More Complexity! (tempi libre)

I bought my first Kashmiri shawl in a small import shop called Tika in Stratford, Ontario. Since then, my collection of shawls has grown to a dozen ornately designed and heavily textured Kashmiri gems, all to my mind, of immense beauty and refinement. At a lecture recently given at the Textile Museum in Toronto, which revealed the history of these remarkable shawls, my knowledge and love for this exquisite artform only deepened. I learned that in using the tapestry weave technique, these garments were worked with as many as four hundred bobbins of multiple colours, all positioned at the same point on the weft, and that they were designed with freely inventive, overlapping patterns. My favourite designs, seemingly concerned with a symmetrical overall pattern (at first glance), were often completed with a woven area that was quite unique to the body of the piece. This surprise element intrigued me to the point at which I began seeing these particular weavings as drawings representing line, freely executed. Further thought examined the possibility of making a shawl-drawing or paper garment that could actually be worn. Though not a novel idea, I can't seem to resist the opportunity to shake up my own artwork. A Chicago artist, Nick Cave, who makes extraordinarily textured and sculpted costumes, is part of this wearable art wavelength. He brilliantly integrates costume design with the idea of animated sculpture and dance that is at once traditional and exotic, ethnic and timeless, incorporating an element of free-association with his chosen materials. Tempi Libre!

The images show an example of a hand-woven Kashmiri shawl of the Sikh period, cicrca 1850.
Also, see Nick Cave's video on YouTube called "Art In Motion": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwupTQt9zxY

Drawing on physics

I once asked a student of mine what they were thinking as they were drawing (after the drawing had been completed). She wasn't able to answer that question without some frustration, as it is often hard to separate the analytical from the intuitive aspects which comprise the making of some works of art. This young person had been taught formal issues (line, shape, volume) which I knew she had been contemplating, but what about her own unabridged personal and intuitive thoughts? Perhaps the formal and informal concepts are so inseparable as to make taking a divided verbal stance quite meaningless. Simultaneity may be an observer-independent fact, hard to fully comprehend.

Artists draw in the present, remember past concepts, and anticipate future goals and images yet to be made, all in the present moment. The convergence of time? Does time dissolve in the making of art?

With my drawings, I try to describe seemingly unfinished, disconnected and fragmented patternings (that overlap one another and cause simultaneous collisions), as part of a visual wholeness. It's as though this maelstrom of arranged pieces, a participant in the world before the splintering pieces stopped whirling, produces a calm stationery effect of equanimity. Space and time - a continuum?

Here are two of my recent drawings:
"Ethiopian Dialect" 19" x 25" graphite (top)
"Queen Mother" 19" x 25" graphite (lower image)

Historic Confluence

Sometimes, my research interests become incorporated in my drawings either intentionally or otherwise. My fascination with the Viking era and my Nordic ancestry has found its way from the historic past into the present day matters of my work. With these interests in mind, I suppose it's not too surprising that one of my large drawings ( "Fire and Water", 5' x 6.5') includes my mother and sisters standing in front of a Norwegian sailing sloop, which is shown in the background area of the drawing. (top photo) The sloop is not a Viking sailing vessel, but the kind of rig that my great-great grandfather Gabriel and his brother Hans, both Norwegian sea captains, would have sailed in crossing the Great Lakes. In my drawing, my sisters and my mother and I are literally half immersed in the waters of unknown realities, both in terms of who our ancestors were as personalities, and as a state of the human condition more generally. In my research, I strive for knowledge as to who the Vikings or my ancestors could have been as individuals. As to the Vikings, the sagas are helpful in this regard. As to my more recent ancestry, I have many facts and dates, and even some wonderful anecdotal stories from which to draw. I also have scientific data that reveals probabilities in terms of DNA. For example, it was thrilling to learn that through the formal analysis of my saliva, taken from a cheek swab, it was revealed that a small percentage of North Indian Tribal and Japanese form a part of my genetic makeup. Genetic researchers also suggest that a large number of Norwegians have a mix of Mongolian, Eastern European and Western European genetic factors. But you know, is that information all so surprising? The fact that ancient peoples have steadily moved around the globe has been common knowledge for many years. If people only knew that they were repositories of the confluence of individuals from across the globe, we might get along a little better. How does all that new information make me feel? Wonderfully exotic in a North American framework.

One last note: At the Viking site at L'Ans Aux Meadows, Newfoundland, a small, typically East Indian shawl fastener was found along with a Venetian glass bead. These findings tell us an awful lot about humans as globetrotters and about the subsequent blend of cultures and peoples that naturally go along with years of migration.

You might find the following two books an interesting read: "The Vikings" by Robert Ferguson and "Norwegian Migration to America" by Theodore C. Blegen.

