Adaptation, 12 x 24 inches, acrylic & mixed media on panel. ©2010 Deidre Adams

After a week of utter insanity, things are quiet now. I’m getting caught up on all that I’ve let slide, like answering emails and attending to other outstanding issues. A blog post seems in order for closure on the the thesis exhibition.

As mentioned, due to unforeseen difficulties, we had a big scramble finding and preparing a temporary space for the show. The one we ended up with was a beautiful space, but it isn’t intended for display of art and therefore had several issues. Some in the class objected strenuously to the rather lively blue and lime green walls. Personally, I think my work would have looked stunning on a lime green wall, but I’m flexible. Since the will of the majority seemed to be that we needed neutral white walls, a bunch of us spent most of Tuesday painting. On Wednesday, I hung my work. This took me pretty much all day, because I had to do it alone, and I was terrified of making a mistake and messing up my newly painted wall. So I did a lot of figuring and measuring and remeasuring before putting nail to wall.

On Thursday, I needed to prepare for an artist’s talk I was giving that evening. So much for my theory that planning the date a year in advance should make for a very comfortable schedule!

Finally, on Friday, only one problem remained: there was no lighting for the walls other than some very high-up fluorescent fixtures — a completely unacceptable situation. Fortunately, my husband was able to take the day off and help with this situation. After several trips back and forth to the Home Depot, we finally had something rigged up on the overhead beams with clamp fixtures and 120-watt halogen floods that was, if not ideal, at least much, much better.

Me with some of my work

The reception was exciting. We had tons of people and it was a big crush, and it was great to be a part of it. I would like to express my sincere thanks to all of my great friends who came out in spite of the crappy weather to support me. You are all fantastic!

Did I really have a vacation a couple of weeks ago? It seems that I did, but the last couple of weeks since my return have been so busy that it almost seems like another lifetime ago. I’ll post some photos from Hawaii shortly, but right now the most pressing thing in my life is getting my thesis show ready.

Our graduating class was supposed to have been the first to have our show in a brand-new space, one purchased by the school and completely renovated to beautiful perfection. Of course, there was always the worry that the construction wouldn’t be finished in time, but we all kept sending positive energy out into the world so that everything would proceed as planned. But yesterday, we were informed that of course the worst has happened. It’s not the renovation itself, but a long complicated story about needing more parking spaces because of the zoning, which requires destruction of other structures on the property, which have now turned out to have asbestos. This is a massive problem; it can’t be dealt with in time no matter how much we might will it, so for the moment we are building-less. A massive search effort is underway for an alternative space, and we are all in a kerfuffle wondering how this will come together by April 23, which is supposed to be the opening.

And I, ever the procrastinator, have been unable to get my postcard to the printer until now, even though it’s due to various parties in a mere 6 days. The reason for that is, as usual, complete and utter gridlock in the ability to come up with a title for my show. Originally called Resonant State, my thesis has undergone many revisions and thus my concept has morphed to the point where that was no longer appropriate. Among other possible working titles, I had at various times called it Patina and Force Majeure. Neither of those gave me the happy, contented feeling I expect when something fits well. Titling is a difficult, angst-ridden process for me. I write down many, many words as they occur to me, anything that might have a glimmer of a chance of being useful. This all stews inside my brain, and after an interminable amount of time, a new title emerges. So it is with this show, the title of which shall henceforth be Plane of Persistence. It works on several levels with not only my thesis, but also with my working methods. More about that when I post the thesis statement shortly.

Now the funny part. I’m getting the postcard printing for $25, but the cost for rush order and overnight delivery is going to be about 4 times that much. So there you have it – do as I say and not as I do, and plan ahead.

I’ve been working more on my paintings in preparation for the thesis show. Although I originally started this series from an idea about the brain and cells and memory and dreams (see A State of Resonance), that’s all kind of fallen by the wayside as I’ve been working more into these paintings. I realized that I’m falling back to my usual way of working, which applies whether I’m working with textiles or painting on panels, or any other medium, and that is a focus on process. I work intuitively, starting with some basic layers of things and responding to them as I go. All of my work is about texture and layering, influenced by the things I’m drawn to visually: crumbling walls, peeling paint, rusty hinges, and marks. There is an inherent aspect of time, as surfaces are changed over time by the environment and by human intervention.

