Paula Billups Art

Gasoline on A Fire

2011-12-13T10:02:00.000-08:00

I knew that this point would come in the MFA process, where I would feel like everything is spinning out of control -- because it is -- and where if possible, each day I would feel more clueless than the last, and then the point where all I want to do is paint small dead-palette still lifes and hide under the covers - maybe even at the same time.

I am trying to call up the patience and equanimity that usually serves me and remember a lot. Remember the Siena residency, remember the BFA year, remember that the nadir is inevitable and so is its receding, eventually. This is how it goes. This is how it always goes. This is the part that sucks.

But I am almost out of patience and this is taking a long time. I keep trying to find ways through the forest but every time I think I've found another path I get more lost. Every time I think I've done something that should aid the progress I end up making things worse. In the studio, in life, in everything.

I hereby declare that all of this is okay. It is okay to not be okay. It is fine to not understand and to not be understood. In fact Levinas would say that this is our right.

I am going to ride the chaos and let the structure fall - follow my nose across the Wisconsin countryside and play the audio files of the interviews to bring a few things to light. To the team - performers, photographers, crit group and advisors, I say - hang on, kids. I feel another change coming on.

I am like a teenager currently living out the consequences of an ill-judged decision to tie my skateboard to a city bus with a thirty-foot rope just to see what happens.

At least I'm bound to learn something.

Watch this space.

Love letter to the Boston Fire Family

2011-12-05T20:21:00.001-08:00

I am not sure why the subdued palette and spare composition of my still lifes gives way to something more vivid in painting the portrait, but it seems to, at least these days. My fire tribe in Boston has been amazing in their participation of the most recent series, something fairly ambitious that is still getting off the ground.

First step is choosing the team and then doing work together - lengthy interviews and also head studies. (In a couple of cases I got carried away and these turned into portrait sketches, but I don't think anyone would blame me, given the magnificence of my friends.)

These head studies are a foil to the larger pieces which will surely require some photographic references - something I almost never use, but the practicalities right now demand it. You can't ask a flame to hold still for three minutes, let alone three hours, or thirty. So I have to capitulate to the necessity of the photographic reference. But all the same the head study allows me to fully understand the forms and anatomy of each person's head, face, features and body in a way that a photograph could never tell me.

Most of these images are quick sketches under 16x20" in size, done in under three hours.

Terrence Drake - fire performer- breathing, eating, and staff

Dominique - fire eater, hooper, and aerialist

Siha - dancer, fire breather and principal dancer with Abraxis Dance Company

Steven - actor and fire performer (staff)

Mooch - juggler, fire performer

Dear God, I love working from life . . . and these participants modeling for me make it so easy.

Many thanks to Terrence Drake, Dominique, Mooch, Steven and Siha for their generous time, patience, kindness and enthusiasm.

"Unsounded - Cairo/Sinai 2010" by Amanda Kerdahi Matt

2011-10-04T12:30:00.000-07:00

So who was that woman reading by the window? It was Amanda Kerdahi Matt, one of my school mates at the Transart Institute - raised in Texas and living in Cairo and creating some delightful, engaging and profound video work.

Unsounded is eight minutes of clear, dreamlike imagery paired with sound that at first seems to be from the same moment. But as the scene changes it becomes clear that the conversation is not happening at the same time as the video being shot. Contrasts - the bread and butter of great work - emerge, as a strange musical note resolves into the sound of subway brakes - we hear a casual conversation between two friends on a subway that leaves the scene of a road trip to serve as the audio caption for a man taking a leisurely swim at the beach -- contrast as the soothing sound of water smooths over a nearly-empty subway car containing a forlorn two-year-old and his tantrum.

Unsounded / Cairo, Sinai 2010 from amandakerdahimatt on Vimeo.

What makes the piece work is the sparsity and clarity of the visual and audio choices. Managed so crisply, each thing standing alone is a visual or audio landscape that we can appreciate. The juxtapositions confuse the sense of time and space, and ball up the sequence of events so that we are no longer in a continuum-- we are in a dream space, the part of us that is thinking one thing and experiencing another, or the way we reminisce long after a vacation or outing has ended.

I did a lot of traveling this year. I have spent five out of the past twelve months somewhere else - four of those overseas. I have visited six countries around the globe and have seen some of the world's great cities, including Cairo, one of the subjects of the piece. (And seeing Kerdahi Matt's video reminds me how much I want to go back there . . . soon.)

What that level of mobility did was move the furniture around in my head to a pretty significant degree. I often find myself wishing to visit a park or cafe that is halfway around the globe, forgetting for a moment where I am. Visiting a new city, I find I refer it to many others - Cagliari is very much its own city, but wandering its center I was all the same reminded of Cairo . . Alexandria . . . Paris . . . New Orleans . . . Hawaii . . . Houston . . . New Mexico . . . bits and pieces of other places kept dropping into the present moment, overlaying it. Sometimes a memory comes up out of hand in the middle of a day - nothing reminded me of it - there is no reason. But driving down the road to Chicago sometimes all I can think about is a certain day in New York or the way a certain chilly summer morning felt in Berlin, a sparkling and rain-washed hour.

I treasure this kind of fragmentation - there are no sure anchors of reference in my physical experience and they are becoming less weighty all the time as my range of experience expands. There is not an ontological yardstick anymore - things are no longer "like home" or "not like home" -- there is in fact no home -- everything contains bits of everything else and I begin to feel at least partly at ease everywhere.

Kerdahi Matt's work primarily evokes that wonderful feeling - the memory of holiday, of place, as it sneakily and blessedly intrudes at times on our waking life and as we can sometimes remember more than one thing at a time. The work speaks to life richly lived and richly seen.

The visual peace and tranquility holds trump in the sensibilities driving the piece - this is fully realized and crystallized image and sound communicating unhindered. As I am a painter, I feel sympathies with Rene Magritte, Edward Hopper, Andrew Wyeth and Johannes Verneer - there is yet lushness in these lines that is brought courtesy of a diamond light.

Kerdahi Matt's work can be seen on Vimeo here.

Back after the Swirl to Tell About It

2011-10-04T06:21:00.000-07:00


A schoolmate obliged me for a pose at the Tanzfabrik in Berlin - July 2011

Hello, everyone!

The last post was back in May. About that time so many things broke loose that it was necessary to let a lot of stuff drop, and the blog was one of those things. Now this is the creative conundrum, isn't it? Because it seems that just when things are at their most exciting is when it ought to be the perfect time to blog. Right? Well, this works for a lot of people. I have learned that I need to work things a little differently.

I have learned that I'm on the slow side. When I experience a place or an event, if I thresh that into work - whether it's writing or art - too soon, then there is something lost in the richness. I think it's a little like those times when you realize that when you are someplace awesome, if you spend the whole time with a camera to your face, there is a way in which you didn't really get to have the experience, only catalog it for some sort of posterity - the later examination of yourself or others. It's the problem of actively remembering something while or in place of fully experiencing it, and there is an important - a critical, fundamental, mandatory - step that gets compromised or lost when you do that.

So actually some of the most beautiful moments of my life are ones that I never photographed or painted or drew or talked about. Those things are only in the archive of my head. In an era where we share absolutely everything with everybody on blogs like this (well, some people do) - that can seem like a meanness, a stinginess, a tease to say that you have had, known, experienced things that you are not willing to share.

But I'm here to assert that to do that is none of thoes things. It's okay to do that. It's healthy and that's human, and for me, it's necessary; essential. It's vital to me to know that there is a secret garden, a private hive, where exquisite things dwell that are not for sharing, just there for me. It's important for me to understand that I, alone, am enough - a good enough recipient for that gift of beauty without needing to hand it off to someone else.

It also makes me a better artist, because I consider things for release into the frame via the brushes only after it has had a chance to dwell a bit and make itself felt - only after I have savored deeply and fully the delish wish of juice and light and gorgeous that caught my attention in the first place, taken it into myself for what it is, not what I think I can turn it into, taken it in because I love it and not because I think someone else will love it.

This is my apologia for a very specific sort of what some people would call selfishness, but what I only call living and honoring what I live -- living it like a human before I start using it like an artist.

So where have I been all this time?

