Grace Notes
June 19, 2009 by Janice · 5 Comments
“The only kind of grace you can have is the grace you can imagine.”~ Ben Zander
I am borrowing from Ben Zander again today. I think because I spent a large portion of yesterday going through materials and working through those project sheets I mentioned on Monday. That meant processing ideas and maybes, into the next steps in different media. Cutting canvas to size, pre-washing raw silks, sorting through collage odds and ends, considering papers to use for the next drawings and assemblages. And pulling out some pre-painting sketches. Some photographs. The kind of work that leads up to the performance part of a finished piece.
But in all of that, I keep going back to drawing. I seem to have an unquenchable desire to draw right now. To feel ink or pencil pulled across paper. To make marks and more marks. To feel them as they glide, or scoot or scumble into form.
I love to draw.
And I want to make some things that are not only close to my heart and the genesis of this series, but create a new offering for my collectors. Some intimate pieces that are dear to me, but not so dear in price as the full opera of the large works.
And yes I did a third of the base drawings for the postcards yesterday too. And I loved that. I even love sharpening my pencils. Cutting or tearing paper to size. Clipping notes to this project origin or that one. And I rediscovered some good ones yesterday, some ones to do in a different way. Ideas that tumbled into being another step closer to an ooh and ahh painting. Large ones from an earlier plan, but with a difference now. I’ll do some studies there.
I love this kind of work too. It’s that place where pencil gives structure, pen makes notes, and the possibilities take on shape and direction. Where I imagine and in some cases envision the pieces fully done.
And I am excited.
There’s this feeling that comes at this point. It’s very hard to put into words, but it is a kind of itchiness, an edgy tension, anticipation, eagerness. And a solidness too. And then there’s the smile part. The part that comes from finding a sweet spot that I’ll nudge into being. And that I truly love. It feels like order, but order that just sets context for play. There’s this bump in my pulse, a pick up in my heart rate, when I see what can come from scooting that pencil and pen across that paper.
So yesterday, yesterday was full of hard work, and dreaming, and doing one thing and then the next and then another. Yes, just being creative. Imagining the grace of the next few pieces.
Now all I have to do is do them.
That’s how it is in Private Studio.
And it is Friday. See you for Naughty Margaritas later? I have some drawing to do and I am fairly wriggly with joy to do it.
How about you? Been a good week?
Shades of Grey, Part 2
May 1, 2009 by Janice · 4 Comments
Private Studio does a wonderful thing. It gives you permission. That permission should always come with a fistful of sharpened pencils and some paper in my opinion. I’m showing you three photos of some of the drawing I did this week. This is me relaxed. Following a concept. Letting go. The large drawing underneath the orange Rhodia pad is ready to cut up. The sketches in the pad have new brothers and sisters, some I’ll show you here. In the second and third photos below you’ll see the storyboard looking set, and then below that in the final photo one of the drawings that I have been after all along I think and its origin drawing from an older sketchbook.
These are private sketches rarely shown. They are working drawings. They are the birth of the Across the Tracks Blues Series along with the assemblages I showed you last Friday. And they only took a few minutes each for me to do them. But I had to live them first. That, that took a while longer.
But that is where their essence comes from, yes? Without the living part, there would be no story. No need for expression. No, this is what it is like for me, can you see it too?
You will tire of me saying this eventually or perhaps you will begin to know it, that art is a living breathing thing…not objects apart. The result of process, the goal, is to produce an object usually, but the essence , the experience of it, that is somewhere in between that object and it’s observer. Just like for the artist it is between the artist and the object created. Between again. Those spaces between.
Those are the wetlands.
So its energy we’re after. Hm, ever look at art as energy?
It is. And it is very very much just that in a drawing. Stripped down to shades of grey, some black , some white, it is pure energy, and motion. Rhythms that set up resonance. Like music.
And this series has its own song. I promised you the song didn’t I? Well, it’s a loosening song. One that let’s me feel at home, supported and it lets the shades of grey, of centered energy just come out. So here’s Wynton Marsalis Live at Lincoln Center
What on earth could I possibly be after with some lines, some shades of grey and a song? The artist smiles because she only knows that she is after it, not what it will look like exactly… but then that is half the fun in Private Studio.
Remember? 1) Befriend random. 2) Experiment 3) The constant becomes you.
So take a look, enjoy the song and have a great weekend. Yes, there should be a beverage don’t you think or some Derby Naughty to get up to?
What about you? Do you go back in and play with your work? Does it have a song?
