The Question is Not “What Does It Mean”?
2.17.09 I delivered 21 pieces of art, comprised of 33 paintings/art objects to a gallery (public artspace) for my first solo exhibit. I officially began this body of work September 2006. 18 paintings were done in the last 9 months and I completed the wall hanging on the morning of 2.17.09. Typically for this gallery, the artist delivers the work, shares their vision for the display, and then is asked to leave; final presentation is determined by the director and his assistant. However, I was invited to stay throughout the process and participate while installing my wall hanging (it didn’t “fold” well for travel). Four hours later the show was hung and my brain was restricted to basic motor function use. And a buzzy feeling of elation.
I think it’s taken a body of work to see how I’ve been developing. In season one of the PBS series art:21, Sally Mann states that she has a magpie aesthetic; the allure of something will catch her eye and she’ll photograph it. She describes her approach as spontaneous, without overarching references during the making of it, and the need for a presence of ambiguity in the subject and final product. Her descriptive layering of practice, context and evaluation resonates for me wholeheartedly. Artwork is a site of discovery. The process of artmaking that most seduces me, however, is that the ‘answers’ are there, I just have to look in different places. ‘What am I discovering?’ and ‘What have I discovered?’ Artwork as/is research. I can inhabit a subject matter in ways that text based studies cannot.
I’d like to frame this semester with questions offered to art practitioners in a 2007 issue of the Journal of Visual Art Practice: What ‘work’ does the ‘artwork’ do? What work do I want the artwork to do? What work does it do for art practice?
“It is our contention that questions treating the definition of art no longer function for artists as vehicles for debating their ambitions for and with art, and other questions need to be formed to facilitate this work. Procedural definitions of art and prototype theories of art, in their greater complexity come closer to adequate social description, but lose the potential to work as a vehicle for debating issues of the value and function of art. The definitional question [‘What is art?’] is a machine that no longer works as a vehicle for artists attempting to hone their ambitions for and with artworks, but may now operate to mark the limits artists can go within the category of art. It no longer identifies organizing principles (other questions are needed for that), but might be useful to identify and police art’s farthest edges and boundaries. If disciplines are characterized by questions, is art [practice] characterized by questions, and if so which questions? And is art practice a discipline?” (Smith, C. and Reilly, L. (2007), ‘What work does the artwork do? A question for art’ Journal of Visual Art Practice 6: 1, pp. 5–12, doi: 10.1386/jvap.6.1 5/2)
This publication also led me to the Visual Intelligences Research Project, http://www.visualintelligences.com/about-the-project.html:
“The idea of visual intelligence in the context of creative practice refers to the kinds of thinking that go into envisaging, making and viewing the visual appearance of works of art. More broadly still, it refers to the kinds of thinking manifest in envisaging, making and viewing objects and artifacts of visual culture, specifically where visual appearance is important to their character and function. The project is concerned to uncover and understand these processes, and in particular to set out for review and debate the specific forms of visual intelligence operating to guide and structure creative practice in visual art. The project also seeks to understand how visual artifacts, including works of art, might embody, facilitate and convey ways of apprehending and thinking about the world that differ from other modalities of knowledge and communication, for example, oral and written language.”
Before discovering this project—the artists’ accountings of their practice particularly intrigue me— I wasn’t sure which threads of inquiries were dangling from my practice, which threads were snipped, and which threads were plain-woven into my daily existence. I will be working on following these threads.
(More questions:)
Where does an artistic act end and documentation begin?
We can’t know how far we’ve gotten in our understanding of creative processes. How do we reach beyond what we know we can do?
Exhibitionist
The work has been well received with some interesting responses. One woman told me that some of the paintings affected her emotionally, making her want to cry. Now that’s what I’m talking about! Some viewers shared their stories and interests in collecting junk. Some were completely mystified but liked the work anyway. Some loved the titles. Some just came for the wine and crudités.
