Re-presenting

My new work presented in my last post finds its beginnings in past explorations. In 2008 I completed a body of work titled Remnants. A remnant can be so many things: vestige, residue, trace, leftover, debris, mélange, scrap, refuse, detritus, relic remains, fragment. It all depends on your personal take. Here's mine from a recent proposal for an exhibition of Remnants:


In abandoned or soon to be refurbished homes, in trunks and old boxes, in debris hidden in grass rests layers of history waiting to be uncovered and interpreted. While the place and time might be specific, the information gathered reveals universal truths. The examination of what remains provides a sense of the past and direction for the future. These pieces of history help to define identity and understand place.


Using various art techniques, I explore the themes inherent in remnants left behind. I’ve placed my family history within the process but extend the exploration to old houses, some abandoned and some in the process of renovation. While one of the houses has a personal connection, the rest I adopted as I came across them in my summer wanderings. The houses continue to come to my attention and I continue to document them for future works.

The peeling walls are metaphors for the lives lived within the houses and are similar in many ways to my early years. The beauty of the wallpaper patterns is in direct opposition to the basic work filled lives led by many of the women in these homes. Seeing beauty perhaps made their environment more aesthetically pleasant. Many of these woman created work by hand that adorned their home made furniture and children. It was the inside life of women while many of the objects I painted to pair with the wallpapers represented the outside life of men at that time: building, fishing etc. There was a strict division of labour and definite male and female roles.

These works are about my memories as much as they are about the objects that I have chosen to revere in the work.

As Estes notes in Women Who Run with the Wolves many of our memories are rooted in the body itself and need the merest touch to resurface.

"The body remembers, the bones remember, the joints remember, even the little finger remembers. Memory is lodged in pictures and feelings in the cells themselves. Like a sponge filled with water, anywhere the flesh is pressed, wrung, even touched lightly, a memory may flow out in a stream."

I became interested in the concept of sensual memory while writing my first artist statement. As I struggled to understand why I needed to work the way I do, I realized that my strong tactile style had a direct connection to the crafts I created in my formative years in rural Newfoundland. My hands have to create layers of meaning through the manipulation of materials. Paint isn’t enough; I need direct contact with materials, tearing and cutting fragments, applying layers, building up, patterning, hiding and revealing. I am building a network of connections in the content and the creative process just as my ancestors did as they created objects of useful beauty, without waste, from materials at hand.

My process itself is based on remnants created by tearing and rearranging image transfers. My new work has moved beyond some of the ideas explored in Remnants. Teresa said in her response to my last post ... "The first though that popped into my head was "haunting memories" in that it seems like memory born from a dream-like state". Haunting memory is definitely part of it, but the memories are born through the process of creating and layering. They are stored memories released through touch.

Reading layers

In response to the last post Kathy noted that:
art primarily deals with "spaces in between." That is, we all observe what's around us and use it to inform our art, but we have to find connections that aren't obvious in order to make our work meaningful. Those "connections" occur somewhere between the realm of reality and our imaginations. Those are what I would call the "spaces in between." there is a space between our original perception of reality and how we represent this in our work.

It seems there are many" in between" spaces in art. A common one is the use of layers to build up a painting. There is also the use of negative space as a compositional device. Tanja Softic uses both in her work.

Morning over there (2008) 15 x 36 in. acrylic, graphite, chalk on paper mounted on board

Last year I was excited to find the work of Tanja Softic as I was researching various artists who cite memory as a driving force in their work. Since that time I've visited her website several times and each time I come away with new insights into her work.

Tanja is an associate professor of art at The University of Richmond, but she was raised in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia. While she was earning her MFA in the United States, war broke out in her homeland permanently changing the pattern of her life.

In her words:

My work addresses factors of cultural hybridity that shape the identity and world view of an immigrant: exile, longing, translation, and memory.

.....The visual vocabulary of my drawings and prints suggests a displaced existence: fragmented memories, adaptation, revival, and transformation. Because I do not live and work within the comfort or boundaries of the culture in which I first learned to observe, interpret and engage the world, I have the arguable privilege of having lived more than one life. My memory is my virtual self and, paradoxically, my most authentic self.

Her references to memory as a "process that involves erosions and accretions" strikes a cord with me as I construct my paintings for Reading a Garden 18 months after my two week stay in Birr Castle Demesne. I am amazed at how quickly I forget specific details and how easily I embellish others and believe them to be true. Softic sums it up well.