Well, in April Scott was laid off his job, and a mercifully short job search yielded the reality that we would need to move across the country. That meant packing a full house and studio, getting the old house ready for sale and all the work that entailed, and finding a place to live in our new spot - Rockford, Illinois. At the same time, my work for the year for my Master's program was due - finishing the studio work, completing the studio documentation, submitting research work, and a full-up proposal for next year's thesis. As well, I was invited to take part in a monthlong residency at the Siena Art Institute in Siena, Italy, which I needed to prepare for -- directly after which I was obliged to be in Berlin at the Transart Institute for another month to fulfill a graduate residency, which I also needed to prepare for -- directly after which I roosted for a few weeks in Connecticut and Boston for some research and field work. Finally now, I am back in Illinois and putting down a root or two in order to keep work going.

Which is why on many occasions over the past four months I have said to myself, "Wow, I should really blog about this," and didn't.

With all that swirl going on, it's a good thing I waited. Because the dust is just now starting to settle and now that the experiences have not just been had but are also being truly absorbed - now that I am beginning to remember sights, sounds, smells, moments, impressions and adventures and not just remembering the sheer fact of them -- I really want to share some of these adventures here with you.

So off we go!

The Noisy Plume Has a Film!

2011-10-04T05:47:00.000-07:00

Jillian, one of the loveliest people on the planet, is the creator of unbelievably gorgeous and unique and museum-worthy jewelry and her shop is called The Noisy Plume. I am always gobsmacked by her work and inspired by her open heart, luminous beauty and incandescent mind, her poet's heart and her strong hands and her delightful smile. Her work keeps evolving and getting better, and I am so honored to have several pieces of plumage . . . she has always been amazing at letting people into her world and sharing the beauty she knows with others, so every time I visit her blog I walk away with a lighter heart and the kind of smile that reaches the eyes and the heart and doesn't just stay on the face.

Here is a very short and lovely little film about Jillian and her work - Jillian, you always inspire me in so much more than art!

http://vimeo.com/21510032

Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo

2011-05-28T06:28:00.000-07:00

The surrealist artist Leonora Carrington passed away this week at the age of 94, as reported in the Guardian.

I was the greenest possible art student in Houston, Texas, having just quit my desk job to study art full-time, beginning at the very beginning at the Art League Houston and studying, briefly, with Mexican artist Tomas Schoelmann. I didn't study with Schoelmann for long, but as is true with most art teachers, I was with him long enough to get something from the experience that was integral to my own way of making and looking at art. I was not too familiar with the surrealists, though I lived a few blocks away from the Menil Collection and so could (and did) walk there occasionally, especially to enjoy the extensive collection of Magritte's work there. Schoelmann looked at my portfolio when I came to ask to study with him and from the beginning he saw a compatibility in my work with the surrealists -- and more specifically, the Mexican surrealists.

He did not, as it turns out, find it worthwhile to mention Frida Kahlo. Instead, he drew my attention toward two other women whom most Americans have never heard of and who knew each other: Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo. I have always been grateful that he had the sensitivity to connect me with them. He succeeded in his attempt to give me a relationship with significant artists who were women and who were too under-the-radar to get co-opted by the feminists. He also saw the surreal streak in my thinking and saw the gentleness of my intentions, and so steered away from the darker and more vicious surrealists (de Chirico and Dali) and toward the gentler but infinitely odder and more complicated artists who did not identify their main motivations with war, disembowelment, inferno and Armageddon.

Below is Carrington's painting, Minotaur.

Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo were women, and to that extent they spoke with a woman's point of view, but I think they would both have objected to being made poster children for the feminist movement, and so I am glad that never happened. Varo's work was more accessible and her painting Exploration of the Source of the Orinoco remains one of my favorite pictures. The ethic of Athena resonates in here rather than that of Demeter or Persephone or Aphrodite. Not woman as victim or woman as lover or nurturer, but woman as explorer.

Reading that Carrington had passed away and reading about her incredible life (eloped with Max Ernst, caught in the Third Reich, escape to Mexico and subsequent career as an artist, personal friend of Kahlo and Rivera as well as of Varo) you get the feeling that when Varo painted her explorer, she was probably painting about herself, but she could have been painting about Carrington or the other audacious and self-determined women that she knew.

My thanks to Tomas Schoelmann for introducing me to Carrington, and my thanks to Carrington and Varo for being such excellent sisters from the past to feel connected with.

Luna's Sea at Cornerstone Playhouse in Mystic

2011-05-28T06:03:00.000-07:00

Last week the Cornerstone Playhouse premiered its new show for children's puppet theater, Luna's Sea. Luna finds herself chasing her pet penguin across the sea and encounters a great many strange and wonderful sea animals. Dancing, theater, music, puppetry and rich set design combine to make this a beautiful and magical spectacle, for children and grownups as well.

The artist Linda Wingerter, a driving force in the New Haven art scene, has devoted her gifts as a painter, illustrator, writer and puppeteer to bringing Luna's Sea to life. Reminiscent of the Nutcracker or Fantasia in its series of glittering and delightful vignettes, the show takes the audience seamlessly from the beach to the inkiest depths of the ocean, where we see creatures and sea plants through the eyes of the girl Luna and her guide, the luminescent Christine Poland, as the Moon. Ms. Poland also choreographed the show, whose dance numbers range in style from modern to ballet to tap, so the mood of the dancing shifts to match the flow of the narrative.

Range of scale lends a sense of surreal and delightful variety, with puppets ranging from a few inches high to over twenty feet long. The considerable skill of the troupe brings the puppets to life in a Bunraku-inspired style of puppetry, where the black-clad puppeteers appear on stage rather than hiding behind a screen.

Connecticut is fortunate to have such a gifted troupe and such a beautiful live puppet show on the scene.

Ticket holders can receive a treasure map to the Olde Mistick Village, site of the Cornerstone Playhouse, which is housed in a refitted segment of the movie theater there. Director Karl Gasteyer has turned a film house into a versatile performance space, and thanks to support from local patrons and businesses, the Cornerstone Playhouse has been producing top-quality work for the community.

Children are brought into the show and made to feel welcome. After the curtain the puppeteers sat on stage to answer questions and allow children to come up to meet and see the puppets up close.

Patrons have the option of a combination ticket which allows admission to the Aquarium as well, or a single ticket - both include a treasure map which children can use to wander Olde Mistick Village, collect stamps and return to the theater to claim a special prize.

Luna's Sea is running through October and deserves the full support of the community. I enjoyed the premiere so much I returned the following week and brought others with me and I hope that everyone in the area, especially those with kids, will have a chance to enjoy this magical confection of puppet theater!

Tickets can be purchased online or by calling 888-838-2906 ext. 1.

For Ahmed Basiony

2011-02-04T14:33:00.000-08:00

Experimental musician Ahmed Basiony was killed in the riots in Cairo this week, evidently from asphyxiation in tear gas. Peace be upon him and upon all of those caught in caught in the currents of history.

Meanwhile, Egyptian Christians joined hands and protected the space for their Muslim countrymen to pray in the middle of the protests. This is the most beautiful expression of brotherly love I have seen in a long, long time. The photo credit is Brian Thomas.

Gosh, I always wanted to write A Modest Proposal of my own . . . (or: One Dollar for Art)

2011-01-24T08:16:00.000-08:00

Our country's interest in and support for its arts is already a disgrace with the paltry amount of money that is currently allocated to the National Endowment for the Arts - money that we nevertheless desperately need to help our arts in every level of life from the cradle to the grave -- and now the new Republican Congress, feeling its oats, has proposed massive cuts in all kinds of areas that are already nearly choked off -- including taking the NEA down to zero.

The NEA's FY2011 budget was $161.3 million. Put another way, the annual cost to each citizen is $0.54 to have a national arts endowment for films, dance, theater, art, music, and writing. Fifty-four cents. Less than a postage stamp. That amount was after being cut in President Obama's FY2011 budget from its 2010 level of $167.5M. So much for his vaunted platform for supporting the arts.

A campaign to ask for a single dollar from every citizen would just about double our current arts budget.

(Just one contrasting example - France's Ministry of Culture Budget for 2006 was nearly €3 billion, or 252 times as much support as the United States offered its artists and cultural workers.) That is a palpable difference that shows up in the statistics for creativity.

Even George W. Bush spoke of the value of the NEA to our nation, as quoted in the cited article:

"the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities have strengthened our democracy by supporting our nation's ideals, institutions, and emerging talents. The NEA has provided support for music and dance, theater, and the arts across our great country. It has helped improve public access to education in the arts, offered workshops in writing, and brought artistic masterpieces to under-served communities."

