july2006

Night Ride

Maximalism, July 31 2006

I am wondering if the use of geometry always equals an analysis known as minimalism? Recently my painting was called Minimal, but I don’t believe that is quite the right description of sensation when one is with the work. Maximalism addresses it more.

Getting and giving, July 30 2006

Melia Donavon at PORT posed some questions to both artists and gallerists: artists, how do you get shows? And gallerists, how do you to decide what/whom to show?

Since I am both, I am going to sort of wrap this all into one small bit of wax. I’m not out to tell you what is on my mind as curator - style-wise. Suffice to say that it changes all of the time. This post is more about socialization and attention.

First and foremost, give it. Give attention to the gallery and what they are doing. Go to the openings. I don’t know how many times I have written this here, but telling the gallerist that the reason you want to show there is because ‘you like the space’ is not enough. We are not holes to be filled.

Focus. The other day I visited an artist who told me he had dropped off his CD of images to ten different spaces. This was not what I wanted to hear. Why should I target him if he did not target us?

He also made it clear that he was a hermit; that he had no fan-base and didn’t care if he had one; he had his ‘work’ and that was all. Like this was something to entice me! How can I care if he doesn’t?

If indeed you get a studio visit from someone, have the work ready. I actually went to a studio last week where the artist had ONE image on a computer screen to share with me. Immediately he plowed into his (admittedly wonderful) idea. But ideas are a dime a dozen and not enough. The gallery does not hang just 'ideas', however we might like to see it that way.

Mark twain had a saying: “Put all of your eggs into one basket - and watch that basket!” This may not be for everyone, but if your work is truly unique, it might be worth it to target one gallery and then just badger them until they finally show you! This is what I did with Augen: five years of coming around and letting them know I was still alive and evolving as an artist.

Do not give up because they haven’t called you. Part of your job is to call them. If they show any interest at all, this is an open door. In the meantime, make sure you get in some good group shows. They tend to happen all over town; there are plenty of opportunities. Just don’t whore yourself out too much.

(PS. Please do no insist that I watch videos of you painting.)

July 29 2006

This is the state of the herb garden right now. All day long and on into the evening, it is covered with bumble bees.

The studio, July 26 2006

Mostly what has been on my mind is the upcoming show at Augen. Everything was delivered yesterday and now I guess I am just supposed to wait.

As a diversion – and because I need to – I go visit artists in their homes and studios. I had to add the ‘home’ bit because not everyone has this exclusive place just for art making. I understand Paul Klee made a lot of his work in the kitchen.

Like I told TJ Norris, art making happens mostly for me in my mind, and thus, everywhere. I do have a place upstairs for cutting and pasting and a place downstairs for painting, but the process doesn’t end when I leave those places.

Randy Moe has a nifty, smartly designed pad. He makes most of his oil pastel drawings on a small 1950s table (not pictured here).

Every aspect of LeAnne Hitchcock’s home is dedicated to the photograph: from top to bottom plus a whole separate shooting area:

Joe Thurston has a wide spread (I’m envious), with plenty of room to not only make a mess but also hang. He’s right on track with the new work:

the raven

A museum, July 24, 2006

Years ago (1988) I went to the Museum of the American Indian in New York. It was located on 155th street, out in the boondocks. No one was there. In fact I remember it was right next to a Spanish Museum which impressed me more (and had a lot more traffic), having some world class Goyas.

That museum of Indian Art was so neglected; it was like a metaphor for the state of affairs of the peoples it addressed. It needed money, care and attention badly.

There was some tape of music playing... songs of men mourning in the night. You imagined a campfire. It felt like the people were still there crying, even though the set-up was really rinky-dink. Maybe because the set-up was so rinky-dink.. all these people mourning right in their museum, with no one listening. The place was dusty with signage literally decades old and no current technology.

I recall both my friend and I were speechless about it and so we tried to concentrate on what we liked (the Spanish museum) and ignore the travesty.

No one in New York went to this place and yet it was rather a nice trip: the loneliness and quietude. Then some scandal went down and someone wanted to give the museum a lot of money - but to take it out of New York, since it did such a lousy job of taking care of it. I think NY tried to hold on, but it is in Washington now.

