confusing discretion with low self-esteem and peer pressure with simple self preservation. But I had no empirical experience from which to draw those conclusions until a few years later in a class in Analytical Chemistry.

While a student majoring in both art and science in college I found analytical chemistry challenging but interesting. I loved the system of equations and the logic of flow charts. But I generally found that my grades hovered around a B and I just managed to keep up. One week, however, I found myself in the unusual position of being ahead of my studies so I decided to do some extra reading in analytical chemistry. The extra reading served me well because the next exam I took seemed to relate more to my extra reading than to our most recent text assignment. In the exam room, I noticed that the other students taking the exam looked confused and that there were not a lot of pencils moving. Had I not done my extra reading I would have been among them.

The following day, when the test results came in the professor announced that the results were very disappointing. Everyone in the class had failed save one person. He explained furthermore that because that one person had earned an “A” he was obliged to grade on a curve and give everyone else a “D” or an “F.” I had found the test challenging but not impossible so I was confused by the outcome. As the professor passed back our exam papers the anger among students grew. All eyes were upon the papers with grades of 40%, 45%, 35% as they seemed to fall on desk tops with a resounding “boom!” Everyone was waiting for the paper that blew the curve to come floating down upon desk of the person who had condemned the class to failure. I was also eagerly looking around to see who it was that messed up my analytical chemistry grade. I was so intent on finding out who it was that I did not notice the paper with the number 96 scrawled in bright red ink at the top lying in clear view on my desk. When I did see it I could not wait to grab it and stash it somewhere out of sight. Of course, if I were the Princeton University psychology department’s ideal of a self-actualized youth with high self-esteem I should have instantly leapt to the top of my desk, waved my paper around and loudly proclaimed victory. It appeared, however, that I had a sudden attack of low self-esteem so I quietly tucked the paper away instead But it was too late. It had been spotted and I heard the words rumbling in low disgruntled tones and spreading with viral intensity around the classroom: “It was Janet.” And I was obliged to sit through that class for the remainder of another two-hour lecture. It may have conceivably been the longest lecture of my college days. I could feel hostile, incredulous eyes burning a hole in my back, from my sides, and from across the room.

Hopefully at this point in my essay I have allowed readers to come to a false assumption. Was I brighter than the other students? No I was not. In fact I failed just as many tests as I made good on. If I hadn’t I would not be an artist today but would have gone on to medical school like I had planned. So what did it mean? It simply meant that on that day, by a strange coincidence, the professor had designed a test that dovetailed with my extra reading rather than the assigned text. And of course anyone with an ounce of intelligence would understand that the circumstances in the above instance warranted discretion rather than a public announcement.

Things are not always what they seem in tests and surveys and their interpretation is largely subjective. Such was the case for the “self esteem and peer pressure” questions, the odd circumstance of a science exam and for the most recent Pew test on religious knowledge. In the latter case I believe that the way the results of that particular test were perceived and disseminated explains why a man with a perfect score would smile and his wife with an identical score would frown, especially with regards to the conclusions that were drawn concerning the beliefs of the test takers.

As an agnostic I was personally rather nonplused at being thrown into the same category as “atheist.” We could not be further apart. An agnostic simply neither affirms nor denies the existence of God. An atheist affirms a belief that God does not exist. One questions, the other answers. One is not committed to a specific dogma or belief, the other is. In this regard, an atheist actually has more in common with a believer than an agnostic does.

When a spokesperson for the Pew foundation was interviewed recently about the results of the religious knowledge test for Americans he made an interesting assumption in his interpretation. Asked about why atheists and agnostics outperformed all others of various religious persuasions on the test, he concluded that it meant that the people in the former group came to their atheism and agnosticism only after studying religion carefully and weighing all the options. That may be so for some people. For me it was entirely the opposite. I was an agnostic well before I studied world religions. It was not a cause and effect relationship. In fact, I had no intention to read about religions in order to “rate” them. And yet the media latched on to this rather utilitarian concept and pronounced it to be so - as if we really were looking at religions of the world like they were themselves a multiple choice test:

A. Christianity - wrong!
B. Judaism - wrong!
C. Buddhism - wrong!
The answer is “D” None of the above!

Further exacerbating the problem of the biased way the test was interpreted was that it appeared that the only mouths allowed to comment on behalf of atheists and agnostics were spokespersons who seemed to be unfavorable to religion. I am not unfavorable to religion I just happen not to belong to any at the present time. It does not mean that I have concluded that I never will belong.

Nor does it mean that I hold myself as more intellectually enlightened than people of faith. So what did the test mean for me? And why would an agnostic make a perfect score? In my case the spokesperson for the Pew foundation came to the wrong conclusion, although that is not to say that he was not spot on with regard to others. But the simple truth for me was that I made a high test score because I read about religions with no other motives in mind other than to enhance my knowledge and understanding of art and in order to enrich my knowledge of the various beliefs of world cultures. And I suppose it helps to have friends from diverse religious backgrounds.

As an artist, it behooves me to understand art history. In the history of art, secular art has been the exception rather than the rule. The church has been a major patron of the arts throughout history, as has the religions of most other cultures. It would be impossible to have a grasp of world art without knowing at least something about the history and beliefs of the religions that inspired and supported it.

In addition to understanding the world of art, a knowledge of religious history supports the understanding of literature, philosophy and ethics. In most religious writing there is at the center a belief in a supreme good, an absolute truth. Much of religious writing is about the striving to be as close as humanly possible to that supreme good or absolute truth. Some of the most sublime writing that human beings have penned is about this striving to be better humans by means of closeness to their God. It is worth reading on that merit alone.

It would be unfortunate if those who misinterpret cause and effect in the recent survey of religious knowledge would use that to dissuade people from reading about religion and theological history. I can easily see how someone with less than ethical motivations might use the idea that knowledge and faith are mutually exclusive as leverage to prohibit religious inquiry. That would be a shame. It would be equally unfortunate if educated people conclude that a low test score on religious knowledge casts too much doubt on the motivations of a group as a whole. One highly educated man I spoke with recently, for instance, concluded that the low test scores among Catholics meant that they are “just believing whatever they are told.” That may be, but it also could mean that the Catholic church has made greater inroads to poor communities than other denominations have - someone working three jobs to support his family will not have the time to sit around and read about Maimonides.

In conclusion, test scores are just indications of the knowledge of people at a particular time and place. How we each got there is a mixture of chance and opportunity. The results are often highly individual and idiosyncratic and should never be used as a tool to embarrass others or define people in accordance with preconceived notions - whether their scores are high or low.
And now that I have clarified this I might join my husband in smiling.

A Pearl in an Ocean

2010-10-02T15:47:00.003-04:00

The Pearl in the Ocean

Despite the tidal waves of information posted, commented upon and hopelessly lost as the sea of time flows by on the internet, I have always been always able to find small gems in the most unlikely of places. And since I had expressed disappointment and skepticism about social networking, I feel that I should also, on balance, highlight a few of these pearls rolling along in the oceans of data. Any bit of pearly light is as much so for what it inspires as for what it is in itself. For me this little illuminating fragment was my reading in Facebook about someone who had a collection of monsters (toys I presume) and wondered why it was so difficult to find representations of monsters in our culture of the female kind. This started a dialogue which resulted in my writing a chapbook of poetry entitled “My Women, My Monsters,” which I have just begun to send out to publishers. I have also begun to illustrate the book with detailed pencil drawings and hand lettering - almost like the medieval Bestiaries I so loved to see in the libraries in Great Britain and in Europe when we lived there. The illustrations are still works in progress and the writing itself still needs to find an interested publisher. The former is just a matter of time and effort but the latter will be a series of leaps of faith, divisions and revisions.

“My Women, My Monsters” was fun to write, and included a cast of characters that readers found both engrossing and amusing, like Mother Puffer, the Empress of Clones, and The Queen of Bones. The poetry might be difficult to publish, as it may not have a fully defined audience - straddling the boundaries of juvenile fiction and adult satire. But I will continue to work on it and post works from it from time to time.

To end my cycle of small paintings, “Thirty-three Days of the Big Cats,” I am posting number thirty-three, the grey terrible she cat, in keeping with the completion of the book of Monsters.

The Finished Collage

2010-10-01T11:24:00.003-04:00

October first seems to be a meaningful time to post my now completed collage “Facebook Purgatory.” As the title implies, it is numerically divided into the threes and nines found in Dante’s The Divine Comedy. My original painting that this collage is derived from was a satire on Facebook putting me into a two-week long waiting period before deleting my profile. It struck me as having a purgatory-like judgmental quality. In recent times, however, with the release of the film today, “The Social Network” as well as the news stories of a youth whose tragic death appears to be linked to a form of harassment exposure on the net, it seems as if the social network of cyberspace itself stands in limbo.

The part of Dante’s long poem about purgatory is distinct from his descriptions of Inferno because although it describes sin, they are character flaws - the seven deadly ones to be exact - rather than actions. Figures in Dante are often described as being in strange positions - backwards or upside down, which is why I decided in my collage to take the face icons and turn them upside down. The three large central icons were made from cut out painted paper and the rest were made with carved rubber stamps. Generally when I design a stamp for an art work I keep them for use in future art works. I threw away the face stamps for this art work, not wanting to revisit the theme.

The painting of the she-cat and her two little ones is number thirty-two in my series of paintings of the thirty-three paintings of the big cats. Tomorrow they will end and it will be on to the next cycle.

Fair Weather

2010-09-29T10:04:00.003-04:00

Nothing can be finer than a fair in Carolina. Even if it has been raining and overcast for two days.

Last year around this time I was a juror for the Mosaic Arts International exhibition held in Chicago. This year I was the juror for the Fine Arts Exhibition at the Orangeburg County Fair. The two jurying experiences could not have been more different. One was highly competitive, international and executed on line. The other was the real time exuberant expression of a local community where everyone wins a place. Although the international exhibition was more prestigious, the local one was more warm-hearted. They were both great experiences in their own way.

There is no greater joy for me in the autumn season than the fairs of South Carolina. The Orangeburg County Fair is a particularly fine one. Since Orangeburg County is largely agrarian, there are no shortages of exotic livestock, plants, fruits and prize vegetables on display. I saw rows upon rows of arfully canned fruits. There were painted goats, angora chickens, roasters with bold stripes of gold and black. There were chickens that sported long thin spikes of white feathers on top of their heads which made them look like Andy Warhol. There was a large deer-like creature which I could not even identify.

Of particular interest to me was the annual exhibition of fine hand sewn quilts. There are seven quilting guilds in Orangeburg County alone, so I was told, which might account for the quilt exhibition taking up one entire building. I have not seen such a fine exhibition of quilts even on the state level so Orangeburg County must be the place to go for afficionados of this art form. It was such a stunning display that I immediately went back to my studio and painted two examples of big cats in quilt form to see if I could manage the style. They could not compare with the great color sense of the quilt makers but at least I gave it a try.

What I found when I juried the fine arts exhibition at the Orangeburg County Fair was that there were more categories of art than there were submissions to fill them. This made some of my choices a little two easy; first and second place, for instance for the two submissions to the category of professional mixed media art. I did take an exquisitely painted miniature icon from the advanced mixed media category and put it into the category of miniature painting, for which there were no entries. I made a note to myself here to enter my own miniature paintings next year.

If the quality of the student art at the fair was any indication, then I was heartened by what appeared to be very hard working art teachers in this county. The oil pastels were especially well executed - with rich colors and details lovingly done.

What a feast of colors, sounds and sights the fair was as the displays were going up! I’m looking forward to going back at least twice with my camera and a sketch book.

Magic Herbs Under a China Moon

2010-09-28T09:18:00.001-04:00

If I have my calendar right, yesterday was the last night of the traditional Chinese Mid-Autumn Moon Festival. I could not let it pass on by without making another small painting in celebration of this time of year. In this painting from my series of small book illustrations, the cat is being ridden by a white rabbit who holds a mortar and pestle. He is known as the Jade Rabbit. In bygone times, the Jade Rabbit was also celebrated at Mid-Autumn Festival for his association with the moon. According to Chinese mythology, the Moon Goddess Guan Yin, maintains her immortality by drinking herbs made by a magic rabbit. Mixing the elixir of longevity also ensured the rabbit’s celestial status which was accorded to him in return for his sacrificing himself in a fire one fine day when the immortals, disguised as beggars, requested food and the rabbit found himself empty handed.

When I lived in China, and for the few years after that when I returned as a guide and translator, the image of the rabbit mixing the elixir of immortality could still be found in shops, museums and temples. I often thought of this figure as an archetype of Chinese civilization’s roots in agrarian pragmatism despite having a pantheon of celestial beings. What other culture would hang the dependence of celestial immortality on taking supplements every day served up by a rabbit? It would of course seem no surprise for a culture that spent thousands of years of developing potable medicines.

Of all the images of the jade rabbit I saw in China, perhaps the one that made the greatest impression on me was a very tiny one housed in the Forbidden City Museum. He was carved out of luminous white jade like the glowing moon itself with eyes that were inlaid with tiny rubies. But what made him memorable to me was not his own shining precious eyes but the pair of eyes that looked upon him and fell in love with the idea of his gift of untiring service to the goddess. But this requires another tale.

Travel to a foreign country has a knack of bringing out the best and the worst in people. In my experience leading several groups to China and back and in living abroad for a number of years I have come to the conclusion that this is because leaving behind the cultural constraints of one’s home country frees people to make new rules for themselves and for the people they interact with. In this sense the foreign land can also be said to bring out the truth in the people who travel to it. For those who carried within them a moral compass, the trip abroad caused no challenges to their judgement. They adapted well, exploring new territory with open minds and natural curiosity. But for others, whose behavior was ostensibly regulated only by the external rules of their own culture, a residency abroad unleashed havoc. Those in the latter group included an American businessman I saw happily stealing the hats off of people passing by him on an escalator in an apartment store. It included enclaves of ex-patriots who, not being obliged by law to be fair to people of different cultures and other ethnic groups, established their own feifdoms of apartheid communities. The most egregious lapses in judgement and ethics that I witnessed I will omit for now, but suffice to say that the people who committed them made the rest of us embarrassed.

My jade rabbit tale is about such an embarrassed woman. On one of my return trips to China, there was a middle-aged couple and their teen-aged daughter in my entourage. Upon their arrival in China the father and the daughter both left any pretense to civility back home in New York. I don’t remember everything the father did but I do remember the daughter’s behavior with particular clarity because it was so outrageous. I recall, for instance, the day she came down to dinner carrying a bottle of wine that she swilled down in its entirety without asking anyone else if they wanted any. She then boorishly belittled the meal set before us by our Chinese hosts. The mother, I’ll call her Mrs. M., was chagrined by her family’s behavior but could seem to do nothing to curtail it. She grew increasingly sullen during the trip as a series of incidents of father and daughter behaving badly stung her own sense of dignity.

One day, the cloud of maternal hurt dissipated for Mrs. M upon a chance encounter with the Jade Rabbit. While we were touring the Forbidden City Museum her eyes fixed upon a tiny white rabbit with inlaid ruby eyes. She asked me what it was and what it was doing with this curious looking stick and a cup. I told her the story of the Jade Rabbit and his tireless eternal mixing of the elixir of immortality for the goddess of the moon. Mrs. M’s face brightened into a smile and she said,
“I want that rabbit.”
Throughout the rest of the trip Mrs. M forgot began to think less about her husband and her daughter’s noxious behavior. And every time she mentioned the little Jade Rabbit she smiled. I am not sure why just the thought of it caused a lightness of heart in her. Perhaps she could vividly imagine being a goddess herself with something or someone working vigorously on her behalf. Maybe the idea of sacrifice and service to a dignified celestial maternal being amused her. Or perhaps the notion that goddesses are works in progress - sustained by daily infusions of magic sustenance gave her hope for herself and her family. I like to think that upon her return to New York she attained something akin to a little magic Jade Rabbit, tirelessly working on the elixir of life.

Reflections on the Moon

2010-09-26T23:35:00.002-04:00

This week was marked by two holidays; Mid-Autumn Festival and Sukkoth. The first came upon us almost too quickly to celebrate, the latter was passed in a small ceremony at Beth Elohim in Charleston.

When my husband and I lived in China, Mid-Autumn Festival was a major holiday, celebrated with gatherings, dragon boat races (although we never witnessed those) and by eating the sumptuously delectable moon cakes. The moon cakes are a pastry about the diameter of a grapefruit. They are generally filled with a sweetened bean paste and stamped with a design on the top. There were variations of these in China depending upon which bakery in which city made them. I heard that the Shanghai moon cakes were filled with coconut with an egg yolk in the center to symbolize the moon.

Unfortunately there were no moon cakes to be had here in Orangeburg, South Carolina but I did celebrate one of the traditions by making a moon painting. My painting of the blue cat and the orange moon above is not exactly conventional for it depicts the moon that lingers at dawn rather than the full harvest moon seen at night which the Chinese celebrate. But I suppose that Orangeburg requires an orange moon.

Mid-Autumn Festival is a time to reflect upon home - but not the home of a present residence but the “old home” of one’s origins. This could mean the place of one’s birth or the place where one’s ancestors came from. It has been interesting that Mid-Autumn Festival coincided with Sukkoth this year - for both are in many ways holidays of quiet reflection and gratitude - for harvest, for family, for memories.

The Tale of the Painted Cat

2010-09-25T22:28:00.003-04:00

I once owned a cat from Africa.

Well, no, not exactly. But as I watched the film “Out of Africa” recently it seemed a fitting way to begin an epic tale. For Max was a cat of epic proportions. And we could not be said to have owned him, for he found us one day in Princeton, New Jersey and condescended to share a home with us for the next fourteen years.

I thought of Max when I finished painting number twenty-six in my series of the big cat paintings. While painting the face of the cat as an almost imperceptible mark, I further obscured it by accidently smearing it with blue and red paint. Max the cat had done a similar thing one day when he dipped his head in the blue then the red paint on my palette and roamed around looking like a punk rock cat with two long stiff peaks of pigmented fur arising from his head. I read that cats tend to imitate the people they live with. Perhaps he saw me getting paint all over myself in my studio and felt obliged to follow along.

Max would often do surprising things like for he was no ordinary cat. He didn’t even meow like a regular cat but made chortles, humming, and chirps interspersed with short cat songs of about four or more bars. His fur was not rough like most cats but like the finest silk. Stroking his fur was like stroking the fur of a mink or a rabbit. And this fine fur covered an elegant eighteen pound well muscled generous helping of a cat.

But despite his pleasant singing voice and his beautiful proportions Max was no angel. He had a quick temper and in his younger days would fly up and bite us out of sheer spite if we came home from even a short vacation without him. He was an avid hunter and like most cats would drag his prey home to our back porch in order to display his prowess. But although many cats had the outrageously awful habit of playing with prey before killing it, Max elevated this into a higher level of exhibition sport. He would take his deceased mice and play hand ball (or I guess paw ball) with them against a screen door. He did this by throwing the thing up high into the air, then wacking it into the screen door with a good right hook. Max would then pick it up, throw it up into the air another three or four feet, then wack it into the door again.

I told my mother once about this odd thing my cat did with mice that I had never before witnessed with other cats and I could tell that she was skeptical. Max could sense the skepticism as well and decided to take matters into his own paws and prove his mettle with mice. So one day, dead mouse at the ready, he chased my mother up a sidewalk, throwing the mouse at her all the way up to the back door of her house (I had come to visit with Max). He would pick up the mouse and throw it a good four or five feet where it fell just short of my mother’s running feet. He repeated this action until he came to a closed door at the back of the house, where he stood guard for some time, mouse tail dangling off the left side of his mouth like a cigarette off a mobster's lower lip.

Some days after the intimidating mouse incident I heard my mother say to someone, "You know how Janet exaggerates in order to tell a good story? Well, this time it was true. She has a cat that pitches mice - for several feet!"

But Max’s pranking personality aside, My husband and I often concurred that this stately, unusual creature was a more outstanding example of a cat than we were as people. If he were a person, we mused, then he would of course be some head of state, a Chinese emperor, or maybe a famous athlete. And although as a foundling we did not know his cat lineage, we concluded that such an exotic feline specimen must have been an escapee from a Norwegian Forest or Maine Coon cattery. When he died we put him to rest in a small rose garden and never got another cat, in part because keeping a pet in the manner they should be kept is an expensive thing, but also because we never could find another cat quite like Max.
The little painting at upper left is from my new series of angel paintings that I delivered today to the gallery Nina Liu in Charleston. Some may question why I have given my cat top billing over the archangel but I suppose that the cat was painted with just a little more awe.

Angel Number Three

2010-09-24T13:46:00.003-04:00

The oil painting above, “Angel Passing the Light of Wisdom,” is the third of my figurative angel paintings for the exhibition at Nina Liu and Friends opening a week from today. The painting is based upon my readings of the descriptions of angels in the classic work, The Celestial Hierarchy by the fifth century theologian Pseudo Dionysius. Pseudo Dionysius himself would probably not approve of this endeavor for on the subject of angels he wrote:

“The word of God makes use of poetic imagery when discussing these formless intelligences but, as I have alaready said, it does so not for the sake of art, but as a concession to the nature of our own mind.”

Nevertheless, the poetic descriptions of the various ranks of angels and their services to mankind have been helpful to me in rendering these images because they hold certain visionary qualities that lend themselves to a visual narrative - both for the figurative as well as the abstract works. The hierarchy of angels as described by Pseudo-Dionysius falls into three categories of ranking in accordance with proximity to God. The first domain, which the theologian describes almost humorously as being in the “anteroom of divinity” consist of the seraphim, the cherubim and the thrones. The second tier of angels are the dominions, the powers and the authorities. At the highest level are the principalities, the archangels and the angels.