" Re-membering becomes an act of reconstruction, where one works with what is there and tries to visualize what has been lost.

The images in Softic's more recent works suggest what Said called "an awareness of simultaneous dimensions." The maps and star charts represent conventional interpretations of distance and scale. Softic says:

I am interested in what they may become, layered upon each other, in visual conversations with other elements in the drawing. In Migrant Universe, the drawings function as re-arrangeable continuum of maps, landscapes and portraits of memory and identity.

The map of what happened below is part of the Mirgrant Universe series.

The map of what happened (2008) acrylic, chalk, graphite on paper on board 60 x 120

Nomad's polyphony (2004) 42 x 108 in. acrylic, charcoal, chalk on handmade paper

While I have found several different bodies ofSoftic's work and critical discussion of it, I was first attracted to the pods, orchid blooms and shells mixed with body organs and bones all juxtaposed with geometric shapes and architectural details.

Allegory of time (2000) 58 x 52 in. acrylic, charcoal, chalk on paper

The layers are complex but negative space exists within and top of the surface which has the ability to both calm and command the viewer. Her work has a dreamlike quality that provides a sense of past and present displayed together. Drawing and printmaking allow her to build up layers of subtle colour and texture. I like the way some of the objects recur in varying combinations throughout different works. David Bickman 2003 noted that "She combines the skill of a medical or botanical illustrator with the soul of a poet to make extremely detailed drawings that are nothing if not evocative."

Porous histories (2005) 15 x 48 in. etching and mezzotint

Perhaps you would like to look at the work of my friend, Catherine Beaudette, who has a summer home in Duntara near where we live. Catherine teaches at Ontario College of of Art and Design. Look at her Recent Works and read her artist statement. You will see why.

Continuum

Continuum (2009) 10 x 24 in.
mixed media ( photo transfer, acrylic mediums &paint) paper) on board

There is inspiration in the simplest things. How many times do people walk by aspects of nature intent on their own inner world and completely miss what is happening around them? At times I feel I have the opposite problem - a continuous bombardment of stimuli that must be filtered out or it becomes overwhelming to process. This rose shrub is a good example of my usual " nature experience". I was strolling along in the Millennium Garden, Birr Castle Demense, and was beckoned by both the buzzing of bees and a glorious smell. Drawing nearer, I could see that some rose blooms were still in tact serving as landing pads for bees busy playing out their role in nature. The thing that really interested me as I looked more carefully was the presence of every stage of blossom development in a rose. It was like the passage of time caught in action and I was there to experience it. Two days later and all the blooms would possibly have disappeared, an hour before the bees might have been busy with other concerns.

This was a difficult painting to execute. It lay around my studio for six months in various stages and configurations of elements. There were so many elements to include that I could not get the composition to work. I used a great deal more paper than in the other paintings in this series. The evidence of the original photo transfers is almost totally obscured by the inclusion of additional information from my memory. The work grew to be much more sense bound and less about the actual rose bush itself. With the addition of each element, I felt I was building my own understanding of the the passage of time.

Same but different

Time flies and I'm not even having fun! I'm late posting this link to the group exhibition I am part of at Cube Gallery in Ottawa (my work is the first panel on the left.) Thanks to a travel grant from the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council, I was able to travel to the opening. It was an honour to see my work among that of five other artists who were all using photography in some way to inform their work.

This show is about a merging of aspects of modernity (photography) and tradition (painting) which is one of the cutting edge genres in contemporary art today. The artists' use of both media asks the viewer to consider what is original and what is representational, what is real and what is not, what is tradition and what is modern.

One of the things that is limiting about living on an island is exposure to different types of art and artists. After awhile you get to know what many artists are creating and it all becomes too predictable. It was interesting to see five artists who, on paper, were working in a similar way to me, and then to discover that we were all quite different in how we were using photography. There was certainly a continuum of how obvious the use of photography in the works was. My photo transfers were very integrated into the composition and you had to spend a great deal of time looking to see what aspects were photo transfer and what was painting.

I discuss this in my artist statement...

My work begins with image transfers from photocopies of my photographs. I consider this "the real", knowing full well the limitations of photographs. Through a series of manipulations using paint, mediums, papers and sometimes ephemera, the image transfers are altered in varying degrees or totally subsumed to reflect my memory of the event. These memories are diminished in specific details in favor of complex meanings associated with sensory experiences that evolve during the process.