You may want to follow the links to:

DNA: http://www.dnatribes.com/

L'Ans Aux Meadows: www.pc.gc.ca/eng/lhn-nhs/nl/meadows/index.aspx

Colour

Yesterday, I bought a gorgeous Czech green glass necklace (circa 1920's), two bright Cerulean blue glass candlesticks, a turquoise blue glass bowl and a lapis lazuli Middle-Eastern necklace. From these purchases, I am reminded once again of how much I love colour. A frottage drawing using colour, however, has been quite challenging to make. The technique is the same frottage technique I've used in previous graphite drawings shown in this blog, but this time, I've used the new (to me) medium of chunks of coloured pencil. Unfortunately, coloured pencil just doesn't show the subtleties that a graphite stick can convey. When I work with graphite, the pressure on the stick dictates whether the feeling of the form is tenuous or more solid. With graphite, wisps of forms can quietly dissolve off the paper - the forms 'waste away', as if somehow aging or wearing thin. However, sticks of waxy coloured pencil seem to be uncontrollably either 'on or off', which makes sensitive markings difficult to achieve. I wonder if using sharpened coloured pencil points, rather than chunky sticks, could achieve a more delicate effect? Or maybe, just maybe, this day is better left to a glass of port, a handful of almonds and Sudoku. Back to the drawing board tomorrow.

Wunderkind

I don't know when I first became aware of the work of Arcimboldo because he seems so intrinsic to my own way of thinking about pattern. I was, however, surprised to learn that he had lived and painted in the 16th century! How could an artist of the Renaissance period dare to do the bizarre work that he presented to the courts of kings? Was Arcimboldo a court jester of a sort? Did he humour King Ferdinand I of the Hapsburg court, Maximilian II of the Viennese court or later, Rudolph II at the court of Prague with his impossible compilations? Is this not modern art?

Though my self-portrait contains a woven fabric-like representation of flesh and hair unlike the Arcimboldo web of realistic objects, the influence of the master of double-meaning remains clear and obvious to me. The Surrealist Salvador Dali is credited for bringing Arcimboldo to the attention of the present art world, and since that time, many of us today have adopted a version of his style.

See the following YouTube links:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfHj0L8fLVY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdfCOCIv_DU

Flashback

They called me "Miss Patterns Novotny". That name was not based solely on my high school art projects, but also apparently on my clothing schemes. I enjoyed wearing patterned knee-socks -such as a turquoise blue pair with red and black rings of colour printed just below the knee - with plaid or tweed skirts. The colours always matched the knee-socks, or so I thought, and maybe I allowed just one permissible area (perhaps a sweater?) to be given over to a solid colour. Even later on in Art School, my clothing unintentionally seemed to invite attention. A classmate once said to me "I'm always interested to see what costume you've devised for yourself." Costume? Of course, I never thought of it in this way, as I was just putting things together. But you know, it's not hard to fathom how all this patterning became such a serious matter in all aspects of my life, if you knew the kind of house I grew up in: highly textured curtains, heavily patterned damask or tapestried upholstery, and many old oriental rugs. Each area an impossible world unto itself. A world where Audubon birds sat on jungle-like tree branches, or a world where baskets of grapes and pheasants play havoc. Oh, and not to forget the carved, ornate antique furniture placed strategically around the "world of worlds". My mother, an antique dealer, artist, teacher and collector, designed that treasured atmosphere and I'm happy to reveal that her world has also become mine.

Experiments

The gathering of textured-surface materials begins with a walk in just about any direction. However, most of my walking is directed toward the dollar stores as plastic (unfortunately?
fortunately?) outlives mother nature. As much as I admire the bark, for example, from a highly sculptural tree-trunk, that material eventually breaks apart after repeated frottage experiments (and, can you see me rubbing away at a tree-trunk in front of passers-by?)

Some of the lowly, highly textured dollar store items that I have used are shown in this recent photo. They include: fly-swats, a plastic kitchen sink mat, the side of a plastic crate, sunflower, flamingo and butterfly garden stakes, and the "exquisitely beautiful" plastic lace. I have also used textures from not-so-lowly items, which include the carved surfaces from the backs of antique chairs (using a light pressure, of course), a black lacquered Chinese Coromandel screen (see photo), silver trivets, and a frenetically designed mosaic clay plate.

What to do with these items? Do the textures work individually or in a layered format? Which textures can be layered successfully? Shall I superimpose these textured images or arreange them in a patchwork layout? How many layers of texturing can be effectively deciphered?

At this point, I've begun a shift from making silhouettes of family and friends to the pairing of unrelated individuals. This opens up the scheme of things in that the use of textured surfaces no longer has to fit, even in a small way, the specific individual. Believe it or not, I tried to relate some of the texturing materials to the friends or family that I knew/know so well. (Example, plastic lace used extensively for a friend with a Spanish background, flower textures for her husband, an avid gardener.) Other somewhat realistic objects do appear in these drawings and are appearing more often. Presently, I am working on a 7' x 5' drawing of friends, a suggestion
of a village, and the interweaving and interplay of many textured fish images....? (See photo)