Up until 3 weeks ago, most of my work was hung on every available inch of wall space throughout my small house. I was living with it, aware of it, proud of it but the relationship was not ideally situated. 10 of the works were in another gallery downtown, crammed onto two small walls and poorly labeled. An unprofessional display, sadly stated. Experiencing the collective visual statement of my work in a well lit, well conceived formal environment astonished me. For the first time I was contending with the group as a whole. Relationships of color, imagery, scale, and dimension are immediately evident and critical to orchestrate for the presentation of the work.
I discovered that my concept of a body of work had not been thoroughly realized as I made the work. While I am not disappointed in the coherence of the exhibit, I have new insight on this aspect of process. I am thinking of the next ‘body’ more thematically in concept. Another decision-making process is how to move from one painting to the next—lateral, back, forward, deeper, wider…Have I completed the research on this idea? Is there a final resolution? There is no fixed endpoint. Making ‘new’ things is a dilemma. There is an argument of the self with the self.
Across the long stretch of cultural time—five million years of human communication—defined disciplines seem somewhat out of scale.
I am the form-maker and first viewer. This is multi-dimensional activity, continuously repositioning in front of the work and bodily occupied within the work. Physically making art provides a sensual break from the intellectual deliberation. There is still a viewpoint that this is, or should, be fun. Follow your passion, do what you love, have implications of recreation, ease. I lovingly and passionately anticipate putting on my “studio clothes” and getting artwork on my hands, but it’s not usually for general amusement. It’s work.
Isn’t making art interdisciplinary by nature? Various intelligences are at work in a range of physical and mental engagement: disciplines of psychology, neurology, sociology, theology, archeology, biology, technology, history, economics, cultural…I suppose there may be a finite number that represents the calculated discipline combinations or exposures that inform my work, but the lovely mechanics of the brain sorts out enough sensory and experiential information to protect our consciousness from that deluge.
Intuition is not un-conscious or mystical. It is a form of gut-knowledge. The more work that I make, the more ‘knowing’ I am. Layers of experience embed in neural pathways and it becomes a conscious effort to recognize and respond to the fluidity of the work, the process and the practice. It’s similar to sustaining intimacies with a partner. The sensory intrigue of a new face and body, dynamic experiences, the detailed recall of every conversation sink into familiarity—the brain’s protective mechanism for sorting information and identifying potential threats—and the relationship soon requires a conscious attentiveness. The more art I make, the more effort to allow for surprise and catalysts. When coins were valued by their actual weight in gold or silver, people would bite them to see if they were genuine. I want to make art you can bite.
Art and Intention
I make art to know the world, get closer to the mysteries and because I have to. I want to know I am making visual work that cannot be transposed into language. My intention and the physical manifestation of the artwork are a negotiation.
It has always been my intention to make art that has multiple layers of meaning and access because I don’t believe there is an ideal audience. However, actual intentions are not always pertinent to define what the artwork means. The materials, colors, context, discourse and theories aren’t enough to fix the entire meaning. Meaning develops through invitation and assumption that the audience is aware of their participation in the construction of the meaning. This is an active role, not passive.
Explaining my own intention is also not neutral; my explication can put an end to an interpretative search for the work’s meaning, just as a dictionary can end the search for the meaning of a word. Similarly, reading the meaning of an artwork in a catalog is not interpreting it.
Which brings me to Gary Larsen’s Cow Tools. I know this might seem to be a stretch in such a theoretical-practice discussion, but I love the vernacular. People were both amused and outraged by Larsen’s Far Side cartoons. But, the notorious Cow Tools cartoon generated hundreds of letters wanting to know the meaning of this particular cartoon. Readers were absolutely certain the cartoon meant something and that Larsen was the one that could explain it.
It turns out that Larsen—who thinks cows are funny stand-ins for humans during common activities—recalled a college anthropology course where he learned that man was not the only animal to make or shape tools; certain primates and bird species do the same thing. The absurd scenario of his favorite cows as proud toolmakers struck him as funny. Larsen acknowledges one of the tool drawings in this cartoon also led to confusion. After reading his explanation, the cartoon is no longer amusing. Ironically, the resulting media coverage boosted his recognition and he went on to greater success.
