The Return of the Palindrome Pig

In my earlier blog, Sarah Palindrome, an irreverent take on the vice-presidential candidate, I illustrated the text with a naive-looking painting of a pig with a head on both sides of its body. Because I wanted to have a visual representation of a palindrome, I needed to make something with bilateral symmetry. In order to do this I made a stencil by drawing half of a pig onto a piece of paper, folding the other side of the paper in half and cutting out. Since I had a stencil of this strange little form I made several other paintings to try different colors and cut out shapes. Some of them looked like Chinese folk paper cuts so I incised an ancient form of a Chinese character on one - the word for "flying."
I became interested in making quick multiples of the same shape after viewing the Andy Warhol exhibition now on display at the Mint Museum of Art in Charlotte, North Carolina. My original interest at the Mint Museum was their extraordinary collection of Pre-Columbian art but the Warhol exhibit was a pleasant surprise. His large square paintings and silkscreens of Hibiscus Flowers revealed brilliant color harmonies that I had previously not fully appreciated as an aspect of Warhol’s art. So with these impressions fresh to the senses, I made use of that most primitive of printing - the stencil - for an unexpected Palindrome Pig series.
Usually, when making art, my original intentions are supplanted by something else. Maybe this something else this time was a visual manifestation of worries bubbling up from the subconcious after watching so much anxiety-ridden news about the economy. This didn’t become clear to me until an artist colleague of mine said that the two-headed pig reminded her of the current state of the U.S. economy. She may have discovered an unintended truth here in this illustration of a beast that consumes on both sides of its body, produces nothing and has no clear exits!

Something Fishy in Obama Campaign Finances

Just yesterday, I visited the website of an old friend from my New York and China days and was amused by a poem he wrote about an unusual place name. Lake Webster in Massachusetts, his website informs us, used to be known by its Algonquin name Lake
Chargoggaggmanchauggaggoggchaubunagungamaugg. I hope I got that right.
On first glance, one could easily mistake this for one of Obama’s sources of campaign funds. I refer here to the recent article in the New York Times submitted by Michael Luo and Griff Palmer concerning the Fictitious Donors in the Obama Finance Records.
My illustration for this is a drawing I did of Courbet’s painting of a freshwater trout. I imagine him feeding at the bottom of Lake Chargogaggmanchauggaggoggchaubunagungamaugg. Although the Obama contributor’s names were somewhat shorter, such as gggjtijtjtjtjtjr,AP, who ostensibly contributed $370.00, they are just as rich in consonants. Some of them are bizarre enough to rival Gogol’s Dead Souls. My favorite, however, is the contributor Jockim Alberton, who the article informs us listed his employer as Fdsa. Public records, we are told, cannot bring such an employer to life. So what is Fdsa? Perhaps it is the elusive Fraud Delivery Service Association.
With friends like these, who needs public financing?

Sarah Palin and the War on Terriers

Well ya know, Sarah Palin's recent revelation about Barack Obama’s friendship with an Airedale makes ya kinda wonder about his politics. And with schnauzers in his backyard and a Jack Russell for a neighbor, well, I don’t know about you but its pretty darned clear to me that he’s harboring terriers. With all his wire-haired terrier friends you would think that he hadn’t even heard that there’s a war on terriers goin on! Its just naive! Doesn’t he know that the folks who have endorsed him, like John Kerry, is in fact allied with the Kerry Blue terrier? And what about all those left-leaning New Yorkie terriers who have backed his campaign? But that isn’t all. So far we’ve only been talkin about Barack’s ties to domestic terriers. But his most recent alliances with Scottish Terriers, Tibetan Terriers and Australian Terriers that have come to light raises the really scary question about his willingness to negotiate with terriers abroad without preconditions. And what about his friendship with the Airedale? Some would say it was just a walk in the park with a man’s best friend but you can’t fool me. Gosh darnit, it looks just like another big old terrier. So why hasn’t he come clean about these associations? The public has a right to know. Straight up and face to face cause ya know, no one should ever Bull Terrier the American People. That’s why I’m highlighting these links to terriers and their terrierist organizations so the public can find out for themselves that these are indeed terriers.

