These forest images are part of a new project, a series of paintings based on a forest’s patterns over a very specific time period. When I look at these images I see patterns of light and shade, and rhythms of repeated forms. Sure, I could paint a realistic image but I find abstract images, that have been based on the real, are more evocative and allow my mind space to wander and make my own connections.

My first step in pulling abstract paintings from these photographs is to simplify to the essentials, whether it is rhythm and pattern, or color and form. I have been using filters and other adjustments in Photoshop to simplify the photograph’s information. Next up is drawing: sometimes in the computer (I like Illustrator and vector drawing), sometimes with charcoal, pencil or pens, in a sketchbook, in a computer, or over a printed image.

Once I’ve found some promising forms the fun will really begin as I twist and layer and coax them into giving up the forest’s secret music.

Fugue #7, ©2011 Caroline Roberts

I came across this quote in Letters to a Young Artist:

Synthesize, Synthesize, Synthesize. Force relationships between forms that may seem incompatible. If they fuse, maybe you’ve found something fresh. This procedure should be carried out with the methodical precision of a chemical engineer.

Kerry James Marshall

And this is just what I intend to do.

Chickens by river seal on Flickr

It can’t have escaped anyone’s notice that there have been only tumbleweeds around here lately. I stopped posting abruptly back in the Spring because I was drowning in stress. Everything that was not essential was eliminated.

The stress wasn’t even any of the classic biggies – no illness, no death, no major changes – it was just too many stressors, too many major commitments. Well, and maybe one biggie that is never on the lists: facing the limitations and restrictions of my own personality.

The accumulating stress caused chronic insomnia – I didn’t get more than 6 hours of very broken sleep from April to June. Some nights I slept as little as one hour and somehow functioned the next day. Adrenaline is a crazy thing!

After I eliminated the external stress sources I went right back to sleeping (being able to dream again made me so happy!) and finally I’m looking around at all the non-essential but FUN things I dropped. I struggle with writing blog entries (if I could only mind-map or draw each one and post it like that!) but the results are so often worth the struggle. Not everyone I meet in my daily life likes to talk about art, paint, light, and color.

Which all leads to my point (really, it does!): I just read Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project  for about the third time. There are lots of things I take from this book but the one that pushed me to the keyboard this morning is this: Be Caroline. For months I have argued myself in circles about the point of my blog – what niche does it fill, what do I want to write about? – but I could not choose just one. And I come to the conclusion that since I often wander off down rabbit holes of curiosity, then so will my blog. Since I enjoy the challenge of figuring out how to get myself organized, stay on track and generally keep chaos from messing with my studio practice, then I will write about that too. I like focused blogs but I am not a single focus person. However, I promise not to muse about the contents of my sock drawer or what we had for dinner or my kids report cards (not that these things can’t be interesting, but they are not me), and I will try to stay somewhat close to the studio.

I can promise that works in progress and my studio practice, or the books I read and the images I see will definitely appear, and they will have no discernable order or pattern. Just like me really.

Central Park in Winter

Half way through any project/task/life ambition, I lose all that initial enthusiasm, look back and see how far I’ve come, and instead of feeling elated I just feel tired.

And it’s not just me: look at all the construction projects where the punch list drags on and on and on. Or the diets that were started in January and abandoned by February.

So what can we do about it?  I think the sagging, wilting feeling is inevitable. Perhaps the only thing to do is to take a breath and start again, as if from scratch. Maybe even reconfirm, or redefine, the plan. Or at least pull out the plan and have a look at it.

That’s where I’m going to start and I’ll let you know how it goes. In the meantime if you have some suggestions for getting through the dip I would love to hear them!

P.S. Does everyone get post-exhibition blues?

Chromo Interference Atmosphere at Color in Space and Time

The Carlos Cruz-Diez retrospective, Color in Space and Time, opens tomorrow, February 6th, at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

The exhibition was curated by Mari Carmen Ramirez, MFAH Wortham curator of Latin American art, and encompasses Cruz-Diez’ entire career, from realistic paintings from the 1940s, to Physichromies from the last few years. It includes a Chromosaturation room and the Chromointerference Ambience shown above, as well as 3-D posters of his atelier in Paris and samples of the machines he has designed and built to construct his Physichromies.