As time passes what I actually remember from my two weeks at Birr Castle Demesne is fading. With each new work completed there are less and less of the actual photo transfers evident. I am synthesizing my impressions and often adding new information that feels like it should be there. In summary, my process of creating these works mimics the actual process of remembering (and forgetting) over time.

If you would like to explore the work of the artists in more detail check out their websites: Katherine Jeans, Jennifer Lawton, Amanta Scott, Karina Kraenzle and D.H. Monet who is the owner of Cube Gallery.

Evolving ideas

I wrote this before I left for my mini vacation when I discovered I could schedule it to post by changing the post time under post options. Imagine that!

In research on characteristics of creative people , the pattern of one idea leading to another features prominently; it is referred to as evolution. This is the method of incremental improvement where new ideas or solutions grow from previous ones. Constant incrementation of ideas accounts for many of the discoveries in the world. Other "thinking"characteristics work in concert with the evolution of new ideas from old. They include:

• willingness to try new things/take risks
  
• ability to see relationships and make mental leaps
• curiosity about new things
• broad interests in many unrelated areas

I see evidence of evolution (of ideas) in every aspect of my life, but especially in my art practice. I can use my last post about the use of a vintage post card in a mixed media work as an example of how you can move along with an idea. Originally postcards were a logical extension of my interest in memory, passage of time, culture, identity and family connections. I didn't think much beyond them as an example. If I want to build on this topic/idea there are strategies I can use to increase the number and range of responses.

1. Brainstorming is a great way to see where an idea can go. Here are my thoughts on postcards:

Postcards

• art of the ordinary person
• intimate in scale
• inexpensive, economical
• commercial
• thin cardboard
  
• travels
• special events
• photo size (4x6)
  
• used across cultures
• souvenirs
• transportable
• topic based
• not age specific
• long history of use
• nostalgic
  
• present positive views
• collectible
  
• sites of interest
• messages
• public
  

2. Sort and re-sort
Create a list of words (as above), phrases or drawings from you random thoughts, look for connections and sort your ideas, then resort. One way is to write all your random thoughts or scribblings on sticky notes and continually rearrange them. You might want to record your connections. This usually yields general themes. My list above could be sorted into characteristics, uses, types, etc.

3. Extend categories
Then try to generate new ideas under each general heading. E.g. uses (exhibition announcements, used for political advocacy, humour, etc. )

4. Extend your list
Give more examples or ask questions.

Postcards

• art of the ordinary person (is there a way to make them elite?)
• two sided
  
• intimate in scale (is it still a postcard if the size changes? )
  
• inexpensive, economical (make them precious, expensive)
  
• commercial (create personal, one of a kind postcards)
  
• thin cardboard (what other formats are possible? canvas, small boxes, video, puzzle format, metal)
  
• travels
• special events
  
• photo size (4x6) (what about same content in large sizes, same impact?, no longer economical or intimate, use of video? )
  
• used across cultures (examine styles of postcards across cultures- ideas for styles?)
  
• souvenirs
• transportable (what happens when you alter the size?)
  
• topic based
• not age specific
• long history of use
• nostalgic (political, spiritual)
  
• present positive views (pose questions, highlight significant issues)
  
• sorted and labelled
• sites of interest
• messages
• public
  

5. Research beyond your ideas
This is where you link with the ideas of others. Be careful here because there is a fine line between copying and extending.

From web research, the traditional idea of postcard is certainly extended.

See various definitions of postcards on the web.

Then there is the world of Mail art where artists enter into the fray.

Video postcards accompany music, illustrate family vacations, show interesting places that are fun and real.

The history of postcards is traced back to 1490 when a medieval nun sent one leaf painting of Saint Barbara to another nun.

It seems the word postcard is part of many song titles with my personal favourite - Mark Knophler, Postcard from Paraguay . Check out many more on YouTube.

Visual art and the postcard

The postcard has been used by artists for many years to create various kinds of art. See the connection British artists Gilbert and George have to postcards.

Art of the Japanese Postcard was presented at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Themes in Japanese postcards are categorized and samples are presented.

Postsecret is an ongoing community art project where people mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a post card. Very interesting...

Julianna Parr uses the postcard as a legitimate artistic medium. See her Time Stamp: A Diary in Postcards 1998-2008. This is the passage of time charted through visual imagery and much commitment .

And finally there are a half million hits on Google images for postcard art.

And yes.... this post has helped me come up with an idea for new work for a summer show I am in. Now I have to get busy creating!

