Videos on Women Who Make Things

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I am laid out with a cold today, so I did the natural thing to do- watch a bunch of art documentaries while not moving out of my chair for hours on end.  The only other thing I felt I could possibly do was to blog, so here I am.

My go-to site for art videos is Art:21 and my absolute favorite is Mary Heilmann's video.  Even though I am not the hugest fan of her work, (some I like, some not so much), watching her talk about herself and also watching her paint, is really quite entertaining.  I could watch people paint for hours.  

Watch Fantasy on PBS. See more from ART:21.

Another great full-length documentary is "What Remains" (available in 3 parts on youtube) about photographer Sally Mann.  My friend, Libby Black, swears by this film, and makes all her graduate advisees watch it.  Watching someone make work, live as an artist with their family, and how they struggle both with concepts and failure as well as success, provides a ton of worthwhile life lessons.  

I also watched a documentary on netflix that I thought was pretty well made, "Our City Dreams", directed by Chiara Clemente, daughter of the famous artist Francesco Clemente. Something about an artist, (or at least having artist blood), making a movie puts a more pleasing visual spin on film, like when the over-hyped painter Julian Schnabel made the great movies "Basquiat" and "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly".  

Clemente's film focuses on five female NY artists from varying countries.  The women are interesting choices more for their breadth than because of their work, for me; Serbian artist Marina Abromovic, who totally shares the same over-saturated cultural domination as Kanye West, is not appealing to me but I understand why she was included.  Performance art just totally bores me to death.  

Swoon, the street artist-turned-museum-phenom, (just like the rest of those graffiti guys), doesn't have the drawing skills to really impress me, but her crusty lifestyle was an interesting addition.  It made me wish for an instant that we could all be that free, but I know it's not glamorous or enjoyable to float down a rickety raft on a river with a bunch of stinky punks when all you want to do is be alone in your apartment with hot water.  

Kiki Smith, an artist that almost everyone on the planet attributes as an influence, was lovable in her acceptance of becoming middle-aged and it was comforting to watch her sculpt her clay pieces.

Egyptian artist, Ghada Amer, was totally endearing as a foreign weirdo who just wants to fit in with the rest of us art weirdos, and not conform to a sexist, oppressive lifestyle as in her homeland. 

Nancy Spero, a total babe in old photos, and now a frail and dominating 80 year old woman, must be applauded for trying to get women artists the credit they deserve, though I wasn't a big fan of her prints.

What to learn about all these women on screen?  I was surprised, thinking about all the videos, at how much I lean towards watching female artists in films.  Perhaps it's because they are more emotionally interesting subjects.  To be honest, I take it for granted that there are lots of women artists out there, but it's still quite difficult to be an artist period, but especially a woman.  In Clemente's film, they all address the choice to have or not have children with shocking honesty.  The act of making art is always a very selfish thing to do, and unfortunately it sort of goes against the expectations of a mother.  I hear by raise my glass (cup of breathe-right tea) to all the women out there, who are making it as successful artists, and especially artists who are mothers.

In the Studio

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I have taken a bit of time off from making things since grad school ended in May, mostly just to catch my breath.  This break has helped me figure out some things about my practice; what do I really care about, what do I really like to make, and who's going to stop me if I don't quite know what it all means first?  I really think these are all important steps in shedding the grad school skin, and emerging as new versions of ourselves: triumphant, self-determined, and excited about the work we make.
With a solo show coming up in September at Soo Visual Art Center in Minneapolis, I finally got the push I needed to take my meandering motivation and harness it to a lightening bolt of energy (sometimes!).  With a full time job plus a teaching gig at Berkeley, I am barely hanging on, but pushing full-steam ahead.  No time for socializing, I have three jobs to do.
One thing which helps me actually get anything done is that I have set up shop in my house as studio one, and a little drawing space by my office as studio two.  In a perfect schedule, I make use of both of these spaces, but I'm not going to lie- a lot of the time I can barely wait to go home and watch Gossip Girl.  That being said, I don't see anything wrong with working this way as opposed to paying rent on a studio space.  While it would be nice, and I hope to have one someday, I don't think not having the means for a room of one's own makes me any less legitimate as an artist, contrary to that old grad school mode of thinking.

Here are some studio shots from my phone of what's in the works.

Stuff I Like Looking At

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As an artist I am always looking, and always surprised by what interests my eye.  I have walked by the same patterns, and the same plants for multiple seasons and am still drawn to look at certain things.  Now that I have an iPhone, I have been documenting these weekly reminders of form and pattern for my work.  Even if they never physically make it into a painting, the act of photographing them (albeit through an amateur lens), solidifies the images for me in the archive of my art brain.