Rereading my earlier words, this seems to be the single most pertinent thing I said in that post:

I’m still working with texture, because after so many years of working with textiles, I’ve developed an inseparable connection with the tactile nature of materials. Besides the visual texture imparted by the lines, shapes, colors and markings in this work, I’m also using thread, string, fragments of handmade paper, and other embedded objects to impart elements of physical texture to the surface. I’m still very interested in creating a sense of depth and layering here, in an attempt to create an illusion that you are moving into the piece.

In the BFA thesis class, we spend a lot of time working on our statements. The thesis statement is distinguished from the artist’s statement in a couple of ways, the most notable of which seems to me to be that it’s a lot longer and therefore full of more pontificating and “artspeak.” In attending past senior thesis shows and trying to read the statements, I’ve found that in most cases they were way too long and my mind would start wandering before I could get through the whole thing. A lot of them sound like they’re just regurgitating a bunch of theory to score points.

In writing mine, I’m trying to be as honest as possible without sounding overly academic and pompous. On the other hand, I do want to make an effort to go along with the system to a certain extent, basically so I can get a good grade. Here’s the part where I’m having difficulty. We are supposed to name a couple of influences, and each named influence must be visible in the work. I mention wabi-sabi, as the idea of finding beauty in the impermanent and the imperfect is very influential, but they also want some actual art movements and/or specific artists named.

Now I have a lot of artists in mind whose work I admire: Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Robert Ryman, Eva Hesse, Gordon Matta-Clark, Susan Rothenberg, Wayne Thiebaud, Richard Diebenkorn, plus many more contemporary painters, textile artists, and photographers. But there is not a single one that I looked at and said, “I want to make work like that.” So I’m going about this in a rather backwards way, I suppose. I’m paging through all my Art in America and ARTnews magazines and a bunch of books to find something that looks similar or has a similar intent. Can’t really find anything terribly appropriate. For lack of a better idea right now, I guess I’m going to go with Abstract Expressionism, since the look of my work is somewhat similar to some of the gestural painters, although I think my philosophy of working doesn’t really fit. (Emotional intensity and self-denial? I hardly think so.) I’m open to suggestions.

One other note, specifically on the painting above. I first did this one last semester, but I wasn’t really satisfied with it in its original incarnation. Then, after I got a comment that it looked like an image of a nebula taken from the Hubble telescope, I realized that was pretty far off my intention. Here’s what it looked like before the rework:

Well, that color really was too wild, and even though a certain person is disappointed about it, I like the new version quite a bit better. I’m in charge here, after all!

In my last post, I discussed my angst over having to finally settle on what kind of work I wanted to have in my Thesis/Portfolio show. A few days later, our class went to visit the site to get an idea of what the space looks like. While looking at one large wall, I got a flash of how cool it would be to have some very large textile pieces in the show. As I waited for everyone else to be finished with their mildly excited chattering and general milling around, I had a little daydream which in short order included a very clear vision of making (5) 6×4-foot pieces to be set close together, making a single statement. (Wikipedia asserts that that would be a “pentaptych,” but such an ungainly word shall have no place in my permanent working vocabulary.)

The textures, colors, and methods were all surprisingly well developed in my little reverie, and I started to make my plan a reality the very next day. I cut backs and batting pieces, and I went to the basement to go through all my old stash of random types of fabric, looking for those piles of silk scraps from the designer clothing castoff sales and the old silk blouses and shirts from Goodwill that I had once accumulated for some now long-lost idea. I spent many hours of every day of the following week cutting, tearing, ironing, painting, arranging, and basting to get my first piece, a prototype of sorts, somewhat in shape to continue. But I had only begun to put in some of the first, tentative stitches — some by hand, and some by machine. The reality of whether I would be able to complete 5 of these pieces by mid-April was seriously in doubt at this point.

Over this past weekend, I met with some friends and showed them my prototype as well as a couple of the Resonant State paintings. Granted, it’s very hard for others to get enthusiastic and be able to have a clear picture of your finished piece when they’re looking at something that’s just a bunch of scraps basted onto a backing, but the consensus was unambiguous: go with the paintings. After all, they’re pretty much done, save for some minor tweaking, so why spend the next couple of months in a state of extreme anxiety when there’s no need for that? If I really think about it, one of the biggest reasons I make art is because I find it immensely therapeutic, relaxing, and satisfying. Rushing to get something done for the sake of a deadline is antithetical to my process.

