www.catbennett.net

That’s my piece, The Mahatma Gandhi Hat Company (”Keep Peace On The Mind”), at the top of the stairs.  The beautiful paintings of my studio neighbor, Deb Putnoi, is just to the left of me.  The sculptures on the stairs are sails, wonderful objects really, by sculptor Bill Frese.  Click on the photos to see them large.

Despite the poor economy artists appear to be full of good cheer.  We’re used to the challenge of making it in an inhospitable world.  Good training, I think, for tough times.  We did hear stories last night of job layoffs.  It seems to me we have to ‘keep calm and carry on’!  Check out this wonderful silkscreen poster I just bought on Etsy for $25.  It was made originally in England during WWII and posted all around London during The Blitz.  This new rather colorful version arrived a few days ago and is waiting to be framed.  It’s available here.

I will announce my new site on Monday.  Please come to visit.  I’ll be posting there from Monday on.  Meanwhile hope all is well in your world.

These are just fun to do, evocative for me and freeing.  They’re a little different from what I usually do but quite nice up close.  Not sure a digital image really shows them to good effect.  At any rate, it’d been great to play with drawing and to cut up a lot of old drawings to make these images.

I’m not sure what I’ll get up to tomorrow in the studio.  I still have to do the banner for my new site which launches next week but not sure yet what I’ll do.   It will come.  And tomorrow is the opening for the faculty/studio artist show at the art center.  Everyone agrees it’s a really fine show, full of fun pieces.  I will photograph tomorrow.

Back to the studio today after a week away with a rotten cold and then snow yesterday.  It was really good to be back even though I got a lot done in my time at home.  For one, I’ve finally designed my new website and am really pleased that I could do it myself, with a little help from my friend Kelly, and especially happy that I’ll be able to update it myself with new work as I go.  I’ll be closing this blog and transferring the blog to the new site next Monday.  It’s really just the name that will change and the look of things; the blog will continue as usual.  The new site has lots of pages of art though and a few of writing.

I thought I might work on a banner for the new site at the studio today but when I started in these little people started to emerge.  I really love them.  They look particularly good grouped together.  I ended up doing 18 of them.  Usually I do art based on ideas so this was a bit of a departure for me.  I started with black silhouettes of people and thought I’d put them on patterned backgrounds then got the idea that the people themselves ought to be patterned and just carried on from there.  It’s part of the ‘All Are One’ theme.

At then end of the day my studio neighbor, Kaetlyn Wilcox, and I did show and tell.  Her work is so wondrous and magical and it was really great to just share with another artist what had gotten done today. Looking forward to tomorrow and working some more on paper.  Meanwhile, we have the opening of the faculty/studio artist show at the Arsenal Center for the Arts on Thursday and I’ll try to take some pictures to post of that.  Hope you’re all well.

Yes, it’s true—at this point my little eyeballs are out on stalks and spinning around like whirling dervishes. I’ve spent the entire weekend trying to design my new website which will have both my art and writing on view. And yes, I did design a site already on iWeb, which is Apple’s dreamy web design software but as with all things techy there are pros and cons. A lot of research indicated that it may be difficult to upload new stuff to the iWeb site if not publishing on Mobile Me, which I’m not, for reasons too complicated and boring to go into. So I’ve decided to use Wordpress, which is the blogging application that I use here and to twist it into a website as well as a blog so everything will be in one place.

That’s the idea and I do think it’s coming along. I have sought the help of my dear friend, Kelly, who is a genius at such things and she assures me that we’ll get it together. I could not do it alone, for sure. I can get about halfway but can’t make it into the home stretch. Once Kelly figures it all out, I’ll be able to keep it up with it though and it will be great to be able to update the work as I do it.

It’s funny putting up a site with art because so much of the art was done in the past and it feels a bit like visiting a museum you’ve been to a few too many times. Was that me? I’m in a transition period with my art and I feel the wind is blowing in with new ways of doing things. This is my time to get clear about the vision and doing the site is helping, I can see.

On another note, I was down with a rotten cold all week so stayed home and chipped away on the computer. I even canceled my drawing class on Saturday so I wouldn’t cough and sneeze on my wonderful students. But I did pop my head into the Center on Saturday afternoon to see the Faculty/Studio Artist show which has just gone up. My own mini-installation piece, The Mahatma Gandhi Hat Company, is right at the top of the stairs to the right of the very accomplished works of Deb Putnoi.  They are in very good company and feel quite honored, I must say.  The whole show is very lively, full of wit and good energy. The opening is this Thursday for anyone in the Boston area. Come along! The Arsenal Center for the Arts. I’ll post photos soon.

