Just say it. (It was said.)

Mostly in progress works for "A Matter of Color" series

I have been a slave to the passive voice.* (Wait, I was a slave to it in the past? I still am? I always will be? Present perfect progressive verb tense here, so- yeah I’m hoping it will come to an end at some point.) My artist statement writing was made of attempt after attempt to remove it. (<– see that! passive again!) With assistance, I made peace with it. But when I dodge the chance to make a direct point (in writing, conversation, or in studio) is it purposeful or accidental?

In my writing, a thing will have something happen to it, but (often!) no one actually does it. The agent is in the subject position. Who knows when things start & end? The setting is always the inner world, and I dance around direct observations. I have an addiction to writing in a way that leaves options open for the reader to make her own conclusions. When writing, I am exploring, and I don’t land on definite rights and wrongs. It’s as if I’m more Thesaurus than Dictionary. Judgment calls are for when all information is gathered, and even then, who has the final say? Still, lately the more I write, I pester myself with questions: Who did that thing? What happened? Stop talking about what happened to the thing, and tell who did that to the thing. I’ve been examining how I remove myself from the action: “I’m not there, it just happens!” I tell myself I don’t want to force anything, and I write in a way that says I am not that kind of person, I do not Commandeer, I am not Imperious, I’m better than that. Or so I like to think.

In conversation, I avoid making judgment calls, and I have reserve in internal evaluations. They are fluid as they develop and clarify. I find that slowness to come to certain decisions is a way of allowing things to have their own place, to accept things/people/ideas on their own terms. Yet, I have respect for those who vocally define their world. Would we have a Thesaurus without a Dictionary? I’ve known for a long time I needed those people & their valuable critique. They are so sure of themselves, whether they are right or wrong. (And I end up looking like the squirrely one!) I try to see all the options. Am I disingenuous? Duplicitous? I’m certain that I am comfortable with uncertainty; conversely I find certainty in my faith. I kind of love the way the puzzle fits together: the certainty of those who define, refine, pronounce, dictate, analyze, and find what’s lacking, along with openness, exploration, and the expansive view that comes with inclusive understanding. I value the obvious authority of the decision makers, but find myself quickly dismissed for hesitation.

Finally, there’s the studio, and the way I wash my hands of what I do. As if there’s some kind of anthropomorphic experience where the materials act independently of myself, the artist. And so I ask questions. Am I just there? Watching it happen? It’s my mind & hands that are making it, why do I shrug off the power role? What is this naiveté, this innocence, this distancing myself from the role of Maker? Has it been acts of humility so that the focus is on the “living/breathing” work, is it a vilification of the Doer, or is it a reluctance to take responsibility for my work? Am I refusing the role, with this being about removing myself as provocateur, keeping the action neutral? Or is this respect for the ways the work is independent of self?

I keep wanting to forget the ways that I take an authoritative stand in the studio. I am the Maker, but then I want to step back behind the curtain. I say I observe. But I effect. I connect. I make. I control my materials. I push and cut, burn and hammer. I will not let the work do this, I will make it do that. Then something happens again. The comfortable authority I have when I’m alone dissolves into a deferent posture when I’m with others. I distance myself from what I know, from how I did what I did, until it becomes something that just happened. I observe others & I observe myself. I say I was hardly there. I look away.

“The wind howls, but the mountain remains still.” – Japanese proverb

* Ever since last October, I have wanted to take a closer look at my addiction to the passive voice.  This is as long as I was afraid it would be.

Left standing, it’ll be all right.

out-of-print book of verse I purchased via eBay last week: Happy Nat’l Poetry Month, I guess!

1. I keep re-starting this art making. Re-starting after having two children (had I ever really stopped?); re-starting after the loss of the adoption we had in progress (my work in the studio became the answer to the hope I’d had anyway, the better choice than having a 3rd child); re-starting after giving myself to the drive for a bone-marrow match for my friends’ daughter… . Now here I am again. Re-starting. Still. I have been working in the studio to varying degrees, I’ve had my work in shows, but it’s been a constant “returning.” Life has interrupted so much that I think I have to stop being surprised. So the choice I have is to get used to it. I want to stop the returning, the turning, the re-booting, the re-whatever. I just want to be. Over & over again I keep being afraid this privilege of artmaking will be taken away. But I want to know that come or go, interruption or no, I will still be here. Doing what I do.