I had to admit I felt a great sense of relief once I began to let go of my new idea, even though it was, and still is, very precious to me. I’m still going to continue with these pieces in the future when the time is right. In a way, this is even better. I have all of the raw materials plus one piece pretty far along, neatly stored away for the future like a squirrel with a big pile of nuts. With this plus all the other ideas I have ready and waiting in the wings, I’ll never be stuck staring at the wall, wondering what I should work on. For me, this is better than money in the bank.

Last Friday was the first day of my last semester in the BFA program at Metro. I’m only taking one class:

ART 4701 – Snr Exp Studio: Portfolio Devl
This studio course requires the student to present finished work in a senior thesis show, produce a slide and/or CD portfolio, and write a concise statement about the intention, and methodology of producing the body of work. This effort will result in the production of a body of work as well as an introduction to the profession of the studio artist.

AKA “BFA Thesis & Portfolio,” this is the class where we wrap it all up, tying together everything we’ve learned, and get pushed out of the nest to sink or swim. (Sorry – couldn’t resist the mixed metaphor.) A major effort of the class involves figuring out what our art is about so that we can write our BFA thesis statements.

By now, it seems we are expected to have settled on a particular media and theme that we want to pursue to the exclusion of all others. This idea is reinforced by the art world in general and the gallery system in particular: once you become known for doing a particular thing, major changes to your style and methods are done at your own peril. Society likes to be able to neatly categorize things, and if you want to sell your work, you need to figure out which box you can be put into.

For me, this whole system is fraught with angst. I’m interested in a wide range of themes — place, time, language, politics, social issues, technology — and I love working with different media — textiles, painting, photography, printmaking, and collage. If I had to choose just one from each column and work only in that way for the rest of my life, it would seriously curtail my interest in making art.

A long time ago, during the course of earning my first degree, I remember learning about the concept of  “opportunity cost” — probably in Econ 101 or some other finance-oriented class. Opportunity cost is “The cost of an alternative that must be forgone in order to pursue a certain action. Put another way, the benefits you could have received by taking an alternative action” (Investopedia). It applies to investing because by choosing to put your money into one stock, you have an associated opportunity cost, which is giving up the chance to make money by investing in something else. The idea really struck me, I suppose, because it occurs to me frequently when thinking about what kind of art I want to be making. For instance, if I choose to work on paintings on panels, the opportunity cost is the time I could have spent making textile work. (Or time I could have spent working on my web site or pursuing exhibition opportunities … but I guess I shouldn’t muddy the waters too much.) The opportunity cost of writing this blog post is the time I should be using to complete my assignment that’s due in class tomorrow.

Last night the idea hit me again vividly when I was making salads for dinner.

When I cut into this beautifully formed Roma tomato, I had a strong, visceral impulse: I wanted to immediately drop everything I was doing and start working on a series of huge, close-focus paintings of sliced vegetables. But my inner arbiter of common sense quickly intervened and reminded me that that would be utterly ridiculous. There would be a huge opportunity cost associated with that: I’d be giving up all the time I need to work on the things I’m currently doing.

That’s been one of the very enjoyable luxuries of school — freedom to experiment and try lots of different things without having to feel that I was giving up something. The painting at the top of this post is a good example. It was done in my Painting II class in 2007. I don’t remember exactly what the assignment was, but I know it had something to do with interiors and Cubism. I remember that I enjoyed making this painting immensely, and I would love to make several more in a series of them. But would it really make sense to do that when I also have a strong desire to make more textile work, and in fact have started on a new series in that medum? And when I am simultaneously thinking about my Resonant State series, which was to have been the work for my BFA thesis? (I say “was to have been” because now I’m wavering once again about whether I should really try to incorporate textile work into my thesis.)

Thank goodness we’re doing all this contemplation and introspection in class. I’m more confused than ever.

Entangled II, 24 x 24 inches, ©2009 Deidre Adams

Now that school is just about over, I thought I would start posting some of the work that I’ve been doing this semester. Besides the Art Theory & Criticism class, I had two studio classes, Painting V and Printmaking II: Lithography. I’ll start with Painting.

Painting V is the last level of painting that Metro offers, and it is the time when students are expected to be hard at work developing their body of work for the all-important thesis/portfolio show. At this time, we’re expected to be pretty much self-driven, choosing what we want to work on, developing our own proposals, and being given little direction other than feedback on the proposal and the work itself, both in progress and finished. It was a stacked class, meaning that the instructor had another class to deal with simultaneously and so was stretched pretty thin trying to get around to everybody. (Not surprising with budget cuts across the board, but who knows how much worse it will get before it gets better!)

