More dance drawings

Late into a three hour dance class, I began having fun with materials and colors. These are a mixture of panda and colored pencil. I used the panda to get the general sweep of the dancer's movement, and then went in with line to fix it in the specific.

In search of dance...

One of my favorite parts of New York was my discovery of the world of dance. Between the New York City Center, the Joyce and the New York City Ballet, I was seeing dance almost every week, and sometimes more. It became almost an obsession. The music, the lighting, the immediacy of movement, the constant division and recreation of space--and even in the most abstract of dances, the necessary figural element of the dancer's own body. In some ways, it is the most human of the arts.

And with the human, there is relationship, almost an implicit story. Dance cannot leave you cold.

Since coming back to Israel I've been trying to keep up this passion. There's a lot of great modern dance, but its harder to hear about--or at least I have not yet found the central information hub. And there are less great student tickets available, which in my current financial state unfortunately means a lot .

A few weeks ago, I went to the special late night opening at the Israel Museum, which served as a venue for student dancers and performance artist. After speaking to the dancers, my friend and I were lucky enough to get permission to come and draw during the advanced improv class at the Vertigo dance company.

These are mostly quick gesture drawings, often done so fast, and layered one over the other, that even I can barely tell what they are at the end. Here is a typical 5 drawings on one paper:

While viewing a class lacks the fusion of elements that makes of a finished dance performance, it focuses you more on the internal space of the dance: what the dancer is thinking about, how they are speaking to their body, what the movement means, the relationship to other dancers.

These sketches try to capture the essential line of the dancer's movement:

While in these I tried to catch a sense of the essential line of the dance as a whole by marking the different position of the dancer as she moved:

These focus on the relationship between the dancers in a duet:

The level of self awareness and of trust involved in improvising a duet is truly awe-inspiring.

Map Project: Task II

Wanted to write week II, but then realized that it has been almost a week since I posted the images from Week I. Hmmmm. A week leaves a lot of leeway for getting lost. So...

Some scheduling protocols for the Map Project. Yes, being organized is a work in progress. Here we go:

Images of completed tasks will be posted Thursday night. The task for the following week will be posted immediately afterwards, or the latest Friday afternoon.

My tasks will generally be inspired by Sarah Salway's Writer's Roots workshop, but adapted to my personal interests and the visual medium.

Task II

• The belated topic of this week are childhood landscapes. This can be interpreted as broadly as possible.

I hope to have this posted by Friday mornings. Wish me luck!

A collage image of of some of my Map Project papers

The Maps Project: Task I Completed

Well, I did it! Task 1 completed!
I went on a shopping spree on Tuesday, buying lots of supplies I couldn't afford.

Most importantly, I picked up 3 sheets of heavy-weight (400 gr) cheap watercolor paper, and a large jar of PVA and of gesso. I cut the sheets into 12 pieces of 35 cm hight. I alternated the width, making half 40cm and half 50cm. This will allow me to play around with foldout pagesand diffident styles.

I also bought a dark blue Conte paper. I will cut it to 35, and have it expand lengthwise.

In retrospect, I think I could actually have gone for a simpler paper--the PVA and gesso offer enough strength. That way the paper would be more flexible (these surfaces are so stiff, I'm not sure I'll be able to bind them)--and more cheap. Something to keep in mind for next time.

Today was a beautiful, sunny day, which made it perfect for preparing the surfaces. I took all the pages out to the roof, and began playing with them. There was no specific plan. I just wanted to make 12 different surfaces that would inspire me to approach them differently.

The first few were very simple:

Tea staining to age the paper

Splashes of ink

Sponged liquid acrylic
(I apologize for the photographs. They're taken at night, with a flash, just to give a feel. I wanted to post this before the end of the week, and knew that if I got precious about the pictures, that would be the end of that).

As I went on, I began to get more creative. There is something incredibly freeing about working on so many pages at once, and knowing that they are not a final product.

The one I had high hopes for--rubbing loose pigment directly into the PVA-- did not come out as well as I had hoped.

