Anne Truitt's "Daybook"

Anne Truitt in the studio, 2013, image: annetruitt.org

Unless we are very, very careful, we doom each other by holding onto images of one another based on preconceptions that are in turn based on indifference to what is other than ourselves. This indifference can be, in its extreme, a form of murder and seems to me a rather common phenomenon. We claim autonomy for ourselves and forget that in so doing we can fall into the tyranny of defining other people as we would like them to be. By focusing on what we choose to acknowledge in them, we impose an insidious control on them. I notice that I have to pay careful attention in order to listen to others with an openess that allows them to be as they are, or as they think themselves to be. The shutters of my mind habitually flip open and click shut, and these little snaps form into patterns I arrange for myself. The opposite of this inattention is love, is the honoring of others in a way that grants them the grace of their own autonomy and allows mutual discovery.

Anne Truitt, Daybook, 1982

Chas Fagan

Chas Fagan at work. See more at chasfagan.com

I spent the morning at Chas Fagan's studio.  I spent the afternoon wondering if I've been doing it all wrong.  Whenever students say "Can I ask you a question?" my standard response is "I have all the answers".  We laugh, and they feel comfortable asking me whatever is on their mind.  I don't bother  telling them that my answers might not be right. I hope they are right....at least for me and them.

Chas Fagan is a Charlotte artist who does big historical commissions around the country.  He's working on a large sculpture of Thomas Spratt and King Hagler (Catawba) right now, and I am lucky enough to be on the selection committee.  This gives me an opportunity to see his work up close.  Chas also completed the bronze sculpture of Captain Jack that sits across the street from my office---it's the sculpture he's working on in the image at top.  I can't show any images of the current project, but what we saw today is a maquette, a scale model that, once approved by the group, must be enlarged from the 2 foot maquette to the approximately 7 foot sculpture.

Chas explained the process, which is complicated, but a traditional method of lost-wax casting that has been utilized since the Greek civilization was at its height. He will enlarge the clay maquette to full scale at the foundry, and then the process of bronze casting will begin.  Here's a link to describe the cire perdue process.  I've done it before---it's a blast, but it's really tough to describe, and not what I'm interested in.

He has a degree in Russian Studies (now there is a useful degree!), but no real formal training in art. He is a historian and student at heart, though.  His studio is filled with research on every historical detail you can imagine regarding his commissions; notes on the topography of the installation site, studies---lots of studies. In the midst of all of this are books on art and artists.  He might not have formal training, but he spends a lot of time looking and researching. He mentioned that John Singer Sargent is a particular favorite, and we talked a little about Caravaggio.

Bust of Lincoln by Chas Fagan. See more at chasfagan.com

Throughout the studio were numerous maquettes in various states of completion.  There were several Lincoln busts like the one above.  There was a maquette of both Bush presidents, together, but still armless, headed to 42's library.  There was a maquette of Ronald Reagan in casual wear that Chas said was "a little too thin" and needed to be revised. There were dozens of maquettes, and all were destined for prominent locations. Casually perched on a desk was a painting of 4 First Ladies---Martha Washington, Jackie Kennedy, Nancy Reagan and Michelle Obama commissioned by C-Span. Honestly... I think he's stronger in sculpture.  But, that said, three of those portraits are nicely done; one is not his strongest work.

Here's a link to an interview with C-Span about his sculpture of Ronald Reagan, installed at the Capitol Rotunda.

Chas Fagan and I come from very different art worlds. Working primarily through commissions and large scale public projects, he has to deal with  a lot of people along the way.  He does it extremely well.  While I do commissions at times, I can't imagine dealing with committees and jumping through all the hoops he has to jump through and trying to please all the people he has to please each step of the way. I would go insane. I'm much more content with making images in my own personal little vacuum and then, if someone happens to fall in love with it after the fact, I get so excited I just want to give it to them with a big, red bow on it. Being in his studio made me conscious that not everyone thinks like I do, and perhaps I should qualify my answers just a little bit more.

Kentucky School of Craft

 Kentucky School of Craft

So much opportunity!
How do you convince people that the arts are a viable way of life? 

Can you teach old dogs new tricks?  

Here is a place dedicated to making art, and it sits virtually empty. What would you do with an empty building, a community that's only mildly interested and under-employed, many of whom have probably never stepped into a museum, and a license to make some magic?

I'm not going to pretend I have all the answers, but I do know that a lot of success comes from building a sense of community and a feeling of positive energy. No, not everyone who walks through the door will make a living as an artist, but taking advantage of the opportunities that are handed to you isn't just about workforce development. Creativity is what sets the individual apart, and studying the arts is a mighty fine way to explore that.

“It is a sign of great inner insecurity to be hostile to the unfamiliar.”

Oh, this is the best explanation of the importance of the writer and artist in society:

"Educators do all in their power to prepare you to enjoy reading after college. It is right that you should read according to your temperament, occupations, hobbies, and vocations. But it is a sign of great inner insecurity to be hostile to the unfamiliar, unwilling to explore the unfamiliar. In science, we respect the research worker. In literature, we should not always read the books blessed by the majority. This trend is reflected in such absurd announcements as “the death of the novel,” “the last of the romantics,” “the last of the Bohemians,” when we know that these are continuous trends which evolve and merely change form. The suppression of inner patterns in favor of patterns created by society is dangerous to us. Artistic revolt, innovation, experiment should not be met with hostility. They may disturb an established order or an artificial conventionality, but they may rescue us from death in life, from robot life, from boredom, from loss of the self, from enslavement.