Art is not frivolous. It is a necessary part of a healthy society. Grant Eckert writes,

This is what makes art so important. It benefits the brain by training it to think outside the box. It helps children understand concepts with greater ease. It aids children in getting better grades. In the real world, the artistic side of the brain helps engineers solve problems. It guides individuals to create solutions. Art is the property of fine artists; it is also the product of engineers, technicians and computer designers. Art, in many different ways, helps people make the world a better place.

The problem is that Congress doesn't think that art is important to society and that its cultural workers deserve neither regard nor support.

In this case, I agree with Laa Ceredona, who said that if Congress does not care for the arts and finds them to be of zero value, they should meet from now on in a warehouse with folding chairs and tables, since they don't care about their lavishly appointed buildings and meeting chambers.

I thought about all the things that they enjoy from the work of artists. Why stop there?

Let us remove the bothersome wood paneling and annoyingly thick carpet and disgustingly overwrought railings and crown moldings, their pathetically cumbersome executive desks. Let us fire their speechwriters, photographers, makeup artists, their cameramen and sound and light technicians, since they are not important.

Let us remove their televisions and radios so that they do not need to be troubled with the noisome racket of actors, singers and announcers. In fact, let's close the television and radio stations altogether. I further suggest we close the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, since our leaders evidently cannot abide the opera, theater, ballet or symphony. I suggest that we likewise close the Smithsonian and the National Gallery. Let every member of Congress be prohibited from entering any gallery, museum, or performance anywhere, since they deem it to be of zero value. The ticket should surely go to someone else more appreciative.

Let us remove the Lincoln Memorial and the Vietnam and Korean War Memorials, the Jefferson Memorial from the sight of our leaders who have no use or wish for these eyesores. Perhaps we could sell them to China to aid our trade deficit. Would they also be willing to purchase and remove the overblown and tiresome National Cathedral? Let us remove every statue and every fountain from every park. They are not needed or wanted. Let us no longer stamp designs on our coins and bills and instead employ low-wage workers at our mints to write the denominations on the blanks with sharpies.

If the President does not care for the arts, let us remove the paintings in the White House and take away the furniture to be replaced with prefab plastic chairs and tables from Wal-Mart. Let us authorize funds to hire workers to replace the carpets with linoleum and pull down the wallpaper and remove the drapes. Let us find more appreciative eyes for its sculptures and busts. Let the White House chef and his staff be dismissed and its gardeners sent to accounting school so that they may better serve the nation as officials for the IRS. Let them remove the Rose Garden and all the city's gardens - let not even one single flower pollute the Nation's Capitol. Definitely do away with the annual Christmas tree. Let the White House stationery consist of notebook paper and Bic pens. Let their web site be closed down as well, since web designers and graphic designers are of no importance.

For all our leaders, let their closets be cleared of that pesky fashion and clothing, since it is so laughable that anyone should want to design clothes, and no sane public servant would be caught dead wearing same. Empty their drawers of that gauche jewelry and those ridiculous watches. Surgical scrubs and flip-flops should suffice. Let us henceforth stop creating medals for our civic and military heroes. Why go to the bother? No self-respecting hero would consent to touch them. Instead let us present them with the cut tops of tin cans on kite string. It recycles materials into the bargain.

Let not one single official portrait, whether painted or sculpted, remain in the entire expanse of our Nation's Capitol nor in any public building within the United States. They are easy enough to dispose of, and are degenerate to boot, in the last degree.

Well. Perhaps that last, in the eyes of our nation's leaders, would be a step too far. So evidently, that most frivolous, corrupt, degenerate, no-good pastime, the visual arts, does have one remaining need to its name.

What shall we artists do? What shall the nation's dancers, writers, painters, light and sound pros, cameramen, photographers, sculptors, videographers, directors, actors, singers, musicians, conductors, poets, playwrights, deejays, radio announcers, cinematographers, chefs, animators, product designers, architects, landscapers, curators and art teachers, do? What shall its museums and galleries and symphonies and orchestras and theaters . . . do?

What will we do to assert our right, by the social value we present, by the myriad aesthetic treasures we tirelessly create and offer, to share in just one dollar's worth of the largesse, vision and abundance of America?

What would happen if every work of art, every thing that required the hand or the mind of an artist, was withdrawn from view or earshot for one day, or one week, or one month?

What would happen if everything was veiled in black until some concession is made? Would we organize to do that? Would even the political forces of museum and gallery leadership, careful to avoid hurting congressional feelings, stand forward in the knowledge that they are already held in contempt by these same people, and that they have nothing to lose? Would they follow the example of Italian Museums who protested Berlusconi's budget cuts? (NB: the cuts were 2.5 times the amount of our entire arts budget.)

No?

Failing that, we have one arrow left in our quiver. We have a voice. Artists shape the context and content of our society. Our last asset is that which is inherent in our work -- our voices. What will we use them to say?

Will we ask our own government to recognize the value and worth of the kaleidoscopic scope and reach of the arts in their many forms to our society? We would have them recognize that art is not the enemy, and it is not worthless -- it is the lifeblood of our society.

We can use our voices to speak against art's denigration by the ignorant and cynical people who pretend for the sake of political expediency not to care about art, although they luxuriate in it every single hour of every single day. They are blind and deaf to this reality, and to the fact that a society without its artists is a dead society. Or if they are not blind and deaf to it -- if they would, in fact, miss having all these matters of beauty and aesthetic and cultural richness -- then they are hypocrites and liars who would declare to everyone that art has no value in this country.

The Winter Residency

2011-01-14T11:54:00.000-08:00

The Transart faculty and students just finished up the winter residency, held at Like The Spice Gallery in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York. It was great to see classmates and to get such a comprehensive overview of what everyone is working on. The weekend was comprised primarily of critiques, but also included a wonderful presentation by guest speaker Coco Fusco, in which she discussed her recent work Operation Atropos, which was a collaboration with the military to produce work that addressed the issues surrounding torture and detention.

Over four days we reviewed the work of our colleagues and presented our own work for critique -- the feedback kicks us into the winter term and that momentum should take us into the summer residency slated to happen in Berlin.

The last day of the residency I met with Scott and Sarah and we went to City Bakery to get their amazing hot chocolate and toast happy endings.

On the way there we stumbled upon the flash mob Improv Everywhere that staged their event No Pants on the Subway. What a great way to finish a weekend in the city.

Goat Vertebra

2011-01-03T12:24:00.000-08:00

New painting, titled Goat Vertebra - like Black Pearl, it is 6"x6", oil on panel. Price $185 or available as a high-quality print for $20 plus shipping.

Tunisian Collaborative Painting Events

2010-12-10T11:45:00.000-08:00

The Tunisian Collaborative Painters covered five canvases in three hours at the Mystic Art Center on September 27. We had a lot of first-time participants and the core collective was in full attendance as well. The canvases were the usual 5 by 6 feet in size, so it was impressive that some teams managed to cover two canvases in such a short time!

The photo as well as the one below of the finished painting is courtesy of fellow TCP Harrison Love (whose blog is phenomenal, please check it out). Behind us is the painting that the four of us created together. To read more about the ins and outs of Tunisian Collaborative Painting, jump here. He also offers coverage on his blog about the most recent TCP event held in New York at the Art Students League, our biggest event yet. I swear I would have been there had I not been overseas at the time. :)

Pictured above from left to right are one of our new friends, Harrison Love, first-time participant Joyita Neerkaje, and myself.

Studio artists always end up having way more fun with this than they expected -- what feels like a relinquishment of control is actually a process that allows some pretty amazing and unexpected life to pour through. For artists who are solitary workers it takes a mental shifting of gears, but it's an exhilarating experience every time.

Back in Action! A quick glance back at the past few months.

2010-12-10T11:32:00.000-08:00

The blog is out of hibernation and I am back in action! :) The intervening time has been a somewhat jammed schedule. After I finished teaching my annual awesome gig at Summer Arts Camp, armed with a drawing by a young student showing a picture of the two of us and a friendship bracelet on my wrist tied there by another young student, I had strong talismans to take me to Germany, where I started a low-residency MFA degree. The residency took three weeks, and then I was able to spend another two exploring Berlin's amazing art scene and catching the tail end of the Biennial. Berlin is a wonderful city and the creativity is hard to take in all at once, but it is everywhere and full of so many quirks, jagged edges and wild vibes that it will keep any artist busy staying connected to everything that is going on in the city. The artistic ethos is a mixture of humor, the surreal, and a keen sense of the collision between past and present.

