new minimalist pieces and college photos

Blue Circle White and Green 12" x 9" oil on panel 2010

photos by Holly Lydigsen, 1990

There's a contrast. Twenty years can change one's art quite a bit. Twenty years is a journey, a lifetime for some.

Geometry and paint application express calm in the three color field paintings. Landscape is referenced as sky and ground, the circle like a celestial orb. In opposition, the painting in the photograph has aggressive marks and is monochromatic: black, red, and pale pink, which create a starkness. I always had a decent color sense but it has evolved over the years to be a kind of science for me.

The photos are from my first year art school at Massachusetts College of Art and Design (spring of 1990, hence the poofy hair. Vain, I almost didn't post them). My roommate, Holly Tompkins (now Lydigsen), took them for a photography assignment and I had some input with the arrangement. The painting was a self-portrait and I don't know where it is anymore or if it still exists. It has a German Expressionist angularity and angst. I might have painted over it - the teacher said it was "an illustration of a grimace", true, and urged me to go beyond. It was one of my first experiences of flat out this-doesn't-work-at-all criticism, literally back to the drawing board. I remember my peers crying in critiques even in graduate school. It's not unlike athletic disappointment over performance. The critiquing process toughens one up. You have to put yourself out there. Total resistance to the process only inhibits growth, but it is necessary to sift through the commentary as one matures as an artist, following one's gut for what is and isn't on target.

My college art school photos and friendships are more on my mind since reading Patti Smith's new memoir Just Kids, about her life and relationship with artist Robert Mapplethorpe. They were lovers before they were famous, before Mapplethorpe realized he was gay, and then forever friends. She bought him his first camera, he encouraged her to perform her poems as music. He photographed her throughout her life and they were committed to art from the beginning. The book is well written and gives an intimate view of how artists evolve and the sacrifices that are made to make the work, as well as New York City culture in 1969. One thing I found particularly striking is how Mapplethorpe made the artistic decision of which of his shots to print, which were the best, Art. He looked at them with Patti and intuitively declared, "This one is the one with magic." It really comes down to that. We can blah, blah, blah about what is significant/working/unique about a piece but it is the inexplicable quality that makes it tick.

Patti Smith's debut album, Horses, is ranked #44 in Rolling Stone's The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time and in 2005 she received the French Ministry of Culture Commandeurs des Arts et des Lettres, the highest honor awarded an artist by France. [Patti Smith MySpace page]

Controversial and exquisite, Robert Mapplethorpe [1946-1989] is one of the most important artists of the twentieth century; his photographs are in museums and collections around the world. When my photo was taken in 1990 I had just seen his explosive exhibition The Perfect Moment at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, funded by the National Endowment for the Arts.

Drawings and Economic Events

March 16 2010 ink 6"x6"

Woods Inspired By Jake Berthot 12x9 pencil

Woods Across the Street 18x12 colored pencil

Woods and Window 12x18 charcoal on paper

Sunset 9x12 colored pencil

Sunset Snow 12x9 colored pencil

February Trees 12x9 ink

February 12th 12x9 pencil

This is a techi week for me. I set up accounts on Twitter and YouTube:follow Art Weekly on Twitter: Art_WeeklyNM.

My YouTube channel where I uploaded three videos this week is under tofupoweredartchick.

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Three recent events, not all negative, reflect the effects of the economy on the arts:

Art school friends told me the Nielsen Gallery in Boston is closing. There's a post about it on the blog Gregcookland.com. I left a comment. The gallery represents many painters whom I love including Jake Berthot, who I have written about before. Now open by appointment only, I rue not being able to see exhibitions by their artists. Berthot's Untitled (3475), graphite from 2008 shows a mapping of light and form, vectors visible as thin lines structuring the drawing. It is truly amazing and shows an depth of concentrated looking rarely seen in art. Patches of light coming down through leaves and branches are subtly integrated with the rest of the environment. If the number 3475 is the number of untitled pieces he has made, it is a sign of someone who has put in their time.

Dennis Kois, the new director of the Decordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts, has gotten the museum into the black, raising one million dollars. At first the decision to return twenty-five sculptures on loan seemed dismaying. I am reassured to learn it un-clutters the thirty-five acre grounds, making it easier to see the work as well as making room for the acquisition of two new works.

