The Best of It

A poem by Kay Ryan:

However carved up
or pared down we get,
we keep on making
the best of it as though
it doesn't matter that
our acre's down to
a square foot.  As
though our garden
could be one bean
and we'd rejoice if
it flourishes, as
though one bean
could nourish us.


Joy in the little things.
Inspiration from minute things.
..."our garden could be one bean and we'd rejoice if it flourishes..."

Perhaps I start off with huge dreams and as life presses on, those dreams become more and more elusive, more unattainable, less important, shoved aside by the daily grind.  But as those dreams get smaller and smaller, I still hold onto them and find hope in them, "as though one [dream] could nourish [me]."

Possible summer project

This is a doodle from my sketchbook.  I was thinking I could do maybe 22 x 30, paint them with acrylic paint, perhaps choose a color scheme that will lend to optical mixing, like Seurat.  I might leave black outlines visible or maybe no outlines at all.  As for the background, I might start off by leaving the white background of the paper.  If I do a series, of course I would try different things: colored background, different color schemes, perhaps imbed an image within the circles.

Leonardo Drew

The Weatherspoon Art Museum is currently exhibiting the work of Leonardo Drew.  Walking through the gallery, I made a list of adjectives that came to mind as I viewed his work: 

industrial
rust
found objects
repetition
textile
earth tones/natural tones
geometric
layering
molds
mundane objects
number
texture
drape
aged

      Of the works presented in the Weatherspoon, Number 59 (1997), was my favorite.  I couldn't find an image of it so I'll do my best to describe it.  From far away, or from across the gallery, 59 looks like a huge black square.  However, when you get up to it you realize it's a series of vertically rectangular little black wooden frames.  The frames are held together by black screws, some with 2, some with 3, some with 4 screws.  Inside each frame is glass, most being fractured.  Black paint covers most of the glass as well, though a very soft cream color pokes through here and there, revealing the spider web of broken glass.  There is a section in the bottom third of the piece, 3 frames high and 28 frames wide, that are all black, no cream showing or broken glass poking through.  It was not noticable right away to me, though the realization came later after I had studied the piece for awhile.

      Obsessed with number and pattern, I counted the number of frames:  20 frames tall and 28 frames wide.  Typically I am not attracted to darkly colored pieces.  I think my fascination with number, pattern, and repetition is the reason I was initially drawn to 59.  I can't imagine it being any color but black.  It definitely wouldn't have the same imposing effect.  It's almost overwhelming to look at, with all the different frames, all the different breaks in the glass.  It's like each little frame is an individual composition in itself.  The black paint is what ties it all together though; the black paint is the unifying factor.

Space, Place, Pointed Invention: Final Project

The criteria: Your final project will be an investigation into how an intense experience of a space or place can bolster and spur on a visual imagination. You will make a mid-sized collage (minimum size is 22"x30") based on source drawings, notes AND memory of a place you have easy access to on a daily basis. You may not work from photographs of a place directly. To clarify--you can generate source drawings from photographs, but minimally. I want you to have to work with the potentially inventive results which happen when you are forced to recall or work with images that are not visually exacting in re-presentation. The material is up to you. You must somehow employ these concepts into the work: repetition, monochromatic, texture (reproduced or actual). All the visual source imagery you use must originate with your site.

The space I have chosen is under the kitchen table.  When I was a kid, my brother and I would throw blankets and quilts over the kitchen table to construct a fort.  My intent for this project is to create an image of that, but take it a step further by creating the imaginary, jungle world that the table fort became when I climbed under it.

It took me a while to get started on the actual piece; I made drawings of the table, took pictures, and built a fort with blankets and quilts.  I also sketched a lot of plant life to aid in creating my jungle world.  Now that I've started, things are moving along pretty well.  I got stuck after about a day.  Fortunately, we had an in-class critique and I got some excellent feedback from my peers.  Here is what it looked like before:

The suggestions:  establish a ground plane; correct the perspective; need a signifier that it's a table, perhaps with a table setting on top, or details in the legs.  After taking these things into consideration, I began working on it again, and this is what it looks like now:

After changing the perspective, it looks more like a table.  I've still got some editing to do on the table, but at least it looks more like a table now.  I still need to establish a ground and then start building up the flora.  And I've got to do it in 2 weeks.

Henry Darger

In crafts class we watched a documentary about an outsider artist, Henry Darger, who created a fictional, 15,000-page masterpiece titled The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What Is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion, or In the Realms of the Unreal, for short.  Darger created watercolors and collages with found images and materials to illustrate his epic tale of the Vivian sisters.  I had never heard of the term "outsider artist" before.  An outsider artist is one who is self-taught, with no formal or academic training.  I had also never heard of Henry Darger.  His art was not discovered until his death, when his landlords cleaned out his apartment.

Darger's art is so colorful and vivid! They are such imaginitive landscapes!  Besides the coloring, I am drawn to the busy-ness and particular format (panoramic) of the scenes.  To be frank, some of the subject matter is quite disturbing and weird.  Aside from that, Darger's art is infinitely fascinating. 

The American Folk Art Museum in New York currently has the largest collection of Henry Darger's work, and from what I've found, they have the best online image source.

Edgar Degas

The last couple of classes in art history (19th century European) we've been talking about the Impressionists.  Today we talked about Degas.  I've always admired his work.  I've got a book of his drawings of dancers.  my professor, Richard Gantt, has pointed out just how sophisticated and brilliant Degas' compositions are, how they are dynamically balanced/symmetrical.  I had never payed that much attention to his layouts; I've always been so distracted by his perfect drawings and coloring.  Now that I see it, I am even more fascinated.  In a lot of his paintings, he clusters a bunch of figures in one corner and the rest of the painting is sparse, but it works!  He's got just enough elements and just the right colors and lighting to make it work.  Brilliant!  Here's a couple of my favorite Degas paintings.  A great website for Degas images is http://www.edgar-degas.org/

Dancers Practicing at the Barre
Dancers in Pink
Ballet Rehearsal, 1873

Just an idea...

These pages from my sketchbook were inspired by Eva Hesse.  They are extremely preliminary drawings.  To be quite honest, they are scribble-scrabble with a few spaces colored in.  The line I'm beginning to think along is perhaps seeing what shapes or figures I might could find in this big, jumbled mess of lines.  I was also thinking of creating some on transparencies, using different color schemes, and overlaying them to create different compositions.