I am really eager to return this summer and keep the ball rolling with Transart Institute. Pictured below is a photo I took after ascending to the cupola of Berlin's cathedral Dom.

I got back for long enough to catch my breath, and then my husband and I were gone again for another five weeks of traveling. The trip was a vacation and so not really in the purview of this blog, but as long as we are on the subject, we did also ascend the Duomo of Santa Maria Del Fiore in Florence.

Throughout it all I have been working on my research and studio projects for Transart and teaching in my usual bailiwicks.

Studio work has been ramping way, way up and I am also out looking for more teaching opportunities to round out my schedule this Spring.

The current series is staying small in size and the prices are consequently very affordable these days too. Call it a recession special, but any painting posted on this blog is available for $150 unless the entry says otherwise.

Back to the brushes, and keep an eye peeled for more little gems!

Self in Brown, Oil on Panel, 5x7 inches

2010-12-10T11:16:00.000-08:00

The current series of paintings is focused on working small, light and fast . . . as with the Black Pearl, this is quite a small sketch, just 5x7 inches.

For several years now I've been increasingly drawn back to the limited palettes that offer such a sense of space and unity in an image. Much of the Hidden series was done using primarily a brown/blue/white palette. This painting was a combination I haven't spent a lot of time with: technically it's a dead palette, with white, lamp black, and terra rosa. I also had yellow ochre on the palette but used very little of that in this picture. Stay tuned for more paintings coming up . . .

Black Pearl -- 6x6 inches, oil on panel

2010-12-01T05:18:00.000-08:00

2010-06-08T19:22:00.000-07:00

The whole local contingent of fire and circus performers showed up in New Haven to send off Brett, one of our oldest members of the New Haven fire crew, to his new home in South Carolina. The event was covered by the New Haven Independent. Yours truly is working safety in the background with the fireproof towel. For more photos check out the news article.

Raiding Banksy

2010-05-19T09:26:00.000-07:00

Recently the news surfaced that Banksy's work in Detroit has been lifted -- or preserved --- snagged --- or saved --- depending on who you ask.

Banksy, for the uninitiated, is an artist that works out of the UK and who works in the medium of spray paint and building sides. His tags and images, full of dry wit and liveliness, have appeared all over the world, but Banksy himself is anonymous and elusive. He seems to delight in the secrecy of his opus and there are wild rumors (or not-so-wild) about who Banksy actually is.

His signature rats and haunting figures are perfectly matched to their environments. The environment itself is the picture plane or the compositional context for the work. His mysterious work pattern makes it even more exciting when one of his works comes to light, and over the past few years, the unknown graffitist has become a superstar in the art world, sometimes appearing to install and announce or publicize shows scant hours before they are to open, as was the case in Bristol last year and LA before that. Of course, anyone who was anyone managed to be there. (What up, Brangelina!)

So his works? Skyrocketing worth . . . one supposes . . . and in a recent visit to the United States Banksy managed to infiltrate an abandoned Packard plant and create another work on a crumbling wall in a post-industrial no-man's-land. Then, of course, he vanished, leaving behind an image of a hollow-eyed youth with a can of red paint in his hands and the words scrawled as though by the boy : "I remember when all this was trees."

Enter the folks at Gallery 555. They get wind of a Banksy original located in a place where the elements are sure to destroy it, sooner rather than later.

They swoop in. Using masonry equipment, they carefully hack the piece out of its site. They cart it back to the gallery and house it in a wood frame case. They put it on display.

The blogosphere ignites.

Art sure is good at exposing social conventions and questioning them loudly, and also very good at not handing off an easy answer. There is a rather loud reverberation, "What would Banksy think of this?"

If only we could find him and ask him. It's anybody's guess. As a prankster, maybe he won't mind being pranked. He may have an indulgent attitude but maintain that the people who moved the work didn't get what it was about, and you can't really fix stupid, in that case. He may be breaking his arm patting himself on the back for having set off a firestorm debate about the nature of art. My favorite so far is this blog that is the forum for a lot of Detroit artists themselves, who know whereof they speak . . .

There are a lot of arms to this octopus, but I will go ahead and just pick one and ask this question: Does art need to endure? Is it essential that art be protected, preserved, and essentially made immortal, or at least very, very long-lived? What is the role and use of archival durability and preservation in art?

There is a very deep automatic assumption at work that the greatest good in a work lies in its ability to stand the test of time, historically and materially. The reason this incident interests me so much is that lately I have been questioning that basic assumption.

Banksy's work is extraordinary in part because he releases ownership of his work when it goes to the street, and past choice of materials and site, he abandons the piece to its fate. His acceptance that the work is ephemeral is captured in some of his work.

The work isn't built to last forever. So if Banksy can accept this, why can't we? Why can't the people at 555?

They may see themselves as champions or conservators, but to my thinking they committed an act of editorial vandalism and denied Banksy's composition and very likely his intent. At the very least, the painting when taken from its site is robbed of its context. That may be a choice of the folks at 555, but nobody has the right to alter art in that way. That is a more serious depredation than the simple ravages of time. That wall would have eventually crumbled. I picture Banksy somewhere in England with his feet propped up and a brandy snifter in his hand, pondering his work's decay and disappearance with a kind of satisfaction.

Put another way, which is better: for a work of art to remain in its site for a short time and do its job well, or for it to be deprived of its context and therefore its meaning and message, so that it can be uselessly but famously and archivally displayed indefinitely? Does the need for preservation trump the work bearing out its shortened existence in a meaningful way?

And how long has it been since any artist began thinking of his or her art and how well it was bearing out that existential meaning, without regard to its lifespan, instead of thinking in terms of archival durability and whether that was achieved, having those considerations and putting them first before the paint is dry?

How many more artists are actively questioning the bedrock supposition of archival durability as a metric for the value of a work? If you're reading this, write and let me know so we can get into the weeds about this. I'm fascinated.

I come away from the incident with contempt for the 555 group. They putatively did this out of concern for the work, meaning that they destroyed what made it important in order to preserve it. They decided that they knew best. How does this make them any different from Clement Greenberg when he decided to take the paint off of David Smith's sculptures after the artist's death? I mean, besides the fact that he was the "Art Czar" whose overinflated ego could have been at least explained a little, and they are a bunch of schmucks?

It's not news to graffiti artists that most people don't respect graffiti work and won't bother to protect it or may try to destroy it, but it hurts when the ones doing it claim to be the good guys or on the side of the art. I sense that their motives had little to do with the nature of art and something more to do with self-importance. They say that they won't offer the piece for sale. We'll see.

Video Snapshots -- Moments

2010-04-21T08:38:00.000-07:00

Lately I've been using the video on my phone to record short segments. I often am struck by a moment that has beauty and life to it that a still photo can't capture, so I choose to show that moment with a brief motion picture. There is no narrative and the quality is more meditative for me than anything else. The mere experience of being alive and walking around means that every moment is a perfect moment, even if it's clothed in everyday glory.

Others can hustle or wait half an hour for a booth or a table if they want to, and I know that "by the kitchen" is supposed to be not so great a place to sit. But I always blow past the hostess stand and head right for the stools at the bar that wedge up against the line. Watching the line cooks, five or six at a time, weave, coordinate, balance and rock and roll in tight quarters through a lunch rush is an amazing thing to witness. I could watch these guys all day, I admire their work so much. This is harmony and cooperation at its best -- and the result is going to make a lot of hungry people happy. Thanks to everyone who works on the line at Ted's.

International Pillow Fight Day

2010-04-21T08:25:00.000-07:00

No exaggeration, as you will find if you use that phrase for a search on YouTube and can see the same event happening all over the globe. I attended the happening at Cambridge Commons in Boston -- a freakishly beautiful day in the midst of a week of bad weather.

Was it art? Was it catharsis? Performance? Public silliness? A combination?

Just because we are preparing to pummel and be pummeled by total strangers, there's no reason we can't be civilized about it . . . bravo to this party for bringing such style with their dejeuner sur l'herbe.