As one who was raised in the egalitarian but bland atmosphere of Protestantism, the notion of an elaborate system of intermediaries between mortals and their God is foreign to say the least. It does bring to mind the pantheon of ancient eastern religions. The forward comments in the translation of Pseudo-Dionysius that I have borrowed for this project in fact notes a kinship with the writings of the early Christian church and Hinduism. There is a certain sense of enchantment emanating from these pages. Despite the complexity of the language and descriptions, there is an almost refreshing humility in the concept of mortal eyes and minds not having the moral and intellectual merit to gaze directly upon the almighty and yet the celestial intelligences can be relied upon to interpret divine messages and disseminate ethereal grace. And they do so with such color and personality!

The painting of the large cat about to take a leap is number twenty-five in my “Thirty-three Days of the Puma” series.

Impressions of Stolen Icons

2010-09-23T21:07:00.003-04:00

The painting on wood above, “Power, giver of courage,” is based on a sketch I made years ago while visiting relatives in Ukraine. The drawings I made of the Russian Icons from that trip brought back a feeling of something stolen. Although the Italians were flattered by artists taking an active interest in their artifacts and applauded people sketching in museums and galleries, the Ukrainians were decidedly suspicious. When I sketched in the museums of Kiev it was soon apparent that making drawings of icons was a forbidden act for the guards would come waving their arms at me and shouting “Nyet! Nyet!” Not knowing any Ukrainian other than a phrase that I learned from my grandmother that essentially meant, “Just a minute,” my response to the guards only further riled them. Ostensibly they were afraid that I was in the business of forging icons, and here I was blithely sketching away and telling them to wait until I was finished.

The original icon upon which this painting is based depicted a regal looking heavenly being holding up two birds, or perhaps minor angels. The drawing that I made this from is black and white and I have long since forgotten how the original icon was painted so I invented colors. The angel looked masculine to me so I named it a “Power” after the second tier of angels in the Celestial Hierarchy. The Powers were described as having “unshakable courage” and being “masculine.”

While painting this small work, I had another rather unusual source of inspiration. A number of years ago, I stayed with an elderly Jewish woman who was a long-time friend of my late Mother-in-Law. She amused me by singing all manner of old ditties from what I assumed to be about the 1920's or 1930's. One of these, “Little Black Me” opened with a line sung in a minor key, “Mother are there any angels black like me?” I remembered the line because the melody had the same opening measures as a Boismortier flute and harpsichord duet. Out of curiosity I did a search on the “Little Black Me” melody and found that it actually dated to 1899 and was written by a Thurland Chattaway. Chattaway had written other songs around that time which advocated desegregation - something unusual for its time.
So with this odd little tune in mind, at least one of my angels became black - I suppose to finally answer the question the song posited.

A Celestial Hierarchy

2010-09-22T21:50:00.004-04:00

The gallery in Charleston asked if I might like to participate in an art exhibition in October on the theme of Angels. I still had some paintings on this theme from three years ago so of course I said yes. Later, however, I asked if I might deliver the work a little later in the month so that I could add some new paintings. The gallery owner was in a typically Daoist frame of mind, and replied that I should do so only if “it was natural and if the spirit moved me.” Since I hadn’t sold any paintings from my previous exhibition it was only natural that the spirit moved me to paint something new for an opportunity to show it in a more commercially viable venue.

Staring at a blank canvas with the exhortation to paint an angel ringing in my head was not, however, sufficient inspiration. For one thing, although I had a treasure trove of experienced viewing of the angel bedecked icons of Europe at my mind’s recall, there were also images of every Hallmark card there as well. So I set out on a quest towards celestial inspiration of a higher ranking.

To refresh my better memories, I looked back over my travel sketch books in order to mine them for representations of celestial beings and found enough to get some compositions started. The sketches of bas-relief angels from the facades of churches in Italy brought back fond memories of warm sunny days in the hills of Tuscany. The small oil painting above was painted from one of these sketches and named “Seraph Bringing Fire.”

The title of my new painting comes from a description of Seraphim in The Celestial Hierarchy by the early sixth century theologian Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. I have South Carolina State University professor Dr. Grenier to thank for his recommendation that I read this intriguing but perplexing work. Certainly it has enriched my new series of angel paintings, as did listening to the compositions for organ that Dr. Grenier just recently finished writing based as well on the descriptions of angels in The Celestial Hierarchy.

I have made three figurative works on the angel theme and several abstract works on paper - some with discernable figures, others without. Many of these will be on view at Nina Liu and Friends beginning October 1 but I will post them here as well along with explanations.

The decorative cat on the left is number twenty-three in my series “Thirty-three Days of the Puma.” I thought it fitting to paint the big cat in a more celestial bearing to announce the start of the paintings of the angels. The design for this miniature is loosely based upon the illuminated illustration of St. Mark in his lion form from the Book of Kells

Homeless in a Pink Kimono

2010-09-21T10:05:00.003-04:00

In my present two-person exhibition at the Orangeburg County Fine Arts Center there is a painting at the top of the entrance stairway which is different from my other work in the show. Made with acrylic paint, collage and printed paper, it rests on the wall rather incongruously alongside a rather staid oil portrait of the Prince of Orange - a permanent fixture in the stairwell of the Art Center. (Too inconveniently located to move, the Prince of Orange presides over all exhibitions, meetings, and displays of talents, regardless of content or subject).

My acrylic collage, “Homeless in a Pink Kimono” is so named for the red print affixed to the bottom of the composition and which reads “without a home.” I created the work shortly after watching the 1959 film “When a Woman Ascends the Stairs,” by Mikio Naruse. In this respect the art work could be considered a study in Ekphrasis for it pays homage to Naruse’s beautifully understated melancholy work.

“When a Woman Ascends the Stairs is a film about bar hostesses working in the Ginza district of postwar Japan. It is impressive that Mr. Naruse made this film, as well as a number of others in this genre, that were so sympathetic to the plight of women on their own and trying to make their way in a man’s world. In this film from the 1950's Naruse chronicles the bar maids’ rush against time and money as they compete amongst each other in a race to become married by the time they reach thirty years of age or save enough money to buy their own bar. The story follows the plight of a thirty year old hostess, Keiko, who struggles to maintain integrity among the numerous betrayals, seductions, and pressures of the Ginza world. Her friends steal away her most attractive women for their own bars. Keiko rejects an immodest proposal from a wealthy business man to buy a bar for her in return for her becoming his mistress. Junko, a young bar maid whom Keiko is serving as a mentor, jumps in to take up the business man’s proposal for herself and is later seen happily polishing the counter top in her own bar. At one point in the film it looks as though Keiko has found an honest man to become her husband, only to find that he is already married.

A persistent theme in the film, “When a Woman Ascends the Stairs,” is the psychological, ethical, and material costs of staying ahead of the competition. The bar maids are constantly pressured into buying expensive perfumes and elaborate kimonos - different ones for every night in order to keep the attention of their male patrons. They are caught in an endless cycle of having to buy, borrow or steal in order to stay in the business just long enough to buy their independence from it. The film is as unsettling as it is entertaining. Was the film an indictment of commercialism run amok? Or was it just Naruse’s cautionary tale about the futility of using up youth and money in a race to win a game with a predetermined outcome?

It is easy to see parallels to Naruse’s women and people in our own society who are strung along in this recession economy with promises of a better life: the adjunct art professor whose university tells her that if she spends on just one more one-woman show she can be considered for full time work, the droves of people who take out loans to go back to school for second degrees for jobs that may not even exist, the self-employed entrepreneur trying to keep up by attending expensive trade shows and purchasing marketing packages. Some expenditures may lead to something, but most are probably just expensive kimonos and perfume.

Despite the sadness of Naruse’s film, “When a Woman Ascends the Stairs,” there does appear to be a message of hope. Perhaps hope is too strong a word. It is more like a low key sanguine acceptance. Keiko knows that she is now too old to marry and that she does not have the money to buy her own bar. And yet she still ascends the stairs to go to work, meet her friends and colleagues - enjoying the few that are true to her and basking in what remains beautiful in life. The film ends in just such a quiet way, when Keiko reaches the bar at the top of the stairs. She nods to the left, then to the right, smiles and gives a greeting to her patrons. Keiko, the one who loses the race carries on.

Autumn hails a time of competition for artists, with many applications for very few positions. There are competitive publications, trade shows, grants, and juried exhibitions to enter. A few of us will win, most of us will not. If anything can be learned from Mr. Naruse, it is that not winning is not an end to living and that some discretion is necessary in the amount of time and resources one spends on dreams.

For my part, I always enjoy the South Carolina Booking Conference, which I will attend at the end of this week. I haven’t actually booked work there in about three years and the attending artists seem to be a bit fewer each year. (The artist-in-residency work I have secured was from people who have taken the time to study my credentials and program through the Arts Commission Web site) But it is still a nice way to meet fellow teaching artists and talk about their work. But perhaps I am now too old to buy a new kimono for it!

Small Art

2010-09-20T10:54:00.003-04:00

ARTIST'S STATEMENT

Smallness in visual art evokes images of exotic Persian miniatures, an exquisitely rendered Chinese fan, a page from an illuminated manuscript, and sumptuously painted portraits on ivory. Gems such as these are more intimate than art admired from afar. They can be possessed and held close to the heart.

But even if small art is not possessed but only shared by their private owners or seen through the glass in a museum collection, they charm and fascinate. The delicacy and intimate scale of these works exerts a hold upon the viewer from behind their glass cases that is quite distinct from that of larger scale works. The consummate care and skill with which an artist rendered images for private use and for which he would consequently perhaps never hear public accolades is enchanting. Modest, lovely, and desirable - small artworks are exciting for prodding the psyche into believing that having is within the realm of the possible.

I have always been charmed by small art - netsuke, snuff bottles, Persian and Indian miniatures, small ivories. It is a sentiment that was never entirely erased by a culture that prefers big and loudly broadcasted statements of art to these tiny whispered secrets. I sometimes prefer the larger works too, but I hold a place in my heart and in my home for smallness.

The two works I have posted today are miniature paintings numbers twenty and twenty-one (the computer was unavailable for uploads yesterday) of my daily work on the “Thirty-three Days of the Puma” series. I was thinking of Persian miniatures and British ivory paintings when I made them. Although these paintings are not nearly as skilled as the works that influenced them, they still, I hope, hold something of their spirit. They are tiny - just three and a half inches tall by five inches long. To paint them I used a Chinese brush made for miniature silk paintings. Since I was trained by a master silk painter in China, I do at least know something of the brush work that is required to accomplish the long sinuous lines. These are particularly evident in the tethers on the big cat at the top.

Multi-Tasking Mania Revisited

2010-09-18T13:34:00.002-04:00

With one show hanging and two more on the way this fall, I’ve been very busy. But in between commitments I did find time to prepare something for the South Carolina State Fair. The collage above incorporates parts of a painting that I cut into pieces and reassembled. The new collage has the same title as the original painting, “Multi-Tasking Mania.” The fragmentation of the collage, I think, makes the title even more apt. The three major long dividing lines represent the hour, minute and second hands of a clock with an ever vigilant center eye as a focal point in the work.

Entering anything into a juried exhibition is always an act of faith. The artist sees the value of the time and attention devoted to creating the work, but the juror may or may not see that intent. After skills and presentations are polished to the best of ability, it is almost like a lottery after that. Submitting a work of art that is abstract or conceptual is always a risk A work of art that has many components to it is even riskier to submit to a show that has a large number of entries because a juror’s fatigue will often cause him to prefer quieter, simpler work. But that also depends on what stage a juror looks at the work - beginning, middle, or at the end. So if a juror looks at “Multi-Tasking Mania” early or late in the process, he’ll follow the nuance. In the middle of the process his eyes will just glaze over.

There are many little parts in this piece that will remain secret messages to myself and anyone reading this entry. There is a brown square, for instance, on the left side of “Multi-Tasking Mania” that is a print from a stone seal that I carved which says in ancient Chinese characters “Believe in Meditation (Zen).” It is a joke, of course, because someone “multi-tasking” will not be a likely candidate for meditation. There are a few other scattered seal prints of “long life” as well, printed in blue and green acrylic paint.

To accompany this crazy quilt of a collage, I’ve selected a miniature painting of two fighting large cats from my series, “Thirty-three days of a Puma.” This one is number nineteen.

Treading on the Tea Party

2010-09-16T14:53:00.002-04:00

It is not always easy to discern what the Tea Party is about.. But Tea Party rallies are generally a pretty good indication of what the group is against. Ironically, the party is purportedly named after the eighteenth century Boston Tea Party. At the Boston Tea Party, colonialists protested a tax imposed by Great Britain on tea. Their protest expressed a righteous indignation on taxation without representation. Colonial Americans didn’t want their tax money to fund a foreign empire overseas. The trouble with the present day American Tea Party is that they appear to be averse to paying taxes to support their own government and their fellow Americans. That’s quite a different thing entirely from what colonialists were all about. Emblazoning themselves with a patriotic name that alludes to taxation without representation could be cause for confusion - unless we are to conclude that they consider the present government a foreign power.

It is not that they don’t have some legitimate claim to ire over the excesses in government, in particular the pandering to corporate interests. Yet if it is true that the Tea Party itself is being bankrolled by Koch Industries, then they could be the biggest corporate toadies of them all.

With regard to their hostility towards taxation, has anyone in the Tea Party paused to think through the implications of their promoting a candidate who literally did not pay her taxes? Someone who benefits from paved roads, library services, public education, ambulance services, police and fire services without bearing her share of the burden to support these institutions - leaving everyone else to pay for them for her?

It is especially ironic that Glenn Beck , a prominent spokesperson for this group, crowed about being a self-educated man who benefitted enormously from free books checked out of public libraries. Are not public libraries funded by taxes? And are not many of them in peril today because of lost tax revenue? Don’t the rest of us deserve to benefit from the same “socialist” institutions that Glenn Beck benefitted from and commends?

From what I have been reading about the Tea Party, it seems to be a rallying point for angry people of means who are afraid that their personal resources are in danger of being squandered by other Americans they deem to be unworthy of their help or support. Mr. Beck underscored this sentiment by emphasizing all the things he declared Americans should not consider entitlements: “healthcare, hand outs”, and, he seemed to imply, education. This is interesting on many levels.
If what studies show to be the demographics of Tea Party constituents are correct, that the majority are middle class white Americans, then many of these “entitlements” that Glenn Beck says we should not expect are in fact already secured by his admirers. Thus would it be too outlandish to conclude that for the Tea Party it is the other Americans that should not have access to affordable health care, education and unemployment benefits? Just as long as the Tea Party folks themselves avail themselves of these rights?

.The general tone of Tea Party rallies, especially those that proclaim to “restore honor to America” are nearly always belligerent. There is even something pugnacious about their choice of the phrase “restoring honor.” It implies that someone or something dishonored the country and its people and we therefore should demand redress. Restoring “honor” does not have the humility that a call to restore “pride” or “hope,” does. And it might be wise to consider who will be hurt in their quest for “honor,” and who could end up paying for their irresponsibility.

I’ve posted two little paintings of paw prints. They are pictures seventeen and eighteen of my Puma series. I was going to post one a day but I am posting two today instead because I am taking the day off tomorrow.

Rainbow Cabin, by Nathaniel Wallace

2010-09-15T21:00:00.003-04:00

The exhibition of Nathaniel Wallace’s medium format photography on display at the Orangeburg County Fine Arts Center includes this intriguing print of a small white house with painted windows. Called “Rainbow Cabin” it is a digitized print from a scanned negative. The paper and inks used are special archival materials that are more permanent than ordinary photography inks. It is a large print, about twenty-two by twenty six inches with rich details.
This particular photograph is probably my favorite in the current exhibition. The colors give the simple white architecture a cathedral-like feel - like Amiens in miniature.

The Orangeburg County Fine Arts Center is open Monday through Thursday from 9:00 am until 4:30 PM and from 9:00am until 12:00 on Friday.

To the left is number sixteen in my painting series “Thirty-three days of the Puma.” It has been relaxing to do these at the end of the day. They are taking on the appearance of manuscript illustrations - probably from my many years of looking at Persian miniatures and Chinese silk paintings

A Meeting of Twain in Something Old and Something New

2010-09-14T23:30:00.003-04:00

A Meeting of the Twain in Something Old and Something New

2010 marks the one hundredth anniversary of the death of Mark Twain. What better way to acknowledge the milestone than to read some classic works of the great American writer?
I have started to read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn because it is one that has always interested me but one that I never seemed to have time to read. ( I don’t really now but I’m reading it anyway).

I’ve also been catching up on the news during my momentary rest on the road to my next art exhibition in October. A significant amount of this news has taken on the heat of upcoming elections with tensions mounting on all sides. The Tea Party and its proponents seemed to be more vocal as of late so I decided to read some of the transcripts of Glenn Beck’s rallying cries to find out for myself what the attractions were to his followers and the concerns were to his critics. This was no easy task because with any public figure, there are reams of commentators to mine through to get down to the actual transcripts - the downside of the information highway. But find a few transcripts I did. After reading them I am afraid that I would have to lean towards Glenn Beck’s detractors in my sentiments.

One transcript of a speech by Glenn Beck opens with his description of his vomiting from a hangover and concludes on the same note. I was completely baffled by how such a presentation could garner adulation from a crowd. I personally have greater appreciation for public figures who do not feel compelled to address their minions by speaking into, out of, or from on top of a toilet. I might add here that I am an equal opportunity critic of this particular technique. Some years ago the National Organization for Women organized a campaign to get Rush Limbaugh off the air that they dubbed “Flush Rush.” Creative assonance aside, I found that I could not donate funds nor could I sign any petitions calling for disposing a human being via a commode - albeit even metaphorically.

From an aesthetic point of view, then, the Glenn Beck rallies held little appeal for this reader. From a stylistic point of view as well an ideological one, they also fell short. As a former English teacher married to an English professor it was difficult to read lines from a transcript of a Glenn Beck speech and not see red. No, not the red of anger that infuriates most of his critics, but the red circles, lines and arrows one might find on a D minus freshman college composition paper. Some examples are:
“You do not know what you if you’re doing it because your family has done it?”
and “Do you wanted to be an invisible, magic sky god that you think is there?” One can only hope that the errors were in the transcript and that Mr. Beck didn’t actually mouth those words. If so, perhaps he needs a better speech writer, a bigger pencil eraser, or both.

The “Restoring Honor” speech was a peculiar amalgam of McCarthyism and libertarianism with a liberal sprinkling of sermonizing thrown in for good measure. There was something decidedly incongruent, though, about the actual tone of his speech and Glenn Beck’s claim to an ideological lineage spanning from Moses to George Washington to Abraham Lincoln to Martin Luther King.

I couldn’t quite figure out how to describe this spokesperson for the Tea Party until I began reading Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn. Glenn Beck has his own reading recommendations for people he wishes to alert to dangerous threats to the American way of life. Most of these threats, according to Mr Beck, are progressives and communists, which are actually one and the same, he tells us from his “history” lesson. But perhaps more on that later. I would argue that the best resources for understanding threats to civilized society come from the ranks of novelists, artists, and scholars - not from political pundits with a self-serving agenda. From the former, a character from Huckleberry Finn caught my attention.

In the opening chapters of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain introduces us to the ignoble character, Pap, Huck Finn’s father. Pap, an illiterate, abusive alcoholic , personifies the wicked streak that ran through American culture of Twain’s time. He is ignorant and proud of it, bullying everyone who does not join him in his ignorance. He beats Huckleberry Finn for going to school and tears up his academic award. Pap at one time claimed a religious conversion and a change of ways while secretly continuing degenerate behavior. In one scene, in a drunken rage, he rails out against the “govment” imagining that the “govment” is taking away his rights. Pap starts ranting about a legal loophole which allowed a light-skinned highly educated black man to vote - something that really got his goat.

Fast forward a hundred years from the death of Mark Twain to a rally in Washington DC. A man describing an alcoholic hangover rails against the government, entitlements to public education and the administration of the country’s light-skinned highly educated Black president. Perhaps there is a little less of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln to this man’s address than he and his adherents would like to think and a little more of Pap.

Nathaniel Wallace Black and White Photography

2010-09-13T21:37:00.002-04:00

Although he favors color photography, Nathaniel has been experimenting with medium format black and white images in the last two years. This print from a digitized medium format negative is a scene from a medieval courtyard in Provence and is one of four black and white photographs in the current exhibition “Locations/Dislocations: Abandoned Houses and Unsheltered Souls.” Many people comment that Nathaniel Wallace’s photograph have a “painterly” quality to them. That undoubtedly comes from years of analyzing paintings for his critical writing as well as from his wife’s influence as a painter.

The small black and white painting at left is number fourteen in my series “Thirty-three Days of the Puma.”

Days of Cats and Days of Bats

2010-09-12T13:39:00.003-04:00

The painting above is number thirteen in my series, “Thirty-three Days of the Puma.” While painting this series to enumerate the days from the start of the drilling towards the trapped miners in Chile, it occurred to me to also work backwards and count their actual days of confinement. This meant doing twenty-six more paintings in addition to the painting a day count. I decided to use the bat as the symbol of this time period, because when the bat hibernates it eats very little in order to conserve energy. Unfortunately, most people do not share my fondness for bats and the bats that are native to South America (should I wish to remain genuine) are not of the pretty variety that Asian fruit bats are. Nevertheless, from time to time I will post a miniature painting from the new series “Twenty-six days of the Bat.” I have completed ten so far - sixteen more to go in order to catch up. This project is now becoming a small book, for which I am still soliciting poets to help me fill it with verse. I may have recruited one so far and will showcase this artist in the future.

A Photograph by Nathaniel Wallace

2010-09-11T20:52:00.002-04:00

have made a series of posts discussing my new work for the exhibition, “Locations/Dislocations: Abandoned Houses and Unsheltered Souls.” But my new work is only half of this exhibition. The other half belongs to my photographer husband, Nathaniel Wallace. He took the photograph above at our friend’s house, Jeri Burdick. Like most of the exhibited photographs, it is a digitized print from a medium format negative. The colors in this work are particularly strong and while hanging our show, it took some time for me to come up with paintings that would hold up next to it. I settled on my painting of a violet shed in field of yellow grass that I posted earlier. My favorite part of this photograph is the bar of coral color at the bottom.

