Text-based drawings: William Powhida

William Powhida's text-based drawings capture some of the emotional experience of being an artist. "By turns sad, true, and laugh-out-loud funny, his schadenfreude-inducing drawings call out the major players, poke fun at the artist as a brand, and divulge the art world’s dirty little secrets," said Bean Gilsdorf, interviewing him on dailyserving.com.

William Powhida, Cynical Advice (from here)

He starts with a draft but each sentence morphs as he draws it. "I want the drawings to be the experience of being in somebody’s head and listening to them think about the art world," he says.

William Powhida, Hope (from here)

The work - and his relationship with the artists he portrays - is rooted in the perception of power structures and the roles that people play.

Asked whether "any press is good press", he said: "Recognition is a big, needy area that can occupy an artist’s life. I thought there might be something interesting in naming things instead of omitting them, but I’m not trying to reify anyone’s position."

More pix are at http://powhida.tumblr.com

RANow

One of my favourite works in this selling show (with an online auction; till 11 November) is a small collaged piece by Jennifer Durrant - apart from the placements of shapes and colours, it draws you in to see the textures of the painted canvas and paper -

The current bid is £1600. Other work is larger and more expensive - the Barbara Rae painting on the left, Andalucia, for example, has a list price of £55,000 -

Poetry Thursday - Wallace Stevens

In 1976, David Hockney created a portfolio of twenty etchings called The Blue Guitar: Etchings By David Hockney Who Was Inspired By Wallace Stevens Who Was Inspired By Pablo Picasso

This week's poem is one that I have encountered once or twice and rather disregarded. But the Poetry Daily daily website has an annual feature called "poets picks" where poems are chosen by contemporary poets to contemplate, dissect, and provide insight on. LS Klatt discussed this one, under the title "Where does poetry come from" -- which is such a good question!

"Of the Surface of Things" 
by Wallace Stevens (1879-1955)

I

In my room, the world is beyond my understanding,
But when I walk, I see that it consists of three or four hills and
   a cloud.

II

From my balcony, I survey the yellow air,
Reading where I have written,
‘The spring is like a belle undressing.’

III

The gold tree is blue.
The singer has pulled his cloak over his head.
The moon is in the folds of the cloak.

(Wallace Stevens spent most of his life working as an executive for an insurance company. Where, indeed, does poetry come from?)

Storm waves

The cold, cold wind was whipping up the English Channel on Sunday - the wild and dangerous sea - the whistling of the wind obscuring the dragging of the shingle shore. A tempest in a teapot of climate change.

Book du jour - source material

The red leather photo album was carefully compiled by my mother for my first Christmas. It is nearly full, with photos up until we left for Canada when I was nearly 4 years old.

 The photos at 3, 5, 7 weeks - and others up to the point of presentation of the book, as it were - are captioned in careful calligraphy -

A labour of love, nothing less.

I'll scan in some of these photos, and use the child's eyes for the second "eyes" book. A new bit of research, seen in the Sunday paper, lies behind this still-evolving idea.

Young children think they're invisible when they close their eyes, and even that if they're not looking at a person, that person can't see them. But it seems that children realise that people can see their body - however, unless they meet the person's gaze, their "self" is not visible to that person.

What an amazing idea. I'm almost unable to take this in. It'll make a book - but do I really know what I want to do with it? It can't be just a repeat of the "three generations" book, with a different title.

Then and now - the studio

May 2006 - tidy but not all that convenient

November 2012 - crowded but much more workable

The armchair has given way to the sewing machine table - which is blocked, just for the moment, by the big box of tools belonging to my son the carpenter. It's thanks to himm the cupboards have been moved to the opposite corner - you can just about see them reflected in the window, were it not for the boards and sheets of wood stacked in front of them! This made room for extending the workbench and putting more shelving under it. We had to replace the old boiler (in the cupboard), which somehow led to the cupboard door being turned into a table in front of the window, where I love to sit (it has under-table heating!).

Yesterday it took most of the day to clear the table of bookmaking supplies and leftovers. Mainly leftovers. But those bits of paper and board and whatever might come in handy for something someday, so I haven't thrown them out - haven't even sorted through them. They are now in a box (or two) in the open cupboard, out of sight, which means out of mind... so I've written on my calendar an appointment to sort through them, in a couple of weeks.

Reorganisation - finding new places for things - takes so much longer than simply discarding things. Something to keep in mind!

Subconscious memory at work

A couple of days ago I posted this photo - a collection of pix "from the pre-digital era" - last century, as it were -

Today - is it coincidence that these photos appear? They are lap quilts, and I loved making them - in the spring of 2006 - the whole set is here -

Seems like the subconscious memory is working harder than we give it credit for!

Art I like - Marian Bijlenga's fishscale works

Revisiting the work of Marian Bijlenga, I find many works made from fish-scales - see them here, where these photos are borrowed from -

The scales are those of the Nile perch. 

