Inertia

So I haven't made any marks in like two weeks.  The dining room table where I had all my alternative process photography stuff set up was overtaken by my husband's tax receipts and the baby gate that cordons off my studio from the kitchen seems to have become increasingly higher, ever more difficult to step over.  (It is to keep the dog out of there while I'm not watching.)  A couple of weeks ago was the deadline to enter pieces in to a juried show that is coming up in a local museum.  I entered three pieces, figuring I had nothing to lose - there was no fee, after all.  But I feel like I've been holding my creative breath since the deadline.  Don't make a move, lest someone sees  you hoping for validation by the jurors or by other artists or community members.  At the risk of being publicly naked here - I found out yesterday that none of my pieces were selected for the show.  My husband reminds me that I just started painting again and that I said entering the pieces was merely an exercise in seeing how it felt to enter pieces for jury and that I wasn't actually expecting to get in anyway.  Yeah, right.  After the news, I did spend a fair amount of yesterday sulking and questioning myself and playing the "my art is better than your art sucks compared to their art yadda yadda yadda" game.  But this morning, I feel ready to get back in the studio and make some new marks.  My original intent was to do this for me - to get back to my art making roots and to rediscover my creativity, and although I am thoroughly enjoying everything that is coming along with that, ultimately, for me, right now, it has to be about the simple act of making, and that has to be enough.  There should be a big package of art supplies waiting for me by the time I get home from work today and I'm going to tear right in.

ANDY WARHOL: PRIVATE AND PUBLIC IN 151 PHOTOGRAPHS Exhibition Opening

I attended Andy Warhol: Private and Public in 151 Photographs exhibition opening this evening at the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art... complete with wig.  Wigs were encouraged attire as a nod to the late Warhol, who, as you likely know, was a fan of artificial hair.

Truthfully, I'll have to go see the show again with fewer people in the gallery.  It was packed with people and I was concerned, initially, about how freakish I must look with dutch boy fuscia hair.  I quickly got over feeling odd (I was on the campus of SUNY New Paltz, after all), but the crowd still made it difficult for me to really take in the art.  I guess openings aren't so much about the art as they are about the crowd.  I did have the pleasure of briefly meeting Sara J. Pasti, the Director of the Dorsky.   Thanks for introducing us, Kt.  She even commented how she loved my wig.  Not just the color, but the cut as well... maybe I should consider this as a pernament look - hmmm...

One thing that stuck out for me was the accessibility of the medium.  The black and white silver gelatin prints take a little know how it's true, but the Polacolor 669 portrait prints were something anyone could do.  I'm not saying that anyone could have taken the photos that Warhol took, rather that the medium was a tool of the masses.  Heck - I have a bunch of the stuff in the studio right now to make slide transfers and portraits with myself.  This is probably why I felt a connection to these pieces, crowded as the gallery may have been.  Alternative process photography has always been a love of mine, even if I haven't done an awful lot of it.  Keep an eye out for some Polaroids and cyanotypes in the not too distant future.

A Moment at MoMA

I spent a good portion of my day today (er - yesterday - it is after midnight as I write this) in a car traveling to and from.  Well worth it.

Monet
Monet's Water Lilies exhibit.  Beautiful.  Yep.  New wallpaper for my phone.  Go see it.

Burton
I may become very unpopular by saying this, but the Tim Burton exhibit at MoMA left me cold.  I know, I know... everyone loves Tim Burton, and I know, I know - I am trying to be more objective about what kind of art I am looking at and what I think about it.  So yes - I reminded myself of that while in the exhibit and it just didn't work for very long.  In all fairness to the work, it may have had something to do with the hoards of people in the exhibit.  There were so many people in there, well... it was like trying to leave a Grateful Dead show when they played RFK Stadium in DC and you had to walk through this tunnel to get back to the parking lot.  The exhibition galleries acted as funnels for ushering people here and there.  I felt like I was in a wave and had no control over where I went next and I was overtaken by a big one.  Under water.  Uncomfortable.  You get the point.  I did take note of an interesting letter to Johnny Depp though about an idea Burton wanted to try in his version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  Interesting in an historical context.  I also noted Burton's use of acrylic paints in his sketches and paintings.  I never think to use acrylics because they seem so flat and, well, plastic to me, but I kinda sorta liked some of the results he got with them.  Maybe acrylics are like cameras... its not so much about the camera as it is about the photographer.  I'm not discounting the merit of Burton's work - just claiming in public that it isn't my speed.  So after deciding I didn't want to drown in a sea of teenage boys who dig movies, it was time to move on.

Kentridge
William Kentridge: Five Themes was my speed.  According to MoMA's website on the special exhibit, [Kentridge is] "Best known for animated films based on charcoal drawings, he also works in prints, books, collage, sculpture, and the performing arts."  What I really love about Kentridge is the sense you are left with that something has come before.  There is a history.  You have a sense of it even if you don't see it - but you do see it.  Many of his animated films are made via a process of adding to and erasing from a drawing and each step filmed for animation.  What is left is a one panel drawing, but you can see evidence of what was there.  It's almost as if you can see and feel the history of the character in the drawing.  Movement has happened here and this is merely one (the final) moment that we get to know about in the drawings.  They are beautiful too - we're not talking about stick figures here.  This man can draw.  And his torn paper animations?  Fuggetahboutit!  He can draw so well that he doesn't even HAVE to draw.  Gorgeous silhouettes of people, animals, costumes - mere suggestions of form from ripped up pieces of paper but that dance right off the screen in such a believable way that I sat and watched slack jawed.  This show closes on May 17th, so you still have a little time, but make sure you see this exhibit.  It was the best thing I saw all day hands down, and I wish I had spent more time with it.

