Light at the End of a Long, Long Tunnel

Finally I am allowing myself some hope, some happiness. The New Yorker cover this past week said it all with such simplicity: The red tunnel is dark and at the very end is a tiny opening of blue.
I didn't allow myself to be lulled into thinking that exit polls or surveys meant anything, since I believe that racism is alive and well in this country. I haven't had the stomach to call all of my sisters from their redneck parts of Illinois (Chicago is scary to them), but I did break down and call one of them just before the election. She had already pre-voted for McCain/Palin. I asked her about Palin's suitability and got a "She reminds me of me!" I mentioned the money she took for working away from the office and was told "I didn't hear anything about that." We didn't get into Africa being "a country" or the fact that she couldn't name a single paper she regularly read.
How she could vote against her own best financial interests amazes me.
I asked her about the last eight years. She somehow doesn't hold W. or the Republican Party responsible for any of it. How can she be related to me and seem so completely out of touch? And the other two sisters are even more conservative politically.
But I'm with the winning team for a change. My son reminded me that when Clinton got elected for the first time, I was driving and had to pull off the road to cry because I told him it was the first time in his life that he had a good president (He was born in 1980...). I had forgotten that moment, but I'm sure it's true because I've been teary-eyed this whole week.
A lot rest on Obama's shoulders, but if anyone can muddle through this mess, I think he can. It almost makes one want to believe in God, but then again, I look at these nutty evangelical sisters of mine and realize my folly in entertaining such a notion.

Immediate vs. Delayed Gratification

What good is it to be right? I remember how much I respected Jimmy Carter because he told the truth and didn’t sugarcoat the problems our country faced. The majority of Americans preferred the Hollywood Ending, which was more fun and full of immediate gratification. And thus you had Ronald Reagan and his “feel good now” message, which removed fiscal oversights and planted the seeds for the jungle we are in now.
Immediate Gratification is a need that we as a country have to get over. I am often reminded of a research project that took place in the 1940s or 1950s. A researcher met with preschool age or Kindergarten age children. There was a marshmallow on a plate. She said “I have to leave the room for a brief time, if you can wait to eat our marshmallow until I return, you’ll get another one.” The reward was double, yet many children gobbled up the treat right away. The hidden camera showed that others tried to distract themselves by singing or getting up and moving around the empty room. A few stared longingly and some gave in and grabbed it and others were able to wait. Some thirty or forty years later, the researchers questioned the members of the study on things like happiness and contentment, finances, career satisfaction and relationships. There was a direct correlation between being able to delay gratification as a child and adult.
But we are the country that could rather lipo our fat rather than diet. We charge things we can’t afford on our credit cards and live beyond our means. We buy houses we can’t afford and then are surprised when the people who have lent us the money go under. Their bonuses and golden parachutes are funded by the poor slob taxpayers who are underwriting this debt.
We are not smart as a country sometimes, and that is why I worry that the sugary McCain-Palin ticket (“Tax Cuts!” “Huge Tax Cuts for the Richest People!!” “Bigger Deficits!!” “Drill, Baby< Drill!!!” “Cuts to Silly Programs Like Head Start and the Like!!!”) doesn’t prevail.

New Poem

Salvation Army Skirt

Your history
is written into this skirt
with its tear from the gate hook,
the elastic stretched out just a bit
at the waist.

I can darn
and know how to sew an L-shaped rip.
I can tighten the waist
and carry on
where you left off.

I Wish I Knew How to Feel Good Again

Is is just me, or are we in a mood/state that is affecting many of us? I don't see any good news coming from anywhere. Even the Olympics were tainted with a murder, underage competitors and a government crackdown. Bush is ineffective, as always, and we still have a messy war we didn't need to get into, stock market woes, mortgage woes, joblessness on the rise, a huge national debt and Palin as a possible next President. This has become a very stupid country. We are so worried about gays marrying and yet we can actually have people in power who think that global warming is not man-made.

I grew up with born-agains. They never got out of their miserable existences because they rationalized that everything was God's plan. My dad couldn't control his violent behavior and my mom couldn't leave. "God is testing me" was her mantra. She was so indoctrinated she was able to witness her children getting beaten up over nothing. I still have a startle mechanism that makes me jump in the air if someone walks in a room and simply says something while my back is turned.

A born-again truly thinks we are headed for an Armaggedon--indeed, they welcome it. They believe God is on our side and that non-Christians (read: most of the world) are going to Hell and that is God's Plan, too. They believe in predestination and therefore what is the use of trying to end human suffering or treating animals better? We don't need abortion rights, a cleaner planet or scientists who think the world is more than 6,000 years old.

If I dwell on this, I will get more depressed. It's enough to make me want to leave or at least hide my head under something. I actually went online to see if my Landed Immigrant status in Canada was still in effect. It's not, but it looks like they would at least consider having me back.

So I'll write a few checks to my candidates of choice and hunker down at school and in my studio, trying to be the best I can be at what I do.

Nature at the New

So the New Museum has Nature in their galleries right now...some of this show is powerful, indeed with the usual ho-hum here and there. For my money, the Herzog film of Kuwait from 1991 is the star of the show. I was riveted. The images are so gorgeous and horrible all at once. I wish I had a remote and could stop and rewind and such. It all went by too fast, not to mention that there was another noisy piece nearby which may it hard for me to hear any dialogue.

I'm currently painting a forest fire, which is going slowly, so destruction is on my mind.

Quick dismissal: Unibomber cabin. And?
Liked: weird, sewn creepy figures, horse going into wall, writhing figure near stairs (although this doesn't probably work in NY as well as elsewhere).
Grossed out: AIDS masseuse mom video. The close up of the feet was truly horrible. How stupid did that artist look with his weeds in his hair in the park and the other antics?

This museum was so missed and I'm so glad it's back. I need indignation as well as quality to fire up my creative furnace.

A Long Summer

I wanted to post daily and of course I didn't get around to it. I've been in my studio, at the beach and getting sleep. But now it's back to business and I'm going to do better. Some recent themes: possibilities, metaphysics, pictographs, babies, devils, water, trees, politics, time.

June Post

The students at my college and high school are out for the summer, although I still have a few days more to work. But time does open up for me and I can decide whether I want to be sleep-deprived or not.

My art/life/teach/time/money conflicts are always bubbling like so much lava under the surface of my day-to-day existence. So many others are in my position; I’m not alone. I think of all the strivers out there, working or trying to work, carrying (lugging?) their dreams around with them: disappointed, sad, angry, resentful, resigned.

“Do your work.” That’s the only thing that makes sense. Leave what you have made on the planet and either it will work its magic or it won’t. But at least you will have made it and there will be the chance that it will have the impact you wish. It may wind up in a dumpster, but then again, it may not. Do your work.

Couple, 2008

Submerged Forest, 2008

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Publish Post

Family, 2008

This Isn't Real Writing, Just My Excuses

It's not that I haven't been writing; rather it's that I've been writing a lot but not exactly on subjects that would work well here. I had a student in my high school printmaking class die in a lunch-time automobile accident (no seat belt) and have been dealing with small issues such as a burn on my leg, school deadlines and lack of sleep.This "diarizing" does not make for compelling reading.

My studio work goes well and my only problem there is not enough time. I am trying to figure out how to organize my life in such a way as to be able to make art for long stretches of time and not just in the summer. If I leave the city I'd have enough money to not teach; if I continue to teach at the pace I do, I don't have enough time in my studio. If I'm so busy working I'm not enjoying the city the way I should anyway, but I am loathe to give it up.

The college teaching stops in 2 weeks and my day job goes until the end of June. It's extra-hard because I enjoy my school district job and feel that I make a difference in kid's lives on a daily basis. As Pierre, my husband, says "The problem is that you like this job so much, you want to be there all the time and you work too hard at it!"

Anyway, I'll have almost two whole months off with very little to distract me. My friends Vince & Chris have invited us out to Sea Ranch in CA and we might do that since it could combine work and play.

So I'll post some relevant stuff soon and forgive this drivel!

Katrina Circa March 2008

So I’ve been writing things but not posting them. Sorry. I now find myself at an art education conference in New Orleans and somewhat shaken by the Katrina damage. It’s a couple of years later and the swath of devastation is so widespread one can’t absorb the enormity of it all. So many people have been displaced or left and so much is rubble. How can one contemplate what needs to be done, even? The job is too big and it was made so much worse due to bureaucratic delays and mismanagement.
Our tour bus (yes, I took a tour bus because I was afraid to venture out in a rental car by myself) went to many affected areas, from the domed arena to the various levees and canals to the two 9th Wards. There are empty lots where neighborhoods used to be. Store after store is closed. Blocks and blocks have a house or two and then nothing. Churches have no roofs. You can see the holes in the roofs where people axed themselves out and holes where rescuers sawed their way in. The “x’s” on the front of buildings tell us when the National Guard was there, what they found (how many dead) and how many occupants were there.
Our driver told of two sisters who were put on different buses and their ailing mother on a third. One sister wound up in Tennessee and the other in Alabama. They still have no idea what happened to their mother or if she is even alive.
A lot of people can share the blame for the lack of response to this disaster. But you would think things would be a little further along by now. I’ll see if I am able to post some photos for you from here. And I’ll get back to the business of blogging more frequently, I promise.

New Orleans March 2008

Stairs to Nowhere

The Rust Marks the Waterline

Parking Lot

Roof Exit

Cocoons, 2008

"Redwood Forest" by Julia Healy

Oil on canvas, 2008,
7' x 6'.

John Currin

In a few sentences--this man can really paint still lives above and beyond. I think his housewives, busty women, impastoed faces and new pornography are awful, though. It’s a case of not have his intellectual thinking match his observational abilities in the handling of paint.
If one needs attention, it’s easy to get it. Eric Fischl consciously did admitted to doing just that with his early representational paintings. “I didn’t want people to see how I was struggling with the figure” he said or a paraphrase thereof.
I guess if I wanted to, I could do the same thing with sensational renderings of...well, I don’t have to go into it. If all I wanted was attention, I would have already done that.
The point of good art is to not only affect viewers is a palpable and mind-changing way, but to bring the domain itself forward to somewhere new. It’s not enough to paint well and here’s where Currin’s technique is at odds with his message.
How ‘bout that turkey, though! Oh my....

Water Babies, 2008

"Falling Babies"

Ingrid

Ingrid

There's something quite strange about celebrity being attached to someone one has known from babyhood and watched grow up in front of them. Can this be the shy girl that couldn't manage an all-night sleepover at age 12?
Went to see Ingrid Michaelson at Webster Hall last night with her parents and some other friends of theirs from Staten Island. The crowd was twenty to thirty somethings for the most part and this sold-out concert was entertaining, albeit physically uncomfortable to some extent. And we had seats! What is the deal with people in the VIP section talking (loudly) through the three warm-up acts and pushing their bodies into the back of our chairs when all we could do to accommodate them would have been to throw ourselves two stories down into the crowd? In fact, what is the deal with paying to stand up for four hours? Not my idea of music appreciation.
Ingrid was charming and very funny. She thinks on her feet quickly and comes up with amazingly clever observations as she goes. Which of course, is why her lyrics are so strong. If nothing else, the songs alone will sustain her into her old age because they are timeless and they strike a chord with "real" people. She performs in such a way that the audience is a large part of things--there are sing-alongs and clap-alongs and she's not afraid to respond to what is called out to the stage.
She has proven that the "No guts, No glory" philosophy is true. I was worried that she was giving up her health insurance when she quit her part-time NYC Department of Recreation job!
I just want the world to know that I had her perform at my salons when I had my Edgewater House many years ago and she sang at my wedding in 2004. I'm as proud of her as a non-Mom can be and I so look forward to what comes next.

If I Ran the World--Part 1 of 3,457,647

It’s a big mistake to complain sometimes, because then people call you on it to make it better and you wind up in charge of something. I am very good at complaining--I like to think I am making the world a better place even though I’ve been told I’m clearly making it worse for them--but I have little or no interest in taking more projects on.
That said, I was at a conference--Using Technology in Art Education--that should have lasted one hour but was stretched out to all day. The mailing said it started at 8:30 so I dutifully got there at 8:30. It didn’t start until 9:30. The materials said continental breakfast. I didn’t know that that meant a plate of sliced lemons for the tea-drinkers--the only solid stuff around. The speakers for 10:00 weren’t in the room so the second presentation went first. It was fine in its way, but was mostly a commercial for a long-distance learning program for the Met Museum, where this was being held. Then we had two presenters who talked about the Met’s Watson Library and the classes they hold and such but no one in the audience could use any of this because it’s for staff members only. I said to the woman who organized it--a very well-meaning person from the Board of Ed--oops I mean Department of Education--that it was like showing us all this candy but then telling us that we couldn’t have any of it.
It was time now for lunch and we were sent to the Met Cafeteria--quite a hike--which of course, was not yet open. We wound up at the balcony cafe/bakery area. Up until then, what had I learned about technology? Nothing!
The last hour was somewhat better with presentations from MOMA and the Gugg. followed by an impromptu look at the Met’s Timeline project which audience members might actually use in their classrooms.
Sponsored by the University Council for Art Education, this was not a worthwhile event, not worth $40 and not worth my time overall. Luckily, I enjoy looking at art and had the late afternoon free, so I wandered the collection without students to worry about. I spent time at the Lehman collection--the Master of Osservanza will knock your socks off--and roamed around the Greek/Roman galleries. Which brings up a topic for another day: why I like painting so much more than sculpture.

Taste

Taste in visual art is not quantifiable or easily assessed or agreed upon. The old saw "I don't know anything about art but I know what I like" makes the point well. You don't have to have any knowledge or experience of art in order to have a certain taste in or for art.

When I taught a college course called Visual Literacy, I thought it would be interesting to investigate the idea of good taste and bad taste as a beginning assignment. Students were asked to bring in something that they considered good taste and something they considered bad taste and we were going to discuss their choices. Most students brought in what I expected: well-designed objects for good taste and souvenirs or tacky knick-knacks for bad taste. But one young woman brought in a seashell and a plastic horse and exactly reversed her objects. The seashell, she explained, was just something you can find on the beach--they're common, everyday items. But the plastic horse (which, by the way, was so crudely made that the seams were very obvious) had to be made. Someone sculpted it before it was manufactured, she said. Her take on it was that good taste and hard work were related. She had no background in aesthetics. She truly didn't know that you could find great beauty in a natural object and find a plastic horse ugly and commonplace. It was very instructive to me and I dare say this woman also learned a lot that semester.

So why don't people have better taste? I ask myself this often. I wonder why people buy Thomas Kinkaides. His stuff (I can't bring myself to call it art), is hideous, plain and simple. Another questions: Why do people like huge, flashy, buckled designer handbags? They're super ugly. Is is a lack of art education? A lack of good art education? Could I be wrong about my own taste? I am rarely in a quandary when I look at an artwork, building, outfit, interior, etc. as to what's wrong or what's bad or good. I like to think I can back up my taste with solid arguments about originality, changing my view of the world, making me puzzled, angry, amazed, etc.

My son who is 28 and an educated person thinks it is arrogant of me to think that my taste is in some way superior to that of, say, an uneducated migrant worker who has never gone to school or been to a museum. I justify my position in that I've spent years of my life in galleries and museums and through my background and eye-sweat (now there's a name for a blog or website--don't steal it, it's mine!), I have a right to my feelings of superiority. Do I?

So can we teach taste? Maybe, sort-of, kind of. We know that drawing from observation trains one's eyes to see. Perhaps taste can be developed and refined by art lectures, travel, going to museums and watching educational television. The teacher in me would love to think so.

But to get back to the idea of what's good and what's bad--it's an ongoing debate, most likely never to be solved. It's also what makes the art world so interesting. Don't think for a second that all of today's Van Goghs are the same people whose work you see in all the big museum shows. There are plenty of art geniuses who are obscure or under-appreciated today, just like Van Gogh was. The contemporary art world of has much more to do with commerce than with what's good or bad. Cynical? Of course! It feeds my work.

Can One Be a Good Mom and an Artist Too?

Being an artist involves a big time commitment and a lot of selfishness. Motherhood involves a big time commitment and a lot of selflessness. If you think about famous female artists, many either didn't have children or screwed them up royally. Men seem to be better at going to the studio whether or not their kids have the flu or need a new pair of shoes or help with a project. Given this dilemma, artists like me choose our children over our art. So it's harder to be a success and get on the fast track. Dealers can smell your ambition. They can also smell your "baby love."

I like to imagine Picasso doing many of the things Moms need to do or feel pressured into doing:
•Picasso bakes cupcakes for the school fair
•Picasso drives to Staples at 11 p.m. to get a tri-fold science board
•Picasso gives a Barney Birthday Party for 10 toddlers
•Picasso cleans up vomit
•Picasso changes sheets in the middle of the night, etc.

So we keep our sketchbooks going, we make our work as best we can and hopefully we live long enough to realize ourselves. My mantra is make the work and worry about the career aspects later on, or never.

Camping in Bad Weather

Rain on tent tapping
children breathing in and out
primal mother love

Outsider Art

I was first introduced to what is called “Outsider Art” in Chicago, when I was a student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Some of my friends and teachers were onto this trend very early. It was a loose group that sometimes hung out at Phyllis’ gallery just off of Michigan Blvd. She had the first show of everybody who turned out to be anybody--Tolliver, Finster, Howard, Simon, Yoakum, etc. etc. etc. Ray Yoshida and Roger Brown were crazy-mad for this kind of art and bought a lot. I don’t remember if Wolfli ever was shown at Phyllis' gallery, but I do know that Jim Nutt, one of her main stable members, bought one or two at some point.
I think we were all attracted to this sort of art in part because we also felt a bit like outsiders. New York was king and Chicago was clearly the second city. And this art and the art we made didn’t look anything like the work being made in New York.
Not that every artist or teacher at SAIC was into imagistic art. There were some abstract artists. But the cool people were the Hairy Who’s and all the subsequent groups on that family tree.
We loved crude. We loved rule-breaking such as compositions or proportions that didn’t make any sense. We loved guys who put religious content into their work. We loved Maxwell Street on an early weekend morning where you could find bizarre things. Ray and Roger were competitive and their apartments sang with the love of the unexpected.
I can’t recall who discovered Joseph Yoakum--it might have been Whitney Halstead or Don Baum, but it was well known that he fancied young ladies and chocolate cake. So on my first and only visit to his studio, I baked him a cake. My oven had no thermostat so the cake turned out to be very mushy on the inside, but he liked it anyway and gave me two drawings as a gift.
I wasn’t in any position to be buying art at that point but I did manage to purchase a Pauline Simon “Matisse Odalesque” for fifty dollars before I moved to Africa. I still have all three pictures.
I sometimes like to try to approach my own work the way an outsider artist does--without thought to conventions or logic and not worried about what dealers or customers might think. Outsider Art at its best is pure art. Urgent. Compelling. Strange. Raw. Unimaginable.

Humor in Art--Part One

Humor in art can be problematic. Jokes can wear thin and since good art withstands multiple viewings, jokey art doesn't hold up well. People have long parodied art--Dali's Persistence of Memory and Leonardo's Mona Lisa have been played with repeatedly. Duchamp himself had some fun with Mona by putting a mustache on her. At the time is was audacious of him; now it could be a typical New Yorker cover.

When I was in graduate school I made stuffed paintings that were "trapuntoed" (is there such a word?) from the back. I would stuff them with polyester and painted frames around them which were also stuffed.
My interest in body builders led me to making an image of a body builder flexing his bicep. The painting style itself was rather cartoon-y and not realistic. So it was an easy leap to get the idea of adding squeak toys inside the fabric where his muscle was. I titled it Squeeze My Muscle and had a sign next to it which stated it was okay to touch this piece and squeeze the muscle. (It was shown at the august Art Institute of Chicago in their Fellowship Show.) Suffice it to say that there was a certain response to this artwork, to the extent that the museum guards told me one woman laughed so hard that she literally wet her pants. Custodians had to be called in to mop the floor. My piece had done its work. Is it great art? I'm not sure. I still stand by it artistically and intellectually but only time can determine its greatness, near greatness, goodness or so-so-ness. We get ideas. We need to make them. We put them out there and hope for a response.

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Is Creativity an Important Part of Most Art Lessons?

The Art Education world prides itself on how it develops creativity in students. My thinking is that what most art educators think of as "creativity" is anything but. Giving someone a paper plate "Mask" and a few markers and then telling them to "be creative" doesn't often produce exciting, original work. Showing a sample project--I hate the "project" word but that's another rant for another time--doesn't result in creative solutions, either. Students have great difficulty in not copying the teacher.

Part of the problem is that in other classrooms there are right and wrong answers and it is hard for students to realize that in an art setting this rule doesn't much apply. It's also true that most art specialists are not artists and therefore not as attuned to the concept of creativity as an important part of an art lesson in the first place.

Creativity comes from being encouraged to take risks and combine dissimilar things or ideas in a new way. With art lessons that embrace experimentation, not product, there is a greater chance for creativity than with recipe-style lessons.

If you are an art teacher, try to make your students comfortable with the idea that you don't have a clue what they are going to produce. A rule of thumb for me is: if you know what your students' work is going to look like, it's probably not an art lesson. It may have value in terms of following steps, working with tools and materials and looking great on a bulletin board, but it's not helping anyone become more creative.

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The Most Depressing Day

The Most Depressing Day
According to some, January 24 is the most depressing day of the year. People are saddled with Christmas bills, it’s dark out, it’s cold, people are sick, there’s very little to look forward to in the next few weeks holiday-wise and generally it’s a good time for feeling crummy.
My experience this time of year is different. We are exactly half-way through the school year, which feels good since I teach. And because the weather’s so bad I’m getting a lot of work done. I’ve managed to get my storage lockers down from two to one and I’m dealing with all--okay some--of the loose ends of my projects. I’m throwing out old files and cancelled checks from years ago. I’m managing to face up to the fact that maintenance is just as important as making piles of new art. What good is a stained, wet pile of art that you didn’t have time to get off of the floor because you were so busy making more art?
So I’m chipping away at taking care of things and dealing with the work I’ve already done. With some exceptions, of course. My daughter showed me a new printmaking technique a few weeks ago that involves polyester plates and direct printing. So tomorrow I’m going to show a couple of my fellow teachers what I’ve learned and we’re going to print up a storm and then go out to dinner.
And the point I am making is..? Balance, everyone. You put in time to maintain your studio and to take care of your art. You attack unpleasant things that you’ve been avoiding like lining up your tax stuff or getting your medical forms sent in. And then something new and wonderful shows up and you play. That’s how to handle January.

The Importance of Things

I have a friend who is 65ish, retired from his day job (which he never loved much) who is interested in all sorts of subjects: science, music, old movies, history, dusty old books and a lot inbetween. He was an only child and spoiled as befits an only child. He loves Christmas, even though he doesn't celebrate it in a religious way, and has composed carols of all varieties that get played at his annual Christmas Eve Party. He might be considered a curmudgeon by some, but I find him honest, delightful and utterly refreshing.
Over the last 10-15 years he has begun an odyssey of sorts into his past. He is trying to acquire the things that he remembers and/or longs for from his past. He has replaced all the pieces of his childhood train set and even bought a few extra items that he never had as a child. He has his original chemistry set that Santa once brought him and has gone about trying to assemble a complete collection of all the games and toys that he once owned.
I write about this because as I look back on my early adulthood things played a huge part in my life--mostly the things I lacked. When I think back on the me that I was I’m embarrassed. The story is so sad.
Here I was, a young married woman living in Canada with my resident-in-Urology husband. We had no money and I was working at whatever art-type jobs I could find to help support us. When it came to getting a present, all I wanted was a Raggedy Ann Doll. I can’t quite explain it , except that I had a fascination about the “I Love You” heart and that I must never have gotten such a doll as a kid. (Stay tuned for the occasional foray into that world.) My new husband, bless his soul, went out and bought me a doll. But he bought me the Andy Doll instead, which just wouldn’t do. Now how pathetic is that? Woman in her 20’s-- a) wanting a doll as a gift and b)disappointed because the wrong doll was purchased. I cringe to think about it. Somehow, I got the Ann doll soon after and had both of them. I guess life was better. I was able to move on, and it was about time.
Having little or nothing, especially compared to other people in your subgroup, can make one feel so empty and worthless. I felt inadequate. I was less than other people somehow. Now I know that that wasn’t true, but I wonder if I could have learned this earlier. To this day I can name things I wanted so badly that never came: A Ponytail diary, scrapbook, wallet or just about anything else. A khaki coat with a raccoon collar. A professional hair cut. A transistor radio that was being given to a lucky winner at Kresge’s. A normal family, Okay, that last thing would have been asking way too much.
Today, I think, things can be burdens. I pay a lot of money for storage. My unsold work needs to be kept somewhere safe and dry. I can’t quite part with memories or objects that have “value.” I’m trying not to give in too to much desire. I’m trying not to start buying all my childhood wants on ebay. But I will admit to the occasional search...

Art & Life

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