She adds ink onto the scales, then stitches them together by machine; the piece below measures 27cm square -

What makes this so interesting, I think, isn't just the unusual material or the sparse yet varied and rich treatment with ink, but the basic combination of the gridded structure and the various shapes of the scales, underlying and understated, making for rhythm and movement. Thus the real support of the work - the invisible support - is the space between the scales.

See more of her work at browngrotta.com and of course on her own website, marianbijlenga.com

Book du jour - three generations

The book uses single sheets and drum leaf binding; the photos are of my grandmother, mother, and me, at various ages.

Many details are yet to be changed, many small decisions made. Getting to the maquette stage is quick, but making it as good as it could be takes longer! For instance, you can see above that the gold cover (the first reasonably appropriate paper that came to hand) is shoddy; and below, you get a glimpse of the endpapers, which are wrong, wrong, wrong - but again, came to hand in the heat of the moment -

So - once you have your idea, you need to think carefully about the materials. Proper books need proper planning; the wise words about "think it through to the end, know how you're going to present it" are as important with books, despite their seemingly standard format, as with more diverse artworks.

I rejected the idea of using this photo either on the title page or at the end -

"Too much information" to have "real people" in the book ... when you see just eyes, they could be anyone ... though they aren't quite anonymous. Does the same "personalisation" happen if you can read the names of the people (at the end of the book)? Does it matter that none of these women have middle names? (Thinking about all this, I realise I must revisit what the book is "about"... to get some distance from my own history.)

Before making another copy, I'll consider using some different photos, and how many of them (and what sequence) to use - and how much photoediting is needed. Also the book needs a good title, and maybe some other text - or at least the wording of the colophon needs to be decided. There is of course the small matter of what kind of endpapers and cover (and spine), and the size of the book, and what font for the title and colophon. I'm happy with the paper ... but maybe I shouldn't be? 

And whatever happened to the idea of using tracing paper overlays...

Photo find

These five photos go back to the pre-digital era ... a (winter) holiday in Cornwall ... poking around little harbours ... much excitement to come across this combination of shapes and colours (the blue isn't quite right - blue is a difficult colour for cameras, still). The shapes and colours have dwelt in the back of my mind ... and may have to stay there a little longer ...

Quilt in a graveyard

When in the St Matthias cemetery, I was amazed to see a quilt inside one of the mausoleums -

On the door is an explanation -

 The patchwork was inspired by the Names Project Aids Memorial Quilt (which, when last exhibited in 1996, consisted of 44,000 individual quilts). It commenorates Vincent, who died of Aids in 1993. None of the people who made it had sewn before, but all found the making, and the sharing of memories, to be useful in the grieving process.

The yellow section represents Vincent's childhood in France, and the blue section his later years (die wechselvoll aufregende Zeit) in Munich and Berlin. The quilt was meant to be part of the Names Project, but was never sent there. It found its place in the Mausoleum Mitscherlich -

an example of "active" memory, and a part of Berlin cemeteries' "Parcours des Erinnerns".

Book du jour - drum leaf binding

Last week, a workshop with Sarah Bryant at LCBA, learning drum leaf binding, in which single sheets are folded and glued together at spine and foredge. Sarah had prepared kits with all we needed, and all tools were supplied -

including individual bricks to use as weights. (Leaving the glued sections under a weight for a while is important.)

A glimpse inside the spine. The covers and text block are glued at the spine and covered with a strip of kozo paper and then a wider section of tyvek or cambric. A piece of bristol board with the same measurement as the spine is encased in book cloth and glued onto the boards, leaving about 3mm unglued so the spine is flexible and the book can open -

 After 3 hours, we each had a blank book to take home, and a new structure in our repertoire.

At the Hadleigh book fair

A chance for Janet's gold books and my little inky black books to be near each other -

Setting up - and documenting the occasion -

Triss shoots Gwen

(Links to the websites of the exhibitors are at thebookartsfair.weebly.com.) chocolategirl64.blogspot.co.uk shows closeups of some of the works that were on show on her blog.

Sally's prolific work, in the foreground; Wendy beyond, with Triss's table at the back

Throughout the day the fair was nicely busy, but with time to chat. At the back of the photo below you get a glimpse of the cafe corner - excellent coffee and a selection of home-made cakes and biscuits, with tables and chairs for visitors to have a sitdown. I think that added to the pleasant ambience.

Exhibitors on the left are Andrew Law and David Howe

Karen showed visitors of all ages how to make a simple book

People were easily persuaded to overcome their don't-touch-the-art instincts and went ahead and picked up the various memory balls. On putting the prickly red ball into someone's hand, I was gratified to hear the "oh it's heavy" comment again and again - it means that people are realising that there are other dimensions to "art" than just the visual one. Touch and kinesthetics, though sometimes subliminal, are important too!

