hb2me

There is something to be said for a birthday and, I must now admit, for an iPhone.(can't find my camera but my iPhone helped me out here with the pix). Not bad for an old person, now that I look at it. Maybe the iPhone has a special airbrush app for such photos - LOl. The day was a treat, starting a a DELICIOUS South Indian lunch prepared by my friend Sujatha! She invited me, along with our friend Ritika, to enjoy each others' company and to share a meal better than anything you can get in a restaurant here. I didn't take pictures of the food but trust me -- it was heaven! Sujathata has promised to send me the recipe for her tomato chutney and I think I may have to barter with her for cooking lessons! Both Sujatha and Ritika are artists - they are silk painters and Sujatha also paint on canvas and does printmaking What a pleasure to share ideas and concerns about being/not being taken seriously. Paint on canvas - fine! Paint on fabric - huh? It's been a long time since I have gotten a birthday gift but today I got a few of them. A beautiful silk pouch from Sujatha and a splendid bag from Ritika that will be an asset when I have someplace elegant to go. My cousin Mimi is here from Fla for the weekend (I had to put on the heat for her!) and she came bearing gifts, too. Two gorgeous one-of-a-kind necklaces that she made. I love them and the iPhone picture doesn't do them justice. Finally, from Anne & Jeremy and the boys - gift cards to Fairway market! I am going to treat myself to exotic olives and other goodies I would not buy with my regular grocery budget. What fun! Yes, generally I blog at night because by morning I will never remember what I wanted to say. Tomorrow will be another long (not art-related)day in NY . And so to bed.

scarves and more scarves

It feels like a weekend, for some reason. It's a short week: tomorrow and then the weekend starts for me on Thursday. In the meantime,I've been working frantically for a week and think I should stop. Slow process --leaving aside the dyeing, I can only print/reprint/steam/wash/dry maybe 3 scarves a day (or night) . Here are a few smidgens from the last two days: Now, having worked, shopped for appliances for my daughter, voted (for naught - ICK!!!!), gone to Target, cooked dinner and caught up on the phone with a friend, I am ready for bed. Studio tomorrow.

I grew up in a hardware store. My grandfather started it as a hay and feed store at the turn of the century and in the late 50's my father turned it into a wholesale contractors' supply business. But to me it was always a magic place, full of everything imaginable: penny nails, house paint, pyrex, light bulbs, and other wonders too numerous to mention. God, I loved that place...right up until the heartbreaking end. Once in a while I still find a local hardware store that is cluttered and smells wonderful and it makes me want to cry. On the left is grandpa and on the right, my father, when he still had hair, in the 1930's. He starting losing his hair in his 20's and I never knew him any way but bald. (But I digress.) We owned the building, which was built early in the 20th century, when it housed a dance hall on the second floor - with ticket window, a coat room and a stage for performances. The third floor was a big loft space that I would kill to have now. 180 was (and is) on the main street, in an urban area not far from the railroad station, away from the expensive shopping area of town. I suspect that my fascination with found objects, old buildings and graffiti as well as my urban sensibility (although I grew up in the 'burbs)came from my love for and memories of that hardware store and somewhat gritty neighborhood. Last week I read a review of a new restaurant in town -cuisine of Trinidad and was shocked to see that it was at 180. On Thursday night, after attending a wake around the corner, I suggested, with mixed feelings, that we try it for dinner. For 20 years, it has broken my heart to drive by that building which we no longer own --but I wanted to try that food. I am so glad we went. The food was delicious (akra fritter appetizer) followed by curry, Caribbean style. The interior of the space is no longer recognizable (unless you know it intimately as we do) and the former ugly laundromat that occupied it after us has been replaced by a bright, clean space where I could just feel the good karma. I feel that space is happy at last. In Jewish tradition, you walk around the block to signal the end of the mourning period and the beginning of moving on with your life. After 2 decades of mourning that building, I believe that meal was my walk around the block.

artist's statements

I hate writing them. I think they are silly and serve no purpose except to keep the viewer from thinking for him/herself. But just once, writing an artist's statement changed my understanding of my own work. When a gallery director asked me 5 or 6 year ago to write an artist's statement for a mixed media show she had curated, I rolled my eyes and asked what she wanted. "Tell me what you do and why you do it," she said. I spread out the work from three years earlier up to the (then) present and it was a revelation. When I looked at a lot of pieces together,I knew immediately what my work was about. Granted, my processes and subject matter were not always the same. On the surface, they were very different, but there was a common undercurrent that colored my work. Once I saw what I was doing, the "why" was easy and the artist's statement wrote itself. Since then, I have modified it slightly and wrapped it into my bio, but it gave me an insight that is either worth its weight in gold, or, as we used to say in my family, "that and a nickel will get you on the subway." I don't have to spread out my work now to know that it is going through a transition and that the undercurrent has changed in the past two years. We all go through these transitions, during which we experiment and may change not only a point of view but visual context. It's part of the deal when you are an artist, I think. Nevertheless, I urge you, if you haven't done so, to spread out your work on the floor from at least the last 1-3 years and find the common thread; the subtext that makes your work yours alone. And then write a "tell me what you do and why you do it," just for yourself.

