Working at the Vermont Studio Center

Here are a couple of pieces done at the Vermont Studio Center. I completed the top piece " Little Betty Jane and the Dragon. And below it is a gouache of some beautiful clematis. I also drew and painted lupines, daisies, buttercups, and bird's foot trefoil. All of these are native and or wildflowers. I plan to make painted paper collages of them as part of the Homage to Mrs. Delany series when I get to NYC.

OPEN STUDIOS WEEKEND

Richard and I have been working hard in the studio. We have lots of new work to show. Come and visit us this weekend. Saturday and Sunday from 11-6. And, there is a party on Saturday night from 6-9 pm.

You can find directions on the NARS Foundation website. But, basically you take the D,M, R, N train to 36th St. in Brooklyn. Then walk from 4th Ave to 3rd Ave (cross 3rd - go under the BQE). Our studio is on the 35th Street side. Go in the door with the number 88 over it. Climb up to the third floor. If you need an elevator or get lost and need help, call my cell: 646-522-5790.

Hope to see you there!

One more Day

Today's work

Oxalis Triangularis: Love Plant, Purple Shamrock


I love this plant. It has been on our window sill for a long time. It just bloomed, so I made the third collage in the Ode to Mrs. Delany series. This is just a part of it. It's not cropped this closely. I need room to put the name on the piece.

Third Illumination

I h ave begun a third illumination. The second one is about birds. Here it is.


I am not sure what the narrative will be for the third. The text for the first and second come from Genesis - King James version. I have begun with the borders for the third. Below you can see one days work. I essentially put in the structure of the patterns. It is a good thing I am not an architect, because despite planning and measuring things still did not come out even. If I were an architect, there would be a lot of wonky buildings around.

This last image is the sheet that I cut out the pattern for the ovals. These leftover pieces are surely going to be used in another piece. I love them.

Otto Dix at the Neue Gallerie

On Monday, I went to the Neue Gallerie to see the Otto Dix exhibition. It is well worth seeing. There is a set of prints on the horrors of war that rival Goya. And, the painting in watercolor and guaoche were new to me. I will surely go back. It is up until August 30th.

Ode to Mrs. Delany #2

I picked some weeds on the way to the studio from a gallery closing reception. They had clusters of small white flowers. I have identified them as Shepherds Purse: Capsella Bursa-pastoris - from a website. These are details. I cut off the black space around the flowers. They are really small flowers. I tried to make them life size.

Ode to Mrs. Delany

I finished this first ode to Mrs. Delany flower. It is a violet. The common blue violet. It is considered a weed. But, it is a beautiful little flower. I got this specimen from my friend Joy's backyard. It was a lot of fun to make - felt like magic.

lucky find and daily work

Look at the book I found in the laundry room yesterday! Can you believe it? I couldn't.


I have been thinking of doing some work in homage to Mrs. Delany. My friend Joy, gave me some violets today. Here they are in a little milk pitcher and a leaf collage that I began ala Mrs. Delany.



Also, I worked on a new illumination. Little Betty Jane is facing a big eagle. This is the beginning of the inset.

Illumination

I think this is pretty much complete. You can see Little Betty Jane is battling a serpent which is under her bed. She has a lance. This is not a very good image. I just scanned it. (I have since uploaded a better image. )

I added a passage from the King James Bible's version from Genesis. This passage is talking about the snake that approaches and eventually tricks Eve into eating the forbidden fruit.

There are currently two separate exhibitions with Books of Hours taken apart - for restoration. Each page is on view. At the Morgan Library they have Catherine of Cleve's Book of Hours and at the Met, they have Belles Heures of Jean de France, Duc de Berry.

These are both wonderful shows and well worth an afternoon or two of looking. I would recommend bringing a magnifying glass if you can. They have them for use at the Met, but they are often all taken.

First Session of the Her in Hero project

This is me showing the powerpoint presentation.

I have been working for months along with Leslie Madigan on a project called "The HER in HERo." It's a celebration of women role models. It's based around my change of costume cards. I made a Hero set - mostly contemporary women who I personally look up to. These are women in the public sphere. I have a webpage that shows the cards.

We had our first class yesterday - Friday, March 5th. It went very well. I will need to refine a few things to make it better, but the girls seemed to enjoy it. They made great "Me" cards and really enjoyed playing with the set of cards I made (I gave them reproductions to play with - the originals are too delicate and they are my 'work.')

