Category Archives: my own work

casting on waters

This past week we picked up 12 pieces that were on display at a University outside Philadelphia. Cairn University is a unique training place for young believers who want to impact culture Biblically. It was a privilege to hang work there. As we packed up we got to meet the President, Dr. Todd Williams, “it was a God thing” he said kindly to us. Then he took us up to see a large piece hanging in their new building that he is (and should be) very proud of. This piece, called “Tree Grace Two” is the first work of art commissioned by a Christian college, and some forward thinking donors moved this visual accomplishment forward. The piece is by well-known Christian artist, Makoto Fujimura. This is a quick shot from my iphone and Mako might well want it seen better. But he too, I know from his writings and having met him once briefly, is making his work to speak beyond him in ways he may never get to realize in a present tense, or quick caught way. There is a lot about making visual work that is a casting forward, and the displaying of it also is an exercise in faith. Faith that is grounded in sure promise is a very good investment. A wisest investor (who was also a poet) once said it this way: “Cast your bread on the surface of the waters, for you will find it after many days.” There is so much in that pregnant promise; in fact I am visualizing more work even as I type this verse out.

I am casting this promise out there for you to ponder too. I have received my work back, safe and sound. What it accomplished while it was “out there” is a confident trust that I own also. Yes, and there is more coming.

hint of the holy

This week I tore down the aging tomato plants and picked what I think may be the last of my chard and kale. I thought as I did this about the pictures that had enchanted me in the seed catalogue (compared to what actually grew). My gardening skills are improving, but never have I bought some seed according to a picture and then found the reality to be quite as good. If I were a seed farmer I might call myself a “seller of hope.” The potential is there in the seed for the pictures promised, they aren’t lying, these seed sellers; but time and entropy, as well as droughts and bugs work against my final harvest.

There is something like that working in my art. I often have big ideas and unfinished pictures in my head. I am after representations and ideas that have enchanted, that are inspired by the glimpses I catch in the landscape or off on the horizon. But what comes onto the paper or the panel works through the mesh of my abilities and inabilities, and is often only a fragment of something far grander that I can hardly grasp let alone visualize. This piece is a cropped excerpt from one effort that was successful. I call it “Hint of the Holy” for that is what beauty is to me: a beckoning appetizer toward a meal coming that is beyond my imagination and certainly my ability. Can you see a hint of that here?

the question of beauty

When I was in high school, I had a remarkable teacher in a world history class. I remember his name (and wonder if he is still alive). I cannot remember any of the exact words or streams of thought in his lectures, but I remember how his ideas ignited things inside me. He spoke about the question of beauty, this in the context of worldwide movements of upheaval (!) and without dropping packaged answers into the hearts of skeptics, he left at least me wondering. . . what exactly is beauty? Why do I respond to certain things and not others? Could there be a code of meaning here that speaks beyond language and culture and time? This further fueled a life long interest in art, and in the meaning behind things.

This morning I watched as a spider finished her web. She had several strands tied way beyond her tiny body up to the gutters of the house. Then she had one tied to the Laurel bush, and another anchored on the Japanese Maple. She swayed in the beautiful center of her fragile trap. Her brain, or instinctive operating center, or whatever she has that makes her move with such deliberation, has to be no bigger than a pinhead! How does she do this, and can she possibly know the beauty here? She certainly cannot see the bigger picture of what she has constructed. And it’s a trap of death for goodness sake! There is something bigger that has set things in play that she has no ability even to imagine.

And so I continue, my pencils making webs, my brushes searching with color, my tiny awareness of the things brewing worldwide at great disadvantage. This same morning I saw this in Psalm 2: “Why are the nations in an uproar, and the peoples devising a vain thing?” And I realize that before we can really handle answers, we have to be somehow startled to grapple with the big questions. And beauty, it seems to me, is one gentle way of walking us there.

dancing memory

Yesterday a generous friend let me use her fabulous intaglio press. I spent the entire day inking monotypes and dancing to music in her perfect little studio. It was perfect timing too, for today a curator from the University had scheduled to come over to see some new work for a Fall show she is planning. I was glad I had some really new work to add to other things she wanted to view. The ink was still wet.