2. In this order…

Winter 2009 thru Fall 2010
Tragic cancer loss of a friend under age 30; sibling got deathly ill (recovered!); friends’ daughter relapsed with leukemia; national campaign for a bone-marrow match for her + continued intense hospitalizations; close friend hospitalized with life threatening illness; then an ‘almost uneventful’ fall 2010 (other than a close call for friends’ little girl).  I re-started again in studio.

All of 2011
In January, close friend diagnosed with breast cancer (in remission!); in March my mother had risky double back surgery with 1 mo. hospitalization (ongoing slowest recovery ever); in Summer, several close calls with losing our friends’ daughter, then father diagnosed with cancer (again! but mostly recovering)… . Then in late December, my friends’ bright, beautiful, creative, brave daughter died at the age of 10.

Lately
In January, my husband was seriously injured (ruptured achilles, just this month is back to driving), both children caught something, then I injured my right shoulder (rotator cuff). Probably this was just my body’s way of saying “Enough!”

3. About that injured shoulder. I was forced to use my non-dominant left hand for almost everything. I could almost physically feel activity in parts of my brain that aren’t usually used, like sparks were connecting to make something new. At first when I washed my face with my left hand, I simultaneously felt like I was washing someone else’s face while someone else was washing my face. So much disconnection with my left hand. But I quickly became slightly ambidextrous, and what seemed so unnatural at first became just something I do. Getting used to it. My shoulder is healing, and I am painting again, but I am being Very. Careful.

4. Part of the studio re-entry the past couple years was a necessary look at ways to exhibit my work. Besides making natural connections via Twitter or Facebook, I entered shows and applied to fellowships and grants. Each of these have been crucial in defining my work for myself as I defined it for others. Even updating my website made it possible to clarify my work by themes I’ve been investigating, and I’ve been able to see consistent threads (literally & figuratively) throughout my work. But I was mixed up. While I needed the framework of deadlines for the calendar of scheduling my studio time, I started to think that showing my work was the end I was looking for. Would it be seen? Heard? Understood? But now after many months of not seeking exhibition spaces (or fellowships or grants), I’ve realized that the greatest need I have is just the making itself. The inquiries I make with the materials at hand, the push for meaning in the images at my fingertips, this is what I need. Yes, I want to exhibit my work. Yes, I want to participate in the dialogue. Yes, I want a career out of this thing. But I can’t lose sight of the hours I spend alone in that studio. It means more to me than all the rest. If I can’t stand working without being preoccupied with who will see my work, how can I stand at all?

5. A recent visit to LACMA’s “In Wonderland” (as well as seeing their permanent exhibitions) really brought to mind for me the place that obscure artists play in the art world. Or wait, it’s actually about something else entirely… What place does the recognition of the art world play in the lives of these obscure artists? Did it really matter? For example, I saw the work of Sylvia Fein. (There’s always a big chance that I’m the rare one who doesn’t know a certain artist’s work). Here is this living artist who’s been working since at least the 1940′s. I was moved by her paintings that I saw (here’s one: The Tea Party, 1943.) There were several artists in this exhibition whose work I hadn’t seen (or heard of) before, and I followed with the “where are they now” inquiry. Who are (were) they? Where have they shown? What did they do? The bulk of the work at this show was from 1930-1970. And I found a poem by Hugh Chisholm that was paired with a piece by Kay Sage in a magazine. His poem, so vivid. His name, only in google search with additional terms. (And why are there so many notable Hugh Chisholms anyway?) So what makes a work worth doing, life worth living? Is it what people say about you when you’re gone, or who you are when you are here?

pic of Kay Sage’s “Blood Machine” along with Hugh Chisholm poem in 1943 magazine

6. “Do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing” – Jesus, the Gospels. It’s a reference to giving to the poor, but when I think of the notion of artmaking as giving, I think it applies here. There’s value in operating in two separate ways concurrently- keeping the meaningful work that I’m doing apart from the outward display of it. But the assumption in the quote above is that a person is using both hands, not just one. I’m trying to get used to this “new normal” I’ve had for a few years by integrating loss into my daily living, using my left hand along with the right, forcing the new normal as I have less function on the right.  There is much to consider in this mini-parable.

