Holy Dying

Finishing

2011-12-12T12:59:00.000-08:00

I have been absorbed in the final stages of finishing my MFA degree portfolio in the past month, and am about as near to finished as I can be before the graduation presentation in March. What a relief! I am starting to look around me and think about other things again, things like starting new art projects! I am thinking I will discontinue this blog, however, in the New Year, letting it be what I intended: a process blog about my MFA studies. I am so grateful to be finishing.

Unearthed Pictures

2011-10-11T13:39:00.000-07:00

Check out this organization Unearthed Pictures which supports safe houses and other such organizations helping the victims of sex-trafficking world wide.

Seattle Quilt in Chicago - 1st play test

2011-09-19T21:25:00.000-07:00

My small Seattle Quilt is just over half way quilted, and I took it with me on my August trip to Chicago. When I showed it to the little girls of the families I was staying with, they got it immediately and asked to play with it. Though their cars sometimes got caught in basting stitches, they drove along the yellow roads, parked in the parking lots, dove into the water, and started arranging doll house furniture on the building squares. Success!

First RESTquilt complete

2011-09-14T17:13:00.001-07:00

At the end of July, just days before the Goddard residency was scheduled at the start of August, I finished the binding of the edges of our first REST quilt. Here it is! And I took it with me to Port Townsend, and it hung on display in the Goddard student showcase at Fort Warden. Fully eleven different women worked on this quilt, either contributing squares or helping to quilt it all by hand. It is a beauty, isn't it?

Faith Ringgold

2011-07-20T14:45:00.000-07:00

I just learned about Faith Ringgold's quilts through a link on another quilter's page, Michael Cummings. This one really pleases me, and I am inspired by how she uses both quilting and painting techniques in her work. This is called "Crown Heights Children's History Quilt" made in 1994.

End of Semester and summer break

2011-07-20T14:38:00.001-07:00

In a final creative push at the end of my fourth semester at Goddard, I made two more of these house squares. Two other women have officially agreed to make squares as well, with at least three others very interested. I have decided to take a summer break from this project and then restart it in September. No one really wants to work on a quilt in the summer anyway! though I have been enjoying mine. I am actually finishing our first REST quilt in the next two weeks; it is all quilted (and off the quilt frame) and now all I have left is to sew the binding strip with a neat little hidden stitch. I find this enjoyable.

Commissioning quilt squares

2011-06-20T12:53:00.001-07:00

It has taken me over six weeks to make this one ten inch square for my next quilt project. At this rate, it will take me over three years to make this quilt top! So I am starting to commission handy women I know to make squares with me. I found a terrific book written in the 1980's called Quilting Together: How to Organize, Design, and Make Group Quilts by Paula Nadelstern and LynNell Hancock. There are photos of quite a few group quilts with a house theme, though my idea of combining the Victorian crazy quilt method with house imagery still seems to be original (I doubt it is original, but I have yet to see any other examples of it). Today I am sorting and cutting small silk scraps for each lady who has tentatively volunteered to make a square. I am thinking about creating a little card to go with it with a prayer for a safe house for girls escaping the sex trade on it, and brief instructions. Now I have to figure that out...

Hours of quilting done, hours to go

2011-05-31T15:41:00.000-07:00

In recent weeks I have quilted one approximate twelve inch square area of my Seattle Quilt - and finished watching the whole first season of X-Files (another Nineties show I am finally getting round to), about sixteen hours of quilting. It is enjoyable work to me, and I am getting gradually faster at it. You can see in these photos that I am quilting different patterns in the different colored areas: the greens get little arches like the wire fences in city parks; the blues get waving diagonal stripes; the black and plaids get doors and windows; the yellow sashing gets sidewalks. The bottom two shots show the back of the quilt as well: it is a really pretty desaturated pattern and the quilting in while thread just shows up as dimples.

It is too easy, however, to develop a new habit of watching TV shows while I quilt instead of letting that be a quiet time, a meditative or prayerful time! even though a TV show now and then can be very restful, the habit is not what I want to associate with quilting. Maybe I just need to have a friend over, or take my quilt with me to a friend's house...cause this is going to take a while.

Sketching class

2011-05-18T12:00:00.000-07:00

I led my first plein air art class this Spring, taking a group of women out sketching on First Hill to learn some skills and ways of creating a travel sketchbook. It was generally wet and cold, though our last day was one of the only lovely days this Spring so far. I took this photo of two of them sketching the concrete structures in Freeway Park; later we came back to sketch the waterfalls.

Seattle Quilt

2011-05-11T17:09:00.000-07:00

Here it is! the finished quilt top - ready for basting and quilting. It is about 45" x 68" which makes it a small quilt, but a large piece of art! the largest I've ever made. I have basted together the top, a layer of batting, and one piece of patterned fabric for the back with red thread and now I am starting to quilt it by hand with white thread. I am making waves in the blue areas, little fences around the green, windows in the black and plaid squares, and lines down the streets. This will take a while - can't imagine I will finish it before August.

New Project: Another Quilt!

2011-05-05T19:00:00.000-07:00

I was given a box full of silk scraps from a friend in LA. They are all in gorgeous colors, peacock blues and greens, rusts, rose, silver, bronze, ice blue, pale yellow...and I've been wanting to really learn how to make a quilt in the crazy quilt tradition, but with my own twist: crazy houses! together to form a glorious city of many mansions. This is a big project, as I want the quilt to be at least 60" square, larger if possible, with around 30 houses, golden streets, a river and trees in the middle, and a jewel colored wall all around (much like the description of the New Jerusalem in the book of Revelations). But at least I have begun with this silk house sewn onto muslin with gold metal floss in a variety of embroidery stitches. What do you think? this is about 10" square.

Where to find my art for sale:

2011-04-22T11:59:00.002-07:00

"Four Corners Art and Frame" is a charming little shop on the Ave (University Way) just across the street from the UW Bookstore. Allison Joseph, the shop's owner, is an amazing artist herself and skilled framer. I love having my work framed by her! She has represented me as an artist for over three years now, and you can consistently find small works by me and other local artists there--works you cannot find anywhere else! Here are some of my older and more recent pieces at the shop right now (look up, they are near the ceiling!) and there are matted sketches in the bin marked "Local Artists."

Quilt Top Progress

2011-04-22T11:51:00.001-07:00

I've made a lot of progress on my quilt top in the past month. In fact, I might be able to finish piecing it this afternoon. It is roughly a map of Seattle: with the waterfront and docks at the bottom and I am about to add Lake Washington at the top! but if you notice the parks are bigger and the streets are strangely gold...it's a fantasy version of this North West city! It is 46" wide and will be around 65" long.

Prayer Meetings

2011-04-14T16:20:00.000-07:00

This is sexual assault awareness month, and though I find the whole trend of naming months after issues to be odd, I am daily aware of sexual assault as I continue to learn about the plight of those in our city (and all over the world) who are enslaved in the sex industry. I have been aware of sexual assault since I was quite young, not first but second hand, through the stories of members of my family. Since then, the stories of women (and men) I've come to know break my heart and haunt me: statistics affirm what my own experience points toward, that far from being strange and unusual occurrences, sexual assault (rape, incest, forced or coerced sexual contact of any kind for any duration) happens to at least one in three women and one in four men during their lifetime. The very most vulnerable people are children, and women under the age of 25. These are the very people in our societies who should be most protected, but they are the most harmed. The idea that people are basically good is shattered by these statistics. The person who rapes a young woman, who molests a child, is not a raving, roaming monster, but our neighbor, our friend, our relative. Many of the girls being prostituted on the streets of Seattle and even girls dancing in strip clubs are only teenagers, some as young as 11 or 12. If you've ever payed for sex, you are likely guilty of raping a minor. If you've ever watched pornography, you have participated in the sexual exploitation of women and children. This must not go on!

I am holding a prayer meeting on Friday nights at my apartment building in Belltown. A group of us are getting together to pray for the rescue, healing, and salvation of those who are being exploited, bought and sold, and for the rebuke, hindrance, and salvation of those who are exploiting and buying them. Jesus carried all the guilt and shame for the sins and sufferings of real people; he died and rose again for all of the evil we have done and the evil done against us, that we might know him and enjoy his grace and healing forever.

For those who have been sexually assaulted, I highly recommend the newly published book Rid of My Disgrace, by Justin and Lindsey Holcomb. The above statistics are widely documented, and quoted from the Holcomb's book as well as Renting Lacy, by Linda Smith.