This week the Ford Foundation announced it is donating ONE HUNDRED MILLION dollars to renovate art spaces and fund art projects in culturally diverse spaces (see the article in The Huffington Post. YAY!!! I almost couldn't believe it. It is not unlike Providence, RI's commitment to the arts and belief in art's ability to revitalize communities. Art centers, studios, and events bring new residents and foot traffic with businesses such as restaurants and stores not far behind. Providence is called "The Creative Capital".

I hope you enjoy the drawings this week. Drawing is the beginning of many artistic ideas, immediate and direct visual thinking. It can also be an end in itself. It is still important.

Speaking of important art, blogger Amy Cook sent me this:

“100 Awe-Inspiring Artists You Should Follow On Twitter” http://graphicdesigndegrees.org/100-awe-inspiring-artists-you-should-follow-on-twitter/ .

Spring #13,14, & 15

Spring Landscape #15 Lincoln Woods 24" x 18" oil on panel

Spring Landscape #14 Rainy March 27" x 21" oil on canvas

Spring Landscape #13 It Stopped Raining 12" x 12" oil on panel

"Avery is first a great poet. His is the poetry of sheer loveliness, of sheer beauty... This - alone - took great courage in a generation which felt that it could be heard only through clamor, force and a show of power..." - Rothko's eulogy for PAINTER Milton Avery, (appearing in Milton Avery The Late Paintings, by Robert Hobbs 1946, Abrams Inc.).

I can relate to Avery in the way he painted, as a colorist favoring landscape, and the difficulty of being engaged with natural beauty in a tumultuous and increasingly technological world. I see this tension in my new painting, Spring Landscape #15; the branches electrified and pointing to a focal point in one-point perspective. The struggle of art in contemporary life seems to be coming up more and more. In her book Finding Beauty in a Broken World, writer Terry Tempest Williams considers beauty and art and its place in the world. She places art in juxtaposition with the environmental crisis and the Rwandan genocide. She believes art is a way of survival, and so do I.

We've recently recuperated from flooding here in Rhode Island. I had to scramble to bring many of my large paintings up from the basement, packing my dining room and studio. I only got a half-inch of water, nothing like neighboring towns needing evacuation. Numbers thirteen and fourteen came out what seemed like an endless string of rainy days leading up to the flooding of parts of I-95 South. My backyard was squishy and the greens brilliant and mossy. The back story of these paintings involves joyfully finding my imitation Wellies from our recent move, composting in downpours, stir crazy dogs barking and missing walks, and the basement reaching the humidity level of 50%, the ideal for art. All this is real to me just as much as the health care debate and anything else in The New York Times. Like Avery, I am guilty of loving light, color, and loveliness and am not detached.

Ceramics: Night Window/Ocean/Birches/ Western NY Landscape #16-27

all approximately 4" x 5"

ceramic reliefs

A lot of reliefs came out of the kiln and I'm playing catch-up here. My friend, the painter Aaron Brooks, thinks these look surreal. Surreal can mean "dreamlike" or "other-worldly". The artistic movement of Surrealism was begun in 1924 by Andre Breton and most people are familiar with Salvador Dali's Persistence of Memory which is wide spread in poster form. If you ever go to see it at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City you may be surprised at how small it is (9 1/2" x 13"). I agree with Brooks but I find they have qualities that are difficult to ascertain. [Please excuse the format with all of them up against each other but I couldn't find another way in Blogger. It makes them hard to see.]

I love the color quality I'm able to get using a combination of glazes and under glaze pastels. The glassiness is sparkly like a varnished painting. The imagery is abstracted from nature, varying in degrees. I continue dot play in some, consider texture, and really try to push space both physically in shaping the clay and in the illusionistic painting of it. Most tiles are surface decoration but these approach three-dimensional painting. I'm not interested in the same things as the artist Frank Stella, however, who had a 2007 show at the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art in NYC titled "Painting into Architecture". Stella and Maya Lin (designer of the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial) received the National Medal of Arts in February presented by President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama at the White House. Artinfo.com says that previous painters who've received the award include Georgia O'Keefe, Jacob Lawrence, Jasper Johns, and Robert Motherwell. I particularly like Lin's piece Wakefield created at the outdoor sculpture center Storm King (near the Hudson in New York State) in 2009 with its small rolling hills relating to the hills of the surrounding landscape. One could say it has surreal qualities. I think my work, although of modest scale and not an on-site earth work, has a connection to it in that way. The mystery of what art is actually doing is the hook that draws us back. I am so glad the United States formally recognizes its importance and acknowledges the contributions of some of its creators.