I have a series I started in ’07 called “Core Samples.” The idea that interested me behind this is what geologists do to test the hidden parts deep in the earth. They drill down a tube and grab up the layers of sediment, exactly as they have rested unnoticed for centuries. The layers are a record of time and passages, even the decaying of many organic things. The vertical pieces I have done recall this geological practice, but they are really landscapes in a sense. They are to me inner as well as outer landscapes. Landscapes I have come to understand are important work, or they can be. The Chinese have been doing sublime landscapes for centuries, and the best of them are not pretty pictures but worldview statements about the position of man in the grand scheme of wonder.

What I am posting today is one that I inked up yesterday. It is a direct response to what I wrote last time about the images that showed up in my pocket. I agree that the photo images I somehow gathered on my hike are better than this core sample representation. However the inked semblance reminds me of the gift of that day and is therefore a record of joy. I used an old racquetball of my husbands as a drawing tool to make the marks in this image. I hope you can dance with it too.

quickening

So often I feel I am at the beginning of new, untested things. My active faith is the only thing that checks me from the despair I sense so often clouding around me. My heart responds to glimpses and quickenings. My eyes sometimes catch a beautiful flare, and then something deeper seems to move inside me like little wings. I am so glad to be a woman for I know already what that is about. I am eternally grateful to be anchored to Jesus, because there is nothing that is going to come down that He will not use as material toward the final resolution. It’s all His. This quiets me.

I have been reading Robert Henri too. This art teacher from a century ago has much that still resonates. He said that all art speaks, that all art (good art) is like sign posts. How come I never read this guy before? I believed this before and after it was fashionable. It probably still is unfashionable, who cares? I care. I hope to go to dust caring. I hope to record some of the signs before that. Henri taught that students would better craft if their model was in another room, so that they had to place on their canvas only the sense of what moved them from within as they had interacted and been pressed inwardly by the outer model. He was trying to train them away from copying and move into deeply mining the sensibility that was theirs uniquely. That is good advice. This prompts me then to post two little studies for comment.

This first I am calling for now: March Vision. It arose out of views that fed me as I drove through Southern VA in March. I wrote about that previously. This is the best I have of that so far.
This next study I am calling April Gesture. This took one fourth the time of the other one, it happened on site and as can be seen, very quickly. I have some opinions about these pieces, but I am going to hold them in check for now, for I am not sure yet what is coming further from this kind of work.

casting

My husband likes to fly fish, and we carved out time to fish and paint together. We are so fortunate, that we live near such beautiful places to do what we both love. Carving out the time together is the task, and then we wonder again why it took us so long. . . anyway, what he usually does is cast, catch and release. What I do is cast and try to capture! I laugh often at his ability to give up so easily what he has worked for, but then I often end up doing the exact same thing. We are both on a silent quest. This activity is much more than the result that either of us comes home with. I love this photograph my husband took because even here he is selecting and searching, more like an artist then a fisherman. I am in the center background sitting on a rock, working on a small watercolor sketch. He composes his photograph nicely, such good color too! The image says a lot more to both of us than a viewer might see.

An art critic I resonate with, James Berger, says this same thing better when he defines the act of drawing. “Drawing is a form of probing. And the first generic impulse to draw (to fish? to paint?) derives from the human need to search, to plot points, to place things and to place oneself.” We are in fact both doing just that when we go out and work: searching, selecting, plotting and placing. That is why we can come home filled even when there is no concrete result. The activity is accomplishing something deeper.

This past week also, I attended the art showing mentioned in my last post. Stephen Wicks, curator from the Knoxville Museum of Art gave an engaging talk about the collection he had assembled, and even highlighted my two pieces with prescience. I spoke with him afterwards to thank him and gained even more, for he said something like this ‘Your work is not just about the collection of color, isn’t it; there is something much deeper going on.” Oh! How encouraging for me, he could not have said much else to propel me further.