Taking Care of Business Conference: Part 2

2010-04-21T08:21:00.000-07:00

On Saturday April 10 , I attended Part 2 of the Taking Care of Business series of professional development conferences hosted by the Connecticut Commission on Culture & Tourism and sponsored by the Tremaine Foundation. Nationally recognized experts in a range of fields were present to share their knowledge and teach classes on various aspects of business management for artists. The enrollment was stopped at 100 attendees. Held at the Performing Arts Magnet school in Hartford, the event proved a lively exchange of ideas and a fantastic opportunity for learning and networking for everyone there.

The third and last segment of this business management series for artists is a steal at $20 a ticket and takes place in Hartford on May 1. Go here to register and learn more about the program.

The plenary session featured keynote speaker James Grace, past the Executive Director of the Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts of Massachusetts, Inc. (VLA).

Pictured below, CPA Paul Ramunni held a valuable session on the financial side of business management for artists. Mr. Ramunni works with clients in creative professions and was able to clear up a ton of questions in the short time we had, as well as generously supplying us with materials to study on our own.

Article on Collaborative Painting and the Old Lyme event

2010-03-23T10:26:00.000-07:00

Mourad Zerai, the leader of the Bouabana Artist collective in Tunisia wrote an article for the Tunisan Paper Le Temps in their March 23 issue. In reporting the event he extensively quoted this blog. I'm tickled to see my writing show up in a paper across the globe . . . translated into French, no less! My photos are also used here. Click on the image to see the full article.

The Collaborative Painting concept holds some very exciting implications for artists. This is a movement to watch.

The Cyclades move to Switzerland

2010-03-19T18:34:00.000-07:00

At least that's what I thought when I went to the Yale University Art Gallery and saw Mains Tenant Le Vid (Hands holding the void) this stunning work by Alberto Giacometti. The inspiration is a pretty straight line. It was made in 1934, after Giacometti had visited Egypt and probably been exposed to Cycladic work during that time. He hadn't reached his mature style yet, but the seeds of it are visible here. The emphasis placed on the object by its absence and even its nature of absence -- the void -- is deeply enchanting.

The mature period is a much-vaunted concept in art, the place where an artist comes into their own. Less emphasis is placed on something else that's true; achieving a mature style is a point of departure. I look at the work of some of the strongest voices of the 20th century and the resounding quality of the mature work of those artists are holes punched in the fabric of space through to dimensions that had not existed until those artists arrived. Those holes in the universe are pretty small -- they only fit one person, and sometimes not even that. The passage from belonging to some other canon and inhabiting your own has got to be a tight squeeze as well as a one-way ticket. I also get this feeling when looking at Franz Kline, Willem De Kooning and Lynn Chadwick.

When Giacometti's universe was created, his attenuated figures attracted the opinion of critics that he was reflecting the existential anxiety of the era and the fear and confusion generated by war. There is talk of a phenominological approach, where what matters is not the objective reality of the subject but the reality of how the artist perceives it, and the artist's privilege is to reflect that unique vision to everyone else.

Giacometti's figures used to scare me as a kid because they looked as though they had been through napalm. These days I look at those figures and I see something in those stretched and spindly figures that whispers that we are all reaching for heaven in some way and that the soul is greater than the body and lighter than air. It's not the flesh that counts but the unsolvable mystery of life force, the greater part of our being that material does not contain.

Artist's Reception at Gallery 195

2010-03-10T13:33:00.000-08:00

Last night was the artist's reception for the two-person show at Gallery 195 that I've been working on with photographer Meredith Miller and artist and curator Debbie Hesse. The hors d'ouvres reception was courtesy of the Arts Council of Greater New Haven and New Alliance Bank, whose building houses the gallery. Thanks to a good turnout and the rising spring weather, everyone was in a good mood and ready to enjoy the art, and we all had a good time. Both Meredith and myself found ourselves with lots of folks to talk to, and the work was very well received. It was really good to see so many friendly faces last night; thanks to all those who were able to make it out!

A couple of peeks at the work on view: Meredith's photography and my painting.

The Leaving, oil on Panel -- Paula Billups

Untitled Interiors, Photographs -- Meredith Miller

Nick and Monica view the finished portrait of Nick at its premier exhibition.

Visitors at the Gallery

Talking with my friend Curt Ebner about the work

Conference Series on Career Strategies for Visual Artists - one down, two to go

2010-03-09T08:12:00.000-08:00

Visual artists in Connecticut and the surrounding area, take note! The conference series Taking Care of Business is under way.

Sponsored by the Connecticut Commission on Culture & Tourism and a generous grant from the Tremaine Foundation, the series brings top-flight speakers from around the country to conduct seminars focusing on various facets of the business side of being an artist.

Enrollment in these seminars is capped at 100, and the first one was almost to capacity. If you're interested in taking either of the two remaining conferences, it pays to be alert to dates when registration opens. There are still two more seminars yet to come: the Business Strategies conference on Saturday, April 10 and the Marketing and Promotion conference on Saturday, May 1. Click here to learn more about how to register and for more details. At $20 a workshop this is a fantastic opportunity to build up some of the business skills that so many artists feel they need to develop.

The first conference was on Saturday, March 6 at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield. The keynote speaker was Karen Atkinson, president and founder of GYST-Inc and author of the book and artist's business software both titled Getting your Sh*t Together. Her lecture was an inspiring foray into the challenges of working as an artist in the paradigms happening now and in the future as definitions and spaces for art continue to grow and shift. She explored the possibilities for expansion and connection of art spaces through collaborative efforts.

For the two workshop times that were scheduled for the morning and afternoon, attendees had a choice of four options. Amber Hawk Swanson presented for the New York Foundation for the Arts, discussing the ins and outs of using its website Artist Source, which retains thousands of opportunities, listings and events for artists nationwide as well as artists residing in the state of New York. Pictured at left, Amber Hawk Swanson chats with attendees after the NYFA presentation.

Karen Atkinson presented a seminar on constructing hybrid careers in the arts in her class Hybrid Careers. The distinguished motivational speaker, artist and author Jane Pollak gave a workshop on setting and achieving goals in her workshop Create Your Own Future. Lastly, a panel discussion that was moderated by Certified Professional Coach Hal Tweedy and featuring artists Sarah Haskell, Karen Rossi, and Allen Wittert on the subject of Thinking Outside the Studio: Using your Unique Skills to Generate Income.

I attended the NYFA and Jane Pollak events and really appreciated all the information on resources available to artists at NYFA. As well, it was great to hear from Ms. Pollak on strategies for going beyond completing work to defining goals and using techniques to stay on track to achieve them. Pollak is soon re-publishing a new edition of her book Soul Proprietor. A previous edition is available online now. Pictured above, artist and filmmaker Nina Salazar speaks to Pollak after the presentation.

The $20 attendance fee included lunch. Folks with common interests were encouraged to hold informal discussions at tables devoted to those topics. I sat at the table focused on social media for working artists. At the social media table I met with artist Colin Burke, jeweler Dawn Lombard and illustrator Linda Santelle.

The day ended with a "JPEG Jam" in a plenary session. Artists were encouraged to submit their digital portfolios and a short slide show ensued. In that way we got introduced to a lot of interesting new artists right in the area and to a lot of beautiful work that we might not have had a chance to see otherwise.

There were a lot of advantages to attending that can't be listed in the facts, including the chance to meet and get acquainted with so many artists in the area who are eager to connect and interested in growing their professional lives, not just as individuals but as they relate to each other. For twenty bucks it's a steal of a way to spend a Saturday. I'd recommend attendance at the other two conferences for any visual artists in the Connecticut area who feel they could use some refreshers and basics for developing their own business strategies and learning about who's working in their region.

Mozart's Requiem . . . and a surprising discovery of treasure

2010-03-07T14:36:00.000-08:00

On Friday night I attended a performance of Mozart's Requiem in Hartford at the Cathedral of St. Joseph. The Cathedral choir were joined by the Arcadia Players for this event. The performance was excellent. The soloists especially knocked me out; they have a gifted director in Dr. Jeffrey Douma, who is clearly able to bring the choir together and draw the best out of them. It helps to have such undeniably gifted voices in such abundance, too, in a single congregation. The music gave me chills, it was so delightful. My friend Louise Fateaux was one of the wonderful soloists and the reason I heard about the concert in the first place. Her website and audio samples can be heard here.

