Loose and lush - permission to paint he said

V Bank (conversation) by Steven Hemmens

VIII Seven sisters (The Women of Jerusalem) by Steven Hemmens

These paintings are by Steven Hemmens from his show Some Stations on the Way to the Cross and they're at Bowen Galleries for a few more days. This morning my mate Paul insisted I went to see them with him. He took my hand - 'close your eyes' he said - 'now open ! ' Permission to paint he said. And they are... I feel very moved. When a good friend says you need to get out of your head and paint from somewhere else - it gives you a jolt. Enough said - except see them if you can before they return to the UK with the artist because they are lovely.

What is it with these two schools of thought about making art and how can I find a middle ground from which to express freely?

Postcards

Wilds 305 x 405mm

I forgot to mention, I've begun to paint the small postcards that I made late last year - and in particular the one in the Joy of Line header. I'm interested to see if they'll stand on their own, if they'll develop or if they remain pleasing abstract landscapes and small maps.
Think this one has kept the intent of the drawing without losing too much to the paint. I'm happy with it. Wonder if they'd scale up a bit bigger?

The body as a map

Today I'm thinking about this quote by Michael Ondaatje from The English Patient:

'We die containing a richness of lovers and tribes, tastes we have swallowed, bodies we have plunged into and swum up as if rivers of wisdom, characters we have climbed into as if trees, fears we have hidden in as if caves...' 'I believe in such cartography ... to be marked by nature, not just to label ourselves on a map like the names of rich men and women on buildings. We are communal histories, communal books. We are not owned or monogamous in our taste and experience...'

And the idea that we are tangibly transformed through learning and through our experiences.

I've been scanning a book online, called Curriculum: Toward New Identities by William Pinar.
Although this book is essentially a collection of essays about learning and the curriculum, it contains some wonderful ideas and a number of the passages simply jumped off the page at me today.
The authors Dennis J Sumara and Brent Davis of the chapters entitled Unskinning curriculum and Marked bodies talk about the sense of self-identity being (I quote)

'not contained within the boundaries of one's skin, but instead, occurs more ambiguously and tentatively amid the interstices of various interacting and overlapping phenomena. What is considered individual and what is considered communal cannot be caught within fixed immutable categories, but unfold through the continual fusing of perceptions, understandings and interpretations. Any conscious sense of self is always an interpretation of lived, remembered and projected experiences.'

... they go on to talk about unskinning or removing recognisable markers - stripping back the boundaries we use to identify ourselves and simultaneous remarking of those boundaries.

It's a concept I'm drawn to - and the associated imagery is lovely.
I'm thinking of marked bodies, of intersections and shared spaces, shared marks or markers (like the cinnamon peelers wife perhaps, who lives with the persistence of presence - ah me everything's a circle... back there again. Maybe this time I'll have more success at expressing the idea), shed skins maybe, (how the dye on the dyers bodies in that passage from In the Skin of a Lion just dropped off in one coloured sheet under the warmth of the water, to puddle like a skin newly stepped out of at the dyers feet) ...of the concept of shared identity and souls and of layers of communally shared iconography and stories - that are somehow 'unidirectional'. The imagery is lovely, and there is much to play with you have to agree.

'she wore a small depression on her shoulder' ...

Publicity and the Princess again

Here's the pic from The Wellingtonian out today, by Lucy Mitchell.

It's me pretending to do sign language and smile...despite not knowing any sign (shame!) and feeling silly because I was faking it for the camera. What'd someone call me last year ? Hmmm.

The article mis-spells Sara's name and colours in outside the lines a tiny bit, but the publicity's great, so I let that go. Yes Adele - I let that go.

But Hey - what about last Night ?

The opening at deNada was a real blast last night!

It's such a cool store and a great location. The art looked amazing on red walls, and peacock walls...

Outside the store it was bucketing down with rain and unbelievably cold but inside it was red a nd cozy and stylie and packed with friendly people from all over the show ... and we had lots of fun.
There was great music provided by Nadas CD picks and flowing bubbles, speeches and heaps of gesticulating and grinning by both of us - get the picture? (not to mention the dress-ups)

I sold at least one piece of art (more news on that later, she says optimistically and half patiently) so it was successful on that level too. You know, I really think collaborating on a good idea is some of the best fun to be had, and when it works well it's way more than the sum of the parts. Today I've had texts from all sorts of friends who've dropped in to see it, or enjoyed last night and wanted to say a big thanks.

