Creating art challenges me on every level: emotional, psychological, intellectual and even physical lately! It stretches me and continues to open doors and windows in my mind, pushes me to contemplate innumerable possibilities for each artistic idea, to problem solve and always ask “what if?” It is an often frustrating, endlessly stimulating, exhilarating, and ultimately satisfying endeavor. Creating the work is one thing. There is a vulnerability and presence necessary to be with and respond to the work in process. An openness to possibility. Putting the work out into the world for audience consumption demands a different mindset.
This summer was a period of intense artistic exploration: papermaking, cyanotype, sculptural paper, natural ephemera collecting, drying and embedding. Different processes demand different setups. Since my studio is small, I needed to get inventive
After a year of waiting for COVID-19 restriction to allow for in-person workshops I was finally on my way to Womens Studio Workshop (WSW). A tuition grant from Surface Design Association (a fantastic, fiber and textile focused organization, journal and resource), allowed me to financially access a paper making studio and a hands-on learning experience.
I was excited. I was finally unloading the dry box where the paper that I pulled from the last week had been drying between felts and cardboard (read the last post to see what happened last week). Found ephemera was layered between different paper combinations. Layering these materials while wet and unstable means that I could only make educated guesses as to what it would look like when dried into a paper sheet. Only through experimenting with different pulp combinations and materials was I able to see which was the most successful in interpreting my vision. Abaca and flax, cotton and abaca or flax, two layers of flax or abaca etc.
On daily walks I collect birds’ nests and eggshells. A small but poignant reference to the cycle of life, nurture and industry, ingenuity and adaptability, I marvel at the intricacy and variety of materials found within each nest. I admire birds’ problem-solving abilities in making use of whatever materials are available at the time. This ingenuity parallels how artists work and how women adapt and improvise while juggling many expectations, demands and limitations in daily life. For a long while I have envisioned deconstructing these nests and with the eggshells and other found organic ephemera, embedding them within handmade translucent sheets of abaca paper capturing and preserving their resilience in another organic material.
One of the ways I recharge my creative battery is by looking at other artist’s work. Studio visits and viewing art in person is integral to the cultivation of my own processes and development. Understanding other artist’s use of materials, both technically and conceptually, give me new strategies to utilize in my own explorations. After months of lockdown and closures I craved the intimate experience of in-person art viewing.
In my last blog post I wrote about the abundance of amazing classes, processes and materials that I wanted to learn about and work with this summer. I was excited and hopeful about the way these things would find their way back into my work and bring the work to where I see it next. But as so often happens, life can interrupt. Albeit in very glorious and insistent ways but interrupt just the same.
I want to know it all. Perhaps it is because I got a late start in art, as it is a second career. With every new thing I learn there are four more things that I want to learn. Each exploration into a material brings its own questions, avenues of exploration, and possible paths to follow.
From a young age I enjoyed going to garage sales, antique stores and secondhand fairs. There's something about the thrill of discovering an object that has a history of its own that resonates with me.
I’ve been thinking about the influence of the seasons upon the work I am motivated to create. In the Fall and Winter, with ongoing pandemic fears and shutdowns, tumultuous chaos in the world, the shortened, colder days, and early darkness, I often felt overwhelmed. I was content to be tucked inside, fire going, tea kettle whistling, my focus narrowing into specific projects that could be broken into smaller parts. It helped to calm my overwhelmed brain, curbed the sense of having little control. It gave order and structure that felt manageable.
I woke up the morning after the installation of Emergence (read more here), already brimming with ideas. It was incredibly satisfying to see the piece come to fruition in a space. It also immediately presented alternative iterations and created questions for me. I see this piece taking over and invading a space: crawling across a wall, creeping around a corner, seeping up onto the ceiling, and spilling onto the floor. I want to think about the negative space more than I did this time around. Think about how different installations can evoke different interpretations.
Through lockdown, pandemic restrictions and fears, political unrest, economic hardship and civil unrest; through a fraught administration change, a growing hope for a return to kindness, and the possibility of effective vaccines… Emergence grew and morphed similarly to the atmosphere I was steeped in did.
I savor the tactile feel of the paper, sewn binding, the smell of paper and ink deep in the pages. I escape to other realms, and once immersed, I am oblivious to the outside world.
I was able to print last week for the first time in many, many months. After a tumultuous year of anxiety, isolation and the pandemic, returning to the Center for Contemporary Printmaking (CCP) felt like coming home.
When Lynn Farrand, the curator of the Contemporary Museum of Art Thousand Oaks (CMATO) called me last spring 2020 to do an iteration of The Memory Project at the museum I was thrilled. Lynn was introduced to my work during the open call for Defining Beauty. My work was not accepted into the exhibition but what Lynn offered was an incredible opportunity. How could I pass this up? Yet how could I do it?
I own this little piece by my artist friend Annette Lieblein
It is a collage where you can see the word yes stenciled on it. She shared with me that when she was little, she did not like being told no and so she wrote the word yes over and over on pieces of paper and strung them from her ceiling. I love this image of a small girl looking up at and being surrounded by “Yes.” Yes to life. Yes to possibility. Yes.
At times, the harder I try to grasp a memory, the more ephemeral and elusive it is, like mist disappearing as I advance through it, always remaining just beyond touch. Other times, a memory feels hard and brittle, focused and razor sharp. I think about how memory shape-shifts, changes as I move forward, and as my understanding of the past changes.
When I was dying cocoons with oak gall and walnut ink, tea bags and coffee grounds, I looked at all of the stained teabags and felt reluctant to toss them. This happens when I am captured by a material. At first I am not even sure what it is that draws me to it. Locked in at home all spring and beyond because of New York’s shelter at home orders, I knew I was fortunate. We were financially secure, had access to outside space and could work from home. I thought about the myriad lived stories across the world during this global pandemic. Each family with its own set of experiences. Children returning home, grandparents moved in for the duration – or worse, prohibited from contact with loved ones. Essential and health care workers on the front lines risking their own lives for others. I wondered what I would remember and hold onto from these long and difficult months.
At times I find it difficult to return to the studio. This is most true after a break of a couple of days, or worse, weeks! This happens often enough with life’s demands. My attention, time, emotional energy and commitment are focused elsewhere. Returning to the studio afterwards and struggling against inertia, can feel like I am wading through molasses. Art projects and the effort necessary to realize a vision suddenly feel too large and make me avoid the studio.
Every year I look forward to taking down the Christmas tree. My favorite part is wrapping the ornaments. I don’t get to see each as we hang them, and not all the stories get retold every year. Each has its own history: who made it or gifted it, which ones were handed down over years, or were made by my children. My favorite ornament when I was a child was a fragile glass icicle. I coveted it and was thrilled to choose it when my siblings and I divvied up the family ornaments years ago. I do not much like it now yet once upon a time, I cherished it above all others.
