Feast Your Eyes!

As one of my favorite literary characters, Auntie Mame, once said "Life's a banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death". She was a person who lived in the moment and made the most of the tough moments. Even, having to...gasp...get a job during the Depression, she did so with a cheerful attitude and never forgot to have fun. She also collected art, and artists, and a wide array of modern furniture, but with the idea that if they were all gone tomorrow...oh well. Which brings my thoughts around to the idea of possessing beauty. At one point I remember standing in front of a beautiful painting in a Santa Fe gallery done by John Axton and just being mesmerized by it. It truly spoke to me. It was large but simple, a group of rocks and shore line off a Northern California coast, and it had a powerful sense of serenity, haunting and still. I really really really wanted that painting. But the price tag said $8000.00. So it was not to be mine. I have purchased more affordable art over the years including a prized piece of James Watkins pottery, and I treasure having them in my life. Yet, lately I notice that the urge to own beauty has diminished in me. Maybe it's that second half of life thing.  I would rather just see beauty, even for a moment. beauty in art, beauty in nature, and savor that. It comes it goes. I actually feel sorry for those billionaires who buy a rare Van Gogh just so they can horde it away, hide it in their lair, with alarms and guards surrounding it, rather than donate it to a museum and say "I want to share this wonderful painting with all of you." Most beauty is for free anyway, even in the Flatlands. Drop by an art show, watch a group of folkloric dancers, look at a thunderstorm approach, notice the seasons change, even admire the texture of an old, faded door. There's always a feast for the eyes somewhere. The Auntie Mame of our family, Glenn's Aunt Marien, would sit out on her patio at Buffalo Springs Lake, glass in hand, watching the sun go down over the water, and declare: "FAN-tastic!" Every day I want to see something that makes me say that.

Eventually it will get done.

I like the idea of artistic arcs. Just like TV series that have episodes that resolve the plot in one hour, but have another ongoing plot that is referred to as the 'seasonal arc' to keep viewers tuning in. In fact, some TV shows have the all-encompassing series arc, where the final strand of the plot is not woven in until the final episode of the series. Which can feel complete and satisfying ("Buffy the Vampire Slayer") or can really frustrate and confuse ("Seinfeld", and depending on your mindset, "The Sopranos"). So, in my own 'creative' projects, I seem to have these varying arcs, like balls juggling in the air. Some projects are done in an hour, or a day, maybe a week. Some are off and on:  a painting I'll return to later, a collage that needs some element but I don't know yet what it is. Other projects are more far-reaching: a quilt block finished, but I only (!) need to make 59 more for a fabulous bed quilt. Wait, maybe I'll just do 25 blocks and turn it into a table runner. Wait, maybe I'll do 12 blocks and turn it into a wall hanging. Hmmmmm, maybe I'll take this one block and put it in an art quilt as an homage to traditional quilting. Maybe I'll glue it on paper and send someone a birthday card. OK, done. And then there are those epic projects that are so huge I can only contemplate one small portion of it at a time or I'll have a mild panic attack. As has happened with my lofty goal to scan and save every photograph from every album in our family history. Now when I started this it seemed like a summer project (summer of 2008 to be exact). Scan, save, scan, save, scan, save, etc. into a nice little virtual file in the sky so that if a tornado ever blew those family albums away those images would not be lost forever. I think I was motivated by Hurricane Katrina where I saw so many desperate people, and so many of them mourning not the loss of clothing and furniture, but of precious family photos gone forever in the flood. So my role as family historian seemed relatively simple, unless........well, it started with the old black and white photos from the 1920's and 30's. I discovered my Corel Photo program, whereby, on my computer, I could  bring up a saved photograph, remove scratches, hide tears, crop badly framed images, brighten dark shadows and darken overlit faces. I could even go Andy Warhol on it, or make it sepia toned, or zoom in on an extreme close-up. It was like a drug. I could 'fix' faded and damaged photos and make them good as new. So now my process became 'scan, fix, save'. Photo by photo. Some were just fine, others took up to half an hour or more to get right. The black and white images from the WWII years held up the best. As did many photos from my childhood in Africa. Then colour came into the picture. We've all seen how those colour photos from the 60's and 70's have faded and washed out. So now on top of fixing damage I was also brightening colour. I was like Paul Simon's cheerful song "Kodachrome". ("They give us the nice bright colours, they give us the greens of summer, make you think all the world's a sunny day..." ). Right now I have finally reached the Seventies. Only three more decades to go. But wait, those are the photo-heavy decades, the ones crammed full of pictures of my children at every age from birth through college and slightly beyond. All my pre-Seventies photos can fit into two albums. From that time onward I have eight overstuffed, giant albums of various milestones of growth, vacations, holidays, school events, staged portraits, and random goofiness. Those albums look awfully daunting. This may be the epic series arc, the one that ends with me on my deathbed reaching for a snappy version of a combo iPad/scanner/TV/music system/phone/camera/microwave/hair dryer and pushing that scan button one last time. Done!