Meanwhile, the watercolor piece I laid out, painting by the stream has since been gessoed over. (The paper was worth more than my result that day!) But the morning was memorable, marking both of us. We were both casting for what we knew not. I think we captured something that day; nothing got away.

gathering

I have been doing an inventory of certain supplies and gathering several new hues and panels toward a workshop I will be taking next month; investing toward meaningful production. Just spending the money is hard. It must be a work of faith and hope too. I want to be stingy, and make do; but I also know that unless I am ready to give it up again, there will be no worthy result out of this studio. The whole process is another reminder that this slog is hard work emotionally, physically, every which way. Sometimes I think being an artist is like being a glutton for punishment. (I used to think that same thing about raising teenagers, another rare art form of faith and hope). Now that the teenagers are grown and I get to do concentrated work in my studio, I guess I need to remember that it is just another form of the same battle. It is battle. So strange, that something so fun could also be so perplexingly hard! Willa Cather said “Artistic growth is a defining of the sense of truthfulness. Only the great artist knows how difficult it is.” I am so encouraged by that statement. For it was in the raising of young people and in the working of art that truthfulness is one of my highest motivations. One of my kids just said to me last month “…that’s because for you Mom, truth is such a core value.” Hearing her say that over a difficult thing we were processing, was very satisfying to me.

So I am pondering a lot of things today: the hard battle, the investment of hope needed in that battle, and the spine of truth that enables any real progress. We’ll see what comes of this next month. Meanwhile, I can highlight here a small cold wax panel that got selected into a good local show. This is called “Unseen Working; Gathering Undercurrent.”

Selah

A good portion of my work is an intuitive response, rapidly laid down. This does not mean that the result seen on paper was altogether quick, though if you had watched this piece and others being birthed out of the press you might think so. What is visible is an end product of a long term simmering from my mind and spirit and body. The thoughts that collide toward and then into a particular working day, the prayers that have been raised and linger as I work, and the arms and legs that labor this forward are mine. But I live influenced and challenged in time by much around me; and that can be seen here too. Of particular note is an apprehension regarding the mystery of beauty. Add to this: mourning over so much that is broken. And finally, every piece I craft comes out from a long term feeding in the words of Scripture that continually ground and then lift me.

The word “Selah” for example is used often in the emotive expressions found in the book of the Hebrew Psalms. The word seems by its usage to be a deliberate pause for pondering. “Pause and think of that!” is how the Amplified version translates “Selah.” It is a call therefore from the penitent to other listeners. We stand together on ground that is broken, but some of us are looking up and leaning forward, yearning for His appearing.

This piece is presently hanging at the Barrington Center for the Arts at Gordon College in Wenham, MA. “Selah” was juried into a show for the monotype guild of New England’s 3rd National Exhibition. It will be up from February 23rd to April 6th.

unfinished

Here’s a beautiful little passage out of a piece I am working on/struggling with right now. I will not show the whole, for it is kind of a mess. The whole piece actually may never get finished in the way I want it to. In fact this morning, I realized that my problem is that I am trying to “make it happen”. I am trying to aesthetically force a conclusion, and it is not working! I have learned/keep on learning that once energy moves in that direction, it is a recipe for failure. So, I will work in my garden today and ease back.

The vision I’ve had for this larger piece is the prophetic statements of Balaam over Israel. You can read that strange but true series of events in Numbers 22-24. If you know that story then maybe the irony is already hitting you, for Balaam too is confronting an unfinished vision. He could not curse Israel, though he was given much incentive to do otherwise with his prophetic skill. What Balaam sees in his last vision is a dramatic statement of something sure to come, but far distant. I have been thinking on his utterance “I see Him, but not now. I behold Him, but not yet” for years and years…

As for my piece…it may get torn up and used as fragments in many new pieces. That would be fitting. I can settle with regeneration, might actually be better.