voices

Thanks for all your interesting comments and discussion on my last post. You got me thinking about so many things that I can't even organize what I want to say. I will get to it. Tonight, I am hand-stitching a piece of cloth I printed maybe 4 years ago. It is part of my Poland series; a tribute to the memory of those rescuers - the Righteous who risked their lives to save or hide Jews during the war. I hand wrote as many names as I could fit on the cloth; "ordinary" people who were, in fact, extraordinary, including The Danish People, the entire French village of Le Chambon, and Sempo Sugihara, Japanese Counsul to Lituania. November 15th will be our annual open studios at 66 Franklin St. Last year, I stuck this piece on the wall and two people said that I should let them know when I finished it because they wanted to buy it. I am not sure I want to sell it, but I am going to finish it and gallery-wrap it before the studio tour. If either of them comes back, we'll see. As I have been stitching, I have been thinking that it is recognizable as mine -- my voice, loud and clear. But what does this mean? The processes are not mine: other people make screenprints and write with syringes around and around till they have finished their stories. And other people put hand stitching into their work and gallery-wrap it. True, I own the image, the essay is my stream of consciousness --my words; my hand. But still, what makes it identifiable as mine? What does it mean to find our voices? Sherryl commented... Finding my own voice.... I love that statement. I hate what it stands for. To me, it means that you have so narrowed down what you do that you no longer experiment. I don't agree. Your voice can sing different tunes - but it is still your voice. And it is while you are learning the new melodies -- experimenting -- that you strengthen your voice. I'm working in a different style now, but even within these new pieces, there is something that makes them uniquely mine (or at least I hope so). What is it that makes your work identifiable as yours, despite forays into exerimenting with different materials, palettes, techniques, or mediums?

Cézanne & American Modernism

A periodic recurrence on the Quiltart list is carping about how someone's quilt is a knockoff of Mary Famous' work and how terrible that she (or he) has been so influenced by Ms. Famous, from whom she may or may not have taken a class. The list members throw up their virtual hands in horror as a beat-the-dead-horse discussion ensues about imitation: flattery or dishonesty? Should the piece be banned from a juried show? What are the copyright issues? Blah blah blah blah. Sigh. Have we forgotten about cross-pollination among/between friends or students/teachers? I have often mentioned the musical influences between Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein -- so strongly intertwined that sometimes, on hearing an unfamilar musical phrase, I am unsure for a moment which one of them composed the piece. A few notes later, it becomes obvious who it was...but the influence is clear. Ditto Hayden & Mozart. So what? Nobody complained that Picasso, Braque, and Juan Gris created work that was practically indistinguishable, one from the other. And nobody blackballed Cezanne for painting some pieces that were strongly influenced by Matisse, with whom he had studied and referred to as his master. This afternoon, Marty and I went to a fascinating exhibit at the Montclair (NJ) Art Museum. The exhibition, 10 years in the planning and organizing, showed the influence of Cézanne on many American artists -- some you might never have heard of, like Morgan Russell. And others like Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, Maurice Prendergast, Max Weber, Arshile Gorky, and even Man Ray. The Cézannes were juxtaposed with similar paintings by the Americans who were studying Cézanne's methods of working. None is as good as the Cézannes, but some were quite well done. (I stealth-snapped this painting with my iPhone. All that pattern going on is clearly à la Matisse.) Bottom line for many of the Americans in the exhibition is that eventually, most of them found their own way of integrating some of those techniques/influences into their work as they found their voices. Some went in a totally different direction. But the artists who never stopped imitating; never found their own voices, are the ones we have never heard of. Lessons learned? If you are anywhere within driving distance of Montclair, NJ, go see this exhibit. I will go back at my leisure and see it again. It is on till January.

home but where have I been?

Saturday was my son Jeremy's 40th b.d. so I went to give him his present and stayed to watch my grandson David(almost 9) play football for the last half of the game. Then some grocery shopping and a visit to my mother. All of this, in the rain, and fortunately, yesterday was warm so it wasn't bad. The woods were at their autumn peak, and in the rain the trees looked too gorgeous not to photograph again. I wish I could bottle the colors and fragrance of fall. I'm so happy when the woods look like this! You're probably sick of looking at these views from my kitchen window every five minutes, but I can't help it: I'm addicted. When we were seriously thinking we would have to move I went into mourning for these woods and my kitchen. Everything else was expendable. Friday and Saturday nights, I printed some of those dyed scarves. A few, I am happy with, altho these pix don't really do them justice. One I don't want to part with; the rest need more layers. So I am off to the basement to add/delete.

back to work!