Draw, yeh Varmint!

In one classic old west Bugs Bunny cartoon, Yosemite Sam, always in need of anger management, fingers his holsters and demands that Bugs draw, to which, in true Bugs style, he takes out paper and pen and whips out a competent sketch. Sam then proceeds to attempt the same but, tongue out in belabored concentration, keeps trying then erasing, trying then erasing, until the inevitable explosion of temper occurs. It's a funny bit because besides being a play on words, there's the meta-level idea of a cartoonist drawing someone who can't draw. Not to mention, it plays into our own frustrations of attempting the same.

I mentioned in the last blog about children just naturally drawing, scribbling, dabbling in fingerpaints, embracing their Crayola time, without worrying about the results. It was all in the process. But as we know, there's that moment in our growth where we become grounded in reality. We see objects in more complexity so we want our drawings to look like that object. We're not happy anymore with lollipop trees and stick figures. We see that faces are more than two dots and a curved line in a balloon head and so the frustration sets in when our drawing of Mom has lop-sided eyes, a snout nose, and a leering set of teeth. Instead of declaring "Look Mom, I'm the next Picasso. Alert the media!" we toss it away in frustration.
I feel the truly great art teachers are those that, given a decent school budget and lots of support for artistic development, work with pre-adolescents through this tough transition, not only with teaching handy skills that enable them to draw what they see, but also to draw what they don't see. Design, color, abstraction, impression, collage, decoration, even collective projects, allow children to experience art at more than just the level of realism. This is when imagination can soar. Or it can die on the vine with endless exercises in coloring inside the lines.
Next time I feel frustration with a piece of art, or just feel my creativity is dried up, I'll try to banish my inner Yosemite Sam before my head explodes, and let that subversive, free spirit Bugs loose. Besides, he loves to dress in drag and he's also a great dancer.

Can Do

A certainly family member who shall remain nameless has what I call 'that old can't-do attitude'. But she's not the only one. Over the years teaching high school I heard many of my students tell me "I can't do that" when confronted with a new skill. Automatically, without evening thinking of a different reply. Just an immediate denial. Nope, not gonna do it. There are two interpretations of that response:
A) I'm too damn lazy to try and it doesn't interest me.
B) I won't look cool in front of my friends because I'm insecure and afraid of failure.

Which brings me back to art and creativity. Among my adult friends I often hear a response to doing art akin to the idea that art is magic and certain people are magicians. Lines and squiggles, paint and clay, turn into recognizable objects, clever patterns, appealing designs. Presto! Still they sigh and say "oh I wish I could be an artist but I don't have any talent." If wishes were horses they could ride a palomino into the sunset. So after many years of hearing this I finally have a response. I say "If you want to play a musical instrument or learn to cook what do you do?" The usual response is "I'd sign up for a class." (cricket sounds, while they mull their answer over). I then say "Well, why don't you sign up for an art class?"  (pause). What it then comes down to is another variation of responses A and B that my high school students used to give me. But my thought is if you want to do something just try it. There are so many classes and courses, so many online resources, so many guides and tools and DVDs, it's almost irresistable. Which brings me to one friend, who, when she turned 50, got that artistic urge and asked my advice. I pointed her first to basic community center arts and crafts classes, suggested trying an art journal or doodling in a sketchbook, trying different media to see what appealed to her. Long story short, and certainly more her own desire and drive than my brief advice, she is now a college student working on a degree in art. It's not always been easy. What new skill is? But she has now demystified the magic of art. Early semester clumsy sketches turn into more refined drawings. Awkward lines becomes elegant. Observing becomes second nature. Hand-eye co-ordination sharpens. Ideas flow more easily from brain to fingers.