For painting number twelve in my Puma series, I have chosen one with strident colors to answer the coral in the photograph. It has something of irreverence about it but that would come as no surprise to most people who know me. I will be posting more of my husband’s photographs shortly although I am not yet sure which cat-of-the-day they will appear with.

Saved by the Small but Interesting

2010-09-10T13:40:00.004-04:00

The day after an art opening is generally a quiet one I am tempted to say an exhausted one as well but would rather not because tomorrow brings more commitments and deadlines: the delivery of new work to Charleston, publishing deadlines, and grant deadlines. They all preclude being tired. But it is always worth spending a little time away from the desk top and the easel to reflect upon an exhibition - what went well and what could be improved for the next time.

Although there was a decent crowd there was just one person from out of town in attendance. That could mean for one thing that publicity did not travel to Charleston or Columbia. It may also mean that while Orangeburg is located conveniently between those two cities, the distance may be just beyond the miles people are willing to travel for an event. On the other hand it was heartening that there was a local arts-supporting population.

When planning an event, one never knows what might capture people’s attention. Almost as an afterthought I added a table of notecards, postcards and miniature ceramic tiles of zhuan calligraphy stamps. These small items are what saved the day and helped pay the costs of putting on the exhibition. Some of the tiles that weren’t in the exhibition are shown above to illustrate what they are. I’ve explained their significance in previous blog entries but will expound a little here.

Zhuan is an ancient form of Chinese calligraphy initially found in inscriptions on bronze vessels of the Shang and Zhou dynasty (hence they are sometimes called Zhou script or metal script). Although Chinese writing changed its morphology over the centuries, various ancient scripts were preserved by artists and shamans, for their beauty by the former and for their purportedly magic power by the latter. It was believed that stone seals with zhuan characters on them could have an effect on the natural and supernatural world when they were stamped onto the area in question. A pond that was suspected of harboring evil spirits, for instance, could be exorcized by a shaman stamping a seal into the mud around its periphery. The stone stamps were often carried in beautifully embroidered pouches so that travelers could use them to banish ghosts away from the places where respite was taken. The same zhuan characters came to be used to embellish scrolls and paintings - they are the little red seals pressed onto the corners of a page, often below an artist’s name. The seal below the artist’s name is generally a writing of that artist’s name in zhuan calligraphy but other seals may show patron’s ownership of the art work. Other seals have pithy little inspirational sayings on them.

I learned the art of stone seal carving years ago as a graduate student at the Beijing Central Art Academy and have continued to use it in various ways in my art work ever since. It is an incredibly beautiful pictographic language but unfortunately one that no one can read unless trained as an archaeologist or a Chinese artist. I emphasize artist here because most contemporary Chinese students of disciplines outside the study of their own ancient art and language cannot read zhuan. ( I was at the Metropolitan Museum of Art this past summer looking at some recent acquisitions of stone seals when a small entourage of Chinese students came in to see them as well. The leader of this group addressed his companions, explaining to them that zhuan is an obscure language that no one can read any more. I piped up in Chinese of course to tell them what dictionaries to buy in order to relearn the script. I don’t think I made an impression because they sort of stared at me as if they had just been addressed by the likes of a small monkey. Oh well. I had wanted to tell them that I have been slowly translating these texts).

To bring things back into the here and now, however, I had stamped a number of my stone seal carvings into the ceramic clay to make these little tiles, some for use as pendants, others just to keep as an object. I translated the text onto the back of each tile so that patrons would know what they had. So many people have little pieces of jewelry or clothing with Chinese on them not knowing the meaning of the words they wear and what is the fun of that? To make my rather long story short, my enthusiasm for the stone seal script stamps filtered out into the crowd last night and they, too, became possessors of these little bits of magic.

It is my belief that anyone who desires to learn something new and has the patience give it their time and attention, deserves to be compensated for their time. So for reading this longer than usual entry you have earned the right to a free lesson on how to read zhuan, or seal script. The little picture to the right is number eleven in my painting series, Thirty-three days of the Puma. This one features a large stamp of the words of a line from the most ancient book of poetry known, the Book of Songs. It reads “Don’t make a hunter’s dog bark.” It is not too hard to read this in zhuan but I will take you through it character by character. Starting at the top (you read Chinese from top to bottom) there is a large character that looks like two people hanging from a horizontal pole. It is the character, “Wu” for “nothing” but in this context a verb for “not doing” or “don’t.” The second one down is “shi” for “make” or “compel.” This is an interesting one for some of its component parts. The pitchfork shape, for instance on the lower right side of this character is the ancient form of the word for a person’s hand. Next you see a character for a hunter’s dog or “mang.” If you look carefully it actually looks like a stick figure of a dog with long ears. The next character is “ye” which is hard to explain - it is like a la la de da extra sound. The last character is the fun one. It is the word “bark.” If you look carefully you can see the word for “mang” or dog again only turned on its side. But there is an additional little square by it with two smiling prongs projecting from the top. This is the word for a mouth - indicating that there is a sound coming from the dog’s mouth - a bark. Enjoy your ancient reading.

Opening Night of an Exhibition Painting Number Ten

2010-09-09T22:26:00.003-04:00

There was a house in Orangeburg County with a facade put together entirely of boards of various shapes and sizes, neatly fit together like a commesso mosaic. The boards were painted creamy white, the spaces between them a walnut brown. The house had weathered so that spider fine lines permeated the whole face like wrinkles on an old sage.

The painting above that I made of this house never made it into our exhibition The walls of the art center were filled up with enough photographs and paintings to create a nicely balanced show. There was a reasonable sized crowd and I think that they enjoyed the art. Over all the opening was a success as far as being a crowd pleaser. And the small items that I sold at least defrayed opening costs - always a relief.

Tonight we presented the performing debut of the Orangeburg Chapter of the South Carolina Writers Workshop. I had always wanted to perform my poetry from memory so I decided to finally have a try with that. I flubbed one word and forgot my last line so the penultimate line had to serve as the final one - which may have worked out for the best anyway.
Now I want to do more of this! It is not that I’m particularly good at it. It is just that with a memorized piece a performer can really own the spoken words. The real star performers tonight were Miles McCorison, Jennifer Harley and Barbara Paul for the readings of their poetry related to the exhibition.

This was a day that rushed by but it was a happy one for it was the beginning of a new year and the culmination of a long summer of work.
The painting at right is the tenth in the series Thirty-three Days of the Puma.

Countdown to an Art Exhibition Painting Nine

2010-09-08T12:59:00.003-04:00

On a stretch of highway 301 going from Orangeburg. SC heading towards Bamberg there was an old farmstead. The main building was a creamy white with hand carved shutters painted green. A faded pink barn rested behind and slightly to the right of the long white house. I had painted the white building some time ago shortly before it was bulldozed down. The pink barn I painted last week for our two-person exhibition which opens tomorrow at the Orangeburg County Fine Arts Center.

The outbuilding, seen through the edge of a woods, looked distant and beckoning. The trees were being cleared and a slightly elliptically shaped log had rolled onto the ground like a giant eye upon the border of wild trees and plowed field. The sun hit the golden flesh of its pulp wood in a beautiful glowing way. I painted the scene on an eighteen inch square canvas - small by most painter’s standards - but dwarfing all the miniatures in the exhibition.

The day before the opening of an exhibition entails a lot of cooking, cleaning and preparations. Hence the shortness of this blog entry - and tomorrow’s as well no doubt.

The small painting at left is “Eye of the Big Cat,” ninth in the series “Thirty-three days of the Puma.”

Countdown to an Exhibition: Painting Number Eight

2010-09-07T12:43:00.004-04:00

My preparations for the “Locations/Dislocations: Abandoned Houses and Unsheltered Souls” over these past two weeks has consisted of creating new works while painting revised versions of older works that are no longer available for display. Among the latter are the paintings I did over again that were featured on the postcards and the note cards. One such painting, the abandoned house with the red tin roof featured above, was originally a small oil on wood. The oil on wood was purchased by a client in Beaufort so I made a similar painting four times larger on canvas. I like the larger size better because it fills an expansive gallery wall to much greater effect. The larger format also enabled me to use larger brushwork for mor textural detail. Like most of the other recent paintings, this one was painted with my Venice turpentine medium, which adds a high sheen and shortens the drying time. This enabled me to paint the greater portion of this exhibition on very short notice.

Painting number eight in the countdown to an exhibition is accompanied by the Red Puma, painting number eight as well in the countdown from the day drilling started in Chile to rescue workers trapped in a copper mine. It started out as a coincidence that the two countdowns started at the same time, but I have been making these little paintings of big cats with some intent, and I will continue the series until the end of the year.

Countdown to an Exhibition Painting Seven

2010-09-06T20:54:00.003-04:00

The painting above is of another abandoned home in Orangeburg County. Although it was popular to paint an entire house a bright blue to scare off demons, in many cases, such as this one, jsut the window trim and the posts were painted that way. For the poetry reading this Thursday evening, I’ve written a very short verse to accompany the painting, “House with Blue Trim.”

When my husband Nat and I explored this site, we found several views that were captivating enough to sketch and photograph. On the porch of the house was a large cushion chair with the upholstery still intact. Nat’s photograph of this chair, “Chair within a chair” will also be in the exhibition. The photograph was so named because the upholstery had a pattern on it that included a picture of a chair in a livingroom setting.

The painting to the left, “Big Cat with Blue Markings” is the sixth in my “Thirty Three Days of the Puma” series. When I posted the second one in this series, I found by accident it had a pictorial relationship with the architectural detail in the accompanying painting. I am now painting the big cats with that in mind.

Day Six in the Count Down of Houses and Pumas

2010-09-05T15:55:00.003-04:00

There is a long house in Bamberg South Carolina that is painted a robin’s egg blue and has a copper roof. I see it every time I go to Bamberg to visit an artist friend in order to have company and better studio conditions while I paint. The house is like a beacon, it is so bright. It is a welcome harbinger of hot tea, good snacks, great films and all the other things that one shares with friends. Because of this, I made a small painting of it in order to have it in the upcoming exhibition “Locations/Dislocations: Abandoned Homes and Unsheltered Souls.” It is a house near the house where some of the other houses were painted.

This is the sixth in my series of count down paintings to the opening of our show at the Orangeburg County Fine Arts Center this Thursday. The painting of the purple puma at left is number six in my series “33 days of the Puma.” As I progress in this series I am noticing that the pumas are starting to look less like big cats and more like domestic ones.

Count Down Day Five

2010-09-04T16:31:00.003-04:00

“Red House with a pointed Dormer” is another repainted scene from Blackville, South Carolina. It is second in a display of four tiny oil on panel landscape paintings for our upcoming exhibition. Yesterday I put up the last labels then went home and rested. After hanging a large exhibition of art work, it was good to relax and slow down for a few hours.

There is something very satisfying about seeing a cohesive body of work on the walls of an exhibition space. My husband’s architectural photography and my landscapes featuring mostly abandoned houses seemed to dovetail nicely. The entire impression of the show is one of taking a trip down back roads - something people do here for relaxation.

The fifth big cat of my thirty-three puma series made me recall what I initially read when the saving pipeline first reached the miners in Chile. Once it was established that this would be a prolonged rescue mission, a number of commentators offered ideas about what should go down or come up that pipeline. I suppose this series of paintings was started in response to a commentator who offered a suggestion that perhaps pictures could be sent down to the minors to cheer up their gloomy space. It wasn’t entirely a bad idea, I thought, but is there a place for art? The social scientists, psychologists and medical professionals assigned to the miner’s welfare emphasized the importance of establishing routines to pass the time. I hope that a routine does not become a monotony. Scientist know how to make every day the same and to be consistent.
And that is required in many respects for the survival of the body. But artists know how to make every day a little different. It is what makes a Decameron out of a long wait for a plague to pass, or the Canterbury Tales to pass the time of a rugged pilgrimage. It makes the tales of a Thousand and One Nights. Every day a little different. Something earned, something discovered. It is what makes a soul survive. I suppose that is why I am making a little painting every day to count the difficult and long journey to a rescue. So this can be the day an emerald cat sniffed the ground to discover that someone or something has passed this way.

Day Four of a Painting Count Down

2010-09-03T20:12:00.004-04:00

Black and grey with pink and red have always been favorite color combinations of mine. For the fourth day of my countdown to our exhibition and the fourth day of the Puma paintings (see previous blog entries to find out what they are for - Ah! I knew I would start getting lazy) I am featuring these colors. I saw this long pink barn with the black roof and the black tire in the area of Blackville, South Carolina. This painting is a smaller version of a larger one also in the upcoming exhibition.

I have two people to thank for my series of small works on panels, Alicia Leeke, for supplying the small frames through her Artist’s Round Table organization, and Stephen Chesley, for cutting numerous masonite panels and even priming them for me. Thank you friends!

Locations/Dislocations Painting Number Three

2010-09-02T18:36:00.005-04:00

Count Down to an Exhibition
Painting number three

September 2 in Orangeburg was a labeling and adjustment event. Most of the hard core delivery, set up, and arrangement of paintings and photographs was completed yesterday. But today replacements needed to be made, labels printed out, and everything adjusted for height and distances apart. It took up the greater part of this day.

Thankfully, an article about the exhibition which came out in the local paper today. A section in the middle of this article looked very familiar. It was classic Kozachek writing, with words like “elegiac” and “juxtaposition” and more than one idea in a sentence separated by the ubiquitous hyphens. My first thought was should these words not be embraced by quotation marks? I then recalled that I had attached chunks of a previously written essay onto a press release which was forwarded to one center then forwarded to a newspaper and in my haste to get the work done forgot to take ownership of anything that I penned thus making it a parcel of thought folded into the corporate ownership of ideas. Also in my haste I hadn’t really been very diligent about revisions. So it might actually be for the best if my meandering thoughts should be attributed to the great cultural unconscious of Orangeburg. No matter. It is good to get the word out and I appreciate the effort made on our behalf.

My painting featured above is called “Grey Shed in a Field of Yellow Grass.” It is another oil on panel that dried just days ago. The scene is from the rural area around Blackville, South Carolina. I recall that the area was moist from its proximity to a pond which probably also the reason for the yellow grasses. Fields of grass in the autumn in South Carolina are as spectacular for their colors as autumn leaves in the northeast. They are made even more splendid by these little gems of architectural remains.

The third painting in my ongoing series of daily art for the miners in Chile is a white ghostly puma moving through golden grass. Every day I do a painting for myself and one for the miners. Hopefully I can keep it up until Christmas.

Painting Number Two Count Down

2010-09-01T17:38:00.003-04:00

It was a long day spent hanging an exhibition. Hanging for two people went especially slowly (I had to hang my husband’s photographs as well due to his teaching schedule). As I expected, there were two paintings that were still too tacky to set into a frames so they will be squeezed into the exhibition later. I ended up hanging just three of my collage works, all of which were not previously shown. So although this exhibition thematically is a traveling one from the previous venue at Gallery 80808 in Columbia it is largely new.

The painting above is of two rusting latches on the door of an abandoned house. I liked the worn paint and the numerous nail holes. This is the only painting in the exhibition of a detail - something I will be doing more of later this month. I painted it in a square because the shape happened into fit a wrought iron frame that I acquired years ago on a trip to Italy. The frame was probably intended to hold a mirror but it suited the small oil on panel fine.

As I was hanging the exhibition, “Locations/Dislocations: Abandoned Houses and Unsheltered Souls,” Beth Thomas, the director of the Orangeburg County Fine Arts Center asked me how I got the glossy finish on my paintings. Many artists wonder that so I’m submitting here the “secret” recipe painting medium I use to get the enamel- like sheen and sculptural impasto effects in the paint. I got the recipe years ago from Piero Manoni, a museum conservator from Rome:

Two Parts Venice Turpentine (Can substitute Canada Balsam)
Nine Parts Gum Turpentine
Four Parts Stand Oil
Nine Parts Damar Varnish

Mix the Venice Turpentine slowly into the Gum Turpentine until it is entirely dissolved. Add the stand oil and damar. Mix thoroughly.

The small painting at left is second in the cycle “Thirty-three Days of the Puma.” for the second day of rescue of the Chilean miners. I have been following the news story and understand that the slow drilling is due to having to bore through solid rock. The puma, which I think is another name for a jaguar, was a holy beast in Pre-Columbian mythology and could be loosely associated with what we might consider an angel. In this picture it is difficult to actually see the puma without looking for it closely, which characterizes the ephemeral natural of spiritual things.

The Count Down Begins

2010-08-31T18:02:00.002-04:00

Sold out. It is a phrase that every artist would love to hear. No. It is not the metaphorical “sold out” to imply artistic compromise. It is the literal “sold out” of having an entire or almost entire collection of work purchased. Ideally this should occur when one is about to leave for a trip or when a bill is due. But good news can come at awkward times as well and the best of plans can go awry.

I had the end of summer planned very well. I didn’t think I would have to work exceptionally hard on creating new work for my upcoming exhibition because I had a collection of paintings that had not sold in one gallery that I would simply transport to the new exhibition venue. Planning exhibitions of the same or similar work back to back is living life a little dangerously. What if the work is all sold at the first venue? Then what? But only a small percentage of my work is ever purchased from my exhibitions and sometimes nothing at all so I figured that it was perfectly safe to come back from Maryland at the beginning of August and work at a leisurely pace here, then pick up my work in Beaufort for a show that hangs on September 1 here in Orangeburg and opens on September 9. The collection of landscape paintings of rural South Carolina had been sitting in Beaufort for over a year so I figured that they would naturally still be there. But when I announced my plans to come down and pick up the work by the end of August I noticed some hesitation in my agent’s voice as she asked me to wait on a few phone calls to clients first.

Just two weeks ago, I got the news that the entire collection, save two pieces, had been acquired by a collector. Since two paintings do not an exhibition make I had about ten days to paint ten replacement paintings. Being a slow working painter, this was a challenge (I’m still working on it). But despite the good yet daunting news, I have been making almost a painting a day.

The first challenge was to do the paintings on the invitations and other publicity over again. So the painting above is very similar to, but not the same painting, as the one on the invitation. Revisiting a previously painted landscape brush stroke by brush stroke is not something most artists would do. But I did it because visitors might be expecting to see the work that they have been invited to see and I wanted there to be at least some truth in advertising. So for the next ten days up to the opening of our three-person exhibition, this will be a painting a day blog.

The ten day countdown to the opening of our exhibition, “Locations/Dislocations: Abandoned Houses and Unsheltered Souls,” begins with another countdown of much greater magnitude and seriousness. Today the drilling started towards the trapped miners in Chile. When I first read about the incident I was mortified like I’m certain everyone else who read about their plight was. I even lost a night’s sleep over it. The thing about reading stories about people trapped is that it occupies a place in the mind that seems to hold its breath and not exhale until the people are freed. Four months is an unthinkable amount of time to be trapped in a mine. Although it may never directly help the miners, I am creating a small painting every afternoon to mark the days until they can be released . I’ve divided them into four groups of thirty-three paintings - one for each miner. Each group depicts various visual interpretations of four animals from Chile, the puma, the wolf or alpaca (haven’t decided yet), birds, and butterflies - one for each month. I’ve attached the first one to the right - a blue puma breaking free and soaring.

Janet Goes to Chicken Farm

2010-08-30T10:37:00.003-04:00

In an amusing moment of synchronicity, while I was waiting with my husband for our meal to arrive at the local Cracker Barrel, my eyes lighted upon an old book propped up on a fake mantel. It was there not to be actually read I found out by noticing hardened glue on the bottom pages where it was affixed to the mantel piece. It was, rather, an attempt at maintaining the hallmark Cracker Barrel nineteenth century rustic look. Just for show though it may have been the 1908 book’s title, Peggy Goes to Spinster Farm was so intriguing that I pried it loose and took it back to our table to read it (It didn’t really take much prying, the glue was not really adhered properly anyway). What caught my eye was Helen Winslow’s opening line, “Everyone should be alone for a year, not to find himself, but to discover the storm at the center of one’s being.” (I am paraphrasing here)

I asked my husband, a devoted English Professor to read a few pages and give me an evaluation. I cannot quote him exactly because I have forgotten the verbatim commentary but it went something like “It is merely a Victorian piece of lightweight fluff literature.” Naturally that just made me want to read it even more in order to judge for myself. Fortunately I found the book on line and began reading the adventures of Peggy and her Aunt Janet. They were Boston ladies of means who decided that they were weary of city life with its many social commitments of the kind the author tells us through her characters, seem to beleaguer women. What these women’s groups were or the nature of their obligations remained obscure. But I was intrigued and amused because the women were leaving Boston behind along with what was described somewhat obliquely as academic and art careers. Having just taken myself and my art business off of social networking sites I felt a sudden kinship with these pioneering ladies. The relationship of the women is purportedly one of blood but it seems reminiscent of the “Boston Marriage.”

There seems to be very little known about this book and its author and I cannot ascertain how much is fiction and how much is autobiography. Stylistically it is, as my husband says, somewhat lightweight, yet reading it in small snippets of time away from my easel has been fun. The prose is not as magical as another author who may have overlapped Helen Winslow’s time, Sarah Orne Jewett, yet it still has some of Jewett’s charm and love of nature. The book chronicles the women’s slow release from Boston society and their discovery of good health by abandoning corsets and taking long walks in the country. There are minute descriptions of the colonial farm house they purchase for their new lives as chicken farmers - with latches in place of “the modern invention of doorknobs.” The hens themselves are described in anthropomorphic details which are entertaining in their silliness.