Quilting walks

2011-04-08T13:15:00.000-07:00

To practice quilting, the tedious all over stitching that holds the layers of a quilt together and gives it that lovely surface texture and detail, I have quickly pieced together an odd assortment of white fabric: muslin, old nightgown cotton, patterned, plain and dupioni silk, and even some Tyvek. Next I layered some extra polyfill batting between this top and a plain muslin back, basted them together with large stitches, and started quilting with red silk thread leftover from my silk curtain project from last year. Rather than quilting in a pattern, I am taking my thread for a walk, a meander, across the various surfaces of the little quilt (14" x 24"). Walk, after walk, day after day, the little pieces is getting crossed and recrossed with the little red stitches, forming tiny triangles, squares, ovals, and weird shapes in between. I am not good at quilting yet, still feel clumsy at it most of the time...but I hear that practice is the only way to learn such things.

Today's Fun: a Real Color Sphere

2011-04-01T16:10:00.001-07:00

I've been drawing on the white board and gesticulating widely in my color class each quarter in attempts to describe a three dimensional color model called the color sphere, designed by Ogden Rood (German, early Nineteenth Century) and refined by Albert Munsell (American, early Twentieth Century), and with a slight variation by me. So, at last, I'm making it myself! I bought a small paper covered globe at World Market and I am painting it in gouache, twelve hues gradated from white to black. It is really fun to do.

Typewriting Art by Linda Hutchins

2011-03-31T18:30:00.000-07:00

Look at this lovely work by Portland artist Linda Hutchins! She did a series of typewritten works on tissue and tracing paper in 2003 that are astounding and lovely. The upper one is called "Sampler (Hold on Tight)" and the lower one is a study for her piece called Trousseau.

Collage Quilts by Joan Schulze

2011-03-25T13:34:00.000-07:00

Joan Schulze is an artist I just discovered through an article in Craft magazine. She's been making collage quilts (as well as collage images on paper) for a long time, and though I do not like a lot of her imagery in particular, I love the texture and overall sensibility of her work. This is one of my favorites, one that really emphasizes her stitching rather than her image transfers.

Color class masterpiece!

2011-03-22T18:04:00.003-07:00

One of my students in this Winter's Color Theory class created this gorgeous little piece for her composition in monochrome. Her name is Sabrina Chacon-Barajas. I love her work.

The fourth semester starts

2011-03-19T17:47:00.000-07:00

I'm back from my G4 residency and now I need to really start the work of my second-to-last semester at Goddard. But I'm sick, with a weird combination of symptoms that feel like wild seasonal allergies along with some sort of achy flue. I know that this semester I am working with fabric again, and this week I have started piecing my own quilt top that I think looks a little like city streets around city blocks of various buildings, storefronts, parking lots, and parks. It is a stretch, I know, but I've found that I need some story to guide even my "abstract" work! It is not any particular city, though I think it sort of represents Seattle because it has plenty of plaid! and some beautiful blue fabrics like water and sky here when the day is clear. Like today. Today was the first truly warm sunny day in months--and I learned why: Mike Davis had prayed for a beautiful day on which to propose to Darla! There is very little sitting still these days, no boredom at all. Not even on a sick day.

The Quilt Frame, part 2

2011-02-28T20:30:00.001-08:00

On this cold Saturday morning in February, Brook and I managed to wrestle the quilt frame into shape, upright and a whole eight feet long, and put our quilt on it. It was great to finally be able to sit at it and quilt and talk until the afternoon was suddenly half passed and I had to leave in a hurry.

We wished aloud at times that we had a friend who knew exactly what she was doing to help us, but we remembered too that we often learn best by just trying things until they work! We finally had to do a Google search "how to attach a quilt to a frame" to learn that it should be sewn with big basting stitches around the wooden bars before it is rolled around them to hold it taught for stitching. Because of Brook's curious and naughty cats we had to collapse the frame and prop it upside down against the wall when not working on it. Ah, pets have interrupted this project before...I have no doubt we are sewing a little dog, rabbit, and cat hair into our quilt!

Make a mess

2011-02-15T16:09:00.000-08:00

In order to make art, one must first make mess. This I am sure of: you cannot make anything without making a mess or entering a mess. Today, I got out all my fabric and bits of ribbon and things and started sorting them, arranging them, tearing them up. This is my favorite new process: tearing fabric into strips for quilt tops. The ripping is very satisfying. I get to iron, rip, arrange, and sew together fabric however I like. Ultimately this is not a mess just for its own sake, but out of chaos comes...something new. I am meditating on the image of the ocean as a picture of chaos is the Bible: how when God led the Israelites out of Egypt and they stood on the shore of the Red Sea, they faced the chaos of the water and what looked like immanent death. God Himself led them through on dry ground and they emerged on the other side as if born again! Thanks to Mike Wilkerson for explaining this in his newly published book: Redemption.

Settling in, imagining

2011-02-06T18:16:00.000-08:00

It's been just over a month now in this new apartment in Belltown, and so much has happened in a brief five weeks! But no art to speak of. I made a very colorful oil cloth table cloth for my work table and have set it up with the sewing machine in my room, by the window. I don't like the view (it's better from the other room) but the light is OK. I am eager to sew and to paint, but still trying to imagine my destination: what am I aiming for this spring semester? but bigger than that looms the question, what am I called to as a Christian and an artist for my whole life? I am working on various types of mission statements and artist statements, and noting that in some ways I am not who I thought I was. But I admire God's work in me, who he's made me to be and how I get to enjoy what he has suited me for and even the things that are really hard for me but are thus sweetly full of him!

The new year, continuing

2011-01-16T14:37:00.000-08:00

After about three weeks off for the Holidays, we finally got back together to work on our quilts. We ended up sitting around on the floor with the quilt between us, bent over making our first attempts at quilting. It is not necessary to use any sort of frame, especially if you are not expecting or desiring perfection, but a standing frame would be helpful so that we don't have to sit so awkwardly! we each managed two or three rows of stitches in the gray thread that seems to change color whichever color it crosses. I am hopeful we can actually finish this quilt by the next Goddard residency at the end of February.

Batting, Basting, and a Bunny

2010-12-12T17:36:00.000-08:00

Collaboration

2010-12-05T21:20:00.000-08:00

Collaborations take time: and time out to find missing puppies, and time to warm up with some tea, time to talk, time to add new friends. Our quilts are not finished yet, but we are getting to know each other better, and we are living our lives together more than before. I look forward to finishing a couple quilts, but I'm content one way or another.

Quilt top all together

2010-11-16T14:11:00.001-08:00

Today I finished sewing together the 15 squares by 8 different women to form our colorful get-together quilt!

my painting in Response Magazine

2010-11-11T17:49:00.000-08:00

SPU's "Response" magazine, both in print and here onlineincludes a photo of my painting "Thistles, figs and grapes, and matches."

Little fabric sketches

2010-11-11T17:10:00.000-08:00

Using a double sided interleaving to iron small pieces of silk and cotton fabric into a 6" square sketchbook, I made a series of thirty little sketches early this fall...here are my favorites, mostly little houses! I think this would be a fun way to illustrate a little storybook.

Our get-together quilt top...almost

2010-11-08T17:12:00.000-08:00

This is the quilt we started a month ago, with each of us making one or two approximately 18" abstract squares of rectangular pieces, without a pattern. I've been reading The Quilts of Gee's Bend and the quiltmakers from Gee's Bend, Alabama refer to a quilt made up of random pieces like this as a "get together" quilt. I love this name for it! And the fact that it is us getting together to make a quilt together. It is very colorful and exciting to look at. I am happy with the progress we've made!

First Quilt top

2010-11-08T17:07:00.000-08:00

We've put together the colorful squares we inherited, making our first simple colorful quilt top! this one is small, a lap quilt really, and we plan to put a black back on it with white quilting in a crazy squiggly pattern trailing off into the word "Rest" in one corner. Can't wait to start the quilting!

Review and photos of Ripe exhibit

2010-10-21T12:59:00.001-07:00

SPAC gallery director and art history professor Dr. Katie Kresser has curated a stellar show this Fall called “Ripe: Juicy Contemporary Still Life.” I'm so happy to have been included with Zack Bent, Eric Elliott, Linda Hutchins, Gregory Jacobsen, Steve Levin, and Christian van Minnen.