mercy’s purpose

It came off the page this morning: “I have kept silent for a long time, I have kept still and restrained Myself, (this is God speaking, timeless in time) Now like a woman in labor I will groan, I will both gasp and pant. . .” (Isaiah 42:14).
Long have I been fascinated with this prophet Isaiah who allowed himself to be an authentic mouthpiece for God’s intentions. I first heard of Isaiah from a lecture in college. This ancient Jew was unique in his multifaceted and very far-reaching vision through time. Isaiah was like an artist, one who saw the peaked mountaintops in a landscape, squished from God-dimensionality into a 2D representation. One can’t make this stuff up, it is too big, too beyond human ability. I tried to study Isaiah when a new Christian, but he was too dense. . . I keep going back to him for more understanding. Christ quoted from Isaiah more than from any of the other prophets, and He knew them all well. The words of the prophets are like echoes that keep resounding in the caves we are living in here. We do well to pay attention.

Yesterday, I worked on a piece, trying to finish it (and be done with it, frankly). It was unresolved, hanging there troubling me for its ugliness. I think I am done with it now; at least it is resolved compositionally. I still pretty much hate it for it is so dark, but I felt I had to complete it somehow. Then my husband came home and told me the news he had heard on his truck radio. My hand went to my mouth, as he choked back emotion and we both staggered to take it in. I cannot take this in: another slaughter of innocents. Child bodies, and blood, and horror. There are people now grasping for political solutions. Isaiah did not begin to see well until political solutions were exposed as dead, and then he finally would see God. You can read about that in his 6th chapter.

This piece is called “Mercy’s Purpose.” I feel I am to put it out there. This is not a display of ability as much as it is the cry from my own heart. I am as much a mess as the jerk in the mid-ground who is railing at/reaching toward God. But God is merciful. (A lot of religious people mouth that God is merciful, hoping that if they say it enough times, maybe it will be true.) You only know that God is truly merciful when you will risk getting to know Him. I do not know how much more time we will have to dally around in our caves. Open the Book and read. Jesus repeated Isaiah’s warnings, saying that labor pains would come. He also said He (Jesus and no other) would be coming back. The key is not the mess we are, or the mess we are in; the key is that He is the key. Ask Him to help you. Isaiah too cried out and learned: He is Merciful, but He is getting ready to move out.

Day of Fire

John Valadez is new to me. His concerns are the dissipation and the distractions of contemporary (Southern CA) culture. His skill is brilliant. This piece, entitled “Pool Party,” was one of his strongest for what I read as a sober warning. The piece is arresting, or it should be I would think, if you still allow yourself compassion and an honest alertness for the dangers (metaphorical and real) we live in, for the people caught clueless when hell breaks loose. Look at these young girls, enjoying their candy colored lives, oblivious to the inferno about to overrun them. A writer I came across recently said that the time we are in now is like being sheltered in a basement during a tornado, where we are all screaming but the noise outside is so loud that no one hears even his own wide open scream. Valadez takes a calmer view. He has his characters playing through shallowness, while he clues the viewer that there is much more going on. This is maybe the California version of Munch’s “The Scream,” that ensign from another anxious era.

The local University art department where I live is sponsoring an exhibit this month called “The Day on Fire.” I guess they want to join the fun with all the 2012 apocalyptic talk going on. In fact, interest in the foreboding is happening everywhere. Prominent Galleries in NYC and London have had shows recently titled “Abstraction of Destruction,” and “Those Who Remain.” The jurors for our local fire show were shocked at how many entries they got from artists all over the nation wanting in on this subject. My entry, “Appointed” did not get into the final show. So goes it. I wonder if John Valadez’s piece would have made it in. My guess is no. He too takes this subject too seriously.

Emily Dickinson is another who took such things seriously. Here she is in her poem simply numbered #530:

You cannot put a Fire out —

A Thing that can ignite

Can go itself, without a Fan —

Upon the slowest Night –

You cannot fold a Flood –

And put it in a Drawer –

Because the Winds would find it out –

And tell your Cedar Floor –

Mary Barton Nees

Conceptual Landscape