While perhaps not being great literature, this little book is still a small gem of social history. And its modest writing is the perfect antidote to present day gloomy news and tea party ranters. I may comment on such things later but for now I’m being chicken with the media.
The acrylic painting at the top of the page is my quirky interpretation of a self-actualized chicken. It was painted from an old folk paper cut in my collection.

Pink Mosque with a Home

2010-08-27T14:57:00.003-04:00

While putting together part two of the exhibition, “Locations/Dislocations: Abandoned Houses and Unsheltered Souls” I reviewed the previously exhibited collage works to determine which, if any, I would select to show with my new paintings. I paused at the collage, “Rose Mosque with a Home” Would I even be able to exhibit this now that in light of current events it perhaps has taken on a new meaning? Who knew that it would be prescient?

The title for the work is essentially named for the small print on the lower left which reads “having a home” in ancient Chinese seal script. The architectural form was something of an afterthought. And I called it a mosque out of a desire to be inclusive. The current debate over the proposed construction of an Islamic center and mosque near ground zero is both interesting yet sad. Once again I see the pro-arguments not fully taking into account the sorrow of victims of 9/11 and their families and the negative arguments often put forward by people who would exploit that sorrow for their own selfish political agenda.

Is there no compromise? Moving the mosque to a less emotionally volatile area? Or perhaps having the proposed center could stay near ground zero and offer itself as a place of healing where a memorial to victims of 9/11 is included in the structure and free services devoted to their care and welfare.

Perhaps the collage “Rose Mosque with a Home” will be included in the upcoming exhibition to see what kind of response and dialogue it engenders.

Facebook Purgatory

2010-08-25T13:32:00.002-04:00

Face book Purgatory
“Totus liber faciei in tres partes divisa est: cupiditas, victoria, servitus.” Jewel Ceasar

The painting above is a study for a collage that I’m calling “Facebook Purgatory.” It is being worked on while I am in my two-week waiting period for my release from Facebook. The image is based for the most part on my readings about Facebook because I wasn’t on it frequently enough for firsthand experience. The profiles of two women to one man at the bottom of the painting, for instance, comes from my reading a number of studies that claim that women outnumber men in social networking, especially on Facebook. The prints of pumpkins deteriorating on a vine are there to indicate games such as Farmville and the intertwining relationships of “players.”

I have been clearing out e-mail subscriptions and internet groups that I don’t keep up with to free up more time to get my other work done and found some interesting results from my fall clearance adventures thus far. I found that most social networking groups and businesses have a convenient “unsubscribe” button. But sometimes they don’t work and phone calls are necessary.
Generally there is a polite response to ending the e-mail solicitations but one company actually sent me a return e-mail that I was now on their “blacklist.” They seem to be taking a departing potential customer rather seriously. Others are perhaps a tad too sentimental for the circumstances. “We will miss you,” they tell me like a departing friend - people who don’t know me nor I them

But what I found truly amazing, and somewhat disconcerting, was the trouble it took to leave Facebook. When pressing the “delete profile” button, I first got an option to delete only temporarily, keeping a profile intact so that I could come back anytime. That option did cross my mind but my curiosity about what it took to clear out completely got the better of me and I pressed “permanently delete.” After some importunate “are you really really sure?” messages I firmly sealed my commitment to drop out. I was surprised to get an e-mail from Facebook some time later to tell me that my profile was only in the “process” of being deleted and that it would take two weeks - during which time I could continue to log on and reactivate my account should I change my mind. It seemed like coercion cloaked in good manners so I started reading up on the history of Facebook, the current research on social networking and articles both pro and con on the use of Facebook as a communications tool. I did this to see just what it was I was getting out of and how it came to be that I, along with so many others, took an unthinking leap into cyberspace networking.

Generally I read up on something before I become involved but as I mentioned in my previous writing, there was social and business pressure that came to bear upon my joining chat group networks. To condense my experience here as well as the promises and expectations, I was told that Facebook would grow my business. One year after joining I can say with assurance that it did not - in fact I could say that it was actually detrimental for it took time away from productive studio work as well as more conventional modes ( and in the long run more effective methods) of keeping up with clients. And the final push to leave came this summer. When interfacing with successful artists, I found that many of them eschewed Facebook and other forms of on-line networking. One of these artists had a thriving business even in the recession and had put two children through college - all without a web presence.

Now from my “holding cell pattern” with Facebook, I can wonder about their need to put people on a two-week probationary period before allowing them to leave. Two weeks is a significant block of time. It has an interesting correlation, for instance, with the outer reaches of the time it takes for withdrawal symptoms from an addiction to subside. This could perhaps have a bearing upon people with the social networking addictions that seem to proliferate these days. Someone getting off their fix on Farmville would have to resist the dying calls to farms from pumpkins rotting on a vine - with their accruing farm cash evaporating by the minute. From what I read about Farmville, a person can only cash in points for their virtual vegetables if they are harvested promptly. Considering the fact that the program accelerates growth so that everything ripens by the hour I don’t see how it would actually be possible to win at such a game without being tethered to a PC all of one’s waking hours. But I suppose that is the point - to keep people plugged in to Facebook as much as possible.

So what is it that makes millions of people abrogate privacy and creative ownership to an on-line corporation? From a practical standpoint, Facebook doesn’t seem like a user friendly place for anyone to promote a business that involves original creative design work. If I read my fine print correctly, Facebook maintains ownership to everything posted on the site. For people who need to advertise their wares then, how does giving away a design or idea help them? And what will happen to all their data once Facebook closes?

When I started expressing my misgivings about Facebook and thought of leaving it, colleagues who were favorable to the site told me that I just “didn’t know how to use it.” That could very well be. I found the site confusing to navigate and too cluttered to make sense of. Perhaps if I had better on-line skills I could have networked more effectively, but I gradually came to understand that the time required to learn those skills might be more efficiently spent on keeping up with my regular e-mail and web sites.

Problems with Facebook had started almost immediately upon my entry. For the first few months I received Facebook messages from friends and colleagues but could not reply because I couldn’t log on to the site. It took a few months for Facebook to solve the problem. In the meantime I missed announcements and appointments. Then there were the viruses that got into people’s Facebook accounts which caused them to spew out assorted rapid fire spam and pornography to my e-mail. Praise for the networking possibilities of Facebook started to sound cloying and I began to resent having to log on in order to retrieve or respond to information that would have been more appropriately sent via regular e-mail. So what possible allure did Facebook have for people and considering the fact that I was not overly enamored of the site, why did it take so long to drop it?

Perhaps there is something that Facebook taps into with regard to psychic needs that draws people in and keeps them once they are there. After I left the site, I was listening to a program on NPR about a music performer extolling the virtues of Facebook as a way to build an audience. She had thirty thousand “friends” on Facebook. During the course of her interview she explained that these “friends” could get to know her personally through the site and have a real “connection” to her as a performer. Well, first of all, in this context, the term “friends” is something of a misnomer. One does not have a personal relationship with thirty thousand people. This “relationship” of familiarity is only going one way. A large audience becomes aware of the details of the life of someone they admire. They are fans, not friends. And I think that here is where the illusion of intimacy is so attractive. Even though we may have some real “friends” on Facebook, mostly it is an information sharing network. But the latter is not a particularly engaging phrase so Facebook uses the term “friends” to sell the site better. Most rational people understand that you cannot maintain a personal alliance on the level of “friendship” to thousands of people. Yet the term “friend” still resonates in the consciousness so that on some psychic level, a person does believe that he or she can collect and maintain an ever growing entourage of admiring friends. And the rush to do so becomes something like an attention getting information dispensing arms race.

Most of the critics of Facebook argue that it is a colossal waste of time. By steady increment s I began to edge towards that sentiment but in retrospect must admit that what is or is not a “waste of time” is relative and subjective. If some people are sharing information that is useful and valuable to their personal or professional growth then the time spent doing so is not wasted. And even if there is nothing to social networking but entertainment then that has its value as well in keeping people happy. I would argue that it becomes time wasted when Facebook becomes an unpleasant or coerced obligation that takes time away from what is really important to maintaining a productive and happy life. For myself, as soon as my presence began to edge towards the latter scenario I felt that it was best not to devote time to it.

Having made my peace with the social networking scene, I will say that there were some interesting moments on Facebook - one that actually yielded a short poetry chapbook which I will discuss later. But for the most part, making use of on-line social networking for me was like looking for a pearl in an ocean.

If you have read up to this point, you might wonder at the Latin quote at the beginning of this essay. While reading up on the history of Facebook I found that although we are apparently worlds apart, I actually do have something in common with the founder of Facebook. We both studied Latin in secondary school. Every school boy or girl begins the study of Latin by reading the works of Julius Caesar. I recall the beginning of Caesar’s description of Gaul: “Totus Gallia in tres partes divisa est...” All of Gaul is divided into three parts. The tongue-in-cheek (and I hope grammatically sound) feminized Caesar says in the beginning of this essay: “All of Facebook is divided into three parts: desire, conquest, servitude.” Or perhaps I should just summarize by saying “veni, vici, proficisci.”

Facebook Purgatory

2010-08-25T13:00:00.002-04:00

The essay for this image is on its way. Blogger no longer allows me to cut and paste documents in any form and the suggested solutions: ctrl C plus ctrl V don't work.

The Art of Reconstitution

2010-08-20T21:51:00.004-04:00

Recycling time in the artist's studio is restorative to body, soul and budget. Much of this, however, requires some tedious labor - especially when it comes to recycling clay. I had been wanting to acquire some stoneware and porcelain clay with which to create stronger sculptures and musical instruments but had put off purchasing it because I didn't have an appropriate kiln for the higher temperatures required to fire those fine clays.

As is often the case, however, that wish sent out into the metaphysical space of yearning yeilded a cache of clay - but for a price in time and effort. I found that I was not the only one doing end of the season studio cleaning. A fellow artist was getting rid of hardened stoneware and porcelain that she decided was not really worth the effort to reconstitute. So I eagerly I accepted her offer of the "free" clay - thus reducing the clutter in her studio and adding to mine - at least until I managed to reconstitute and repackage the stuff.

Reconstituting clay is a time-consuming process and must be weighed against the cost of purchasing new material outright. After the time it took to pulverize the hardened blocks, soak them, mix the slurry, spread the slurry on to drying bats, knead it, and then package it (yes into newly purchased buckets) it was probably not what one would call cost effective. But the process of recycling materials has a benefit beyond material cost. It is this physical work that settles the mind and soothes the spirit.

Coincidentally, as I was doing the recycling work, I was reading about some interesting research on the positive effects of vacations in the wilderness far away from internet connections. It appeared that downsizing the amount of information bombardment on the brain actually stimulated and enhanced creative problem solving. Who, of course, has not perhaps already noticed this during long distance driving with the car radio turned off? Processing materials for me is my wilderness, the vats of soaking porcelain my Walden Pond.

While pulverizing the blocks of clay I mentally wrote two or more essays. Soaking the clay in trays and buckets of water yielded thoughts for a painting design. The slurry spreading across bats of plaster drained the distractions from my mind and paved the way for another collage design. While folding the drying clay slab into a coil, then a shell, then a cone, I realized that I had recently made a small judgement error during a telephone conversation. Kneading the clay like bread dough I was able to work out a plan for a diplomatic solution. While the relaxed mind wedged clay and packaged it neatly, ideas for how the clay might be used in the future flowed seamlessly. I recalled the meditation of Chinese painting masters as they ground their ink onto a stone. (I recalled as well with some amusement a lecture given by a young American artist that began with a display of such an ink stone to illustrate the point that a felt tip pen is cheaper, easier and more efficient). Paul Resika, a painter in New York, once told me that what he enjoyed the most about grinding his own pigments into paint was not the cost saving but the sheer joy of meditation upon a luxurious color and imagining all the paintings that the color would fill.

The sections of reconstituted clay were wrapped in plastic bags then sealed in plastic tubs to ensure workability. The processing of this clay brought to mind the stories I had read about Japanese ceramic artists who would work clay then bury it in the ground - not to be touched in their lifetimes. The clay stayed in the ground until their sons inherited it - just as they had inherited their clay from their fathers. The best reserves of porcelain clay were purportedly worth more than gold. Recalling this story made me wonder if our American culture of immediate gratification has lost a sense of patience and the concept of planning for the long term. It is sometimes difficult to imagine us making materials for our own future use let alone for the use of a following generation.

I should explain here perhaps that clay becomes more plastic the longer it is aged by bacteria - something like cheese I suppose. I have experienced a definite difference in aged clay slips that slide onto a vessel like butter on a hot pancake versus the freshly made stuff that pulls and leaves brush streaks. Needless to say, the reconstituted clay is now aging gracefully in containers and awaiting the arrival of winter. Blessed winter after the harvest of ideas.

Fall Clearance and About Face

2010-08-19T10:09:00.002-04:00

The shortening of days and the hint of coolness in the air is a time for sweeping, harvesting and storing. It is as if a certain circadian rhythm clicks in and with it a desire to prepare resources for the winter months ahead. Winter. When days are dark, creatures move more slowly or hibernate. The time to have a reserve of strength and material resources.

Perhaps there is some logic to cleaning out the studio and processing supplies in the late summer/early autumn. It is preparation for a time when commitments are many and available hours to complete them are few. So it is better to have the parts for an art work ready for assembly then to slog through inhospitable weather to create something new on a deadline while nursing a cold. Just the facts of life. Fall is the time to repair, restore and re-evaluate. The overriding order of the season is to let go of what is not being used well and therefore not contributing to an artist's productive life. The alternative is to fix it into something viable. Use it or lose it.

In terms of material good, this means letting go of an inherited kiln I have that sports a four pronged outlet not usable in my present studio electrical system. It means jettisoning any broken equipment that cleaning ferrets out, sharpening the dull stuff, and cleaning off the rusted tools.

This year my sweeping hs been extended into cyberspace. The "delete" and "unsubscribe" buttons there have been seeing a lot of action as of late. There were the networking sites I rarely used, too many newsletters that I don't have time to read, companies that I rarely purchase materials from and surveys that I never take. Clearing out cyber clutter was a necessary part of staying focused for me. I do have a particularly low tolerance for this kind of clutter because while veteran multi-taskers might be capable of selecting their focus, I can easily be distracted by information that obscures or hides more salient or urgent messages. I find it somewhat discombobulating, for instance, to find a grant application deadline or a reminder about where and when I might need to show up for a job sandwiched between an importunate call to take dietary supplements I don't want or a notice that so-and-so is now connected to so-and-so and that I should know that they are now happily exchanging virtual vegetables.

In the midst of my exhilarating clean up of the e-universe I found that everything but Facebook was easy to eliminate. Facebook seemed decidedly obstinate when it came time for the recycle bin. Indeed, they put me on a two-week waiting period for the "processing" of my request to delete my profile (Since they apparently feel that they are considerably more necessary to existance than all the other networks that allow immediate deletion I have decided to honor them as a subject for an upcoming blog). So I've marked the date of my release from Facebook on my claendar and calling it Facebook Liberation Day. As part of my independence day celebration maybe I should through open the gates and liberate the rest of the millions that still reside in Facebook Detention - something like the storming of the Bastille perhaps?

It is amazing what an institution looks like depending upon which face you see it from. Heads when you are a part of it and Tails when you exit. Being on the outside looking in, Facebook users do look like they are incarcerated. What would hapen if they were "released" en masse?

Go down Moses, let my facebook friends go. Free them from their tethers to Farmville plantations where they labor without compensation. Release them from service to market research without pay. The gates are open! Run away! Run! Go!

Seriously though, I am certain that many people find social networking sites such as Facebook enjoyable and entertaining and that some might actually find it useful. But I have often heard people tell me that they felt "pressured" to join and then "pressured" to stay. For this latter group I would say that feeling pressured is not a good sign. As a brief public service upon which I will expound later I would like to remind the reluctant participants that they do not have to join Facebook and that they won't really lose much by not staying. In fact there is much to gain from not being there with improved focus and more time to devote to better things.

For myself, it is enough to keep my real space swept up and organized without having to sweep up the virtual world as well.

Carrot Flowers

2010-08-04T11:23:00.004-04:00

"Who cares to notice carrot flowers, when the plum trees burst into bloom"
-Japanese Haiku

This was a hot summer made hotter still by all the outdoor work I passionately but foolishly took part in. After months of creating musical instruments out of difficult, unyielding volcanic ash clay, along with collecting manure to dry and sticks to burn, my friend and colleague Jeri Burdick and I were ready to do a reduction outdoor kiln firing. I had learned the technique a year ago from Wanpovi and Gilbert Sanchez and had been eager to see if we could reproduce the blackware here in Orangeburg County. Only being maverick Americans, we had to add a new twist even before our first firing by applying sage and white colored slips to our ware in addition to the traditional earthen-red-that-turns-black-when-the-oxygen-is-sucked-out. I also added some pieces made with a clay that I mined locally in Orangeburg that would, of course, yield untested results. In fact I made a large bass ocarina with the stuff even though it was untried. I guess that I like to pot dangerously.
The clay recipe we used was 50% volcanic ash, 45% ball clay and 5% yellow art. Working this clay was like working wet sand. It was not very plastic but did sculpt nicely in the greenware stage when it had a quality like stone. As someone who like to sculpt, however, I found the lack of plasticity so frustrating that I kept muttering to myself, I hate this clay, as I kept trying to coach a form out of its soggy resistance. I stuck with the recipe however, because Wanpovi had told us that the volcanic ash content needed to be that high in order for the clay to survive the rapid rise to a high temperature. Unlike other clays in pit-firing, this clay purportedly vitrifies to a very hard state.
After finishing up my portion of objects made with this clay, I called Jeri to see if she had finished her portion. "I hate this clay," were her first words. I advised her to be patient with it and give it a chance to yield its own unique qualities, while thinking It really is disgusting.
We made two firings of objects in our metal "pit" with cedar chips and other woods mixed in (the Sanchez’s use only cedar but we ran out, and being experimental from the start we absolutely needed to see what other woods would do). One hour into the firing we heard a loud blast followed by numerous smaller pops. It was not a good sign. We clicked off the number of pops in our heads, knowing that each one signified a lost object. We pretended not to be personally hurt by the losses. But it was hard from that point to keep feeding wood into the kiln and tending the fire thinking of so many still born pots that would likely emerge. The air was smokey and hot and we had to take many breaks to drink cold ice tea and douse ourselves with cold water. We were greasy smokey sweaty messes.
At the end of the day, I tried not to think of a month’s hard work literally going down in flames. Instead I went berry picking and told myself that it was all a learning experience and that life was good. We pretended that we could wait for two days before opening the kiln. The following morning I got a call from an ecstatic Jeri informing me that she had to take a look into the kiln and found to her surprise that only one piece had broken - my large bass ocarina made with Orangeburg clay. It served me right I suppose, but I was still a little dis appointed as I was unable to reproduce a bass player with an equally good sound. It appears that the errant bass player was the initially blast we heard and that the subsequent pops had emanated from the same piece continuing to explode into smaller and smaller fragments.
Not learning from my first experiment doing a pit firing outdoors in the hot summer air, I agreed to do another one with my second batch of goods. This time the temperature was in the triple digits yet we kept the fire vigorously stoked. The results were excellent. There was just one casualty in the fire - a clacking instrument with a nice curvilinear design.
I took my pit-fired instruments last month to the arts and crafts festival at Carroll County Farm
in Westminster Maryland. I put a price on them that I hoped reflected the physical sacrifice that went into making them. I found, however, that the audience favored my multi-colored gilded ocarinas over the pit-fired pieces. In fact I was unable to sell even one. I noticed that the intensely colored pieces tended to make the smokey black ware look a little dirty in comparison. Even my mentor, Wanpovi, who taught me the black pottery technique, purchased my brightest gold and yellow ocarina.
Back home again in Orangeburg, I mentioned to Jeri that my pit-fired pieces were not favored. She said that the same thing happened to her pit-fired pieces in previous years when she tried to market them alongside her color work. A Japanese haiku I had heard years ago suddenly popped back into my mind:
"Who cares to notice carrot flowers when plum trees burst into bloom?" It occurred to me that those subtle smokey works of art were like carrot flowers among pink plum blossoms. It would take a great effort to even notice them under the circumstance. Undaunted, however, I took a second look at my pit-fired ware and decided that they could use some refinement and that if I showed them more love than eventually others would as well.
The first dose of kindness to my new instruments was a good washing. Many of them had been packed so hastily that they had not even been dusted off or had the ash rinsed out of them. (I was afraid of scratching the still vulnerable surface) As a consequence black smoke emanated from them when they were played or struck - not exactly a good selling point. So my cleaned ocarinas and rattles looked a bit better - yet still dull. I had found through internet research that many ceramic artists who do pit firing finish their wares by polishing them with butcher’s wax. I did that as well (it was not as easy a product to find as I thought and I ended up having to purchase it online from the Butcher’s Wax company). After much experimentation I discovered that more than one shine and buffing was recommended and that a small shoe polish brush helped get the wax into small crevices to even out the texture of the surface.
Even with the polishing many of the vessels still looked plain. This was especially true of vessels that were significantly reduced (blackened by lack of oxygen) and turned almost entirely smokey grey. I recalled the subtle etching that Wanpovi had made on her vessels and how that helped to add shape and differentiation to otherwise plain surfaces. I made a makeshift etching tool with the tip of an exacto blade and used it to carefully outlined discrete areas of the vessels by carving into the surface. This not only helped create some interest and variation in the surface design but served to hide awkward edges where two different slip coatings retracted or overlapped..
The completed pieces now looked more professionally finished and the next step was to find a better context for their viewing. Using various background colors I found that the smokey greys blacks and earth pinks were best served by setting them against a warm white, almost almond color. This next stage - finding a proper display - is still in the works for I will now have to locate a display shelf to paint the appropriate color. But when I do it will hopefully bring attention to my small carrot flowers.
　
　