Although there are seven artists, and nineteen works, it has the feel of a good solo show. There is agreement among the themes, colors, quality, scale and presentation of the art with very pleasing contrasts that invite slow perusal, and plenty of revisits. Taking as its subject the genre of still life, the show is a bit of a history lesson—but it is much more than that. It narrows its focus on the taste-able, the touchable, both beautiful and gross. Perhaps the show as a whole is a kind of contemporary Vanitas, with a light hand.

Something I find very satisfying is the repetition and consistency of scale. The framed dimensions of the work itself varies, from about three by five inches to three by five feet, but the objects depicted are all approximately life sized and small, things that can be held in the hands. This greatly heightens the tactile sensual appeal of a display of objects to be looked at.

We observe the changing, decaying life of mundane things like fruit, plants, food...and, by analogy, people. In one piece we literally watch something change—Zack Bent's film of a jar of lard solidifying from clear to white—but in all the pieces it is implied or happened as the work was being made. This is exquisitely shown in Linda's encasing of a jade plant in nylon organza, alive when she sewed the fabric around the leaves and stem, but now dried out and displayed as a specimen in a box. My set of six paintings capture fruit and found objects as they were bruising, drying, falling apart. In Gregory's oil paintings of luscious piles of oozing, bursting stuff, at once like iced pastries, candy, fruit, meat, and offal, it seems like rottenness might set in at any time and the whole thing start to stink. In this show not only are there familiar, touchable things like eggs, apples, bottles, but also things we do not want to touch like intestines and unidentifiable lumpy growths.

There many thoughtful juxtapositions around the room. I notice Eric Elliott's gray painting of a potted plant across from Linda Hutchin's encased plant, the obvious link of inspiration between the work of Christian van Minnen and Gregory Jacobsen (Christian said Gregory is his favorite artists, one of the only other painters who “gets it” when I spoke with him at the opening), and lovely little things like the way both Steve Levin and I play with trompe l'oeil, and how Christian puts fruit and objects where a late Renaissance portrait should be, while I do the same with fruit where a saint should be in an early Renaissance altarpiece.

Art history and tradition are clearly important to all the artists in Ripe, yet there is still a freshness to this show that I find surprising, a reason for it to be. I conclude that even though everything has been done before, this is our time to think about what it means to be a dying, beautiful, gross creature in a dying, beautiful, gross world.

The REST Quilt Project

2010-10-08T14:54:00.001-07:00

It's officially begun! This is my practicum project for Goddard, making quilts with a group of other like-minded women, mostly from Mars Hill, mostly living right here on Capitol Hill. We are learning how to make quilts together to give to a women's shelter or foster home, and to raise awareness for the issues of sex trafficking in Seattle. The name comes from the REST ministry at Mars Hill Church which reaches out to women and girls involved in the sex trade. I will write about this more at length soon.

Ripe: Juicy Contemporary Still Life

2010-09-30T19:50:00.000-07:00

During Fall quarter 2010 the SPAC Gallery is proud to present Ripe, a group show featuring contemporary experiments in the genre of still life. Good still life has always been about sensuality. In our world of synthetic materials and virtual realities, still life can remind us of the beauty that's painful and bloody: birth, woundedness, ecstasy, transformation, decay and death. Artists featured include Zack Bent, Eric Elliott, Linda Hutchins, Gregory Jacobsen, Steve Levin, Christian van Minnen and Natalie St. Martin.

The exhibition will run from October 11 - December 3. An opening reception will be held Friday evening, October 15 from 7:00-9:00pm.

I Know You, I Don't Know You exhibition photos

2010-09-24T11:25:00.001-07:00

The show's last day is tomorrow, September 25th.

You are Invited

2010-08-31T11:57:00.000-07:00

Come on out to Gallery 110 this Wednesday for the preview opening of "Constructing Recognition: I Know You, I Don't Know You," the exhibit I've been planning since last October with three other artists. Or you can stop by the gallery during the First Thursday Pioneer Square art walk, or even drop in to see me on Saturday, when I will be gallery sitting from noon to five!

We hung the show on Sunday, and it is really special, if I do say so myself.

New Work

2010-08-15T15:12:00.000-07:00

"My Seattle Map", mixed media on paper, 54" square.

The two pieces I've worked on since December are finished, and the show with three other artists at Gallery 110 "I Know You, I Don't Know You; Constructing Recognition" will open the first Thursday in September, with a preview opening the night before.These pieces really need to be seen in person! They are larger than I usually work and very tactile.

"Blood Washed, a Self Portrait," mixed media on silk, 5'6" x 15"

A thank you note

2010-08-10T16:45:00.000-07:00

Dear Father God,
You made such a beautiful world! Thank you for the beautiful coast of the Yucatan Peninsula, for the warm blue-green ocean, for the steamy storms, for the iguanas sunning on the white rocks, for the fish tacos, for generous, gentle friends to travel with. Thank you for hot sunshine, hot sand, comforting shade. Thank you for adventure, and for our return home. You are abundantly generous all the time!

sneak peek

2010-07-16T15:09:00.001-07:00

I am so exited to see this come together! only four more squares to make, and almost half way sewn together, this piece is finally taking shape.

Map with Piecora's and Chop Suey

2010-07-02T20:03:00.000-07:00

gouache on paper, 9" x 9"

More red silk pieces

2010-07-02T19:55:00.000-07:00

Bound thorns and stained handkerchief, both 5" x 5"
Finished the number of red squares needed, and now I have just nine more to make in pink, tan and white, before I start sewing this piece together!

Red on white smocking samples

2010-06-08T14:09:00.000-07:00

Here is the front and back of my first successful attempt at English smocking. The fineness of the silk fabric and thread make this very tiny and delicate, and blindingly hard to stitch! this, as usual is just under 5" square.

A couple more maps...

2010-05-25T17:39:00.000-07:00

I painted this using a black Micron pen and a latte from Cortona Cafe: the heart shape formed accidentally right over the cafe on the map! So I call this one "I Heart Cortona" which makes me smile.

This map shows alternate walking routes to and from work at the Sunset Club. It is in brown silk thread on paper with an Irish Breakfast tea stain.

Brief descriptions of my two projects

2010-05-20T16:20:00.000-07:00

Just for those who are curious, all the individual pieces I am making lately (and posting here) are pieces for two large projects: 1) a map portrait of Seattle, which will be made of 40 or more 9" square paper maps (including the shadows) all connected together into one large folding map that will also look a little like a quilt. And 2) a delicate quilt-like curtain made of 5" square pieces of silk. This piece has a self-portrait component in that it will be approximately my height and width, but it is about Christ's atonement, his blood and wounds washing and healing his bride, the church - of which I am so gratefully a part!

Wounded eyelet and diamond print

2010-05-20T16:15:00.000-07:00

This one is lining silk with cut out pattern stained with gouache and walnut ink 5"sq.

And this one is tea stained lightweight silk satin with a pattern made by using the previous piece as a stencil. 5" sq.

Shadow portraits on Seattle sidewalks

2010-05-14T11:56:00.001-07:00

Here are my latest "maps" - they've taken a turn toward self-portraiture lately! documenting my walks around Seattle by painting my sidewalk shadows. These are all 9" x 9" in gouache.

Remembering a workday at the Frye

2010-05-10T15:12:00.000-07:00

Gouache on paper, 9" x 9"
When I worked as a cook in the cafe at the Frye Art Museum, there was a lot of repetition to the paths I walked during a day...

Still Life's on view at Cortona Cafe

2010-05-07T20:26:00.000-07:00

My six little still lifes from this Fall semester are on display at Cortona Cafe during the month of May!

Cross

2010-04-30T16:44:00.000-07:00

goauche on silk, with applique, and cross stitching, 5" x 5"

As I post this I am reminded of the beautiful song: "When I survey the wondrous cross, on which the Prince of Glory died, my richest gain I count but loss, and pour contempt on all my pride."

Dancing Daughter

2010-04-29T17:01:00.001-07:00

Finally finished this one, front and back. The back is a piece of stiff silk netting sewn onto the silk satin with red thread. 5" x 5" gouache and silk thread on silk.

Stripes

2010-04-11T20:45:00.000-07:00

Hand sewn stripes in red silk thread on tea stained silk satin. Just under 5" square.

Bloodied

2010-04-02T16:25:00.000-07:00

gouache on silk, 5" x 5"

Cross stich stripes, front and back

2010-03-27T17:00:00.000-07:00

silk thread on fine silk taffeta, 5" x 5"

Wounded silk with stitches, front and back

2010-03-26T15:54:00.000-07:00

gouache and silk thread on silk satin, 4.5" x 5"

The Sunset Club as doll's house

2010-03-18T11:10:00.000-07:00

Here's my latest "map," showing the main level floor plan of the women's club where I've worked for the past four years--it will be five in August, at which time I will finally get my Sunset Club staff pin of a little fat silver peacock.