Pig Lips and Potty Mouths

It has been a long while since I have added to this blog. My time has been taken up by exhibition preparations, finishing up my first book, and being suddenly called to serve as a temporary adjunct professor at the local university. Autumn is also the time of year that yard work becomes particularly time-consuming. All of these pursuits were rewarding but left little time for blogging. And even in those rare moments when I was free, it became hard to know exactly where to begin again with that thread of thoughts for the cyberworld.
Surely there is much to talk about, with our country on the verge of an economic disaster and the public about to make choices in what is the most interesting political race I’ve ever known. But what inspired me to sit and paint in my studio again was a strange little article by Matt Taibbi that a friend sent me a link to recently. Taibbi ‘s editorial, if one can even call it that, was about how the vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin reflects a certain segment of the American electorate. He raises some legitimate questions about her seeming lack of preparedness for public office. He is correct as well, I think, when he takes issue with Americans whose tendency it is to vote on the basis of what seems comfortingly familiar to them rather than with a mind towards who actually has the public’s best interest at heart and who has the experience to carry through sound decisions.
The problem I have with his article, however, is in his presentation. Assailing the meanness of what he purports to be the conservative, anti-intellectual right, he rolls out a veritable machine-gun blast of profanity. It strikes me as something of an oxymoron to rail against thoughtlessness by using the language of an inebriated thug. Yet this is not untypical in the world of popular writing - especially in the unregulated cyberworld of You Tube and blogs. And on-line writing is tending to be even more vitriolic as the passions of an election year fire up.
During a long but pleasant day in Charleston, after having caught up on paperwork, shipping, and other duties, I had a chance to reflect on the words and images that articles such as those written by Matt Taibbi conjure up. The phrase that came to mind was one coined by the nannies on those popular television shows "Super Nanny" and "Nanny 911." "Potty Mouth," I believe was their charming epithet for youngsters who could not control dirty language - most likely learned from their parents, perhaps some of whom write for Rolling Stone magazine.
In the course of my painting, I was also reflecting on how easily the popular media distracts our attention from crucial central issues by running us down rabbit holes of political gaffs and trivia. The question of what exactly the phrase "putting lipstick on a pig" meant and to whom it referred is just one instance. So my little painting, "Pig lips and Potty Mouths" sums up my sentiments on media diversions and lack of introspection in popular writing.
Perhaps we would all be served better at this time by reading Barack Obama’s Audacity of Hope as well as John McCain’s Faith of My Fathers and Character is Destiny: Inspiring Stories Every Young Person Should Know & Every Adult Should Remember, and relegate the Potty Mouths to the restroom sidelines.

How will Clinton Supporters Vote in November?

“If you’re not for Barack, then get off my back.” I recently saw this emblazoned on a sweatshirt. A drawing I made of an ivory plaquette from the Bargello Museum of Sculpture in Florence brought this to mind again. But the drawing of a man with a spear vanquishing a female enemy that he is treading underfoot reminds me of something else in recent American events. It reminds me of the American media’s reaction to the Hillary Clinton presidential primary campaign. The appalling sexism that surfaced during the Democratic primaries was something that I had wished to comment upon as it was occurring but my lack of research hours made me think otherwise. Although the media was largely silent on the sexism issue, there were occasionally some bold journalists and academicians who came forward, such as Amanda Fortini and Kent Gibbons.Although this would seem like old news, especially for those eager to make the first woman who had a serious shot at the presidency disappear from the public consciousness, the ramifications of that time have yet to play out with November looming before us. For the many Clinton supporters who saw their candidate treated with a negative bias and have yet to commit their new allegiance this autumn, the misogyny that reared its ugly visage from both liberal and conservative camps puts them into something of a quandary. It is an uneasy choice; to vote with those who chip away at women’s rights, or to vote with those who pretend it isn’t happening.

“A critic at my house sees some paintings. Greatly perturbed, he asks for my drawings. My drawings! Never! They are my letters, my secrets.” - Paul Gaugin
I am perusing my sketch books, winnowing out drawings I don’t want, and excising others for matting, shrink-wrapping and framing. In doing so, they do lose their context as a visual travel log to places both pedestrian (subways) and elevated (the museums of Europe). Gone as well are the rough stages of mental processes behind the designs for sculpture and paintings - the letters and secrets that Paul Gaugin referred to. So it is with some trepidation that I effect changes in the historicity of my work Making new artwork from compilations of notes from the past brings the old drawings to a present context divorced from the work of the past that it influenced. In other words, an historian would be confused as to why a painting from a preparatory sketch predates the sketch. Yet when the sketch is altered to become essentially a “new” work it has to be dated as such. Perhaps I’ll use a date range.
In any case, there are some reasons why letting go of secret sketches in binders doesn’t bother me as much as perhaps it should. For one thing, it is highly debatable that there will be historians interested in analyzing my creative thought processes. Also, my sketch books are not terribly organized, but rather are amalgams of ideas, complete and incomplete drawings, and are not in any chronological order anyway. As for the destruction of some work that is not satisfying, I think of the painter Georges Rouault, who shoveled buckets of what he considered his weaker works on paper into a wood-burning stove. So winnowing out is not necessarily a bad thing.
Ever the pragmatist, I am using the frames I got from the Artist’s Round Table warehouse event to preserve the drawings that don’t end up in the equivalent of Rouault’s stove. Taking a break from the gallery and arts festival scene, I’m exhibiting these in my studio for a small group of friends and mentors. In going through these old drawings I see that I’ve come full circle in the year that I’ve started blogging - August 7 will be one year exactly. The revising of drawings was exactly what I was doing in August 2007. Drawing was a nice place to start and always a sound place to return to.

