couldn't be happier

I have noticed recently, whilst driving all these great distances up and down and around the Hudson Valley and environs, crows. Or maybe ravens, but I think crows.

I have always loved crows. There's a park across the street from my house and one of the big old trees there was a roost tree -- until the West Nile epidemic in 2005. Since then, virtually no crows. But recently, and so very happily, I have begun to see them again.

Last year, I noticed one or two or, at most, three at a time. This year, small flocks. This is a very unscientific sampling, but I am so happy about it. Crows.

co-incidence

What a coincidence -- according to to day's post over at The Writer's Almanac , today is the day that Moby Dick was first published -- to no acclaim whatsoever. A "damp drizzly November in my soul" and a case of a prophet being without honor in his own country indeed.

I was thinking a lot about the book today. My friend Denise and I went to the Dia in Beacon -- and it was glorious. But also very, very white. Rooms full of extremely ascetic paintings by Robert Ryman -- white paintings on white walls, which are purely about the paint itself and the painting's relationship to & with the wall (or other supports). Years ago, I saw an exhibition of his paintings in San Francisco and was so baffled I asked the guard if the paintings had been hung. What a difference two decades makes in my willingness to understand. I was very enthusiastic about the paintings but was interested to find that the longer I spent in the room, the more unsettled I was becoming by All That White. And I wondered if the oft-quoted line in MD "It was the whiteness of the whale that appalled me" has as much to do with the epic size of the whale as with its unnatural color.

But the most transcendent thing in the museum, I think, is Richard Serra's Torqued Ellipses -- four huge vessels (as Denise calls them) in a room only just big enough to contain them that have profound mythic, shamanic presence. From the website: " in these works space shifts and moves in wholly unpredictable and unprecedented ways: so destabilizing yet so beguiling is this sensation of movement that the spectator quickly gets caught up in an exploration of extended duration." Walking around and into these works was like walking into the womb of the time-- disorienting, then exalting.

Then there were several -- I don't know what to call them -- pieces? works? by Fred Sandback who is probably at the most extreme edge of minimalism. The works are simply outlines formed by tautly strung acrylic yarn. They create the illusion of glass panels, but there is literally nothing there.

About Sandback, also from the museum's website: "The first sculpture I made with a piece of string and a little wire was the outline of a rectangular solid . . . lying on the floor. It was a casual act, but it seemed to open up a lot of possibilities for me," Fred Sandback wrote in 1986, looking back over twenty years of activity to a seminal sculpture he had executed in 1966. The key implications of that determining impulse remain at the heart of his practice today. In wanting to create sculpture that did not have an inside, he found through this seemingly "casual act" the means to "assert a certain place or volume in its full materiality without occupying and obscuring it."

This experience of looking at something that was simultaneously there and not there was really delightful. I thought pieces were very playful. I used to not like being played with in this way, but I hope that as my understanding and appreciation of the goals of artists that I found and find challenging grows, that I will continue to be less troubled by the feeling that I'm being had in some nefarious and mean-spirited way and be more genuinely engaged.

It was a wonderful day -- lots to think about, much inspiration, and a good time with a good friend.

macro II

hmmmmm. This is a lot more dynamic in my mind. Well, it's still early days. These are some of the things I've been thinking about attaching. Twigs (imported from Massachusetts), twine, shiny metal rounds. The cats knocked over a stack and some photocopies of that hand tumbled out, so I thought I'd put one down and see what I think. And I think . . . maybe. I think it may be -- all together now -- too much color.

The eternal conversation of art vs. craft arose recently over at Karen's place. I was reminded -- several years ago, I worked a needlepoint (kit) of the fairly famous quotation from William Morris: "Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful." I find the verbs provocative (a reliable function of verbs). I think you can know if something is beautiful, not just believe it. On the other hand, I have a three-story house stuffed to and beyond the gills with a plethora of things that may or may not be useful -- and I find that much harder to gauge with any accuracy.

And so to bed, leaving both twigs and philosophy for another time.

macro progress I

I still don't have a source photo. Nevertheless, I think I'm making excellent progress on interpreting it. Don't you? Thus far, I have a foundation piece approximately 12 inches by 18 inches comprised of a backing fabric (grayish off-white), white low-loft batting, a single layer of cheesecloth, and all-over seed stitching in grey carpet thread. That's a whole World Series, plus a couple of evenings, worth of stitching (minus a little time diverted to exuberance about a happy outcome for the home team). Here's a detail, almost life-size:

I think what comes next is kitchen twine, metallic silver thread, slim-slim-slim twigs, and some of the metal bits I've found in the street and in drawers, and in tins in the closets. Maybe some glass. But if there's glass, there will need to be a reinforcing layer to support the weight. More cheesecloth, definitely more cheesecloth.

Never let it be said that I don't know how to have a good time.

going macro

My fiber art group is working on a challenge: take an extreme close-up of something(s) using the macro setting on the camera, then work up a panel inspired by the image. I have an idea I've started working on, now all I need is a picture to have "inspired" it. Hmmm. This is not the way the process was supposed to go, but I usually fall short on the "supposed to" side of things. I did take some photos, though, some of which may do for something at some point. To wit . . .