6. So if I just stand still so that I’m left standing in the end, isn’t that all right?

DOUBLE TAKE

Wait a second… researching this poet further… geez, he was briefly married to Bridget Tichenor, an American born Mexican surrealist painter… whose work I saw at LACMA… whose painting was featured in an article I read in An Xiao’s article in Hyperallergic…. So, I see how he was a part of this scene of painters… and yet notes of his work say merely “war correspondent for NBC news”. Hmm. Graduated from Cambridge, published in the Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker… and then… who knows. I love biography, and connections, and the record of a life left behind.

Anyways, several paintings will be shown Gallery Ehva in Provincetown, MA: June 1st-13th in the show “Good Vibrations.” I will also show work at the 6th Int’l Encaustic Conference Hotel Fair at the Provincetown Inn on Sunday, June 3.

Here we go

spacecraft re-entry (ATV-1 Jules Verne)

And so here goes the re-boot of whatever work I was doing in November. Re-entry. I have two paintings in progress in the studio, my sketchbook is getting active again, I’m re-vamping my website (under construction here) (now live here- May 2012), slowly catching up on my favorite art blogs, listing out what needs to be photographed, taking inventory, and thinking through what work I will present at the hotel art fair that’s a part of the 6th Int’l Encaustic Conference in Provincetown (fill the room!). I need to have more panels made to spec. I need to organize 2011 receipts for taxes.

I am working.

I get by with a little help…

“Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.” -Alexander Pope

While I rush ahead in one way (graduating from both high school & art school pretty early, 16 & 20 respectively), I lag in others (actually making my artwork happen, showing it publicly.) It’s been 16 years since I got my BFA. I used to be frustrated about spending time & money on an undergrad education that didn’t hand me a ready-made emerging art career, but the truth is, I wasn’t ready. (And who wants one of those ready-made anyway? Oh wait, some people do.) But I’ve written before about what it means to me to be an emerging artist. Or have an emerging career. Whatever.

So I am writing this to make a note of the fact that it’s really okay that I am not “there” yet. Maybe this is just an “I know that you know what I know because I told you everything myself.“

Let me list the ways I have gotten help to go from making art & showing no one, to finally showing my work (just two places in 2008 & 2009), to working & showing more regularly.

• Worked at BlankSpace Gallery in Oakland (now closed) in Fall 2009, made connections with people who introduced me to a fellow working artist with a kid! (Jeanne Lorenz) in Fall 2010; she pointed me to valuable resources (a local framer who’s affordable*! He helped me cut panels to spec– for free!– when I was at a loss as to how to have them constructed at an affordable cost.) (Hello, panels!) These were for the paintings included in While You Wait: at Extra Gallery, NYC. I do not have a woodshop.
• Took a class in professional practices in Fall 2010 from Jamie Brunson, at Kala Art Institute. She is a wealth of information. Really. So much packed into 4 classes. She urged me to take risks. So I have. I also connected with two Bay Area artist friends. They were in attendance at #Rank in Miami for the reading of my script. Ron Saunders (currently at Sirron Norris in San Francisco, earlier this year at Krowswork in Oakland) and Dana Zed (upcoming artist-in-residence at the De Young Museum.)
• Participated in #Rank at the Miami art fairs last year, an event that in most ways didn’t accomplish what the organizers wanted. Still, I gleaned so much experience there, and met many twitter friends in person. However disturbing it was (processing the varied strata of the art world), it was a powerful experience. And it’s pretty great to say I had work there, even if I know my work was included as a part of the free-for-all that was the #Rank event.
• Learned encaustic painting from Hylla Evans, also at Kala. I finally found my painting medium. I left the painting department in SFAI in my first semester there (switched to New Genres Dept). I’ve painted in watercolor, oil, and acrylic, but encaustic is everything I want in a paint. ♥ ♥ ♥ And I love Hylla’s paints. I could wax poetic about encaustic, but I think you’d get sick of me. ;)
  
• Jamie Brunson pointed me to someone to professionally photograph* my work. No amount of googling led me to a photographer who did that, and I was at a loss. My work is difficult to photograph, and I am not skilled with the camera. Jamie also referred me to JoJo Razor to get help with my blog/website last Fall. She is a pro. Although I have to take over the design & workings of my website so that it will become something I can completely update in-house, I highly recommend her for artist websites. I will soon have a site using WPFolio to put together a functional online portfolio, and I have Brian Piana to thank for letting me know (via Twitter) about that option. I needed a site that could seamlessly host my wordpress blog as well, so that was the way to go. Coming soon: Launch of my new website.
  