The Red Thread

This week marked the completion of the seventy-fifth poem for my book of poetry, Monologues: A Hundred Poems for a Hundred Paintings. This project was started in autumn, 2007 and I am hoping to finish in autumn 2008. The project has proceeded more slowly than I had anticipated but the poetry and paintings crept steadily along. The words and paintings come even more slowly now, as I am writing new verse while revising the old and making new paintings to replace those that I was not satisfied with. Many thanks are due to Professor Tom Cassidy of South Carolina State University and Professor Tamara Miles of Orangeburg Calhoun Technical College for getting me this far along and for their literary insights.

The poem and painting “The Red Thread,” is inspired by a German phrase “finding the red thread,” roughly meaning “a thread of continuity” in an individual’s life that ties together and unifies various passions. I am still searching for that red thread myself.
The Red Thread
Baffled before the armoireand not knowing what to wearhe crouches naked on the floorto search for a red thread
A red thread that bindsumbilical cord to motheror spirals upward and outwardlike a ribbon dancer’s gift to anonymous spectators
A thread that could weave his unruly loveinto sensible tweedor a thread free to meander like the vinethat clings to the roots and stems it feeds upon
A red thread to carry aspirationslike the veins that carry his life bloodor messages upon a wirelike nervous impulses conducting themselves across a synapse A thread pluckedlike the straight taut string of a luteor inextricably jumbledlike saffron noodles eaten from a bowl
A red thread that braids togetherthe lines of intertwined impressionsinfluences that tug against his heartinsinuating lines that wheedle the sense out of chaos Janet Kozachek copyright 2008

The Common Ground Experience

Once a year in mid summer, artists, dancers, poets and musicians come from around the world to converge upon the small college town of Westminster, Maryland in a feast of the arts known as Common Ground on the Hill. The program is conducted by professor Walt Micheal, who coordinates the music program and Professor Linda VanHart, a jeweler extra ordinaire who rounds up all us visual artists. This was my second year to have the honor of being among the lucky chosen artists.
The first week at McDaniel College I taught a course in Chinese Landscape Painting during which I pulled out all the stops to expose my students to Po Mo (broken ink) style landscape painting, cun fa (cross hatching) landscape techniques, calligraphy, seal carving and a bonus lesson on how to create Chinese glue for sizing paintings. The course was very full but the students were all quite capable as well as courteous - a talented bunch and a joy to teach. The second week was more relaxed - just three students for my “Secrets of the Masters” oil painting materials, techniques, and formulas. This actually worked out well, since I had students grind pigments into paint which proved to be rather time-consuming. I had my students make traditional marble dust gesso panels for these pigments much like the small oak panel that I used for my painting “Reflections on a Tremor” illustrated at right which was part of the Common Ground Faculty Exhibition.
Apart from teaching highly motivated, interested students, the second truly rewarding thing about teaching at Common Ground on the Hill was the opportunity to take courses taught by my colleagues. A knee injury left me having to curtail my dance activities but I did manage the morning yoga class with Laurel Hummel. She is probably the best yoga instructor I know, paying great attention to every student’s strengths and vulnerabilities for a custom made program towards better health and flexibility. I also managed a few classes with yogarhythmics instructor Marya Micheal, a gentle soul and a beautiful person to be around. Lee Francis introduced me to the new generation of slam poets in The Spoken Word. This was a great course for learning how to bring poetry alive as a performance art. Women in the Blues, taught by Scott Ainsley and Lea Gilmore, was a lively and informative introduction to an often neglected history of women’s contribution to the development and proliferation of Blues music. We learned how to sing and compose 12-bar blues music in this class - which was immense fun.
The weekend before the second session of classes was celebrated with the annual arts festival at Carroll County Farm Museum. There were no sales for me at this festival (It appears that arts and crafts shows are not an optimal venue for me) save for a last minute mercy purchase of a small ceramic pendant. The moribund market for art was offset by the interesting artists that I met. I spent two days making drawings and hobnobbing with craftspeople. I was particularly impressed with the Native American potters with whom I shared my tent. My meeting them was the completion of a long ago yearning to meet the potter Maria Martinez. As it turned out my neighbor artist at the crafts festival was Kathy Wan Povi Sanchez - Maria Martinez’ granddaughter. She has kept the coiled black pit-fired pottery art alive. There were a number of charming little black vessels on her table, some with turquoise inlay and all of them burnished to a metallic sheen.
Another highlight of the crafts festival was meeting Tatianna Rakmanina - a third generation milliner from St. Petersburg. I greatly admired her on-of-a-kind handmade hats. Some were so understated they were just embellishments fo wear in the hair. Others were way over the top in decorative design. The latter had broad brims decorated with bows and spots. A number of these bore an uncanny resemblance to the hats worn by characters in Johnathan Green’s paintings. Fortunately Tatianna the hatmaker was fond of my watercolor paintings so we traded paintings for hats.
During the second session of arts immersion at Common Ground I was joined by my husband and we spent some time exploring Westminster and nearby towns. We had a good time and a reprieve from cafeteria food. My class attendance was sporadic this second week but I did mangage to spend three sessions in the Big Song Swap, guided by Rod MacDonald and Bob Lucas. They were wonderful mentors and I learned from them the value of memorizing the songs one writes - something I haven’t done yet. In fact, I found to my own astonishment I had more Chinese poetry and song memorized than English ones. I am still amazed at Rod and Bob’s tolerance for my belting out Peking Opera tunes, although I did also debut one of my blues songs, “Your Mama Has.” I believe what I enjoyed the most about this class and the Common Ground experience in general was its authenticity. Too often we are served up entertainment in the popular media that is fast, easy, accessible, and boring. The songs we shared were rich nuanced and personal.
Perhaps one of the best features of being a Common Ground Artist is the access to concerts. Where else can you hear music from the Southwest, Iceland, Quebec, German folk songs, bluegrass, blues, and strange instruments like the Norwegian Nyckelharpa all in one place? Add to that Walter Linigar’s grand finale virtuoso harmonica performance on the final night and it was a two-week extravaganza to remember. Kudos to Walt Micheal and Linda Van Hart for once again making this a great occassion for the arts.

