the things we think about



Matisse's The Piano Lesson

As an artist, we do lots of different things to get by to do our craft, to have the freedom to think and respond openly.  Aside from teaching college classes I substitute teach to make extra money to travel.  Today, I was at Service High School filling in for the choir teacher.  Her classroom was this theatre arena laced with chairs in a semi circle that grew in tiers and in the center was the Grand Piano.  This setting took me back to my piano teacher named Mrs. Corio who lived in Neptune City on Slyvania Avenue in New Jersey.  As a fifteen year old, my mother would faithfully drop me off at her home every week while I had my hour long lesson.  I taught myself how to read music early on in my childhood.  We had a modest standard Baldwin piano growing up.  When I lived in Los Angeles, I bought a Haddorf with ivory keys.  My former husband owns it now in lieu of my absence.

 Art is puzzle solving, an engagement of the mind focusing on the unconscious level; more or less it can be termed as the abstract piecing together ideas into forming concrete tangible statements.  Piano lessons taught me about discipline and applying the mind while reading a barrage of flats, sharps, tempos and at the same time learning how to touch the keys and translate the feelings that were present in the piece.  Playing music put me in touch with a variety of waltzes, Russian and Hungarian folk polkas and fantasy melancholic landscapes.  The piano taught me great drama, expression and it was when I had my first recital on stage.  My mother was always present at these affairs.  When I played my recital piece it was a fast and furious display of memorization and it was also to be my last formal music performance.  I loved looking through the foreign language of classical music books that our piano bench contained holding the mystery of an obscured beauty in papers.

How often we take these experiences for granted and I realized today how I had long forgotten Mrs. Corio.  She was a good teacher and possibly one of my first unrecognized art mentors.  While she was strict, she also had a great sense of humor; am not sure if she liked me (or if I liked her either), but she enjoyed extending her knowledge, was sincere, and passionate while passing on her skills of what she knew about music.  Who could have cared?  Today, I thought about the piano that I grew up with in our household.  It was an instrument of learning.  Years ago, I had learned that Mrs. Corio died of cancer.  Presently, I don't miss the piano though because  I opted to become a painter.  This activity is more of a natural expression to me but the notes, signs, and symbols that I learned from reading music often appear in my canvasses today.     



like dreamscape meanderings

from the artist Valdimir Kush

The past few days I was thinking about writing on the concept of strength. Where does strength come from? Physical strength can be built and worked by maintaining a regiment of diet and exercise. That takes practice, will power, concentration and constant energy. How is that done? Why are more people prone to this successfully while others fail miserably? What about mental strength? What keeps us going; the drive to do, the strive, getting something and having to go somewhere, this state of achievement. Can this be taught? Is it dependent on our backgrounds, our genes, luck, chance and how we were raised? I was brought up with the rugged individualist ideal. We worked for our adventures and discovered our lives through accidents, by doing, finding out and making lots of mistakes.

from the artist Hieronymus Bosch

Shown in this entry blog are surrealist paintings done as a final project from my drawing class. Students were shown surrealist paintings from artists such as Salvador Dali, Frida Kahlo and Dorothea Tanning. For warm ups, I read stories and myths aloud to them as students drew what they experienced or felt by using symbols forming the concept on the narrative. We worked with a live model. Students then could attach these elements to the figure drawing building the concept of storytelling and showing how surrealism works in expressing dream states and altered realities . Finally, they were asked to copy a painting from a surrealist master's oeuvre. Included in this post are their responses to the assignment.




from the artist Valdimir Kush

 

sunshine planters with great expectations

I started watching Dicken's classic Great Expectations last night on PBS. It is hard to grip the English cockney at first, but you soon tune your ears into the brogue. It is beautifully set in England; the characters delightful and engaging ringing true that the Brits are truly masters at their theatre craft. I look forward to the upcoming episodes.

But it is the new sunshine and light that invigorates me. Last week, I decided to do some experiments with old soil and work it with flower seeds that we didn't use from last year's planting. We get some beautiful sun and heat in the front rooms of our home suggesting a greenhouse space and we have often used it in the past for starter plants. It is very early in the year to plant though but I decided to test it out anyway with a few of my pots. After two days, all of the pots have sprouted with tiny green sprigs. These modest beginnings are religiously observed every day with optimism and happiness.