• Hylla Evans sent me to someone who could build panels to spec*, because I can’t manage to love the basic sizes. (Again, no amount of googling connected me with such a person.) His panels are AMAZING. I’m attached to sizes that build off the 8.5″ x 11″ sheet of paper. I splurged on those panels in the spring, but have yet to afford to buy more. Enter the local framer. He offered to cut panels to size for me, whenever I needed. For free. Told me not to buy equipment. Wow.
  
• Twitter. This is the place where I have an art community. People go to art openings and post pics. People complain about art happenings. Whatever is “important” that day (is any of it?) I hear about it there. Hyperallergic is an art blog out of Brooklyn, and it’s pretty much where I get the coverage of a variety of artworld things of interest to me. I don’t have time to find all that information myself. It’s great to periodically review the posts there and catch up.
• Speaking of Twitter, I recently tweeted my dilemma over the troubled re-write of my artist statement. I labored over it until I hit a wall & could do no more. I got feedback from Amy Berk (see below.) Still, I was at a loss with the last sentence. Here is where Sharon Butler of TwoCoatsofPaint stepped in to save the day (Two Coats is a blog specific to painting that I follow.) She tossed me a last sentence, and she gave me the words to drop the passive voice in my statement. (Passive voice- a whole other blog post.) I was finally able to come up with the last sentence I wanted, and she helpfully tweaked that as well. I finally finished it last Thursday.
• This last Saturday, Nov. 5th, was the opening of the show “Tweet/Cry/Connect/Drink/Soar”, the culmination of a class I took from Amy Berk, the Program Chair for Contemporary Practice at the San Francisco Art Institute. This particular class “Exhibit Art” was thru UC Berkeley Extension. We met three times before installing the show. I am not in their Post-Bacc program, but my husband saw this class listing and thought it was the right fit for me. He was right.
  
• Yes, I needed to take a class on exhibiting art. I needed to learn how to select & present my work. I had to make a case for the work I chose and what I envisioned. I had never printed postcards for a show. I had never installed my own work in a show, nor have I ever had this many pieces in one place at one time (eight!) and they take up more wall space than ever before. Okay, I said it. I am that inexperienced. I learned about the best way to arrange work, and got great feedback about the terrible frame I had for “Artifact from an Anthropological Experience.” Fixed it myself, now I love it. Promoting the show was another skill I needed. And all in all, the biggest lesson: Just do it. I am very pleased to have worked with some great artists in this class, as we are all in different stages of emerging. Staging an art show really is an art in itself. I’m very happy with my work, the artists, and the show. The opening was fantastic. A great turnout, and we had an impromptu artist walk-through. I seriously talked about my work to over 25 people. And I made sense. And no one fell asleep.
  
• Lastly: friends. I have made a number of artist friends on twitter that have become more than just twitter contacts. Because of twitter, I have gained the essential art community I need, one that fits into my hurried life as a scattered parent  & community volunteer. The support I receive from them (it’s impossible to list them all) is key in my mental survival as an artist. It really means so much to have meaningful dialogue with them, to meet them in person as the opportunity arises, to get a little online message to have a great opening, and to know I have their support even when they can’t be there in person. One such friend & artist (who I met because of twitter) is Chris Rusak. He wrote an amazing bit regarding my work here. Having friends in all sorts of places- how else could I get by?

So I’ve taken my time to do what I’ve always wanted to do. I’ve always wanted to do this thing: making artwork, getting it shown, saying something of consequence in a meaningful way. Something to note: while fools rush in where angels fear to tread, there’s no mention that caution & hesitancy make it any easier. Everything seems complicated, and maybe I need a little hand holding, but basically, I just gotta do it. Angels may still fear this place where I am going, but go I must– it’s just a whole lot easier going when I’m not alone.

