Golden Tree

12" x 16", oil on panel

Big news at the MFA Boston!

Reframing “American” Art was the topic of the National Public Radio show, OnPoint, this past Tuesday. Hosted by Tom Ashbrook, the guests were Elliot Bostwick Davis, chair of the Art of America’s Department at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston and Andrew McClellan, dean of Academic Affairs for Arts & Sciences and Professor of Art History at Tufts University. The occasion was the opening of the MFA Boston's new "Arts of the Americas" wing. Five hundred million dollars in the making, it houses approximately fifteen thousand works of art.

Some of the discussion involved how the exhibit reflects the United States' changing demographics and global awareness. Juxtaposing art from the U.S. with our neighbors can inform our identity. What is similar or dissimilar in the art and how does that speak to who we are? It can broaden our self concept, not unlike a child going to preschool to be socialized. The child learns about others, finds his/her place in the group and goes home to bring the new knowledge to the family (sometimes for better sometimes for worse!). The Internet sends us all to a virtual "pre-school" experience, allowing us to learn from one another well beyond the one-room school house. Maybe computers can't do it all. I believe it is short-sighted that geography is rarely taught in American public schools anymore. Our lack of education about other cultures is compounded by the physical location of the U.S.; disconnected from the other continents. We began by separating from Britain and turning away from the layers of European history ever present in the architecture of those places. The pioneers had a clean slate, a wilderness they felt compelled to claim and tame. Out with the old, in with the new. The new wing and the curators way of presenting the art is an opportunity to poke our heads up and see what was going on while we worked so hard. If we begin to consider the art of others as equal, we can increase our understanding and value of the people behind it.

Many American artists were viewed as pioneers. The first landscape painters were out to show Europe that although we didn't have its cathedrals we had something better - God's unspoiled creation. Alfred Steiglitz's 291 Gallery bridged the gap, showcasing American and European artists. Jackson Pollock and the Abstract-Expressionists put New York City on the map as the art capital of the world, pushing Paris to the side. A lot has happened.

I worked as a security guard at the MFA in college and had a lot of time to think about the collection. My husband and I met at the West Wing Entrance where I was selling admission tickets (May 1992). He was a visitor, a total stranger. A lot has happened. I just had to call in.

I was on hold when Ashbrook asked if there is any point in looking for commonalities between the art. He took my call. I said that certainly each artwork is it's own thing but the impulse for art-making is human and connects us. I said that Joseph Campbell made his life's work be the study of mythology of all cultures throughout the world and throughout history, including how those myths are represented in art. He found reoccurring symbolism on many levels. The collection lends itself to this exciting approach. For example, what does a portrait of Paul Revere, a Jackson Pollock painting, and a teenage museum visitor have in common (I promise I'm not setting you up for a joke)? Rebellion. The passion to challenge the rules. The will to make one's mark and envision a different world. There is great strength, determination, and perhaps some necessary pig-headed-ness mixed in as well.

So there you go. I'm going with my old art school buddy and I'll take my husband and son. We can think about who we were and who we are as we look.

Maple, Grass and Maple, Dusk (iPad)

I am so happy. I blogged before about a book close to my heart, Just Kids by Patti Smith. Much to my delight, it just received the National Book Award for non-fiction!

"The judges called her memoir "an evocative work of cultural history" and an "unsentimental elegy for a time that seems both very recent and very long ago." - Bob Minzesheimer, USA Today

Smith cried while accepting as she told of working at Scribner's Book Store in New York City when she was starting out. She used to put the National Book Award winners on the shelf and wonder what it would be like to win. She promised Robert Mapplethorpe the day before he died to tell their story. They came from nowhere, committed themselves to art and came out on the other side. She means a lot to me for writing a book that is about art and the artistic struggle, fine literature than can speak to everyone. She opens the door to show people what an artistic life can be like. The book takes place in a particular location, time, and culture (NYC, 1970's bohemia) . This differs from my experience as someone who is just as committed to art but also determined to have a quiet family life avoiding walking the line with a risky, potentially self-destructive environment. I don't believe that that environment is necessary for great art-making but the proximity to other artists and exchange of ideas can generate more. It can lead to recognition as well. I neither celebrate nor criticize Smith and Mapplethorpe for choosing that framework for living; it's a valid path. It isn't for me - art yes, instability, no. I plod on painting dots in quiet.

A note on the above images:

The singular trees are figurative, like self-portraits. They are made colored light occurring at a particular time of day. Key is the loose, energetic line, free yet structured, communicating space and form. I am very free yet structured.

Winter Memory and Forest, Fields

Winter Memory, 6" x 12", oil on panel, 2010

Forest, Fields; 6" x 12", oil on panel, 2010

The work of children's book author Ed Emberley was recently featured in an exhibition at Scion Space in Los Angeles. Six artists responded to his pictures by combining their style with his. Emberley's Drawing Book of Animals was an absolute favorite of mine in third grade. Drawing instruction "how-to" books are usually poo-pooed for hampering a child's creativity, a principle I generally agree with. This was not my experience in the case of Emberley's, however. The book shows children on how to make his fanciful, graphic animals by building on basic shapes. The creatures are just plain cute and I remember giving the my drawing of the porcupine to my teacher. Children go through a phase of enjoying drawing characters as well as repetitively drawing schemas - a subject they draw in a particular way every time (mine were a clown, a fruit bowl, and a cat). Wikepedia defines "schema" as deriving from the Greek word "σχήμα" (skhēma), which means shape, or more generally, plan. The Free Dictionary adds that it refers to "a structural or procedural diagram". Emberley's book fits these definitions.

My landscapes are schematic in that I have a particular viewing experience in mind - a window/stage/framing like a screen. How I work it out isn't planned and can be a bit confusing, a puzzle, a challenge. I'm obsessed with the schema and want to push it in all directions as I repeat. Many painters did/do the same, revisiting a motif, banging it, bending it, pushing on it, trying to get it to give. Sometimes it comes easily, sometimes it resists. Either way it compels. I don't have a teacher anymore so I'll just pass them along to you.

View

View; 6" x 12", oil on panel, 2010

The well-known artist Ann Hamilton invented a special camera using her mouth. Her mouth is the camera body into which she inserts film. When she opens her mouth, it functions as a shutter to let in light. Intrigued by the idea of using one sensory organ to act as another, she combines the mouth with the sense of sight. The relationship of the body to taking the picture is different; it's not about eye-level. Hamilton creates people's portraits with her mouth camera. You can read PBS's Art 21 interview on the subject here. She has also written a book with Joan Simon titled Ann Hamilton: An Inventory of Objects which delves deeper into the project.

View has a similar kind of bracketing as the mouth camera portraits but the method, oil painting, is almost as old as the hills. Hamilton says the oval shaped pictures made from her mouth camera look like an eye, the person's portrait in the center, a "pupil". While not formatted as an oval, View, as with many of my paintings, is about the experience of looking out through something to what light reveals in the center. It is a particular favorite of mine because it looks fresh, free from labor, as if the subject was always there and you just came upon it. It feels as if you were lost in the woods and made it out, the black forms a bit ominous, the center a relief. It is a primordial world. The people in Hamilton's photographs are caught where they are, a part of their real selves captured in a blink. They are ready for a time capsule. My landscape is outside linear time, something that always was, the fruition of my search. It looks forward and back. Don't forget to change the clocks.