Another Alexander art post

Now this one does not fit into the category of those drawings of course, but it's pinned onto our special art wall because....well, it is so ODD.  I never imagined some pressed together bits of clay on a paper plate could be so uncannily articulate.  And I love the "Alex T." written in green by his teacher above the eye brows.

What I love (Seven)

I love living with art.

Images from top to bottom: 1. painting by Helen O'Leary, teacher and friend, 2. early painting by Michael Christy, classmate at Penn State, 3. early painting by Gerald Davis, classmate at Penn State, 4. collage/print by Adam Wolpa, friend and classmate of Chris's at Iowa

Dirt

Just this afternoon we witnessed a scaled-down, much less theorized version of Robert Smithson's Asphalt Rundown--a big, blue dump truck let loose a massive amount of dark, dark, beautiful dirt--the key ingredient for our in-progress vegetable garden. As far as aesthetic experiences go, this one was thrillingly engaging.

And now we have a mountain of dirt.

What I love (Six)

Roba Henshaw is a quiet, elderly gentlemen who was a member of a painting class taught by my husband a few years ago. Roba made the painting above--now hanging against the white wall of our upstairs bathroom.

I do not recall any explanation behind the painting--but there is this wonderful matter-of-factness to it which I love and rather envy.

What I love (Five)

The very top image is the center medallion of triangles surrounded by multiple borders--from a 1966 quilt made by Sally Bennett Jones, one of the Gee's Bend Quilters.

I LOVE this image, and I wish I could see the whole quilt. In particular I love the irregular/illogical cadence of the rows of triangles. The subtle periodic shifts in positioning yield some optical nuttiness intriguing to me.

I made a quick little studio drawing to figure out the shifts just a tiny bit--should make a lot more to really understand what is going on.

And too, any entity that is readily comprised of amassed pieces (and a bit fragmentary) is right up my aesthetic alley.

What I love (Four)

I don't think I need to say much of anything about this image.

What I love (Three)

Since I got my MFA in 2000 I've had seven different studios. I've hung this picture of Toni Morrison in all of them, and so it's getting a little bedraggled.

Toni Morrison just astounds me; I don't even know where to begin in telling you how. Suffice it to say she is a person I think about when I think about the worlds that may be made in art.

I also love the fact that THIS image--carried as it has been across states and places and years has taken on the character of a well-loved object--the mound of masking tape that keeps accumulating, the folds well-pressed into the paper, the specificity of the tear along the left hand side.

What I love (Two)

This little pile has been in my studio since July.

On the bottom is an unfinished painting, a simple beginning that has no need for finish, from my time at Hambidge this summer.
Propped on top, and completing my piece, is an upside down watermelon made by Alexander last year sometime. I love the fact that the watermelon seeds are at once watermelon seeds, a representation/abstraction of watermelon seeds, AND Alexander's fingerprints. That kind of definition shifting interests me a lot in the studio right now.

And I love the shape of the watermelon in relation to the shape of my image--they need each other to become more than their original mundane reality.

Lastly, I love the fact that the watermelon is propped on top of the painting--remaining separate in its connection nonetheless, and soooo precarious.

What I love (One)

I LOVE helping students locate their idiosyncratic voice/figure out what they want to make art about. Being involved in the process by which an individual suddenly sees that, "Yes, I have something to say, and it is mine to say, and maybe (hopefully) it's a little odd but I'm going to say it anyway!" is absolutely thrilling because my own belief in the fact that we all have something hopelessly and wonderfully unique to offer the world is affirmed yet again by that student's discovery.

On the process toward those realizations is a lot of work though--and one of the things I ask my students to do is, quite simply, identify what they love. Accumulating an understanding of what one loves visually and viscerally is like gathering up clues toward self-knowledge. So simple but so helpful.

Toward that end and being that I am in a bit of a searching mindset myself, I thought I'd start posting some of my "loves."

The first:

I love this photograph of Hella Jongerius. (taken by photographer Gareth McConnell for the NY Times)

I collect images of female artists, and this one is a favorite. The blend of austerity with subtle femininity, (shot through with a bit of purple) her evident focus, her stillness in pose, the mesh sweater half tucked in and therefore perfectly revealing the silver belt buckle and pleated pants, a work space evidently and fully considered--a woman of focus and immense ingenuity, creativity and singularity of vision--incredibly inspiring to me in the studio, but even before that is my love of what the image simply says.