asymmetry

I don't know who started the asymmetric trend but I see it every where from Martha's clustered collars on Castle to the DIY kits at Michael's. I hate asymmetry!!! I'm a type A person that likes Martha Stewart balance: two lions on the steps of the NYC Library, a topiary on each side of an entry at Christmas, an even number of columns in the Hypostyle... what is wrong with symmetry?
Nothing. I say that and immediately I think the Sphinx, the Giza pyramids, Washington Monument and, that if you do it right, there are some really amazing pieces of jewelery that don't follow the rules.

This piece is another one of my favorites. The chain is new but it feels like something from the days of dragon battling knights of any shaped table. There is a chain of linked bars that I scavenged from one of mom's mineral drop necklaces that I never saw her wear. The Fleur focal point is actually a pin of Gramma Ada's with a natural, polished citrine drop. Everything else is new. If it were not for the faceted stone in the center of the Fleur that dictated the use of other faceted elements this piece could have gotten visually heavy rather quickly. This was going to be an organic piece for a gypsy costume; just the chain and the two large spacers at the top. But when the Fleur fell out of the box onto my work space as I was digging for findings... well literally the pieces of the concept fell into place.

It goes great with jeans and every cool color article of clothing I own. It is longer than I tend to wear, measuring in at nearly 36 inches, the citrine falls to my belly button. It would be awesome layered with more silver strands of varying patinas.

still waiting

This is what I do while I am thinking about how to solve the painting problems. I take myself out of the equation by putting my mind on a different problem.
And believe me, designing jewlery even with someone elses metalwork is a problem. But the resolutions are easier to come by.

So do you remember when I told you (over at Geekdom) about being in the jewelery making aisle at Michaels and feeling like gramma Ada was with me? This is the result of that trip. It's taken many months to get to here from there as I've been scavenging bits and pieces to go with the store bought stuff. These three pieces were made by deconstructing and reassembling parts from a variety of collections. I really love the medallion. I don't know that green and purple together would have excite Gramma A. But the style is certainly up her alley.

The 1st photo shows a heraldric symbol indicative of the bavarian style. To me it almost looks like a doorknocker. But these elements were often used in pediments above doors or as a kind of finial on above crenellations. There are not many of them that I can find on old buildings in Germany. Delicate pieces tend to succumb to the elements and battle. They do frequently appear on sheilds and as main elements in family crests.

The second photo is my favorite party piece. I wore this to the Christmas party with my eggplant gown and got tons of raves from the gals who are big into this kind of thing. Of all the pieces I've made, this I would have the most toruble selling. The third photo shows the same necklace with a choker I made almost 6 years ago. Everytime I am able to match colors so well over any expanse of time I am reminded of something Mrs. Kozlowski said in art class. "Mix more than you will need because you'll never match the colors exactly again." is it wrong to relish proving people wrong to the degree in which I relish that?

new work

The urn is contrusted out of several layers of preprinted paper. These papers are thin enough to manipulate and provide me the oportunity eliminate a couple of layers of painting.
The second step is to apply thin washes of color to manipulate the tones and establish the shadows and highlights. Then I wash those with colors to blend into the background layers. The third photo shows a detail of the cutout and a little of the sketch for the shield medallion.
By now you should know that I hate having plain vases. When I look at the knick knacks that gramma Ada had, I see that there is yet a Bavarian influence in my work. Since the urn is the representation of myself, going a little heavy on the German isn't a bad idea. As the theme is a fortress around a heart (thank you Sting for the imagery and the song) the germanic overtones dovetail nicely with the work I am doing in other areas of my life; genealogy, german heraldric devices, translating Rammstein lyrics, et all. But the sheild medallion, beyond aesthetics, reinforces the feeling that I need to protect myself. Of course the crack in the vase runs behind the sheild, giving the impression of a band aid and thus illustrates closing the barn door after the horses have escaped. Classic me.
I don't have all the pieces put together yet. I am stuck. With every layer I seem to be obliterating the distinctions between back and mid ground. It is not muddled. But it is not right. The vase needs to stand out from the background in color as much as in motif. Not sure how to resolve the issue. I am considering applying a MW techinique but so far nothing is really coming together.
And this, people, is the difficulty in pricing artwork. Straight formulas either undercut the effort bby only considering materials or they inflate the value based on standard time. How do you justify the thinking part of the process with a dollar value? Sometimes art is not play but provocation to do bodily harm in the form of a pint of ben And Jerry's in one sitting.

NEXT!!!