This shows the piece a few days ago. The finished piece has a portrait of Gandhi in the middle.

I’ve just about finished my small series of paintings, The Mahatma Gandhi Hat Company, just in time for the show to be hung on Tuesday.  I apologize for the photos;they’re a bit fuzzy and I really will read that camera manual one day soon.  The actual piece will not have the four little paintings in the center but a portrait of Gandhi instead.  On the whole I’m quite pleased with it and will post better photos once I get them.  You can see the portrait of Gandhi lying on the table not far from my thermos of coffee.

I have to say that deadlines are helpful in forcing the hand—the work does get done.  But they’re also a little stressful because I work more intensely than I like to.  So today, Saturday, I’m a bit pooped.  We had a good, relaxing drawing class this morning and drew faces from photographs.  What I love about the drawings of less experienced artists is that they’re so full of individuality and charm.  The trick is to keep that essence as we build skills, no easy feat.  It makes me wonder just how much we need in the way of drawing skill, just enough, I think, so that the drawing convinces and doesn’t look entirely accidental.

Today I loved all of my students drawings.  Every person got to that place of authenticity and total uniqueness.  It’s just so interesting to see how everyone has something different to express.  I loved their drawings more today than I loved my own.  Sometimes I feel a little too practiced—it can be a challenge to be fully and totally present in the drawing.  But then I’m pooped from painting solidly and at a great pace for the last two weeks.

One thing that came out of this work is the strong desire to create work that can be turned into multiples one way or another.  I really am not very interested in the gallery system as I go forward.  This is a new chapter for me as an artist and I’m very aware of the brave new world of internet art marketing.  I love the fact that people are selling wonderful things online for small amounts of money.  These are genuine, honest pieces and I’m feeling my way forward in this direction.  These paintings took far too much time to make to sell for low money but perhaps giclée prints might work.  Even those cost a certain amount to produce so I continue to think and explore options.  I do want to do more with The Mahatma Gandhi Hat Company.  “Keeping Peace on the Mind.”  I probably need to get myself one of those hats!

That’s it from here this week.  With luck, I’ll get to take photos of the new show as it goes up on Tuesday.  Should be fun.

I’ve spent most of my working life meeting deadlines.  That’s the life of the freelance graphic artist and there’s some sense of satisfaction in being able to come up with creative solutions to situations in short time.  It’s good training.  Creativity is a curious thing—it doesn’t come from thinking or trying but from the meeting of experience and inspiration.  It’s hard to open to inspiration when a deadline looms.

In two weeks I’ll be in the Faculty Show at the Arsenal Center for the Arts and that’s not much time considering that a week ago I’d not begun.  But I did have some inspiration.  I want to continue to work on my word paintings but to increase the scale.  So far everything has been small because I’ve worked so much as an illustrator.  So I began with a canvas 32 inches square.

I wasn’t in the least concerned which is rather typical but perhaps I should have been.  On a larger scale my skills are still a little shaky.  I got muddled half way through the first painting and the more I worked the worse it became.  I know this one.  Sometimes we just have to let go.

So, on I went to the next piece, equally large.  Big things take more time, of course, and I was a bit anxious about the deadline.  With small scale work I know exactly how long I need because I’ve done so much of it and am confident of what will emerge. I was not confident with this.  I saw I needed to experiment more.

This morning I went to the studio and sat for a half hour with a cup of tea scribbling a few notes in my journal, just as I do most mornings before beginning to clear the head and focus on what I want to do that day.  Then I meditated for few minutes so I felt very peaceful.  The day before had been quite stressful for all kinds of silly reasons and that is not a good place from which to make art.  I then opened my sketchbook and suddenly knew just what to do.  Abandon ship!  A new idea came at once—something smaller and more manageable.  Luckily I had the art boards on hand in just the size I needed.  I’ll post these works in a few days when I’m done.  They’re very, very simple and I love them.  Each one is a painting of a small white cap sitting in a field of color—Mahatma Ghandi’s white cap.  They’re like fake ads, as much of my word art is, in this case ads for hats that will raise your consciousness in one way or another.  Ads for The Mahatma Ghandhi Hat Company.  I will post photos in a few days when the paintings are done.