The Long Walk to the Ball Park

The Long Walk to the Ball Park
Picking up where I left off before my two-week gig as a resident artist at McDaniel College, I introduce the second of my mosaic seminar demonstration pieces. I call it “The Long Walk to the Ball Park,” because it reminds me of summers in the New Jersey of my youth. The road to the local ball park back in rural New Jersey in the 1960's was a dusty dirt road where wild blackberries grew alongside fields of queen anne’s lace. The ball park was an adventure whether it was baseball season or not. A vacant ball park was the setting for childhood war games - the dugouts serving as bunkers, the stands city walls to be scaled. And the concession stand had a flat roof suitable for furtive scurrying. This last mosaic reminds me of the overlay of natural and man-made textures on the dirt road to the ball park - or perhaps I just think of these things again because of the summer heat.
The glass in the mosaic are drops from a stained glass window project which required very thick block glass. The blocks had to be faceted by hand chipping out pieces with a hammer and anvil. The multi-colored glass drops fit well onto a flat surface because they have at least one flat edge. Turning the mosaic on its side reveals more keenly the effect of the overlapping wedges of glass. Many of my recent mosaics have this kind of high relief which can almost be read like a diorama. I may even consider displaying them at some point to be viewed from above.

Summer Stalactites

During a recent seminar on mosaic art I demonstrated some cutting and compositional techniques. “The Opus vermiculatum technique,” I explained, “sharply defines the edges of forms and creates sinuous lines in the back round.” I then cut angles and wedges in the tesserae, placing them along curves that would allow that to happen. The class was lively and the time went by quickly. I packed up my equipment at the end of that rewarding day along with two unfinished “demonstrator” mosaics. I could have left them in this state and probably should have with so many other immediate commitments looming. But I have some compunctions about leaving things in various states of incompleteness before moving on to other projects. Unfinished mosaics have a particularly strong pull on this compunction - staring down at one from a wall or looking plaintively up from a worktable with their pathetic gaping blank spaces. So instead of doing the “smart” thing and getting my work packed up early for my upcoming teaching at McDaniel College, I had to spend some time to sit down and complete the mosaics before sorting and packing materials for my next group of hopeful students.
As I sat in my studio slowly applying bits of glass and stone to cement backer boards, conglomerations of patterns began to emerge which evoked pleasant memories made rosy by their remoteness. The vertical piec to the left reminded me of family summer vacatons replete with trips to caverns. I had a special fondness for caves, especially those with stalactites. I remember in particular a cave with live dripping with mineral-laden water that formed, over eons, the stalagmites on the cavern floor. The mosaic “Stalactites” is made with chips of clear block glass interspersed between slate and marble tesserae. The clear glass chips represent the water dripping from above. Since glass in not actually a solid but in fact is a super-cooled liquid, its use in this vertical study mosaic is apropos for it represents water dripping over thousands of years - which it is in fact doing.