Blog

   For better or worse, it is my way to chew on ideas for a long time, sometimes decades, before I am able to articulate them in any way, shape or form. As a result, I don't have much to show for it as far as tangible results, particularly along the "express yourself" course in the studio.  Some of that comes from not having a fixed idea of specific identity (maybe one,  but that's a dry well) along the generally recognized pathways, nor any real certainty about my purpose on earth or really, anything else that  drives my creative expression. The exception is that I recognize that I am human, live on an inescapable pale blue dot in a universe infinite for all intents and purposes, and that I and everyone around me is mortal, fallible, and also capable of amazing things despite all of  the shortcomings. Hard to put that on a canvas!

  Over the course of the last few years, as mortality becomes less and less a romantic abstraction and more and more at the forefront of my day to day, I have begun to think about  things that were once major drivers of action and expression- the passions and desires and goals once ineluctable that are now as deep beneath the surface as a giant squid.   But as is evidenced in every antique store or estate sale, in this I have a lot of company.  There shelves are full of objects loved, desired, acquired, prized, lingered over, then put out, abandoned, discarded as fashion dictated , broken, relegated to attics for a"just in case" that never came, or simply lost when they didn't fit through the needle's eye when those who possessed them trotted off the mortal coil. Some will bring joy to others, and be loved and treasured, but most will simply be lost or end up in landfills.

   But how to express this process? It came to me that one surface couldn't hold the notion, and that I should start thinking about a a series of work, but that lacked the all in one place immediacy.  As I began charting it out in my notes, the idea of a journey with way stations came to me, which led me to think about prayer rituals that followed paths with shrines, but the idea of having one ultimate destination seemed false.  Maybe a maze? A mandala? The idea of a circular path came into focus (turn, turn, turn) with the least common denominator, time, at the center. Then, at the 2026 Artfields celebration in Lake City. SC, I had the great pleasure to exhibit in the Main Street Emporium, and there, surrounded by hundreds of timepieces as well as other vintage treasures, (desire on a shelf) it came to me that the center would be a stopped short, never to go again, grandfather clock, because time is what there's never enough of.  The stations would radiate from there like spokes on a wheel or hour markers on a clock face. The other thought that occurred to me at Artfields was how integrated all of the works on display were with the community, and how viewers were not the usual museum goers, but  part and parcel with the community, enthusiastically so, as they walked to the dozens of venues all about town that housed art. There's really something special about coming face to face with art for its own sake in a BBQ restaurant or barber shop, far from the hush of a museum.

  And that's how this came together: I wanted to make a piece that was acted on by viewers, that they moved with. I wanted to make a piece that gave back and looked  viewers in the eye instead of just being gazed upon. I wanted to make a piece about desires and longing and love and getting lost and found and  discarded again and how art was a portal through the millennia, time traveling as it were. Not on a continuum per se, but selectively or randomly the way our memories do- vignettes that pop up not in an orderly fashion but which are put on finely turned pedestals that set them apart from others arbitrarily but absolutely.

   Anyone who's still with me is probably beginning to see why "expressing" myself in my art work doesn't happen.  But- if I wasn't going to do it now-when would I? At the same time, I realized that A. this was going to be physically large B. physically challenging, and time consuming  C.  impractical to store, and move, D. have limited exhibition options  (marketability was discarded from the get go) and E: to accomplish what I had in mind I was going to have to first acquire some new tools and equipment as well technical skills, specifically wood turning, yikes,  to make the pedestals that supported each station.  Also-  time was a wasting, ( I'm old, have had a challenging year on various fronts) so I'd better get to it while I still could!

   And so it began.  I received a few lessons in how to work a lathe from Kurt Lewin at Windsor Woodworks in Cape Charles, and started practicing and practicing before beginning the actual work.  It was important to me show what a human could make from scratch in a world where we generally defer to machines, so I had to make it myself.  I found that turning is a lot like drawing, but a lot scarier and a lot messier- a learnable skill.  A major accomplishment was keeping my fingers and eyes intact despite flying wood chips and chunks. I worked my way through the pedestals using a variety of locally sourced wood, much of it glued into blocks by my husband, but also dead limbs that I turned with the bark still on. This was the most challenging part of the undertaking since I was clueless going into it, and I have to say I was relieved to have completed that part of the project. 

                                     

 

   The studio work was easier, because the drawing was direct, and for the painting I stood on the shoulders of giants, riffing on iconic works  (art history is us!) by removing or altering the central focus or figures. Opening up the ground makes space for the viewer to enter, and put themselves center stage.  Props are provided to aid in the action. Smaller paintings of eyes look back at viewers,  because eye contact is essential and the human scale of the project was important.

.    

 

    Did I mention there's also a textual component?  Here's the thing: why should music have all the fun?  Why can't art have lyrics? There's also a fine tradition of writing on empty walls, and I like the "b" sides and parentheticals,  so there I was with twelve blank spaces just asking to be addressed.  With that in mind, I sought out and acquired another once desired, well loved and well used object, a typewriter. Now moved into the realm of anachronism and curiosity, like so many other parts of our lives, it has real heft.  There's a physicality to typing on it, and hitting "shift" really moves the whole thing.  Back spacing fixes nothing, (no take backs- so focus!) so one must be aware of margins and word breaks. In short- it underscored my feeling that machinery should be a tool, not a tyrant, and help to focus us more on our innate capabilities,  instead of deferring to the convenience of having it done for us whilst losing our agency.

   So there you have it.  Thanks to all of you who've let me bounce notions off of you through this process: Karen, Barbara and Blair in particular.  Thanks to Tina for blessing me with her typewriter, Kurt for teaching me how to use a lathe and not kill myself, my husband John for all sorts of help in the workshop and for bouncing the technical stuff around with me, not to mention helping load and unload the whole shebang, I really couldn't have done it without you! Thank-you Cliff for the finials, Jenny and Harley for the grandfather clock, Mimosa Barn for letting me set up and photograph there, and Georgia for convincing me to swing for the fences. Not sure what will become of it (it truly has been a matter of working with alacrity into the void, ) but what the heck: time's a wasting.