Remember as little children we struggled to walk, and talk, express ourselves, tie a shoe, scribble trees on paper, do happy dances to music. We didn't give up then. It was a natural impulse to persevere. We weren't aware of looking or feeling foolish, only of completing that goal and grinning broadly when we achieved it. I think I can. I think I can.

Better late than never

I was a mediocre artist in college. I can admit that. Maybe I was an art major at the wrong time. The Seventies was all about do-it-yourself-discover-the process and very anti-technique. I floundered. I needed concrete instruction and exercises and I needed a gentle, coaxing method. I was too insecure, too sensitive. The tendency was towards the abstract and the art-as-therapy approach. If I wasn't exorcising my demons on canvas I was uninteresting and dismissed. (Still, a special shout out to my favorite art professor, Terry Morrow, who was never dismissive). C'est la vie. That milk has been spilt. Those tears have been wiped. My life turned out just fine anyway. My back up major, Dance, became my prime focus for over 30 years. Now I'm back at the art without anyone breathing down my neck. It's just me breathing down my own neck. If I don't like it, I throw it away. Or gesso over it. Or cut it up into tiny pieces and think: hey, there's a collage in there somewhere. Who knew? Recycle, renew.
So, it's the letter B today is it? Be all that you can Be. To Be or Not to Be. Being and Doing. Faith and Works. Do Be Do Be Do.

Absolutely Zen

How long can a project stay unfinished until you just give it a decent burial? I have quilt tops I have never quilted, paintings I have left in limbo, ambitiously started art journals that never got past page 3, a children's book with the first chapter written, and numerous bits of stitched fabric and glued, or stamped paper left like orphans in drawers. Yes, I even have a sweater I started in the Eighties, that only needs a collar to complete it but it's so out of date now I will have to wait for the next baggy, dropped shoulder, puffy sleeved era to come along to wear it.
That's why I've started working small. There's at least a hope I'll get it done. My last grand project was a queen sized quilt that lives in Lacrosse, Wisconsin. It was my Noah's Ark. Now that I know, emotionally, that my life on this earth is limited I want to do something that gets done in a day. An artwork a day, that's a reachable goal. OK, there's still that eight foot long wall hanging for an art quilt show coming up in June 2012 but I'll drag my feet on that till summer. Meanwhile, I decided to cut some watercolour paper into little squares 5"x5" and told myself that each day I would take a letter of the alphabet, and construct a 26 word poem from A to Z, accompanied by a simple ink drawing. It will take you 26 days to read this poem, much longer than it took for me to create it. It's not Shakespeare. It's not even Pablo Neruda. I love Pablo Neruda, in case you're looking for some poems to read. And I cheated on the letter X.

Everyone I know has a Blog

Frankly it's hard for me to be interesting on a regular basis. My son helped me start up this blog to record my travel diaries but I haven't been back to it since....see previous blog....2009 when I was in Montreal. I haven't been out much since then except for a fun weekend at Ojo Caliente spa near Taos, New Mexico.

I fear Emily Dickinson syndrome is setting in. So.....since I probably need an art blog more than a travel blog I am now re-designating this space for my art adventures until my next great trip.
What I've been up to is basically an ADHD journey into mixed media: a little bit of collage and a little bit of quilting, a little bit of painting, drawing, doodling, stitching, glueing, stamping, and snipping. Making a big chaotic mess in a tiny studio. I've finally reached that stage in my life where I can't NOT do art. I think that would be called a 'soft' addiction, as opposed to my hard addiction to chocolate. Whenever I am somewhere else doing something else, even sleeping, I am waiting to get back into my studio to play. I'm not afraid of failure anymore or what anybody thinks or says. I just have to do it.