Holland Cotter wrote a piece for the Times on what’s going on in Washington and gave a small bit about the exhibition of Native American Art from the Pacific Coast. The images are marvelous. I love the masks and wish to use them somehow. The closer I get to birds, the more I see how well one of these masks could function in my own (private) life.

New York still has a place for the Pacific peoples (unless they have changed the place). Go down to the basement of the Natural History Museum. My God, it is a paradise of immense totems and haunting imagery.

Day care center, July 22 2006

Again I slept outside, able to wake up to the first arrival of birds in the morning. Generally it is woodpeckers and jays.

In the Oregonian is a column by Bill Monroe called Wild Things which I always read. His last column addressed how geese will leave their babies off with just one couple, so that one set of parents are the caretakers of the day. I then realized that the same thing was happening in my backyard.

Sometimes there are literally a dozen baby jays (of varying development) in the yard, but there is an adult or two around. They play, they spar, but mostly they eat – all day long. People had remarked before that it looked like I had a nursery out there and now I know it is true.

Splash! July 20 2006

Close to my home is the Wilson Pool and while it is hot (all six weeks of it), I take advantage of it as much as I can. I love swimming pools as not just someplace to be in, but also to look into.

So much variation in what is known as aqua. If you like blue, a swimming pool can teach you so much. I made my own Swimming Pool a few years ago but knew there were many more inside me:

I feel too that there is this other blue show in me, not necessarily water-based. Maybe more sky based. In the end, I guess what I am really after though is the unification of both, a melding of the horizon line. That melding and unification has been on my mind a lot lately.

Swimming pools in general might seem like fluff, but I always thought they could be done well too and I liked all of the efforts of David Hockney (see painting above). I imagine after an upbringing in Yorkshire, the warm blue enclosure would be very inviting.

On/ Off 8A & 8B, 1967

P Modern Party, July 19 2006

While at the Portland Modern party at Disjecta, my mate pulled out his digital camera and took a few highlights. Of course the Star of the show was Mary Henry, whose works from the 1960s we see above. These were the stunners of the night. I also enjoyed the work of Isaac Lin:

Here's a close up of my contribution, Day Trip:

1978 xeroxes, July 18 2006

Some of the earliest photomontages I have are kind of destroyed, as I used rubber cement. For years they looked just fine but now are spotty or yellow. So the only things worth scanning are the copies I made which went into fanzines. The originals are terrible but the xeroxes still look OK.

Since I was in a band and everyone I knew was in a band, instruments were always around. I placed my dad’s accordion (with Rrose Selavy) and my boyfriend's guitar right on the copy machine, using it like a camera. We copied our clothes, our bodies, our fish-netted feet and just about everything else.

The rare great yard sale, July 15 2006

Across the street is an old farmhouse from the 1880s, the first house in this area. Older folks always lived there, quietly. Now they are going away and a wonderful yard sale precedes this. Today I bought a fully functioning record player for two dollars. Then, an old suitcase in good condition – filled with 78 records! On top of that, for free I got another suitcase filled with Oregon Journals and Oregonians from the early 60s, including loads of coverage of JFK’s assassination. I also found some wonderful plastic flower pins from the 60s and the whole purchase was under ten bucks.

Lavender Field, July 15 2006

Like a lot of artists, I am inspired by what I see around me, especially nature. If it collides with my concerns regarding a fuel-injected experience via color, all the better.

Lavender Field, 2004

And so, the lavender field. I’ve done at least four versions of the overlay of purple on green, all of them different, learning all the while. I recall a certain critic telling me: “Purple and green, that’s the tough one.” But I found they provide endless enjoyment.

Paint is not enough, July 13 2006

Baby Smith had asked me if I considered my work to be ‘abstract’ or ‘representational’ and this led to a long string of thoughts in reply. This is not a topic to chase me all day, but if I had to be cornered I would join Yves Klein who said he painted his own reality.

What had chased me lately was a consideration of the act (and result) of good painting. I was trying to ascertain why some works left me empty and some did not. In the end, it goes back to the beginning, a circle, the foundation. It needs to be laid.