Many people wound their names into my "ball du jour", often reminiscing about how they used to wind wool for auntie as a child, and obviously enjoying it so much they didn't want to stop. I acted as a thread guide, to keep the cone from toppling over and make winding easier -

I had no enticing books to sell, so why was I there? To interact with the visitors, basically ... to give them an unexpected experience, and let them make of it what they will. I'm happy that people are interested!  Also it's a chance to practice talking to people about my work - and to listen to what I'm saying about it, and assess the reaction. To see where the conversation goes...

Reading list

All these tempted me - couldn't decide on just one, so I bought none of them....

Seen at Queens Park Books.

Farmer's market, Salusbury Road NW6

Fresh greens

Wild mushrooms

Profiterole cake (from Cakehole London)

Fragile

From http://debraeck.weebly.com/mixed-media.html

Debra Eck says: "I find myself drawn back repeatedly to work that requires repetition and the labor of my hands and always to the presence of text and pattern and to making work that inhabits the spaces of the studio and gallery."

Her "aran sweater" experimental binding is also intriguing -

Book du jour - quoting

It's unexpected to make a book quickly. Even if it's a small book. I've had the "secret book" template for a while, and Janet supplied the quotes from her "gold books" in last year's "Overdue" exhibition at Camberwell library, so this is a sort of collaboration, and it has a pedigree. The sheet is  printed on both sides and I even found something slightly better than typing paper (which is toooo white - !) to print these wise words on to.

My favourite quotes include:

A work of art is above all an adventure of the mind (Eugene Ionesco)

Mistakes are the portals of discovery (James Joyce)

Argument is meant to reveal the truth, not to create it (Edward de Bono)

Gardening* is an instrument of grace (May Sarton)

(*Today I planted some tulip bulbs. Red parrot tulips; 10 bulbs, not enough really, but it's a start.)

Bird motifs from the Pergamon Museum

Seeing those reminded me of what fun it was to make the coasters for Hooked in London's "chicken challenge" - I might have to make some more... You can see the various hooked chickens on the group's blog - hooked-in-london.blogspot.co.uk

Found art Friday

Poetry Thursday - indecision

Sometimes you come across a poem and it becomes one you want to "have" - and sometimes you have to look for one. Hunting around (on poemhunter) for this week's short poem to memorise, I am torn between several. Perhaps I should be looking for a poem on indecision? Last week's poem isn't yet firmly lodged in my brain, so I'll choose the new one tomorrow, and keep on with Li Bai's monk from Shu and his green lute-case in the meantime.

Epilogue

Rows of books around me stand,
Fence me in on either hand;
Through that forest of dead words
I would hunt the living birds -
So I write these lines for you
Who have felt the death-wish too,
All the wires are cut, my friends
Live beyond the severed ends. 

Louis Macneice

Dreams

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow. 

Langston Hughes

A Question

A voice said, Look me in the stars
And tell me truly, men of earth,
If all the soul-and-body scars
Were not too much to pay for birth. 

Robert Frost

Book du jour - three generations

Real-isation starts with printing, scaling up the cut-out eyes to the same size. Indeed, some are pixelated into a fuzzy blur. I used InDesign to lay out two pictures on an A4 page, then cut the page in half. (Another thing that might feed into this project, especially if the pages continue to be folded, is the way that faces aren't symmetrical.)

Now, deciding the sequence. And deciding if these are the "right" photos and if there are "enough". Which means - knowing what the book is meant to "say". This is hard, because I'm very close to these photos, these people who no longer exist (but to whom I still feel accountable) - my grandmother, my mother, the young me.

My first idea was to print on tracing paper. Here it is layered  -

Double vision

That layering might work in a star-book format, with both edges held securely, and the "whole" page (both layers) turned at once. If you turn only the transparent page, the effect is rather startling -

Disconcerting!

Some things about this project make me feel very uncomfortable!

St Matthias Freidhof

The cemetery is perhaps best known for the graves of the Brothers Grimm, and two of Wilhelm's sons -

This headstone intrigued me - the red is leaf-like shapes cast in resin. Hedwig Dohm (1831-1919) was a feminist and author - her influential books were written in the 1870s. One of her five children became the mother-in-law of the writer Thomas Mann.

A lovely, leafy place, the cemetery had other surprises.

It was a surprise to come across a bit of contemporary art - Parla Memento Hedera, a "klang-installation" by Christian Find, using interviews with and readings from the works of people buried here. Inside the little greenhouse, almost hidden by the ivy (hedera), is information on each, with a button to activate the sound.

One was artist, poet, thinker and activist Helga Goetze; another is the Afro-German poet, educator and activist May Ayim.

 Three years ago, the trees across the road looked a sorry sight -

 Moments before, the large one looked like this, about to blaze out in its autumnal glory -

As the drone of the saws and crusher went on and on, I cried. But even in the city, nature is a force to be reckoned with, and here are the trees now. Not as shapely as before, but still providing welcome greenery -

They are ash trees, though - the latest species to be threatened by virulent disease - ash dieback. What was that the poet said ... "Look thy last on all things lovely / Every hour..."