Mind Like Water

These past few days I have taken a time-out to do a tidy-up of my life. I listened to David Allen reading his book (7 Cd's) while I took notes. His book, Getting Things Done The Art of Stress Free Productivity, is about setting up a system to capture all you want to do in your life so your mind is free to become like water, free to be creative and to come up with those brilliant ideas.
Another half day of work and my studio will be set up according to his system.
I am looking forward to having a mind like water.

Antonio Gaudi

I saw an old Japanese movie, early 80s, almost no talking, no sub titles, some b/w footage, no information, and it was great. I was able to really focus without distraction on the incredible detail in everything this art nouveau architect touched. It was enthralling to spend well over an hour just panning through his structures.

Louise Bourgeious

Don't Abandon Me
Another artist I looked at in my essay was Louise Bourgeois. A vital part of her human form sculptures in cloth is they are made from her own garments. This is self psychoanalysis.
She is an amazing role model, producing several shows of new work each year. She will be 98 this year.

Christian Boltanski

Christian Boltanski is another artist who works with cloth and the body.
I wrote about his work in my essay too.

'Art can only be made if one has a Utopian faith in the possibility of changing the world.'
-Christian Boltanski

Return to Earth

I have returned to earth now that I have completed an essay for the Opus BA module I am doing this semester. What a journey. I learnt lots while working out how artists transform used and sometimes dirty garments into art.
This is an image of Maria Ezcurra's work. She has unpicked a woman's swim suit and tacked it to the wall. She says she releases women from labels which are restrictions society puts on her. She has changed something 3D into 2D abstract art.
The problem is, I can see the male gaze focusing on the woman as a trophy, turning her into an object just the same way westerners have mounted and displayed kills from a hunt.
I think these works of Maria's could have their meaning turned around to do reinforce what she was intending to change.
It was her other work I wrote about in the essay because it is exciting stuff.

Sue Stone

I recently came across Sue Stone's work and find this one 'East End Chair' so appealing. I don't know why. Is it all of the textures she has worked up with needle-weaving and hand and machine stitching on recycled fabrics?
Plus, it is funny.

Chinook - the Snow Melter

20 minutes ago a wind hit the house. I heard a dripping sound and looked out the window. All of the snow on the trees was gone. A grand-daddy of a Chinook popped over the Rockies and blew into town. The temperature has just risen 12 degrees in 30 minutes. What an exciting place to live.
Here is a photo snapped in the fall showing the typical arched cloud formation of a warm wind we experience here in Calgary, which brings the rapid rises in temperatures.

Snow Snow Snow

Calgary had its first big dump of snow yesterday.

I took a break from writing my essay to go outside

and enjoy the tranquil beauty in our back yard.
Now back to my essay.

Censoring the Body

While doing research for a term paper I read a great essay by the art critic and historian, Edward Lucie-Smith. He is someone with the ability to look over history and pull out key ideas, trends and shifts in ways of thinking.
He begins his essay with the observation, "from the earliest times, humans have found it difficult to represent their own bodies in a straightforward way" and he continues to bring his observations of censorship of the body up until the present day. He raises lots of provocative ideas.

Peabody Essex Museum

A good friend gave me a delicious book, Painted with Thread: The Art of American Embroidery, published by the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts. It is volume 136 in a series featuring their museum collections. The museum has more than 25,000 American textile items. The ones shown in this book are from an exhibition that showed items to the public for the first time.
The format of the book is perfect for the study of work when you can't go and see the real thing. Each of the 68 works has a 2 page spread, a full page close up of the work and a page giving details and background on it.
I have put this museum on my 'must see' list.

By A Lady

A kind friend sent me a yummy book. WACK!, the exhibition on in the Vancouver Art Gallery left me wanting to find out more about what women artists were doing in Canada over that time period and then this book arrived in the post.
One of the reviewers, Robert Fulford, wrote, "Maria Tippet reveals in By a Lady that the tradition of women's art in Canada is far richer than most of us ever imagined. Her book makes an important contribution to our understanding of Canadian art."
The title comes from how people in the C19th referred to a work of art by a woman.

Tyndall Stone Wall

I am making a Tyndall Stone wall.

I have prepared my palette, just as Julia Caprara says to do. Torn strips of fabric...

..lengths of thick yarns, tapes, ribbons & threads are ready for building up in layers on the burlap base. I have 3 stone blocks under way. I'm not sure how many I will need to make a wall.
I'm now thinking the title should be something like 'Walls Talk'.

'Costume In Detail'

I just received this yummy book in the mail & I have already spent several hours dipping into it.

Nancy Bradfield obviously loves costume because it shows in the inspiring, detailed drawings she has made of the outside & inside of hundreds of garments & accessories. Most of them have never been seen by the public and never will because they are too delicate or are disintegrating.
Most of the earliest costumes are drawn from a cache she discovered in the basement of Westminster Abbey on wax effigies beside the owner's tomb.
The drawings are so detailed they are an 'invaluable source of information for those concerned with fashion, with period dress, with history, and with theatre, film, or TV.'
ISBN 0-89676-217-3

Vancouver Art Gallery, The Revolution - What Revolution?

I have been thinking about the exhibition Wack! and why the time period it covers, 60s & 70s, is called a revolution in the art world. Though not all of the art world. The art historian, Robert Hughes has the view 'The 1970s, a time that evokes little nostalgia in the art world today, went by without leaving a "typical" art behind' (The Shock of the New p.364). He must have spent his days in white cube galleries over this time period. Or he defines art as a work in oils or acrylic painted on a regular shaped canvas. Anything else doesn't fit his definition of 'high/fine' art.

The 2 floors of the Vancouver Art Gallery, here, are full of works in a myriad of media with only a hint of the smell of oil. What work there is in oil/acrylic and worked traditionally on canvas is macro views of the human form such as Joan Semmel's work, or photo realistic/personal memento still lifes of Audry Flack and Jacqueline Fahey, all pushing the boundaries of 'real' art.

Sylvia Sleigh's Turkish Bath is a parody of the long popular nude harem fantasy subject of male artists. Sylvia's wicked sense of humour is even more apparent when one learns the men depicted are all art historians of the day. There also 2 versions of her regular model. After all, if she is painting him as an object, just as nude women have been painted for centuries, then her male object can be reproduced as many times as she wants to only she doesn't follow the rules by putting her multiple copies of her object in the same painting.

WACK! Art & the Feminist Revolution

I went to this exhibition in Vancouver last weekend. Vancouver is its 4th and last stop in its North American tour. I recommend you go to it if you are in the area before it ends January 18th, 2009.
It is a huge exhibition covering 2 floors of the Vancouver Art Gallery. For me it was a thrill to see works I had only looked at in books. The real thing is such a different experience. The air crackles with strong emotion and the political voices of the women who were part of a social revolution.
On the 2nd floor there are a lot of Canadian artists, which I was relieved to see because all of my reading for the current module I am studying has been about European and American women artists. So the revolution was happening north of the border too. My ignorance supports Martha Rosler's comments that the "lessons of the feminist movement have been contained and particularized."
Martha's work Hot House (Harem) is on the cover of the exhibition catalogue (see above).