Came home to this glorious color and this morning, shot it with my iPhone, just to see how the resolution would turn out.  Not bad.

I finally got my quilts off to the San Jose Museum yesterday, overnight mail:-(...that's what I get for being a slowpoke.  Meantime, I have quilts scattered all over my sewing room, which is not at its worst but not at its best, either.  Do I need to straighten it before I leave for the studio? Nah.

I dyed a pile of scarves yesterday as a base for whatever it is I do with them.  We have open studios at 66 Franklin Street on November 15 and I hope to have a pile of scarves to sell.  Just got in 3 dozen from Dharma and they seem to be sewn with silk thread, so that's good. I plan to transform as many as possible today - at least with one layer, for starters.

Before I run to the studio, I just want to share a few pieces from our Art Cloth Network "gallery" (aka - show and tell) which broke up the business parts of our meeting. 

Sue Jones helps hold this piece while Russ Little talks about his process.

Susan Ettl helps display Susie Monday's work as she talks about it.

And here, Sue Jones discusses her concept and process.

There are artists out there creating amazing cloth! Which puts the pressure on me to get out the door before the day gets away from me.

R.I.P. flip phone

Boo hoo - I love this phone.  But I couldn't find my charger -- although I could have sworn I packed it. So, the phone was destined to die during the five days I was here. Sunday morning, after Bev Snow and I walked 3 miles to breakfast, we headed to the AT&T store so i could buy another charger.  But did they have one? Of course not; this phone that I loved so much is so old they no longer make it.  So I asked for their cheapest upgrade. Without going into a long story, suffice it to say that I ended up with a phone I never wanted but everybody tells me I will be happy that I have. Maybe eventually, but so far it's a learning curve, just like my macbook was.

Still trying to figure it out, but everybody who has one is welcoming me into the cult. I guess I can learn to love it if I can figure out how to get my voice mail. Here I am, outside the gallery where we had our art cloth exhibit, with Bev Snow and Susie Monday. Maybe I am making progress.

We spent this afternoon doing "meet the artists" and here are some shots of the work.

 

Going back to Sunday, after the cell phone debacle, Bev Snow, Russ Little and I took the tram and the bus and then walked to the Menil Collection - a most wondrous private art collection that we were so happy to have seen. They wouldn't allow pictures but all I can say is that if you are ever in Houston, do not miss this remarkable museum.  Here are some things we saw on our walks around Houston (and by the way, several people said to us, "you WALKED? Nobody in Houston walks."  Look what they are missing.

 

Early flight tomorrow - more when I can.

Internet at last!!

I've been in Houston since Saturday and only now have Internet access at the hotel. Don't ask! So now you're in for either a very long post or several long ones while I catch up on everything. Saturday afternoon, Russ Little and I met at the hotel and took the tram to the convention center. We didn't have a lot of time to spend but I had to see a bunch of people, so we headed to the vendor aisles. Here we are at the start of the afternoon. The first person we ran into was Cathy Arnett, who was working at the Embellishment Village booth. Cathy and I have never met face-to-face so it was good to do so, especially since I will be teaching at Fabrications Retreat next September. This picture of us isn't great but the other one was worse, so you get this one! Cathy is wearing a scarf she bought from me several months ago. Over at the C&T booth, Jane Davila had just left to go over to Make It U and Lynn Koolish (my editor) was left to man the booth herself. Can you tell what a terrible time she was having? She was demonstrating the new line of Liquitex soft acrylics that will now be available in quilt shops so that people who do surface design will have easy access to paints. Behind Lynn, the booth was loaded with all the wonderful little quilts created with those paints,including two that I made. The diversity of art was a pleasure to see!Here's Leslie Jenison, who was over at Make It University, demonstrating gelatin printing. She had just finished and we were waiting for Jamie Fingal to finish up so we could have coffee with them and chat for a bit. Pokey came over to say hi while we were waiting, and Susan Brubaker Knapp, who had just finished teaching, came over for a hug. Susan and I first met at Quilt Market in Portland last year when she took a schoolhouse class I was teaching. Now she's got a book out. Goodness, what a group! Russ and I did have a little time to see the quilts but I was not comfortable taking pictures of them. However, I had to take one photo of the wonderful German Forest installation. This doesn't begin to give you the idea of how amazing this exhibit was, but it's all I have.After the show closed, Russ and I met Jane Aldoretta and went out for a delightful evening and good dinner. It was soooo great to catch up with Jane and I can't wait to go out to Grand Junction again one of these days. She's got plans to open a wonderful, big, new studio and classroom space in January 2010 that will probably be a mecca for that whole area. There were people I didn't have a chance to see because there was so little time. We had hoped to go back the next day but Sunday turned out to be quite a different sort of day, which I will post about tomorrow.