Rebecca's Nest

The practice of seeing (Part 2)

2011-11-06T09:22:00.001-06:00

Last week, I wrote about an interview conducted by Alessia Masi in ARTnews, November 2011. She interviewed Wayne Thiebaud in an article titled “Object Lessons: Wayne Thiebaud on Morandi, light, color, shadows and more.” After Thiebaud discusses Morandi so expressively, Ms. Masi inquires about his own art practice, how he works in general, from reference, memory or imagination.

Thiebaud notes that he cannot work from photography, that he has a “kind of quarrel with them.” He notes that he does a lot of drawing, a lot of painting. He also talks about looking at other artists for his reference. He says that with a lot of practice, you can see a dime size piece of a painting and know whether or not it is a Vermeer, a Degas, a Seurat. He says you have to look a lot, see a lot, spend more time and look more carefully to learn.

One story that he related I found fascinating. He says that the painter Jean Ingres challenged his students to create a 100 step achromatic value study. The students rebelled saying it was impossible. Then Ingres brought out his own student work featuring a 1000 step value study!

Ingres, Jean-Auguste-Dominique (1780-1867)

Half-figure of a Bather

1807; oil on canvas

Can you imagine a 1000 step value study? Amazing. Thiebaud says that by looking at the back of one of Ingres’ Turkish Bathers, you can see those beautiful subtle values.

In terms of practicing drawing, Thiebaud notes that Mondrian made thousands of little thumbnails. These drawings would be studies for placement and intersection of his lines and to determine “how much space in one area as opposed to another”. (pg 80) Thiebaud notes that one has to test out different set ups, re-draw, adjust, move things slightly and pay attention to composition if you are serious about your work. He acknowledges that it can be neurotic but, how much you learn! Don’t, as Thiebaud notes, cast too early in concrete. Practice seeing, drawing, painting.

I’ve read many books about practice but I always get more inspired when I read interviews or articles or books that give you specifics. I feel like the artist is in the room with me, sitting next to me, encouraging me by example.

In the upcoming weeks, I will be visiting the Dallas Museum of Art to see the work of Mark Bradford and going to the Modern Art Museum of Ft Worth to see the Richard Diebenkorn exhibit. I’ve read a book on Diebenkorn, and have seen the ART21 video on Bradford. I look forward to checking out other books on both and reporting on my visits.

The practice of seeing (Part 1)

2011-10-30T14:42:00.001-05:00

I read a very interesting article the other day in ARTNews, November 2011. The title of the article is “Not-So-Still Lifes: Thiebaud on Morandi.” In the article Wayne Thiebaud talks about the good lessons that can be learned from looking at Giorgio Morandi’s work such as the “wonder of intimacy and the love of long looking.” Spatially, there is something not quite right in Morandi’s still lifes and, also, dare I say it, in some of Thiebaud’s. This is what makes them more interesting than a traditional still life.

Thiebaud goes on to describe more of “long looking,” “of staring but at the same time moving the eye, finding out what’s really there, and there are so many things that are subtle and may look like something at one moment but not the next.”

Wayne Thiebaud, Two Cheese Cubes, 2011

Thiebaud also says that Morandi’s work was hard to appreciate initially, “These didn’t come to you, you had to go to them.”

Giorgio Morandi; Natura morta (still life), 1956, oil on canvas, 30.6 x 40.8 cm

Thiebaud goes on to talk about the formal qualities of light such as highlights, core and cast shadows and how to replicate or use these strategically as a way of determining volume. With Morandi’s work, and also I believe with Thiebaud’s paintings, he says, “the light is created through creating energy, by the juxtaposition of colors and the interaction of those colors to create light quite different from the modulation of volumetric rendering.” Other artists who use light by “way of color” are Bonnard, Matisse or Vuillard. The light can be discussed as “eternal or symbolic or a light that is sustained by energy.”

