If you're an emerging artist like me and you're not sure where to start, you may want to consider getting this book by Heather Darcy Bhandari and Jonathan Melber.  It's available on Amazon and, look at that, it's even gone on sale since I bought it.  

For a thorough review of the book and some other reading suggestions, have a look at this post on Artblog.net.  

What listening to Soundcheck did to me...

Someone's cranky...I tend to disturb Sashi's cat napping now that I work at home.  

Heard a really good Soundcheck piece on NPR this afternoon about the evolution of musicians and how some gain more success and new fans with the freshness of their sound, while others are written off by their faithful followers.  The show focused for awhile on Chan Marshall, aka Cat Power, who I've been a fan of for nearly 10 years (feeling my age) so my ears perked up to listen.   You can listen to that piece and the rest of the show here.    

Anyway, I mention it because a few things ran through my mind.  The first - and one I'm not proud of - was that I couldn't help but feel envy that someone in their 30's, my age group, already has a biography written about them.  (Although the author of the biography, Elizabeth Goodman, who was being interviewed on Soundcheck today, mentioned that Marshall was not pleased about having the book written.)  I realize how much Marshall has accomplished in her young life so far with her music, reaching supposed "icon" status, and has indeed lived several lives, recreating herself in persona and in art in order to survive rather than to keep up with trends.  But here it was coming through the radio right when I feel like I'm at a point where I need to figure out who I am creatively and can't quite define that creative persona.  I have an idea, but getting jump-started is the hardest part.  And I feel like it's late - I should have thought of this years ago!  

But of course it isn't late!  I've met so many people at various ages and at various stages of personal discovery, creative or otherwise.  I don't know why there's so much pressure to "make it" while we're still young (however you define "making it" - recognition, awareness, wealth, being affective).  Or maybe it's just me who feels this way...  Time is borrowed and it is quite possibly the most valuable thing a person can have.  And of course you can never get it back after it's lost.  My father died when he was only 38; such a short life.  I think since that's always in the back of my head I'm constantly worrying about losing time - not necessarily worried that I'll die young, but that I will look back and think how quickly it all went by and why didn't I take advantage of all that TIME I had?

I think I had intended to write more about artistic reinvention but there it goes...this entry just evolved into something else.   

Well then, going back to my precious cat, I know she won't be with me forever so I won't stop pestering her while she's cat napping because I want to give her as much petting and love as I can.  I want to honor those in my life while we're still together in this life.  And my goal is to honor myself and the work I will make by trying as much as possible to not waste time.  So today I guess I'm inspired by my cat and Cat Power (hee).                 

Untitled, 2009, ink, acrylic, pastel on paper

One of my latest Rabbit drawings.  The unfortunate incident with this drawing, which I happen to love most so far of this series, is that I needed to spray it with pastel fixative which ended up leaving blotchy markings on the paper.  The scanner also picked up the warped texture of the brown paper, creating ghostly white spots.  I had been thinking of making limited digital prints of the drawing but I'm not sure I love the scanned and printed results so far.  I'll have to play around with it a bit more and may need to move away from using brown kraft paper and back to watercolor paper, which is too bad since I prefer the former.       

Talking About Artists: Elizabeth Bisbing

Top: Tornado, from the Calamity Series, 2009, collage: ink on paper, 15 1/2 x 11 3/8 inches

Bottom: Mercy (after Simone Martini), from the Paper Madonnas Series, 2008, collage: gouache on paper, with gold leaf, 12 x 8 inches

I met painter Elizabeth Bisbing while I was a student at Rutgers University.  We were introduced by her daughter and my friend, Christine Ramsey-Wade (a seriously talented poet), who invited me to see her mother's work at an art opening in Red Bank, NJ.  Bisbing's earlier works - small, square paintings depicting iconic spools of thread and geometric Monopoly houses in surreal, flat landscapes of bright, eerie color - conveyed complex themes of feminism and domesticity.                         

Bisbing met with me last week to discuss her current body of work that was most recently exhibited at Soho20 Chelsea Gallery in New York and is featured in the traveling group exhibition, The Veil: Visible and Invisible Spaces (now at Indiana University East).  Her medium has shifted to collage, although the painter in her is still very evident, and her imagery is sourced from both the home and the museum.  Referencing and borrowing imagery from famous masterpieces featuring iconic depictions of women, she re-interprets the paintings through small-scale collages, lending them new context and dimensionality.  "I wanted to (reclaim) the word 'Master' since 'Mistress' doesn't work well for women; it has negative associations and implications," commented Bisbing.      