Inspiration
Peter Doig: “When you start out, you make a painting by adding. As time goes on you realize it’s what you leave out that’s important.” Art in America, May 2008, No. 5, p.172
Substitute painting, sculpture, video, music or any form of art and art-practitioner in this excerpt of an essay written by the poet Loüise Gluck:
“What I share with [poets in my generation] is ambition; what I dispute is its definition. I do not think that more information always makes a richer poem. I am attracted to ellipsis, to the unsaid, to suggestion, to eloquent, deliberate silence. The unsaid, for me, exerts great power: often I wish an entire poem could be made in this vocabulary. It is analogous to the unseen for example, to the power of ruins, to works of art either damaged or incomplete. Such works inevitably allude to larger contexts; they haunt because they are not whole, though wholeness is implied: another time, a world in which they were whole, or were to have been whole, is implied. There is no moment in which their first home is felt to be the museum. … It seems to me that what is wanted, in art, is to harness the power of the unfinished. All earthly experience is partial. Not simply because it is subjective, but because that which we do not know, of the universe, of mortality, is so much more vast than that which we do know. What is unfinished or has been destroyed participates in these mysteries. The problem is to make a whole that does not forfeit this power.”
From Louise Glück, "Disruption, Hesitation, Silence," Proofs & Theories: Essays on Poetry (New York: Ecco, 1994) 74-75. Copyright 1994 by Louise Glück.
Unpacking the Work
I am still playing with the materials, additive, reductive, stenciling, layering, color and light. Imagery, shapes, narratives develop from the materials and dimensions of the substrate.
Both works are 10 ¾” x 34”. Dimensions are specific to Japanese scroll and screen paintings which I’ve been looking at since I began investigating Japanese poetry. The Rimpa school of the Edo period (mid-1600s) was known for recreating themes from classical literature, bold and lavishly colored. I began and finished these 2.13.07 – 2.15.07.
Orpheus: “You’re Tougher Than I Thought”
Mixed mediums on plywood: Spray paint, water based oils, oilstick, pastel, dog food can, aluminum flashing sample chips, screws, shipping netting, film negatives
Eurydice: “I Am an Instrument in the Shape of a Woman”
Mixed mediums on plywood: Spray paint, house paint, water based oils, pastel, Liquid Nails adhesive, fiberglass screen, tree root, imitation (I think) black Tahitian pearls, aerosol can top, cut nails, telephone bell, plastic bead, sheet metal bead and waxed cord.
I honestly don’t remember the words of Rick’s poems, read at the workshop, but the story and the emotions stuck with me. I felt I needed more work for the show and I had started 2 paintings before the G2 with some field painting and colors, but nothing else. So approached these 2 paintings as Orpheus and Eurydice
I did some Internet research on the story because I had forgotten it. I came across references, feminist writings and poetry giving Eurydice a voice, control over her situation, and Eurydice as erotic. Other documentation presented the story as allegorical interpretation to fit Christian doctrine and clerical misogyny. That was very interesting to me. Orpheus represents logic, wisdom, the rational. Eurydice is human desire, pleasure, earthly delights. Orpheus loses her through the teeth of the serpent; she was bit by temptation and killed by sin. We cannot come back to life and we cannot live life without death. We have feet in both worlds.
The field colors in Orpheus represent geological and metaphorical layers/levels of above ground to below ground transition. The colors on the sample chips match the levels. There is a chart below that refers to the symbolic meanings of ‘white’. The stamped words and geometrical shape references the logic and reason aspect of Orpheus. The can-figure is split, facing up and facing down. It could be 2 aspects of the same being or Orpheus and Eurydice. The trailing hair-like bunch of strands is grabbed by the black/black sample chip. There are pieces of film negative among the strands. Originally, I had the strands looped through the vacant circle facing downwards, but I severed the overt and direct connection when I cut back the strands and left the empty space. This results in more of a tear, something more yanked.