As usual, I struggled to figure out what I wanted to go with for my concept. It’s not that I don’t have any ideas, it’s just the opposite. I have too many, and I feel such affection for each of them, it’s hard to settle on a single one. I went through a couple of false starts before I finally settled on this one idea. It’s something that’s been rolling around in my mind for a long time, but I never could figure out exactly what I wanted to do with it. Part of the problem is that as a highly introverted individual, I’ve always shied away from making work that is too personal, choosing for the most part to concentrate on formal elements and/or safe choices that won’t reveal too much of myself to the world. When my mother died four years ago, someone close to me suggested to me that I should do a piece about it, to allow me to work out my feelings. No, I said, I could never do that. I wasn’t even fully capable of confronting those feelings directly; it was better to keep it all at a safe distance.

Without saying a whole lot more about it, the important thing to convey is that about 4-5 years before she died, my mother began to exhibit signs that something wasn’t quite right in her mind. She was forgetting things, losing things, saying things that made no sense, sometimes displaying irrational fears about things that no one else could see. By the time she died, she didn’t know who I was any longer, but I think from some of the things she said, she might have been confusing me with her older sister.

While I was thinking over ideas for my concept, mulling thoughts about patterns and textures in nature and science, my dad had an accident and went into the hospital. I went down to Albuquerque to see him and deal with anything that needed my assistance. While there, I stayed in my parent’s house, which always makes me think a lot about my mother. I also think about how the things I experienced growing up might have looked from her perspective, how differently those same incidents and conversations would have appeared through her eyes. I think about what she might have been like as a child and a young woman, what kind of hopes and dreams she may have had that never materialized as she continued down the path she ended up choosing.

When I got back home, something I saw, I don’t even know what now, sparked the idea of trying to tie together her experiences with the physical changes that occur in the brain of a person with Alzheimer’s disease. I did a lot of research so I could understand the science of it. Neurons, the nerve cells which transmit brain activity, die when the proteins which are normally broken down and eliminated by the body instead become reformed into hard, insoluble plaques. Microtubules, the brain’s cellular transport system, break down abnormally and the proteins released reform into insoluble twisted fibers called tangles. As these cells die, the brain shrinks. Ventricles, the chambers containing cerebrospinal fluid, become enlarged.

Having seen the outward manifestations of these changes, I visualize the thoughts inside the person’s head becoming trapped: twisted, tangled, and cut off from their normal pathways by these cells and obstructing formations. An idea tries to make its way to a familiar connecting point, but it’s either stopped completely or diverted to a place it’s not supposed to go.

I wanted to use fibers and thread to express my concept, both because I love using them and because these materials seemed like a natural fit to express the concept of entanglement. As more and more thread is added, the surface becomes at once more complex and more unified. The idea is not a literal representation of brain cells, but rather a depiction of how the strangulation of the sending and receiving cells means they can no longer function as they should.

Entangled I, 24 x 24 inches, ©2009 Deidre Adams

These originally started out as strictly fiber works, but the shapes were very wonky and I couldn’t figure out how I would hang them. I also knew I would need several more pieces in the series, especially since these two were so different. I would need to make more pieces with bridging elements to make everything work together as a single exhibit. So I came up with the idea of making a grid of 24-inch squares, and to that end I ended up stitching these pieces to stretched canvas.

I also started a third piece, but since these are extremely time-consuming, I didn’t get this one to a satisfactory state before the due date. I’m not even sure if I want to keep going with it. For now, it’s a UFO (unfinished object).

Entangled III, 24 x 24 inches, ©2009 Deidre Adams

Gordon Matta-Clark, Splitting, 1974

Completion through removal. Abstractions of surfaces. Not-building, not-to-rebuild, not-built-space. Creating spatial complexity, reading new openings against old surfaces. Light admitted into space or beyond surfaces that are cut. Breaking and entering. Approaching structural collapse, separating the parts at the point of collapse.
— Gordon Matta-Clark, 1971

I’ve just spent a couple of weeks researching the work of Gordon Matta-Clark for a paper for my Art Theory & Criticism class this semester. The assignment was to choose an artist and/or specific work to tie in with some of the theories we had been discussing in our readings. Deconstruction theory* is very interesting to me, so I started with a Google search on that term and came up with Gordon Matta-Clark. As soon as I saw the images that came up, I remembered having seen a slide of his work in an earlier art history class. The slide we saw was from his work Bingo, in which he cut out sections from the side of an old condemned house. Some of these sections were saved, and this slide shows them placed in a pristine museum setting — a striking contrast of particular interest for me because I find abandoned structures so compelling.

