As you learn new things sometimes a weird thing has to happen. You have to come to grips with the fact that what you thought before was, well, wrong. Some of my mistakes can be fixed with an 8 pound hammer. Others require words.
Sometime back in preparation for a new semester I rambled on about how much I hate cell phones. I'm here tonight to say that while I may still hate most cell phones, I may not quite hate the iphone.
In fact, I may love it a little bit.
To be clear, I still hate YOUR cell phone and the fact that you insist on texting and looking up things on the internet while you are driving with your kids in the car. Yes, dark blue minivan on I-26 last Sunday, I'm talking to you.
Let this serve as notice that as I place ideas, thoughts, and opinions here on this blog, I reserve the right to change my mind about them at any time without telling you.
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Monday, August 10, 2009
Dear Reader
If I were reading another person's blog and they insisted on posting articles and reviews written about themselves or their work, I'd probably think that person had an overinflated opinion of himself. With that in mind, I cringe each time I need to copy an article or review and post it here. The thing is, this non-blog here is for me, not for you. Don't get me wrong, you're welcome here and I hope you enjoy yourself, but I'm not here to amuse you like a clown (as Pesci would say). This weird internet sketchbook has always been a place for me to easily access images and thoughts as I have them and a place where I can copy and paste interesting things that I'd like to think about and perhaps incorporate into my drawings and sculptures later on. But since I'm a one man operation there are times when I have to act as a manager too and preserve internet snippets because, let's face it, you're not going to do it for me, are you?
Right. So please feel free to skip the rest of this entry if you like. I would. Just know that my opinion of myself and of my work is unflatteringly realistic.
Worth the trip to Salisbury: Waterworks always does a fine job, and two collections especially stand out this time - one by ceramist Sharif Bey
By Tom Patterson Local Columnist
Published: July 26, 2009 in The Winston-Salem Journal and JournalNow.com
SALISBURY -- Thanks to its consistently varied, generally high-quality exhibitions program, the Waterworks Visual Arts Center continues to distinguish itself among nonprofit visual-art venues in North Carolina's smaller cities and towns.
The center's current round of exhibitions, assigned the broadly ambiguous collective title "Color," spans a typically broad thematic and stylistic spectrum. These shows are on view through Aug. 22, and they're worth a visit to Salisbury, thanks especially to two of them -- a duo exhibition by Charlotte artist Barbara Schreiber and Doug McAbee, a sculptor from Spartanburg, S.C.; and a solo show by Winston-Salem ceramist Sharif Bey.
Schreiber's and McAbee's exhibit is tagged with the seemingly self-deprecatory title "Shared Delusions." In the case of Schreiber's work, that title alludes primarily to societal delusions about childhood innocence and the influence of mass media. She is represented here by nine different series of narrative-based acrylic drawings (occasionally with silkscreen-printed components) in a cleanly linear style highlighted by bold colors.
In both style and content these works are reminiscent of children's-book illustrations, and the figures in most of them are solitary children or cutely stylized cartoon animals -- kittens, bunny rabbits, teddy bears or birds. Despite visual cues that emphasize protected innocence and insulation from painful realities, a close look at these images reveals their concern with the toughest problems of the adult world -- war, poverty, unemployment, extremist violence and everyday stress. This clash of realities -- childhood naivete vs. grown-up horrors -- provides the thematic foundation for most of Schreiber's work.
In her "Babydreams" series, a sleeping infant dreams about a terrorist bomb, a mob of torch-wielding teddy bears, a violent car accident and a kitten drowning in quicksand. Each of the girls in her "In a Dark Room" and "What We Learned Today" series are stretched out on the floor of a domestic living room containing a television, generic furniture and a few other objects. The key details in these drawings are the tiny images on the TV sets (a mushroom cloud, the chalk outline of a sidewalk shooting victim's body) and the objects the children are playing with or holding (a bomb, a martini glass, pills).
A highlight of Schreiber's show that occupies its own distinctive thematic niche is a sequential series of eight drawings about commercial airline disasters and flight phobias, titled "Final Boarding/The View from 1-A." For each drawing she has adopted the position of a commercial airline passenger peering out the window alongside a plane's foremost window seat. In the first five drawings the airplane window frames images of passengers in an entrance-ramp corridor as they prepare to board. But the last three views indicate that something has gone badly wrong, as they show the corridor respectively swarming with headless insects, filled with several feet of water containing a shark and other carnivorous fish, and traversed by a scythe-toting grim reaper.