I have some photos. Here you see their "Me" cards.

Here is Leslie working with the girls at circle time. This is when the girls played with the cards. Leslie has them in her hands.

All things Medieval

I am in love with all things Medieval. I love to go the Met and draw. I just wander around the Medieval art section. The things I find. They seem so contemporary to me. Look at this Lion - the first drawing. I found it on a metal piece - I think it was an aquamanile (something used to wash hands at the dinner table).

I love dragons.

And the birds were on a clasp of some kind. They are really strutting their stuff.

I didn't sleep well last night. This is a chronic problem. When this happens I am very down the next day and my brain is foggy. But, I did manage to get to the studio in the afternoon and I worked on my illuminated image of Little Betty Jane battling the snake creature.

A while ago, I bought myself a lamp with a magnifying glass. I thought about this for a long time. I tried to avoid the temptation because I feared that my work would only get smaller. People are always saying I should work bigger - not smaller! Well, you'll see.....

The image above is of the image on an illuminated page. The image is 3 x 4 inches. And, the detail image is just of LBJ. It's real size is 7/8 of an inch. She will have flowered pj's.

You can see all of this is still incomplete. I was having a lot of fun putting stripes on the snake creature. I could do that forever!

Slow Progress

The work is very slow going. And, the details are quite small. You may not be able to see most of them.

New Obsession

I went to the Morgan Library on Thursday with a friend. They have the pages of The Book of Hours of Catherine of Cleves on display because they needed to take it apart for conservation. It's really wonderful to see these works. You can see the entire set on their website. It is great.

I have long thought about working in this format and if you think about the veil cards and the artist trading cards. That have a bit of the same feel. You can see I began one. It is 7 x 5 inches. I wanted a tiled floor. And, the flowers in the border. There is a bird - dragon creature in the border too. I am going to add words in a calligraphic style. The "L" of Little Betty Jane will be illuminated. All this done is painted paper collage - of course. I just put the letters on this in photoshop to see how they look. These are at the very beginning. Lots to do and lots of things to work out.

New Work

As you know, I have been playing around with found source collages. I recently went to the "Playing with Pictures: The Art of Victorian Photocollage" which I absolutely flipped over. I received a couple of catalogs in the mail: Restoration Hardware and Land's End.


I really like the Restoration Hardware catalogbecause all the pages show domestic interiors - although very opulent and arrogantly arty. There is even a page where they made an easel into a support for a flat screen TV. (Ugh!) Collaging into these catalogs seems natural and made me think about the Victorian albums. (I wonder what those women would think if they saw their work in the Metropolitan Museum of Art?) The idea of "woman's work" and the place between art and craft - that these works traditionally occupied - is something I relate to. I feel that I wander around that space too. My work being small and about paper dolls.

Here are a few pages:

New Mosaic

I started a new mosaic. I didn't get that far. Even though I like it - just like this, I am going to keep going. I feel it is not yet resolved.

Just about there

This is after an hour and a half yesterday.

And, this is after 2 hours today. That brings me up to a total of 23 hours spent thus far. It is almost finished. I need to just tweek it a bit. Stay tuned...

Big changes

I started to think a lot about what this piece was really about. And, that may always be a problematic process, but I was always explaining what the source material was (Bergdorf Goodman catalogue) and what that had to do with anything. The tiles of the mosaic are made by cutting little rectangles out of the photos of models from a Bergdorf Goodman "Vision" catalog that I found in the laundry room - of all places. The prices in this thing are way out of the realm of any of us who use the laundry room!

So, I made some radical changes. I cut out the reference to Oscar De La Renta - that was on the earlier version. In this top one - you can see the changes made in an hour and a half session yesterday. And, the bottom image is after another 3 hours today.

Further progress

I worked for an hour and a half on this piece - yesterday. I don't know how many hours that is in total - thus far. By the way, if you click on it, you see it at the actual size of the piece. It is about 6 x 4 inches.

Koala and Panda

I am beginning work on a book project. I will be collaborating with my son - Stu. He is going to write the story. I am not a great writer. Here is a little animation I made with the characters - a panda and a koala - showing how they can move. They are paper dolls with movable limbs.

Today's work

I spent a couple more hours working on this mosaic. This slow, tedious process allows for a lot of thought.



