Art from Around the Web

A little curated inspiration while I get back into the swing of things.

Los Gatitos after Las Meninas

This was my submission for the penultimate assignment in the MOOC I am doing on art history. Our task was to rework the paint Las Meninas by Velazquez. I chose cats because I think they are beautiful and seem to be a favorite pet of artists. Cats have certainly found their place in the virtual world, millions of people watch videos of them online everyday. I like humor in art and I like to create humor in art.

{Re}Happening 2014

Attending the {Re}Happening was a little like slipping into a dream. Through the darkness people wandered in and out of vision and earshot. Every now and then a familiar face would float into my line of sight, but they didn’t recognize me and I let them pass without approaching them. Walking was hard, the ground uneven in the velvety night. If I am hungry at night I often dream about food, usually cakes or ice-cream. These dreams seem to always involve me not having enough money to buy all the things I want and I wake up ravenous. At the {Re}Happening ice cream and cake was free. If there is a heaven, I want it to be like this. Not only because of the free treats. I cannot think of anything more wonderful than going from place to place to experience art projects that were wild and wonderful, meditative and inquiring. Often flawed, but that is part of it. I cannot do justice to the evening merely through descriptive writing. Experience is everything. I will keep trying.

Black Mountain College of Arts

A quick post. The 2014 {Re}Happening was last Saturday. It was truly amazing. Here is a board about the Black Mountain College of Arts and the {Re}Happening

Doing Cubism

 

Here's some advice. If you're interested in trying Cubism, don't do what I did and use as one of your subjects a perfectly cylindrical biscuit (cookie) tube. One of the essential ideas about Cubism was painting a subject from different angles. Great. Except that cylinders are more or less the same from every angle. The picture I did is growing on me. I need to finish it. I think the little cowboy hats with the very British word 'Jubilee' are funny. The ties from different angles look like search lights, which could not have predicted being the result when I started. I may post the end result here.

Good times. 

In Mud

According to the teacher of my art class, 'mud' does not refer to a colour, rather a colour that you didn't intend.
It seems that most of my adult life has been spent in mud, doing things and making decisions that took me somewhere unintended. I suppose that is the advantage of not having clear ambitions. I can't recall ever having long-term goals. That doesn't mean I was unmotivated. Whatever I was doing at any time, I threw myself into - teaching, travelling, being in love. 
This art class is merely the most recent. I don't know whether this will be something that becomes a long-term activity, I know that I am enjoying it now.

There are definite advantages to living in mud. You don't get disappointed and there is always something new to discover. I recently read an article about Cindy Sherman in Vanity Fair and she said: "I had no idea I would really become an artist. I never would have thought I'd be doing this for 35 years." 35 years in mud has resulted in some amazing work.

I intend to stay in the mud. I hope that it spreads and more people see the beauty in it.

Permissions

I think it's time to put inspiration in its place.

In one week, I heard the word ‘permission’ used twice by two different art educators. Once was to describe using a sketchbook through the MOOC I am doing. Another occasion used by the teacher of my evening class on art, in reference to creating without a plan. I found it interesting that they both used that word: ‘permission’. It’s a gentle word, a considered ‘yes’with a gentle hush to it. Don’t ‘force’ or ‘try’ but ‘give yourself permission’ to work, to do. That’s the problem with inspiration, it denies us permission. Should we throw ourselves at the mercy of inspiration, we might never create anything. Inspiration says we should not work but wait and wait and if nothing comes then it is because we are not ‘good’ at whatever it is we're trying to do.

Inspiration is also, I think detrimental to the notion of education and teaching.   Some teachers see themselves as central to the learning process, they feel that it is up to them to inspire their students. I find fault with this. If you as an educator are trying to fill your education with pizazz and 'jazz hands', students become passive, back seat drivers to their own learning. Why bother to be curious when your teacher is going to present what they think is important, and only if they present it in a charismatic way will you sit up and take notice? Educators put excessive amounts of pressure on themselves to perform sometimes, and in so doing lose sight of what is important, creating an environment of curiosity and choice making.Without ego, thanks very much.

From my first degree, I remember the teachers who had charisma coming out of their ears. I do not remember anything about what those charismatic teachers were supposed to be teaching me. It is the pointless performance that lingers.

Below is a picture of the permission I gave myself to hang my work, in a room and not care about how it looks. To me they are each mementoes of an occasion when I was doing something I loved. Each one is a snapshot of a journey I took, sometimes in a class, but it was always between me and the work.  The teacher just gave me an idea of a path to try.

Dying Everyday

My question was: Are all paintings redeemable?
I looked at my picture in dismay. I had started with such enthusiasm, making stamps out of push pins and stencils from cardboard. This lesson we were looking at pattern and the slides our teacher showed us motivated me to explore. But the more I worked, the more everything seemed to slip away. The push pin stamp resulted in a stipple effect, far less precise than the shape I thought would come out. Paint seemed streaky and the three sections lacked cohesion. My teacher could see I was not at all impressed and gave me some helpful pointers, which I did incorporate. The result is better, not great.