When we totally accept a pattern not made by us, not truly our own, we wither and die. People’s conventional structure is often a façade. Under the most rigid conventionality there is often an individual, a human being with original thoughts or inventive fantasy, which he does not dare expose for fear of ridicule, and this is what the writer and artist are willing to do for us. They are guides and map makers to greater sincerity. They are useful, in fact indispensable, to the community. They keep before our eyes the variations which make human beings so interesting. The men who built America were the genuine physical adventurers in a physical world. This world once built, we need adventurers in the realm of art and science. If we suppress the adventure of the spirit, we will have the anarchist and the rebel, who will burst out from too narrow confines in the form of violence and crime."

Anais Nin, 1949 (Diary of Anais Nin, Vol 5)

From Brain Pickings

Beverly McIver, The Mint Museum and Me !

Ohhhh, this is going to be fun! I'm helping out Mint Museum's master educator Rita Shumaker by leading a painting session on expressionist figure painting on November 20 (6:30-8:30).  This is one session only in a three session class that's in conjunction with Beverly McIver's exhibit at the Mint. 

Beverly McIver, Renee Moving Away, oil on canvas, 48x48", 2003 courtesy Mint Museum

It's a lovely little show...intimate, containing primarily portraits of the artist's mother and mentally disabled sister. It's gestural and direct, and there seems to be great joy within the works.  I saw just just moments after viewing the big Giacometti exhibit at the Bechtler, and the contrast was marked. The stillness and structural veil of Giacometti's work compared to the intimacy and directness of McIver's---two wildly differing approaches, but both dealing with psychological status.

Here's a link to the exhibit: Reflections: Portraits by Beverly McIver at the Mint Museum

And here's a link to the artist's website: Beverly McIver



Contact the Mint if you're interested in the class (but do it soon)!

Everything Comes to an End

I read this a couple of weeks ago, and it has been haunting me. When he was 22, Stieg Larrson wrote this letter to his girlfriend, to be opened in the event of his death. 27 years later, it was. It is beautiful, haunting and bittersweet for me.

Stockholm,
February 9, 1977

Eva, my love,

It's over. One way or another, everything comes to an end. It's all over some day. That's perhaps one of the most fascinating truths we know about the entire universe. The stars die, the galaxies die, the planets die. And people die too. I've never been a believer, but the day I became interested in astronomy, I think I put aside all that was left of my fear of death. I'd realized that in comparison to the universe, a human being, a single human being, me...is infinitely small. Well, I'm not writing this letter to deliver a profound religious or philosophical lecture. I'm writing it to tell you "farewell." I was just talking to you on the phone. I can still hear the sound of your voice. I imagine you, before my eyes...a beautiful image, a lovely memory I will keep until the end. At this very moment, reading this letter, you know that I am dead.

There are things I want you to know. As I leave for Africa, I'm aware of what's waiting for me. I even have the feeling that this trip could bring about my death, but it's something that I have to experience, in spite of everything. I wasn't born to sit in an armchair. I'm not like that. Correction: I wasn't like that...I'm not going to Africa just as a journalist, I'm going above all on a political mission, and that's why I think this trip might lead to my death.

This is the first time I've written to you knowing exactly what to say: I love you, I love you, love you, love you. I want you to know that. I want you to know that I love you more than I've ever loved anyone. I want you to know I mean that seriously. I want you to remember me but not grieve for me. If I truly mean something to you, and I know that I do, you will probably suffer when you learn I am dead. But if I really mean something to you, don't suffer, I don't want that. Don't forget me, but go on living. Live your life. Pain will fade with time, even if that's hard to imagine right now. Live in peace, my dearest love; live, love, hate, and keep fighting...

I had a lot of faults, I know, but some good qualities as well, I hope. But you, Eva, you inspired such love in me that I was never able to express it to you...

Straighten up, square your shoulders, hold your head high. Okay? Take care of yourself, Eva. Go have a cup of coffee. It's over. Thank you for the beautiful times we had. You made me very happy. Adieu.

I kiss you goodbye, Eva.

From Stieg, with love.

From Letters of Note

10 Rules of Writing (but let's pretend it's about art)

Zadie Smith's 10 Rules of Writing, but I'm telling you, this can apply to art as well.

1. When still a child, make sure you read a lot of books. Spend more time doing this than anything else.
2. When an adult, try to read your own work as a stranger would read it, or even better, as an enemy would.
3. Don’t romanticise your ‘vocation’. You can either write good sentences or you can’t. There is no ‘writer’s lifestyle’. All that matters is what you leave on the page.
4. Avoid your weaknesses. But do this without telling yourself that the things you can’t do aren’t worth doing. Don’t mask self-doubt with contempt.
5. Leave a decent space of time between writing something and editing it.
6. Avoid cliques, gangs, groups. The presence of a crowd won’t make your writing any better than it is.
7. Work on a computer that is disconnected from the ­internet.
8. Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you.
9. Don’t confuse honours with achievement.
10. Tell the truth through whichever veil comes to hand — but tell it. Resign yourself to the lifelong sadness that comes from never ­being satisfied.
    

More at Thought Catalog

Met Publications offers online viewing

You can read at least 293 different fully online texts from the Metropolitan Museum. This makes Carolyn very, very happy.

Metropolitan Museum Online Publications

Here's the first one I'm digging into:

The Care and Handling of Art Objects