Suspended Together

I am always ranting to my students about using beauty to draw the viewer in.  A great concept doesn't change the fact that your work is going to be viewed from 15-20 feet away at first glance, and you need to find a way to make someone actually look at what you've done. Once you pull them in, have something interesting going on.

Suspended Together, Manal Al Dowayan

Suspended Together has that potential. Here is the artist's statement:

“Suspended Together” is an installation that gives the impression of movement and freedom. However, a closer look at the 200 doves allows the viewer to realize that the doves are actually frozen and suspended with no hope of flight. An even closer look shows that each dove carries on its body a permission document that allows a Saudi woman to travel. Notwithstanding their circumstances, all Saudi women are required to have this document, issued by their appointed male guardian.

Suspended Together, Manal Al Dowayan

The artist reached out to a large group of leading women from Saudi Arabia to donate their permission documents for inclusion in this artwork. “Suspended Together” carries the documents of award-winning scientists, educators, journalists, engineers, artists and leaders with groundbreaking achievements that gave back to their society. The youngest contributor is six months old and the oldest is 60 years old. In the artist’s words, “regardless of age and achievement, when it comes to travel, all these women are treated like a flock of suspended doves."

You can see more images here: http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2012/02/suspended-together/

Quick Ink Wash

Carolyn Jacobs, quick 20 min. ink wash on Arches 140lb paper

To me, the secret of grace is learning how to move within your limitations.

Noemie Goudal

Noemie Goudal, Les Amants (Cascade), Colour Photograph, 168 x 208 cm, 200

This is lovely, isn't it?  See more at Noemie Goudal. Enjoy.

"Brainwave"

There are times I wish I lived in NYC. This is one of those times.

Brainwave at the Rubin Museum of Art

Brainwave at the Rubin Museum of Art 

Click the link above for more info about this series of discussions about memory.

Trixie Whitley

I have discovered Trixie Whitley, and I am a little bit in love:

I love the top comment on this video on youtube:

"Man, that Fidel Castro can groove."

 

A Thousand Thieves
Source: Nowness.com

This is simple and really beautiful.

A Memory Palace

I have been kicking this idea around for some time---at least since reading "The Enchantress of Florence" by Salman Rushdie.

I am haunted by everything I've forgotten.  About 10 years ago, I was struggling with some chronic headaches---like a headache that lasted a month long---punctuated with an occasional migraine. The kind of migraine where you have to lie in a darkened room protected from every stimuli because any interruption of the tenuous hold you have on sanity will push you over the vomiting, writhing edge. I shudder just thinking about it. 

The myriad of doctors dedicated to confusing me and not working together while treating my lupus symptoms decided I needed a battery of tests.  One of those was a memory test, and the results were equally alarming in their individual potential and collective vagueness.  The neurologist said "Either you are in the early stages of Alzheimer's, or lupus is affecting your brain." I think it's fairly safe to say it is the latter rather than the former.  I voiced my concern about Alzheimer's to my primary doc, and he put me at ease (about Alzheimer's, anyway) by saying "Carolyn, everybody loses their keys; it's when you can't remember what keys are for that we start to really worry".  Whew. But then that means lupus is picking away at my brain in some way....

I forget a lot of things. Little things. Big events.  Some are just very vague, but some are gone completely.  Brain fog is worse on some days. Some of my students love this; some are exasperated by it; some probably don't notice.  I used to tell myself I just need to live in the present, but then one day a colleague invited me to sit in on a discussion of a landscape painting I'd done (now hanging in the 3rd floor hallway of the Overcash Building).  I hadn't looked at the painting since completing it several years before.  Immediately, I was transported back to the moment I painted it.  I remember what I was thinking as I painted each passage.  I remember why I chose one color over another. I remember what the paint smelled like.  I remember the way the canvas responded to each stroke of my brush. 

Ultimately, I realized that I can remember almost all my works in this way.  I am sure there are a number of reasons for this---the fact that I was clearly present in physical and emotional way has to factor---but what really concerns me is figuring out what to do about it.

My thinking is that building my own version of a memory palace might be key to feeling I have some management of this condition I find myself held hostage. I don't know exactly how it will come together it, but at this point, I see a series of work that forms a visual record of memories and events. A memory palace exists in the mind, but I can't rely on mine.  I need the physical embodiment of a memory----both for memory's sake, and just maybe, for sanity's sake.

Landscape: David "I make my own work" Hockney

David Hockney, 'Woldgate Woods, 21, 23 & 29 November 2006', 2006. Oil on 6 canvases. 182 x 366 cm. Courtesy of the Artist. © David Hockney. Photo credit: Richard Schmidt
Source: Royal Academy of Art

David Hockney takes some digs at Damien Hirst in his exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts, stating prominently that he has made all his own work.  Meanwhile, Hirst is over at Tate Modern, featuring works conceived by Hirst, but made by studio assistants.  This article cites the historical practice of workshops/studio assistants: The Independent .

As I understand workshops, they were the primary educational venue for artists.  An apprentice would study, work with a master, and once a certain degree of skill had been achieved, he would strike out on his own.  I use the masculine here because with only a few exceptions, it was all men.  Those who didn't rise to the level of their own workshop toiled away at a master's shop. The article compares the use of workshops throughout history, but what it doesn't mention is that Hirst, when he did show examples of his own paintings see Wallace Collection, they were not at all "masterly". I would say he would be relegated to preparing canvases, sweeping floors and underpainting in a master's workshop.

I don't deny that Hirst is sometimes interesting conceptually.  Nor do I respond to Hockney's work in general.  The debate is not about the art, but about what is more important: the concept, the execution or the finished "product".  The obvious answer is that all three are important.  Works that are more than passing fads have all three; the concept is interesting and relevant, the execution is reflective of the time created, or indicative of progress, and the finished work finds that sweet spot in between.

Here's a link to David Hockney's show at the Royal Academy of Arts.

Here's a link to Damien Hirst's show at Tate Modern.