*Let me know if you are in the SF Bay Area and want contact info for the photographer, framer, or the panel-maker I mentioned. They don’t have websites. A-ha! This is why I couldn’t find them via Google. ;)

The ARTIST STATEMENT is under construction….

… and I hit my fingers with the hammer a couple times while constructing this thing.

I’m gonna keep posting the revisions I’m making, maybe something will make sense soon. It’s not an understatement that I screamed tiny screams several times today, and there is a little pile of hair next to my laptop. OK, kidding about the pulled out hair! I enjoy writing, but the purpose of this thing is to be straight-forward and clear about what I’m making and why I’m doing it. Right?

Version: Monday, Oct 24

I work with the space between–what is in between here and there, this and that, one person and another. My practice is based on investigations of connections between people, from the micro level of individual experience to the macro level of systems and social structure. I am interested in what is safely revealed, what is kept hidden, and what is forced to be invisible.

My paintings are made with encaustic medium to mimic the layers of personhood: information is buried under translucent layers, the blow torch sets it in place, and the interplay between surface, interior, space, & material is itself a kind of story. The video shorts are narratives derived from the interactions with materials in the studio, and earlier works use hardware supplies to find balance in back and forth communication.

(insert 2 sentences for Conclusion. Something about fragile, or about missed or almost missed connections, or about how this work accomplishes what I set out for it to do. Oh geez….)

Version: late Monday nite, Oct 24

I work with the space between–what is in between here & there, this & that, one person & another. I really like to pay attention to what is happening to the connections between people, from the micro level of individual experience, to the macro level of social structures and systems people put in place to categorize themselves and each other. I am interested in what people reveal, what they hide, what is praised and what is subjugated.

My paintings are made with encaustic medium, which is a translucent wax, resin & pigment mix. Information is buried, paint is smoothed on, the blowtorch sets it in place. The interplay of surface, interior, space, and material becomes its own story. The video shorts are narratives that came about as I interacted with materials in the studio, and earlier works use hardware supplies as a counterintuitive way to find balance in delicate back and forth communication.

The material combinations, the titles of the pieces, the layers of meaning that are built into the works then obscured with subtleties–each of these serve as a way to create expectant animation. Each piece awaits a viewer who slows down enough to listen.

(that very last sentence is annoying me. Like the pressure is all on the person looking at the art, not on my work? Is my work so great that the only reason somebody wouldn’t listen is coz they don’t slow down? doubtful…) :D sigh…. artist statements….

Version: Thursday, Nov 3

What is in between: here and there, this and that, one person and another? What is happening to the connections between us, from the micro level of individual experience to the macro level of social structures? What do we reveal when we devise systems to categorize each other? What are we hiding? What is valued? What is subjugated?

My paintings are made with encaustic, which is a translucent wax, resin & pigment mix. I smooth it on, bury information, and set the layers in place with a blowtorch. The interplay of surface, interior, space, and material becomes its own story. In earlier works, I used hardware supplies to create a counterintuitive balance, a delicate back and forth. The video narratives record the interaction that emerges in the studio between the materials and me.

The material combinations, the titles, and the layers of imagery built into each piece (then subtly obscured) create an expectation of exchange. I look for the careful listening found in that pause.

Mucho thanks to Sharon Butler of TwoCoatsofPaint – she helped me drop the passive voice in the statement and prompted the concluding sentence I finally came up with (which she then helpfully tweaked.) And so I am writing a little blog post in the next couple of days: “A Little Help Here“. I do often benefit from the kindness of strangers. I hope I am able to return the favor.

A Kind of Waiting #within: Oct 6

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(These paintings are up at Extra Gallery, NYC, now through Nov 1st.)

I began work on these paintings in the middle of the summer. The panel shapes came first, then the words followed. Friends and family members went in and out of the hospital. Quietness settled in. The words that are a part of this set of paintings wound themselves in & out of my days. I wrote them down. I crossed them out. I worked on the paintings in my mind, the place I’m most accustomed to working. The actual painting had to wait a spell, as I worked a plan to have the panels made; they were finally cut for me, for free, gratis, what a gift. I don’t own any electric saws.