You can’t take apart what you never learned to construct. Paint is not enough. Some artists find paint so exciting, they think it will carry the painting and for awhile, maybe it will. But if you go on for years in the place where you started (save maybe bigger or variant palette), then you need to retrace and rethink: the paint can’t hold up the painting on its own after certain expectations in your evolution have been met.

Who we are, part one, July 11 2006

Recently it had been suggested to me that I write up a short bio, as there was plenty not covered in the typical exhibition history one submits to various opportunities.

This is something I always avoided before as I did not know where to start. One of the reasons I began this site was to create a way to fill in gaps, yet still connect to my art-making life. I don’t feel there is a lot of division there; I see no big line drawn in the sand.

But that has become a big problem, for the typical art world person looking at your art and then your life basically wants that separation. Edward Winckleman recently had an interesting discussion of this very subject up on his site.

Basically, the art world wants to know that you are serious and clear about your studio practice and not out and about trying to be all things to all people. They suspect your art might be weak if you are spending a lot of time doing something else. I got so confused about it all, I ditched writing a bio altogether.

Perhaps it’s true that the typical artist who goes out and curates a few shows is not doing it on a level to change the landscape. They are doing projects with friends and there’s nothing bad about that at all, but these are nothing to include on a piece of paper. But as a curator and an interviewer I crossed over into another area awhile back, and hate to ignore the fact.

And yet do these activities mean anything as regards to what we make as artists and how it is perceived? That’s the important question. How does it come back to the image and oeuvre one produces? If the extra activities have no real connection, they have no place in documents out to groom you as an artist, first and foremost. This is what I have been told and it ought to be clear where to draw the line, yet it still isn’t.

So these past few days, I have been fluctuating with everything I do and while knowing it helps others, wondering if it is helping me. It hurts to delete what I have worked so hard on and it hurts to hear that its inclusion is potential ‘career suicide.’ Yet very few critics have ever addressed my painting or photomontage, while happy to note everything else. I have to think about that every time I put together a press packet.

This glaring fact has me rethinking how wise it is to have cultivated what I did, a practice of servitude and exposure for other artists - which I have enjoyed and learned so much from. To be in the studio and ponder nothing but my world is not nearly as exciting as the balance I strived toward: receiving injections on various levels from various excellent artists can really kick your ass and broaden your world.

If however, I continue to grow as an artist and make paintings which also kick ass but are underestimated or dismissed, a reason could be the unclear package I present. I can well understand why there could be doubts about where my heart or focus is, if all they want to see is m y i m a g e and m y c a r e e r.

My confusion lies in the observation that the really evolved artists I see out there are the ones who also did things for/ with other artists, at least at some point in their career. And no matter what, it is a rush to give. I might have to stop Artstar and all the rest of it to establish that I am an artist, even though I’ve been one for decades, and that’s kind of depressing to me. Of course you could say well, just don't tell them about it. A little difficult to do when everyone else's bios are filled with the projects I included them in.

La defense, July 10 2006

Often when people see my work online for the first time, they say I am an Op Artist. In fact many jump immediately to the idea that they are made digitally, while nothing could be further from the truth. Look at the paintings for more than 10 seconds. So I am going to try to connect some dots here.

OP Art: a flat art which plays tricks on your eyes and cause shapes and colors to move and transform. There is no other thesis that I can find, behind this. These works originally were made in the 1960s with stencils and very controlled flat color planes which formed patterns to jar your eye and sense of space. They fit very well into their place and time and of course artists like Riley and Celentano (on this coast) have expanded their vocabulary from the start.

For me, I am interested in movement as an indication of the life force. I wish to make my work the living object as opposed to copy them. And my influence (stretching from the 20^th century all the way to the Egyptians and the Indians -on both continents and hemispheres) is life long and evolving.

Look closely and you see a perfection in line in a Celentano or Riley that I am not out to achieve. I grow plants, skies, gyrations of light and other entities of life. It’s not a surprise from anyone who studied ancient art. Long before I got Malevich and Albers, I got the Cyclades and the rugs, weavings and patterns of various tribes in this country.