Thoughts:
Mrs. Delany's work and it's connection to mine is how I am a part of female visual culture. This culture started (?) includes processes considered acceptable for female occupation -- sewing, collage, embroidery, paper dolls, silhouettes, etc. I found a connection through Mary Ellen Best, a nineteenth century British 'lady' watercolorist. Here 'Change of Costume Cards' were the inspiration of my veil cards.

With this thought (this morning) I see that I have a right to this kind of work. It is my heritage (no pun intended).

From Merriam-Webster.com

Main Entry: her·i·tage
Pronunciation: \ˈher-ə-tij, ˈhe-rə-\

Function: noun

Etymology: Middle English, from Anglo-French, from heriter to inherit, from Late Latin hereditare, from Latin hered-, heres heir — more at heir

Date: 13th century

1 : property that descends to an heir
2 a : something transmitted by or acquired from a predecessor : legacy, inheritance b : tradition
3 : something possessed as a result of one's natural situation or birth : birthright

This is interesting to me. Afterall, history refers to the story of mankind. Heritage infers handing things down through generations. This would naturally have to happen through mother to child. I think the word innate - as in inborn - infers to something (talent, trait) inherited from the mother.

Today's work

More time (a couple of hours?) spent on the mosaic. I think I could endlessly do this.


I wanted to paint on magazine text and then cut out the shapes for a collage of a doll I bought at the Newark Museum yesterday. She is from Africa. I put her on black painted paper - like Mrs. Delany.

Today's work

I was able to work on the mosaic today. Just about an hour. But, enjoyable - I really like cutting and gluing these tiny pieces of magazine paper. ?

And here is the school uniform completed. She had her brown paper bag lunch with her initials - LBJ.

Subway Reading

I found a magazine on the laundry room bookshelf: Turps Banana Issue 6. The laundry room is my favorite library. I find the best stuff there. It makes doing the laundry not only bearable, but a bit of a treasure hunt.

I read this article by Tom Phillips - "Biography of a Painting 2". He is a British painter. Here is an excerpt:

"14th March '08

.....Just as the novelist reaches a certain point where his characters, empowered by a sudden and mysterious accession of free will, begin to act and speak for themselves and to contradict their creator's intentions, so the artist is surprised when the shapes in his painting start to clamour for a similar autonomy. They argue with the painter and amongst themselves. The artist who started as captain now doubles as umpire.

The last thing I do every night is to look in the studio, inspect the day's work, and think about the general state of play. Also, unbreakfasted and teeth as yet unbrushed, it is the first thing I do each morning. I like to see whether, say, yesterday's radical gesture has been absorbed by the image as a whole. It is a constant of infanthood to imagine one's toys and dolls having a communal life of talk and action when their owner sleeps. So with that same childlike optimism I look to see if any problems might have been resolved while my eyes were shut.

This can also prove to be the Frankenstein moment when a picture that, left in apparent calm, seems to have had a bad night groaning its dissatisfaction at recent changes.

.....Certain marks press for revision, for a second chance. While one of them begs for fusion with a neighbouring element another is suing for divorce from its present partner.

.....But at least I am still in charge though I know from experience that a moment comes when the work banishes its creator. In the end it is the painting that declares itself finished.

The artist will enter the studio one morning and find, almost with brush poised, that the picture is as out of bounds as a taped-off crime scene.

It must then be accepted WAF as the book dealers' catalogues say, with all faults. If I want to improve things my only option is to do so with another painting."

Here is a scan of the painting he was discussing. This is a pretty bad image of it. I tried to find an image of the work on-line. Couldn't. His paintings vary widely from abstractions to portraits. You could see those on his website.

A Great Day in New Haven

Yesterday, I went to New Haven to see the exhibition "Mrs. Delany and Her Circle" at the Yale Center for British Art. I had been told by a friend that it was a must see - Thanks Linda. And, it was in the back of my mind. Yesterday morning I checked the website only to find out that - that was the last day. So, off I went - to New Haven via Metro North. It was snowy and blustery in NH. The museum charged no admission - yeah!!!!! I rushed up to the show and I was really blown away. Mrs. (Mary) Delany's colors are so lush. She had to make them herself; there were no commercial paints at that time.

She called her work 'paper mosaicks.' Her paper was thinner than the paper I use. It was often hard to see that it was collaged. I really love the black backgrounds. The black makes the colors sing.

These two images - I scanned from the exhibition book - which I HAD to have.