Faces of Flint and Osidian

2010-08-03T18:56:00.003-04:00

Last month, when I taught a class on three dimensional mosaics, I proposed that my students incorporate materials at their immediate disposal in addition to the items that were purchased. In this way their time, location and what happened there could be commemorated.. Needless to say this had pragmatic goals as well - keeping green by recycling resources. To this end I demonstrated by creating a three dimensional face consisting of parts that were the byproducts of other arts and crafts classes.
There was a jewelry class upstairs, a woodworking class next door, and a blacksmithing class outdoors. In a small grove just outside our studio was an unusual class on flint napping. The instructor in the latter class had brought with him a plethora of obsidian and flint for napping into arrowheads, knives and spears. The painstaking process was fascinating and were it not for having to teach at the time, I might have taken this course. Fortunately for us, there was significant "waste" of flint and obsidian pieces from the napping process and discards of material which had fault lines inconsistent with making a good tool. The instructors were very generous with cast off materials and I used them to create the face of flint and obsidian to the right. I found that these materials could be nipped down and fitted fairly well with a rotary glass cutter.
My student followed suit with a more carefully arranged mosaic made with flint pictured above.
Unpacking today, I came across my own cache of flint and obsidian. It will rest in my studio until it finds the right place for something with swirling white and grey.

Musical Mosaic Masks

2010-08-02T11:25:00.002-04:00

The Mosaics That Sing
For years I have made mosaic masks. Yet they always seemed incomplete to me. There was that empty hollow space behind the face that was overlooked. True, when hung on a wall, no one would see the obverse side anyway. Yet the unfinished nature of that empty, heartless space always nagged me.
At one point I thought that I had found a solution to the back side. I simply made another concave mosaic in the interior. It was a good solution except that it was not feasible to display that side because the mask would only hang one way. It is possible that I still may to return to that idea and make the mask a free-standing object. Or I may simply engineer it to hang either front or back. But in the mean time a different solution has come about that incorporates my love for hand-made musical instruments.
This last year I have been working on making ceramic ocarinas with increasing complexity from simple whistles to double flutes. When I returned to my ceramic masks I decided to experiment with closing the back , adding a fipple (mouthpiece) and holes to make an ocarina. I finally finished my first three last month and not only displayed them but played them as well for the faculty lecture recently at Common Ground on the Hill in Westminster, MD. Unlike the double front and back mosaic masks, these can be hung either way - one way for the mosaic, the other to display the decorated musical instrument. The mosaic mask pictured above and to the right is cast from a friend’s face. Harriet would be pleased to know that she now sings a tune.

Distressed Mosaics

2010-07-29T11:36:00.003-04:00

Fuel and Fodder: Using Grief and Anger to Put Passion into Art
The mosaic work above and the detail to the right was created out of necessity as a cathartic tool for releasing excessive grief and anger. The title of the work, "Three Intruding Fanatics: One Throwing a Rock," aptly reflects both personal and, hopefully, universal fears. The piece was recently a part of the faculty exhibition at McDaniel College held in conjunction with the Common Ground on the Hill Summer Arts and Music program. Before that it was part of the group exhibition, "Locations/Dislocations: Abandoned Houses and Unsheltered Souls."
Like most of my mosaic art, this work grew slowly, piece by piece and was built as a bas relief sculpture working from the bottom up. I started with the central figure - a man with hands over his ears to shut out excess noise. The doorway to his right was made from a rusted break pad and bears two small tiles which read, in Chinese seal script "Without a Home" and "With a Home." The mosaic started out as a message about circumstances beyond one’s control and the theme of Homes and Homelessness that I was working on for the first exhibition. But midway through making this piece, I lost a loved one who had been a large part of my life for the past thirty years and another family member became seriously ill. Although there is never a particularly good time for these things, at that time I was also dealing with some rather aggressively vocal people with dogmatic religious views. Not wanting to deal with them directly any longer for fear of saying something that I could never take back, I put the raw feelings about three of them into this mosaic in the form of the three "intruders." Interestingly, for viewers of this piece the three fanatics came to take on the more universal three great religious teachings, Christianity, Islam, and Judaism and the grief associated with fanatical manifestations of these.
Ironically, after finishing this piece, I found that my anger significantly dissipated and even started myself laughing at the central figure throwing a rock three times her size.
Perhaps strong emotion is in fact good fuel for creativity. At that time two months ago, my poetry strengthened as well - so much so that I was able to finish a chapbook. And all this was accomplished without severed relationships, broken ties, or bad memories. Indeed, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of art sometimes is to maintain humanity within conflict and adversity.

The Art of Dislocations

2010-07-28T13:05:00.002-04:00

The Art of Dislocations
Once again, it has been a long time since I have updated this blog. It has not been on account of having nothing to write about. Quite the contrary, I’ve been very busy with exhibitions and teaching - perhaps too involved to write about it. So I am writing a short synopsis for late spring to mid-summer in three parts to bring my on-line art writing up to date.
The Exhibition "Locations/Dislocations: Abandoned Houses and Unsheltered Souls." was created and exhibited with much soul searching and wrangling about the meaning of the art and the direction it would take. The Gallery 80808 portion of the exhibition ended on June 1 and was featured on the television program "Hello Columbia." The opening was well attended and the crowd seemed receptive to the thought-provoking art.
As the title suggests, the art featured portraits of homeless people by Khaldoune Bencheikh and photographs by Nathaniel Wallace of abandoned or semi-abandoned homes around the southeast.
A portion of the proceeds was given to a local charity in Columbia to provide for the homeless population. I like to think that in some small way, my contribution changed a life for the better. My own work went through a pronounced change during the preparations for this group show. I started out making paintings of abandoned homes - many of them at the same sites where my husband, Nathaniel shot his photographs.
During the course of painting for this exhibition I began to speak with representatives who either were homeless or worked with the homeless population. I reflected on the meaning of the word home and the significance of being without one or having one. I looked at my work and felt it wanting. It seemed that the paintings were my husband’s photographs interpreted in a different media. I became confused. But moving forward in art I find often begins with fighting through confusion. I no longer knew whether the subject of the exhibition no longer interested me - or if it was too difficult to understand the meaning of an exhibition with such a long meandering title: Locations/Dislocations: Abandoned Houses and Unsheltered Souls. So I did what I always do when meaning becomes elusive - I started reading and writing ancient Chinese. I carved a series of stone stamps of Chinese zhuan calligraphy (regular readers of my blog will know that I trained in Chinese art) many of which read either "Without a Home" or "Having a Home" and made several prints of these. I became interested once again in the words.
The word "Jia" in Chinese calligraphy can mean "home" or "house" but it can also mean "school" as in a school of thought. So my prints of "without a home" could also be interpreted to mean not adhering to any particular school of thought or dogma. After printing these onto several scraps of white and buff colored paper, I printed them into clay to make miniature tiles of the words for use in my mosaics, three of which were shown at the May exhibition. My favorite of the mosaics was "Three Intruding Fanatics: One Throwing a Rock." which I will discuss later.
Satisfied at having reconnected to the exhibition through the back door of ancient language I examined the theme again and decided that since my husband’s work was described by "abandoned houses" and "locations" and Khaldoune Bencheikh’s portraits of the homeless were "unsheltered souls" my niche in this exhibition would be under the word "dislocations." Consulting the modern day Oracle at Delphi that google is, I typed in "dislocations" to see what the cyber gods would tell me. I was surprised to find the term firmly planted in geometry and the study of crystals. A dislocation, if I understand it correctly, is essentially a fault in a crystal that causes a shift in its alignment which is not apparent in the surface form. It is sometimes compared to a stack of paper hiding a half sheet in the middle. A hidden instability causing the world to shift askew. Perfect to describe my art as well as the vagaries of fortune that changes a life circumstance. So for the last month before the exhibition I made a series of collages on painted boards. I affixed my stone prints onto painted papers, then pasted these cut outs onto the boards. In all of these I thought of the architecture as a faulted crystal - opened up and laid out in all its syncopated beauty. The collages I have displayed above and to the right are some examples of these. They are: "A Belief in Zen" and a detail from "Old Dormitory."

Jurying an International Art Exhibition: Part 2

2010-04-15T10:34:00.001-04:00

In my previous article, I outlined some of the process behind jurying the Mosaic Arts International exhibition. I had originally intended to republish an earlier article but could not find it so published instead based on an unpublished interview for Contemporary Mosaic Arts. This morning, after doing a clean sweep of my computer files, I found the original article so I will publish an updated version and answer some questions that readers have had for me.
I was one of a three person jurying panel for the Mosaic Arts International Exhibition to be held in Chicago in 2010. I had been a juror before on the state level but this was my first job jurying a national competition. When I was younger and even more naive than I am at present, the process of getting accepted into or rejected from juried shows and competitions was always a mystery to me. Hopefully, by writing this inside view, it will help remove some of the mystery and inherent uncertainty for artists applying for competitive exhibition venues.
Jurying this outstanding selection of mosaics for the Mosaic Arts International Exhibition was not only an honor, but personally gratifying. Back in 1999, when it first occurred to me to start an organization to represent the interests of mosaic artists, there were no venues to showcase this venerable art form - one so painstakingly rendered. In fact, one impetus that prompted me to start the Society of American Mosaic Artists ironically came from an experience with a jury deciding not to fund a body of my mosaic work because a committee could not figure out how to categorize it. I wondered how many other maverick mosaic artists were out there defying categories with their hammered stones and cut glass. Fortunately there were just enough to support a fledgling art organization. And then there were even more to read Groutline. And by the end of my tenure as president of SAMA three years later there were a few hundred mosaic artists who learned from each other, communicated with each other, and belonged together.
Every artist who submitted their mosaics to our first exhibition and conference at South Carolina State University and the Orangeburg Fine Arts Center back in 2002 was awarded a place. Despite the open admission there were several outstanding works of mosaic art at that show. The work of these artists inspired others to grow larger in their artistic thinking, experiment with new materials, and challenge themselves with greater risks. Who would have thought to use beads instead of grout in the interstices of a pique assiette mosaic? How amazing it was that an elaborate mosaic screen could be made from bits of corrugated cardboard!
With subsequent exhibitions, the mosaics kept getting bolder, more refined, and more varied. Every exhibition seemed even better than the previous one and it was always a joy to behold the beautiful complexity of this work. Every year the exhibition venue hosted museum quality mosaics.
Late last year I had the pleasure of reviewing the nearly five hundred submissions of mosaic art for the annual exhibition celebrating what mosaic artists do best. The process of paring these submissions down to a core group that was less than a sixth of that number was difficult. There were some mosaics that I was sorry to see not make the final round and I hope that they will find their own cherished spots on a gallery or museum wall some day. Because of the serious challenge of selecting so few among the many qualified entrants, I used strict guidelines about
what should be seen, who would most benefit from having these works seen, and how the cause of advancing the art of mosaic would be best served by this exhibition. This entailed choosing a broad range of subject matter, from representative to decorative to abstract, as well as mosaics that incorporated the versatile use of a large variety of materials. There are those, like OB, who wrote to tell me that organizing an exhibition based on a range of materials and subject matter should not be a priority but that artistic merit alone should be the criterion on which to base a decision. This is a point well taken so I will address this. Firstly, I can assure anyone that artistic merit is of course the first consideration in jurying an exhibition of art. But when there are several pieces in the final count that are equally meritorious, the next priority is balance.
I chose mosaics for this exhibition on the basis of how well they would inspire an audience to think more deeply about art and for how they might provoke other artists to challenge themselves technically as well as creatively. An exhibition is, after all, a learning experience. One should be able to walk away from it with all the energy and enthusiasm that new discoveries bring. Submissions that scored high for me were those that I thought used the medium of mosaic in a way that would rekindle an eagerness in artists to return to their studios as intrepid explorers, creating work for a receptive, appreciate audience.
The jurying process was fascinating, albeit somewhat painful. I mean the latter both metaphorically as well as physically, for halfway through the jurying process, I had an accident and lost a tooth. The dental accident delayed the jurying for a day, as I purposely kept away from judging mosaics for fear of developing a bias against mosaics that incorporated small ivory colored tesserae that looked like broken teeth. The other less physically painful part of the jury week was having to eliminate so many truly inspired and worthy mosaics.
Most jurying these days is done on line. The Mosaic Arts International was no exception and used the now standard Juried Arts Services Organization. For those using this system there are benefits with regard to the ease of sending images to jurors who may live in different parts of the country, or even, as in our case, different parts of the world. The disadvantage is that with this system, it is difficult to see the textures and bas-relief that give mosaic art its unique qualities as an art form. For mosaics that did rely on relief sculptural effects, and even those that were only in low relief, it was most effective to have detail photographs shot from an oblique angle that revealed the actual mosaic terrain. I would have to add that another disadvantage of the jurors being in different locations is that it does not allow for discussion. On the other hand, one could argue that distance and isolation prohibits a more charismatic juror from imposing his/her viewpoints upon others.
With regard to photography of art work, when entering a seriously competitive exhibition, it is best to have only excellent images of the art work. Most of the art work I saw was photographed with great diligence and care. But there were a few - like the one photographed leaning on its side so that I had to look at it with a crooked neck - that did got eliminated by round one on that account.
Other mosaics that were eliminated on the first round were those that appeared very much in a student stage of development. When entering a competitive national exhibition, it pays to know what the competition is. Are the other artists professionals? Do they have advanced degrees in their art form? Have they devoted years to the development of their craft? Do they have a history of merit awards and significant achievements in their field? If all of the above are true, then an art work that was completed in an afternoon seminar devoted to beginning students may not go very far. For that matter, even seasoned artists may wish to submit work that required significant time and attention to detail. This was a lesson for me as well. Jurying this group of mosaics made me realize that most of my own smaller work would probably not qualify for entry and I had the distinct impression while looking at the large, brilliant works of my peers, that my own work falls short. But that was probably a good lesson, for I will now return to my studio to work harder, and strive for excellence.
Some first round eliminations may have had something to do with the artist’s statements. Although the main focus should always be on the art work, a piece could have been harmed by a statement that was overly glib, too sarcastic, bombastic, or even incoherent. When in doubt about what to say about an art work, a simple description of materials used and techniques employed will suffice along with a brief statement about what inspired the work.
The jurors of the art show chose from numbers on a scale of one to seven. During the first round of tabulations, I am guessing that anything that scored below average did not make it to round two. Because most of the submissions were very professional, round two entailed comparisons of what was good to what was better. At this stage, everything was competently executed and presentable. They could all be hung in galleries or in the homes of wealthy clients. I recall that at this point we were down to about 180 art works. This was where pain began - for art that was skillfully done and obviously took time and sensibility to create could not go on to round three without being truly striking. Here I began to eliminate work that was good but perhaps cliched - things that may have been overly influenced by an instructor’s style, images and compositions that had been overused, or employed standard "tricks of the trade." This could put professional mosaic artists who work under market pressures to produce stock images produced by a formulaic approach at a disadvantage. My only suggestion to those artists would be to have a strict line of demarcation between their commercial work and their more personal exploratory art. This would entail setting time apart from a busy schedule of commissioned interior and exterior design work to make something that embraces a larger vision of what art is for. Another option would be to seek clients who grant a high degree of artistic freedom in the execution of a design. But most of us, myself included, don’t usually have that degree of freedom in commercial design.
Designs in round two had to be original in order to progress to round three. There was one work, for example, that although finely executed, looked like a book illustration that I had seen somewhere before. Diligent juror that I was, I searched the web until I found it - not an exact copy because a mirror image was used, but close. Another work was a copy of another mosaic. Although there is a copying tradition in mosaic art, for a juried exhibition I felt that the work should reflect the artist’s personal vision. In a previous mosaic exhibition I attended a number of years ago, I saw mosaics that were fabrications of paintings done by other artists. They were done fabrications based on another art work if I had been a juror at that time. Originality is the lynchpin that drives an art form forward.
During the jurying process there were a number of mosaics that persistently made a strong impression on me. Some were majestic - like the installation of what looked liked Faberge eggs rendered on a grand scale in an undulating mosaic landscape. Others were equally sublime as intimate gems - something looking like a turquoise studded axe caused my eyes to pause and scan the bejeweled surface. I especially liked mosaics that used multiple overlays of complex textures and patterns. They were the visual equivalent of fine opera - where several performers can sing their story at the same time and yet it all makes sense. "Familiar Ground" and "Radiance," were examples of the sheer joy one could feel from seeing these amazing colors and lose oneself in the intricate weaving of mosaic tesserae. "When the Stars Line Up" made striking use of large chunks of coral colored stones against an intricate background pattern. There were many others in this genre that I unfortunately neglected to note the titles of as I would like to have pursued my interest in them further.
There was one mosaic in particular, that made such a deep visual impression on me that I would dream about it at night. That was the "Impromptu in Green," a stark black wave of smalti running between two separate strata of greens in a subtle gradation of hue. The black roadway of tesserae stood out in high relief like a black waterfall tumbling over rocks. There were subtle
lines of gold interspersed among the black and running down the length of the center of the mosaic. It was probably the fact that my mind’s eye could almost discern a meaning in this but the mosaic would ultimately defy identification that caused me to pay so much attention to it. What was it? A road or a waterfall? Was it running through an abstract depiction of vegetation? Or wass it simply an exercise in pattern, hue and form? Whatever the reason for this holding my attention, I was inspired to use the idea of a large gray and black line wedged between a wall of lighter squares in a design I was working on in my own studio. And what a pleasant surprise to see this very mosaic featured some weeks later on the cover of Groutline!
I was impressed by how many ways a mosaic could be successful. Although I gave high points to mosaics that could sustain a balance of multiple complex color patterns, I also gave high points to compositions that were restrained in color. Two examples that come to mind were the mosaics "Permafrost" and "Rainy Day." "Permafrost" used an ensemble of whites, silvers and reflective mirrors. Thus the artist allowed the work to hold the viewer on the integrity of the tesserae alone. It was all about the andamento - which made it in this respect the quintessential mosaic. "Rainy Day" used smalti in the black, white and gray scale to reproduce a photograph of a rainy day in Central Park. Through the canopy of leafless trees standing in rows aligned in stark one-point perspective, distant figures could be barely seen at a distance. They reminded me of the moonlit marine paintings by the Flemish painter Adrien Brouer, with his enigmatic figures in silhouette against the ambient light - anonymous parcels of humanity that pique an interest in what they might be doing.
Mosaics that made bold use of unconventional materials - especially ones that dared to juxtapose the sacred and the profane - like smalti and rusted found objects - were favorites of mine. An example of this would be "Waterwheel," which used both high end purchased mosaic materials and old metal pipes arranged in an abstract composition reminiscent of Juan Gris. Sometimes materials commonly used in mosaics were also used in interesting, provocative ways, as in "Clockworks Dyptych." The surface of this mosaic was like a glassy clear pond on a spring day - reflecting the budding forms in trees and along the banks. This placid surface was punctuated by what looked like crystal flowers jutting directly out of this surface - multicolored glass poking aggressively out of the picture plane at the viewer. This is one example of how important it was to see the mosaic from the side in order to discern the degree of sculptural relief.
Just about everything in round three was exhibition worthy and it was sad to think that only half of these would be physically there in Chicago for the Society of American Mosaic Artists audience and I dearly wished that more than forty works could be displayed. What could jurors do when everything is worthy? Rely on instinct and impulse I suppose. At this point everything that was chosen became a matter of what resonated with aesthetic impulses. Associations become almost arbitrary. Did I love the strange truncated sculptural figure of a girl’s legs and mid torso with a cruelly deceptive bonnet on top for the offbeat humor as well as its ingenuity and artistry? Or was it because of its title "Easter Sunday 1957?" I was born in 1957. Did I love "Temples" because I was warmed by the associations of Europe, excavation sites, and Israel?
It came time to pick a juror’s choice award. We had to each pick our top three. I picked six. I was informed that my beloved "Impromptu in Green," was not included in the pack after round three. So I had to choose between the five remaining pieces that I have included in my discussion. I wanted to give a juror’s choice award to all of them. After much wrangling, I finally settled on "Temples." It was a mosaic that I could truly explore and one that was beautifully composed. It also embodied all the elements that I looked for in a mosaic; technical craftsmanship, integration of multiple patterns, incorporation of different types of materials. But there was that one thing extra that set it apart from the rest. That was the ineffable spiritual dimension of the mosaic in creating a desire to explore lost civilizations and a sense of physical continuity between the past, the present, and a future state of being. It simply resonated with me.
In jurying this exceptional body of work, my faith in the art of mosaic had been renewed and I looked forward to the day when I could finish a few painting commissions and experiment in this medium again.
　