I was hoping this would serve as the backfill inspiration for the new piece, but no dice:


This is a beauty shot of a beauty bush. Not a macro shot, but I can rarely resist anything purple. I like the verticality, there may be something in this for another time.
Can you guess this next one?

(Hair elastics with metal clamp, above)
This caladium leaf has possibilities as an abstract -- also for some later day and project.

And now -- going to go watch Game 3 of the World Series.

holiday plates

I have a short list of things that I do when I couldn't possibly feel any worse. Things that are in themselves so dispiriting, that I need to be at some kind of existential nadir even to approach them. The list is:
1. Do some housekeeping.
2. Try to write something
(as in an essay or a story of some kind; maybe fiddle with one of the ideas for a novel. hah).

I told you it was a short list.

So today, fresh from my Very First Colonoscopy ("perfectly healthy" by the way), once the sedation had ebbed sufficiently, I opened one of Mom's closets and looked for the holiday dishes. I had recently begun to think that I should haul out of the closets all the things that were deemed "too good to be used" and/or Set Aside For Special Occasions Only and -- brace yourself for the sacrilege -- use them. On the other hand, I live alone and it's a service for -- if I remember correctly --12 and includes things like a gravy boat and several cunning sets of plates in inscrutable sizes, such as this one, which is about 7 inches across and has itty handles. Some kind of serving dish?

The set was acquired by my grandmother, so the story goes, at the "Dish Nights" that the grocery stores and movie theaters sponsored in the '30s or the '40s to keep people coming in. That is, you came in, spread a little cash around, and were rewarded for your patronage with one or more pieces (or place settings, the details of the story wander) for your set. As I said, it's a fairly large set. The idea of my grandmother doing this, week after week, when there was very little money, when there were five kids at home and a harsh alcoholic husband to dupe or persuade, is impressive. This determined yearning for a bit of gentility -- the pieces are stamped "Made in U.S.A. Limoges Lyric Warranted 22 K Gold" -- should not be hidden away in the closet under the eaves.

On the other hand, do they suit my life? They cannot be popped in the microwave for fear of arcing and of literally popping apart, and they must be hand-washed. Hmmm.... Maybe I need to acquire a staff? Good lord, Gramma, what were you thinking?

fun, fun, fun

Lots to catch up with. I'll start with the classes I took this weekend. (I'll finish with them too. It's getting late and I do have to go to work tomorrow.) Lynne Perella -- author of Alphabetica, True Colors, and Artists' Journals and Sketchbooks -- was doing two classes sponsored by The Ink Pad in Manhattan. So I signed up for both, and even though each class focused on the same technique, I was very glad I did. I am very poky in my art making, slow to get an idea, slow to commit to an idea, slow to work on the idea, slow to finish. So, having taken the Saturday class, I was better prepared for what I needed to do, and how to pace myself for Sunday. I'm pleased to announce: I Finished Something. And I finished it in the time allotted. Holy Mother of God, I hope no one expects this to be any kind of precedent.
But I digress. Lynne teaches her method of making highly textured, multileveled backgrounds/midgrounds, and then incorporating onto these surfaces a top layer of altered images based on photocopies. On Saturday the theme was Asia; on Sunday, Medieval. Lynne is a fabulous teacher -- she teaches her method and then coaches each student to deploy it to express her own way. Every piece produced each day was highly individualistic. I think this is a wonderful thing in a teacher. So Saturday I got my highly textured background done and, because I rarely get further than making a highly textured background in any mixed-media class I have taken, I am getting quite good at these backgrounds. I fell way short, however, on the altered image front, but Lynne suggested making a large drawing of one of the images, using it as a mask, and painting around it. This is the other amazing thing about this generous woman -- overflowing with terrific, achievable, spot-on ideas.

(detail: Cranes)

Still, I was frustrated and disappointed that I didn't get the collage part done. Because the base painting is 30 inches x 30 inches (almost three times bigger than my usual format! yikes!), I decided to make honking-big photocopies to use on Sunday. This was a good decision. I finished just in the nick of time, but I finished.
One option for the finished piece is to fold it to form a book. Most folks decided to do that (me, too) but some left their work open and flat as a painting, and Lynne suggested that my medieval piece might also work as panels. I don't know what a four-unit piece would be called -- a double diptych? -- but I wanted a book. Clumsily photographed, it looks like this.

Flat, folded, and cut (details from the Unicorn tapestries at the Cloisters): Inside pages
(we were encouraged not to be concerned about images appearing upside down, or sideways, or in partial views) Front cover (folded):

I have had in mind a project using the format of currency (banknotes, paper money) to celebrate various women. I think this process will let me start that project. And soon.

Meanwhile, gentle readers, if you EVER have a chance to take a class with Lynne Perella, do whatever is necessary to be there.