This time of year reminds me too that I have five weeks left of college classes; soon to resume three months of working full time in the studio, focused reading and upcoming summer trips brings great openness to my psyche. This May, I will traveling to New York to see art and family with an old grad school buddy from Los Angeles. Ken and I will be doing our annual research for our trip abroad to China for next winter(which is yet too far away.) I have an artist in residency to teach in Xi'an, the funerary home of the Terracotta Warriors and Horses. We have been wanting to go to China for some time; the art dense, deep, centuries of brilliant ceramics, contemporary art and the exquisite forest steppes landscape shaped by dynasties of the old and new will be sensational. We caught a whiff of this sensibility last year when we travelled to the northern area of Sapa, Viet Nam which bordered China. I felt like I had been transported into another time realm.

My planting brings to mind the things that I have yet to do, the possibilities of new things to see with surprises and changes. All this cultivating is done with careful tendering, watering and good sunlight, not to mention the work that brings the joy of fruition.

copping an art feel

Once a month, I go to the library and peruse the film rentals. Their foreign film section is rather large and you can find films from Middle Eastern, Indies to classic silent films, art, music and documentaries to European standards. (I usually pick up French films to brush up this language I learned years ago and am in fear of losing; possibly my French has waned in years and would like nothing more but an intense three month immersion in Paris. Helas alors, I have other travel priorities!) But often though, I have scored several times by picking excellent films wonderfully filled with content that is deeply satisfying to me.

Last week, I rented a Danish film called The Inheritance by the director Per Fly, Cassavetes' The Killing of a Chinese Bookie and Barton Fink from the Coen Brothers (which I have yet to see.)

The Inheritance was a ritzy showcase of gorgeous visuals with gorgeous actors along with their gorgeous dysfunctions. While it was slick, I enjoyed it; the acting quite good and throughout the show, the architecture shown in several homes with interiors filled with art murals and abstracts excited me and gave me hope for contemporary painters and the art world. That aspect alone sated my film whims, but it was Cassavetes' film The Killing of a Chinese Bookie that stayed with me after several days of viewing it. It starred Ben Gazzara who was the over the top star playing a casual cool, aloof strip joint owner. I loved that it was set in sleazy Hollywood; feeling the wide dirty boulevards of the strip, that balmy fuzzy sea air and elements of the crazy fast life of city freeways made me nostalgia for the west coast. Cassavetes uses random, gritty scenes and jumbles his settings that often seem askew. He films actual situations and lets them fly, usually setting up for funky and disjointed scenarios. Nevertheless, he leaves you thinking about his films and what will happen to the characters in the story. There is really no beginning or ending, but pure living as it is. His films are raw and candid, his characters engaging in their ordinariness.

Films give me a good dose of art; the cinematography and places/countries/cities from where they are filmed are feeders of time for me. This is what I do when I cannot get into the studio and teaching classes becomes all consuming. I watch and study films, do a bit of reading and try to add significant impressions to my blog.

drawing from thin air

My blog entry consists of works from a Beginning Drawing Class A105 that I instruct on Tuesday and Thursday evenings. I enjoy teaching students who are open, interested and that take risks. It isn't easy to teach concepts that are mercurial and that do not easily translate, like perspective, movement, space or line. Usually, I am so close to my practice that I don't understand the confusion on a student's face when they exclaim - well, how do you do it? This class is composed of eight students; I teach each one to find their voice and results bring a variety of art expressions. Many of the works that are presented in this blog are far beyond a beginning drawing status and students have completed some very complicated studies.

We study simple objects and complex still lives with several objects using shading and cross hatching. The above drawings give you an idea of class projects.We also study landscapes. Students use photography to apply to their studies; observing how nature arranges itself and simplifying our subject matter is never an easy thing to do.