I have to thank Liz especially for her grand PR job - even popping out mid-show for an interview on Maori radio last night.
You can visit the picture of me again at deNada's blog if you like!

Today it's down to earth day again as I do my GST and hit the event planning job hard. You can read the online story here

International Newspaper Blackout Month just gone

The date by Austin Kleon.

Last month was International Newspaper Blackout Month on Austin Kleon's blogsite.
He spent the month writing a poem a day with the help of a Sharpie and an insatiable imagination. I love the idea.
I know it's not April any longer and he's all finished with his 30 poems in 30 days - but go check them out. Such a simple idea - soooo cool.

Publicity and the princess

Well you open the door - and in it comes!

'The Wellingtonian' newspaper interviewed me today about the sign language drawings for the show which opens at deNada on wednesday night next week. They came up to the studio to photograph me with the art and I felt like a performing princess!
It's necessary I know, but it's cringe material and if I dwell on it too long, it's easy to feel like Linus. I wonder if that means I spend too much time her by myself?

The publicity's been taken out of my hands for this show - it's all due to Liz from deNada, and since I've been snowed under with a huge job, I'm happy to have it that way.

Looking forward to wednesday night - I know it'll be a gem.

New blog

Today I made a new blog - and it looks like this...
It's high time I had somewhere to post up my work and the thinking that goes on around it. I know I said it flows and feeds the art - but for some reason I still want to have some separation. I need some place I can send prospective clients to where they can see the breadth of my work.
I'm hopeless at the building the website, a year in and all I managed to do is put up a deleted odd looking template page! And you know what? I don't really care!
But... I do know how to blog, so I think I'll be able to link to that and send clients there to view my current work.
Anyway, it's overdue, so I've done it today.

It's called 'Picture it so' and you can find it at http://pictureitso.blogspot.com/

Incentive

Nelson is a great place for thinking. I've just had a week of doing very little in the Autumn sun down there and it has been good for taking stock and motivating myself.
It must have something to do with gazing at all that slow moving tidal water and that yellow gold morning light...

I went to see Jay at Red Gallery and we looked at my work that she's holding in her stock room - quite a nice little collection by now - it was good to review it and reaquaint myself with last years efforts.
Best thing though, I talked her through the baby ideas I've been thinking a bit about and she liked them. We agreed that I'd develop them into a show for later in the year. Exhale!

I'm so excited to have the chance to work towards an end date (we're thinking tentatively about the week over the Nelson Arts Festival- how cool is that?)

So in between coordinating the Storylines Festival again, helping to organise Spinning Gold (the childrens writers and illustrators conference) to be held here in Welly in September, and reprising the sign language work in May ... I'll have something new to focus on. I'm glad - I bloody well need it!

I'm looking forward to making 3D work - to experimenting, and working a metaphor, and Suzanne from Konev Leather's keen to offer support wherever she can. I can see this might be a lot of fun.

Love your experiments by Wordle

Ah watching paint dry.
Here's a Wordle mash up of one of Bruce Mau's quotes - Love your experiments. I'm thinking the alogarythm's done quite well with it ...

Reprising a show

So when does reprising a show become a new show?

Do you call it by a new name - and if you do will all your friends expect to see something fabulous and new from you ?! (of course they will)

And will they feel duped when they realise it's a glorious opportunity to view the work they know and love all over again in a new swish location and setting?

I've booked the 6th of May to show the sign language and gesture pieces in Lambton Quarter - at deNada in Featherston St Wellington. Not a gallery but a lovely concept store run by a gutsy and savvy woman called Nada Piatek.
Between us we recognised an opportunity to work together, and I'm looking forward to the chance to have my art hanging in her store for six weeks. Six weeks!!

I've just GOT to paint some more...get those movies off my dratted laptop, pull finger, slap my hand into drawing mode, talk sternly and then dive into it. I want at least one new work in this show, and prefererably a big one. Just what I needed - a push in the right direction.

On another note - do you like the new banner ? I got sick of looking at the plain one !

Oh the 2D Life of Her...