Meanwhile I see that letting go allows for letting in.  Letting go is not giving up.  It’s surrendering to the light of the day, whatever it is.  That’s all.  And what a sweet day it was today.  I can’t wait to get back to the studio tomorrow.

In the story, a group of people are living on various barges at one end of the Thames River on the edge of London.  The barges are not seaworthy and some are, in fact, rusty artifacts full of holes, just barely afloat.  The inhabitants of these barges have mostly arrived out of necessity—the single mother, the artist, the gay man.  They can’t cope, you see, with the demands of onshore life, with what they’d have to do to live in London proper or anywhere pricey for that matter.  Most don’t expect to stay offshore forever though as time goes by they seem to find something kind and reassuring there.  It’s pinched, for sure, and damp but there is real friendship. One person helps another.  They have their fits and confusions.  One even makes his living in a rather nefarious fashion but there’s no judgment and the bridges between the barges are open.  When one of the inhabitants must leave they all rally around to help sell that person’s barge, full of leaks as it is.

The barge dwellers are free from pretense.  Fitzgerald, once a barge inhabitant herself, is singing the praises the person who is treading his or her own path however indelicately.

It was heartening to read.  All artists are offshore really as is anyone who chooses to take risks of one kind or another. Fitzgerald shows the risk has immeasurable often hidden rewards though not financial ones.

For all of us women who’ve had to juggle so many things to be artists of one kind or another, we can thank Fitzgerald for not sinking, falling overboard or giving up.  If she hadn’t gone offshore she couldn’t have written this book.  The glimpse she gives of onshore life is not attractive but she hints at safety there too.  But there’s liberation in setting up offshore, at least for a while.  So, if you’re offshore, keep your head up and plug the holes in your barge as best you can.  Then read this book.

There’s so much I love about this man.  First, he did not go to art school and taught himself which really made it impossible to be anything but quirky and funky though he did it with a lot more panache than most.  Second, he felt like an outsider because he immigrated from Hungary as a boy and kids made fun of him for being a bit plump and not speaking English.  And he kept the outsider vision throughout his career and didn’t try to fit in. Third, he had shrewd political vision.  It seems he not only saw that almost everything in art and design has to do with money but he rebelled against conformity and acceptance. All so courageous.

He had a kind of ‘accidental’ career starting as a clerk in a New York bookstore that eventually became Barnes and Noble and becoming their chief designer before moving on to a thousand other things.  Whatever he did, he made content the subject and refused to submerge it in fancy, boring packaging.  He used his clients’ commissions to say something vital, eventually becoming the designer/editor for a magazine sponsored by Bennetton called Colors, among other things.  He was whimsical and anarchical and I can’t help feeling we need some of that spunk now too.  The tide has changed, hallelujah, but we’re going to have to keep hope alive.  So reading this book on this snowy day is quickening my pulse a little and giving me all sorts of ideas.

I’m just finishing my drawing book which is based on The Saturday Morning Drawing Club, the class I teach at The Arsenal Center for the Arts.  It had way too many words.  I keep cutting and cutting which gets easier as I begin to work on the images.  And then, yesterday, the TIBOR book jumped off my bookshelf and into my hands.  I think books are like that.  They can sit still for a long time but when you really ought to be considering what they say, they just leap into your hands.  My own basic point is that through the practice of drawing and making art we can all be more anarchical, more true to ourselves, braver, wilder, more fun, more empowered, more TIBOR, which I’m now making into an adjective.

BTW, the painting here is the cover of the book—painted in India from a mailed in photo for $40.  Isn’t it fabulous?

And now, out to shovel again.

Last night Dear A and I set out for our favorite restaurant in Cambridge to celebrate despite all the snow.  The restaurant slashed their prices, brought in a band and renamed everything on the menu—Obama Soup, Obama Salad, Obama Chicken and so on.  Delicious.  We didn’t stay to dance because the band was a little late getting there.  But we were hanging out in the bar watching the big TV when Beyoncé sang and the Obamas danced.  The whole place went wild.

This must be a quantum leap.  in science a quantum is a very tiny unit of measurement but a quantum leap is gigantic.  In one moment an atom is in one orbit then in the same moment it’s in another higher orbit without moving through any of the intervening steps.  We’re in another orbit now and more leaps are coming.

Meanwhile everyone’s walking around with smiles on their faces.  Strangers are saying hi to each other and I’m still trying to believe how absolutely fantastic that benediction was.  True art on the planet.  One old black man going way over the top and just saying it just he sees it. This time we laughed.  Amen, brother.