For Carrie 1907

For Carrie 1907, 10 x 20 in. (2007) Mixed media collage

Can you have a series if you've created only one art work? If I can count the ideas still lurking in the mulling centre of my brain, then For Carrie, 1907 is part of a series based on old postcards. The original postcard rests under the iris painting with the signature in gold ink (a faint trace of human presence ) representing the voice of the sender who is forwarding best wishes for Carrie's birthday. I found this particular card tucked away in the corner of a box in an antique store. I dreamed up a world for Carrie to celebrate her birthday. I love the fact that I created this work exactly a hundred years after the postcard was sent. My only regret is that I didn't copy the postcard before using it in the collage. It is forever shrouded by my interpretation of it.

The postcards that I find most appealing have embossed floral motifs, lots of gold and flowing script. They remind me of a time when such objects were in direct opposition to the the lifestyle of the recipients. Life was hard and there was little time for beauty. I place these postcards in the same category as the lavish wallpapers that even the poorest women managed to acquire for their homes.

There are many sites to purchase post cards. This one has very nostalgic images that are accessible with the purchase of a one time membership .

Other vintage postcard information and/or purchase source are:
TMonline Vintage Postcards ( 1907 vintage)
Joyce M. Tice (my favourite featuring the Language of Flowers)
Cottage Collectibles and Postcards (featuring tinted cards)

and of course you local antique shop or your grandmother's dresser drawers.

Remember when?

When I was a child my mother and grandmother made quilts from remnants of clothing, furniture coverings, traded scraps from friends, fabric that my aunt sent from New York (very exotic in my childhood world), fabric my grandfather brought home from material salvaged from his job, and even old quilts that had been retired. The backings were often flour bags (then flour was purchased in large cloth bags) which were bleached white. Sometimes used sheets were used for backings. Nothing was wasted. I didn't know at the time how these pieces would provide a record of my years at home.

Many years later when my mother moved from our family home to a small cottage the quilts needed a new home. I claimed most of them because I saw them as memory markers. I knew that these patterns would some day end up in my art work. I've had many of my photographs printed now, and I'm in the process of sorting and resorting, waiting for an idea to attach itself to me.

This was a Sunday dress my mother had. I always loved that dress. I thought the red bits made it very exotic. To this day I love paisley type prints.

For many years there was a Singer sewing machine in the corner of our kitchen. It was beautified by a cover. This was the pattern that was on it for most of my teenage years.



Can you believe this was a cover for our sofa when I was a teenager (1960's)? I sure doesn't fit in with my minimalist look today.

What a smashing number I must have been in an mini dress made of this material!

An then there was the move to the flower power stage of my life.... And I wonder why I'm so attracted to memory, floral motifs and pattern in my work. I need look no more. It's ingrained.

When to call it quits

Summer Baromenter, 2008, (16 x 16) mixed media on canvas

Today I went looking for an image and found this misplaced documentation of a painting I sold last year. This piece had a long gestation period. I could never seem to get it just right and it kept me company in my studio for three years. One day last spring, it just happened! Soon after it was chosen for a juried fine art/craft show and sold to an American tourist. I like the thought that someone else can share the joy of my early years.

In this piece I wanted to capture both my memory of the physical aspects of the landscape where I grew up, and my feelings for the meadow where we played most days of summer vacations until I was a teenager. It was a time of freedom, where we were allowed to run rampant through tall grass, over rocks, along the water's edge and through the woods that bordered our property.

I find that when I create work that is intensely personal to me and I want to get it perfect, it hampers my free flow of ideas. Nothing is good enough, and I often refuse to follow up on ideas, throwing them on the reject pile before they have had time to grow. As a result, I either have a piece that ends up in my recycle pile or I have a piece staring at me for long blocks of time. The challenge is knowing when to call it quits. I'm glad I waited for this one.

Attachments II

I just looked at Lisa Dahl's work on Dear Ada (and left a comment) and that got me thinking about the whole idea of house and home which is a theme I am very interested in. There are so many images that bring me back to my roots and the environment in which I spent my formative years. Objects have the ability to transport us to another time. When I'm not exploring the many themes inherent in gardens and flowers, I seem to explore the same themes through objects and place.

This work explores family attachments and place. This is what's left of a structure on my family's land that has special meaning for me. While bolts served to attach the posts of this house, as objects they cause me to think about other attachments I've had in my life.

The bolts are wax castings of the actual objects painted with oils. The image is a photo transfer into encaustic over fiberous paper.