This show was spectacular!
I was hooked by it's black and white grainy, wiggly aesthetic from the word go. As the artist Fleur Noble built and explored a world at once 2 D and 3D, we sat transfixed. Images of her and her life size puppets stepped in and out of the paper stage set - merging with paintings on easels, imprinting scribble drawings of themselves by banging their heads onto paper - and at one point talking to each other by speech bubble. She whitewashed them out only to have the puppets tear the paper and almost step off the page.
When the whole set burst into cracking and then roaring virtual flames - and the paper littered floor appeared to ignite and glow with embers we were at once in it and swallowing our instinctive reactions. Bravo for this multi media performance that explored the boundaries of film, drawing, performance and puppetry.

You can check out the interview with Fleur Elise Noble and Melody Nixon of Lumiere Reader here http://lumiere.net.nz/reader/arts.php/item/2016

Homily homily hommmmm

This morning I opened the fresh box of Hubbards cereal - and looked afresh at the little news sheet they tuck in beside the cereal... hey I thought - they're all homilies ! and it struck me, we get our little 'life prep' doses in cereal boxes these days, not just from our parents and elders (or church or where else...?). Hmmm... now there's a thought. Saving them too now. What a hoarder I'm becomming.

And one more .... This I've gotta see!

The Therepeutic Hour - Art and Art History Explained by Kristelle Plimmer... an illustrated lecture in rhyming verse. 12 -14th Feb

She may not remember morning train rides into town in the front carriage in 1973, (yeah I was in third form alright!) but I'll never forget. It'll be nice to see Kristelle in high voice and action again.

Later ... (16 Feb)

We did go to this Fringe show and it was good.
Very funny in fact. Kristelle managed in an hour of unbroken rhyme to deliver an erudite discourse on the various conflicting and confusing theorem of art historians (Kant et al), and how their approach to art and artists has shaped art history as we know it today. All presented from on high (on stilts) - very appropriate.
Accompanying slides and slide notes just added to the sense that you were sitting in an art history lecture, and at times I had to remind myself that it didn't actually matter if I didn't remember it all - the rhythm of the words was such a pleasure.

2-D Life of Her

I'm looking forward to three things this month ...

The Cuba St Carnival and being able to climb out my very own studio window and sit on my very own hot tin roof to watch the parade, and then to my birthday the next day.

To celebrate my day this year, I've booked some tickets to a Fringe show -
'2 - Dimensional Life of Her' by Fleur Elise Noble.
The show's brought to the Wellington Fringe Festival by the Govt of South Australia, and it sounds amazing. It's billed as 'A theatre production made of drawing, animation, puppetry, film, projection, performance and paper'...

I can't wait!

The pic I've included here is a still from her promotional movie for the show. You'll find the movie preview of the show on Fleur Elise Noble's website www.fleurelisenoble.com . She's done some pretty cool drawings and she plays with 2 -D projections onto 3- D objects in some very clever ways.

I LOVE the Fringe Festival.

Thinking about a comment By Hamish Keith

I'm reading Hamish Keith's autobiography at the moment 'Native Wit' (This is the HTML version of the PDF put out by Random House NZ Ltd). It's a great read (especially now I'm up to where he's working as a junior assistant at the Auckland City Art Gallery with Colin McCahon. I'm thinking on this small piece of commentary at the moment...

" saying you are an artist and believing you are an artist, with however much conviction and passion, will not make you one. There is an equation to being an artist which is beyond the power of an individual to complete however fragile or tenuous it might be, the artist and the work have to make a connection with the culture in which they come from - disconnected is disconnected. The New Zealand official cultural pendulum seems to have swung from denying arts value to a point completely the opposite, giving too much benefit to too many doubts. I sometimes feel that the complete lack of connection between what is claimed to be a work of art and the culture in which it exists is, in some perverse way, seen as a virtue. It must be good because nobody gets it. There is always a case for subsidy and subvention, but it ought not to be a permanent state of affairs"
Hamish Keith 'Native Wit' Random House 2008

I'm not sure I agree with his first opening sentence. I think we are what we want to be and we become what we want to be (whatever our bent) through focusing our passion and having the conviction to follow through and put in the hard work.

But what he says about an artists need to connect with the culture in which they come from is surely wise. His views on art are based on his experience of living and working daily with art; with a group of peers who were artists that shaped and contributed to our cultural identity and have continued to influence New Zealand artists enormously to date.

I'm mulling on what I identify with, where my connection is and (humbly) what I can offer to the culture I belong to with the emergent art that I make.