Gordon Matta-Clark was quite an interesting guy. He was the son of two artists — Chilean surrealist painter Roberto Matta and American artist Anne Clark. Marcel Duchamp was his godfather. He was active during the early 70s and died an untimely death from cancer when he was only 35. His work is somewhat difficult to categorize, consisting of elements of sculpture, drawing, film, performance, social activism, and “semantic deconstruction,” a label applied to his fondness for word play in his documentation.

His most well-known works are probably those often referred to as the “building cuts.” The earliest works involving cutting of buildings were “urban guerilla acts” in which he illegally entered abandoned apartment buildings and cut out parts of what would have been a floor on one level and a ceiling for the level below. These cut-out fragments were displayed in a gallery setting as Bronx Floors.

Gordon Matta-Clark, Bronx Floors, 1972-73

As he gained notoriety, Matta-Clark was able to gain legal access to various condemned structures in order to perform his interventions. Splitting (top) is probably his most iconic work, consisting of a house which he cut completely in half. He and his collaborators were able to remove part of the foundation on one side so that the affected half tilted back and transformed the opening into a dramatic wedge, widening from bottom to top.

Matta-Clark was interested in the social aspects of how abandonment and urban renewal would affect and displace communities. His ideas about consumerism and capitalism seemed to be taken almost directly from the Situationists: the concepts of psychogeography, dérive, and détournement. In explaining his “dualistic habit of centering and removal,” he said,

Here I am directing my attention to the central void, to the gap which, among other things, could be between the self and the American Capitalist system. What I am talking about is a very real, carefully sustained mass schizophrenia in which our individual perceptions are constantly being subverted by industrially controlled media, markets, and corporate interests. … This conspiracy goes on every day, everywhere, while the citizen commutes to and from his shoe-box home with its air of peace and calm, while he is being precisely maintained in a state of mass insanity.[i]

Matta-Clark was trained as an architect, having received a B.A. in architecture from Cornell University in 1968. But he spent a lot of time in the company of artists while in college, and he expressed some disaffection with the field of architecture, and especially with the type of modernist ideas he encountered there. After leaving Cornell, Matta-Clark moved to New York City, to an area now known as SoHo but which was then called the South Houston Industrial area. At that time, the area was in a state of decline, a prime example of urban decay, with numerous abandoned buildings and streets lacking lighting and maintenance. Since the 1950s, artists had been attracted to the area for the cheap rents, living illegally in buildings zoned for commercial, not residential use. In the late 1960s, the city’s urban planners and wealthy landowners wanted to transform the area into a modern corporate and financial center, an idea which was met with no small resistance by the inhabitants.

At this time, much of Matta-Clark’s work involved a spirit of community, calling attention to the plight of the poor and homeless and involving neighbors and other artists in the work’s creation. He had several ideas for making building materials from discarded bottles and other trash, with thoughts of developing some of these ideas into places for the homeless to live.[ii] He explained his motivation:

As a native New Yorker my sense of the city as home runs deep … [and] my attitudes are still keener as regards an awareness of prevailing conditions and their need for improvement. Among the conditions my training and personal inclination have taught me to deal with is neglect and abandonment. There are words which when applied to children or human beings of any age evoke a profound call for alarm and rectification, yet when existing in massive proportions throughout our urban environment evokes only bureaucratic or juridic ambivalence and in-action.[iii]

Matta-Clark’s ideas about the social content of his work grew clearer to him as he progressed in his career. In a 1976 interview with Donald Wall, after he had done several building-cut projects, he reiterated his commitment to fighting against what he saw as a flawed system:

By undoing a building there are many aspects of the social conditions against which I am gesturing: first, to open a state of enclosure which had been preconditioned not only by physical necessity but by the industry that profligates suburban and urban boxes as a context for insuring a passive, isolated consumer—a virtually captive audience.[iv]

In 1975, Matta-Clark began work on Conical Intersect, one of his more complex building interventions. In Paris at this time, the old section of the city known as Les Halles was being demolished to make way for modernization, including the building of the then-controversial Centre Georges Pompidou. Matta-Clark obtained permission to work on two 17th-century houses that were the last to be demolished to make way for the modernization project.

