NEW YEAR, NEW STUDIO!

Starting 2015 in a beautiful new studio with great north light and lots of storage. This is a  panoramic view. Is there a better way for an artist to start the new year? I think not.

MANUFACTURING IDEAS...AND MORE

Artists are typically viewed as living somewhere on the edges of the labor/work community. After all isn’t the making of art often considered by others (non-artists) as a hobby? “Oh he/she is “artsy”, or she is an art “teacher”, or worst of all, he’s so “artsy-fartsy” (I HATE that one!). Many people cannot seem to utter the statement “This person is an ARTIST”. Instead, they qualify it with the addition of other adjectives. It’s as if by making that simple statement, “Joe is an artist” they are stating an untruth. To be an artist – as opposed to “Joe is a lawyer” – is somehow not legitimate. It’s certainly not viewed as a profession that makes and sells a commodity.

Yet an artist is part of the economy, and not just what we know as the creative economy, but part of the real work a day world. Most artists do not sit around hoping for inspiration to strike. They work. Like the woman who reports to her office job every day at nine am the artist reports to his or her studio and simply gets to work. If we waited for inspiration to strike we might never create anything.

Which brings me to the title of this post. Artists are in the business of manufacturing ideas, taking those ideas and turning them into tangible objects, available for purchase, thank you very much. They take the ephemeral and turn it into the tangible, put a price tag on it, market it, and by doing so, fuel the economic community in which they live. And work. Just like everybody else. 

By the way, here is one of my "manufactured ideas": 

This collage is titled "King Billy", the slang name for the Monarch butterfly. It is my interpretation of the monarch feeding on the milkweed pod. 

IN PRAISE OF LIGHT

Sometimes I grouse. Sometimes I gripe. Sometimes I gripe and grouse about situations I could change with just a little effort but instead of doing so, I gripe and grouse. When I do this, my husband accuses me of “cursing the darkness’, saying I would rather do that than light a candle. Sadly, I have to admit that over the years I have realized that often, he is right on the money. I do have a tendency to curse the darkness when it would be so easy to light that darn candle!

I am making a concerted effort to change that habit. When I consider all the blessings and good things in my life past and present I understand that gratitude is not just an attitude, it is a continual state of feeling. Even difficult times can contain a spark of light, and it is the hard times that make us grateful for the blessings.

Therefore I have decided not to curse the light under the barrel but to praise it. Mightily. And to release it as well. Instead of meeting life’s challenges with a curse at the dark, I plan to sing mighty praises to the light.

On a different note, I have moved to a beautiful new studio, and am seriously praising the light there! Hurray! Take a look:

Oh happy days! Ready to get back to work.

Silver poplars...

So I have been absent the last several weeks. Much has been happening in worlds both personal and art and I will be elaborating on that in posts to come. However, this week I have decided to post the homework assignment I am giving my Intro to Art Media class. I will be introducing them to assemblage and the work of both Louise Nevelson and Joseph Cornell. They will be creating small assemblages themselves. Because this is the week before Thanksgiving, their sketchbook homework has to do both with creating assemblages and giving thanks.

HOMEWORK TEN, DUE MONDAY NOV. 24, 2014

Introduction to Art Media

Monday evenings 5:30-8:20 p.m. Room G-34   Instructor: Marsha M. Pippenger

“Drawn” to Assemblage: a Cornell Thanksgiving Box

1. This is a very straightforward assignment. In your sketchbook draw a large box. It can be a 3D box or a simple square or rectangular shape.

2. Inside your box, place those things you are thankful for this year. Do this by drawing images of those things inside your box.

3. Spend some time on this drawing. Be mindful as you do this. It is more than a drawing exercise.

Indeed, it is more than a drawing exercise, and I hope they understand this. I am giving thanks all week and next, thinking of George Orwell’s thought as he lay near dying on a stretcher in 1936: “Isn't it wonderful to live in a world where silver poplars grow?” It is.

The Mind is its Own Place....

Yesterday I read a fascinating article in The New York Times Magazine about the writer Marilynne Robinson. She has been teaching the art of writing at the University of Iowa, known for its fine writing program, since 1989. You may recognize her name from her Pulitzer Prize winning novel "Gilead". Her most recent novel is "Lila", which continues the saga of the residents of the mythical community of Gilead.

Much of what she had to say resonated with me, but a couple of comments in particular gave me pause. She talked about growing up with teachers who encouraged her to build a mind she could live with, that one's mind is a place, that we must live with our minds our entire lives so we should build a mind that is .... well, more heaven than it is hell.

Think of that: one's mind is a PLACE. We alone are responsible for building a mindplace we can live with. Not only live with, but thrive in. That's the point I think. Now I am not advocating that one disappear into a fantasy world, nor is she, but what we think, how we think, can definitely affect how we live in this world. Solitude can be a lovely place to reside if we have built a habitable mind, a mindplace. I like that idea: a mindplace.

Marilynne Robinson is an exceptional writer, and it is clear from the interview that she has made her mind a great place in which to live. I want to thank her for opening my own thoughts to the care of my mindplace.

To read the full article go to The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/05/magazine/the-revelations-of-marilynne-robinson

Dayton:Aspen, Aspen:Dayton?

There's a new museum in Aspen. Yes, that Aspen, the town in Colorado probably better known for skiing than art. More precisely put, there's a new museum building in Aspen, as the original Aspen Art Museum opened in 1979 in the European model of a Kunsthalle. In general, a Kunsthalle does not have a permanent collection. Instead it mounts temporary shows, hosts symposiums and workshops and features artists.

This is a model that works for a lot of cities, as pointed out this past Sunday by Holland Cotter of The New York Times. He notes that Aspen's modestly sized museum has no permanent collection and is a potential working model for a lot of small to medium size cities between the coasts.

According to Mr. Cotter: ...."why settle for being a New York-Los Angeles outpost? Why not take advantage of the excitements that regional consciousness can offer, and by doing so chip away at the tired East Coast-West Coast hegemony?

The Aspen Art Museum’s founders were wise to create a noncollecting, community-serving museum on the classic European kunsthalle model, a model that assures that even residents of small cities have access to art and some say about the choice of it."

A facility like this does not have to buy art or maintain a collection. It can stay fresh in this way and promote talented regional artists. He notes that not every artist is driven to go to the large art centers and that smaller communities also have busy art scenes.

Aspen's new museum has its issues; it is not perfect. But it does offer a model for smaller metros: the idea of incubating spaces with pop-up, local shows that are exciting, thought-provoking, and supported by their communities. There is art excitement in one's hometown, and it's time more people understood that. Dayton, in the artistic sense, could be the next Aspen.

To read Mr. Cotter's full article on the Aspen museum: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/28/arts/design/a-museum-is-in-aspen-but-not-of-it.html?ref=design