Zen and the Art of Homes and Homelessness

2010-04-14T16:03:00.003-04:00

My exhibition in Kansas City is now a part of my personal art history and a concluded line on a resume. I expect the fully loaded crates to be at my doorstep any day. While it was a good experience to have had a one-woman exhibition out of South Carolina once again, it will be quite some time before I will invest in shipping so much art such a long distance again. It is my good fortune that the Thornhill Gallery is picking up the tab for the show’s trip back home.
With this show on the road home, my attention is on the upcoming exhibition at Gallery 80808 in Columbia, "Locations/Dislocations: Abandoned Homes and Unsheltered Souls." The exhibition explores the theme of abandoned architectural remains so prevalent in this state through my paintings and my husband’s documentary photography. Khaldoune Bencheikh will be exhibiting drawings of the homeless population in Columbia. Part of the proceeds will be donated to the "Keepin’ It Real" ministry, which supports aid to the homeless.
There are times when I do things that follow my heartfelt inclinations even though I know that those inclinations run counter to everything rational and sensible. Perhaps that is why I am an artist. Two things about my work for the upcoming exhibition fly in the face of good sense. One is the very idea of having an exhibition that is in part a benefit when my art has not been a commercial success. The other is abandoning that small part of my painting that has been marketable in the past. Add to that a dental bill that is outrageously huge in proportion to the size of the repair and it becomes clear that now is not the time to be idealistic. (Truly, of late I’m thinking of just keeping a gap in my mouth).
Now having admitted these things as a mea culpa in not contributing to our country’s economic restoration, I’ll detail why.
Things started out well enough in my studio. Several panels and canvases were lined up at the ready - ready to receive splashes of paint spread with a palette knife and detailed with a little nylon brush. All would form small saleable paintings of architectural remains. But I found that after four such paintings, I could do them no longer. This was, of course, after painting well over a hundred such works previously. I just could not bring myself to paint one more bucolic scene of South Carolina. I was helped out a little by the recession - for even reliable subject matter was ceasing to be marketable. So I decided to jumpstart my creativity with a little experiment. I reflected on the theme of homes and homelessness, the sorrow, the fear, and the implications of being with or without a home. Then I used my three greatest passions, ancient Chinese language, painting, and assemblage as a vehicle for expressing these feelings about home. Rather than force a solution I just played with the media and let the raw materials and raw emotions speak for themselves.
I began by carving ancient Chinese on to stones to make prints. I made a series of small prints which read "having a home" or, conversely "without a home." The Chinese word for home, "jia" can have an interesting alternative meaning to a literal home. It can mean a family. Or it can even mean a school, as in a school of thought. So "without a home" could be interpreted to mean "without a school of thought" or not being a part of any particular philosophy or religion. Other prints read "A belief in Zen" "In all the world there is no other" and "belief in the spirit." I printed these in red, brown and black inks onto transparent papers. I then glued the prints onto acrylic and mixed media paintings on paper. These bits of paper were in turn assembled onto the very boards that were supposed to receive the paintings of scenes from the countryside. So now they have a very different message - a strange amalgam of fragmentation, Chinese language, and gestural painting. I did find that the details of these new collage works were very bold and expressive so I have been experimenting with painting these details large - coming in the back door to painting again. And maybe in some way in makes sense after all.
　
　

Jurying an International Art Exhibition MAI SAMA

2010-04-12T11:09:00.001-04:00

The following is an updated essay on my experience late last year as a juror for an international art exhibition. I had published an article about this and gave an interview somewhat pre-emptively and therefore withdrew it at the time. Several months have passed, and the sorrows of the rejected and the exhilaration of the accepted has been tempered. The Mosaic Arts International Exhibition has been held in Chicago, catalogues purchased, work probably shipped back home or sold by now. Economic and family circumstances prevented me from attending the Society of American Mosaic Artists Conference to see first hand the exhibition that I helped jury. I therefore never was able to discuss the jurying process on hand so I will belatedly discuss it now. I do feel that since it is no longer an emotionally charged matter, a better perspective can be brought to bear on the words that detail this process.
I used two sets of criteria for judging the current SAMA exhibition. One set of criteria was for the individual mosaic works, the other set was for maintaining the integrity of the exhibition as a whole through presenting a diverse body of work representative of the best that the art form has to offer. With regard to the latter, I sought to achieve a balance of abstract, decorative and representational mosaics. I also sought to include mosaics in a wide variety of media so that the viewing audience as well as other artists would be inspired to think creatively and outside the norm. I aspired to be as egalitarian as possible in choosing mosaics that used both high end, expensive materials, and those that incorporated everyday found objects. I hoped to compile an exhibition that would be instrumental in showcasing the art in such a way as to promote the appreciation for and stimulate positive growth of the art of mosaics. For evaluating the mosaics on a case by case basis, I looked first at the craftsmanship of the individual pieces. How well did the artist cut, adhere and blend the individual tesserae? Did their choice of placement reveal careful study and understanding of the art form? If not, was there evidence of a purposeful "bending of the rules," so to speak, to create a highly individualized approach to the andamento of the mosaic? I also sought to answer the question, through scrutinizing individual works, of why the medium of mosaic was used to express the artist’s creative intentions and how well this choice of medium conveyed their ideas. I read every artist’s statement to see how well their written essays dovetailed with their visual interpretations. Would another media have served just as well or better than mosaic to convey the message? Why mosaic?
I chose mosaics on the basis of how well this medium was used to the best of its capacity and in all its glory. I also looked for originality and creativity.
The jurying process itself was fascinating. I was part of a three person panel of judges, one from Great Britain, one from Mexico, and I representing the United States. Our jurying was done online through Juried Arts Services. We all judged about five hundred entries, architectural works, 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional mosaics all included in the same batch. Each entrant was rated on a scale of one to seven, one being the lowest and seven being the highest. All three jurors voted in three rounds with results being tabulated at the end of each round. I had mixed feelings about on-line jurying. On the one hand, it was a great convenience for jurors who may want to work as a team but are in different geographic locations. It saved time and money for entrants as well. In an ideal situation though, jurying would be done from actual art work. But because mosaics are often quite heavy and the jurors were at various places around the globe this was not practical. Perhaps a good compromise would have been to have made selections for the exhibition on line and awards given in person from viewing the actual art work. This would have entailed, of course, flying in the jurors, which may or may not have been practical for a small organization on a strict budget. If some compromise could have been arranged with regard to virtual and real world viewing I would have loved to have seen that happen in the case of mosaics. Mosaics are so dependent on texture and low relief, photography can often not do them justice.
Another possible improvement for future exhibitions would be for the artists to get a numerical score for their submissions. There are few organizations that do this but the ones that do give their artists valuable feedback. When I applied for entry into the Smithsonian exhibition, I did not gain entry, but was told that I had been in the upper 25% of entrants. This was helpful to know so that I didn’t second guess my photography or the subject matter of my submissions. With the jurying process that is in place now through Juried Arts Services there are three rounds of jurying with eliminations made after each round. But an artist will only know that his work either gained entry or did not, and not how far along in the jurying process his work went. An art work eliminated in round one is very different from a mosaic that is eliminated after round three.
In the process of jurying the art work, I would occasionally see familiar faces reflected in the submissions. Although this is an anonymous process, there are certain "signature pieces" that would come up - something I had seen on the cover of a magazine for instance - making the working positively identifiable. When that happened I found myself reflecting on something that I heard from a national juror some time ago. When I was a freshly minted MFA, I attended a seminar at the College Art Association conference in New York hosted by the National Endowment for the Arts. In detailing some of the factors in awarding artists grant money, one of the representatives said "It helps if we know you." I was shocked at this unbridled admission of what appeared to be blatant bias and it rattled my sensibilities as a young aspiring artist hoping for fair and democratic treatment by the art world. Decades later, I understand her words better as simply a candid confession of the way of the art world. In this respect, in any jurying venue, the fame factor comes into play. High profile artists often have highly recognizable art work. Regardless of the professed anonymity it was impossible not to associate a name with a style.. I would like to think that it had not influenced my judgement. As a strict rule, I separate a person from his or her art. This is because no matter the person or his peccadillos, a person making art is a human being at his or her best. Their art is a gift and should be cherished as such - especially when it is excellent. Conversely, no matter how beautiful a person is, if they have been less than stellar in their approach to their art and need to apply themselves to their craft just a little more diligently, it does them or the art no service to promote their creative work before the art of those who have worked harder and sacrificed more.
But having said that, when I looked at some of these mosaics and know just how much some of the makers have contributed towards pushing the art form forward, the words "It helps if we know you," kept coming back to me. But they were all outstanding pieces so there wasn’t a true conflict of interest there - at least I hope not. I have to confess here though, that while I was jurying I realized that my own work would be recognized by select groups of artists. I couldn’t help but think that I certainly hope that I haven’t alienated them!
　
Having set goals for a cohesive exhibition, set standards for artistic integrity and accounted for the fame and familiarity factor I set to work. Art that did not make the first cut was often eliminated due to poor photography or to the artist not having fully developed his/her skills. Again, it would be helpful for an artist to have had a numerical score so that he/she could seek better training or hire a photographer. A mosaic that didn’t make a second cut were those pieces that were competent but perhaps too formulaic. Someone whose work was eliminated at this point might compare his work to his contemporaries to see if he is presenting something that stands apart from the crowd. He could then review his work to see if he is growing artistically beyond the conventions he has been taught. Any work that went very far in the jurying process but still did not gain entry was a winning mosaic in my estimation. The artist should try again in a different venue with a different juror. Indeed, one of the pieces that I had short listed for a juror’s choice award after round three had been eliminated by the other jurors for the final round!
The process of paring about five hundred mosaics down to a core group that was less than a sixth of that number was very difficult. There were some mosaics that I was sorry to see not make the final round and I hope that they will find their own cherished spots on a gallery or museum wall some day. The jurying process was fascinating, albeit somewhat painful. I mean painful in both the metaphorical way as well as physical for during the process I actually had a dental accident and lost a tooth! It seemed like a macabre parody of the art of chopping bits of stone for a mosaic. So intense was the experience that I began to bodily produce tesserae!
It was exhilarating to be immersed in the world of mosaics for a few days. I was so impressed by the ingenuity of these presentations. And I felt humbled by the time and patience artists must have devoted to completing these. They made me want to return to my studio and a work harder. Some of the accompanying artist’s statements that I read were as well crafted as the mosaics themselves and they, too, were an inspiration. It was indeed a rare privilege to be able to do this.
I took my responsibility seriously and allowed myself ample time to review the mosaics.
While jurying the exhibition, I sometimes revisited my own strengths and weaknesses in various stages of developing as an artist. I could now see reflections of some of my own foibles in statements that were perhaps overly glib or sometimes unnecessarily obfuscating. Or maybe there was a time when I hadn’t presented an art work at its best. I could appreciate how painstaking the process of artistic development is by being on the other side of that looking glass. I even learned a few things about how I might photograph my work differently in the future.
I made many notes about compositions, techniques and materials that I might incorporate into my own work some day. During the jurying process, I borrowed an element of one of my favorite mosaics and painted it on the side of a ceramic ocarina I designed - it had such an elegant charm!
The experience itself shifted with the various stages of the jurying process. The first stage was not difficult because the jurors all seemed to concur on what should move on to stage two. The second round was more difficult because pieces that were quite competent were removed. Yet there seemed for the most part a confluence of selection. By the third stage I believe that some of the jurors’s differences began to emerge as the selection grew more subjective. What was interesting about jurying from a large pool of entries was that some of the images that tended to keep popping out strongly were often those that were simple yet iconic. I acknowledged this while attempting not to be too influenced by what I thought might be a kind of juror’s battle fatigue - losing the ability to concentrate on intricacy - for I love the particular complexity inherent in mosaics. At all stages I was acutely aware of the consequences of my choices. No matter how seasoned an artist is, a rejection still stings on some level. And it was a little sobering to feel that other artists were stung by my choices - which was one reason why I was grateful for these choices being shared among three jurors. I felt confident, though, that the process produced a great exhibition and was sorry I couldn’t see it in person.

Eleven Bullets of the Civil War

2010-03-15T23:41:00.003-04:00

Above is a detail from my latest figurative mosaic, Eleven Bullets of the Civil War, featured at right. It is so named for the actual civil war bullets incorporated into the mosaic. I am usually not quite so literal in my titles for art work but this one just seemed to write itself. The bullets were found on the trip home from Maryland last summer and the figure was modeled that same summer. For some months now they sat in the studio unassembled while I ruminated over them.
It takes me a while to compose the elements of a mosaic - although these days I am moving slower than usual. The placement of parts in a mosaic of found objects such as this one can change the message depending upon where they go and what they are next to. While composing this mosaic I kept this in mind, asking questions all the during the slow assembly. Should the bullets be arranged in a row to evoke the straight and narrow way of the military? Or should they be scattered to indicate the chaos of war? I decided to use them in provocative, ironic ways, as parts of architecture, as a pillow and foot rest. They surround and embellish a neolithic spear head (given to me as a gift one year ago). After arranging them all to my satisfaction, I had one spare bullet that didn’t seem to fit anywhere. I almost put it aside when I finally realized that all the other bullets were on their sides, flush with the picture plane. This last bullet I cemented to the picture in such a way as to project outward towards the viewer. How awful and confrontational! The last bullet would point at the viewer’s head should the picture be hung at eye level. Should someone ask why I changed the orientation of that last bullet I would be obliged to come up with an answer. My answer would go something like this:
The last bullet punctures the illusion of peace in war time. It makes us see that which we wish not to see but which happens nevertheless. The last bullet shatters the notion that America at war does not in some way involve us all and that, aware of it or not, it is a part of us. It is that lingering, nagging sadness in the back of the mind as we go about our daily business, made manifest by a direct shot of confrontation.

It is difficult to be aware of the extent of what happens in Iraq and Afghanistan. Unlike Vietnam, which was brought into livingrooms in graphic horror, the current wars are filtered somewhat my media coverage, I believe. Hence it is a new kind of civil war.

Characters in Dance and Writing

2010-03-14T13:37:00.003-04:00

For the last month, I have been traveling the state to teach Chinese Calligraphy and Painting. My program, A Brush With History, teaches students the historical development of Chinese writing and painting with hands on training in brush painting. My February Residency at Spartanburg Day School happened to coincide with Mardi Gras, which only added to the festive spirit - replete with King Cake served in the school cafeteria. King Cake was a delicacy that I had been hitherto unacquainted with, but as someone with a penchant for sweet things, I was more than happy to make that acquaintance. It was a tubular creation filled with an eclair-like cream and festooned with sugar sprinkles in a gaudy array of colors ranging from purple to yellow. Tradition has it that a small baby doll is hidden inside and whoever gets the piece with the baby in it will have good luck and will throw the next party. (I’m not sure how bearing the expense for a party can be called "lucky" but I suppose you just have to roll with that).
My Brush with History residency went quite well. The classes were small, the students were attentive and my teaching hosts were very accommodating. The school was unusual in that a Chinese language program had been in place and the elementary students already had up to four years of exposure to Chinese. I was also amazed at the plethora of work by professional artists adorning the hallways and hung in large meeting places. The cafeteria was like a restaurant with a full time professional chef. My eyes were often wide in disbelief at the cornucopia of fresh fruit and greens available. Such is the lot of private school students: good food, good culture, small classes, one-on-one attention opportunities. Although the residency was only four days, I was able to cover the three classic elements of Chinese Painting: calligraphy, brush painting and seal carving. The residency was fortuitously covered in the Spartanburg Herald as my stay happened to coincide with a visit to the school of a Chinese contingency from Guilin.
My second residency was at A C Flora High School in Columbia, SC. What a contrast public to private school was! The grounds were still under construction and there was a lot of repair work still needed on the school infrastructure. Teachers packed their own lunches but that was fun anyway for the lunch comradery. At Spartanburg Day School I had about a total of thirty eight students. At A C Flora there were over one hundred. (I have had some public school experiences where there were over two hundred students for the week Some teachers regularly have about one thousand!) Although some of the combined classes were quite large, I fortunately had the help of the visual arts teacher, Mary Conner as well as the dance instructor, Gayle Etheridge. This was an experimental residency combining dance students and visual art students. It was the culmination of something I had been wanting to do for several years - have dance students choreograph a performance based upon Chinese calligraphy. It entailed having both the visual art and dance students study Chinese calligraphy forms; the basic strokes of kai characters, stroke order, and stylistic variations such as oracle bone, zhuan shu, xing shu, li shu and cao shu. The final day, the entire group of participating students were divided into fourteen groups of about five to eight students - visual artists mixed with dancers. Because I had about two decades of pent up ideas with regard to dance and Chinese calligraphy I had loads of suggestions for these groups. The art teacher and the dance instructor advised me, however, to hold back as much as possible during the student’s creative phase. And they were right because although many students incorporated some of my ideas, most of them came up with even better ones on their own.
Despite the two days of emphasis on Kai, or regular hand characters (something I could compare to printing versus script) most of the students performed dances based on zhuan characters. This made sense in that ancient Chinese zhuan characters (roughly 800 BC) are closer to pictographs and it is easy to envision people striking exotic poses when looking at them. In some instances, though, these were used as elaborate floor patterns for creating dance movements - something I wouldn’t have thought of. Since I provided translations of the zhuan characters many of the students focused on literary content in their dances. One used the concept of wisdom and philosophy, another used both the form and content of the sun and earth elements.
There was one truly brilliant dance performed to the writing of basic strokes of kai characters and I was glad to see at least one group take on that challenge. There was one particularly fascinating bit of choreography with the calligraphers drawing in the air with brushes over the heads of the dancers who simultaneously "translated" these gestures into body movements. The students did such a great job that I almost cried at their performances.
Performance day itself was full of surprises. We had a visit from the director of the Confucius Institute at USC, Professor Tan Ye. Professor Ye gave us information about what how the Confucius Institute is supporting scholarly exchanges between South Carolina students and China and encouraged the high school students to consider further language and cultural studies. Professor Ye did not come empty handed and presented students with a bag full of goodies in the way of Beijing Opera letter openers and silk good luck charms to hang from door knobs.
After the residency, I attended a meeting with the dance instructor, her student teacher, as well as the art instructor. We all came up with ideas to make the next residency even better but most of all we just took some time to bask in the warmth of each other’s company and the satisfaction of a job well done.
　

Abstract Expressions: Both Ancient and Modern

2010-03-13T12:12:00.003-05:00

While routing through my materials I came across a painting I did as a demonstration work for a course I taught last year for the Columbia Museum of Art on automatism in Abstract Expressionism. In keeping with my vow to either throw out excess material or use it up in a new way, I decided to "complete" this little painting by making it into a collage with strips of leftover paintings from a different course I had taught previously on lightweight mosaics.
Despite my title for this log, Abstract Expressionism is not entirely modern in that its adherents were painting about sixty years ago - how time flies! But there has been a resurgence of interest in this period and the theories behind the creation of 1950's and 60's abstract painting.

In my own work, I noticed something calligraphic about the black brush marks so decided to add finishing touches with prints of stone seals that I had carved last fall. They read Gold River and Black Water. Inclusion of these two prints makes this newly revived work something of a cultural overlay. In recent weeks I have been teaching more Chinese so integrating these disparate units of different times and far away places into my painting just seems natural.

The Other Collage Squares

2010-03-07T10:12:00.007-05:00

From my previous writing, including some blogs, readers will know about my ongoing desire to keep from accumulating too many materials in the studio and home. This is of course a daunting challenge because of the nature of my work as a mixed media and found object artist working in several genres. I just keep finding stuff and making more stuff with it. So in keeping with not keeping too much around, I chose to cut and paste old pieces of previous painting studies on paper and use them in the last two collages squares I made for the Kansas City extension of the "Homage to Squares..." exhibition. These two compositions were simply called "Expressions" as they were simple experiments with limited color palettes. Green and orange have always been favorite colors of mine and I made liberal use of these colors for the square painting above. I knifed through the paint in several areas as well to make primitive scrawls like those seen on neolithic pottery or the etchings on ancient Chinese oracle bones.
The predominantly black and white pattern to the right looks forward to an exhibition idea for next year, "Basically Black."

Opening Day: Squared Away

2010-03-05T09:27:00.003-05:00

Today marks the opening of the second installment of my exhibition, "Homage to Squares: The Poetry of Paintings and Mosaics." The down side of not selling much work at an exhibition is that it can be difficult to cover exhibition costs, let alone make a profit. The up side is that the artist still has a body of work available to travel to a new venue. If one is lucky enough, another gallery/museum will host the continuing saga of the ever growing body of art.
Regardless of the fact that I could just recycle the same exhibition in a different setting, I generally pull some old work out and replace it with some new things to freshen it up. In the case of Kansas City exhibition, pragmatism prevailed in this regard because everything had to be shipped to location. Small works on canvas were ideal for shipping but even mid-range mosaics, with their plethora of stones and ceramics, were problematic. As a consequence, only five of these were shipped out. What I made to fill the wall space usually taken by these heavier works were a series of small square collages weighing just ounces each. I took as inspiration for this small run of collage work, the paintings of the abstract expressionists I had reacquainted myself with when I taught this subject at the Columbia Museum of Art last August. Using a decidedly automatist technique, I painted small square non-objective compositions with acrylic on paper then mounted these onto a tinted museum board base. I then reinterpreted elements of the painted colors and composition with painted papers cut in various shapes and sizes. These were pasted onto the background in mosaic designs, sometimes tessellated, other times cut in haphazard patterns. There was something very peaceful about the act of assembling these small compositions in the joy of working only with shapes, textures and colors. Objects are fascinating but sometimes worrisome for artists- having to get something that reasonably evokes recognition.
The first square in this series is influenced by Gottlieb - the rounded forms with their definitive black outlines. But the color palette is decidedly different, more earthy. The painting to the left was purposely done in counterpoint to the first one, in soft pastel colors redolent of the comfort of flannel pajamas. I will look forward to having these paintings back again but would rather they find homes in the midwest.

Allergy Shots and On-Line Diaries

2010-03-04T11:50:00.003-05:00

Allergy Shots and On-line Diaries
2010 sprung into being about two months too soon. Here it is March and I am finishing up projects and starting new ones that I thought would be welcoming the advent of the new year. We expect to keep up with things and finish what we started but sometimes life gets in the way. A protracted respiratory illness beginning in December and ending in February, along with various and sundry little setbacks and a heavy schedule of obligations caused two things that I generally keep up with to fall by the wayside: allergy shots and my blog site. Why these two things would be the ballast of daily life that ended up being jettisoned in order to keep moving forward I cannot say. They aren’t exactly related. But in either case, getting on board again will require catching up and starting over. New vial of antigens, new paintings, new drawings, new writing.
So to catch up where I left off in December, after I participated as a juror in the International Mosaic Arts contest, the saga continued with my renewing my membership in the venerable old mosaic organization that I had founded ten years ago and joining a new on-line mosaic group, the Contemporary Mosaic Arts. It is good to be social again after such a long hiatus. Sadly, I will be unable to join my colleagues in Chicago and to see my selections in person. But I am hoping to get to Kansas City to catch up with graduate school classmates from twenty years ago. Perhaps the twenty year reunion, due to a sense of seniority, takes precedence over the ten year one?
The biggest project that was brought to fruition these past months, is the catalogue and digital archive of my work, which now includes about 1600 entries. It occurred to me that if I wrote a story about each work one day at a time it would take about four and a half years to get through my life story in art - what a journey that would be! I might try it if I can finish uploading the drawing collection.!
The second big project for 2010 was finishing the work for my Kansas City exhibition, crating it and shipping it out to location. This exhibition opens tomorrow evening at the Thornhill Gallery at Avila University so I will begin my blog again by posting some of the new work for 2010 now out in the midwest. The three paintings posted are three views of a parade from 1984 viewed from Tian An Men Square in Beijing. The paintings are based on photographs that my husband took on site those ages ago and which I posted on my earlier blog, "Sixty Years and Three Parades: The Long March to Conservative Reporting on China." In the paintings I kept the people crowd-like and nebulous, to emphasis the massive group of humanity moving forward with these ridiculous floats. My favorite painting is the one of Red Balloons over the portrait of Lenin.