Wallpaper and textiles have power as memory prompts. If you respond to this work with familiarity you are definitely a certain age. While I consider this colour scheme very garish now, it was the one that was in the first home we purchased and began our family. How I lived with it then I can't understand. My leanings now are toward more serene environments.

This wallpaper sampler was created as part of my Remnants series in 2008. The technique is photo transfer collage, built up wholly of photo transfers into gel skins and torn to create a composition that is then enhanced with acrylic paint. The shots were taken in a house in a community where I spent many of my summer holidays. We now have a summer home there. Connections abound in our lives.

Attachments

Mounted #1, #2, #3 , Butter Point, Jerseyside (2008) 10 x 10, wax casting, oil paint, encaustic on paper

Not everything you find in a meadow is a flower. These three works were created from objects I picked up from the detritus of what was once a family shed that sat in the middle of a lovely meadow overlooking the ocean. I wanted to honour these everyday objects that had all filled important roles before the wood they were attached to had fallen into disarray.

This work is part of a solo exhibition called Remnants held at The Leyton Gallery of Fine Art in May 2008.


Here are photos of the site.

Lost in memory

Part 3, Lost in Memory, (2006) paper, paint, acrylic mediums on canvas

My garden explorations began in the meadow of my childhood where my grandparents' temporary dwelling was located while they built the one I remember. In 2005 I took a trip back, walked the paths and visited haunts from my childhood, recording my journey in hundreds of photographs. I continue to review them and find inspiration to add to other works. It was the photo of the candy bar wrapper in a previous post that made me think of this work that now is part of a triptych gracing my friend's wall.

Here's the whole piece.

Capturing time

This image from my 2008 Remnants series was created almost completely using gel transfers. I began the process by taking hundreds of photographs of the walls of old houses that were undergoing renovations. I then sorted the photographs into groups and created the transfers. The layering of the transfers was very effective in creating a similar texture to that found on the original walls. Once the composition was created, acrylic paint was used to enhance it. This series was a departure for me because it was created almost exclusively by layering transfers.


My new Reading a Garden series that I am currently working on is utilizing some photo transfers that are then being changed by painting to mimic the erosion that occurs in our memory. As time passes we forget many details and revamp the original image based on what is memorable or important to us. We remember interpretations not facts.


So I have revealed one full painting from my new series.

Waiting

Waiting (paper, acrylic paint and gels, ephemera on canvas) 16 x 16, 2006 - Ryall

Like many things in life, the sparkle of a long awaited event can be momentary. We spend so much time in anticipation - waiting and planning- that the actual event often pales in comparison if we are not careful to pay attention to smaller things. It is important to grab fleeting moments and file them away for future reference. Christmas Day is over in an instant. What will you remember about Christmas Day 2008 ?

The erosion of memory

The power of the photograph to document places and events cannot be disputed. How close is this documentation to reality? It isn't as close as you might think.

Photographic film distorts brightness and color. Because film has a small dynamic range relative to our eyes, it compresses the range of darkest dark to the brightest bright creating lower contrast, resulting in an object in a photo being less visible. The amount and type of distortion depends on the film used and the way that it is developed. With color film, longer durations make scenes look brighter and short duration make them darker.

In addition to the distortion caused by photographic film, camera optics must be considered. Lens choice affects spatial relations. Wide angle lenses cause distortion because the lens is closer to the subject; telephoto lenses compress objects together. The angle at which a photograph is taken also impacts the relative size of objects at different distances. Perspective errors are caused when an image of a 3D world falls on a 2D plane.

When we examine the reality of the photograph, it becomes apparent that many changes occur from the time you focus your camera to the time you look at a photo and even after that point depending on the viewing conditions. Some information is altered subtly and some is lost depending on the quality of the technology and the skill of the photographer.

Looking at an image captured by a camera is still the next best think to being there. That is why I took almost a 1000 photos during my two week stay on the grounds of Birr Castle.

The process of reality erosion had already begun when I chose certain photos to initiate my responses to reading Birr Gardens. When we remember a place or an event without a photographic reference even more information is lost. The more time that intervenes between an event and our effort to bring it to mind, the more information is lost. That is the reality of our memory of experienced events. This is a constant element in my work and it plays a prominent part in my new explorations.

My art process physically reflects the erosion created in our memory by the passage of time. I begin each piece with several photo transfers of a particular place in the garden. I consider this "the real". I then begin through a series of manipulations using paint and organic papers to alter the photo transfers to reflect what I can actually remember of the specific place. I'm finding that only certain salient points remain.