In my neighborhood I go for walks often, on uphill sidewalks and along mostly partially-cared-for gardens.  If my neighborhood was slightly wealthier, the gardens would be homogenized plant life presentations landscaped by professionals.  However, here the local and store-bought plants mingle with weeds and sunlight-loving lounging cats.  If the neighborhood was worse (and I have lived in those as well), there would be no gardens at all, and instead disheveled concrete plots with the occasional determined weed, leaving me longing for beauty so badly that I might go slightly insane from the lack of stimulus.  No, I much prefer my working-class streets and their attempts at order and style, which is the perfect complement to each yard's unique arrangement of natural disorder.  I never get tired of looking at these gardens because the combinations of color and exotic plants mixed with ordinary blooms create a constant treasure hunt for me as the visual huntress.

Lucky for me, in addition to these garden-lined streets are artsy stores on Piedmont Ave. and the amazing Chapel of the Chimes mausoleum, designed by architect Julia Morgan.  With all of these things, plus the cemetery, (more on that later!), I never run out of things to get inspired by.

Pink and burgundy

Little cup flowers remind me of being a kid and imagining stuff like where fairies would live 

Thorny, repeated shapes and the fire-like ombre of these flower colors

Great pattern ideas for my headdresses

Love the black, the symmetry, and the sculpture element

Inside the Chapel of the Chimes- so many amazing tile patterns

Flowers, patterns, and a glistening pool

Passion flower vines are a beautiful shape, and these fuchsia flowers are unusual 

Weirdly enough, this image jumped out at me even though it's kind of banal.  I used the same idea of green geranium leaves and just a small amount of red flowers in my latest painting.

So many colors and textures, including the weird gray blue of a succulent

This candelabra would make a good headdress

Some ranunculus flowers at Whole Foods

Love the little white daisies and red tulips at the cemetery, like a valentine

Old patterned cement at the cemetery

I like the combination of the black gate and trailing pink pointy jasmine buds

I don't go into Starbucks very often, but every time I do, in every bathroom is this same light fixture and it always reminds me of an awesome pope hat headdress

Getting ideas for things standing on other things

More Chapel of the Chimes patterns

I like the barren sticks and these triumphantly bright carmine colored blossoms

Archways and geometry

Words from Rebecca Morris

Just this week, the Painting Department at CCA, (of which I am an indentured servant until those student loans are paid off or I die first), started our Spring Painting Lecture Series with the Los Angeles abstract painter, Rebecca Morris.  Since I was the one picking her up from the airport, I got to talk with her and have a small glimpse before the lecture of how cool, laid-back, and at ease she was with her career, her work, and herself.  It's refreshing and motivating to meet women like that, who know who they are and what they want, with out being dicks about it.  I also read a great interview with her in the new art blog, In the Make, where you can read a little for yourself about how she answers questions about her work in a similar fashion to her lecture.

During the lecture she mentioned a manifesto she had created for herself during a year long residency in Berlin.  She said during this time, painting was considered a dead zone, not to mention abstraction.  While originally for her own notes, the manifesto ended up being a call to arms for all abstractionists, and her Berlin gallery, Galerie Barbara Weiss, ran the manifesto in an ad in Art Forum.  It became infamous and people ripped it out of their magazine copies, and it eventually became a poster.  While the manifesto is titled, "For Abstractionists and Fans of the Non-Objective", it still had morsels of art wisdom for any maker, even for the most representational among us, like me.

MANIFESTO
For Abstractionists and friends of the non-objective

BE A FORCE

Don't shoot blanks

Black and Brown: that shit is the future

Triangles are your friend

Don't pretend you don't work hard

When in doubt, spray paint it gold

Perverse formalism is your god

You are greased lightening

Bring your camera everywhere

Never stop looking at macrame`, ceramics, supergraphics and suprematism

Make work that is so secret, so fantastic, so dramatically old school/new school that it looks like it was found in a shed, locked up since the 1940's

Wake up early, fear death

Whip out the masterpieces

Be out for blood

You are the master of your own universe

Abstraction never left, motherfuckers

If you can't stop, don't stop

Strive for deeper structure

Fight monomania

Campaign against the literal

ABSTRACTION FOREVER!

I found both the manifesto and her way of talking about making things in her studio inspiring, but it also made me question what the hell I am doing in my own art practice.  Unlike Morris, I don't feel like being in my studio any time, all the time.  In my work I have to have a plan, and then I execute it.  It sort of becomes work, and not in the way artists refer to their 'work' but real work.  I'm starting to wonder if maybe I am not doing it right.  I know there are lots of different kinds of artists, and different kinds of practices, but all the painters I talk to who love being in their studio any spare minute of the day seem to be getting something different out of the process.  And I am jealous.

Morris will be showing my favorites of her paintings, the water media drawings, at Harris Lieberman Gallery in NYC on March 23-April 21, 2012.

These canvas pieces are part of her larger body of work.  The more she talked about how she made them, the more I liked them.  I liked the fact that they are oil paintings but very thin, like watercolor, and if she makes a mistake there is no painting over, only wiping away and starting over.  Also, I love the spray paint and the way nothing is exact, and all made with the honesty of her own hand.  But I still like the watercolors better, because there is something beautiful about them and these paintings are not about beauty. 