Simple objects with light and shade are integral. Once light and shading is developed, this concept forms our pictures on how we see things into recognizable and successful imagery. This is a great example of a MacDonald's french fry carton looking like it needs to be filled!
Interiors are never easy, but the class develops a quick understanding on how line divides and forms a room.
A complex still life study comprises of two or more objects. We start to employ colors, one at a time. Later, students build their compositions by using two colors.
This is a very sophisticated study by a sophomore in high school. Emma has decided to take my class and does some startling works. Printed drapery is an achievement to handle in drawing!

After spring break, we are going to see "Pina" at the Bear's Tooth Theatre, the documentary on the life of the dancer Pina Bausch directed by Wem Wenders. We will start drawing the figure shortly afterwards.

portabella passing

Arriving in San Francisco late in the afternoon brought back memories of dusty gray air but the sunshine streamed through it and redeemed the smog/fog okay to bear. I had come to scout overseas possibilities and couple my stay with a day or two looking at art.

On Sunday, I took the Bart from Millbrae to Powell Street costing $8.50 round trip. Years ago, when I worked in Los Angeles in the fashion industry, I frequented San Francisco. This was the city I had thought about moving to but now I was getting off at my destination and I hurried to MOMA. (I had recently watched "Milk" with Sean Penn and James Franco who both acted beautifully. The film was informative and brought back the San Francisco of the sixties movement, beat poets and Hare Krishna.)Once at the museum, I scoured the exhibitions, cramming my already tired eyes with quick assessments of wonderful photography shows along with the Bay Area greats, just next door to artist masters such as Matisse, Picasso and Max Beckman. It was the two photography exhibits that I found the most appealing. One featured Francesca Woodman who showed an astounding aesthetic at the young age of 22. Woodman committed suicide at that age but her maturity and skill of piecing self portraits was astoundingly refreshing. You had to enter each piece intimately to examine and scrutinize the content frame. The other photography exhibition was a retrospective of Rineke Dijkstra (her photographs pictured above and below). The artist gave you the information in large glossy colorful prints and most of it was an easy read; the artist astute to our "quick fix" needs as observers. Her portraits showed young Israeli soldiers - the same boy in uniform contrasted in his regular everyday clothes. Other pictures told stories of a young woman starting from ten years in age gradually developing into a mature twenty year old woman. Each photograph was huge - close to 10 by 7 feet, cosmetically presented, a fairy tale image of glorified pop. This was not dismal portraiture no matter what subject matter concerned. Another series of works was a strand of bull fighters after a bout in the ring (seen above). Each matador wore a dishevelled look stained with blood and grit.

I left the museum more inspired by the photography exhibits than anything else presented. It was a rewarding and invigorating treat always welcoming life's surprises. As I exited outside, a sumptuous fill lingered on Market Street, as I watched people, I checked out the flower stalls pausing briefly, quaint shops and singing minstrels guided me back to my return place.

At the airport, I gobbled a grilled portabella mushroom sandwich peppered with feta, pesto, grilled onions, tomato and lettuce. This huge mushroom spread on the bottom bun, amazed and suddenly realized however, that I was in one of the food capitals of the world - no matter where!

time out of mind

The past loomed in front of me as I tried to doze off late last night. Unexpected recollections popped up from old haunts of long ago.

The scent of sea breezes drifted into my psyche when I was carefree and thinking of that period of innocence, I was almost there, feeling that utter freedom of lightness. If there was trouble and worries at that moment, I didn't know it. Where did that sensation go? Jersey coasted past me. Grand vistas of the shoreline; the meeting place of first night dates, parked cars with timid conversations, afternoon dips, sunrise services, warm, humid kisses, the scent of pizza, jammed beer bars and hot boardwalk.

I was in love with the sea. It stretched endlessly for miles with waves of heat rising in rivulets above the wide beach sands; the ocean insurmountable, not comprehending the beauty of it all, I gave up and immersed into it's nothingness.

The sea was my refuge and I would escape to this landscape easily embracing the openness, the horizon always there greeting me with predictability. It was a mystery and fantasy land of tall grasses, rollings surfs, jetties, old fishing piers, white grasshoppers and lazy days. Why did I leave this paradise?

I have missed this space again and again sometimes fretting if these memories ever existed, drifting away out of sight, out of mind. How happy I am to be able to retrieve this place and at the same time how sadly I recognize these years gone by.