Postcards

So yeah, here are my little territory postcards. One or two I might play with as a full scale painting.

I found these

I love these paintings by Australian Carl Plate. I wish I knew more about him. I can see a trip to the library coming on.
You know when you see something and you pine a little because someone has succeeded in doing work that you aspire to? The little journeys I've been scribbling for example (which I'll bring in and scan tomorrow)... My favourite's the olive green one called 'Spring'.

The nature of ideas

Some ideas are gestated at length; the end results evolving through time spent on exploration, by following a deliberately convoluted path with the end point obscured to retain the mystery. The process is a delight and the results are often enriched by the series of trial and error discoveries and the depth of the research and thinking.

Other creative ideas arrive fully formed as lanky young concepts, lacking grace but full of enthusiasm - or like soft spoken ingenues peering out from behind a fringe. (OK enough of that syrupy prologue...)

And then some spark ignites an idea - and like a small flash, you can see the whole finished work in it's entirety. (Like a Paul Simon song).

Who's to say this is not how it should be done?

I've been spending a bit of time recently surrounded by handbags. No, not my new fetish - just the result of a serendipitous meeting, some interesting work and the opportunity to try my hand at a little creative marketing for a new friend's leather goods store.

She and I have talked at length about what a handbag expresses of a woman, what we carry in them and why... the need to equip ourselves with a beautiful receptacle into which we cram every earthly thing we may need to face the world at our best.

It's led me to think about the kinds of homilies that are shared as part of preparing for adulthood, parenting and dating - the kind of wise (or silly) advice that's passed down from generations to daughters and sons. Has it changed? What wisdom has crossed over? And what about the debunked outmoded or obscure advice? Is it still stuffed into the handbag of things that might come in handy along with the clean hanky?

The studio is beginning to be a place to stash the kinds of stuff I might use one day - you know the sort - paper, paints, wallpaper, handbag handles...

Today I'm seeing a collection of small bags (some of the handles I have acquired are art deco) and recticules made of elaborately pleated, folded or embellished paper - a support for drawing or painting that explores this notion of carrying useful wisdom as a defence against the ills of the world.

I'm not at all sure that attaching paper to these little brass fittings will work - but I'll give it a go.

So, I've begun a notebook of homilies. I want to collect them from a wide range of people and see what results.

Here's one from Sarah's mother : 'you can tell how organised a person is by the way they hang their washing'.
And one from Bob (though he credits it as emanating from certain Catholic boy's schools - and I know he didn't attend one of those) 'don't open your Xmas presents before Xmas'.

See what I mean?
Feel free to leave me a homily here that means something to you - either because you find it comforting or wise (still), or because it's ridiculous and you've exposed it as foolish.

Messing about in Wanaka

Last weekend I packed a bag and headed to Wanaka for a brief breakaway with a friend. At the last minute I threw in a pack of coloured pencils with a 'landscape' palette and a block of blank postcards.
I'm no landscape painter -preferring to gaze in awe at the Remarkables through my own eyes rather than the eye of a camera or through the lens of my own artistic attempts ... but after a day of breathing mountain air and cruising about on the back roads I did manage to tutu a little (and yes, I even took some photographs which capture some of the amazing depth of colours down there). I might work up the image on the far right into a large painting some time soon, there are some nice textural things happening in it here and there.

Deceptive entropy

An interesting thing is happening to our building at the moment.
The natural entropy that comes part and parcel with an old inner city building (circa 1903) which has seen many generations of gallery space and artistic endeavors is being amplified.

At Enjoy - the gallery down stairs from me, a show has been taking shape for the past few weeks. It's called 'Landing' (Oct 30 -Nov 15) and for one of the artists at least, it's taken place outside of the gallery walls. Through subtle brushwork and paint mimicry, the artist has created an insitu simulacra which highlights the buildings aging face and tarnished surface, and without changing the bone structure; the stairs and stairwell have become a canvas.

In the morning I come to work and wonder whether that dirt, this brown wax (is it squashed gum - or worse?), that chipped lino or this rust stain was here the night before.
I marvel at the progressive but subtle decrepitude as it advances and how it only serves to highlight the existing characteristics that we as tenants know so intimately. The artist Raewyn Martyn has a day job, and so these small transformations occur at night or in the early hours. It's one of the more curious shows we've experienced this year ...and I think I like it.