Art and music seem to be cross-wired in my head. Since I was a kid, choral or symphony performances have an effect on my brain. It's a sort of cycle; I listen attentively and with quite a lot of babble-head at first. Eventually the babble-head quiets down and I let the music carry me along as though I were laying on my back in a flowing river. That's the sweet spot of consciousness -- I'm saturated with the music and my emotions engage; it's a totally different channel of being. Eventually my thoughts wander and I start thinking about totally unrelated stuff like taxes and laundry. Of course, those thoughts are so banal, especially in the presence of a beautifully performed masterpiece of music, that I bring my attention back to the concert, re-focus, and the whole cycle starts again. After a while, the time I spend floating on the river of music grows longer.

I've been listening to performances like this since I was little; this cycle of attention/floating/wandering/attention was true then too. I don't scold myself for letting my thoughts wander; I figure they serve a useful an indicator that I need to refocus.

Sometimes, while floating in the music, an inspired thought or image arises. This happens almost every time. Ask anyone who's sat beside me: often I'll start to sketch. I know it seems rude as hell, because it suggests that I am bored or not paying attention, but nothing could be further from the truth. In those moments I am at my most attentive and most engaged. From within it seems like the most appropriate response to the inspiration that is flowing from the miracle of beautifully performed music. Drawing is my gratitude to that gift. The music drives my hand to move and the emergent images in my mind to receive illumination. It would be a pity NOT to respond to inspiration in my own way -- it would be refusing a wonderful gift that the composer hoped to give in the first place.

Artists and musicians, writers and playwrights, dancers and singers, don't want us to sit on our hands when they come to us with the good stuff. They want us to reach out and grab it and wrap ourselves in it, bring it into ourselves, participate in the ocean of being. They wish us to be open recipients of the gifts they offer by the hard work they did to bring those creations to life. What good would it be to accept that with socially correct restraint? . . . half-heartedly, or with a puritan determination not to rejoice too much, not to be too overwhelmed, or a resolve not to feel TOO strongly the energy of that exchange? I suppose the same could be admonished of creatives: don't stint. If you are going to give the gift, GIVE IT.

It's not a zero-sum thing. One person or a million can be transported with intense passion or emotional response, giving or receiving; there is no limit to the inspiration that can be generated when something so fine is offered to the world. We don't take anything away from another person by rejoicing to the fullest -- we only rob ourselves of the richer experience we could have felt, if only we had allowed ourselves. Conversely, when the energy arises, it takes everyone with it and everyone grows greater because of it.

So -- usually I am moved to draw when hearing such concerts. But on Friday night I didn't draw for the simple reason that my eyes were closed most of the time. And my eyes were closed for the simple reason that the cathedral is absolutely stunning. And being who I am, I can't tune magnificence out. I can get bowled over by one juggernaut or the other, but both together fries the wires and if I try to attend both I end up not being able to fully appreciate either one. I've never been able to hold up my end of a conversation while music was playing, either. I want all my attention to be given to one thing at a time.

So mostly I closed my eyes and floated in the river of Mozart's last work. If my eyes were open I was distracted at least a little from the music because I was goggling at the unbelievable altarpiece.

It is a ceramic tile relief mural, 80 feet high and 40 feet wide, the largest of its kind in the world and incredibly beautiful - totally transcendent in its design, color and execution; a masterpiece. The photo doesn't do it justice: at 80 feet high, no photo could; but I had to try. The figure of the risen Christ, in the traditional mandorla, ascends -- many times bigger than life. The rainbow-colored wings on the angels surrounding him really seem to flutter and shimmer as they attend him. The saints around him are witnesses to this awesome moment of ascension: they link the miracle to us here on the ground and in the regular world. There is charming mystery is the bronze lion that is creeping in from the right edge of the mural - not really visible from this photo. The Lion is the symbol for St. Mark, not Joseph. So . . . . quoi???

The simplicity of the design of the nave and apse, completed in 1962, are perfect foils for the altarpiece. Likewise the elegantly constructed canopy points to the altarpiece and doesn't compete with it.

Under the canopy is another Christian symbol, the crucified Christ. In this cathedral we are presented with two images of Christ, superimposed. The crucified man in the front is small, pale, and deadened in color. Behind this image that is only a few feet high explodes the shining, titanic, kaleidescopic vision of Christ risen. The risen Christ displays the triumph of spirit -- divine consciousness -- over body -- fleshly concerns. What will we concentrate on? The artist seems to ask. The flesh, so temporary and frail? . . . or the spirit? Which contains which? Which is the source of our real being? What matters?

Contemplating that while hearing the Requiem was a rich feast of the senses that I was truly privileged to experience.

If I wanted to fully turn my capabilities to be gobsmacked to Mozart (and I did) it was necessary for me to close my eyes, most of the time, though I couldn't help gazing occasionally to contemplate that spectacular mural.

I'd never been inside the cathedral before. Its exterior never tempted me. It's a strange shape. Its lines are spare and angular and its general impression is imposing and rather cold, even dead with the gray limestone covering it but smooth and unrelieved by the arabesques that enliven the usual cathedral enterprise. I didn't have a reason to think that the interior would be any less dreary. I was eager to hear the music but not thrilled to know it was to be performed in what I had come to think of as "The Concrete Cathedral". I had trouble finding parking or figuring out which door to pass through, and had tried a couple and found them locked, so I was worrying about finding my seat in time and was halfway up the nave before I even took notice of the grandeur around me.

Whew. How deceiving can outer appearances be??

The photo here is courtesy of the Cathedral's website, which describes the treasures of the church interior:

The new cathedral is noted for its huge expanse of spectacular stained glass windows crafted in Paris, the ceramic tile mural behind the altar that is the largest of its kind in the world, and its majestic four manual Austin pipe organ. The sturdy U-shaped structure is suggestive of a modern day version of Paris's famous Sainte-Chapelle with walls of breathtaking faceted stained glass windows.

Kickin' It Tunisian Style -- Collaborative Painting with David Black

2010-02-21T15:01:00.000-08:00

On Saturday, February 20, for the first time ever in the United States, three groups of artists created Tunisian-style Collaborative Paintings at the Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts under the guidance of artist and Fulbright Fellow David Black. I was one of about fifteen painters to jump in with the brushes yesterday.

Tunisian Collaborative Painting was pioneered by artist Hechmi Ghachem in Tunis. On arrival at the Bouabana Art Space in Tunis, David Black was initiated into the process and has since made trips back there to catch up with the Bouabana Artists and do some more collaborating. He felt and saw how art, as it is meant to do, transcends boundaries of culture and language as he worked with his collaborators on the canvases. The wish to share that connection led Black, on returning to the United States, to introduce Collaborative Painting to artists here and set up some events. Yesterday was the first one of its kind in the States. In November, a larger collaboration will be taking place in Manhattan under the auspices of the Art Students League.

So what is Collaborative Painting? It is a process governed by a few simple rules to allow the maximum amount of exploration and execution of a painting at the hands of a group of artists. The ground rules are:

The group must be between three and 12 artists.
One person is given the honor of starting the painting.
One member of the group decides when the painting is finished.
Another member settles any disputes concerning the painting.
Anyone can work on the painting at any time.
At any time, anyone can erase or paint over any part of the work
Once begun, no additional members may join the group and the group works together on the painting until the director says it is finished.

It's not exactly a rule, but Mr. Black says 6'x5' is an ideal canvas size, because it allows room for a number of people to be painting simultaneously. We used acrylic paints because they dry quickly and in the course of time it made things easier as we painted over things already put down. There isn't ordinarily a time limit, but because of the nature of the event we only had about two hours to work. We were split up into random groups and then Black turned us loose with no further instructions than the ones listed above.

Here's what happened: Black addressed the group, explained the origins of Collaborative Painting, covered the ground rules, separated us into three groups and turned us loose without further ado . . .

After the paintings were finished, Mr. Black had a short plenary session for the artists to discuss what had just happened. My particular team's painting is in the background there.

A special visitor, Ira Goldberg, director of the Art Students League of New York, addressed the group as well. He will be overseeing the upcoming Collaborative Event taking place this November in New York.

The upshot: A group of between four and five artists managed to execute complete paintings at a very large scale in a very short two hours (Click here to watch a brief video of the event on YouTube.)

This is something none of us could have done alone, not just because of the logistical constraints but because, on our own, none of us would have produced or even conceived of these images.