The painting work became a complex paint in & paint out experience, referring back to the written work, forgetting it necessarily, and coming back in. The paintings began as one painting in five parts, and everything felt fragmented as the paintings made clear that they were not parts of a whole, but each whole in themselves. I ended up with five paintings. Finally I reached the point where I could work with them individually, instead of corralling the five in a group like messy-headed rowdy children being herded in one direction. Because you know that never works.

So I worked with the connected paintings, then made my way back to the words. The pieces of phrases that had been with me all summer arranged themselves into the story I have had with me for some time. I’m not posting the poem at this point, but the poem is there- it’s in the paintings (for the most part, not that you can read anything clearly.) This has been a step in the #within project for me. I started out placing factual statements into paintings, things plainly understood if they were read (though of course they were hidden/cut apart/buried.) And I have gotten to the point where the text for the #within paintings are another layer–poems–and there are no plain statements, and all of a sudden I am composed. In a manner of speaking. :)

Sort of what is written in the press release:

This is a set of paintings that bring attention to the mental shift that takes place when one enters, waits within, and then exits a space. The layers of encaustic paint and hidden text activate the tension between space and void, here and there, now and then. The paintings are hung in this order to be read from right to left: “Happening before I”, “Is the place of”, “Neither here nor”, “Leave me with”, and “I am left”. The titles are taken from a five stanza poem I wrote in conjunction with these paintings. Portions of the poem are buried into the paintings.

Extra Gallery NYC “While You Wait”
Oct 6 – Nov 1, 2011

The Extra Gallery is located in a semi-private space in Chelsea in New York City. If you would like to make arrangements to view the exhibition or would like more information, please contact Brian Dupont via email at briandupont@gmail.com.

Press Release is here.

This is Week #39 of #within.

Keep going #within: Sep 15

An unspoken truth doesn’t cease to exist. It doesn’t disappear into the background,
It isn’t irrelevant.
It’s the frightened surface of the lightning rod, silent and waiting for the charge.
– written by me, this summer

After so very many weeks (okay, months!!), I am making another written record of the #within project. Last night, I took my post from July out of draft mode. I wrote it but was never able to post it.

I have been painting.

in my studio yesterday

The more I paint, the less I have to say. I thought I knew what I would want each painting to say, but instead I have to listen. And sometimes I don’t like what I hear. And sometimes I don’t want to talk about it.

Here is where I first posted my thoughts on the #within project. I wrote “I am hoping to draw people in to experience this with me,” but I guess I let people in, then I suddenly felt like shouting Get out! My apologies.  I had no idea what to do with that. By Week 2, I was already starting to fixate on the notion of privacy, and I wanted it more & more. Huge conflict though: I hang out on social media a lot. I’m compelled to by my own strange desire to simultaneously connect with people and be alone.  I wrote in Week 2 that I “move forward to find a voice for quietness.” You know what that voice sounds like? Nothing. It’s absence, it’s silence, and I keep listening, and it stays the same. The voice for quietness is me shutting up. And yet I can’t. I chatter on social media and sometimes I want to slap myself for it. I also wrote “living in an open way paves the way for access.” Well, I guess by not blogging this for months, I shut down a piece of that access. But it’s also because, while I wanted to “crack open the process” of creating these works, I couldn’t crack the code. I am dealing with information, pieces of things that constitute my private life.

one of the records of info for the #within project

How did I think I could force myself to out all this information, even if I was burying it in the paintings? I rebelled against myself. Apparently I told myself You can’t tell me what to do. Well, anyway, here I am. The process is changing me. I thought I was directing the process. I laid out all these criteria on January 8^th, thinking I was charting a path for creating painted works in a way I had never done. I thought I could take the map out of my artist backpack and chart out the plan and head out on this hike. But this year has had event after event telling me I am not in control, not just of my life, but of my work. I can’t explain how so much has undermined my intentions to go in a chartered direction. It isn’t just people I love getting very sick, it isn’t just fears of their deaths, it’s the crumbling financial system, political leaders not leading, floods, earthquakes, droughts, fires, starvation, tsunamis, nuclear reactors, well… you know.

Turns out I am not the boss of me.  I’m not just taking orders. I’m just on a hike to I-don’t-know-where. I don’t know how I’ll get there, and I don’t know how long it’ll take.

This is #within, This is Week #36.

piece of paper found on an actual hike I took yesterday