Gordon Matta-Clark, Conical Intersect, 1975

Having been to the Pompidou myself last summer, I found this especially interesting. The pictures are fascinating, but how amazingly cool it would have been to be able to experience this first-hand. These works could only exist, and for only a short time, because they would subsequently be destroyed. All that remains are photographs and film of the process.

Interior view of Conical Intersect

I can’t help feeling nostalgic when older buildings are demolished to make way for the new. I know that’s a kind of sentimental attitude, and we must have progress and all that, but I just like the character of old buildings better than new ones. If I never saw what was there before, of course I couldn’t give that too much thought, but Gordon Matta-Clark did want people to think about that, and that’s why I love his work so much.

_______________

*Deconstruction is a literary theory credited to Jacques Derrida, who is maddeningly difficult to read. I found a very understandable explanation of deconstruction in Literary Theory for the Perplexed by Mary Klages. (Wow – Amazon seriously wants $132 for this book? Good thing we have libraries!)

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

[i]Gordon Matta-Clark, Interview by Donald Wall, 1976, in “Gordon Matta-Clark’s Building Dissections,” in Gordon Matta-Clark: Works and Collected Writings, ed. Gloria Moure (Barcelona: Ediciones Poligrafa, 2006), 58.

[ii]Christian, Scheidemann, “Material and Process: Gordon Matta-Clark’s Object Legacy, in Gordon Matta Clark: You are the Measure. Exhibition catalog published by the Whitney Museum of American Art (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 119.

[iii]Gordon Matta-Clark, notes from the Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark, quoted in Judith Russi-Kirchner, “The Idea of Community in the Work of Gordon Matta-Clark,” in Gordon Matta-Clark, ed. Corinne Diserens (London: Phaidon Press Limited, 2003), 148.

[iv]Matta-Clark, Wall interview, 57.

Image from a self-portrait project done in 2003

As part of the curriculum for painting classes at Metro, we are required to do several writing assignments. One of them is to do a written response to a particular book. I had already read the first book on the reading list, so I went to number 2, which was Art & Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking by David Bayles & Ted Orland. I know, seriously — can you believe I had never read it? Anyway, when I posted on Facebook that I was reading it, a couple of people expressed interest in reading the paper, so I’m posting it here. Yes, it’s probably way too long for a blog post, but here it is anyway.

Response paper – Art & Fear, Part I

As I read this book, I found myself over and over again nodding my head in agreement. Yes, I do that…yes, that too. I make work that doesn’t feel like my own. I leave things unfinished; I repeat myself. I have things in my mind that seem more real than the finished work. Hey wait a minute! Are these guys living inside my head?

Art & Fear is a fast and enjoyable read. It’s full of things that most artists have probably already encountered in one way or another, but it’s reassuring to have them so eloquently articulated and to know that these are common feelings for others. Just the fact that this book exists gives hope to the idea that these misgivings can be overcome once they are properly understood.

The second chapter starts with a sobering fact: There are many in the world who began to make art but most of them quit at some point for whatever reason. The reason might be fear of failure or a feeling of having reached one’s destination. For students, one reason for quitting is graduation from school. (For my own circumstances, I hope I’ll be insulated against this possibility because I started making art long before I decided to go to school for it.)

The authors suggest making friends with others who make art and sharing work in progress as a way to guard against quitting. I’m fortunate in this regard, because I belong to a couple of very supportive groups of textile artists. I’ve also started getting into blogging and social media like Facebook, which have both opened up additional avenues of feedback, encouragement, and support.

Still, the doubts persist. Is my work any good? Do I really have anything to say? Even if I do, does anyone care? Is my work my own, is it authentic? I was reassured by the assertion that “Uncertainty is the essential, inevitable and all-pervasive companion to your desire to make art. And tolerance for uncertainty is the prerequisite to succeeding” (21). Well, I have plenty of uncertainty, so theoretically I should do just fine!

Chapter 3 of the book, “Fears About Yourself, has several subsections. The first is “Pretending.” This one really hit home for me. The notion that I know better than anyone else how much of my art is due to accident or owes to things I’ve seen in other peoples’ art is one of my deep, dark guilty secrets. This gives rise to, as the authors say, imagining that “real artists know what they’re doing, and that they — unlike you — are entitled to feel good about themselves and their art”  (24). If one pays attention to art-related magazines and electronic media, the continual discussion of what “art” really is goes on over and over again, and the question is never really resolved because everyone has a different idea about it. It’s comforting to know that I’m not the only one who questions whether what I’m doing is really “art.” Most of the time I don’t bother worrying about it, mostly because I get a lot of enjoyment from doing it, but also because I receive enough positive feedback to keep me from feeling it’s a total waste of time.

