Sitting Ducks

I'm taking a break from my drawings! I'm stuffing ducks! No, not as in a cooking experiment with spicy livers and liqoured orange sauce, but as in piecing various fabrics together in order to form sculptural, three-dimensional life-size birds. Don't ask me why I want to do this, but when I found most of an old duck pattern that I had used years ago in making two stuffed ducks for my children, the 'thrill' was on! Using Kaffe Fassett's printed fabrics, felt, or lush brocades from the Stratford Festival Theatre, the serious duck-making began. Twelve ducks later, I continue to find all manner of fabric possibilities for use in my sculptural creations. In pondering the why of all this, I did some research as to what a duck might symbolize.

Apparently, ducks in a dream may represent spiritual freedom or the unconscious, though that thought doesn't seem to apply to my irascible state at the moment. However, the sturdy birds are also indicative of a certain earthly flexibility as they can blend or adapt to various situations and elude their enemies by flying, swimming, running or diving for cover. Unless, of course, they are sitting on eggs, when, as 'sitting ducks', they can be targeted. Both these scenarios could refer to the expression 'ducking out' of a certain issue, meaning unable to confront something straight on. Is this me? Serious work waiting?

On a more domestic note - in Chinese culture, a mandarin duck symbolizes affection and fidelity as they mate for life. These ducks are said to help couples achieve marital bliss and strengthen togetherness. And, according to Feng Shui theories, if you place a sculpture of a mandarin duck in the southwest portion of your house or bedroom, the duck "allows its owner or anyone near it to emit a strong love chi, making that person more loveable and attractive".

Wow what a resourceful bird and clearly my answer to the why of this activity. A dozen ducks placed in the southwest corner...a smoking love-chi wafting about...what happens next?

The Principle of Uncertainty

Over thirty years ago, I was part of a very diverse art community in Vancouver. Though I was a painter, a friend of mine, Toby MacLennan, who was a performance artist, invited me to join her in a number of her quasi-theatrical performance pieces. We began with a late-night sojourn to one of the parks in Vancouver. I was to bring my cello and she brought a tall music stand (made of wood) that was fitted with staff lines (five small tree branches), situated some eight feet high at the top of the device. The spaces in between the staff lines were left empty, allowing for the complexity of the stars in the night sky (on this clear evening) to congregate, clump together and shine through these lines, thus becoming musical notes. At first, I played the actual stars/notes as they appeared on and in-between the staff lines as though I were playing conventional cello music. However, it soon became obvious that the star-notes that came in clusters and nearly crowded out single note sounds, had to be dealt with in some other way. So, I began to trill this particular star/note configuration. And then, as there was only one giant measure from which I could work, I decided to "play" the stars backwards and forwards and from there, the "music" became improvisational. (I could tilt the staff lines up and down to form other groupings of stars/notes.)

This photo shows me looking up through the music stand/staff lines, and playing pizzicato notes. A flashlight was attached to the base of my chair so that I could see the staff lines up above. Do you see the impish white figure floating over my head?

After this particular night-sky activity, which consisted of just the two of us and a tape recorder, Toby scheduled a performance in the star dome of Vancouver's MacMillan Planetarium (1976). This performance included an opera singer and other musicians who "sang" the stars. The piece was called "Singing the Stars". Later, we performed in Toronto at the McLaughlin Planetarium and other venues which would allow the projection of a night sky on the walls and ceiling of an ordinary room.

This photo shows another variant of a music stand (see vertical posts) as sculpture, where an individual (that's me!) prepares to be both a part of the night sky (mask) and a musician. This activity, with its principle of uncertainty, is not far removed from my passionate work of assembling and layering sections of frottaged textures with figurative elements. Each art form consists of a kind of mystical faith that the spiritual, visual outcome will prevail.

Please see Toby MacLennan' s website ( http://tobymaclennan.com/ ) and hear a little "night music", or read about her other performances in the book "Caught in the Act" an anthology of performance art by Canadian women edited by Tanya Mars and Johanna Householder, pages 315-323.

No See-Ums Revisited

Continuing with the inadvertent imagery idea, bring your attention to the lower right-hand corner of the drawing of my husband and me, which is titled "Art and Natalie". At the lower edge of the back of my head, a lightly patterned profile of a figure faces into my hair at the nap of my neck (see detail).

Where this profile touches the hair, have a look at the darker profile which seems to be about to kiss the lighter one! Two inadvertent anomalies! Then, if you look just above these two figures, you will see yet another profile of a person with a protruding chin and lower lip, his eye looking out from under an excessive sweep of hair.

The couple kissing - is that a secondary narrative describing the two of us? I'd like to think that maybe unconsciously I could have willed this to happen…

However, given that interpretation, what would be a probable story line for the profile above the lower two? Is that the faint image of a clock, just to the right of this profile? Could it represent aging and the passing of time? Okay, I've got to stop all this and come back to a less confabulated mindset. But you know, Art and I will have been married for many many years come this July (passage of time?), and as far as I'm concerned, that knowledge may be floating somewhere in the mysterious collective unconscious.

The No See-Ums (continue to surprise me!)

While looking over details in my large drawing called "Family Tree" (see October 16th, 2009 post) and other of my frontage works, new, obliquely hidden images caught me by surprise. The no seem-ums, or unintended figurative elements, seemed suspended between the rather pattern-saturated atmosphere of my intended imagery. In "Family Tree" for example, a number of fish, inhabiting the post-like supports of both figures, came to my complete attention. Repeatedly, and in startling detail, the fish were caught midstream in other-wordly relationships, perhaps as irrational as an automatic writing discourse. With this discovery, I drifted into a thought pattern best described by Paul Klee when he wrote in his diary that his paintings were like dreams flowing beneath the waking surface of life. "From the uncertain, a something shines not from here, not from me…" It is a known fact that fish often symbolize the deep waters of the unconscious psyche. As ancestors of our own species, fish may also characterize the division between the conscious and the unconscious, matter and spirituality. In this way, could a possible secondary narrative be explored in these drawings? I leave that up to your own imagination.

In Victorian times and as early as the sixteenth century, intentionally hidden images could be found to create fantastic Arcimboldo-like portraits (see the Napoleon postcard, circa 1905) and portrait-landscapes (see the "the hidden giant" eighteenth century - a face in the landscape.)

I have been fascinated by the limitless possibilities of such an approach to making art, and it never ceases to amaze me that, at the finish of every one of these drawings, an element of surprise continues to shape the content.

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