The Spider, The Mistress and The Tangerine

I finally watched the most recent documentary on Louise Bourgeois last evening. While I determined to turn it off twenty minutes in (feeling too tired at first to endure 99 minutes of Bourgeois's typically opaque intensity) I somehow could not pull myself away in the end, and I watched to the very last credit.

I wonder how woman marry, have children and make art of the highest quality. (I wonder this a lot actually, and so few women who've managed to juggle all three are interested in talking it seems.) Bourgeois of course never touches upon the how, as those questions/wonderings are no doubt so very far from her thinking these days, but I wanted to watch until the end nonetheless to see IF she'd shed some light. Perhaps her intensity is a clue. And her willful, defiant, almost hermetic vision? Cantankerousness might be a requisite? A predilection for hot pink fur coats and spangly hats, singular red rose always in hand?

In the end, I watched because she is a captivating anomaly. She is obviously of the art world, while being so, so out of it. She resides quite fixedly in the history of 20th century art; but she's also adamantly in the present dialogue. She taps into her past and her memories to an almost embarrassing degree, and yet the work is oddly accessible, even frank.

The bigger, more important question/lesson/inquiry to pull from the film might be more readily, "How does one tunnel so deeply into one's own pursuits and still emerge with whole, accessible, enigmatic, fully unique and alive work?"

A Momentary Studio

With the onslaught of 90 degree weather (in the midst of high pollen season) comes a healthy dose of allergies for all of us at residence Denouement--our home was given a name by its former occupants and who are we to strip it of its title? But also, I can now resume my love of hanging laundry out to dry on our line. If I had a momentary studio, where nothing really got made but a good deal of thinking, looking and just plain BEING in a space that is fully my own was had...well, this patch of weedy grass between two trees on the edge of our property would be that momentary studio.

I've been thinking a bit about worlds within worlds as of late because I am nearing the end of the second book in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy--in which walking between worlds, cutting windows to other worlds and sorting out the reality of worlds one can't see residing within one's own world are ideas all played out with a great deal of imagination and a lot good writing. I bring up Pullman and the notion of a world within a world here because it's an apt analogy for a healthy studio. When my studio is a place beyond my normal life, I step into another place--of my own devising, my own making. I step apart.

Walking to the edge of my property, peering into the woods, hanging color on a line is a way to step apart for just a moment.

Kneading (or thinking by feeling)

Life has been nutty as of late--full of meetings, teaching, many EXTRAS needing done. Moments in the studio have been just that--moments here and there. I do become down when life is so crazy that the slowness of an afternoon deep in thought with piles of paper and paint (or of just 20 minutes) is a hard won challenge. But in the midst of my sort-of-sadness are some lovely encounters.

For one, I DID make six loaves of bread in the last week and a half. (Hmmmm, you are saying, now just what are those extras you speak of...?) A pile of left-over mashed potatoes from a dinner with friends encouraged my barrage of bread making--potato bread making to be exact. (Yes, that potato bread you buy in the store whose crumb is so very soft and whose color is that lovely tinge of egg-yellow--AND from which one can make the most glorious french toast, or any toast for that matter.) The bread is easy and excellent, and just right toasted with butter and jam on cold school mornings. I made all that bread to use up our potatoes, to stave off the sudden voracious appetite our house developed for potato bread in the last week, AND to experience the pure delight of kneading bread dough--so welcome amidst the craze of now.

Just after all the ingredients (mashed potatoes, honey, egg, yeast, salt, milk, flour) come together and are turned out onto the flour-dusted counter, there is a lovely moment of stillness. And I begin to knead. Invariably, like when beginning a standing drawing, I shift my feet about three feet apart so I am firmly planted--so I can control the weight of my body, moving that directed weight into the dough--lightly, but firmly. Kneading is lovely for many reasons. The first--kneading requires one puts aside "head thinking" for a moment and really pay attention to how something feels, how that feeling evolves and changes, and when the feeling is just right. I must feel (not think) my way to the instant when just enough flour has made it's way through the mound of dough. The recipe I followed suggested at least 10 minutes, but I found the dough soft and pliable and FULL after about 5, and I was thrilled to trust feel or touch over an external, more substantiated (in some ways) directive.

Kneading is also lovely because it is repetitive and meditative--but in a way that engages the fullness or length of one's body. I did not learn how to knead in a bakery or my kitchen or from a cook book, but in a ceramics studio--when I was a sophomore in college. In order to insure all the air bubbles were pushed from any given lump of clay, we kneaded the clay--I actually forget the correct clay term for the movement. I loved the action--a perpetual rhythm of pulling the clay back toward my body and then pushing back out with the whole of me. I recall very little of what I made in ceramics save for the fact that it was very heavy and very brown--but I remember kneading my clay in the quiet of an evening--somehow intuiting even then that THIS is important--THIS action I'll carry with me.

52 actions (at home)

Fumble in the dark.
Brew a pot of tea.
Sit on the couch in silence.
Pour a glass of water.
Make a bowl of oatmeal.
Read for several minutes.
Let the cats in.
Read for several minutes.
Fold a load of laundry.
Swallow a daily vitamin.
Respond to a crying child.
Change a morning diaper.
Wash a sink of dishes.
Spoon yogurt into a bowl.
Cut a banana.
Pack lunch for school.
Close a door.
Watch from a window.
Walk up a flight of stairs.
Put away clean clothes.
Take a shower.
Wring out a wet washcloth.
Dry a wet body.
Pull on soft clothes piled at the foot of a bed.
Smell the residue of brewed coffee.
Wear a pair of red worn sandals.
Sweep a rock strewn path.
Sweep a hairy floor.
Make an unkempt bed.
Correct a thesis paper.
Prepare for drawing class.
Pour a glass of water.
Drink a cup of tea.
Push a stroller down the street.
Buy a cranberry-orange scone.
Read part of an article.
Roast a pile of bright red beets.
Make a piece of buttered toast.
Wipe a crumb-strewn counter.
Close a half-open window.
Listen to the quiet of a house.
Put away the remains of dinner.
Load an empty dishwasher.
Paint toenails red.
Peel a newly bought orange.
Cover a blister with a band-aid.
Stand up straight.
Stretch a tight body.
Walk up two flights of steps.
Fill the tub with water.
Sit in stillness.
Give the cats some food.