Giorgio Morandi; Natura Morta (above), Wayne Thiebaud, Condiment Bowls, 2008 (below)

We are currently working with color to express the illusion of space two dimensionally in my classes. This article could not have come at a better time.

Hunting for Treasure

2011-07-30T18:39:00.001-05:00

Above: sneak peek at a commission not yet delivered…

Every year Seth Apter organizes a "Treasure Hunt" for favorite blog posts from the past. You can find links to other bloggers taking part in the treasure hunt, here. This post about Eva Hesse still gets lots of hits, so I know I’m not alone in my admiration.

In my opinion, no female artist has had the impact on art that Eva Hesse had in her short life. (1936-1970). I am particularly enamored of her drawings and her sculpture. Her drawings have a child-like feel to them and she was a master at using color. From the Estate of Eva Hesse site:

Untitled; 1963-64; Collage with ink, gouache and watercolor on paper; 22 x 30"

Untitled; 1963; gouache, watercolor, pencil on paper; 22 x 30"

Untitled, 1963; oilstick, ink and pencil on paper; 8.5 x 11"

Untitled; 1963; collage with gouache, ink and watercolor on paper; 36 1/4 x 27 3/4"

This book on her drawings is worth checking out if available in your area.

Show Opening

2011-04-18T08:16:00.001-05:00

My show opening was a great success – a huge thank you to everyone who came out and supported me and my work. I’m updating my website with all of the new artwork over the next week, so be sure and visit there to see all the work in the show as well as my older pieces.

In the meantime, here are two shots of the west and east walls:

And the series “Fragments”:

Each is 6” x 6” and are honoring my grandmother with the fragments of leather gloves, along with industrial and unprocessed wool felt; machine embroidery.

New York Park Armory Red & White Quilt Show

2011-04-05T08:50:00.001-05:00

You may have seen the overall image of the amazing four day show at the Park Armory in NYC. It was put on by the Folk Art Museum and consisted of over 650 quilts owned by collector Joanna Rose. She’s been collecting red and white quilts since 1956. Here is a slide show so you can see some of the quilts in detail. You can read interviews with one of the co-curators and the head of the exhibition design company here and here.

Exhibit opening

2011-03-29T09:58:00.001-05:00

I’ve been given the wonderful opportunity to show my artwork at a small arts center in Irving, Texas (near Dallas). I am having an opening Sunday, April 3 from 2-4pm and would love to see you there! Here’s the information and a few photos of the new work in the show. I’ll be posting all the artwork on my blog once the show is over.

New Work by Rebecca Howdeshell
Exhibit dates: March 27 - April 28, 2011
Opening: Sunday, April 3rd, 2-4PM
Contact Information:
howdeshell@gmail.com
http://rebeccahowdeshell.blogspot.com

Jaycee Park Center for the Arts Directions
2000 W. Airport Freeway
P.O. Box 153581
Irving, Texas 75015-3581

(Note: the entrance off the service road is still open – just stay on the service road and turn in through the construction barrels)

Gallery 972-721-2488
Hours:12:30 p.m. - 4:30 p.m. Monday thru Thursday, and 1:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m. on Sundays. Closed holidays.
Email info@irvingart.org

Sectional Dance II; 2011; industrial felt, thread; 6” x 6”

Cross Section IX; 2011; industrial felt, thread; 12” x 12”

Modern Geometry I; 2011; industrial felt, thread; 12” x 12”

South and east walls of gallery with artwork installed

Two recommendations

2011-03-05T13:03:00.001-06:00

Recently, I had the opportunity to see a clip of the Oscar winning animated short “The Lost Thing.” I was intrigued enough to purchase it on iTunes for $1.99. Wow. This short, about 16 minutes long, is so visually arresting with a compelling story line to boot. Highly, highly recommended.

I challenge you not to watch the part that begins about 12 minutes in, over and over.

Second is a film that I’ve had in my Netflix queue forever due to another artist recommending it. The documentary is now available for free on demand. “Between the Folds” is billed as the science of art and the art of science. I find it hard to describe, it is so much more than the art of origami. The documentary starts small and builds into possibilities that you can’t even imagine. Watch this!