Do you ever click on the tab on the header that says next blog just to see what all is out here on the wwweb? About a week ago, after we met a new follower to the Geekdom blog, I went for a joy ride in the blogosphere and found two more blogs that I really enjoy. I haven't listed them on the right hand column where you find Wil and my friend Michelle. They are on my Blogs I Follow list on my dashboard. Both of them focus on anthropolgy. And I am following them here because they are recently tackling topics which I am trying to define for myself.

Archive Five and Eidetic Illuminations are very good. Both of these guys are students and they are trying to figure out what work is and why we do what we do. I answered a survey on Archive 5 which led me to Eidetic Illuminations. I went because his answer to the survey was so intriguing. That led me to post an answer to his question "What is work?" And.... we still have no clear cut answer beyond what Webster's would classify. Though there is a physics equation that I would like to cram down someone's throat.

Click on the next blog button sometime and see what you find. It is an amazing world out there and each of us has a part in its representation and creation. Yes, this should have been on the geekdom blog. I realize that now that I am looking at the labels for this post. [headdesk: need more coffee]

How Can You Mend a Broken Heart?

I don't know how the Bee Gees solved their heart issues. But I put the pieces into my art work.


Behold the base layers of a new work entitled "Solitaire". From left, the second layer which unifies the torn papers and random areas of color. I wrote the impetus for the piece on journal paper which is, in terms of Warehouse 13 theory, an incredibly bad idea as the emotional energy could have devestating effects on the purchaser or a stroke of genius. I vote stroke. Otherwise all I've done is spread the pain around a little.
The second figure has more patches of journaling on the green paper. The most exciting part of this layer is watching paint dry. Or rather the episodes of Ghost Whisperer that I watched while it was drying. Yes, folks... that's the thing with art. You fill your waiting time with the minutae of living.
The third layer was more fun. Smoosh colors here and blend. Smoosh color there and scrape. Add the harbingers that I ignored to my detriment, 7. If you want to be picky I was thinking the 7 Seals on the 7 Scrolls which signal the Apocolypse because, let's face it, I wanted to blow up the world and start all over again. This pick yourself up, dust yourself off Irving Berlin crap is for the birds. Heh, punny. For those who are less melodramatic, for the moments when I chastized myself for being so melodramatic, the Munificent 7 were helpful until the CD got to Something the Boy said. To me its always something the crow said/mocked with its self righteous cawing. Of course at some point this imagery should all morph itself into a little "hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul and sings the tune without the words and never stops at all". You know, right after its picked my liver clean. I also emphasized the crenellations across the top of the painting. This is afterall the fortress I've built around my heart. Just so you don't think it is all gloom and doom there is a bit of vegetation sprouting.
Now at this point I've run into a problem. My background and mid-ground are hopelessly stagnant. There is not enough contrast between these two elements. So I threw down the batik printed lace to even things out a bit and lighten it up. This also further unified the color striping that happened as a result of being a wee bit tired at this session. Various rub ons applied over the lace give me contrasting elements, layout the frames for future elements and give me some elements to tie into the herldric aspects of this fortress and said future elements.



At this point I have 10 hours worth of time invested in the work. And that isn't the hours of staring at it and cursing like a mad scientist "Why won't you liiiiiiiiiivvvvve! Why won't you form a cohesive whole!!!!" Not once did I think to scream like WFS at Kahn. That may not be beneath Sheldon Cooper. But it is beneath me.

Nearly a year since my last post

I feel like a stranded astronaut on her way home.
I started packing up the studio shortly after the last post. I knew I was going to have to appease the estate's trustee, but I didn't know that it would take nearly a year to get a brush in my hand again.

I went to live with a friend who turned out to be one of the worst friends I've ever had the misfortune of misreading. I had supplies at her house but was so busy cleaning her house and trying not to freeze in my spare time that I couldn't use what I had there. It was only a 5th of my studio and thus a triffle stiffling anyway.

Now I am living in a spacious motel room courtesy of a great boss and our beloved Director of Properties. And, despite the lack of access to the embarrassing abundance of supplies, I have what I need for the foundation of a new piece or two. The one is going to be a painful process born, as it is, of heartache. And it is going to be a long process. I find that after nearly a year without using my art muscles, I am somewhat diminished in capacity. Add to that tbe uncertainty of my future, I am constantly shutting up my internal mother who keeps telling me I should be doing other things.