Psalm of Suffering

2010-03-12T10:43:00.000-08:00

Pappa! I don't feel good again
again this weakness
headaches, trembling
my heart like a fledgling
fallen from its nest
I lose my blood, Pappa,
every month, and the lack
is anemic tiredness
OK. This is your gracious way with me
that you be strong when I am weak
OK then! You've given me
a hundred lovely things to do
plus this weakness that cannot do them
then be strong! Mighty Father
and glorify yourself
in your little daughter.

Exqisite Corpses

2010-03-02T14:20:00.000-08:00

Here are the eight pieces made by Sharon Siskin's advising group in the Fall semester 2009 at Goddard. They totally make me laugh! monstrous and beautiful.

More new map sketches

2010-02-25T11:33:00.001-08:00

Stop! 12th and Madison

Posters and Pulp: 11th and Pine

Pine and Summit, with Travelers and empty lot.

Three maps of the south end of Capitol Hill. This project is largely about experimenting with pigments and materials, and finding ways to depict Seattle's colors, textures, and moods.

Walking to church

2010-02-25T11:21:00.001-08:00

Here's my second attempt (the first is such a mess I didn't even post it) to depict the last part of my 45 minute walk from 16th and Olive to Battery and Western, Mars Hill Church Downtown. The building is in a clumsy spot to get to by foot because of all the on-ramps and off-ramps to the Viaduct around it, and the stop and start sidewalks.

changes, anticipation

2010-02-07T21:24:00.000-08:00

My heart is so peaceful, so hopeful these days. I am much encouraged by the fruit of the trials God has given me: he gave me the trials, he has made the fruit as well. I am no longer anxious about marriage at all. He has worked a miraculous repentance in me from looking to men to save me; in its place He is giving me love for them as my brothers. And a joyful expectancy to receive good from His hand in all things!

And other priorities are changing too. I've not renewed my membership in Gallery 110 for this year. It's an expensive way to do all the work! not that I did all the work, but all the artists together do all the work to run the gallery, as well as pay the rent. While in grad school, that is just too much. But also, I think my relationship to promoting my art is changing. I want to make it, I want to sell it so that others can enjoy it and I can keep earning a living, but I don't think I need to push the whole make a name for myself side of it. Not that it was really going anywhere anyway. Which is on my list of things to thank my Father for with all my heart. I have such a struggle with pride and thinking too much of myself as it is.

May I fall short often, Lord! not of you, but of myself. I want as much of you as possible, and that means I desperately need humility, to receive all the grace you give.

Moon over my neighborhood

2010-01-01T15:27:00.000-08:00

goauche on paper

Walking over the freeway, heading Downtown

2010-01-01T15:19:00.000-08:00

gouache and blue pencil on paper

Seattle maps with ink, coffee and tea

2009-12-12T19:22:00.000-08:00

December Art Review

2009-12-07T19:00:00.000-08:00

"Of Walking in Ice" is the title of Soil Gallery's December exhibition; it is also the title of a small book written by Werner Herzog in 1974. The book is a travelogue of Herzog's walk from Munich to Paris, and all the artists (twelve in all, plus one writer) have read his account before making the work we see in this attractive show.

Curator Jack Ryan says that the artists have drawn from “their unique perspectives to reflect, visually contextualize, and depart from Herzog's travelogue,” and that all of the artists have used the book as a “starting point for new inquiry.” At the same time, however, he also calls the artists “translators” and defends the practice by saying that multiple translations can form a “matrix of beautifully convoluted information.” But isn't it impossible to simultaneously depart from and translate the same thing? I would argue that none of the artists legibly translates Herzog, but rather that they have only used his book as a starting point, a place from which to depart. All the artists, it would seem, have either walked around for a while in the cold or at least thought about the act of doing so. But none of these artists has made it clear what Herzog believes about walking.

Herzog has some very definitive things to say about walking and truth. In the curator's statement, he is quoted saying, “Truth itself wanders through the forests,” and in his “Minessota Declaration” on his website, the artist lists as point # 7 “Tourism is sin, and travel on foot virtue.” Ryan praises Herzog's “sincerity and fluid pursuit of truth.” To translate Herzog, then, would be to pursue the same truth, make the same claims, in different language. But these artists do not say anything so bold, they make no value judgments or say anything in particular beyond, perhaps, “Walking is a neat.” Which is easy enough to agree with.

The show is about walking around for a long time in a rural landscape in wintertime. “This compendium of artists works wanders and unwinds a spectrum of possibilities as viewed through the remarkable portal of Herzog's text,” Ryan says, and confusing mix of metaphors aside, it is important to note that these possibilities do not form a conclusion—that would oppose the goal of the show—which, I propose, is to walk, not to arrive, but to walk on and on. This is made evident in the work on all sides: the soundtracks loop, the video also loops and reveals nothing but a sense of moving forward, the photo of a road is empty, the people are either faceless or strangers, the maps show the ground swelling and falling, up over and around, but have no towns or destinations, there is a language made just for traveling, the logs on a flatbed train go both ways at once, as do the snowshoes, stories are overheard in whispered sideways pencil, and a wolf snarls but then backs off alone. I am convinced that the skis are, oddly enough, the most appropriate metaphor for this show's conceptual and philosophical content: this collection of artists' works skis over the surface of Herzog's text.

The show is absolutely enjoyable on this surface level; walking through the gallery and thinking about travel long distances on foot in a white landscape is a pleasure, and the work holds together beautifully on this theme. The experience is not unlike exploring a natural history museum, looking at artifacts from other people's adventures. The objects are intriguing and give lots of glimpses of different times, different places, and different stories. The work is attractive and beautifully crafted: there is the satisfaction of hand-carved wood, the softness of rabbit fur, the curiosity of a made-up language, the surprise of unrecognizable people, the pathos of secondhand tragedy, the hypnotic thrum of sourceless music.

On a deeper, philosophical level, the show becomes a confusing tangle. As soon as I begin to explore some of the paths back to their source I am faced with so much information that I am overwhelmed and frustrated. Everyone could be saying something different, and it would take hours of research into Herzog and each participating artist to begin to unravel what the exact connections, references and departures are. The essay by Jan Tumlir proves this: in it he proposes a new metaphor entirely, that of the artist/murderer and critic/detective. The essay is extremely complicated and requires knowledge of many specific references to really understand, especially its obscure conclusion. I feel like I have just walked in on a very intelligent conversation that is not meant for me. Or is this essay just like the rest of the artwork here, a departure from Herzog that walks forward in the cold resolutely going nowhere in particular?

Guillermo Kuitca

2009-12-05T19:06:00.000-08:00

Naked Tango
2004
Photogravure and screenprint on paper collé
57 3/4” x 47 3/8”
Edition: 20

Silk organza "scar tissue"

2009-12-04T14:06:00.000-08:00

Friends stitched together, in Christ

2009-12-04T13:49:00.000-08:00

Maps of 11/11/04

2009-12-04T13:45:00.000-08:00

My new project: maps

2009-11-21T15:36:00.000-08:00

My still life series has come to what feels like a premature end; I wanted to paint a full seven paintings, but at five and a half I'm calling it quits. I've really enjoyed the chance to paint from life these past six months, and I've learned a ton about still life, about gouache (and new pigments like Cadmium Orange, Cadmium Red Light, Cerulean Blue, Pyrrol Red and Quinachridone Violet), and about myself before God. Working with these symbols and thinking so much about death and Jesus has been a wonderful meditation: and yet the way I've responded to difficulty and failure in the work, in the process, has revealed my sinful desires for glory, for perfection in myself and my work, and legalism--which is really me just wanting to make my own rules so I can define my own success or failure apart from Jesus. Oh and what a lack of joy I'm guilty of! Yet, my Father keeps pouring out his love on me.

So, for now, I'm letting go of the whole fruit-in-Renaissance-arch theme and starting to draw and paint little maps of places I know and remember in Seattle. I don't know how this will relate to my overall study plan (Goddard) and my overarching themes of death, temptation, and vanity, but I look forward to finding out. I'm making a little map book, a sketchbook that I'm rapidly filling with maps, and which I will eventually cross reference in some way.

Home blocks with break up bench

2009-11-21T15:31:00.000-08:00

Painted in white and red gouache, walnut ink, and yes, a wee bit of my own blood...