But a boring yellow liquid acrylic livened up with spilled coffee grinds splashed with PVA became quite dramatic

And a not quite-successful-attempt to use dead leaves began to work better when I spilled coffee over PVA, and then let it run down.

By the end, the prepared surfaces were almost becoming independent collages--especially in the case of the last one, where I combined old books, my music notes, pages from school books, and torn up drawings from my sketchbook:

Which made me think that since I am anyway not binding the papers until I am done, it might be better to make the preparation an essential part of the project, so that the collage elements will fit the topic.

Something to consider for next time!

I do think that I will buy I few blank papers, just in case...

Hope to see some other people joining!

Late night thoughts on Museums, Assemblage, and the Power of Instant Apprehension

I went to visit the newly renovates Israel Museum this Monday with a friend. It was my second visit to the museum since its refurbishment, but the first when I actually had a chance to look around.

Just wanted to jot down a few thoughts before I they were forgotten. Sometimes I do think that is the purpose of this blog--to catch all those fleeting observation before they sink into the ethersphere, never to be recovered.

There are no photos allowed in the museum, so these will unfortunately have to be verbal notes. First, on seeing a roughly-hewn sculpture from the Easter Islands with a beautiful conch-shell attached with a rope, I thought--assemblage is not a modern art. It is, in some ways, the earliest art. One of our most primal impulses is to use our surrounding objects, the things we love, in a new form, to make the found truly ours by making it anew.

One of the hidden jewels of the collection--this is the first time I've seen it--is the Jacques Lipchitz room. The sculptor bequeathed his private collection to the museum, and it's hidden to the side of the Fine Arts department in an easily missed, intimatly darkened room that feels like a Victorian library. In the cupboards of hundreds of unlabeled small sculptures from around the world. The most beautiful to me was a leaping fish, made out of a single piece of driftwood. The fins, tale, and mouth had been beautifully carved, but the body was the untouched branch, with small shells and stones attached to accentuate its movement, and two beautiful stones for the eyes.

It reminded me of the sculptural garden rocks in the Astor Court at the Met--beautiful found stones, which were polished a little, put on a stand, and became a sculptural landscape. It's an idea of art as a change of context, as a way of looking, rather than a way of making. The object is allowed to be, is almost unchanged, except that we look at it differently. It is far less a violent relationship to material than carving (for all that Michelangelo spoke of freeing figures from teh rock), and more organic than painting and drawing--where we seek to construct something from within, rather than letting the material speak...

And yet it was the little touches of skill--the beautifully carved mouth with all its little teeth, that brought it to life...

On Museums...

One of the best moments in the museums new design is a window which connects the African arts department to the Modern Art. Through the corner of your eye, while looking at tribal masks, you suddenly catch sight of a Max Ernst sculpture and a Picasso painting. And the connection between African art and the development of modernism hits you, immediately apparent. It was far more powerful than any essay I had ever read on Picasso's influences.

And I thought, Wouldn't it be incredible if we could build an entire museum on this principle. A kind of panoptican where everything can be seen from a single viewpoint, and create actual structural links--windows, doors, passageways--highlighting the connection between related works. Reading art on an immediate level.

The University of Michigan Museum of Art has attempted to create something like this with its DialogTable --a huge touchscreen of all the pieces in their collection, in which if you select one, all related elements come up with it.

But powerful as it is, by using charts,texts, and different categories for search, it is already appealing to the verbal, symbolic element of the mind. It is reading art at a remove, rather than by direct apprehension...

Some work inspired by Hopkins

Last year, I worked with Hopkins poetry while focusing only on one poem, responding to a single line. Here are some of the drawings and paintings from the yet unfinished series.

The Artist's Way: Week 4

I am now into the fourth week of Julia Cameron's Artist Way, and on my third day of the “reading diet.” When I first saw the task--not to be skipped, she demands at the opening--of not reading for a week, I thought She must be joking. Then—No way. Then—Well, I’ll finish my book first. And I need to write my review of Heller’s “Artist Journey Inward.” This just isn't right for me. It's going to push me back, just when I decided to be reading more about art.

