ART CHALLENGE - 4 of 5
Art Challenge, day 4. I'm reviewing my art production over the last 12 years, trying to tease out the common strands for my future in art. I've gotten up to the point where I started working in glass.
Glass, my darling! Glass, often with concrete and metals, occupying me for years. Trying this, trying that. Taking advice, thankful for help, trying to find my own voice.
The guys at The Washington Glass School did their best for me with space, advice, patience - what a bunch of champs! Even though, the more I tried, the farther I seemed to get from what I had in mind, whatever it was.
I did a long series of dresses, figures in dresses, dresses for walls, dresses in panels, free-standing dresses. This one (above) is made from plate glass, concrete, and plaster. It's coherent because each element has a frilly portion. But for me, what about dresses? Seems retro - I never wear dresses. Nothing to work through as regards my femininity. But could this be denial? Kept puzzling about this. Kept making dresses.
Bricolage, remember that term? It means taking bits that come your way by chance, and finding in them larger meaningful patterns. Ooh, this piece, Back-to-Back, was a one-off surprise! There's a smiling face inside the bubble, if you look down from the top. I loved this, although my imagination is not actually surreal, as it turns out.
Birds, another long series. Dozens of birds. At first, I refused to call them "birds," instead calling them "bird-forms" because of course they don't refer to any specific bird species. Some of them look more like bats. But, the idea of flying, soaring, going up and beyond, that was what I was after.
In between these more sculptural attempts, I made a lot of stabs at little gift dishes, bowls, necklaces, and similar functional objects. I made a big bowl for a baptismal font, for a church in McLean, Virginia (someone else made the stand). These gestures worked out pretty well, overall. Functional is not my middle name, though. I like sculpture.
Still searching around for a voice, trying this and that. Here is a large panel based on 19-century Japanese kimono designs re-published by the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Stencil and glass enamel on plate glass, with frit between the layers coming out darker than I preferred. It begins to look like I'm just playing around, like I'm not serious. I thought these were beautiful, but I thought, you know, if I want to paint, I can paint. Really. A. Lot. Easier.
Wildflowers. Step into abstraction just a tiny bit. Tempered glass bits, borosilicate rods, oil paint, concrete with a copper sleeve inside for the glass. Fun to figure out, also needing many trials. I love working in 3 dimensions.
Picking up one of these bases with my thumb inside the copper sleeve, I wrenched a tendon in my wrist. Pain, shots, pain, surgery, and it'll never be the same. So what do I think about that? Is this a warning shot from my body, demanding I ease off on heavy lifting?
My tendency has been to assume that if I ask it to do something, my body will respond. I've hurt myself before, notably drywalling my cottage in Seattle, but my body has always healed. Must I now admit to a need for carefulness?