David Black called our attention to the work we had just accomplished, the harmony with which it was arranged, and then pointed out the most extraordinary thing of all by asking a question:

"If you saw one of these canvases hanging on the wall of a gallery, how many people would you say had painted it?"

"One." Came from all corners of the room. He held us in the implication of that with a short silence.

"That is a miracle."

Yesterday each of us became a component of a collective artistic entity that produced this work. It was miraculous that we produced work on behalf of a larger shared thought instead of an individual concept. Our groups had been through something remarkable together and the synergy was palpable.

Black assured us that as he has returned and worked with his group on more paintings, the style and meshing of the group as a single artistic entity has matured. It was the kind of painting session that leaves you totally tired out and completely luminous -- by the time we had finished our painting, we were high-fiving each other, more than a little punchy from the effort, high on the experience. I think all of us could have painted another canvas right then without stopping for dinner, and I know all of us were wondering how soon we could arrange another shot at the big canvas.

David Black talked about the way that Collaborative Painting has affected his own work, allowing him to be more daring in his choices and to be less hesitant to change or erase what wasn't working.

While much was made of the fact that this was the first time this practice had been done in an institutional setting, that doesn't mean it's anything new to our culture: far from it. Wonderful murals have been the province of graffiti artists worldwide who already knew this experience and who have done spectacular collaborative paintings that do end up looking like the work of a single person. It's good to see that the gift of that action has been offered to a wider range of artists so that we can all catch some of the good stuff too. I don't think the graffiti artists should have all the fun.

The artists who participated were elated with the experience and surprised at the coherence of the results. We were not given any specifics as to what we should paint or how to go about it; we just jumped on in. Oftentimes painters, who are used to having total creative control over all the decisions that go into a painting, found themselves being challenged to switch gears in order for the group format to work. There were a few tense moments, but not as many as you might think, and in the end we were a pretty happy bunch.

More details on the November conclave as they become available. If you have the opportunity to gather a few friends and give it a try, you're sure to come away with something wonderful and unforeseen.

Many thanks to David Black for sharing this with all of us!

Bring The Weird

2010-02-20T08:00:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite little quips on creating art is one that comes from a story the artist Robert Kulicke used to tell. He taught along with Wayne Thiebaud in California years back, and of course Wayne was doing (and still does) very well for himself. Kulicke tells of their customary exchange.

"I would greet him, saying,: 'Wayne, baby, how's the painting going?'
He would reply, 'The painting's going great, but how do you put the ART in?' "

Great question.

If Thiebaud can't answer that question I probably shouldn't try here, but I do want to share an inkling I've got.

Pretty much every masterpiece out there has a fair amount of what I call "weird" in it. It's rarely readily apparent, but the component that jolts the image out of reality and turns it into art is always there, even if it's implied, or even if it's an absent element that calls attention to itself by its very absence. It raises a question in the viewer's mind,"What is going on here?" It may be such a deep-down response that it only manifests as a kind of wonder or a subliminal delight that something like that could plausibly fly. Art only works on the soul if the viewer can enter into it without reservations and just go along with whatever the artist has proposed, however weird. For the painter, this is the sorcery that we elect to exercise. What a privilege.

Next time you find your hair standing on end as you encounter a work of art, be with it for a while. Let the dust settle and let the silence descend. Live in that artist's invented world long enough. Maybe the weird will announce itself. Perhaps it never will, full voice, but what the hell. You can listen for it anyway.

It strikes me that perhaps this is why we like labels and art history -- why we wander museums with an awkward audio contraption pressed to our ear. If that weird tickles us behind the ear too vigorously, we may feel discomfited. We may seek an explanation toute de suite to stop that tickling, which is never comfortable and is sometimes scary.

There is sense in allowing the tickle some breathing room to let it thrive instead of cutting it off with the explanation of another person right away. For this reason, on a first tour of a show, I never read the labels and I never use the audio guide. By the second or third trip around the room, I have found enough ore to satisfy me and start my ideas working. At that point I can accept the thoughts of others on paper. (But I still never use the audio guides.)

My recent experience of a healthy dose of weird was a trip to the Clark Institute, a gem of a collection hidden away like the well-kept secret it is, in the northwest corner of Massachusetts. Trip and you'll fall over the Vermont state line. Incredibly, in the off-season admission is free. Want to know what you can see while you're there? First-class work by Bouguereau, Carpeaux, Carolus-Duran, Gainsborough, Van Eyck, Cassat, Tolouse-Lautrec, Sargent, Homer, Turner, and, I kid you not, Botticelli and Bronzino. Among many others.

There was an exhibit on Winslow Homer. I hadn't paid proper attention to Homer on previous visits, but I was ready to hear his voice this time, and his work totally bowled me over. Incredible, bold, confident -- luscious brush work, nauseating color made to sing at perfect pitch, strange flashes of light captured in oil, over-the-top moves of virtuosity with respect to form and figure work --- and power. These paintings were muscular and howling. They were all about power, elemental and cataclysmic. Often these were shoreline landscapes of Maine, sometimes other subjects, but always roaring with power.

The one that had me circling back again and again and standing transfixed for a long enough period of time to make the guard curious, if not suspicious, was Homer's painting Undertow.

It's quite large and takes up a good chunk of wall, fills your field of vision nicely.

Ostensibly weird. The first question that comes into my mind, instantly, is, "What is going on here?"

The title answers the question succinctly. But that's part of the problem. What IS going on here? What was going on in Winslow Homer's mind? Why compose the figures the way that he did?

At first glance it puts me forcibly in mind of the Rape of the Sabines. The women are in a tight spot. The one seems to be getting dragged out of the picture plane by her hair, and the other is having the hem of her dress lifted and investigated by the fourth figure.

Quoi??

It causes a perceptual collision to see what is evidently a rescue but which has a sinister counter-plot. The faces of the lifeguards are hidden but their bodies are totally active, every muscle tight. The women are passive in their pose, though the lead woman has tension through her arms, what with being dragged and all.

On the heels of this incongruity is my admiration for the figuration, so much life and force concentrated in them - a desperate moment in a desperate afternoon sheared through the blades of anatomy. Then there is the sinuous composition, the undulating wave of swells and troughs made by the four figures, echoing the ocean waves, linked together and all connected, forming a swag across the canvas that cradles our focus between the two end figures. Flawless color structure.

Look closer. You can't see it in a web reproduction, but in the gallery, I discerned what I missed at first -- the hand of the lead rescuer is gripping not hair, but a wicker handle of a sort of litter or rude surfboard -- and the hand of the rear rescuer has the other end of the wicker, not the girl's dress.

So there is no no dark sub-narrative. Two female swimmers, exhausted by their misfortune, are being towed home by two men who are used to doing the work.

A different painter might have tried to show the tension and danger of the moment through facial expression. My sense is that Homer didn't want to show us an individual's crisis, but a human moment; the nexus at which the power of human might has as much elemental force as the sea, if not in physical terms, in spiritual ones.

We have overcome much greater disaster in the name of our fellow human beings. The faces don't matter because it's not a unique or individual quality but a universal one. The gravity of the moment is fully expressed with the bodies of these people -- facial expression would be extraneous and distracting.

Possibly a perfect painting, justly seasoned with a dose of weird.

Why did he make that visual choice in particular, create that first-glance impression of abduction and violence? Not being an art historian, certainly no expert on Homer, I wouldn't know. I am content to let that remain a mystery and to take some delight in the idea that Homer was not afraid to mix up the message in a way that keeps the image ever from sitting easily in the mind. I have had this painting looming in my thoughts since I really looked at it for the first time a couple of weeks ago.

Warning to Artists: About Using the Weird

This is not an advisement to deliberately insert weird in the work as an ingredient for a successful image. Do that, and it will just become self-conscious or maybe even precious. To insert weird into a picture deliberately in the hope of making it masterful is a little bit like cutting off your ear in hopes that some of van Gogh's genius might get sprinkled your way. It doesn't work like that, of course.

An artist will look silly trying to employ anybody elses's flavor of weird other than their own. I mean, let's keep it real. Backlit ice cream cones??? What's not weird about that? Who else could possibly pull it off?