Someone even said: “How can you combine the ancient with the Modern and really, are you?” This is a question posed by a person who has never seen anything like what I am doing. They even said so. I guess there is a price to pay for that- the rare and brave, inventive critic, whom I'm still waiting for, comes to mind..

It’s sort of like the curating question which comes to me occasionally: "Do you show artists like you?" Well, of course not, how could I? Who are they?

“I’m going to be a great painter, and you’ll probably end up teaching painting in some girl’s school.”

July 7 2006

The name of this piece is the above quotation by the artist who created the central cameo around 1918, Eugene Speicher. He went to the Art Students League of New York with Georgia. Just the wrong woman to talk like that to.

Slowly I continue making a collection of photomontages of Favorite Dead Artists.

Molten

Nicolas Gadbois, July 4 2006

While it is a holiday, I will still go down to the gallery at some point to meet Nicolas Gadbois and receive his works. Gadbois addresses the land, like Ann Hogle, but in a much different way. He is inspired by aerial views which make patterns and reveal the various marks humankind leaves on the land. Gadbois uses interesting materials too, pigments mixed either with sand and cement, or wax. So some are light but some are really heavy, and many are more like releifs than straight-ahead paintings.

‘Why have there been no great women artists?’* July 3 2006

TJ Norris has an interesting post up, a ménage of couples in which both are artists. They inspire, exchange, support. Both careers are equally respected. I’ve known a few like that but think it is actually very rare.

It’s great if they can work that kind of situation out, but in my own experience (and also in what I see out there in art couple-land), women are holding the short end of the stick. And let us never forget that this is one very competitive arena (for ink, for space, for just about everything) and at least for me, I got tired of competing with my mate.

I’ve seen cases where the female has made art all her life. She mates with a male who then takes it up, inspired by what is her world. And guess who ends up selling his work for much more than the woman, who has made art ten times longer (and often ten times better too).

But the male can brim and network with an inbred, from-the-cradle confidence that takes decades for the female to form, if she ever does, having few role models. You can’t tell her about all those women presidents and all those great female painters from the various ages of art history. Even when you get into the 20^th and 21^st centuries, we’re lucky to make a dime to his dollar and that’s no shit.

And of course the male artist wants to help her - how to frame the work, where to show it, critique her education and who to hang with. Before you know it, she’s just doing it all wrong (for ‘help’ often does imply inadequacy, sorry) and a funny thing happens: all those strategies and various factors that were so wrong for her are JUST FINE for him. I’ve seen this sad scenario so many times; I will deliver no names.

The worst case scenario is the woman who gives it all up to help her man with his art career. And hell yes, with that kind of force, he will have one. Art history is full of male artists who got the real brainstorm of their lives from the woman.

But not even just in art history – how about right here on Artstar Radio? An example: an interview with a male artist who left the woman friend in the lobby… as the interview goes on and he’s talking about his project, he makes it clear who taught him how to do what he’s doing. In fact her name came up so often, I was about ready to say: “Don’t you think we ought to be interviewing her?”

-Yet no one really knew of ‘her,’ if you know what I mean. Her name was not on the postcard, in the papers, on the bio, on the backs of the works. Maybe indeed they are very happy in love and I wish them well, but this kind of situation I find actually very distressing. ‘Cause it’s got to be what has gone down for centuries and part of the answer to the question above.

* The title of a well known essay by Linda Nochlin, published in 1988

First Dawn by Ann Hogle

Eruption, July 2 2006

Earlier in this diary I gave a detailed account of what living in Portland was like when Mt. St. Helens went off in the big way:

Burnside 1980 by Rupert Jenkins

Ashes in our sheets, no cars allowed (wonderful!), a town like a ghost town, and wondering when it would go off again. Suddenly the mountain had a flattop. I’ve posted previously the photograph taken by Rupert Jenkins, of people waiting for the bus on Burnside in 1980.

Fire Works

This is all on my mind as the next exhibition at Chambers is part of a suite of paintings made recently by Ann Meilstrup Hogle, all based on the eruption of Mt. St. Helen’s. The artist was here when the mountain went off and never got it out of her head. The works were all made within the last three years. We’ve paired Ann with another artist, Nicholas Gadbois, who also addresses the land but in a much different way.

More recent entries: June 2006