Eyes of Blue I.O.U

2009-12-28T09:45:00.003-05:00

This December one of my commissions was actually an IOU - a painting made as an in-kind service to graphic designer Rachel Bair Ficek. It is nice to have this painting finished and feel that everything is squared away and even for the end of this year. The painting was of Rachel’s two children and her sister’s three children - five little portraits to get right on one canvas. How daunting!
Because portraiture requires accuracy I spent a long time making a transfer grid and preparing a grisaille. For the grisaille I used red and umber earth tones with touches of shell white over a rose colored ground. The painting above is this painting sketch, or underpainting. Besides making certain that everyone is sitting where they ought to be on a canvas, the grisaille also brings out any defects in the canvas such as scratches or uneven paint that has to be corrected. There were two areas that had to be patched and allowed to dry before proceeding.
One by one, the children appeared in full color as I applied pigment over the grisaille. The second child to be completed is the pleasingly plump boy to the right. I found the children’s hands to be very expressive and included them in the painting to add an extra dimension of personality.

A Dog Named Bear

2009-12-27T16:20:00.002-05:00

A Dog Named Bear
Artists’ work in December often runs towards the small and intimate. It is the Christmas market. Craftsmen busy themselves turning out trinkets. Large and ponderous work falls by the wayside as all hands work for the immediate gift giving market. It is a strange time of year for artists-for-hire; fulfilling the desires of others.
Unexpectedly, I had small commissions and large commitments to complete on short notice. As they were gifts for other givers the subject matter and execution was somewhat outside my usual repertoire. They consisted of two small paintings of beloved dogs for their person companions and one group portrait of five children to be given to their grandmother for Christmas.
It was a challenge at first to become motivated to paint subjects that were of much greater sentimental value to people other than myself, but times being what they were, and still are, I rose to that challenge. One of my subjects was a little dog named "Bear." As I sized up Bear and began to paint his visage on a small panel I reminded myself that although I don’t know him, I could at least do a decent job of making an oil painting of him. In order to interpret the photograph I was given in a more artistic manner, I eliminated some of the floor board lines that were cutting across his body and created deeper shadows along the edge of his form.
As I painted that perky little face I was surprised that I began to see something of a presence of animal consciousness. It was looking at that curious consciousness that pets have when perceiving their person companions and aware once more of the mutual adoration of human with animal. It then occurred to me that I was painting something like a small icon. Little Bear reminded me of how emotionally attached people become to their animal companions despite the folly of investing so much time and heart to a living thing with a limited life span. The painting I had completed the week before was of a deceased pet and poor Bear was also not long for this world so I was told. I do hope that he continues to bring his family joy for just a little longer and that my painting will warm the heart for years to come.

Slips Showing

2009-12-12T09:28:00.001-05:00

I recently participated in the jurying of an international arts exhibition and wrote a blog about the fascinating process and the extraordinary art work that was included in the entries. I uploaded this writing after I heard that the judging results were officially posted. Apparently at that time not all of them were and I may have inadvertently scooped a part of the show. I had also been interviewed about the exhibition in the mistaken understanding that this was something that everyone had agreed to do for the membership. It hadn’t been agreed upon. I apologize for any inconvenience these slips may have caused. Words cannot express how embarrassed it makes me feel. The only word I can think of to capture the feeling is a non word often uttered by Homer Simpson, "DOH!"
In any case, I’ll publish the article I wrote again some time later when feelings of acceptance and rejection are not so near the surface nerves of everyone’s skin. I’ll add to the article both sides of the art competition equation - with shows that I had been juried into or juried out of. In the mean time, in honor of slips, I am for now posting a revised version of my short piece on Freudian Slips.There is a fine meeting of human psychology and creativity in one of the theories of Sigmund Freud. It is perhaps the only theory (or should I say observation?) of Freud that I actually find so entertaining and amusing that I put it into unconscious practice. This is the serendipitous art of the Freudian slip. These slips of the tongue purportedly point to unconscious desires and feelings about a subject as the speaker inadvertently mispronounces something. Truth? Or is it freudulent ?
So what does it mean when I say to my husband when we get into the car, "You drive, I’ll nagivate.?" Of course anyone can be free to nagivate with a captive audience in an enclosed space on a long trip. What better time to bring to light that laundry list of unfinished business?
Another one of my favorite Freudian slips, albeit unconsciously created, is my reference to our beleaguered utility room. This is the room that most people are familiar with. This is the very room where everything that you don’t know what to do with ends up. This is that limbo space where you put things that you don’t know how to deal with , and would rather not see or have anyone else see . This is where everything that confuses and frustrates belongs - things that one unconsciously wishes to lose - equipment that you can’t figure out or have forgotten how to use. Things that can no longer be matched with written instructions can be put there, and maybe a few hopeless people, too. When my husband asked where such a thing could be put I answered with my characteristic fatalistic charm, "Oh, just put it in the futility room." I am quite confident that I am not the only one in this world with a futility room.
A very odd word construction came spilling out of me when someone described to me a group of language teachers who had gone back to school to retrain in a different field because their university no longer had a use for their skills. I tried to use the word "recycled" but instead the word "resuckled" came out. So is this the fate of people who have lost their usefulness in this world? Send them back. All the way back...to mother’s breast...to relive infancy, childhood, adolescence and young adulthood so they can get it right this time. There are definitely those who need to be resuckled.
A woman who was abusing her power of attorney in order to withhold medical information about a sick parent from other family members I was "slipped" into describing as "Sarah’s Power of Eternity." The distress she caused that was described to me most assuredly seemed like it would last an eternity. There is something in the nature of unpleasantness that causes it to seem without end. And it is often the feeling that a reprieve is no where in sight that makes an unpleasant thing all the more intense. That is the power of eternity.
And what of those days spent chasing down information lost to bureaucracy? Or days spent catching up on tedious chores put off? I spent an entire day recently doing both. I described it to someone as a day spent "running errors." I quickly corrected myself and said that I was running errands. These errands including returning an overdue library book, filling a lapsed prescription, tracking down reports that were never faxed to the appropriate office, tracking down a check payment to a credit card company that got lost in the mail and getting the late fee from the said credit card company dropped. On second thought I believe I was right the first time. I was "running errors."
Sometimes errors of the human unconscious can even come from non-human sources - like spell check on my computer. Whenever I type in my description of my art specialty, "mosaicist," I see a red word flashing in the corner of my screen that says "masochist." Et tu PC? Considering the fact that we live in a fast paced, time is money capitalist society, specializing in an art form that slowly pieces together hand hewn chunks of rocks and ceramic does seem to encourage a sort of artistic suffering. My PC also insists that my surname is an erroneous spelling of the word "cheesecake," but I was never able to figure out what the digital unconscious was trying to tell me. Whether digital or human, the hidden truth is uncanny.
My story of slipped truths is illustrated by my painting of a young man sporting a gar fish on his head. Why it strikes me that a gar fish, that useless fossil-like weird thing, should be Freudian I cannot say. Perhaps it is something in the surreal juxtaposition of a man out of water and this fish on his head. Perhaps there is something secretly phallic about the strange shape of the gar. Or perhaps it is meaningless. After all, sometimes a gar is just a gar.

Sarah Palindrome: Updated

2009-11-19T11:01:00.002-05:00

Okay. The news about Sarah Palin's new book is irresistable and I have to run an updated version of my blog Sarah Palindrome:

Some politicians like to drop the "g" off of words in order to sound folksy, or talk in long meandering sentences that are indeed bridges to nowhere. One politician who often uses those spoken devices is Sarah Palin. (Although it must be noted that towards the end of his own bid for the presidency, Barack Obama started spinnin some folksy banterin around as well). But what interests me about Sarah Palin is that there is a word with her surname already built into it - the palindrome. The palindrome is a rare oddity of language in which a phrase or a word reads the same forwards and backwards...
Ya know...a word that says the same old thing goin away from ya as it does comin right back atcha...words like kook and boob. I was just thinkin how someone could use those if she were in public office. Wow!
If she could get a gig like that just think what she could do. She could put a gag order on anyone in health care thinkin they would advise a pregnant teen on options other then if the teen didn’t want a tot she just shoulda just behaved like a nun. But if the teen did the deed , well, we wouldn’t want a peep out of a provider about any such thing as a morning after pill either unless it’s a dud. Mum is the word on that. Then we can have happy young teens proud of just bein a mom puttin a bib on a baby and a dad cleanin poop outa diapers.
The good thing about livin in Alaska is that you can see Russia on the radar in your own back yard! And its cool in the summer too! But even if it gets to where its 90 degrees at high noon on a winter’s day up there, don’t blame it on man-made global warming. Cause our Sarah of the north don’t believe the stats on that, whether they come from a sir or a madam.
Our Sarah is a master of tit for tat. Just look at the pep rally she has around that book thats poppin off the shelves right now. Now she has a chance to toot her horn too. But ya know, sometimes a person you think is a kook or a boob writes a book or two. Just the right person in office can pop on over to the public library and pop those books off the shelves and pop them right on into a fire. It would be enough to make a soccer mom bob up and down and holler.
Harrah for Sarah Palindrome!
　
　
　
　
　
　
　
　
　
　
　
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The Price of Cultural Ownership: The Guenall Lioness Part II

2009-11-05T15:07:00.003-05:00

The Cost of Cultural Ownership
The Guenall Lioness, Part II
After seeing the tiny stone sculpture of the lion-headed goddess some years ago at a special exhibition at Princeton University, I brought out pencil and sketch pad, and began to commit her form to paper. There was something powerful in this ancient figure - a union of a male upper torso with female hips. The hands on those powerful arms folded into fists and pressed together accentuated the solidity of the sturdy well-muscled form.
Recently, my inventory of drawings and search for powerful female figures brought her to the fore again. There is not much I know about her except that she is from Iran and that she was created five thousand years ago. Was she an early object of worship? A venerated warrior?
What does her stance reveal? Is she animal, human or both?
Seton Lloyd, in his book The Art of the Ancient Near East, published by Oxford University Press way back in the 1960's refers to the Lioness as a "monster" which is "...the first and perhaps the most striking of many monstrous forms in which the Sumerians symbolized the malevolence and hostility of nature towards humanity." He is alluding here to the commentary of Henri Frankfort, who studied the object when she was still in the Brooklyn museum: (she) "stands at the head of a long line of monsters which appear in all the great periods of Mesopotamian art and convincingly express the terror with which man realized his helplessness in a hostile universe."
It is interesting to read this early commentary and yet see nothing particularly hostile in this statue in her rather self-contained pose. Hands folded in front of the body is not a particularly threatening posture. One wonders if these men themselves felt disconcerted by a form that was man/woman/animal/human all in one. What does strike me about the pose is that it prefigures the classic archaic pose that is familiar to Egyptian paintings, with frontal upper torso and legs twisted sideways. The mystery of what she actually signifies is equally alluring as the question of what it is that she is doing.
On the latter subject, I had a conversation with my Tai ji quan instructor. He put forward the theory that she is dancing some sort of marshal arts dance. He came to this conclusion by noticing that the fists together across the chest and the twisted torso is almost identical to a position in the Wu style of Tai ji quan. His own instructor had a theory that these movements of Tai ji quan were evolved from ancient goddess dances. It is an interesting theory but might just be as difficult to prove conclusively as the "terror and helplessness in a hostile universe" one.
It is engaging to speculate on whether she is striding or standing at attention with the legs apart. Just for fun I put both fists together in front of my chest, turned my head over by left shoulder and took several paces forward to see what a dance like that would feel like. It did indeed have a powerful effect and felt almost like the determined stride of the Tango.
I am grateful that I went to the museum the day that the Lioness was on display for little did I know that I would never have an opportunity to see her again. Of course I can still look at reproductions but they are misleading for not showing the figure from various points of view and for nearly always depicting the figure almost twice actual size - making her indeed more menacing than intimate. The real Lioness is quite small. At just a few inches high she could fit in the palm of a hand or in a shirt pocket.
What is provocative for me and for anyone else who loves to see artifacts first hand is that because the Lioness was sold to a private buyer for the princely sum of fifty-three million dollars, she is out of the public viewing domain - maybe forever. I was reflecting on this as I reviewed my sketches. Is such a pivotal icon of the culture of humankind a precious part of our collective legacy that everyone should be able to share, or is she another commodity that can be sold to the highest bidder? Does money give a person the right to own history?
I wonder about who the anonymous buyer of the Lioness might be. We only know that he/she is someone in Great Britain. In my flights of fancy I imagine the Queen of England with the Lioness on her dresser next to one of the Queen Mother’s exotic hats. Or perhaps she rests in a red velvet lined case in a secret hideaway owned by Harrods department store. In considering this, I realize, too, that by making drawings of the Lioness from life I share an unusual bond with the mystery owner of the work. Firstly, we obviously share a love for the object. But we share to some degree, ownership as well. This is because I have found that when I sketch a work of art, the slow process of rendering makes that work a part of me in a way that simply buying a reproduction does not. The Japanese potter, Hamada, was cognizant of this phenomenon and consequently made copious drawings of the pottery he saw in museums. He referred to this practice as "devouring" the pots. So, like Hamada, I "devoured" a piece of the Lioness and she resides in my memory. In a metaphorical sense then, I too, am part owner and it does give me a small sense of satisfaction that this particular kind of ownership cannot be sold away. It also gives me some sense of gratification that I captured a side view of Lioness before the opportunity to see that disappeared. Amazing. Only mystery owner and myself can see Lioness’ back.
I wonder about what inspires someone to pay such a large sum of money to own something like this rare statue. Is it simply because one is able? Is it an expression of power? Or is it perhaps for a love of art and ancient history so deep that one would spare no expense for the privilege of forever being able to hold it in the palm of his or her hand at will? Whatever the reason, I hope that Lioness is loved. I will miss her.

Where the Lady Wild Things Are

2009-10-30T13:46:00.003-04:00

I recently joined the Facebook group "Ladies and Gentlemen." I generally don’t join chat groups. It isn’t because I’m some sort of misanthrope. It is just that they tend to switch from topic to topic too fast for me and sometimes encourage jumping on bandwagons that I don’t wish to ride.
But the discussion group, "Ladies and Gentlemen" caught my eye because it seemed to be an attempt to discuss gender issues. So I took the risk that it would be a ride to nowhere and joined the fray.
One of the topics that didn’t seem to travel more than a few hours, unfortunately, was the observation on the part of the group discussion leader, A.J. Bodner, that there seemed to be a dearth of female representatives in his monster collection (not sure what kind of collection this is - toys?) I wrote in that in my travels here in the U.S. and abroad, I happened to find a number of "monsters" in art and anthropological museums that were female. Many of them, interestingly, were in the mid-east, Eastern Europe and Asia. I had made notes and sketches of many of these and had incorporated them into my artwork. It might be worthy of note that my art work based upon these images never sold. I hypothesized that A.J.’s poor showing of female "monsters" in his collection might have something to do with a lack of commercial viability for creating female gender power images, whether monster or hero.
Needless to say, I fear that I am a flop at Facebook because I want to pursue ideas beyond the point where anyone else might be interested. But the monster sub-topic in Ladies and Gentlemen gave me an interesting idea - a picture book of female monsters! Since I am already in the midst of too many unfinished projects, this one might have to go on the back burner for a while. But my mind is already filling with some hilarious, scary and weird images of female grotesques.
For Halloween, I offer a sketch of the earliest female "monster" that I found. I sketched this from an exhibition of art objects from Princeton University alumnae collections at Princeton University in 1997. It was a small Proto-Elamite sculpture of a lioness goddess - a rare gem that caught my attention. My sketch of this figure, also known as the Guenall Lioness, shows a frontal and side view. I was attracted to the massive shoulders and large fists locked together in what appeared to be a show of strength. What impressed me about the statue was not only her power but the age of the piece. She was carved nearly five thousand years ago - a staggering expanse of time! And I may have to eat my words about female power figures not being commercially viable. When I did some background research on this work, I found that it was sold to an anonymous collector a few years ago for the some of fifty-two million dollars.
Happy Halloween Everyone!

In All the World There is No Other

2009-10-28T14:45:00.002-04:00

In All the World there is no Other
This past weekend was an emersion in Chinese language and culture. It was a homecoming, of sorts, with plenty of opportunities to speak Chinese and watch a live performance of Beijing Opera. I’m referring to the festivities celebrating the gift of 1500 Chinese films to the University of South Carolina. The new collection, supported by the Confucius Institute and the Chinese National Film archive, is now the largest resource of Chinese films in North America. It will probably take some time to catalogue and digitize, but it will be a great contribution to scholars of cinematic history when it becomes available.
My husband and I attended a get together at the home of Patricia Willer, Assistant Vice Provost for International Programs. There we met scholars and performers from the Beijing Language and Culture University and the National Academy of Theater Arts. The performers were particularly engaging and we were able to discuss a little bit about shared art forms. I am now encouraged to watch some more Chinese films and do some more Chinese reading. Now that my poetry book is finished and I have returned to writing my China books, I found some renewed inspiration for my work.
After a short dedication ceremony at the USC library, my husband, myself, and our guest returned home for a midday break. Usually once we make a 45 minute drive all the way back to Orangeburg from Columbia, there is not much cause to turn around and drive back again for another event but this night was an exception. As part of the celebration, we were invited to return for a free performance of Beijing Opera. That was too nice an opportunity to pass up so we drove all the way back into Columbia for the performance.
The evening Beijing Opera performance by the National Academy of Theater Arts was a spectacular feat of showmanship and artistry with a well-crafted, organized lecture/demonstration. Before the performance of selections from famous operas, the audience was introduced to the traditional musical instruments used in Beijing opera. These instruments included the er hu - a two- stringed bowed instrument held upright and sometimes called by its misnomer "Chinese violin." The others were two percussion instruments; the small gong and percussive clappers, the moon guitar and the suona. (The suona, which sounds somewhat like a crumhorn, is one of my favorite instruments for its vibrant exuberant sound.)
After demonstrating how these musical instruments are played, there was a brief explanation of eye and gesture movements and what they signify. The audience was also introduced to the stock characters of the Beijing opera - the female roles, the young hero, the old sage, the clowns, the warriors. There were interesting subdivisions here. For instance, the female, or Dan roles were further subdivided into warrior woman, young "flower" girl, robust cheerful woman, and old crone. Here is where being a Chinese speaker can be fun and interesting. When the scholar from the National Academy of Theater Arts was introducing the stock female characters, he described the old woman character as "old and ugly." This was transformed by the translator into English as "Well...lets just say that this character is the older woman." Nice homage to American style political correctness here - no one likes to think of their floppy skin as ugly. I suppose its all relative though. And here I was just getting ready to run off to join the opera as the "old crone" character!
The costumes worn by the actors were intensely colorful and elaborately embroidered. Bright red silks with gold trim, elaborately painted faces, bejeweled headdress decked out with long feathers - all enabled the actors to enter the stage with a big bang! And this is where Beijing Opera shines. It is an immediate and sudden transformation onto a higher plane of pure art. And from that higher plane, fundamental truths are revealed about human character in a lively and entertaining way. One feels the pathos and cruelty of war as a general delicately sheds tears into his sleeve for a mother he is prevented from visiting. The sense of suspense is palpable as two men fight each other under the cover of darkness. And a young woman in spring, herself in the flower of youth, softens the heart.
It can be difficult to take everything in at once, because the Beijing opera is concomitantly acting, visual art, dance, marshal acrobatics, poetry and song. In an effort to allow the audience to follow the action, the Chinese characters of the songs were projected onto a screen along with the English translation underneath. One had to keep watching the acrobatics, listening to the music and flitting eyes up and down to the printed words.
In earlier times, I was most attracted to the Beijing Opera for the colorful costumes and the acrobatics. This past weekend, for some reason the poetry and song moved me more. The poetry sung by the warrior character, his face painted black with swirls of white was so beautiful - full of triumphal energy. In a feat of enviable flexibility, he kicked up his heels over his head, singing out a song the last line of which stayed with me well after the performance. The English translation read "I am the one in a million." In perhaps a more literal translation of the pithy Chinese words ( shi wu shuang) he sang out "In the entire world there is no other." The line stayed with me because it reinforced the realization of a miracle in every soul being a unique creation. I am grateful to the Beijing Opera for reminding me of that. Truly, in the entire world there is nothing else quite like it.