The title for this piece is Orpheus speaking the words: “You are tougher than I thought”, which is meant to say she is harder to get over than he thought AND/OR she can handle her situation better than he realized.
The field colors in Eurydice are greens for her wood nymph persona. Green can be tenacious moss growing in shade, green of new growth, or swampy and pungent. The horizon line is way up on the top, so she is located below ground or water, tied to her position. The copper painted screen material, however, allows Eurydice to expand beyond the plane or edges of the piece and maybe her circumstances.
The ‘eye’, the look that sent her back to Hades, is nailed in place, through it’s center and is meant to evoke discomfort, staring, a fixed gaze. 70% of our information comes through the eye and seeing…There are many phrases in our experience with the words ‘see’, ‘eye’ and ‘look’ – the “look of love” comes right to mind.
The wooden burl and root refer to the wood nymph and other below-ground life transmitting conduits to above ground growth. It looks like fallopian tubes and uterus as well as a torso with arms.
The pearls are purposefully black rather than white. Black signifies the primordial darkness in Buddhism. In the realm where it is dark, because there is no light reflected, there is also a sound, which we cannot hear, as it is so high on the scale of harmonics that it is inaccessible to the hearing capacity of any physical being (so I gave her the bell). Black is also the color of hate, transmuted by the alchemy of wisdom into compassion.
The telephone bell gives Eurydice a real voice. The telephone – the bell ringing, announcing a call, a connection. We don’t have telephones with REAL bells any longer. I miss that. My daughter has never heard one ring in the house.
Among the many bell references are the ghanta bell in Buddhism, representing the female principle which symbolizes wisdom and purpose. Through the sound of the bell, Koreans tried to comprehend the Buddhist belief that all objects and living things in the universe don’t stay in one shape but continuously change form. Koreans also believed that bells had the power to subdue evil and erase sin and pain. And honestly, I was just amused by it being there.
The title is Eurydice speaking the words, “I Am an Instrument in the Shape of a Woman” which is meant to say she knows how she is used AND/OR how to use her power
Matrimonial Tallis: Never Greet Your Husband at the Door in Your Housedress and Rollers
Wall Hanging, approx 48" x 48"
Mixed mediums and materials: fold-out sofa bed mattress support, dog food can lids, red wire, silver wire, oil pastel, fiberglass screen, cushion springs, ceramic tile, enamel paint curtain pleat hooks, drapery pins, rolled sheet metal. Completed 2.17.09
In 1999, I first hung the mattress support, squarely, on a wall in my living room because I liked the grid quality of it. I intended to use it as a location for hanging mementos and other meaningful bits, to create an evolving 3-D scrapbook representing my daughter and me. I saw a silly movie, Man of the House, from which I borrowed this idea. I never got beyond hanging it on the wall and took it down a year later. In September 2006, my daughter was scheduled to dorm at college, so I turned her bedroom into my studio (she commuted instead, so we share the 10 x 10 space) and hung the grid up in the shape that reminded me of tribal skins or ceremonial robe hangings. Or ‘70s macramé hangings,
The discs are dog can lids I burned in a 55 gallon drum barrel and then let sit in the weather to rust, which speeds up the process. When I forget they’re out there they disintegrate. The lids are attached with red wire. Collecting the lids as I fed my dogs and rusting them took some time; there are 160.
For a year that’s as far as I got. It started with plain abstraction: the silhouette, the beauty of the rust and the pose of the structure. The middle section stumped me. I thought it might turn into an oracle- with messages or images on the reverse of the lids, hanging away from a wall. Everything I attempted to add to this piece was overwrought, obvious, or didn’t fit the visual and mythical logics. There were too many circles, too much rust, too geometric, natural fibers= too obvious, typewriter keys= too literal (!) … I thought this piece would just live in that unfinished realm with no further adornment or interference from me.
When I was chosen for this February exhibit (March 2008) I envisioned this artwork on the far wall, the ‘impact’ wall, as you enter the gallery. As the date got closer, this piece became more critical for me to resolve because I still had that vision of this piece on that wall. It felt like a battle of intentions.