My suggestion is that we would do well to get to know our interior self more thoroughly than is comfortable. We need to bring to bear all that is beautiful and harmonious in us, but we also need to embrace and grant admission to all that is unflattering, frightening or horrifying in us and let that inform the work as well. Down in the basement and to the bottom of the cisterns, all the energy of being must participate in the creation of art. It's a frightening prospect at times and may take a lifetime to understand the subtleties of the process and how to imbue life with weird -- how to take a painting and put the art in. But understanding one's own weirdness is worth the investigation. You don't know but what your greatest shortcomings might be the making of your next --- or your first --- masterpiece.

2010-02-16T05:24:00.000-08:00

Nick, the most recent portrait -- this will be making the rounds in the next few months at one place and another. I'm excited to present this preview: hope you will get to see it in person at one of the upcoming venues!

The painting is about 3 feet square and is the last I finished before moving out of the old studio.

This is the first portrait I've completed since the drawing intensive at the Grand Central Academy in New York.

My friend Nick is one of my favorite people, and he was also a patient and generous model.

Oh Plume, you amazing artist! You made a constellation!

2010-02-16T04:56:00.000-08:00

Allow me to draw your attention to The Noisy Plume, blog site of artist and jeweler Jillian Lukiwski

http://thenoisyplume.blogspot.com/2010/02/launch-of-rumors.html

She recently posted these gems on her site and they all sold in just a few hours. Her own explanations of the pieces are far more beautiful than I can manage here, so I will leave the description up to her. But you must visit and see these wonderful works of art! (Works of heart?)

Plume's Rumors are haunting my mind's eye!! Something about her jewelry's nature and its character bears such luminosity, wildness, and transcendence. Her etsy page is commonly empty because her pieces sell pretty much as soon as she posts them, but visit her blog or go to her etsy Sold page at Thenoisyplume to see what magnificence she manifests.

The Rumors of the Sea series has been a sustained note in the symphony of my thinking ever since they made their appearance. Seven very lucky women are now the custodians of this series. I have a sudden vision of the constellation of their new homes: Plume has created her very own Pleaides!!

Upcoming Show at Gallery 195 in New Haven

2010-02-11T06:00:00.000-08:00

Courtesy of the Arts Council of Greater New Haven, my recent work will be on view in a two-person show at Gallery 195 at NewAlliance Bank, 195 Church St., 4th floor, New Haven. Exhibiting with me is the accomplished photographer Meredith Miller, who I am excited to be showing with! Here's a sneak peek:

The Leaving by Paula Billups

The exhibit is open for viewing at bank hours from March 3, 2010 through June 4, 2010.

The artists’ reception, open to the public, is scheduled for Tuesday, March 9, from 5 to 7pm. I hope you can all come to see the work and say hello!

If you want to add your email address to my mailing list so I can keep you updated on future events, please let me know!

Fresh Oxygen from the Met

2010-02-09T12:26:00.000-08:00

Sunday we went to the Metropolitan Museum. This visit was dedicated to those collections that I typically neglect in favor of the Eurpoean collection -- with emphasis on the Greek and the Modern collections. I left my sketchbook behind, resolved not to steal secrets as I sometimes do, but just to absorb and enjoy.

I have been burrowed in the European Baroque period and it has had ascendancy in my opinion for quite a while. But I've been a little boxed in by the rules of that particular game as of late, so getting away from that and going to ancient Greece and Rome and Mesopotamia was a break from a lot of comfort zones.

It was hard at first to find a mental entry into those works and shush the part of my mind that saw the hall of sculptures and automatically played the recording that says something like, "Loads of armless marble goddesses many grecian urns blah blah blah ssssnnnnxxzzzzzz . . .". I sternly told that voice to shut up and directed my eyes to pay attention, really see it and not just look for information; a huge difference. A bit like meditation, this takes some time . . . shedding the clothing of everyday thinking to become grounded in a more tranquil and receptive place, an attitude of listening with the inner apparatus.

This can lead to some startling experiences. About seven years ago, I was copying a drawing by Pontormo, a simple head study in red chalk, a self-portrait. I was occupied with the form, the action, line quality, balance and rhythm; all these things I was trying to emulate and absorb. I came to the features of the face and the unforeseen happened. Suddenly the past 500 years evaporated and through the sorcery of his very drawing, Pontormo pulled me through the opening between my time and his, and I saw him. Not animated lines of red chalk or an imagination; just him. The monochrome didn't stop me from knowing that his eyes were blue and his hair was blond. I knew what he was like. An indescribable experience. It was the first, but it was far from the last time that this sort of time travel took place. Look at art in the right way, do that quietly enough and long enough, and it will happen to you too.

In the Greek wing , the patience and discipline of the artists was accompanied by a love of narrative and a sense of humor and pathos; whole novels or movies could (and do) spring from the hordes of women, men, soldiers, satyrs, gods, chariots and horses that march their way around the vessels and urns. More, there was a lightheartedness and a humanity to the work; anthropomorphized objects, votaries of little beasts and minor fertility deities with their naughty bits glorified . . . done with total confidence and liveliness. (Why don't we put big googly eyes on OUR soup bowls any more?)

The Cycladic idols had chic and restraint in contrast to the curlicued and bumpy contours of the prehistoric Venus figurines. How fitting that they are a mystery. They don't give away anything, not a stroke wasted in their making, no unnecessary details, just the pure essence of the thing, holding the secret of their reason for being there. Their use is unknown, but they were found all over the place, in graves. They look "primitive", and maybe that's true, but grab a bit of stone and an adze and see if you can do half as well. Simple does not equal easy. It's a very, very hard quality to attain.

As I look at all the sculptures of heroes, so beautifully proportioned, the serene or sighing faces, the occasional dimple or smile or furrowed brow, the corkscrewed marble of hair that has been DID --- the thought goes something like this: Wow. They were just the same as us. We haven't changed a bit in five thousand years. Our fears, worries, pleasures, concerns . . . all just the same. Anatomy? Hasn't changed in tens of thousands of years. Not a bit.

Being literal-minded is an impediment to me -- the abstraction of what is presented is something I have to remind myself to attend. The object is just the scripture. Its meaning is the spirit that the scripture is pointing me towards. It would make as much sense to assign the significance to the object as it would be to try to eat a cookbook.

So when I see those staring Syrian idols in my everyday groove, and I imagine what Syrians must have been like, I don't think first of human beings but of goggling clay figures or kings of stone that are more ringlets and luxurious beards than bone and muscle and heart.

But just like Pontormo's self-portrait, if I stay there long enough and let all the assumptions tire themselves out, let that internal chatter die down to nothing, the object shimmers like a ripple of water, then turns to glass, through which, smudged a little, I can see the person, like me. Sometimes I see the artist who sculpted him. I don't just imagine him; I feel him, I know him, I can practically feel his breath on my skin as he takes up room in my awareness. I can see what he is wearing and the expression on his face and the dust on his toes, the color of his skin. Sometimes when the marble dissolves into that crystal medium I can see through its lens the frustrated subject of an official bust; important, busy, with other places to be, preoccupied, itching to get back to what he was really wanting to do -- consult a colleague, take a walk, write his papers, wondering what's on for dinner, hoping to get to the bar a little later, flicking his ear like a horse's when he hears a servant shoo his children away from the door for the tenth time . . . the involuntary twitch in his hands as the wish arises to catch up one of the kids and toss them in the air just to hear them squeal with delight -- if he has so much time to burn, why is he sitting here instead of doing that? He toys restlessly with a strand of beads in his fingers. He searches for ways out of the sitting. He sighs.

No matter that often those busts were posthumous imaginings. The artist doesn't let that stop him from introducing us in a real way to that human being all the same.

The galleries shattered and among the fragments of terracotta, the drifts of marble dust and smashed fresco, we wandered in a restored city square that was alive with voices and bodies and faces and sounds. Present and distant past were mooshed together until neither existed anymore as anything besides a construct, and a useless one at that moment.

Welcome!

2010-02-05T08:04:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the curiosity shop, everybody! Enjoy taking a look around.

Follow this blog for updates and notes on my studio work or teaching. Here is where I will be posting notices on upcoming shows, preview peeks of new work. I also hope to include some links to artists, writers, and musicians I admire and to the places I visit that affect my work. I welcome your thoughts and links too. I will also use this space to write notes and thoughts on art and living as an artist in general and adding stories of moments worth mentioning and stuff that makes me laugh!

If you enjoy the blog, please let others know about it too, and if you have a blog, please let me know so I can follow that as well.

Welcome again to my corner of the blogosphere.

Cheers,
Paula