Sixty Years and Three Parades: Semantics and the Long March of Conservative Reporting on China

2009-10-21T13:23:00.002-04:00

Sixty Years and Three Parades: Semantics and the Long March of Conservative Reporting about China
1984
The year was 1984. I was in the People’s Republic of China where I was a graduate student at the Beijing Central Art Academy and my husband was an English professor at Beijing Normal University. The mysterious date made famous by George Orwell’s novel about totalitarianism found us in China, about to witness a parade of thirty-five years of communist rule. Our travels in China for the previous three years had been exotic. We had lived in Baoding, in Changchun and finally in Beijing at a time when China was an exciting albeit a challenging place to live - just opening to foreign markets and foreign education. We felt privileged to have been able to have seen so much of this vast country, to learn the complex language and the fascinating culture.
Subsequent travels could never quite compare to the intensity of the China experience.
It was exciting to actually witness, as a culmination of our China years, the longest, most colorful parade I had ever seen.
Unfortunately I now only have a few blurry photographs remaining from that time ( a valiant search may eventually turn up the rest). These photos of the whole fantastic thing were taken from such a distance that details are hard to make out. But the impressionistic dream-like quality of them matches the fuzziness of a quarter of a century time passed since the event.
But some things remain as clear as if I had seen them yesterday, with the more recent events of China’s 60th anniversary parade bringing them back into sharp perspective.
Before the parade began, my husband and I took our places high in the bleachers overlooking Tian An Men square. In the large square over the far side of Chang An Boulevard we could see thousands of people holding variously colored pom poms. On cue they would hold up pom poms to spell out "1984" in white on green - about a square mile of that famous date in history and literature.
To announce the beginning of the parade, Premier Deng Xiao Ping was driven down Chang An in a long black limousine. He stood upright in the car in a position of great vulnerability to this American’s eyes, ( given our own country’s record of trying to pop off our national leaders). Then Premier Deng announced in his chirpy southern Chinese dialect the beginning of what was to be a short introductory military parade. The military parade had a tank, a missile and contingents from the army and navy. It seemed somewhat obligatory and not particularly memorable. After the military introduction Deng Xiao Ping returned to announce "And now let the People’s Parade Begin!"
With that announcement the square blossomed into vibrant colors. The people in the square held up large swaths of indigo colored cloth undulating in unison to create a giant ocean of waves. Men in turquoise blue silk costumes danced down Chang An Boulevard holding what looked like large tambourines decorated with flames of brightly colored silk which rippled when they swept the air with them. Behind them a man carried a white orb on a stick that was chased after by several people dressed in a dragon costume. The orb was the pearl of happiness which the mythological dragon pursues in heaven but never captures. There were floats of just about every kind. My husband’s students were featured in one that was supposed to represent a giant unfolding lotus. The students, dressed in white, bent backwards in unison to represent the opening of the lotus blossom. From our distant vantage point, they looked a bit like cocktail shrimp but they made a good effort.
Periodically, balloons would fly into the air and packages of gifts would into the crowds. The people’s parade lasted several hours and was packed with colorful floats and exquisite costumes. Nightfall brought out the fireworks display and dancing in the square.
What was interesting for me, and a bit shocking, in my experience of the 1984 parade was that it was followed closely after by a return visit to the United States. I could see the U.S. media coverage of the event that I had just witnessed. What first astonished me was that there was no coverage of the "people’s parade," which was about 80% or more of the event. Instead the entire parade was said to be a "military parade." Pictures of goose stepping throngs in army outfits proliferated along with big red and scary headlines. There were endless news videos of rows upon rows of tanks. Since I only recalled seeing one tank I wondered at the spontaneous generation of several. Looking closely at the news coverage, however, I noticed that the camera panned the same tank over and over again to make it look like several. (If my memory doesn’t serve on this and I can find a photo of more than one tank from 1984 I’ll post it). The text to accompany these images tended to follow suit with strongly worded intonations about the Chinese flaunting their military might. I especially recall the striking lack of color in the reporting - the jargon being as depressing and dull as the flattest and greyest images that could be conjured of the event. I attributed the tone of the coverage and the misrepresentation to the cold war politics of the Reagan era and thought no more of it, except to say that from that time onwards, I took the U.S. media coverage of events abroad with more than a little grain of salt.
Years passed. We moved to Holland. We moved back to the United States. I returned to graduate school in New York. Then the last decade of the twentieth century brought us to Orangeburg, South Carolina. Our new house had been owned by a young couple, a jeweler for several decades before them, and a doctor before her. Now here in Orangeburg there is a peculiar institution of historic preservation by means of shoving your unwanted belongings into crawl spaces beneath the house, never to be retrieved again even by subsequent owners of the house. The clean living young couple who owned the house for a year before us, however, unfortunately threw away tons of vintage medical paraphernalia from 1930's and 1940's. But there were other items that were still retrievable and made for a great archaeological dig in the basement. Local civilizations past emerged; an old target with metal squirrels on springs that I used in a mosaic, a half buried "Colored Persons Waiting Room"sign that I gave to a friend who subsequently used it in a collage. Through the debris I found a box of National Geographic magazines from the 1940's that were in pristine condition. The one from September of 1949 caught my eye. In this issue was an account of the communist forces arriving in Beijing (then called Peiping). The article, entitled "Power Comes Back to Peiping," was written by the former ambassador to China, Nelson T. Johnson, by W. Robert Moore and by the photojournalist David D. Duncan.
The recent news about the sixty year celebration of communist rule in China spurred a desire in me to revisit the events that started the People’s Republic of China. So on a cool October day, I opened the vintage National Geographic and began to read, transported by colorful photographic plates and words of wonder to the events of sixty years ago in China, 1949.
1949 on the streets of Peiping. World War II was over, the Japanese invaders were vanquished and the Chinese civil war between the Nationalists and the Communists was concluded, with Chiang Kai Shek retreating to Taiwan. There was nothing to do but wait...for the communist forces to march into Peiping. And in they came. From David Duncan’s photographs, we know that they came into a world of exuberant color and a city rich in history. What a tale these three writers told! And with an enthusiasm that required a liberal use of exclamation points!
The writers emanated a sense of awe in relating their tale of Peiping - from its earliest inhabitants through the end of World War II. There was a palpable excitement about their even being in the "God-Emperor’s" city - a city with a long tradition of pomp and grandeur. This was a city described as a "majestic, glittering metropolis" resulting from "genius and work." The writers expressed marvel at the newly opened museums of art and culture: "Where is another people who can display a similar wealth of creative craftsmanship over a space of 4000 years?" they asked incredulously. Their wide-eyed wonder was charming and their attention to exquisite details enchanting.
I learned a few new points of history myself as I read "Power Comes Back to Peiping." There were interesting maps and a detailed history of the structure of the walled cities within the city - five cities in one with nine gateways. I also learned that the strange beast that I thought was a myth, the si bu xiang, was an actual animal. It was a deer that had long been extinct in Peiping but which had apparently been preserved as a living specimen in a zoo in New York. ( The Chinese, who couldn’t figure out how to describe it, simply called it si bu xiang, which roughly means "four things its not like"). As well as a keen interest in history, the writers of ‘49 were fascinated with cultural details and David D Duncan liberally photographed them. The photographs were truly artistic gems. Two of them featured Chinese citizens modeling richly embroidered traditional coats - one a 250 year old imperial yellow silk coat with gold embroidered dragons.
In an almost surreal juxtaposition, the photographs show street vendors and roadside performers distracting crowds in and around the invading army. The "Peiping Bathhouse Guild" puts on a performance on stilts. Vendors selling fragrant pears and plump persimmons tempt shoppers. The photographer himself buys oriental carpets and lets us know that he got them for the bargain price of about $20.00 each! !!! !!! In an oddly anachronistic performance, a Chinese flutist plays "Deep in the Heart of Texas."
It is heart wrenching to read the sanguine expectations for China - the newly opened parks and museums for the people and the promise of a better life - and know what lies ahead. I look at mothers proudly holding their babies and realize that when these babies become teenagers China will be in the grip of the great Cultural Revolution. Will they join the ranks of the infamous Red Guards and do havoc to the country -destroying "the four olds?" It is sad to know that just one year after this article was written, the authors will be separated from the country they were so captivated by with the advent of the Korean war. There will be the disastrous Great Leap Forward in the fifties. There will be purges and crackdowns - culminating in the terrible Tian An Men Massacre of 1989 ( This was a year I was supposed to be working there but for obvious reasons my gig was cancelled).
The United States, in an eerie parallel to the purges of the communist world, suffered through the McCarthy era of the early fifties. In our own crackdown some of the best and brightest in academia and in the entertainment field were purged - blacklisted, forbidden to work and even imprisoned. They were labeled as leftists and had their lives turned upside down and careers ruined. China followed suit in the later fifties by purging intellectuals who didn’t toe the party line from their universities too. Over there they were called rightists. (Maybe our leftists and their rightists should have just switched countries and spared everyone the misery! I did, in fact, know a family of refugees from McCarthy era America who had emigrated to the People’s Republic of China)
There were terrible consequences to these purges. Backwardness, loss of civil liberties, you name it. Since many of our own blacklisted artists and writers were from the African American intelligentsia, the nascent civil rights movement of the 1940's was undermined when these intellectuals left the United States, leaving it to the next generation to pick up the pieces and start over again. Indeed, the "Colored Person’s Waiting Room" sign I discovered in the 1940's strata of my basement dig could just have easily been discovered in the 1960's zone.
2009
Senator Joe McCarthy, and his witch-hunt days, died in 1957. His excesses have most assuredly been discredited. But is it possible that he still casts a long shadow into the present day? Is it even possible that his brand of red scare tactics could rise again? Certainly the fundamental base for reporting on China that has been in place since 1949 could contribute to at least a partial resurrection of his ideas. A friend and former fellow teacher in China gave me a lovely present of a book by John King Fairbank, The Great Chinese Revolution 1800 - 1985. His observation of post 1949 writing about China was as follows:
"Once we reach the People’s Republic of China in 1949 the scholarly literature on China changes remarkably from historical studies to social science studies. China’s going communist spurred a great western effort to understand the new enemy." Fairbanks notes further that the new academic talents on China were recruited from the fields of "geography, economics, political science, sociology, anthropology, and social psychology, in order to know the enemy" (italics mine).
I would take issue with Fairbanks’ disdain of these disciplines as necessarily being inherently inferior to history as a means to critical understanding of another culture, but would add that, on balance, voices of artists, writers, linguists, and legal experts should not be so arbitrarily discarded either as valid witnesses to the complex culture of China. But I would venture that soliciting the expertise and commentary from anyone solely for the purpose of finding enemies, ultimately serves no one.
I lived for many years in China, and returned several times as a guide and translator. My educational background and interests are in Chinese language, art, science, and writing, with a healthy love for history thrown into this mix. With this in mind, I look for commentary on China which informs and enlightens. In the most recent coverage of China I don’t find that. What I do find is what John King Fairbanks rails against and what Senator Joe McCarthy would probably find satisfying.
The following comments were extracted from the LA Times and the New York Times. Both of these articles describe the Sixty year celebration parade in China as a "military parade" only. Given my experience with the American press in 1984, I suspected cold war politics still in play so wrote to an American friend on location in China and asked him if the parade that he watched in Beijing was indeed a military parade only, or, as I suspected, a short perfunctory military introduction to a civilian parade. He concurred that the latter was indeed the case. I later checked in with BBC and saw that their coverage more accurately provide readers with the breakdown of civilian versus military in the parade. The BBC also provided very helpful time lines along with facts and figures of China’s development over the last sixty years.
The American journalists, after dubbing the myriad floats, balloons, and dancers a "military parade" in its entirety, they proceeded to describe this event in terms that have a decidedly cold war flavor. In Sharon La Franiere’s and Micahael Wines’ article in the New York Times, October 1, 2009, they describe a "vast display of military power" with weapons, they tell us that "one day could be used to counter American Aircraft carriers." This they’ve-got-the-big-guns-and-they’re-pointed-right-at-us rhetoric rings so big and red and scary it would do Joe McCarthy proud. The language used to describe the parade was almost universally condescending, using phrases like "indisputably retro," and "kitschy." The parade is found to be flawed in the LA Times, as well, for purportedly reusing old material from previous parades. It is, of course, vitally important that the American public know that the reds put on parades that are like last year’s dresses.
Both articles made much out of the "totalitarian" aspect of this parade not being freely open to the public and that most people had to watch it at home from their television sets. Anyone who has lived in Beijing and walked its streets knows that even on a day without the street being taken up by a parade and with every inch of the public square filled with performers, the crowds are such that everyone is shoulder to shoulder. The public could not possibly fit on the side of Chang An street during this parade unless they were perhaps standing stacked up on each other about ten high. I also find this accusation somewhat ironic in that, as a citizen of Orangeburg, South Carolina, I was not allowed to attend the Democratic Primary debate at the local college last year. The public was not invited. Although it was just up the street I had to watch it on my repressed little television in my oppressed little living room. But I think in both cases there was more of pragmatism than totalitarianism in this- in either case there was only so much room for human bodies.
At the Chinese sixty year anniversary parade, Hu Jin Tao, as he addresses the throngs, cannot stand up and wave right to the American journalists. In the New York Times article Hu Jin Tao is described as giving "a bromide-filled speech." (We are never told what the words actually are) and waving "stiffly." Barbara Demick, reporting in the LA Times, describes Hu Jin Tao as looking like "half of a severed statue." As to the parade itself, Barbara Demick occasionally forgets herself and allows for some descriptive and colorful language in her article. She breaks with the droning style with a surprising reference to Zhang Yi Mou’s fireworks display. But she quickly remembers where she is at and what her job is and reminds us that when the parade participants lift multi-colored pom poms it is a "depersonalizing technique." This is the first time I have heard of color pom poms being used as weapons of mass destruction of civil liberties but I am guessing that the conclusion was arrived at through the tautological reasoning that since North Korea had used similar pom poms and North Korea is a totalitarian dictatorship, so it must be that their use in a Chinese parade spells out totalitarianism. I am not saying here that China is not totalitarian. I just believe that it did not come via the pom pom route.
What I found ultimately most poignant about the New York Times article was something not
contained in the body of the article itself but it did speak volumes to me. It was a question for reader response set in a column off to the left of the article. The question read, "Can China spread wealth and become a consumer society?" I was saddened to see that question placed where a better question would be "Can China ever become a democracy?" The latter question would come from a free-thinking truly democratic society with a genuine interest in human rights. The former question is one that would only be posited by a society where consumer interests are the greatest priority. I have been hearing several permutations of the first question for decades. I heard it often repeated while in China that "All China needs is a free market system." I would always respond that instituting a free market system in the absence of a democracy where there is rule of law would only result in corruption, exploitation, and environmental pollution. At least Barbara Demick references the severe air pollution in Beijing, and the Chinese attempts to diffuse it at least temporarily through cloud seeding. It was interesting and informative. But does she not make the connection between the free-wheeling unrestrained pursuit of capital through unregulated industry and the air pollution problem? No. We don’t need to turn China into a massive land of consumers fashioned after ourselves. We need to support their civil liberties as we should our own.
One way to support human rights in China is to first have responsible reporting from China that reflects an understanding and respect for its people. A good start would be to assign journalists who speak Mandarin and Cantonese to cover the country. It would also help to break the cycle of cold war political hyperbole in writing. There are enough problems in China to report on them straight, without didactic ideological embellishments. It becomes difficult to take seriously a story that includes the pom pom theory of political repression.
People do have a right to know what is happening in the world in which they live. Borrowing an analogy from our own legal system, we know that it is possible for a guilty person to get away with a crime if the prosecution argues his case poorly. Bias, sloppy detective work, not following due process, can get a case thrown out of court. Similarly, in the court of public opinion, when news comes to us packaged in propagandized form and found to be politically biased, or misrepresenting of the facts, we may very well close our eyes and ears to its message. In this way, any potentially serious news will be thrown out along with the language and methodology that brought it to our attention. We need to have our curiosity abroad represented by people who give us answers rather than serve us agendas.
I am curious about many things in China. I would like to know more about what is happening in Chinese museums, in the field of science. I would like to know about advances in the field of history and archaeology - maybe even writing about it that includes an exclamation point or two.
If the United States continues to dispense people around the world on the basis of their ideological allegiance rather than on the basis of their intellectual acumen, then the worst of what happens in the world in which we live will never be fully comprehended and the best of what happens in the world we will be prevented from even knowing.
In the mean time, in the arena of world news - happy reading in the BBC!
Postscript:
In the process of my background research for this article, I discovered that David D Duncan, the photojournalist who wrote the original 1949 National Geographic article about Beijing at the beginning of the People’s Republic of China is still writing and making beautiful photographs at the age of 94. What enthusiasm and a love for beauty will do!
　

An Architect's Conference Goes For The Green

2009-10-16T11:37:00.002-04:00

The painting above, "Inscape," was one of my feature works at the Southeastern Architect’s Regional conference held in Greenville (how apt a name for today’s post, yes?) South Carolina earlier this month. The painting is of a root wrapped around a rock. Through the space we can see an open vista of clean air and green pastures. A second painting of the same art work hangs in my mother-in-law’s room in the Bishop Gadsden nursing home in Charleston. She tells me that it makes her feel peaceful and gives her hope. In her imagination, she flies through the porthole to rest in the sunny grass over the other side.
Despite the uncertainty of our economy, there were elements of hope at the architect’s conference in Greenville. I found to my surprise that there were a number of displays about using green materials in construction and efforts to cut down on waste. The company in the booth next to mine, Green Roof Outfitters, was particularly interesting. They made interlocking squares of drought resistant vegetation set in specially prepared soil. The plants looked like something between sage and succulent and were exquisitely beautiful. These units of plants fit onto rooftops and not only provide oxygen for the environment but cut down the utility bills by about 50%. If we didn’t have a severely pitched roof on our own house I would get them and put edible plants on the lower level accessible trays.
There were many other examples of architects and their suppliers going green. A number of them were using recycled materials in their building products. Reading through the abstracts of the papers that the conference attendees were listening to, I could see that there were new requirements already in place for architectural designers to incorporate renewable resources in their plans. The new buzz word I learned here was LEED, an acronym for Leadership, Environmental Energy Design. Under this program, an architect must obtain a certain number of LEED points in order to maintain his/her license. (If I understand this correctly).
Not to digress too much here, but readers may wonder why, in the first place, a visual artist would be setting up a display at a conference for architects. That in itself is an interesting story.
Due to the economic downturn, there were not enough buyers of booth spaces to fill the conference so the empty spaces were sold off to artists at about 75% off the regular price. A small band of visual artists and art galleries jumped at the opportunity. None of us knew what to expect from this. It was the first time that artists were showing alongside engineering firms, brick making and tile companies, etc. Despite the uncertainty of this venture, however, we felt that we had to brave the unknown. Art, after all, is considered a luxury in even the best of times, so the current downturn has meant difficult times for us. We were there at an architect’s conference bravely pursuing even the hint of a possibility to have our art survive.
After about two days into the conference and sensing the drift (I’m a little slow on the draw here) towards a green economy, I started emphasizing how green was my art. As luck would have it, a number of the pieces I had brought with me indeed used recycled materials. The large paintings used recycled matt board from the framing industry. My mosaics used discarded construction materials. I’m not certain that I actually convinced the three or four architects who stopped by my booth (it was a very slow conference) of the necessity of hiring artists who use recycled materials. But I did realize that it was something that I could indeed continue to develop and do my small part to decrease waste. Dumpster diving here I come!

Fishing for Inspiration on a Bass Ocarina

2009-10-07T13:37:00.003-04:00

The best dancers can make art from any prop. The two dancers featured above are South Carolina State University instructors of dance Eddie Morris and Brian Williams. I had given them gar fish forms that I had fashioned from markers on foam core cut outs and asked them pose for me in exchange for doing publicity photography for their dance group. I had noted, as had Professor Morris, that the head of the fish was similar in form to a cupped hand or a pointed foot and that the distance from the dorsal fin to the pointed snout also happened to correspond to the distance from fingertip to elbow (ironically a biblical cubit). Watching someone dance with these forms was almost like looking at statues of shiva with his extra arms and legs.
With a knowledge of kinesthetics and both a scientific as well as intuitive sense of bodily proportions, the two talented dance professors intertwined curved arms, pointed hands and feet to make the exquisite balance of forms shown above. What started out here as an experiment became the as-yet-to-be published Dance of the Gar Fish. I had completed a series of paintings on this theme a few years ago but had never fully developed the images of Professor Morris and Professor Williams into a finished work of art. But a chance encounter with them while on a recent shopping trip brought their interpretive dance to mind once more.
I had been working on a large sculptural form that also served as a bass ocarina. The sound was playable albeit reserved and soft. I’ve conferred with a musician here who tells me that getting a full volume sound in a large wind instrument can indeed be very tricky and best left to the experts. So with my large yet ineffectual musical instrument lying bereft of embellishment on my worktable in my basement studio, I left to go grocery shopping. Almost like manna from heaven, I chanced upon both Professor Morris and Professor Williams at the local grocery store and after a brief conversation, had my idea for the decoration of the large bass ocarina.
Returning to my studio to study the large form I realized first that the fipple could accommodate the upturned head of a fish - its mouth gaping. So I painted this on with some white slip and then continued with the white slip around the base of the form to complete a fish body. Using a sgraffito technique, I scraped through the white slip to reveal the red clay body in a fish scale pattern. But how to integrate the dancers? I remembered a reproduction of a piece of temple art from Thailand I saw on a recent work trip to Maryland this past summer. It featured the monkey god, Hanuman, rescuing immortals by letting them ride on his back and tail. With that in mind I painted the dancers performing the gar fish dance on top of this other giant gar fish. The background was painted with black slip to give the whole ensemble a look like a Grecian Krater - even alternating red and white on the figures for contrast like on those ancient Greek vessels.
As of this writing, I have repaired a small chip that came off an area surrounding the fish head on this art piece. I am about to return the Ocarina of the Gar Fish Dance to the kiln for a second firing - this time to add mother-of-pearl to the fish and to select parts of the dancer’s costumes.
Although from an economic standpoint, it would be much better if I had jobs and commissions lined up but at least for now, the downturn has resulted in an upturn of experimentation. I never thought that I would be fashioning exotic musical instruments and have no idea where this might take me. But there was some interest in these at my last two conferences and a new line of work might just emerge from all this.