The next categories are “Talent,” “Perfection,”  “Annihilation,” and “Magic.”  To me, these all seem related. Worrying about one’s lack of talent, harboring impossible expectations of perfection, fearing dry spells, or wondering why your work doesn’t just magically create itself are obviously self-defeating, but the trick is figuring out how to overcome these traps. Working with textiles has some built-in advantages here, fortunately. When I’m stuck for ideas, I can work on getting materials into the pipeline. I can put small pieces of fabric together, work on stitching larger pieces, or paint on fabrics or quilts. All of these activities are great for keeping work in progress as well as generating ideas for finished pieces. Similar activities, like doodling or sketching, could work for painters, and there’s probably something similar to be found for every medium. It’s a matter of doing anything you can to keep the creative mind engaged.

Chapter IV, “Fears About Others,” provides some great insights. The expectations put on us by the outside world are numerous and contradictory: We must make art that’s original, yet familiar. We must produce work that’s challenging, yet understandable within the context of what’s gone before. In an academic environment, these expectations carry the added burden of trying to win the acceptance of one’s professors and classmates. In my own experience, this can be a two-edged sword: sometimes the feedback is helpful, but at other times it just works to force me to subvert my own vision.

Seeking approval from others seems to be a basic human need, experienced by everyone at some level. Maybe there are some artists who don’t care at all what others think about their work, but I could never honestly say I’m one of them. I’m certainly not putting myself in the same category as a Stravinsky or a Robert Frank, but if I want to do something different from what’s gone before, I’m often reluctant to show it to others for fear of disapproval or ridicule. These contradictions are something I have to try to ignore or at least work around, lest I become frozen, unable to proceed. I need to keep in mind the authors’ advice: “The only pure communication is between you and your work” (47).

Chapter V is called “Finding Your Work.” It offers interesting observations about the artist’s dual roles as both a maker and a viewer of art. We’ve all been moved or inspired by particular works of art, whether from the standpoint of its impact as a finished piece or because of a specific visual element or technique. In trying to make use of or perhaps pay homage to the feelings these works inspire, we may try to borrow some of the imagery, symbolism, or techniques of another artist. The authors caution against the attempt to “incorporate the power” of a symbol that belongs to another culture, place, or time into one’s own work “under pressure of impending irrelevance” (55). They also similarly caution against using techniques that appear in work we admire, but I disagree with them on that minor point. I believe there’s a lot to be learned by trying different techniques, and we can’t invent a new wheel every time.

We fear running out of ideas, or we may worry that where we’ve been going was down the wrong path. When regarding a finished work, we may wish that we had done certain things differently. But it’s important to keep in mind that an honest evaluation of finished work, even the disappointing aspects, provides a learning experience for all the work to come after it. My favorite quote in the book  helps me to understand that even the mediocre or just plain bad work does hold some kernels of knowledge for the future: “The undeniable fact is that your art is not some residue left after you subtract all the things you haven’t done — it is the full payoff for all the things you have done” (56).

The message this book offers is that despite all of our fears and misgivings, the important thing is just to keep doing the work. Not only does the work itself offer valuable understanding and insight for future endeavors, but the practice of doing the work helps us to develop habits and rituals that will keep us working and going forward. We develop a certain vocabulary of marks, colors, and working methods that are used in a subconscious way, “engaging unarticulated beliefs and assumptions about what artmaking is” (59). After some unspecified length of time spent in our practice, we begin to choose certain materials, adjust our environment, and proceed to work in a particular way without even thinking about it. These things give the artist the confidence to keep going, even when fear and uncertainty intrude. They are “canons,” and they are part of the life of the artist.

This summer, I had the great good fortune to go on a 12-day trip to France, visiting Paris for 4 days and then spending the remaining time in Giverny and the surrounding area. I went with a group of fellow painting students and our instructor, Amy Metier. Giverny is the home of Monet’s Garden. The garden is a huge attraction, with over 500,000 visitors each year, but we were fortunate to be part of an Art Study group, which has arrangements with the Monet Foundation that allows their students to go and paint in the gardens for 2 hours each day after they officially close at 6:00 pm.

