Volcanos in art

Simon Winchester's overview of volcanoes in history in today's Guardian mentions the effect of the Krakatoa eruption in 1883 on artists:

"Krakatoa's immediate aftermath was dominated initially by dramatic physical effects – a series of tsunamis that were measured as far away as Portland Bill and Biarritz, a bang of detonation that was clearly heard (like naval gunfire, said the local police officer) 3,000 miles away on Rodriguez Island, and a year's worth of awe-inspiring evening beauty – astonishing sunsets of purple and passionfruit and salmon that had artists all around the world trying desperately to capture what they managed to see in the fleeting moments before dark. A Londoner named William Ascroft left behind almost 500 watercolours that he painted, one every 10 minutes like a human film camera, from his Thames-side flat in Chelsea; Frederic Church, of America's so-called Hudson River School, captured the crepuscular skies over Lake Ontario in their full post-Krakatoan glory; and many now agree that Edvard Munch had the purple and orange skies over Oslo in mind when 10 years afterwards he painted, most hauntingly, The Scream."

Here's a painting by AscroftFrederick Church (1826-1900) painted some lurid sunsets all right - have a look at these - but I couldn't find any post-Krakatoan ones.

My interest in Krakatoa stems from this book, written in 1947 by William Pene du Bois and read in childhoodPerhaps it stuck in my mind because of the picture of the raft floating over the volcano, which I realised even then was impossibly fantastic, or because of the vividness of trying to escape-Now what strikes me is this vignette -[Having reassured his audience that the foundations of the building are solid, the professor is about to resume his talk.] "Suddenly - and this was a sight which is a vivid to me now as it was when I first saw it - the wall opposite me slowly and almost noiselessly opened up in a crack large enough to allow the sun to shine through. It was the most terrifying and sinister sight I have ever seen. A considerable amount of powdered plaster dropped on the heads of the families in the room and the windows near the cracked wall broke open. The windows had all been closed so that the usual noise of the mountain wouldn't interfere with my talk. Now, through the crack in the wall and through the broken windows, the rumblings of the mountain thundered in full force."

Breath of fresh air

Anne Smith's talk at the AGM of Contemporary Quilt was a breath of fresh air. Her art studies were in ceramics and she says that working in other materials informs the stitch. Some of her early quilts had porcelain held on with organza, and she's combined cubes and beads of fabric to make flexible constructions.

Anne brought along not only the quilts that were in Quilt National, including best-of-show Calon Lan, but also some small works and samples of her raw material - children's clothes from thrift shops - unprecious fabrics with a previous life.

Anne says "without doodling, ideas don't happen" - and she makes little painted doodles on bits of corrugated cardboard and small paintings from which quilt ideas arise. With smaller pieces, you feel in control - you're bigger than the work, she says. She also talked about having a gut reaction to these, leading to development.

Her larger works, like Catherine Wheel, which she's showing below, are limited in size by the available space for spreading them out - on a bed - and she has to move out to the landing to get a "distant" view. (Very encouraging for those of us who work in small spaces!)

She often stitches from the back of the quilt, and will pick out threads from the stitched-down fabric to get an interesting mark that isn't controlled -
While adding elements, she'll rip out anything that isn't working.

Anne emphasised the importance of composition, and mentioned the work of Tapies, Rauschenberg, and Sarah Fanelli. We drank it all in, with rapt attention -

It was the sort of talk that makes you start noticing things - compositions everywhere!

Flaking paint

The bridge on the way to the park is in danger of an onslaught of graffiti - It's time to photograph the layers of flaking paint - inspired perhaps by Saturday's talk at the CQ agm, by Anne Smith. I'm looking for interesting composition -





These make me want to get my paints out, to make "paintings that are about the paint"...

Chook tales

What stories do these gals (in Helen's collection) have to tell? "Chicken Little", maybe - the story where "the sky is falling, the sky is falling". Here's one version; this is called a "story for teaching courage" but there's more to it than that, as you can read in the explication here (interesting to think of Henny Penny as "a very self-actualised hen").

Chicken Little likes to walk in the woods. She likes to look at the trees. She likes to smell the flowers. She likes to listen to the birds singing.

One day while she is walking an acorn falls from a tree, and hits the top of her little head.

- My, oh, my, the sky is falling. I must run and tell the lion about it, - says Chicken Little and begins to run.

She runs and runs. By and by she meets the hen, who is busy scratching for worms.

- Where are you going? - asks the hen.

- Oh, Henny Penny, the sky is falling and I am going to the lion to tell him about it.

- How do you know it? - asks Henny Penny.

- It hit me on the head, so I know it must be so, - says Chicken Little.

- Let me go with you! - says Henny Penny. - Run, run.

So the two run and run until they meet Ducky Lucky.

- The sky is falling, - says Henny Penny. - We are going to the lion to tell him about it.

- How do you know that? - asks Ducky Lucky.

- It hit Chicken Little on the head, - says Henny Penny.

- May I come with you? - asks Ducky Lucky [or Cocky Locky, or Turkey Lurkey, or Goosey Poosey, or Ducky Daddles].

- Come, - says Henny Penny.

So all three of them run on and on until they meet Foxey Loxey.

- Where are you going? - asks Foxey Loxey.

- The sky is falling and we are going to the lion to tell him about it, - says Ducky Lucky.

- Do you know where he lives? - asks the fox.

- I don't, - says Chicken Little.

- I don't, - says Henny Penny.

- I don't, - says Ducky Lucky.