I returned home from this G2 residency with 10 days left to finish my body of work. 2.7.09 I visited the gallery to pick up my postcard announcements, and saw handmade Hand of Fatima and evil eye charms in a nearby shop. Immediately I tried these symbols (more abstracted) for my piece and they worked. The cultural, tribal, protective idea of the robe took on a stronger resonance. The symbols are related to my Jewish heritage and so my robe became a Tallis. In the Torah, there is a commandment to wear "fringes", known as tzitzit, on all garments of a certain size or larger, which have at least four corners. These fringes are knotted in a specific way and represent the 613 mitzvahs, or commandments, given in the Torah. During prayers, the custom is to wear a large rectangular garment with tzitzit (tallis gadol) and pray while wrapped in it. There are different customs as to when this is done. Most Ashekenazi (Eastern European) men will begin wearing the tallis when they get married. There are some communities that begin this earlier. Customs vary among liberal Jews as to who wears a tallis—women—and when it's worn. Every effort of adding knotted fringes to this piece looked strained and I stopped pushing the fringes. I’ve got wire instead.
The entire title for this piece came at the same time as the tallis concept. Never Greet Your Husband at the Door in Your Housedress and Rollers was a phrase my Mother used repeatedly, to caution me on how to keep a husband and keep him interested. To a young girl, it made perfect sense to make the effort to look and feel beautiful. There aren’t enough pages in this packet to discuss what that perspective, perception, cultural version of women meant and still means personally, as well as universally. I can tell you it’s still baggage I drag around, but at 47, it’s got wheels! And now lids. Good- another reference.
The center portion was still empty and all my efforts clogged the rhythm of the piece. During the following week, I was grabbing stuff by the boxful from my shed to throw at this work. I took apart the cushion inner springs and spiraled them on the center portion. In a subtle way, the springs both fill and keep the space open, giving a sense of motion, suggesting a way in and way out of the work. They seem as if they are capable of collecting or emitting sound. Other references could be the spiral shape of the galaxy, surface waves, the cochlea of the inner ear…Then I painted them a royal blue with white striping, which has an aboriginal look and breaks up the visual plane of the spiral when the piece hangs against a white wall.
The “hooks” along the top always looked like the body and leg silhouette of cranes or herons in flight. So the fiberglass screen wings made sense. Someone saw them as dragonflies. OK. What I like about the screen material is the moiré pattern that occurs, also giving movement and lightness to that area.
I decided to add the yellow and white cross marks on the lids at this point. I had researched and used this symbol in other works and had been looking at pictures in my Primitivism books:
Rubin, William Stanley, and Museum of Modern Art (New York, N.Y.). Primitivism in 20th Century Art; Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern. Vol. I and Vol. II. Museum of Modern Art, 1984.
29:1 · The wheel cross, sun cross, Odin's cross or Woden's cross. Nordic Odin and Teutonic Wuotan or Woden was the supreme god of the Nordic religion before Christianity. Odin was the god of art, culture, warfare, and the dead; depicted as an old, one-eyed man with two ravens as his intelligence agents and messengers.