True, a permanent home is needed. But until I have the money saved for a deposit the point is moot and I might as well use what I have. The creative process will keep me from spending money as an idiotic therapy for the depression that sits on the doorstep of the school like a bully waiting to pounce. And since I can not do anything but horde my meager paychecks, I might as well do more than overdose on sci-fi channel (sorry- SyFy. Stupid name!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) while I am hording.

I haven't been completely inactive artistically. I've made a few necklaces which have gotten raves. But I really need to get back to painting.

In the Moment

The problem with non artists is that they have a very illogically logical sense of the artist's process. Case in point for which I wish that I had a set of photos: text tulip watercolours. I did a set of 4 watercolours. Red red tulips wrapped in rice paper printed with a made up but realistic looking foreign script. I did throw in a few arabic phrases and Shalom in Hebrew but I was really going for something in an asian hand rather than asian block print. I only liked two of them. But as a whole they really worked.
The process here was as interesting to me as those in the previous post. The script flowed from my hands pretty easily. The tulips were more difficult. I used fresh flowers as my model so that I could get a good 360 degree view and understand what I was seeing. This is sooooo much better than working from a photograph, especially when working with a transparent medium like watercolors. So I had one portrait that gave me fits. And I should have stopped when I got mad. (Ego) But I forced the issue, did another layer of red glaze and flattened out the cup of the tulip. Grrrrrrrr. But again, as a whole, the set would pass inspection. My sister saw them and fell in love.
So she actually bought them (to help me pay for my car that month) after I put them in black frames. When she got home to Alaska, she showed them to a friend who has a gallery. They discussed making prints. But... AK is a bit light on those kinds of resources. So sister calls me and says paint more of them. What? Paint more of them? Her logic was that if I could do it once, I can do it again.
It isn't bad logic. But let me tell you why it is faulty logic and coincidently why art feeds the soul. Art is not Math. You can not aply a formulaic "if/then" statement (sorry Charlie) to recreating a piece of artwork like you can duplicate a building. The reason being is that even Fibonnacci cannot account for the infinitesimal nuances in each nano second of each minute from one session to the next to recreate a piece of artwork exactly as it is seen. Even the artist cannot do this despite the fact that it looks as though all the tools: artist, substrate, medium, temperature, humidity, lighting (natural and artificial), are the same. The thing that is different is the thing that actually makes the artwork work for the buyer. That is the moment in which it is made.
The moments in which the art is created are directly entagled with the final product. A moment today is never going to be identical to another moment. Amount and quality of sleep, the health of the body, the fluidity in the muscles, strength of the skeletal structure, emotions in those moments, quality of the artist's relationship to the Muse/Creator/God, mood that influences a music selection... it is all entangled (Charlie can 'splain it) with the artwork. I could never have duplicated the work itslef. I could have repeated the concept. But even then it would have been a shallow relfection of itself because of the very thing I remember most about the experience of painting those tulip portraits.
I was in the zone. My vision, that which is beyond visibility, was accute enough to see the subtlties with the paint flow in relationship to the face the model presented. I felt like the ink that created the "words" was an extention of me... my blood and soul said something in that made up language that I have not felt since. I truly think that is what my sister resonnated with. Whatever I felt and said outloud from my subconsciousness was what she was thinking/feeling/needed to hear in hers. Like anything else I have journaled, once it is written down and out of me it is gone and I am not responsible for keeping it anymore. So it isn't there. That's why its good to journal anger. It is released from your body but trapped on a page where it is inocuous... I'm just saying. I do not have that to tap into any more. Compound that with the fact that they weren't conscious thoughts and WHAMO!... nothing.
If I could look at them again, I could feel those moments again: an overwhelming sense of peace and rightness. But I can not recreate them. It isn't possible. Thank God for giclee. But that is the only way that they will be reproduced.
Coincidentally, that is also why artists hate to be stuck in assembly line production of their babies. The soul of the piece gets lost. Those of you who are encouraging your art friends to get into the mass production game need to think of a better game or encourage them in other directions. While it is truly a shame that some work will not reach the masses, you don't want to kill the artist's soul with the masses. I would recommend you encourage reproductions, giclee or otherwise, offer to help them make great digital files of their work and even offer to display it in your offices, retail stores et all to support them. But if there is one thing that doesn't mix, it is the corporate gristmill and the artists' soul.
Okay... lecture over.

footnote: In reference to Charlie. Professor Charlie Epps from the CBS show Numb3rs, makes math fun. Better than that, I can understand it much better than I ever have before. I am a little less math-phobic but not much. Haven't seen it? Check it out. Seasons 1-4 are superb. 5 I'm an still out on.