Rachel Whiteread (cont.)

2011-02-06T08:09:00.000-06:00

Courtesy of Jo Horswill at Mystory, a short video of Rachel Whiteread talking about her Drawing show, which I wrote about here.

Rachel Whiteread: Drawings from Field Studies on Vimeo.

Class results

2010-10-31T13:05:00.002-05:00

We had a great time during my October Blast class. It is fun and educational to be able to really study a concept or principle in detail and delve into all the ways you can use motion, rhythm and repetition to your advantage when creating composition.
I asked the participants to share an image exhibiting motion in her work and was very pleased with the images chosen:

Above (left) is Rosemary Claus-Gray’s Indigo Sketches.
Above (right) is Jeanne Raffer Beck's Letter Rhythms.

Above (left) is Marcia DeCamp’s Earthquake Faults.
Above (right) is Jeanne Simpson’s Green Heatwave.

Samples

2010-09-06T22:15:00.001-05:00

Making samples is a great way to work through design and construction issues. I spent a nice part of this long holiday weekend relaxing and visiting with family. Most important was the time I got to spend in the studio stitching on new large work.

I’ve also been working through some ideas for a new series on paper. These two collages (and one that didn’t work at all) are the results of my musings. Each are about 4” x 6”.

Art filled weekend

2010-08-15T09:27:00.001-05:00

I was so excited to be able to spend part of my birthday weekend visiting some exhibits in Dallas. If you are in the area, I recommend all of these, particularly the Luc Tuymans exhibit at the Dallas Museum of Art. It is on exhibit until September 5. The Rachel Whiteread exhibit ended Saturday, unfortunately, but the Il Lee exhibit continues into September.

Rachel Whiteread is known for her installation work and large scale sculptures that reference space. At her exhibit, there were many drawings of some of her monumental projects, such as the Holocaust Memorial in Vienna and the Water Tower on the roof of the Museum of Modern Art. In studying negative space and memory, she creates large molds and casts them often using resin. For example, the Holocaust Memorial is a cast of an interior of a library including imprints of the books on the shelves.

Although Whiteread says that these drawings aren’t preparatory work for her installations but rather art unto themselves, when viewing them and reading about the resultant sculptures, it is hard to not see them as such. The Water Tower drawings were printed photographs where she had inserted the outline of her proposed sculpture into the environment. She often draws on graph paper and uses correction fluid to fill in the outline. She also did one of the Water Tower at night that I found absolutely stunning. I can’t find an image online but below are two of the Water Tower drawings:

On the lower floor of the Nasher Sculpture Center, I found some of my favorite of the drawings and collections in the exhibit. Below is a drawing of Stairs:

My very favorite were the collections of images where she took vintage postcards and altered them with paint, or in the case below, by using a hole punch:

There were many, many of these propped on rows of display boards. The book that accompanies the exhibit only has images of 2-3 and that was a disappointment but you can see more images of the exhibit here. In addition, Whiteread sent collections of objects she has picked up on the street and in thrift stores. She likens these collections to “like doodling in a sketchbook.” Below are shoe molds and two of her casts:

The Il Lee exhibit was in a fairly small space at the Crow Museum but the high ceilings made up for it and showed the artwork beautifully. Lee’s drawings convey a huge amount of energy and he says his new drawings are more angular, interrupted with a more rigorous approach. Some are huge, 4’ x 6’ and you know that Lee is putting his whole body into creating these drawings. There is intent in the drawings, you can definitely follow the pattern as they are constructed. Below is one example and an image of Lee in action:

There was also a wall of drawing studies, about 50 of them hung salon-style. I found them fascinating as they were put on scrap paper, newspaper and other material. Highly recommended.