The structure is one of the first non-pictorial graphs to appear when humankind was on the threshold of the Bronze Age. It is common on rock carvings. It appears in ancient Egypt, China, pre-Columbian America, and the Near East. From the facts available it seems as if it is associated with the wheel, not so much with its invention as with its revolutionary effect on the existing society. In ancient China this sign was associated with thunder, power, energy, head, and respect. When the first ideographic writing systems were developed, 
was included among the signs. It appears in the earliest systems of writing used by the Egyptians, Hittites, Cretians, Greeks, Etruscans, and Romans. In ancient Greece it signified a sphere or globe. It was also used as a natal chart pattern in ancient astrology. In modern astrology it is the sign for the planet Earth, the astrological element earth, and Fortuna, the Part of Fortune, an important position in the natal chart related to progress and hindrances in the material aspect of an individual's life. It is easy to trace a shift in this sign's meaning over time. In earliest times 
was a symbol for the highest power, the sun, and its counterpart, the king. It represented power and control. This meaning changed so As has been its custom, the Christian Church has included this ancient pagan sign among the crosses of its symbolism. It is known as the gamma cross, the Roman Catholic cross, the consecration cross and the inauguration cross. At the inauguration of a church, the bishop, using blessed water or oil, draws the wheel cross at 12 different places on the church walls. Its use as a halo or gloria, i.e. the spiritual power or energy that holy persons emanate, is associated with its original meaning as a sign of power. During the Middle Ages the alchemists used it to signify copper 
appears in about 15 modern ideographic systems. In some US meteorological systems it has been used to indicate that visibility is worsened by fog or dust. In some British meteorological systems it can mean a solar halo, i.e. a ring around the sun. In modern ideography it is often related to visibility and signaling. Thus on modern German maps it can stand for radar station. In the US, British, Swedish and French hobo sign systems we find that it means here you will find food, work, and money, or here live generous people. Excerpted from http://www.symbols.com/encyclopedia/29/291.html
References for the colors chosen in this work:
| | | | | |
| Color | Blue | White | Red | Yellow |
| General Meanings | coolness, infinity, ascension, purity, healing | learning, knowledge, purity, longevity | life force, preservation, the sacred, blood, fire | rootedness, renunciation, earth |
| Emotion, Action | killing, anger | rest and thinking | subjugation and summoning | restraining and nourishing |
| Transforms: | anger into mirror-like wisdom | delusion of ignorance into wisdom of reality | delusion of attachment into the wisdom of discernment | pride into wisdom of sameness |
| Body Part | ears | eyes | tongue | nose |
| Element | air | water | fire | earth |
By 2.16 I had everything accomplished on this piece except how to the finish the outer edges. Nothing was making sense and I had to deliver the work Tuesday morning.
I came home from teaching all day, had to frame my last four paintings, help unload and take home my friend’s pickup truck, and print up wall text/labels for some of the pieces. Late Monday night, I was still trying several things including busting open old cassette tapes and hanging the tape like fringes on the two outer edges. Horrible. I surrendered. I let go of my vision for the exhibit. I went to bed.
Tuesday morning I went into the studio (Jessi was sleeping) to gather some things to bring with me and I looked at the Tallis briefly, affirming my surrender to banging the piece into submission. The way to finish it- happened. No other way to describe it. It didn’t bubble or strike, it just happened. The solution was a shining row of can lids on each end that hadn’t been processed. They would be reminiscent of the shiny veneer; a surface quality. The opposite of edges that tend to get worn out first. Maybe they were replaced. Or maybe the decay began in the center and worked it’s way outward. If the tallis could be worn (wrapped around) the shiny lids would meet down the center. I loved all the ambiguity.
I had been too hell bent on artwork to do my recycling and I was able to scrounge 26 lids from the bin. I was feverishly hammering the popped tops flat at 7:00 am (waking Jessi of course) and hanging them. It worked. The piece is now hung as envisioned and has been well received.
This was a culmination of working in the studio for 3 days in a row and coming out with 2 new paintings and the wall hanging. The moral of this story: I’m not sure which lesson there is to learn here. I tried various ways to participate in the evolution of this work; some were passive, like sitting with it and being empty or some were active, like trying on every idea until I found ones that fit. Maybe it was a lesson in confidence; I felt an incredible sensation of being able to reach beyond what I know I can do. The Greeks called it “daimon”, the Romans “genius”, the 5th century Christians “guardian angel”, William Hogarth named it “grace” (1753) and leaping across 250+ years, today we use such terms as “following your passion”. Maybe it was my spiritual counterpart wagging its finger at me.
This has been my first experiment with more of a sculptural piece, however, I’m still attached to the wall! I don’t see myself working sculpturally, in a total 3-D sense. That spacial sensibility doesn’t inspire me. My combination of painting and dimensional objects on one substrate meshes with and allows movement between the layers of meaning and physical textures or dimensions that I’m working to achieve.
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