15th Ave with Victrola and Remedy Tea

2009-11-21T15:15:00.000-08:00

painted with a latte from Victrola one cold afternoon.

November Art Review

2009-11-15T20:02:00.000-08:00

Laura Lasworth's latest paintings are, as usual, delicately detailed, skillfully crafted, and attractive on many levels. They are beautiful to look at, and yet there is much more to them than at first meets the eye. Her themes are complex and thoughtful, and she makes many unique literary and historic allusions. I will focus this review on her title theme, “The Western Wall.”

All fifteen paintings in this show feature the same view of Puget Sound from a Western window. In each one we see a low watery horizon beneath a cloudy sky. On this stage with its natural drama of changing daylight, seasons, and weather, delicate filigreed arches and gates appear, and white unearthly trees, small figures, and boats. Some of these look familiar, some otherworldly.

When I first encountered the show, I was immediately intrigued with the metaphor of West Coast as a wall. The idea of an expanse of sky and water being a wall is striking, and it brings up paradoxes of depth, and of entrance and blockage. In the history of American Western expansion there was a sense of having reached the end of the world here on the West Coast; the conquest of the land that is now the US only ended when it reached this wall. But this historical “wall” is not what Ms.Lasworth ultimately intends us to think about. Instead she is likening this view of Puget Sound from her window to the Western Wall in Jerusalem.

The Western Wall in Jerusalem is a highly charged historical and religious site. It is the remnant ruin of the Second Temple, which stood between 516 BC and was destroyed in 70 AD. For religious Jews this is the closest they can get to worshiping at the temple, and many believe it is the closest they can get to God's presence on earth. For them it is the most sacred place on earth, but in its ruined condition it stands as a sad remembrance of past calamities and a site of longing and hope for a day when the temple can be rebuilt. There are many people who visit the “Wailing Wall” to pray, some believing in a sort of good luck, that their wishes will be granted because of specialness of the place, but others come to lament the brokenness of the world and cry out to God for deliverance, healing and justice—and for the promised Messiah.

If this is the image of the Western Wall that Ms.Lasworth wants her audience to think about, then these paintings might be said to be prayers. Imagine praying before a window, pouring out your heart's sadness, regrets, longings, hopes, and dreams into the depth and glory of the sky that reminds you of the greatness and beauty of God. But this reading of these paintings only works for some of them. It works for the ones that I feel are the strongest; for me her work is most moving when she uses her most dramatic and weighty symbols and makes them really mesh with her backgrounds. When everything is connected as in “White Willow,” “The Remnant, ““Gates of Sharon,” and “Allegory of Vine Branch and Dry Bones,” the poignancy is palpable.

One of the most beautiful these is “White Willow Tree (Psalm 79).” It is hung right beneath the exhibit's title on the middle wall. This painting is all sadness and tears, with a cold white weeping willow growing out of the smooth gray water, with the faint glow of a white sun above a heavy hammock of clouds. The branches and curving sweeps of rain overlap and seem to cry as one, painted together in a way that is exquisitely satisfying. Psalm 79 is a true lament, containing cries for justice, forgiveness, help, ending in a doxology:

“O God, the nations have come into your inheritance; they have defiled your holy temple; they have laid Jerusalem in ruins...We have become a taunt to our neighbors, mocked and derided by those around us. How long, O Lord?...Do not remember against us our former iniquities; let your compassion come speedily to meet us, for we are brought very low. Help us, O God of our salvation, for the glory of your name; deliver us, and atone for our sins, for your name's sake!...But we your people, the sheep of your pasture, will give thanks to you forever; from generation to generation we will recount your praise.”

In “Gates of Sharon” we see a dusky sky with a distant gathering of violet pink clouds. In the foreground, a lace like structure of arches stands in the water; there are flowers and trumpet like shapes in the white scroll work. On the right, a red tugboat (?) slowly moves through one of the arches of the ethereal gate.The boat's intense, warm blood color makes it seem very real and hopeful as it moves through the scene with a wonderful certainty.

The three paintings called “The Remnant” are darker in color and more dramatic in mood than most of the other paintings. On the left and right there is a stormy seascape, with black clouds and walls of rain (there is another similar painting by itself on the middle wall called “Wall of Rain”), and mysterious gray water. The middle painting is a wonder: in it we see an even more dramatic moment in the rainstorm when there is a strange parting up high in the clouds, and a slice of blue appears. Cutting diagonally across the greenish water is a very red canoe with four gray hooded oarsmen. The more I look at them, the less they seem like the last people left on earth (remnant), but like angels of death.

As a Christian, Ms. Lasworth thinks about the Western Wall differently than a devout Jew would. Christians are convinced that the promised Messiah has already come in the God-man Jesus Christ. He stood in the very temple whose Western Wall remains, and proclaimed that he, himself is the temple of God. This brings an interesting complication to Ms. Lasworth's theme. For example, “Allegory of Vine Branch with Dry Bones,” make clear references to Jesus, not only in that it looks like a crucifix, but also because he referred to himself as a vine, with his people as the branches. For a Christian, no site is closer to God than another, so this window can be a special place to pray, but is not the special place. And because Christians are waiting for the return of Jesus Messiah, there is a similar intense longing and expectation for a day when all will be made right.

But I run into trouble understanding some of these paintings as metaphors for prayers offered at a Christian's Western Wall because of some unexpected visitors. In particular the painter George Tooker, the Jesuit priest and paleontologist Teillhard de Chardin, and Laura Lasworth herself. In “Looking at the Overlooked (Portrait of George Tooker)” we find the painter as a fresh faced young man sitting in a vividly magenta pink chair on a weird pink sea. Above him in a smooth clouded sky a phenomenon of yellow and pink light appears like a friendly UFO. This piece is more enjoyable if Tooker's paintings can be called to mind—it alludes to his work in its lonely, poignant oddity and use of color. But how is George Tooker a figure that would come to mind when praying? Why did he show up? He must be some sort of prophet. But all I can imagine is him baptizing Laura Lasworth in Magic Realism!

The painting featured in the show's advertisements “Teillhard de Chardin east of the Mercy Gate" shows a neatly dressed man standing calmly next to a beautiful ethereal closed gate. The rich brownness of his suit is a wonderful contrast to the cool blues and pinks of the scene, and like the red tugboat, he seems vividly real amid all these ideas and dreams, though he is only about one inch tall. Is he someone Ms.Lasworh hopes to meet someday in an eternity beyond those gates? Surely he portends something, or waits for someone...

Then in “Corporal Acts I and II” Ms. Lasworth appears on her own horizon: handing herself a small fluorescent green stick (which looks very like the radioactive stick that Homer Simpson and coworkers handle so casually at their nuclear reactor plant), and then bending down to touch the flowers that bloom from a plant that apparently sprouted from the stick after it was planted. The redness of the sunset in “Corporal Acts,” and the fine boned little woman in her red coat and earmuff headband makes me think about aging, and some of the loneliness and longings, as well as surprising revelations, that accompany getting older.

These and others like “Illuminated Manuscript” pull the viewer away from the realm of prayer to God and into the realm imagination—its almost as if we are trying to pray, but find that our thoughts keep wandering! At worst, among the others these paintings are distractions, but at best they are humorous notes and little personal quotes that lighten the melancholy mood that pervades this series of paintings.

"The Western Wall" New Work by Laura Lasworth is on display at the Seattle Pacific Art Center, 3 West Cremona Street, Seattle from November 9th to December 9th.

Vanitas by George Tooker

2009-11-13T19:34:00.000-08:00

"Fallen apple, winged seed, bits and pieces"

2009-11-12T16:07:00.000-08:00

It is finished.

Remembering...five years ago

2009-11-11T16:22:00.000-08:00

This little map shows how I remember first avenue between Union and Seneca, with Porter Davis Antiques (my first job in the city), the old Seattle Art Museum, and the Harbor Steps. In my story, I identify with the city as a place of refuge--God made a way for me to leave home and move to the city five and a half years ago. Five years ago today, I cried "Help!" for the first time, walking to work down University Street, confused, ashamed, exhausted, lonely.

And oh, how He has helped me!

"Striped apple, thorns, and empty box"

2009-11-10T16:21:00.000-08:00

I think it's actually finished now, after all these revisions and revisits!

Year in Review

2009-11-02T16:18:00.000-08:00

I turned thirty-one yesterday. Wrapping up one of the longest years of my life. If I were to sum up what God has been teaching me, it would be Hosea 14:8

"O Ephraim, what have I to do with idols?
It is I who answer and look after you.
I am like an evergreen cypress;
from me comes your fruit."

I've been growing up and becoming dependent, gratefully bearing fruit in keeping with repentance. How has he done it? by carrying me through desire, confusion, heartbreak, and need...by providing me with an identity that does not depend on what I do, or feel, or think, or what others do to me or think of me.

Jesus, you have nothing to do with the things I've served and made up in your place. You are the one who has taken care of me and blessed me. Whatever good comes from me is still from you. With love.

Worm eaten apple, winged seed, bits and pieces

2009-10-24T12:13:00.000-07:00

I've been working on this painting for almost 2 months now, and I'm puzzled by its obstinacy. It's not quite clear to me what it is expressing (though I was thinking about miscarriage and the death of infants) or what is not right about it yet. I think it does express some of my own loneliness and awkwardness right now...

Apples, thorns, and empty box

2009-10-24T12:06:00.000-07:00

The painting was essentially finished, but seemed to be missing something in the middle section to the lower left of the main apple...I thought of an ant, but where would I find one? and how would I get it to sit still for me? Then my friend Aileen suggested apple seeds. So I cut up my little pink apple and ate it, collecting the seeds. Seriously, there is a stab of sadness each time I throw away or eat the fruit I've painted! But this time, the seeds remain. And I suddenly realized that besides being about the Last Adam, this painting shows the "three ages of man"! A popular theme in Renaissance art.

October Art Museum Review

2009-10-22T16:06:00.000-07:00

As part of the larger exhibit called “Chinese Art: a Seattle Perspective” the Seattle Asian Art Museum is showing"A Black-and-White World" "the Art and Lessons of Chinese Rubbings.” This is a one room display of two very different sets of images made the same way; on one wall is an arrangement of rubbings taken from the ruins of the Wu Family shrine, and on the other wall are rubbings from stone tablets representing the Sixteen Lohan. The former preach Confucianism, the later Buddhism.

According to the curatorial descriptions of the display, the Wu Family shrine is regarded as the most important pre-Buddhist monument in China, constructed to commemorate official Wu Liang at his death. He lived in the Eastern Han period, and the shrine is believed to have been designed by Wu himself to teach and lead later generations in following Confucian principles. The rubbings, some more or less distinct, are taken from the walls, ceiling, and gables of his shrine, each section representing different parts of the world and “the order of existence”: the ceiling represents heaven with auspicious omens, the gables represent the realm of immortality, and the walls show the human world with all its hustle and bustle “administered by paragons, virtuous women, and wise ministers.”

The shapes and rhythmic patterns of these images are very original and strikingly beautiful. The forms are rounded and stylized—horses with great circular thighs and thick arched necks pull strange chariots with huge round wheels while rounded robed figures gesture, bow, fight, fall over. There are stories of a journey, of some sort of battle, a failed attempted assassination, and a mysterious scene in which an agonized man seems to be overtaken by snakes and large salamanders while two other men rush to the rescue wielding clubs, perhaps at the urging of a strange angel. At one point, which seems climactic, robed figures pull on ropes with all their strength to open a passageway for birds and people in boats below to get through—or to send up some sort of urn—to the formal standing figures above. In many places there are birds, fish, and dogs, besides lots of horses, and those rows of solemn standing figures up above it all. There is a strong impression of order, structure, activity, and interrelation.

I approached this show not knowing much about Confucianism, but with an ongoing curiosity about how religious belief systems and spirituality can be communicated visually. Here, in the Wu family shrine's rubbings, I found that although I did not understand the specific gestures, narratives, and characters depicted, I easily picked up on some of the beliefs and values that undergirded them. Confucianism places the highest value on moral virtues instilled and exhibited in social roles, protocols and ceremonies that create an ordered and harmonious society. It is about the person in relation to others, mutually defined and mutually dependent. In these shrine images there are dozens of people, each one interacting with others, and each one in his or her specific place (as shown through all the dividing lines and hierarchical visual structures of rows and squares one above another). There's always much to be done in this world—the people are active, engaged in travel, work, conversations, ceremonies, and battles. Tellingly, any momentary chaos is confined to a small area, and never really disrupts the overall order. People appear to be more alike than different, and any differences seem to be between human types rather than particular individuals. In each section there are strong, inescapable patterns—patterns to live by.

In very stark contrast to this, stand the much later rubbings of the Sixteen Lohan on the opposite wall. 1600 years after the original Wu family shrines were built, these rubbings were taken from stone tablets which were themselves based on the work of an earlier artist. The Lohan are “Buddhist immortals who have achieved enlightenment...escaping the cycle of rebirth.” These are portraits of Sixteen unusual men. First and foremost we see here the contrast between Confucianism's person in society, and Buddhism's person outside society. These mysterious men are loners, outcasts by choice, who are as different from others as possible. Each man is a unique individual, and even the rocks and trees around them are strange and strikingly particular. There are contortions, twists and knots, lumps, wrinkles, loose and wild hair, deep folds of fat, protruding bones. Through their lack of patterning, and minimal repetition of shapes, each image announces its independence and originality, like the Lohan themselves. The style is at times like a caricature, with almost mocking exaggerations, but there is surprising tenderness and subtlety as well. Apparently these are holy men, set apart from others for spiritual reasons, devoting themselves to poverty and private rituals of study, fasting, journeys and meditation. There seems to be peacefulness here and there, but I was deeply struck by the aloofness of the characters, and the predominant loneliness of the pictures—a chilly homeless isolation. No one talks to his neighbor.

Each man is named and described in a few sentences written above his portrait in small characters. These have been translated on a plaque beside each image. Holiness is defined through specific character examples, often contradictory: one man is “free of all earthly passions,” another “superior being neither speaks nor is silent,” and another “has seen the futility of the sense and the intellect.” For one fierce looking man who seems about to talk “joy equals anger,” but another says, “What profit is there in stirring up the feelings?” One man is so aloof “it is impossible to get to close quarters with him, nor will he ever enter into a discussion.” The epitome of anti-social! These men look passive, despairing, aggressive, arrogant, asleep, or crazy. They are the farthest thing from balanced, well-integrated individuals.

The differences between the Confucian ritualized social order and the Buddhist rejection of social affairs is clear in sign, symbol, structure, and content of these images. Even more than twice removed from their original images and far removed from their original context, I still found these rubbings to be surprisingly legible doctrinal texts of their respective religions.

Koo Schadler

2009-10-14T21:09:00.000-07:00

I really love this little egg tempera painting of apples by Koo Schadler. Just thought I'd post it for inspiration.

Progress on apples, thorns, and empty box

2009-10-14T15:03:00.000-07:00

I haven't known what to paint in the upper arch or the lower strip of this one until now. And now at last its subject is becoming clear too: it is about the first and second Adam, about Jesus conquering death through his death and resurrection.

sketch after Memling

2009-10-05T23:15:00.001-07:00

October Art Review

2009-10-03T21:17:00.000-07:00

Monarch Studio in the Tashiro Kaplan Building in Pioneer Square is showing prints and paintings by Seattle artist Ronald Aeberhard this month. When I first entered the gallery during the opening I was so nonplussed by the work that I almost walked right out again. There are four paintings (one of them a diptych) around 20” x 40” in warm neutral colors, five very black monoprints a bit smaller than the paintings, and three black etchings even a little smaller. The paintings look like muted, controlled variations on Modernist abstracts, lacking all the color contrast and tension. The prints have so little contrast that they look like plain black rectangles from a distance. This is decorator art, I thought, the sort of non-committal, neutral work that offends no one, and appeals to the clichéd American love for colors like beige, taupe, and mauve. Curious how such boring work came to be created and shown in a chic and innovative gallery, I lingered to investigate. Up close, some surface complexity caught my attention: the paint is glazed and built up with obvious care. There are very subtle textures and shifts of color that are occasionally pleasing. The warmth of the pieces is comfortable, and the charred blackness of the prints is satisfying—they don't push us away. But at the same time, they are all impasses. There is no where to go.

I read the artist's statement, and learned that his specific arrangement of squares and rectangles, some vertical, some horizontal, altogether form shapes like the “Ka” doors of ancient Egypt:

“The Ka was the life force, or soul...the doors were placed as the front of the burial chambers for prominent citizens. They were not actual doors that could be opened, but were representations...thresholds that allowed gods or the deceased to interact and link with the living world...intended to allow the deceased a link between the living and the dead so that the dead would receive sustenance from the land of the living.”

I asked Mr. Aeberhard how he came to his interest in this shape, and he said he has visited Egypt many times, and has stood before such doors—they are very tall, and he said he wished he could make paintings that large. He spoke of the whitish, sandy color of the limestone, and how they were once painted all over with colors. I began to see how his paintings mimic the visual experience of low relief carving. Looking at the monoprints then, I realized they look like mummified versions of the paintings! Interestingly, each painting has it's match in print, though not all the paintings are at Monarch Studio. The other paintings are being shown at Saint Mark's Episcopal Cathedral.

But the show and all the pieces are titled “Passage,” and the designs are based on false doors. Specifically, spiritual passage; specifically the Ka doors of Egypt. The work does not make me think of passage or of doors, however—I don't wonder what might be on the other side or what might come through. They are window sized representations of false doors. This more than twice removal from the idea of door is problematic for the work. I agree with the artist that he should paint larger: at least one painting should be at least six feet tall. This alone would help the viewer think of a door; we would to stand in front of it knowing that although it doesn't open like a regular door, it might open in some other sense.

But size aside, the most significant problem with this body of work is it's relationship to the spirituality and beliefs it takes as its subject. The spirituality of the work lives in the past and in the imagination, not in the heart or culture of the artist or his audience. Mr. Aeberhard does not believe these paintings to be actual passageways between the worlds of the living and of the dead, and he doesn't expect his audience to believe that either. Proving this, we also find his paintings hung on the walls of a Christian church, where it is not the norm to be a follower of a pharaonic Egyptian religion. I visited the cathedral to see how the paintings look in that context. They are hung against wood paneling below enormous arched windows. They look even less like doors here, with all the real windows, pillars, passages and doors in the spacious, vaulted room. In fact, they merely look like imitations of the wood paneling.

The Ka doors of ancient Egypt, on the other hand, were communicating in a visual language that was understood by those who viewed them, and they were functional, not fictional, to their original audience. But in order to read these paintings as anything other than very plain abstract designs, we need an explanation—and given one, we then become tourists, observing a different culture from the outside; we smile and nod at these long dead religious practices that have no affect on us at all. We do not worship or plead before these doors, we do not weep for the deaths they represent or leave our own food as offerings here, going away hungry.

If the work is fiction, it is unconvincing. If it is reality, it is a decoy version. This is where the artist falls short: he is neither honest with us about what he believes nor willing to talk to us about what we believe. In “Passage” he is obviously not wrestling with his own real questions about life, death, a spiritual realm, and passages between. Instead he has focused on how another culture, long ago, dealt with it.

The artist calls himself “A process person” and described his enjoyment of surfaces, of glazing, and working with inks, acid, plates. I can see this enjoyment in his work; his care for the material and his pleasure in the making is evident. But the work does not rise above its process to say something more, despite its stated meaning. I would not call it “Passage” but “Dead End.”

And both at once

2009-10-03T13:01:00.000-07:00

Yesterday night I suddenly pictured a very dark red violet for the ground color around the wormy apple painting, and the same warm gray that was the ground for the figs as the ground in the arch, around a green winged seed.

I've been looking for just the right winged seed for more than a week now, trying to find one that has a stem, is close to symmetrical, has wings that are fairly upright, and one that has two seeds. I find a lot whose seeds never developed, or only one, and many that have already been eaten by squirrels. I think I found the one I need, but it's already drying out.

The pink apple painting still has many questions to answer. I have no idea what to place in the bottom section. I've had a really good time painting this apple, enjoying the light around it and the complicated shadows.

Yet another apple

2009-09-30T19:39:00.000-07:00

Instead of finishing the previous painting, I've started another. This is because I have this apple, and don't want to waste it, letting it go bad, while I finish the first painting (whose other elements can hold). So I've been painting this pretty, pink and white apple--and the challenge has been that the palest side of the fruit is in shadow, whereas the darker colored side is in the light. Next to it will be a dried out apple core with a leaf still attached that I've held onto for years.

fallen apple

2009-09-21T13:03:00.000-07:00

Just in time. I managed to paint this little fallen apple just as that bruise developed, and by today the bruise covered almost the whole side, and fruit flies have gathered. So now, my little model is in the compost bin.

My advisor asked me about my relationship to my objects--is it love? and yes, to some extent, I come to love everything I paint. I clipped an article from some family magazine a long time ago with the title "The More You Look, The More You Like," claiming from studies that the more time people spend looking at each other, the more attractive they became to one another. I've found this to be true of much of my long looking. It is a bond formed from identifying the uniqueness of something, it's particular structure, it's own flaws and details--amounting, altogether, to its beauty.

To paint this apple, I've used three red pigments: Pyrroll Red, Quinachridone Rose, and my new addition Cadmium Red Light. The first is a very middle red, while the rose is very cool (Magenta-like) and the Cad Red Light is hot and of a lighter value. They were a little awkward to handle together, as each one mixes differently with my Azo Yellow, Ultramarine Blue and Cerulean Blue, but I'm excited to learn.

Starting a new painting today

2009-09-16T11:38:00.000-07:00

Today I will take the painting in this photo, "Updo," to the Seattle Pacific University Art Center for the group show that opens later this month, and I will start sketching out my next fruit painting. Another one with an apple (or two). Thinking about my friends who are mourning the loss of their tiny baby who died before being born.

Thistles, figs and grapes, and matches

2009-09-13T21:06:00.000-07:00

"Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will recognize them by their fruits."
Matthew 7:15-20

Psalm 130

2009-09-11T11:54:00.000-07:00

Out of the depths I cry to you,
O Lord, hear my voice!
Let your ears be attentive
to the voice of my pleas for mercy!

If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities,
O Lord, who could stand?
But with you there is forgiveness,
that you may be feared.

I wait for the Lord, my soul waits,
and in his word i hope;
my soul waits for the Lord
more than watchmen for the morning,
more than watchmen for the morning.

O Israel, hope in the Lord!
For with the Lord there is steadfast love,
and with him is plentiful redemption.
And he will redeem Israel
from all his iniquities.

Dry Thistles, figs and grapes, and matches

2009-09-10T14:03:00.000-07:00

Essentially finished, here it is! This third painting is much more complex than the first two, and I have a much more intense intention behind it. And the fruit is not rotten, but just a day or two past perfect ripeness.

Sparrow

2009-09-09T17:32:00.001-07:00

I feel like a sparrow today--fragile, feathery, busy, nervous. I go about the city and feel free and happy in a sunbeam, light! and then suddenly tiny and needy, I hurry home. I don't think I've eaten enough these past few days, and I know I am tempted to a low-lying anxiety...adjusting to new things, repenting of familiar fears, confessing my bitterness and distrust. Lord help me now!

September Art Review

2009-09-04T21:29:00.000-07:00

I visited Gallery 110 for the First Thursday openings yesterday, and spent time up in the loft with Stephanie Wilken's show “Exile and the Kingdom.” According to the statement on the Gallery 110 website, this body of work is engaging with the philosophy of Absurdism as expressed by Albert Camus in his 1957 collection of short stories Exile and the Kingdom. Here are ten pieces, all intaglios and monoprints in black and chromatic grays. The pieces are small, some tiny, and one larger work on the far wall. In general Stephanie's imagery is melancholy and cryptic, but in a mental, quiet sort of way.

There is an oppressive quality to some, like “Diviner,” which is a cluster of prints starting with a greenish black intaglio of a haloed, sturdy, blonde female head facing left: the tilt of her chin, and the fierce gaze could look heroic, except something about her eyes and mouth daunts me. As a diviner she is perhaps the one to seek out to learn one's future or to inquire of the dead, but there is a strange phrase printed below: “At Kung there shall be no loss.” And then beneath that print is a smaller dark rectangle with a suggestion of a vortex, then a very small formal looking gold stamp suggesting a flag and then a reddish x. The viewer's eye is guided around the piece by the circular motifs of the halo and the vortex and the large to small pattern starting at the top and moving down and left to right, ending in...nothing. Is this then a statement about the unknowable nature of this world?

Another one that I found oddly oppressive is called “Ideas of Order.” It is a symmetrical arrangement in an unwelcoming blue-gray depicting a ladder and the moon, with Roman numerals and the letters A B C D Y. The surface of the print is different from the others, it has an almost metallic sheen, and there is none of the scratchy marks or deep blacks of most of the other pieces. It is almost peaceful, but the letters and color make it too regimented—only the shifty ladder suggests any actual physical peril, but I am really only in danger of getting stuck in the realm of the philosophical mind.

The largest piece is called “Lost Heart” and I found it to be the weakest piece in the show—it is a many layered print all in that shadowy blue-gray, with a mountain and narrow, toppling telephone poles. A lone crow flies over. The paper is very warped, and the image is tepid.

The pieces that I enjoyed the most are the scratchy etchings with suggestions of the human form. “How Wide it Was” strikes me as a scene in a concentration camp, despite the vague Gothic Arch in the background, with a limply standing figure that looks hanged, head slumped from a broken neck, in ill-fitting square cut pajamas, a conspicuous star on the left breast. At the bottom there is a wonderfully black and detailed bit of etching that reminds me of the beautiful plants often painted around the feet of saints in early Renaissance altar pieces. This image seems to meditate on death as a sad and evil reality...on murder and crimes. It's religious allusions make me wonder if the image is placing such crimes on the Western church.

“Exile and the Kingdom” is a larger piece, three prints, one above the other. The bleak sentence: “I rapped on the tomb, no one came,” sends chills down my spine as I look at the print on rough fabric of a dusky horizon, a fragile pale cross on a blue-gray square, and a life-size inky hand print. Below, three little Eastern arches with tiny buildings inside, seem like grave stones, separated by a little null set. The “Jesus didn't rise, your Christian hope is foolish” statement here is painfully clear. But it is more sad than mocking.

The etchings “Cosmogeneses,” “Finis,” and “Mother Night,” each contain my favorite motif: a tiny drawn hand print. I love the intaglios that make up “Finis.” The fragile-looking etching mounted above is of a Gothic arch with a square box where the body of a figure would be, two offering, pleading hands open on either side. Above, a faint suggestion of a face, with a mathematical circle for a halo. There is only a small x in the box. We expect a saint, or Christ, but find nothing. Below, in a long and narrow rectangle like a coffin lies a skeleton, jaw agape. The soft, rich blackness of the ink and the beauty of the drawing of the bones is wonderful. This print is very solid, certain. Here again I recognize a negation of Christian hope in life after death, with that x having it's doleful say. Finally, "Mother Night" is the only image that suggests an actual, present experience of pain—the hands this time seem to scream for help, pleading in pain out of a circular tangle. This image is not numb, but remains ambiguous because of its title.

In the end, I found Stephanie's show to be an effective exploration of her themes, instructive in the beliefs of Albert Camus, with an overall mood of quiet, livable despair and mental effort. The slight awkwardness of her print combinations, the differences between the pieces sometimes works to contribute to her paradoxes, but at other times hinders the conversation between the parts of her pieces and the pieces with each other. In her show you are urged to contemplate mortality, without hope and without desperation, told to believe in nothing but yourself, to find no other meaning but your own, and, if you must be encouraged at all, then be encouraged by the fact that you are not dead yet.

2009-09-02T18:02:00.000-07:00

I want to emphasize the pricklyness of the dried stem of thistles in the top section, but details are mind/eye-boggling. It doesn't look right yet, not even the left area that I worked on for hours today. I'm happy with the match box, though. I found a beautiful book on Still Life painting in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries at Powell's books. It is very inspiring. I've been so focused on portraits for years now and am a bit surprised by this turn in my work...but it is fun and refreshing (conceptually, not particularly in execution!)Everywhere I go, I'm gathering little bits of plants and stuff, coming up with more arrangements than I can possibly ever get to painting.

Painting in progress, August

2009-08-27T15:53:00.000-07:00

I painted the grapes the day before I left for the Goddard residency in Port Townsend, and then got back to the pear that I intended to put in the background having rotted in big black spots, too far gone. Then I thought of figs, and these bright green ones were ripe at Madison Market. But I've had to paint in such a hurry because they are oozing their honey and fading fast! and at $5 for 10, I'm determined to eat them all...so I've had to paint quickly, and ate the large one as soon as it's portrait was done.

The figs have actually been very difficult to paint, and I think it's an issue of pigments/colors; the greens I can mix all have difficult properties, such as a grainyness (from the Ultramarine), and a dull acidity from the Azo yellow; the Cobalt Blue is great but gets dominated by the yellow, and Phthalocyanine green is too vividly blue-green to be helpful here. It's also been a transparency/opacity issue: the figs have a unique skin that has a transparent glow in some of the yellow and green areas, with veins of transparent brownish, but then other areas are flat, opaque yellow to yellow green with cool grayed reflected high-lights! a purely shiny object, or a purely dull one, seems easier to see and render. But then again, maybe whatever I am painting now, is what seems most difficult!

2009-08-26T10:16:00.000-07:00

flowers of the field

2009-08-24T10:58:00.000-07:00

August in Port Townsend, and dandelions and thistles are seeding in the grass and along the hillsides. I like the shape of the small dandelions, with their more graceful stems and small, dense fuzzy heads, and this other variation that has a delicate shape and color. The ordinary dandelion weed has such a stiff, straight wide stem...more humorous than attractive to me, but perfect for picking and blowing on to scatter the seeds!

Is All Art Religious Art?

2009-08-18T11:31:00.000-07:00

Perhaps religion, whether organized or vague, is what lies behind all art. We talk about art as coming from a “deep place” of desire and need, and we talk about giving back with our art, doing good. Doesn't this sound like religious practices? We talk about creating experiences and spaces for self-awareness and transformation. Isn't this what ancient temples were for? Or ritual grounds? And wasn't most ancient art made for a religious use? I'm thinking of ancient sculptures and buildings. People put effort, care, creativity into what they see as preeminent. We often find ourselves trying to express significance and core meaning through art. Is art then still about the most holy?

There is another aspect to historic and contemporary art practices that is not overtly religious, but is about ordinary life; beautifying and organizing one's home, community, and sphere. This too demonstrates core beliefs, what we value, and I think goes hand-in-hand with the above.

I'm puzzling out why the history of art and artifact is so tied up with religious practices and beliefs and yet that does not seem to be the conversation today. I don't think people on a whole have changed that much. I propose that our art is still about beliefs, worship, ritual, sacrifice, good and evil, high and low. If we describe what we believe, what we think is worth sacrificing for, what rituals we perform, what we find good and what we think is bad, what we put up high and show to everyone, and what we debase and try to hide, we will find the definition of our religion...and our art.

Dependence Day

2009-08-02T18:00:00.000-07:00

Two sins of my heart keep being exposed: independence and self-preservation. These motivations seem good at first; they are praised in this culture, and easy to justify in myself. But they aren't good! They are based on two fundamental lies: that I don't need God and that God isn't absolutely good and in control. I should perhaps have put those in the reverse order; because on some level I don't trust God's goodness and sovereignty, I think I can and must make it on my own. But worse than that, there is a part of my that doesn't want God to be in control.

I am so tempted to think I need something other than what He gives me: when I am in pain, I think I need relief; when I am lonely, I think I need a husband; when I am scared to do what is in front of me, I think I need escape or rescue; when I sin, I think I need to clean myself up. And lately, all this happens all at once: In pain, lonely, scared, and aware that I am sinning in my lack of trust in God.

But my old comforts are wearing thin, developing holes. Familiar, they still seem to offer what they provided before, but taking them up, I am strangely dissatisfied. Being alone used to be a great comfort. So did being praised and admired for excellence and beauty. Fine clothes and fine meals used to mean a lot to me. Feeling good about myself, confident that I had done well and looked good, used to be my goal. A moment of standing on my own, justified and satisfied in my own eyes! This saddens me. Especially because it still tempts me on a regular basis.

Someone insisted to me recently that dependence on Jesus is freedom. Whereas I get it backward, thinking that freedom is when I don't need his help anymore. Like if I were never tempted to take up a fleshly, sinful comfort again--that sounds like freedom to me, to never even want it again. But to struggle and to be tempted and need the Holy Spirit to help me not to sin...ah! that is the dependence of freedom.

I want to grow in happiness in my need for God--to greet it at every trial, to turn to him quickly and welcome his aid with joy!

Rotting Peach, Rosemary, and Stones

2009-07-28T11:12:00.000-07:00

By the time I finished painting the peach it had rotted through the white paper it was sitting on, creating a large dark spot on my table. The rosemary was drying so fast on these hot days that its color and shape were changing as I painted. Only the pits and rock sat steadily for a few days...I can't decide if the pits represent death or life. they are like the skeleton of the peach, but they are also seeds.