- I do, - says Foxey Loxey. - Come with me and I can show you the way.

He walks on and on until he comes to his den.

- Come right in, - says Foxey Loxey.

They all go in, but they never, never come out again.

This version is even better - there are 1920s illustrations, and the ditzy animals outwit that rascal Foxy Loxy. The story has been around since at least 1865.
Another chook tale is the story of The Little Red Hen, who got no help with baking her bread - so she ate it all herself! Read the classic version, and a cynical update, here. Here it is with a (sad) new twist, and here are Andy Warhol's illustratons for the story.
And who can forget Rosie's Walk? In Pat Hutchins' story, the blithe hen simply carries on across the farmyard, unaware of the fox behind her, waiting to pounce - a classic children's book.
To finish, Louis Jordan's "Ain't nobody here but us chickens" - lyrics here, and listen here.

Random acts of art

Projects that involve people coming across art in unexpected places fascinate me. A feather threaded through a leaf as you walk along the path - that sort of thing - showing that someone has stopped, looked, thought, acted - "made an intervention". Do they go unnoticed ... are they overlooked ... who sees them, what do they think? It's like stumbling upon secrets...

"Land art" is one sort of intervention. Public art is, too - but it's noticeable, planned, paid for, and will be there for a while. What intrigues me are random, unpredictable occurrences - like Charlotte Hughes's Milk Bottle Project, in which she engraved glass bottles and left them on strangers' doorsteps -Then there are the textile interventions - like Paulene Cattle's jute chains -and even "guerilla knitting" (more pix here).As the other side of the coin, consider "thoughtless acts" - Janet Fulton Suri has built her design career on noticing the intuitive ways we adapt, exploit, and react to things in our environment. Here's one such "thoughtless act", from this wide-ranging blog.But is it art??

Kew Gardens without planes

Despite the volcanic ash cloud that is causing havoc with air travel, the UK is having some glorious spring weather - and where is spring more glorious than in the UK - and in particular at Kew Gardens, which usually has a plane a minute passing overhead, about to land at Heathrow only a few miles away!

We got to the gardens as soon as they opened on Sunday and the first thing we saw were the wild parakeets -There was blossom everywhere, and still a few daffodils in the grass. Not quite time for bluebells yet.
This is part of the view from the treetop walk -
Other delights of the day were hearing swans flying overhead, seeing the botanical drawings and of course lunch - and the lily house is always a favourite stop -The cast-iron architecture dates back to the 1860s.

More women artists - 20th century self portraits

There are so many!

In the National Portrait Gallery's 2002 exhibition, for example - it has links on this web page. And yet more are shown here, a 2003 exhibition of self-portraits of Vanessa Beecroft, Cecily Brown, Rachel Feinstein, Jacqueline Humphries, Sophie Matisse, Wangechi Mutu, Elizabeth Peyton, Susan Rothenberg, Dana Schutz, Amy Sillman, Kiki Smith, Charline von Heyl, Sue Williams, Su-en Wong, and Lisa Yuskavage. ("The exhibition was of particular interest because of its relevance to the strong revival of figurative painting and the renewed interest in issues of self-identity.")

Prize-winning Tasmania painter Christine Hiller, after spending time in Mexico -
Gabrielle Munther (1877-1962) in 1909 -May Smith, New Zealand, 1920 -Na-Hye-Seok, Korean writer and artist of the 1920s and 30s -Barbara Balmer, 1952 -Vanessa Bell, 1959 -Eve Thompson, 1977 -Alice Neel, painted in later life (1980) -Elaine de Kooning (1918-1989) -Canadian Paraskeva Clark (1898-1986), painting herself in 1933, pregnant with her second son - In terms of the contraints on women as artists - which was the starting point of this series of posts - consider this exhibition on women artists and motherhood.

Portfolio time again

The application deadline for the one-year course is very soon. In a moment of sanity I changed the research proposal to developing something I'm already doing, comfortable with, and enthusiastic about - the TravelWriting. Thinking hard about it to write the proposal is effort that won't be wasted - I'll continue with the project whether I get into the course or not, and writing the proposal has identified various ways forward and more importantly some gaps in my knowledge.

My portfolio is almost ready. Lots of the work done during the course has come out -I've put in some of my "more painterly" textile work, some of the JQs done on the "weather" theme -
and also this work in progress, which I call SpeechMarks -
another type of abstracted "writing".

A bit more stitchin'

The one I did earlier is on the left - it was part of the BQL bag challenge - it hangs on the back of my door no longer and is travelling to its new home.

The ladders are at the start of their journey - I'm working on the idea. It's not moving on by simply thinking about it; often the only way forward is to get on with doing it.

More women artists - 19th century self portraits

To start - here's pre-raphaelite supermodel Lizzie Sidal (1829-1862), painting her self-portrait in 1853-4, later to be disappointed in love by Dante Gabriel Rosetti -Anna Bilinska (1857-1893) - she died of a heart attack soon after her marriage and return to Poland -
Rosa Bonheur (1822-1899) - what a gal! - is known mainly for The Horse Fair - this is thought to be a self portrait, painted about 1860 -
Mary Cassatt, painting herself in 1880 (she lost her sight and couldn't paint after 1914) -
Kathe Kollowitz has done many self portraits - see them here. This one is from 1898-and this one from 1934 -Another who spans the centuries is Paula Modersohn-Becker - see more of her self-portraits here. Hers is yet another sad story - a career cut short by an embolism at age 31.

There's a long list of 19th century women artists here.