Then came pacing and jumpiness, like I was an addict locked away from dope.

The very strength of the visceral reaction told me that I had to give it a try.

One interesting side effect of not reading is that I find lines from poems that made an impression on me floating across my brain. It's like they were drowned out by the cacophony of text, and in the sudden stillness are emerging to be heard.

This morning it was mostly Gerard Manley Hopkins. An internal rhythm, with fragments of his line swimming in and out, yet without the darkness and drive they usually demand:

I am gall, I am heartburn

God's most dire decree

Bitter would have me taste

My taste was me...

Self yeast of spirit

A dull dough sours...

Their sweaty selves only worse...

Betweenbepie, a mountain

Let joy cling God knows when to God knows what

Give comfort root-room

Spliced, out of order, and misremembered, they've been recreated into a medley that is both more personal and strange.

I have been working with Hopkins' poetry in my art for close to three years. I remember at first, I just sat and wrote it out from memory with ink and brush. When I checked the text, I was shocked to realize that many of the lines that drew me were often from different poems, that they each belonged to separate units, were saying different things. I began working with the text of the poem present, giving more pressure to the lines that meant something to me--but some of the magic went out. It became more calculated.

I now think it might have been a mistake to return to the text: the lines that stuck to the flypaper of my brain were the ones that mattered to me. And the lines I got wrong and recreated were my personal investment in the poetry, my own transcription into my work.

Sometimes you have to Let be. Let art spring God knows when from God knows what.

And, in a tribute to Hopkins, I post here what I think is one of the greatest poems of the English language--in its original form, unaltered by my brain (I am resisting, and not rereading it as I post it):

Spring and Fall: To a Young Child

Márgarét, are you gríeving

Over Goldengrove unleaving?

Leáves, líke the things of man, you

With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?

Ah! ás the heart grows older

It will come to such sights colder

By and by, nor spare a sigh

Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;

And yet you wíll weep and know why.

Now no matter, child, the name:

Sórrow's spríngs áre the same.

Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed

What heart heard of, ghost guessed:

It ís the blight man was born for,

It is Margaret you mourn for.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

New Years project: Week I

No, I have not forgotten, though the end of the week is fast approaching.

After a lot of thought, I decided to center the yearly project on personal creative maps.

In a workshop I took part in, Sarah Salway spoke about the importance of discovering your own internal creative landscapes--of mapping out the spaces that formed you, the emotions, places, images or experiences you keep returning to again and again.

These spaces might be formed of the rooms in which we grew up, the games we played, our family history, and all the debris that is hidden somewhere beneath our conscious level of thinking. Last year, I was surprised when my teacher, Bill Jensen, pointed to the repetition of a certain arching shape in my sculpture, and connected it to the way I spoke about the architecture in my childhood home, the Old City of Jerusalem. It was a "ta da" moment.

Task-Week I

So, for week of the New Years project, hereby renamed the Book of Maps, I'm going to prepare 12 paper surfaces of equal size, but different color and texture.

I originally was going to sew them together with a Japanese staff binding to create an artist book, but then reconsidered, thinking it would be easier to work on each separately, and attach them all when they are done. That way I have more freedom with the order, and can also choose to expand the book.

Though perhaps it would be better to have the strict constraints of a prefabricated book. Any thoughts on the matter?

Reading The Artist Journey into the Interior

Currently reading Erich Heller's essay on Classical and Romantic art. Finding it a little disturbing.

To be discussed later...

And how to replace them...

At this point, there is little I can do about work-spaces, other than getting used to working small, on a table rather than an easel, and with little privacy. Daunting, but must be endured.

On a more cheerful note:

• I can keep up the meta-artistic, philosophical musings on art. To do so in a structured way--ah, the magic word, structure!--I have added a book recommendation page, where I hope to keep up with some good artistic reading.
• Commit to some consistent projects that fit in with my limited work space. More on that later...