A celebration

2010-08-06T08:10:00.001-05:00

Today is my birthday and those of you who are artists can guess how I’ll be celebrating. I purposely planned a long weekend to take advantage of TIME -- that all elusive thing that seems to disappear when you work outside the home for long hours. I’m also spending part of tomorrow visiting some exhibits in Dallas, including Il Lee at the Crow Collection of Asian Art, the drawings of Rachel Whiteread at the Nasher Sculpture Center and the paintings of Luc Tuymans at the Dallas Museum of Art. Whew.

There will also be various dinners and lunches which I plan to take full advantage of including a free brunch offered all of their subscribers at the Blue Mesa Grill.

Jeanne Simpson has been one of the students in my pilot offering of classes, and I wanted to feature two of her homework assignments. The first one was in response to an exercise that asked my students to create an example of proximity using actual line:

The second image was in response to an assignment to explore the illusion of space:

I think she did a wonderful job!

Happy Fourth!

2010-07-04T09:12:00.002-05:00

For those of us in the US today is the Fourth of July, Independence Day. This day has a lot of meaning for me beyond the celebration of the US declaring independence from Great Britain. My maternal grandmother was born on this day in 1902. She passed away in 1999 just short of her 97th birthday.

She inspired me every day through her work ethic, independence and character. She was an accomplished cook, gardener, seamstress, as well as doing china painting later in her life. It seemed to me as a child, that everything she touched turned to gold, or on Christmas, pink, as growing up she would decorate her pink tree with pink lights and bulbs. It was so magical to walk into that room on Christmas Eve.

I found out later in life that her "talent" came from sheer hard work and perseverance. As an artist, I strive to do the very best I can and sweat through numerous samples to accomplish just that. Some days, I'm very hard on myself for the time it takes to get from idea to product. In reality, if I slow down and enjoy the process, the outcome is so much more enjoyable. It isn't perfection we are after but rather artwork that comes near the imagined final product and most important, evokes the emotion and soul of our ideas. Today, I remember my grandmother and salute her memory by reminding myself of just why I love being an artist.

Art Heroines

2010-03-31T08:11:00.001-05:00

Terry Jarrard-Dimond posted some photos of her studio on Facebook and included a sampling of images of her art heroines. One of her heroines is also one of mine, Eva Hesse. While sitting outside recently enjoying the spring sun, I was reading Catherine de Zegher's book Eva Hesse Drawing.

Highly recommended. One of the most interesting parts of the book is Hesse's "relationship" with Anni Albers. You can certainly see a connection between the work Hesse was doing and fiber art. More discussion to follow.

Collage exchange

2009-11-14T21:27:00.006-06:00

I recently participated in a private collage exchange and here is one of the collages I submitted. It is 9" x 7" and mounted to an 10" x 8" piece of watercolor paper. Part of the image was a collage that was scanned and printed on W/C paper, then additional imagery was added.

New felt artwork

2009-08-29T10:19:00.003-05:00

A few weeks ago, I posted a blog with new spinal drawings here. Although I don't work directly from my drawings, I do use them to map out where the major elements fall on the page as I want to get proportion right. I saw a post about Rapid Resizer, a software program that allows you to enlarge your drawings that I had heard about some time ago but had never tried. I downloaded a trial of the product and found it very easy to use. Here is an enlargement of one of my drawings:

As you can see, it turns your drawings/sketches into line drawings that can be used for patterns or for placement. Below is my latest felt artwork derived from the line drawing.

Density; 24" x 24"; industrial felt, paper, thread; 2009

Density (detail)

Artist Recommendation – Marilyn Pappas

2009-08-22T13:59:00.003-05:00

Marilyn Pappas has been included in exhibits at the Snyderman-Works Galleries in Philadelphia and had a solo exhibit at the Nancy Margolis Gallery in NYC. She taught for many years at the Maryland College of Art and Design. Marilyn will be exhibiting her work and speaking at SOFA Chicago in November.

I'm particularly drawn to her new work titled "The Life of Beauty." Marilyn says about this work that they are "meditations on Western concepts of beauty throughout time." She also states that she is interested in the "imperfection of beauty and the beauty of imperfection." She also talks about the comfort of hand work, the meditative quality and the slow development of her work. You can read more of Marilyn's statements here.

Here are some examples from The Life of Beauty series:

Nike and the Life of Beauty (left and detail, right); 2006; 102" x 59"; cotton, linen, gold

Left: Nike with Broken Wings (detail); 2002-2008; 68" x 33"; cotton, linen, gold. Right: Venus, Marilyn and the Life of Beauty (detail); 2009; 70" x 52"; cotton, linen

And from the Fragments Series: left: Fragment of a Wounded Amazon; 2000; 32" x 23"; cotton, linen. Right: Fragment of Killimachos Aphrodite; 1995; 36" x 15" x 2"; cotton, linen

Conversations

2009-08-17T08:00:00.004-05:00

I am participating in a project called Compositional Conversations. This was conceived by Terry Jarrad-Dimond. There are 14 artists in the group and my contribution will be featured today. Terry will be posting updates once a week, so check in on Mondays to see the progress and please join in on the conversation. All input is welcome!

As part of the process, I made full size patterns to test how they worked before making any fabric choices. Below is the composition with the paper pattern after I had made my final shape choice. Read the full story here.

Collage and sketchbook pages

2009-07-28T20:03:00.003-05:00

New sketchbook page

2009-07-20T06:03:00.001-05:00

New collage, sketchbook and tiny painting

2009-07-07T15:18:00.002-05:00

This is a small (6" x 6") collage of two kinds of handmade paper stitched onto watercolor paper. It is fascinating to me how the holes in the paper become such a strong design element:

And here are two pages from my just completed sketchbook and a tiny painting of my funny spine "forests." The sketchbook pages are 9" x 12" and the small painting is about 6" x 6". The sketchbook pages are done with graphite and the painting is Pitt pen, gouache and pencil.

New Artwork

2009-07-03T21:25:00.001-05:00

Geomorphology; 24" x 24"; 2009; paper, thread on felt

Recommendation – Eleanore Mikus

2009-06-27T12:48:00.005-05:00

Here is an example of Eleanore Mikus' artwork with her lines caused by the folding and re-folding of paper. Images from her website below:

Three Horizontals, folded nacre paper, 1968, 13.625"x10.5"

Architectural White Paperfold, 2000, 5"x14.5"

White Nacre Handfolded Paper, 1980, 33.5"x23.25"

and from her Black Paperfold series:

Ate, Ink on Handfolded Paper, 2002, 30 1/2"x23"

and from her Colored Paperfold series:

Red Ink and Oil Crayon on Handfolded Paper, 2005, 7" x 7 1/8"

I have her book, there is also a catalog from The Drawing Center on her work as well. The book information: Eleanore Mikus: Shadows of the Real by Robert Hobbs and Judith Bernstock; Ithaca: Groton House, 1991. Amazon link here.

Alyson Stanfield and basketry

2009-06-23T06:34:00.004-05:00

Alyson Stanfield writes a newsletter weekly and I enjoyed this one - "Listen, read, act, repeat." Alyson discusses how we automatically respond to people "I already know that" when just stopping and listening may open yourself to new experiences. Scroll down to check out this good read.

This title was followed up yesterday by her newest newsletter topic "Stop, and then get to work." This topic refers to falling into the trap of doing endless research or endless searching as opposed to just doing. Alyson writes, "Stop! Stop gathering information, stop looking for something that doesn’t exist, and start doing." Good advice.

You can sign up for her free newsletter to be delivered once a week via email. Highly recommended.

I love this basket by Japanese bamboo artist, Fujitsuka Shosei. See more images at Tai Gallery here.

And a sketch from my journal based on the image and my fascination with boxes:

Looking at things differently

2009-06-18T09:34:00.002-05:00

Another new sketchbook page....

Sketchbook page; 6/16-6/18, 2009, graphite