The experience of being in France for this time was so far removed from my everyday way of life that I’m finding I’m still processing all that I saw and did, as though a part of me is still there. Each day was filled with visual and culinary richness, all spent in the company of other artists. I had very few daily responsibilities pulling at me. And possibly the best of all, I didn’t touch a computer for the entire time!

I took over 1400 photos, so I’ve been slowly trying to wade through them in the past couple of days to pick out a good representative sampling. I also did several paintings. I’ll be posting more of all this in the coming days, but I just wanted to check in briefly in case anyone’s been wondering where I’ve been.

Untitled, 12 x 12 inches, ©Deidre Adams

When I finished up my spring semester of school back in mid-May, it seemed I had the whole summer before me and many grandiose plans swirled through my brain about all the great work I was going to make and the many things I would accomplish. Well, here it is the middle of July and I don’t have a whole lot to show for it. Instead of going into my studio and working full days with single-minded focus, I’ve found that my time has been thoroughly eaten away with traveling and design work, and artwork time has been limited to popping in for short stints when I just couldn’t force myself to sit at the computer for one more second.

This kind of disjointed time is manifesting itself in serious ADD behavior. Instead of concentrating on a single thing, I’m flitting from one project to another, making small amounts of progress on each. I’m working on a few large pieces in my standard working style, progressing very slowly. It seems the large pieces now require small amounts of painting interspersed with lots of staring and contemplating and decision-making. In addition to those, I’ve also started some totally new small works that I have a vision will contain lots and lots of hand-stitching, something I love but rarely find time to do. And since I’m not distracted enough, I’m getting out UFOs (unfinished objects) and finding little ways to improve them. I’m even taking a few of my older finished pieces that I wasn’t satisfied with and have been making small alterations.

This piece above started as a school assignment. It was part of my final project in Painting IV last spring, which was supposed to consist of 2 large paintings. Since I was taking a total of 5 classes, I knew that I was not going to have a lot of time to complete the work at school. Plus I really did not want to have to schlep huge canvases back and forth to school and home for each class. In consultation with my instructor, we agreed that I could make 6-8 small pieces instead of the 2 large ones. At the time, I had been reading Elaine Lipson’s Red Thread Studio blog, a content-rich source of ideas and links relating to all manner of sewing topics, and from there went to a link for the Sri Threads blog, specifically this post about a boro sakiori noragi, an old Japanese work coat that was well worn and loved and had been patched many times. I loved the story of how it was made:

Sometimes a group of women would pool their meager resources to buy a bundle of rags.  They’d sort the rags, wash them and then prepare them for use as yarn to create these thick coats.  Prior to this, farmers and rural folk would wear what they could forage for and turn that into yarn, so they wore clothing of hemp, ramie, wisteria and the like.

The Sri Threads Gallery has many more examples of these patched textiles on their web site, and I printed out some of them for the “process folio” we’re required to make for every painting assignment. The beautiful stitching was so engaging to me, along with the idea of continuing to repair and keep using an item of clothing, instead of casting it away so easily as our society does. So I had some kind of idea that my pieces would be about wabi-sabi, or finding beauty in the imperfect. I knew that I wanted to include scraps of cloth and hand stitching as an homage to this way of thinking and living. Here’s an image of them in progress:

The top ones are before any paint is applied, and the bottom ones are in early stages of painting.

The problem was, I ran out of time and was just going through the motions there at the end. I couldn’t figure out how I could possibly give them the kind of dimension I wanted them to have, plus get them all mounted so they would look complete, but at the same time preserve the raw edge of the torn canvas, which I deemed as very important to the work. Since having something you could call finished seemed to have a bigger impact on your grade than whether or not you realized your artistic vision — after all, how could anyone besides the artist really know whether that was achieved — I had to compromise. I ended up making 2 long, banner-like mountings out of canvas and batting, and I laboriously hand-stitched each of these little paintings to them to form long vertical pieces. This image shows them close to done but without the final dark paint that I ended up putting on the background. I forgot to take a picture of the completed paintings — I guess that in itself is an indicator of how excited I was about it.

Well, these things have been hanging around my studio for months, and I finally got tired of looking at them. I just decided to take the plunge and cut them all apart again, to live as separate paintings as I had intended all along. I’m giving up on the idea of simple beauty, because they were, quite frankly, just plain boring, and that original idea is less important to me than having work I find interesting and complete. I’m working on making them standalone paintings, with texture and color and many levels of layering. I’m much happier with where these are going now. Here are a couple more: