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)

Shadow Puppet Intrigue

On November 2nd, 2009, I experienced a spectacular performance of Stravinsky's opera "The Nightingale and Other Short Fables", staged by Robert LePage at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts (Toronto, Ontario, Canada). I was spellbound. LePage's operatic concept was strikingly avant-garde, and yet his ideas included the ancient artforms of puppetry, Vietnamese water-puppetry, shadow puppetry, and the dramatic play of water and light. Combining such an array of artforms was breathtaking and remarkably coherent. The audience and I fell headlong into a child's magical world right from the start. Though we acknowledged the unreal world of puppets, the opera singers/puppets catapulted the libretto into our present reality, as the viewers become captivated by the unique transformations set before them.

The orchestra pit, filled with water, was the "stage" where some of the opera singers sang and waded, dressed in colourful Asian costumes. The singers, half immersed in the water, animated the puppet figures (using Javanese style sticks for maneuvering) that glided along in beautifully crafted boats. Sound wild? Yes, but it worked so well. The full impact of the unusual theatrical elements and brilliant singing pulled the audience away from a pretend sensibility into one of an intense here-and-now reality. We became children being "read to", while the "pop-up book" scene and complex musical richness shimmered before us. And what of the Nightingale? The Russian soprano, Olga Peretyatko, sang with a gorgeous coloratura voice and was well-suited and versatile in her role as the magical bird.

This particular extravaganza put me in mind of many intrinsic elements that I have recently come to recognize in my own art expression. Unbeknownst to me, in terms of a conscious effort, the figurative puppet element began last year with a silhouette drawing of the profile of the heads of friends whose "bodies" morphed into Maori objects, culminating in tapered legs that diminished into stick-like points. I call the drawing "A Fine Polemic" (2008, 4'8" x 4'2"). A playful synergism?

To see something of what made the Nightingale so special, go to Youtube and type in:
Michael Curry Demonstrates his Nightingale Puppets
or
ExMachina/The Nightingale
or
Waywang Kulit (Dewa Ruci by Ki Manteb 2/10)
or Vietnam Water Puppet Show 2008 part 3

From the Past:

Have you ever looked at some of the silhouettes and paper cut-outs by Hans Christian Anderson? He always carried a pair of scissors in his pocket, and if he met a child of a certain age, he would pull out his scissors, and while telling a fairy tale, he would begin to cut out an elaborate cut-paper image. The image illustrated the story! Since he always wanted to to be an actor, all of this was dramatized, the story ending with the final paper-cut!! While living in Cambridge, England for a year, I began a series of cut-paper creations for my daughter, who was five and a half years-old at the time. Every so often, I would draw and colour an image that had been folded and cut, and then leave it at night as a surprise on the floor in front of her bedroom door. In the morning, what fun! This activity got me thinking about how important paper templates have been in my struggle to find my own art niche. Looking back at a series of ribbon paintings, completed in the 1970's - '80's, I realized that they were a result of the manipulation of three different templates which I had drawn and cut out for use on large scale (8' x 5') canvases. Looking farther back, I discovered that repeat patterns used in my fabric design class at SAIC, were the initial source of the way I approach my art practice today.
Examples of the folded paper and cut series (6 1/2" x 14"), and the painted ribbon series (5' x 8') are shown here.

A Discovery: Part 4

When I am using frottage as a way of working, I find that a peculiar, intuitive spatial depth occurs. Even though I have carefully controlled the placement of textures, the final outcome is filled with unintended and random imagery. Recognizable images, like fish, animals and people, for example, may appear between and around the intended imagery. Even rubbed areas that were unintentionally embossed by the wooden edge of my pencil, reappear when other patternings are rubbed over them. These surprises and patterned layerings float and intermingle, materialize and disintegrate, throughout the drawing surface. When I use profiles of life-size people, they suggest the iconic representations seen in postage stamps, coins and in the profile paintings of ancient Egypt. I feel that the partial essence that remains of a rubbed object, forms a kind of memorial or commemorative of the actual object. Perhaps references to the ancients, archeology and anthropology can also be inferred. What I see are the textures immersing the images in an "electrified forest", carrying with them a spinning, illusory momentum that skids and careens across the surface of the picture plane.
Here is the detail from the drawing "Russian Bowls" as promised from my last blog:

A Discovery:
Part 3

I asked myself; how can I make this combination of image plus textured rubbings work and still involve some technical aspects of drawing? Why not practice placing the textured surfaces around and even layer them using old has-been drawings. I found the perfect throw-away item. It was an image of two large flowers (hard at the best of times to not sentimentalize) and a Russian bowl whose rim segued into a duck's head (something rather esoteric).
I worked fiendishly on this drawing, adding bits, erasing, and generally sweating over it. In the wee hours of the morning, the completed work met with some kind of intuitive, know-when-it's-right, cognitive reality. I burst into tears!
Now, people who know me have seen me burst into tears before; there was the image of Caravaggio's "Supper at Emmaus" located in the National Gallery in London, U.K. There was many a poignancy in viewing various Shakespeare productions at the Stratford Shakespearean Festival Theatre, Ontario, Canada (Othello, Hamlet, and The Tempest), and finally, I can cry over the sweet, innocence of young children and their thoughts. Ok, enough of that. I guess that what I'm trying to say is, I think I found my drawing niche!
This is the deciding factor drawing that spurred me on. Click on this image to enlarge.