All images from Harris Lieberman's website.  I found the manifesto on a blog, so it could be wrong.

More January Openings

As an ever intrepid art explorer, I felt it was my duty as artist, CCA alum, and blogger to see the following San Francisco Art Openings.  Most of my evening out was a CCA-a-thon, where faculty, alumni, and current students all had work displayed for us to pretend to see but where we mostly chatted it up with the rest of our CCA community.  In addition to the shows at Patricia Sweetow, Haines, and Altman Siegel, I had the opportunity to see an SFAI affiliate (gasp!) and total art hero, Josephine Taylor, at Catherine Clark with my friend Libby and my little buddy Jasper.

David Huffman "Floating World", Patricia Sweetow Gallery 

(January 5 through February 11)

My former professor, David Huffman, recently made a pretty significant shift with these mostly abstract paintings of color and glitter with appearances by one of his familiar representational narrative elements, the basketball.  Huffman has included the deep space of water media and cloud-like formations in his previous, more politically explicit work for some time, and it looks like the space has taken over the narrative in a sort of tongue-in-cheek approach to abstraction.  While the basketballs reference African American stereotypes, I missed more of the action and story-telling of his former work.  With the repetition of this series, I didn't learn or think about anything past the first painting onto the next.  They are pretty, though.

Sweetow's space is a sort of in-between level in 77 Geary, with cement floors and lots of pillars.

The paintings appeared in different color schemes, like pastel and below, blacks and browns.

You know I like glitter and washes.

Kota Ezawa, "The Curse of Dimensionality" and Taha Belal, "The Atmosphere from Before the Step Down Returns to the Square" Haines Gallery

(January 5 through February 18)

I thought this show from CCA Faculty Kota Ezawa was pretty great, but it was also so crowded that I didn't get a good look at the massive amounts of work shown inside the gallery.  Kota's signature flattened cartoonish imagery was shown as animation, light screens, paintings, view boxes, and sculpture.  It almost seemed like a retrospective with the inclusion of his work from as far back as the SECA show OJ Simpson series in 2005, but I found it really inspiring that he has been able to use so many different mediums to communicate a similar theme.  

Taha Belal is a CCA MFA Alum from 2008 and a native of Egypt.  I remember his work from a few years ago of meticulously cut out newspapers, and it looks like he still uses the same techniques, but has also applied stylized patterns that the cut outs create, reminiscent of Arabian designs.  Right?  I don't really know what I am talking about.  The title of his show in the back room suggests a pretty clear message about Egypt and its political turmoil.  Belal has been staying in his country of origin, but that's really all I know.  I didn't do my homework very well and couldn't look closely at the images.

This turd with the top-not behind the counter ignored me all three times I went to get a water.    Get a grip, gallery intern, and get a new hairstyle too.

Some paintings by Ezawa, my favorite of all the mediums.

Some light boxes on the wall and the floor.

Belal's cut outs.

Group Show with Jessica Dickinson, Liam Everett, Alex Olson, Josh Smith, and Garth Weiser
 Altman Siegel

(January 5 through February 25)

I am getting to the point where I don't care who reads what I say.  The people at Altman Siegel seem really stuck up.  There, I said it.   I hate going in there- they never look up and say hello, they serve beer at their openings, and then there was the incident last summer where the asinine artist Chris Johanson asked my friends and I to leave his show because we were talking amongst ourselves during his bad-on-purpose band performance to go with his bad-on-purpose art.  All that being said, I do really like CCA grad student, Liam Everett's, artwork so I went to the stuck up palace anyway.

The same crowd moving with me from gallery to gallery.

I kind of liked this piece by Alex Olson.

Goopy.

Something weird was taking place over and over again in front of this beautiful piece by Liam made with acrylic,  salt, and alcohol.  It made a great backdrop for people to take pictures of themselves, so people kept posing in front of it, instead of taking pictures of the piece itself.  I have never seen this phenomenon with an emerging artist's painting, and I thought it was really disrespectful.

So, of course, my buddies David and Chrissie, and I had to mock what everyone else was doing.

Josephine Taylor, Catherine Clark Gallery

(January 7 through February 11)

As I mentioned, I am a big fan of Josephine Taylor's work, and have been following her beautiful large-scale ink drawings since I saw her at both the 2005 SECA show at the SF MoMA and the Bay Area Now show at the YBCA the same year.  Not many people, at least whom I have come across, make large, airy, realistic, psychological work on big expanses of white paper.  What can I say, she had me at "white paper".  In juxtaposition with her detailed and soft technique is the heavy imagery of very disturbing things.  It's amazing to have met her and know she's a very well-adjusted and lovely person, who must get a lot of things out through her art.  One more thing to like about art- it makes for great therapy.

Her pieces were mostly very large images with figures battling each other.

I really liked her choices of filling in some colors and not all.  It gave those areas more importance, and gave visual punctuations to the grotesque stories- like the balls and toenail.

The fight scene really made scary by the body language of the feet.