Living My Dream

Well, it turns out that for years I was supporting women artists to articulate and go after their art dreams. I could never think of an "art dream" myself - it always came out as "travel."

So last week, one of the days in Yellowstone or the Tetons - I think it was at "artist's point," a spot overlooking Yellowstone Canyon where the rock looks like flesh. Or maybe on the road, in vast open spaces beyond belief, with funky buffalo walking their ancient walk on the road. Or maybe photographing pelicans making v shaped water waves as they swam. Or just looking at the sky.
I thought WOAH, this is IT!

Not a solo show at the Hirschhorn, or getting mammoth commissions, or being written up in Art News (a colleague woman artist's dream), or selling work for 10,000 dollars. Nope, I would not turn down ANY of those. But those are not dreams I go after.

Now we are planning to visit Glacier National Park. Or maybe Yosemite. Or maybe some day Alaska, or Hawaii.

When I was three, we visited a farm in southeast Missouri, called May and Belle's farm. I have a photo of me sitting on a fence post. I asked over and over to return to that farm, but we never did. That was it for travel, until I took a bus to NYC when I was 19. And eventually many more buses to NY, and later trips to Europe and Costa Rica and Prague. There you have it. Maybe our dreams are about filling out the empty spaces in our lives.

Open Studio

Last Saturday May 8 three neighborhood artists - Joan Samworth, Ann Riley, and myself - hosted open art studios. We had a nice card made, emailed our lists, spiffed up our houses, and psyched ourselves up for these unusual and very homey events. I wanted to meet new neighbors, and welcome old friends to see the new work. I gave two demonstrations of encaustic painting. (A great idea).

I had had some trouble getting my head around a Constant Contact invitation. It seems that my education, development as an artist, expensive medium, and prices of recent work - have priced me right out of being affordable to people who should be able to own my art work. What to do!?

Well, we finally figured it out, and found ways to make a huge amount of older work and reproductions of recent work totally affordable by just about anyone.
And what happened? Unbelievable, but the RECENT work was purchased by several people who fell in love with it, and much of the other work, ranging from $1.00 to $125.00 was purchased too.
There was much good energy, good will on all sides, and a feeling that the work that I do, actually gets to "do its right work" in the world.
A perfect circle. I am still working on fully accepting this into my heart and mind.

Open Studio

Two neighboring artists and I are planning open studios for May 8. I am working on getting my mind around a clear gesture.

My new work is not cheap; it requires a middle class income or a deep enough love of the art to pay smaller amounts over time. From one point of view the prices may seem "outrageous," and from another, they are clearly "a steal." Which is the correct point of view? I am going for "reasonable," considering artistic experience, skill, integrity, and emotional and spiritual depth. Plus my status (Carl and I often use this one) as an "under recognized sophisticate."

My wish however is to have my art to be affordable by just about
everyone. I am determined to have things at my open studio that
someone can purchase for the price of a lunch. There again is the economic issue - WHOSE lunch? Someone of modest means.
I am taking some of my older drawings, and good quality reproductions of new work - and playing with frames and ways to make these accessible. This is a great experiment. And fun.

Now the challenge is to bring people HERE to see these.

Mike Daisey's radio show performance

With great excitement and chutzpa financially (having just been to NY), we purchased tickets to Mike Daisey's performance in NYC at The Greene Space, reserved a hotel room at Hotel 31 (newest favorite place to stay), booked Vamoose bus round trip, and set off early Friday morning. The weather prediction was cold and rainy, but we were feeling like - well, he was the best thing we'd seen in DC for ages.
We described Mike's DC performance to my (dynamite) artist friend Marion Held, who came along to this performance and brought her husband Curtis. We had tried to get my son to join us, as well as an actor friend. Luckily they did not come, because, to my great disappointment............

Now this is really interesting. I like this guy so much that it is hard to badmouth him in any way! On the other hand, I was really really peeved to have done this trip around him and been presented with 50 minutes of low level (bordering on really awful) performances by others and only 10 or 15 minutes of the real Mike Daisey. Not two hours, and hardly anything of substance. Is he getting tired? What was happening there? I am stymied.
Might I add that we arrived an hour early to be first in line and get the best seats? Maybe if we'd just driven in for the evening from Brooklyn...

So - nope, not the BEST trip to NY but we realize that we need to do this often. Even the best performers screw up or plan badly. Even people you like have that awful "New York Attitude" and think they know best, are always right, and are better than us born mid-westerners who don't live in the City.
We sensitive non New Yorkers have to toughen up. Those of us without middle class or NY attitudes have to take our rightful places anyway. Aren't we supposed to fill in those gaps as we grow older? Who makes up these stratifications anyway?

David Lund

Miraculously I found my art teacher mentor from the 60's - I had found an article about him on the web and traced him to his new address in NYC. On Sunday Carl and I spent 3 hours with him and his wife. David Lund is about 85 or 86 now, didn't quite remember me - he has taught hundreds of students at Columbia and Cooper Union, and our meeting was at Washington University in 1967.
We looked at painting after painting after painting. It was really something, as he is steeped in tradition, and you can see Giotto, Cezanne, Chagall, Italian painting, Rembrandt - and Lund. Steeped in tradition yet totally contemporary and coming out of his own mind. He says "I am so out of the box that there IS no box!"
I loved hearing him talk about his work, and I loved seeing all that I'd been taught so long ago, there in front of me, looking fresh, deep, radiant, and substantive. No flat cartoons! Yay!

Eventually I showed David and his wife some of my postcards - images from Scenes of Childhood, Still With Us, Soul Ladders, Presence of Spirit, and others. Very different from what I'd studied with him, and yet so "art" that they were both genuinely impressed. It was very moving and gratifying to me. I can't quite describe this, think I'll post an image or two of his work.

and ps what made him the best painting teacher I'd ever encountered had little to do with technique. It had everything to do with his encouraging us to go into and to then express the depth and breadth of our human experience. Hmm. Same with Lowry Burgess years later.

Karen Finley

Unbelievable, but the day we arrived, last Saturday, Karen Finley was performing a piece about Jackie Kennedy, right across town at 42nd and 9th. We were second in line (yes, I really wanted to be there!). I'd seen her perform at Dance Place in the 80's, striding back and forth across the stage in a raincoat, ranting, eventually baring her chocolate or spaghetti or both (I can't remember) covered body. Womens' bodies. Our bodies. Sexism is too weak a word to ues. It was the most unforgettable performance I've ever seen.
The Jackie performance was brilliant, (got a bit too long for me in parts,) and eventually got to the meat of the issues of female objectification and oppression. There was a long string of epithets (word?) telling us females to be quieter, more assertive, more this, more that, not ever this, always that, etc. She got louder and louder. It was all too true. And we are pretty much all the time still under it.

Return from NYC

This is going to be backwards, but since the blog ends up being a public art diary, I have to say that I am so "in my element" in New York City, that returning, even to this house and neighborhood that I love, is difficult. I hope that blogging about my art experiences in the big apple will relieve some of this burdensome feeling. Stay tuned.