The amount of detail and labor that goes into each of these collages is a testament to Bisbing's patience and love of creating them.  She starts with several drawings that she then traces for her collage elements, essentially creating patterns which can be re-used for several works.  Each element, which is often miniscule in size, is cut from sheets of different shades of colored paper that Bisbing has hand painted herself with gouache.  The final product is painterly and mosaic-like all at once; the painstaking process quite evident in the work.    

In addition to referencing masterpieces, Bisbing has created a series of collages which she has titled her "Calamity Series."  These works, in black/white and gray scale, each show two little girls in the direct path of a natural disaster - a shark, a tidal wave or a tornado - innocently going about their play without any awareness or knowledge of danger.  A mother of four, including two grown daughters, Bisbing "wanted to convey what it's like to be or to raise a little girl in our society."  

Even if I didn't know Bisbing personally, I feel as though I would after seeing her work.  From her art making process to her imagery, you get a sense of the artist's desires, hopes and fears; you can imagine just how she might be working in her studio.  It's the work of an accessible visionary; a master you can relate to.    

                   

Perfectly Brilliant!

Art blogger Joanne Mattera posted an entry she calls The Artists' Stimulus Package.  You've got to love her for thinking of it!      

Pollan-ation! (And ideas about "good" art)

Yesterday evening, two of my friends and I were members of a very lucky audience to hear Michael Pollan speak at Columbia University.  In between passages that he read from his books, including The Botany of Desire and The Omnivore's Dilemma, he relayed stories about his progression from his early days working at Harper's to his most recent writings that explore our abnormal modern industrial food chain.  Afterwords, he took some time to answer questions from the audience - everything from his writing process to his thoughts on food policy and government funded farm subsidies.  He was funny, engaging and enlightening - everything I wanted him to be in person after reading his work.  (And I was proud that I remained wide-eyed and alert since the talk was happening at right about my crash-time.  I've had the embarrassing nod-off happen at even the most profound lectures...)

I also learned last night that Judith Belzer is Pollan's wife.  Belzer is a painter whose subject matter is influenced by the natural world.  You can view her work and read her artist statement on her website. 

When I first started my undergraduate studies in fine art at Rutgers University, I was adamant that I was going to be a painter and had very strict ideas of what "good" painting should be.  I thought that a rigid practice of realism was the truest form of high art and that skill had been replaced by concept, which I considered lazy.  WHAT A FRESHMAN I WAS!  Especially since I myself was a relatively lazy art student.  Fortunately I grew out of that sensibility and my eyes opened up to fresh concepts in contemporary visual culture.  And then the opposite happened - I began to reject realism and, eventually, painting in general.  Bring on the political criticism and high-concept invention!  Art in the moment!  Down with traditional mediums - they're sooo bourgeois.

Fast forward to the last 5 months: to my surprise I've not only returned to painting and painting realistically rendered images, but I'm learning not to judge and worry about what it is that I "should" or "should not" be doing as an artist.  I still need to learn how to marry technique with a unique visual language (I still think I'm better at communicating ideas through conceptual performance works), but I appreciate all mediums for what they are and how they communicate different ideas and needs to different people.  

Which brings me back to Belzer: fourteen years ago, I would have aspired to be a painter like her; two or three years later, I would have rejected her based upon my idea of what was relevant.  Today, I look at her work and not only admire her visual language, but I appreciate it for being absolutely relevant rather than simply a display of skill and technique.  Like her husband, Belzer is presenting us with a human relationship to nature.  And being that we may someday soon lose the opportunity to get that up close and personal with nature, it is definitely work that should not be taken lightly.                      

More from "Rabbit"

I'm working on a new assemblage featuring Rabbit; above is the drawing.  This time Rabbit finds herself in a ghostly forest of tree stumps.  She is completely exposed, in danger of being swept away by any force.  The sky forecasts doom, but all she can do is keep moving.

Like my previous Rabbit drawing assemblage, "The House Where Rabbit Slept," I'll sew this drawing onto a found piece of plywood.  I've already sold "The House Where Rabbit Slept" to a friend and loyal customer, and I'll truly miss it since I've grown very attached to this work.  I'm sure it will be enjoyed by its soon-to-be owners, who are people I admire and trust.  

I'll be posting the above work on Etsy once it's complete, which I wish I could say will be tomorrow.  I'm usually too eager to post items right away but I think slowing down would benefit me (and the work) in the long run.