...and More!
I managed to get to a couple more galleries while I was there, surprisingly, as I was pressed for time.  Architecture and Design was interesting - its always a hoot to see common household kitchen utensils in an art museum - historical context, ya know.  And who doesn't love an Eames chair!  Also managed to get to the Picasso exhibit, which I breezed through except for some quality time in front of the series of five "Bull"s.  Loved this because you could follow him through his time and process from a very  accurate, almost anatomical drawing of the bull all the way through the next four levels of abstraction ending in a "simple" line drawing.  It was easy and interesting to see the connections he was making and that the viewer can make visually.  I also noted that he always included the bull's "parts", no  matter how accurately represented or abstracted.

I got to a drawing gallery too.  Lots of great stuff for me there - Mark Tobey (a new fave I have to do more research on - I only was introduced to him recently by Amy Lipton in her curated show, Body, Line, Motion: Selections from the Permanent Collection, at The Dorsky Museum in New Paltz) , Jean Dubleffet, and more Kentridge, to name a few.  But the stand out in my mind was a drawing by David Smith, Untitled (Tank Totems) 1953.  I'm certain that getting acquainted with the Smith collection at Storm King Art Center as part of my docent training informed this for me, as it did for other exhibits as well, especially the aforementioned Picasso Bulls.  But being able to see the connections between Smith's drawing (which I am largely unfamiliar with) and his sculpture (which I am becoming sorta familiar with) was a little a-ha moment for me.  The artist only has his own "handwriting" if you will.  Something I;ve always know and expounded on in conversations before, but a good and solid recollection now.  Maybe it is different for other sculptors - I don't know.  Studying sculpture and sculptors is relatively new for me.  But in this instance, at least, it is clear to me that the marks made on the page and the marks made in space are one and the same, and I think that is lovely.

What I Wanted to See But Missed

• Painting and Sculpture galleries.  Really?  I missed these?  Sacrilege.  Next time, I promise.  
• The Sculpture Garden.  I did have a few  moments there, but mostly to sit and rest and while I did a wee bit of communing with the Calder there (ooh, aah), I didn't have enough time to wander the garden.
• Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present.  The artist was absent.  I knew she wouldn't be there - it was one of her very few scheduled days off.  But her exhibit space was lit and even without her physically being there, it felt as if she was holding that space for something to happen later.  It absolutely had the energy of things having already happened - not entirely unlike Kentridge's drawings from his films.

Work, then art. A few more elevens.

The expiration date on the cereal box this morning read, "11/11".

Then to a busy day at work - even with the gorgeous weather we are having, people want their massages.  I knocked off a little early so I could head upstream a clip to a brand new gallery in Saugerties for their inaugural opening.  Actually, this was the second opening reception for Jen Dragon's 11 Cross Street Gallery's first show.  Artist was on-hand and spoke casually but passionately about his "Rock &" exhibit.  One piece, "The four directions" by LDDD (I'm embarrassed because I dont know what the initials stand for - I want to know the artist's name better than this - Jen, if you are reading, help a girl out, unless LDDD is the artist's version of "Madonna" or "Seal" or "Sting", in which case "LDDD" is enough) took its inspiration from a Native American medicine woman's healing words, carved in stone, mounted on wood and arranged int he four directions.  In the center, was the artist's late wife's bag that she carried around Nepal on a trip there.  To me, it said that any way you look there can be healing.  Any way you look there is history.  Any way you look, there is a foundation.  What made it even more interesting, was the artist's story of how, tragically, his home recently burned down and this piece was able to be salvaged from the rubble.  Any way you look, there is hope.

Thanks to Jen Dragon for being such a gracious host and for welcoming me so warmly to her new gallery. 
www.11crossgallery.com

Photo of "The four directions" taken from:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Saugerties-NY/11-Cross-Street-Gallery/104505696249284?ref=ts

From Saugerties, I made my way back downstream - no, I wasn't in a kayak, but could have been with all the runoff and localized flooding we have in the area as a result of an 80 degree day at the beginning of Spring.  I noticed some roadside trickles that turned in to rushing rapids.  A quick stop at the used book store in Saugerties and $11 later, I had in my possession two art books which I intend to flip through this evening, if I can break away from the computer for a moment.  I am especially looking forward to thumbing through "Henry Moore Carvings, Bronzes, 1961-1970".  Ever since my days at Purchase College and a few covert and a few not so covert trips to the PepsiCo campus across the street, I've been in love with Moore's work.  And now that I am in training to be a docent at Storm King, I have a renewed love for sculpture and am fortunate that they have a Moore or two in their collection for me to gawk at.

OK - that's enough.  Time to go home.  But as I made my scenic route home, I remembered that it was the first Saturday of the month,  and so I found myself in Kingston at the Arts Society of Kingston's opening of a member show, "Three Dimensional Wall Sculpture" with pieces that ranged from silly to poignant.   Also showing was Lynne Friedman's, "Poetry of the Flowering World" consisting mainly of representational watercolors.  Not my cuppa, but I can appreciate the technical merit and creativity.

I've been trying to be more of an "art appreciator" lately, even if (or maybe especially if) I don't particularly like the subject matter, materials or execution.  I keep saying that making art can be purely about the making.  Whatever that means to each artist can be different, but I respect each person's own process, or at least, I choose to believe that each person is in their own process.  Props to photographer, Anthony Maddaloni (http://www.etsy.com/shop/archivalstudio), for sharing his own insights about looking at other people's art with me.  You never know what little golden bits of wisdom may be birthed in even the most casual of conversations or gleaned from a quick visit to a cute little gallery.

11/11.  Any way you look there can be healing.