studio index: December 2010

Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Drawing/Cooking/Santa

Monday, December 20, 2010

He wanted to meet in the real world

the unsubstantial image which his soul so constantly beheld. He did not know where to seek it or how but a premonition which led him on told him that this image would, without any overt act of his, encounter him. They would meet quietly as if they had known each other and had made their tryst, perhaps at one of the gates or in some more secret place. They would be alone, surrounded by darkness and silence: and in that moment of supreme tenderness he would be transfigured.
from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce

When I read this passage I felt I'd read an exacting description of my relationship to the images I seek to make.

Friday, December 3, 2010

Final/From Representation to Abstraction

I had a particularly strong beginning drawing class this semester. They moved swiftly through all the usual drawings, finishing what is typically the final drawing a couple weeks early. So we got to try out some higher level thinking for the last project. They grappled with the potentially unwieldy and unlimited possibilities of turning facets of representation into abstraction. From deeply rendered drawings of cork screws and car engines, tea kettles and chopsticks they made lovely and highly individual abstract charcoal drawings. I was so pleased yesterday when I saw them all gathered together on the wall.

Thursday, December 2, 2010

Andrew Masullo

I love these funny paintings at Feature right now. I am reminded of how insular good abstract paintings are, how strange they can feel when encountered in the course of a day, today--and how grateful I am for the way they collide with my typical pace. These make me come to a screeching halt so I can just look, because these are what I want to look at right now.

Facebook doesn't do this, nor email or my blog...or any other blog for that matter.

Our woodstove makes me stop--with its emanating heat pulling me/all of us in.

Other things that still:

Alexander's little hands reaching for me as he wakes--and their warmth

baking

sketchbook work

raking leaves

folding laundry

soup making

singing old hymms

walking Benny

abstract painting/alexander's hands/baking/sketchbook work/leaf raking/folding laundry/soup making/old hymms/walking benny

Notes

Within an ephemeral present, we return through memory to things, places, and events in the past in order to find purpose and direction in our lives. Meaningful time is elliptical time.
Vigen Guroian

I have concluded that the whole misfortune of men comes from a single thing, and that is their inability to remain at rest in a room.

Blaise Pascal

May your imagination know the grace of perfect danger.

John O'Donohue

The amount of life I can put through my eyes is the amount I can see.

Ivan Albright

When I painted a chair recently, I noticed that I put the paint on indifferently, smoothly but without particular attention. The results were satisfactory but not in any sense beautiful. Does the attention in itself with which paint is applied in art actually change the effect of the paint? Does the kind of consciousness with which we act determine the quality of our actions? It would follow, if this were true that the higher the degree of consciousness, the higher the quality of art. I think it likely. Training in art is, then, a demand that students increase the consciousness with which they employ techniques that are, in themselves, ordinary.

Anne Truitt, Daybook

It was suggested to me that I would want to preface this reading tonight with a short statement about my philosophy of writing. Of course I don't want to do anything of the kind. My approach to literary problems is very much like the one Dr. Johnson's blind housekeeper used when she poured tea for him. She put her finger inside the cup.

Flannery O'Connor