Now that I've made myself feel slightly better about my day (though that cannot do, write about doing), I'll get off to sketch some sister watching TV...

Holding the fort... OR: Things I miss about art school

Been a hard day.

I didn't get a teaching I had interviewed for. A second place where I taught a class turns out not to have any openings this semester, though they hope I'll come sub. And a third job lurking in the horizon now seems highly unlikely to ever amount to anything.

I'm sitting in a noisy room surrounded by people, and feel my dream of a studio receding ever further into the mist. And as happen every time I get down, I get depressed over the fact that I have not been painting seriously in months. The ever present paradox: when we don't work, we have time, but no space, and little supplies.

Last year--with my full days of painting--seems more than just an ocean away.

To stop myself from getting too discouraged, I decided to make a list of some of the central elements I feel I got from school (other than the oh-so-desired-workspace), so that I can find ways to try to maintain them. This will also satisfy my inner-editor, who has been twitching in the back of my mind, complaining that blogging is disorderly, lacks structure, and encourages my mind to float in every direction. A compromise between my need to overflow in every direction, and the answering desire for order. Let's think of it as a kind of table-of-contents for the blog.

The missing components of art school:

• A consistent work environment
• A time structure--with deadlines.
• An artist community or people with whom to talk, from whom I could get feedback, and from whom I could be inspired.
• Learning to think about art. My initial training was in a rather anti-intellectual environment, where the focus was on technique, on continuous work, rather than the philosophical underpinnings of art, or the meta-poetic elements--the study of art as a language. I was surprised how much the academic element of the MFA enriched my world.
• Looking at art. Sometimes the greatest part of the New York Studio School was that it was in NY. I went around the galleries and museums at least once a week, and the sheer practice of looking is sometimes the greatest push power there is.

To be replaced....

New Years Projects

Even talk of New Year's resolutions leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Nothing like failing to set you back...

But I do like the idea of New Year's projects: actually stating something that can be done in incremental steps. I've signed up to some art mailing lists, trying to keep up with new interests I developed while in NY, and loved this idea that I found in Lean's Imaginarium, an altered-book blog:

PROJECT: Fifty-Two

Weekly journaling and altered pages with a purpose to come every Sunday.

This project is to devote time to create one section of this book each week. The first couple prompts are constructing the book itself.

There are no rules. Just a little me time to focus on centering myself through my work on a weekly basis.

I like the idea of a developing project that keeps going throughout the year. It seems like the closest visual equivalent to Cameron's morning pages--free, associative, without any pressures of producing a finished product, a visual journal that is more cohesive than a sketchbook. And it's a way to expand my interest in book-art. Now just to define the weekly topic...

Anyone interested in joining?

Consistency

I think one of the most important--and least talked-about--elements of art school is consistency. Forget the teachers, forget the feedback, forget even the projects and final crits. The daily grind of needing to be in the same place at 9:00 a.m., rain or shine, tired or energized, happy or miserable: that is what I miss the most.

When I had a studio, the space itself would create the structure. The 35 minute walk to my much-lamented now-gone studio would help me make the transition into work mode, and once I entered the broken door with its peeling walls, I didn't get distracted.

Without a studio, trying to work is like fighting quicksand.

So, in the last few weeks I have been trying to create some internal structures:

• I undertook Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way. I use "undertake" selectively, since I think of it as more than "reading".

The ins-and-outs of the experience require a post for themselves--and just entering week 3, I don't think it's time yet.

Still, even at this early point, I can say that the daily morning pages are useful. Not for any deep truths they have helped uncover, but for the daily commitment of starting the day with a creative act--rain or shine, tired or awake, depressed or energized. And even though I'm accountable only to a book, it helps.

Trying to find a way to bring that into drawing now... Have tried to follow the morning pages with a morning drawing, but it hasn't worked yet.

Perhaps I'll make myself accountable to the blog, and that will be the push-power....

• Which brings me to: the blog. This is my way of committing myself to staying involved, excited, and aware--and maybe expanding my artist community.

More on internal structures later....