Sharing a small gallery with Schreiber's work are eight of McAbee's painted steel sculptures, whose bright palette recalls plastic children's toys visually echoes some of the bolder colors in Schreiber's drawings. Although they're predominantly abstract, these slick-surfaced sculptures incorporate clear allusions to the human figure in the form of components resembling spindly arms and legs, eyeless heads and, in one case, a giant-size pair of blue, horn-rimmed glasses. These figural components are fused in some pieces with references to architectural forms or industrially manufactured objects. Collectively and individually they convey an impression of cartoonish whimsy, making them likely to be a hit with children.
Occupying an adjacent gallery at the Waterworks are 23 "New Works" by Bey, a ceramic sculptor and assistant professor of art education at Winston-Salem State University. About half of the show consists of functional vessels characterized by striking geometric patterns and designs that reference African art and textile design. The other half is made up of works that extend Bey's continuing investigation of ceramic beads as a sculptural form and conceptual vehicle. As in other such pieces he has shown in the past two or three years, the hand-crafted clay beads are significantly oversized, and the wearable necklaces they form double as commentaries on social issues involving black identity.
Several of Bey's clay-beaded necklaces play on the contrast between black-power-era fashions and current hip-hop styles in order to critically engage the conflicting values underlying that contrast. These pieces reference both the traditional African beads often worn by Afro-coiffed black men and women 40 years ago and the gaudy, lavishly priced "bling" jewelry favored by many contemporary hip-hop artists and their fans. The big clocks that served as popular hip-hop fashion accessories a few years ago -- typically worn like amulets on pricey gold or silver neck chains -- serve as models for large ceramic discs on the beaded necklace pieces in Bey's "Flav Clock Series," as well as his smaller necklace titled Mostly White Hero Clock With Minority Modern Master Supplements. The face of its central clock is emblazoned with a photo-transfer close-up of Picasso's face, while its smaller beads bear photo-transfer portraits of lesser-acclaimed black or Hispanic artists.
Running concurrently at the Waterworks are a duo exhibition by painters Whitney Peckman and Marge Loudon Moody; a small selection of outdoor metal pieces by Winston-Salem sculptor Don Green; and a small selection of lively, promisingly imaginative paintings and drawings by Hannah Thompson, a Rowan County high-school student who recently received a $1,000 "Dare to Imagine" award from the Waterworks.
■ Works by Barbara Schreiber, Doug McAbee, Sharif Bey, Whitney Peckman, Marge Loudon Moody, Don Green and Hannah Thompson are on view through Aug. 22 at the Waterworks Visual Arts Center, 123 E. Liberty St., Salisbury. For more information, call 704-636-1882.
Right. So please feel free to skip the rest of this entry if you like. I would. Just know that my opinion of myself and of my work is unflatteringly realistic.
Worth the trip to Salisbury: Waterworks always does a fine job, and two collections especially stand out this time - one by ceramist Sharif Bey
By Tom Patterson Local Columnist
Published: July 26, 2009 in The Winston-Salem Journal and JournalNow.com
SALISBURY -- Thanks to its consistently varied, generally high-quality exhibitions program, the Waterworks Visual Arts Center continues to distinguish itself among nonprofit visual-art venues in North Carolina's smaller cities and towns.
The center's current round of exhibitions, assigned the broadly ambiguous collective title "Color," spans a typically broad thematic and stylistic spectrum. These shows are on view through Aug. 22, and they're worth a visit to Salisbury, thanks especially to two of them -- a duo exhibition by Charlotte artist Barbara Schreiber and Doug McAbee, a sculptor from Spartanburg, S.C.; and a solo show by Winston-Salem ceramist Sharif Bey.
Schreiber's and McAbee's exhibit is tagged with the seemingly self-deprecatory title "Shared Delusions." In the case of Schreiber's work, that title alludes primarily to societal delusions about childhood innocence and the influence of mass media. She is represented here by nine different series of narrative-based acrylic drawings (occasionally with silkscreen-printed components) in a cleanly linear style highlighted by bold colors.
In both style and content these works are reminiscent of children's-book illustrations, and the figures in most of them are solitary children or cutely stylized cartoon animals -- kittens, bunny rabbits, teddy bears or birds. Despite visual cues that emphasize protected innocence and insulation from painful realities, a close look at these images reveals their concern with the toughest problems of the adult world -- war, poverty, unemployment, extremist violence and everyday stress. This clash of realities -- childhood naivete vs. grown-up horrors -- provides the thematic foundation for most of Schreiber's work.
In her "Babydreams" series, a sleeping infant dreams about a terrorist bomb, a mob of torch-wielding teddy bears, a violent car accident and a kitten drowning in quicksand. Each of the girls in her "In a Dark Room" and "What We Learned Today" series are stretched out on the floor of a domestic living room containing a television, generic furniture and a few other objects. The key details in these drawings are the tiny images on the TV sets (a mushroom cloud, the chalk outline of a sidewalk shooting victim's body) and the objects the children are playing with or holding (a bomb, a martini glass, pills).
A highlight of Schreiber's show that occupies its own distinctive thematic niche is a sequential series of eight drawings about commercial airline disasters and flight phobias, titled "Final Boarding/The View from 1-A." For each drawing she has adopted the position of a commercial airline passenger peering out the window alongside a plane's foremost window seat. In the first five drawings the airplane window frames images of passengers in an entrance-ramp corridor as they prepare to board. But the last three views indicate that something has gone badly wrong, as they show the corridor respectively swarming with headless insects, filled with several feet of water containing a shark and other carnivorous fish, and traversed by a scythe-toting grim reaper.
Sharing a small gallery with Schreiber's work are eight of McAbee's painted steel sculptures, whose bright palette recalls plastic children's toys visually echoes some of the bolder colors in Schreiber's drawings. Although they're predominantly abstract, these slick-surfaced sculptures incorporate clear allusions to the human figure in the form of components resembling spindly arms and legs, eyeless heads and, in one case, a giant-size pair of blue, horn-rimmed glasses. These figural components are fused in some pieces with references to architectural forms or industrially manufactured objects. Collectively and individually they convey an impression of cartoonish whimsy, making them likely to be a hit with children.
Occupying an adjacent gallery at the Waterworks are 23 "New Works" by Bey, a ceramic sculptor and assistant professor of art education at Winston-Salem State University. About half of the show consists of functional vessels characterized by striking geometric patterns and designs that reference African art and textile design. The other half is made up of works that extend Bey's continuing investigation of ceramic beads as a sculptural form and conceptual vehicle. As in other such pieces he has shown in the past two or three years, the hand-crafted clay beads are significantly oversized, and the wearable necklaces they form double as commentaries on social issues involving black identity.
Several of Bey's clay-beaded necklaces play on the contrast between black-power-era fashions and current hip-hop styles in order to critically engage the conflicting values underlying that contrast. These pieces reference both the traditional African beads often worn by Afro-coiffed black men and women 40 years ago and the gaudy, lavishly priced "bling" jewelry favored by many contemporary hip-hop artists and their fans. The big clocks that served as popular hip-hop fashion accessories a few years ago -- typically worn like amulets on pricey gold or silver neck chains -- serve as models for large ceramic discs on the beaded necklace pieces in Bey's "Flav Clock Series," as well as his smaller necklace titled Mostly White Hero Clock With Minority Modern Master Supplements. The face of its central clock is emblazoned with a photo-transfer close-up of Picasso's face, while its smaller beads bear photo-transfer portraits of lesser-acclaimed black or Hispanic artists.
Running concurrently at the Waterworks are a duo exhibition by painters Whitney Peckman and Marge Loudon Moody; a small selection of outdoor metal pieces by Winston-Salem sculptor Don Green; and a small selection of lively, promisingly imaginative paintings and drawings by Hannah Thompson, a Rowan County high-school student who recently received a $1,000 "Dare to Imagine" award from the Waterworks.
■ Works by Barbara Schreiber, Doug McAbee, Sharif Bey, Whitney Peckman, Marge Loudon Moody, Don Green and Hannah Thompson are on view through Aug. 22 at the Waterworks Visual Arts Center, 123 E. Liberty St., Salisbury. For more information, call 704-636-1882.
Sunday, August 9, 2009
have you any wool
We finally got away to the beach for a week. We endured several bathroom stops, roadside feedings, and 576 renditions of "Bah Bah Black Sheep". Still it was relaxing and enjoyable. I started and finished 2 art related books (I'll never tell how many pages each had) and did some major planning for the upcoming semester. In the spirit of the completely absurd stories our son tells us each day, I'll recap the Wild Coastal Adventures:
We dug for buried pirate treasure and were attacked from behind by an evil red umbrella.
Then a little man flew his kite up over the water while he floated on top of the ocean. He had no idea that the ocean was going to get him. Thousands of sharks and jellyfish waited underneath for him to fall down.
The sharks went into a feeding frenzy yet they were kind enough to sign some autographs and pose for photos.
Then the kite turned into a giant octopus and scared the sharks away. Then they took us to get some ice cream.
But this magical ice cream melted at astonishing rates and seemed to have a deep seated hatred for the Cubs. The ice cream fought with the hat and tried to devour it.
Marty McFly came to the rescue in his DeLorean from the future. After a quick pit stop for diapers, he was off to Colorado to see if he could catch up with Ginger and The Casey as they....well, lets just say they're passing through Salina with a pretty girl from Chile wondering if it's the beaches or the smoke in our lights that caused the weight of lies to buy it in the curve. You follow? Yes sir, yes sir, three bags full. Trust me, it's more interesting this way. Otherwise it's just a stupid slide show of a beach trip where I say, "we saw this and we did this."...and unless you were there, it wasn't that funny and you just don't care.Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Have You Seen Me? or Miscellaneous Post
Have you seen this guy?
That fellow wearing the suit made of plastic bags is Michael Spires of Columbia. I ran across this photo recently and laughed and wondered what ever became of the notorious Mr. Spires. I think he told me he was leaving school to join some branch of the military. This photo was taken by one of his classmates after he got up in the middle of working on one of his projects and decided to make and model a suit of plastic bags. This guy was a hoot and I joked with him that in 20 years he'd probably be a senator in our fine state. I have not checked any government websites, but if you know Mr. (or Senator) Spires and know what he's doing these days, please let me know. 
The summer has been productive so far and there are new sculptures and drawings on the website. There should be a link to the website right over there. You'll find a few new sculptures and 2 or 3 new drawings. There's also a new exhibit coming up in Tryon, NC. There's lots more reading and thinking and sketching going on, so I'm hoping for more creative production soon.
Cute kid alert:
For some reason this reminds me of the mid 1980's. Or that vampire movie starring Jim Carrey before he got famous and started talking out of his rump. I suppose watching cartoons teaches children certain things about visual communication. Tonight he pointed to a drawing of a frog with a down turned eyebrow and said, "OOOOOh, look, he's MAD!". That's a pretty subtle clue for a little guy to pick up on. Then he took me to his room and told me we were going to watch TV. He instructed me exactly where to look on the wall while he took a ladder from his fire truck and used it as a remote control. I think we watched several shows before he turned the wall off and went to bed. Thursday, July 16, 2009
You Keep Using That Word
What is it that makes something beautiful? What do we mean when we say that something is beautiful? Most of us have been conditioned to think of beauty in terms of visual appeal. We may think of a famous painting, a lovely person or a sunset as beautiful. But why? Is Leonardo’s “Mona Lisa” beautiful? Truly this subtly smiling lady would not be deemed beautiful by modern fashion standards and in fact, we may even admit that she’s a bit homely. Perhaps it’s the painting itself that is beautiful. Closer inspection will reveal a simple barren landscape behind the modestly clad female subject but nothing that we can really say that would stand out to us as beautiful. The painting, however, is excellently crafted by one of the greatest painters ever to live. Is that what we mean by beautiful?
Visual attraction does exist in humans and we need look no further than romantic interest to find evidence of this fact. We may, in fact, find someone so visually appealing that we stop in our tracks and stare. The basic makeup of most humans is the same: two arms, two legs, a head, a torso. Nothing breathtaking about that. Yet we distinguish between two very similar humans quickly labeling one ugly and one beautiful. Is it the combination of physical features? Does it matter if these features are real or manufactured? Is this really beauty…or perhaps simply sexual desire?
The most stunning of sunsets that many of us have captured with our cameras at one time or another indicate how light from a star is bent and scattered as it enters Earth’s atmosphere and makes its way through dust and pollution to our rods and cones. There’s nothing inherently beautiful about the science of how we see a sunset, yet we pause at what we call beauty and gather our cameras to capture that moment. Perhaps it is not the clouds and atmosphere and light that we find beautiful, but rather it is that moment we are privileged to experience.
Beauty is more than visual.
One of the time tested definitions of beauty as it relates to the visual and performing arts is that an object, performance or event provides the spectator with a moment of transcendence. This moment occurs when the object, performance or event becomes something more than a literal interpretation of itself. At this moment the art urges the viewer to think about something beyond or greater than itself. In fact, the object, performance, or event no matter how glorious or visually appealing simply becomes the pathway that allows the viewer to travel to a different level of interpretation and acknowledgement of truth. Writer Don Miller said that the purpose of art is “to point ourselves and those around us to a reality greater than the one we know and toward which only the imagination may point.” It is this experience that gives the viewer the internal feeling of having experienced something beautiful. Consider the following examples:
"Under The Table" by Robert Therrien
In a 2005 live performance by the band Wilco, Jeff Tweedy provides a different kind of transcendent moment for his audience. Starting out the Chicago concert the band plays Tweedy’s song “Misunderstood” and at one point Tweedy begins to sing the word “nothing” over and over and over again (36 times if I counted correctly). As he continues to repeat the word into what seems like infinity while the band also repeats the same chord along with the word a change begins to take place. The listener has time to move from thinking about the novelty of repeating a word in a song for emphasis to becoming slightly annoyed by the monotony of the repetition to wondering if Tweedy is lip synching and the recording has hung up, to finally moving beyond the literal nature of the single repeated word and into thinking about the symbolic meaning of someone speaking this word into infinity. Somewhere along the way Tweedy is able to transcend the literal interpretation of the single word and gently direct the listener toward something beyond. (To experience Tweedy's moment, check out Wilco's 2005 release "Kicking Television" Live double album. Specifically, the song "Misunderstood" right around the 4 minute 25 second mark.)
Mural by Mark MulroneyMark Mulroney creates large scale murals that change how a viewer interacts with an interior space. His paintings make use of a flat presentation of planes of color that rely heavily on a good sense of design and a good sense of humor. The images Mulroney uses in his murals are representational but maintain a healthy ambiguity that prevents the works from being read or interpreted too quickly or easily. Many of his images are reminiscent of things seen in comics, coloring books, or print ads and Mulroney's use of such subject matter allows him to tap into a more wide ranging collective viewer lexicon. His paintings present themselves without pretense and bank on the fact that most viewers will recognize at least pieces of the images and that they will then try to connect those images in some sort of narrative in order to form an interpretation of the work.
While Mulroney's images are clean and well crafted the subject matter can tend toward the dark, threatening or downright bizarre. The human forms are not "pretty" or idealized and many images are distorted to suggest pain. It would be easy for the viewer to quickly dismiss the idea that any real beauty existed in his work without taking the idea of transcendence into mind. Subjects in his art works are painted in various sections of the walls sometimes but not always connected by visual cues. These visual elements may not be in a linear order but may be arranged as a writer would arrange elements of a sentence to communicate a coherent thought. As the viewer engages in this visual act of translation, the sum of the collection of images becomes much more important than the individual parts. It is here that a moment of transcendence is achieved and the viewer is moved beyond the images and into the greater meaning of the symbolism. The hieroglyphics on the wall may be interesting as individual symbols but the greater meaning is derived from understanding the meaning of all the symbols together as a complete thought.
Beauty has not been the most popular term among Contemporary artists and perhaps this is due to the misunderstanding and misuse of the word. When the Post Impressionists stepped more toward the area of Abstraction they also stepped away from the goal of simply portraying visually appealing objects on canvas. Instead of leaving beauty behind they were, in fact, pursuing a better definition of the word and attempting to point us toward a greater reality. These early visual pioneers were beginning to understand that beauty was more than a desirable object and was something that could not be communicated in literal terms. They needed to discover new ways to communicate ideas that were beyond the reach of words and just outside the grasp of the literal image. They and the stylistic movements that followed them have helped us realize that beauty is more than just the presentation of an appealing image; it is an experience that moves us beyond that image and into a transformative moment.
While Mulroney's images are clean and well crafted the subject matter can tend toward the dark, threatening or downright bizarre. The human forms are not "pretty" or idealized and many images are distorted to suggest pain. It would be easy for the viewer to quickly dismiss the idea that any real beauty existed in his work without taking the idea of transcendence into mind. Subjects in his art works are painted in various sections of the walls sometimes but not always connected by visual cues. These visual elements may not be in a linear order but may be arranged as a writer would arrange elements of a sentence to communicate a coherent thought. As the viewer engages in this visual act of translation, the sum of the collection of images becomes much more important than the individual parts. It is here that a moment of transcendence is achieved and the viewer is moved beyond the images and into the greater meaning of the symbolism. The hieroglyphics on the wall may be interesting as individual symbols but the greater meaning is derived from understanding the meaning of all the symbols together as a complete thought.
Beauty has not been the most popular term among Contemporary artists and perhaps this is due to the misunderstanding and misuse of the word. When the Post Impressionists stepped more toward the area of Abstraction they also stepped away from the goal of simply portraying visually appealing objects on canvas. Instead of leaving beauty behind they were, in fact, pursuing a better definition of the word and attempting to point us toward a greater reality. These early visual pioneers were beginning to understand that beauty was more than a desirable object and was something that could not be communicated in literal terms. They needed to discover new ways to communicate ideas that were beyond the reach of words and just outside the grasp of the literal image. They and the stylistic movements that followed them have helped us realize that beauty is more than just the presentation of an appealing image; it is an experience that moves us beyond that image and into a transformative moment.
(As for the image at the top, don't judge me. Katie Holmes is pretty)
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Thin Places
"Italy Series Village I" by Marge Loudon MoodyA few weeks ago I had the opportunity to attend an artist lecture given by Marge Loudon Moody, an abstract painter living in South Carolina. I was impressed by the straightforward approach Mrs. Moody took in addressing her audience in a small gallery setting. In such institutional environments it is not uncommon to hear artists wax poetic about the lofty goals they have for their work and to fill the air with large vocabulary words and references important only to those who may have majored in Art History in college. This type of approach does nothing to endear the audience to abstract art and if anything it increases the width of the great chasm between the average person and contemporary art. In this context Mrs. Moody's honest and personable approach was fresh and comforting.
Moody began with personal background information and made sure the audience knew that she began with a very traditional arts education in Scotland where her focus was on observational painting. After relocating to the United States in 1982 she unexpectedly began working in non-representational collage. This move was unexpected because of her traditional training yet it was a path she would follow for the next 20 years. Her most recent work (and the body of work about which she was lecturing) is representational in that it begins with observations of her immediate surroundings but she has abstracted her imagery allowing the colors, forms, and spaces to take center stage.
The gallery was filled with large and small canvases Moody has covered with vibrant colors, strong lines, and implied spaces. Some paintings give way to pieces of landscapes or chunks of architecture and hints of interior and exterior light sources. Each painting tends to attract visual attention from across the room and the placement of the subject matter draws the viewer closer into illusionary space. The hints and nudges of almost recognizable objects play a cat and mouse game with viewer's need to interpret and solve each work of art.
After getting the historical items out of the way, Moody moved confidently into discussing how often viewers wonder about the validity of abstract art. She quoted people who had wondered aloud if they or their children couldn't produce something just as good with no artistic training. Reference was made to viewers who clearly thought that artists just threw paint at a surface and carelessly produced art with no meaning and then made up stories about it after the fact.
Moody did not dismiss these ideas as always false nor did she dismiss the people who had these thoughts about abstract art. She simply explained in the tone of a kind friend over coffee exactly how she went about the process of creating her paintings and exactly what she was trying to communicate in her work.
In describing that she almost always began by observing a specific physical location as the subject of a painting, she also touched on exactly why a certain location might lend itself to being the focus of a work of art. One idea she introduced was the idea that some places we experience in our personal lives retain some special meaning or importance to us. These places may be significant because of some event or personal experience we observe there but sometimes a place can just feel special to us for reasons we can not explain logically. Some are drawn to a stream in the mountains. Others are pulled by the tides to the seashore. On a smaller scale though, there may be locations we see everyday that retain this idea of significance. For some it could be a certain water tower half covered with vines that they pass on the highway commute. For others it may be a room in their home where they have tea and unwind by a window.
Moody spoke of a grassy field near her home, a particular view through a couple of rooms in her house, and the view from a window in Italy. She spoke of her feeling of closeness with each location and compared this feeling that defies logical explanation to the idea of "thin places" an idea held dear to the Celts in Britain and Ireland for centuries. She cited examples from poets and writers who defined these "thin places" as specific physical locations where the veil between the physical world and the spiritual world is very thin. These "thin places" were thought to allow overlap and passage between the two worlds. These places were the sites of ceremonies and gatherings held by the ancients and many are still spots frequently visited today. Moody suggested that these "thin places" may exist anywhere, even in our immediate surroundings.
A part of what Moody is attempting to do is explore just what makes these places feel so special. She is attempting to assess the physical and emotional contents of such places and to find ways to communicate those ideas to her viewers. Here is an example of the artist trying to find ways to convey her questions, ideas, and feelings to the viewer instead of simply passing along factual information. This seems to be one of the important aspects of high quality abstract art. Whereas a realistic rendering of a landscape or community may tell the viewer exactly what something looks like at a particular time, such a rendering will often fail at conveying a range of feelings or questions. For the abstract artist, being able to observe and render the subject matter accurately is not the ultimate goal, but rather it is the first step in a process of discovery and communication. Instead of simply making a statement of fact, the abstract artist is interested in engaging the viewer in a conversation and a transfer of ideas. The abstract artist is not saying, "That's the way it is" they are saying "Here's what I've been thinking about this idea, what do you think?".
This relationship between the artist and the viewer is one based on mutual trust. Sadly this trust has been broken over the years by poor quality artists who work under the guise of "abstract artist" when they are simply taking the easy route to making personal or political statements with their work and by viewers who dismiss abstract artists as people who have no real talent other than passing themselves off as real artists when they should probably be working as ad copy writers or political speech writers. Each breech of trust feeds the other in a continuous cycle. If this trust relationship is to be repaired it will be by artists like Marge Moody who are stunningly honest with their audience about what they are doing and why they are doing it.
Moody began with personal background information and made sure the audience knew that she began with a very traditional arts education in Scotland where her focus was on observational painting. After relocating to the United States in 1982 she unexpectedly began working in non-representational collage. This move was unexpected because of her traditional training yet it was a path she would follow for the next 20 years. Her most recent work (and the body of work about which she was lecturing) is representational in that it begins with observations of her immediate surroundings but she has abstracted her imagery allowing the colors, forms, and spaces to take center stage.
The gallery was filled with large and small canvases Moody has covered with vibrant colors, strong lines, and implied spaces. Some paintings give way to pieces of landscapes or chunks of architecture and hints of interior and exterior light sources. Each painting tends to attract visual attention from across the room and the placement of the subject matter draws the viewer closer into illusionary space. The hints and nudges of almost recognizable objects play a cat and mouse game with viewer's need to interpret and solve each work of art.
After getting the historical items out of the way, Moody moved confidently into discussing how often viewers wonder about the validity of abstract art. She quoted people who had wondered aloud if they or their children couldn't produce something just as good with no artistic training. Reference was made to viewers who clearly thought that artists just threw paint at a surface and carelessly produced art with no meaning and then made up stories about it after the fact.
Moody did not dismiss these ideas as always false nor did she dismiss the people who had these thoughts about abstract art. She simply explained in the tone of a kind friend over coffee exactly how she went about the process of creating her paintings and exactly what she was trying to communicate in her work.
In describing that she almost always began by observing a specific physical location as the subject of a painting, she also touched on exactly why a certain location might lend itself to being the focus of a work of art. One idea she introduced was the idea that some places we experience in our personal lives retain some special meaning or importance to us. These places may be significant because of some event or personal experience we observe there but sometimes a place can just feel special to us for reasons we can not explain logically. Some are drawn to a stream in the mountains. Others are pulled by the tides to the seashore. On a smaller scale though, there may be locations we see everyday that retain this idea of significance. For some it could be a certain water tower half covered with vines that they pass on the highway commute. For others it may be a room in their home where they have tea and unwind by a window.
Moody spoke of a grassy field near her home, a particular view through a couple of rooms in her house, and the view from a window in Italy. She spoke of her feeling of closeness with each location and compared this feeling that defies logical explanation to the idea of "thin places" an idea held dear to the Celts in Britain and Ireland for centuries. She cited examples from poets and writers who defined these "thin places" as specific physical locations where the veil between the physical world and the spiritual world is very thin. These "thin places" were thought to allow overlap and passage between the two worlds. These places were the sites of ceremonies and gatherings held by the ancients and many are still spots frequently visited today. Moody suggested that these "thin places" may exist anywhere, even in our immediate surroundings.
A part of what Moody is attempting to do is explore just what makes these places feel so special. She is attempting to assess the physical and emotional contents of such places and to find ways to communicate those ideas to her viewers. Here is an example of the artist trying to find ways to convey her questions, ideas, and feelings to the viewer instead of simply passing along factual information. This seems to be one of the important aspects of high quality abstract art. Whereas a realistic rendering of a landscape or community may tell the viewer exactly what something looks like at a particular time, such a rendering will often fail at conveying a range of feelings or questions. For the abstract artist, being able to observe and render the subject matter accurately is not the ultimate goal, but rather it is the first step in a process of discovery and communication. Instead of simply making a statement of fact, the abstract artist is interested in engaging the viewer in a conversation and a transfer of ideas. The abstract artist is not saying, "That's the way it is" they are saying "Here's what I've been thinking about this idea, what do you think?".
This relationship between the artist and the viewer is one based on mutual trust. Sadly this trust has been broken over the years by poor quality artists who work under the guise of "abstract artist" when they are simply taking the easy route to making personal or political statements with their work and by viewers who dismiss abstract artists as people who have no real talent other than passing themselves off as real artists when they should probably be working as ad copy writers or political speech writers. Each breech of trust feeds the other in a continuous cycle. If this trust relationship is to be repaired it will be by artists like Marge Moody who are stunningly honest with their audience about what they are doing and why they are doing it.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
musical interlude
You have to have music for your summer and if you're looking for something good, allow me to make a few suggestions. Here's what's been in heavy rotation on the ipod lately:
Neko Case - "Middle Cyclone"
Noah and the Whale - "Peaceful the World Lays me Down"
Johnny Cash - all the American Recordings
Blitzen Trapper - "Furr"
Sequoyah Prep School - "Ghost Town"
Wilco - "Wilco the Album"
And if you'd like to hear the Avett Brothers perform 3 songs live for NPR, just follow this link:
Avett Brothers Live
That little concert is also available as a free video podcast on iTunes if you're into that sort of thing.
The 'less than three year old' enjoys his music too. He likes to sit at his mother's piano and bang out tunes while making up stream of consciousness lyrics about anything in his immediate visual environment. Apparently he also thought the black and white keyboard layout was a bit boring and decided to add some color when no one was looking.
Please be washable crayons.
Neko Case - "Middle Cyclone"
Noah and the Whale - "Peaceful the World Lays me Down"
Johnny Cash - all the American Recordings
Blitzen Trapper - "Furr"
Sequoyah Prep School - "Ghost Town"
Wilco - "Wilco the Album"
And if you'd like to hear the Avett Brothers perform 3 songs live for NPR, just follow this link:
Avett Brothers Live
That little concert is also available as a free video podcast on iTunes if you're into that sort of thing.
The 'less than three year old' enjoys his music too. He likes to sit at his mother's piano and bang out tunes while making up stream of consciousness lyrics about anything in his immediate visual environment. Apparently he also thought the black and white keyboard layout was a bit boring and decided to add some color when no one was looking.
Please be washable crayons.
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