Despite my love and respect for process and work, sometimes I would like to end up with something pleasing. I assumed this would happen with my abstract class since I have always preferred abstract art to figurative, it hasn't. I mentioned to my teacher that abstract work is deceptively difficult. With traditional techniques, if the apple you are painting, looks like an apple then you have some idea of progress. With abstract work however, there is often no reference, how do you know it's ready? That you're making any kind of progress creatively?

Innovation must be a lonely business. No wonder Van Gogh went mad. Imagine, striking out, doing something new and perhaps you sometimes are excited by it but there must also be times where you really do question whether you are on the right path.

In answer to the question: Are all paintings redeemable, my teacher responded that she thinks they are. She then went on to show me examples of painting she has reworked into bright woven squares. I wondered what the original pieces must've looked liked, a pointless thought. She had made them new and let the old creations die (for nothing that dies completely disappears).

John Updike claimed that everyday our old self is gone with the new day. We die, so how can we be afraid of death?

I don't know how we decide what to keep, what to throw away. I trust that at some point, I will know when to let it die, if need be.

Painting, Decisions and Meaning

According to Jean Piaget: "Intelligence is what you use when you don't know what to do." This quote became my silent mantra for my most recent art class as I battled with Fauvism and struggled with color fields.
After surprising myself with my first paintings I often ask myself now, perhaps it was a fluke.
 Painting is making decisions even if the decision is to keep going with no plan. It's hard and the results sometimes less than satisfying but it doesn't matter. It really doesn't. The process is the point and the process is becoming my addiction. What  joy it is, after years of being the adult educator to learn something new.

Unlike the beginning acrylics course which was more technical, more methodical, this class feels like a tour through modern art. This time we discussed the Impressionists, the Fauvists and Black Mountain College of Arts whose spirit still lives on in Asheville. I learned that the Impressionists used oils. I thought of those garrets in Paris in the summer, hot humid and reeking of linseed oil. The smell must've been intoxicating.
We learn and then we explore those techniques and it feels to me like I am developing connections with these artists. I mean this with great humility. Actually doing what they did brings it alive. To be honest I think EVERYONE who likes art should do a class, even if you don't have the desire to be an artist. I will never look at art the same again. I'll never look at life the same way again.  John Dewey said this: "Whatever path the work of art pursues, it, just because it is a full and intense experience, keeps alive the power to experience the common world in its fullness." (from 'Art and Experience')

I am sharing what I did, not because I think it is any good but to make those of you also struggling feel better. The finished product here seems so insignificant to the experience of creating it.

From Beginning Acylics to Abstract Art

Every now and then in life we experience a moment of utter perfection. The moment the teacher of my new evening art class turned off all the lights, illuminating the new falling snow while we practiced automatic drawing was one of them. This new class which began last week, is about abstract art. It's the same teacher I had before (local artist Ursula Gullow) but the tone is different.

In this first lesson we looked at the idea of automatic drawing. Ursula made an excellent point. When we create art with a clear plan of what we want at the end, the subsequent process becomes a series of tasks, with the creativity happening at the start. Whereas if we create art spontaneously, we become the medium along with the materials we use, the creativity is ongoing.  As someone who has always created with a plan, this has been liberating. That is not to say that it is always easy to work spontaneously, my brain doesn't do this naturally. But I am trying!

As part of the class we created our own automatic drawings in the dark using black lines. I chose to draw continuously from one line without lifting my pen from the surface. It was a good feeling to be with these people I barely knew, in the dark, collectively creating. We used the drawings as the basis for paintings. Many people used different colours and materials. I stuck with monochrome. The piece I did fought me for a while, then somehow it came together.  Below is the result.

What you can't see in the picture is the areas that are raised, peaks of paint. I have decided to call it 'Cartography' because to me it seems like a map, a map of my subconscious perhaps.

Do This MOOC!

I am currently participating in a MOOC called Live! A History of Art for Artists, Animators and Gamers provided via Coursera by CALarts.
It is a really great course full of wonderful resources. The CALarts teachers have done a superlative job at structuring a course around art theory but also encouraging collaboration.
Part of the course has been weekly sketchbook assignments.  Last week we had to create a visual of ten sources of inspiration. I did mine as a Pinterest board (see below).  I cannot recommend this course enough. For someone like me it has been endlessly useful, it has helped me structure my creativity and expand.  I am by nature lazy, I can talk myself out of anything, but the activities and networking with other members of the course have energized me.  PLUS I have found a new way to use Pinterest! When you are an independent lifelong learner like myself, it is hard sometimes to really know how well you are doing or come up with ways to assess and expand on the knowledge you are gaining. Courses like this help because they gave me exercises that I would not have thought of doing.

The advice on how to critique and articulate feelings on my own art and others has even helped improve this blog! 

We are in week 3 and the course lasts for 9 weeks, at this point I dip into the course and look at the videos and read forum posts daily but then also keep track on Twitter and other social media sites as well as blogs. I am by day an instructional designer and adult education specialist, and so I know what I am talking about when I say - this is how education should be! Collaborative, at the student's own pace using materials and technologies to aid learning when relevant. Well done CALarts, Jeannene Przyblyski, Ph.D. and her team!