From the MFAH website:

For more than five decades, Carlos Cruz-Diez (born 1923) has experimented intensively with the origins and optics of color. His wide-ranging body of work includes unconventional color structures, light environments, street interventions, architectural integration projects, and experimental works that engage the response of the human eye while insisting on the participatory nature of color.

Cruz-Diez was born in Caracas, Venezuela in 1923, travelled to Paris in 1955, and moved to Europe permanently in 1960. Today he maintains studios, or ateliers, in Paris, Caracas, and Panama City. He began his research on color alongside the Kinetic Movement of the 1960s, reading Newton, Goethe, Albers and many others. His work aims to show that color, when interacting with the observer, can project into space without the aid of form.

I was struck most of all by the range, variation and infinite possibilities present in his Physichromie series, of which there are now over 2000. He first constructed these out of cardboard but later moved to PVC. When the oil crisis occurred and plastics were becoming scarce he switched to aluminum, bent into a U shape, combined with Plexiglas and screen printing. Each material problem that had to be solved has strengthened and clarified his work.

It is difficult to appreciate any of his work from photographs as it requires the viewer as an active, moving participant. Below is a video of how Physichromie 450 changed as I walked past it. Please excuse the wobble in the middle when I nearly walked into another viewer – there was a lot of that going on last night!

The Chromosaturation is a space comprised of three, interconnecting rooms, each bathed in a different color – red, green or blue. After spending a few minutes in one of the rooms your eyes adjust to the monochromatic environment and what was originally a vivid blue slowly fades to white and other colors become apparent, even though only blue light is present. At the preview photographs were allowed but no camera can capture that effect – cameras simply do not adjust and adapt as our eyes do.

Chromosaturation, blue space, Carlos Cruz-Diez

There is a lot to see and take in at this exhibition, some of which is extremely tiring for the eyes, and it deserves multiple visits to best appreciate and absorb the long and illustrious life-work of Cruz-Diez. The only works I felt were missing were his Transchromie series – an environment of colored Plexiglas that colors the viewers world as they move through it.

In connection with his retrospective, Carlos Cruz-Diez is presenting a seminar class, The Doors of Perception, at Glassell, in collaboration with Arielle Masson.  As I am a member of that class this blog may be somewhat skewed towards color, color theory and kinetic art over the next few months!

Tetra Circular Azul by Elias Crespin

Through my visits to Cosmopolitan Routes: Houston Collects Latin American Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, I have been introduced to the work of Elias Crespin, in particular Tetra Circular Azul (shown above). The squares appear to float and move in space without support; tilting and moving they change configuration, sometimes all together, sometimes as few as one piece at a time. His Picasa web album has a series of images to gives= you an idea of the changes this sculpture makes over time.

While I was standing by the sculpture, making notes and watching, mesmerized, as it moved and danced in the air, two men came over, iPhone in hand and started discussing the speed of the sculpture. This piece is controlled via an iPhone – yes, I guess “there’s an app for that”!

We got talking about the sculpture, the artist and the intersection of Math and Art; and I discovered later that I had been speaking to none other than the sculpture’s owner, Brad Bucher. He told me about his favorite configuration that the piece goes through – a moment when the sculpture forms a curve, as though a spiral staircase. A moment which occurred as we spoke and it is indeed an exquisite, sweeping curve, the sculpture pausing just long enough for you to take in its beauty, before moving on to the next pose, like a ballerina.

I wish I had known because I would liked to have asked if the piece is an area with natural or changing light, and how that light affects the sculpture. Something that cannot be seen in a museum or gallery setting.

I am particularly drawn to the transparency of the perspex and the way the overlapping squares, at varying angles, create variations in the depth and intensity of the blue. Although it may not be a specific part of the piece, the reflective surface of the perspex creates moving reflected light patterns on the ground below, as well as blue, semi-transparent shadows.

Elias Crespin is a Venezuelan artist living in Paris who trained as a computer scientist. He talks about his art as “a metallic dance of elegance” and “painting in the air”. His work started after he saw the works of Jesús Rafael Soto and wondered how they would look if they were to move. He learnt how to control one motor with the computer, then two, then eight and the many more – Tetra Circular Azul has no less than 64 motors.

I consider myself very lucky to live near a large museum, like the MFAH, where I can come into contact with works, and learn about artists, that I might never otherwise see. I read widely, but contemporary art isn’t in the books yet  - the only way to learn about it is to go to shows, at museums or at galleries, make notes and then start digging up information and images on the web. This show in particular has taught me that I should go to every show that I can, because I just never know what I will come into contact with – Elias’ work was not the only piece that has had me digging around on Google all day, but more of that another day!

Why is there a difference between the museums in terms of the number of galleries, artworks and related information?

Google approached the museum partners without any curatorial direction, and each museum was able to chose the number of galleries, artwork and information they wanted to include, based on reasons specific to them. All content in the information panel pertaining to individual artworks was also provided by the museums.

The museums included in the site are all big names and are spread across the US and Europe – see the quoted list below. It is possible to navigate around the museums using the Google Streetview technology, but I preferred selecting individual works. Just as with StreetView or Google Maps the high resolution images take a moment to load each time the zoom changes, but I’m on a Wi-Fi connection and I did not find the wait times too long. My favorite way to navigate was by museum or ‘More works by this artist’, which lists all the artwork on the site from that artist.

For now the following museums are included in the project:

• Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin – Germany
• Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian, Washington DC – USA
• The Frick Collection, NYC – USA
• Gemäldegalerie, Berlin – Germany
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC – USA
• MoMA, The Museum of Modern Art, NYC – USA
• Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid – Spain
• Museo Thyssen – Bornemisza, Madrid – Spain
• Museum Kampa, Prague – Czech Republic
• National Gallery, London – UK
• Palace of Versailles – France
• Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam – The Netherlands
• The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg – Russia
• State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow – Russia
• Tate Britain, London – UK
• Uffizi Gallery, Florence – Italy
• Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam – The Netherlands

The Home page gives some information about the selection of artworks in the project, a video about using the site and a really interesting video showing the work that went into obtaining these photographs.

I hope that this site is expanded in the future as I can see it being a very valuable resource, for teachers, for artists and for art lovers. Will it reduce museum attendance? I don’t believe so, no more than books of high quality images do. It is impossible to replicate the sensation of being in front of the real painting: the size and scale compared to your self is a real factor in how a painting ‘feels’. On the screen Vermeer’s jewel of a painting, The Milkmaid (45.5cm x 41cm), is the same size as Rembrandt’s Night Watch (363cm x 437cm), despite the later being nearly 10 times its size! Texture or smoothness of the paint is also a part of the viewing experience for me – although I can see Van Gogh’s brushwork on the screen I cannot see the texture as well as on the real painting.

Onion Skin
©2010 Caroline S Roberts

As many of you know, I have an ongoing theme of transparency and shadows. I also have a tendency to amuse my family (or drive them crazy) by taking photographs of the strangest things. Photographs, for me, are a form of sketching. They allow me to study light more intensely than I can with a pencil & paper sketch. In theory they are faster too, but that doesn’t stop me from extending a walk in the woods by a few hours by stopping every few yards!

Last night I was making chicken soup for my sickly, coughing children, and I became fascinated by the onion skin. Yep, the skin. There was a layer, of this pretty white onion, that was not papery but not thick and edible either. Its transparency fascinated me and has led to a series of photographs. The better ones today as the skin has dried and crumpled overnight.

I don’t yet know what these will turn into, but I am loving the reflections, particularly on the one above. I want to bring out more of the translucency in the one below and explore some more unusual compositions.

Translucent Onion Skin
©2010 Caroline S Roberts

Who knew soup could be so inspiring?

What everyday objects have been inspiring or fascinating you recently? Share some in the comments so we can all see our surroundings in a new and unusual way!