Studio Sunday-New Art Talk Video

I have spent the better part of the last two days at my computer creating and uploading a series of videos from my talk on June 17 at the Paula Estey Gallery. I set up a tripod with my iPhone at the gallery and recorded a video. After talking to my social media expert daughter, I decided to break the 30 plus minute video into smaller parts.

I brought the video into iMovie and divided it into separate clips. I then copied each of the separate clips into a new project and made a series of 13 videos. I didn't do any editing within the clips and added a title to each and my information at the back.

I then exported the files as .mp4 (no choice of file type, iMovie does that automatically) into a folder and uploaded them from youtube. There is an option in iMovie to upload them directly to youtube but I had difficulty with that. As the files were uploaded, I added titles, descriptions, and keywords for each of the videos. Everything takes time.

And now, they are up and ready to share. I'll be highlighting different ones periodically here on the blog but here is the link to view them all: http://bit.ly/2tuF9Yo.

I hope you enjoy them and feel free to share.

Tribute to Peg Dalton

An opinion column of mine was published in today's Newburyport Daily News. I wrote about the passing of local artist Peg Dalton at age 97 and included some reflections on being an artist. You can read it here.

Art Lessons Talk Video Online

My Art Lessons Talk at the Newburyport Public Library in December was videotaped by Jesse Christensen. I will be giving the talk again at the Chelmsford Public Library in Chelmsford, MA on March 9 at 2 PM. If you are in the area, I would love to see you there. If you are not, here is the video from Newburyport.

As I viewed it, I thought I was perhaps talking too fast but it felt right in that time and space. My speaking does tend to be more fast than slow, not because I am nervous but because I have so much to say. I also felt that I gave my work over the last 8 years short shrift. It was easier to find connections and threads through the earlier work as I have more distance from it. For the upcoming talk, I have gone back over my more recent work and added significant projects like the lettering on the walls of Nathaniel Hawthorne's birthplace and the NH Humanities Council Bhutanese-Nepali book project. I'm also adding some current projects and thoughts for the future.

Art Lessons Excerpt on NAA Blog

To be an artist means not to compute or count....Rainer Maria Rilke

The rest of the passage and the essay that accompanies it in Art Lessons: Reflections From An Artist's Life, has been published on the Newburyport Art Association blog.

Thoughtful Thursday-Norman Sasowsky

Norman Sasowsky has written a thoughtful piece presented in what he calls a PDF digital booklet about his sixty years of living as an artist. There is much to ponder here. Here is what he has to say about success:

SUCCESS is, however, for the very few, and, once gained, very ephemeral. But, for many striving artists, this is difficult to see, because it seems that part of an artist’s makeup comes with feeling special and expecting the Reward. The “lucky” ones develop a style or product that catches on and provides a way for the artist, and more often the salesman, the art dealer, a means to cash in, and in our time there is a great deal of money involved. Of course most of these monetary profits end up in the hands of others because the “hot” item immediately becomes a commodity, some­ thing to be traded and not necessarily appreciated or valued for the art work.

All of these can quickly fall away and the artist is left to sustain the market for their work by making the necessary adaptations or withdrawing from the game. You can imagine how good it can feel to have ones’ work recognized, honored, collected. One is easily addicted. Unfortunately, success can have serious consequences for artists who cannot manage it. Yet many of us continue to seek that Success.

Norman Sasowky PDF Digital Booklet

Norman Sasowky Video

Thoughtful Thursday-Jenny's Influence Continues

"So—base your own work on a deep exploration of your own life and times, so that you have your most meaningful continuity and growth outward—AND inward —really the other way around—from there."

Jenny's gifts continue even though she is gone. I've opened my Jenny envelope and reread her letters. Several long letters sent in the late '80s were absolutely pivotal then and continue to teach me now. She has freed me once again.

I started doing calligraphy in 1978. It took me until 1991 to be able to have the words "I'm an artist" come out of my mouth when people asked me what I did. The difficulty I have now is explaining why I don't actively sell my work or so rarely use the skills I have acquired over the past thirty plus years (calligraphy, design, bookmaking) to make money.

In 1988, Jenny wrote me:

"Follow where your passion lies. It has never been false to me. It will not mislead you. Forget about 'marketing'."

Shortly after, I made the decision to teach for money and do my art for myself. I developed my program of teaching bookmaking in schools and for years my problem was balancing the two. I always did feel that the teaching justified the art in both the sense that I made money and that I was giving to the larger community.

In the past few years, I have left that teaching behind and struggle to be at peace with the idea that I am primarily an artist and more significantly, an artist who makes very little money from her work. There are two sides to this. One is that I am not immune to our culture's way of judging people by their livelihood. I don't feel pressure to make a lot of money, but rather to contribute what I think of as my financial share. It needs to be said here that my husband believes in me and says we can manage with whatever I do. And two, I have a strong belief that I need to give to the community and the world at large. I understand how I do that when I teach, but I can't quite believe that making art is enough.

Here's something I wrote this summer:
In some ways it all comes down to how one defines success which is something I have a hard time with. I want success as the world gives it out yet I don't want to do the things that the one needs to do. I have to understand what being an artist means to me, what I can and can't do because I am who I am, what to change and what to accept and how to move forward without burdens (many of which I gather myself) into the future.

While Jenny's letters may not have freed me from my doubts and sense of obligations, they have told me what I need to do. It's my attitude that needs to change, not the world's. I am taking a deep breath and saying: You are an artist. You can be one in whatever way you need and want to be. I am listening to Jenny when she wrote "have faith in your 'rightness' and mystery."

Standing Desk Anniversary

It's the one year anniversary of my switching to a standing desk. No trips to the acupuncturist since so I'm happy. Occasionally I have tired legs after a long day but there's definitely more movement and change of position than when I was sitting which is how I got myself into trouble. Working on graphics was no adjustment at all but it did take a while to be comfortable writing after so many years of writing sitting down from first grade on. Of course if I wasn't such a lousy typist, I'm sure it would be easier. I don't have many regrets but not learning how to type way back when is one of them. It really slows me down.

There was an interesting piece on Marketplace on NPR a few days ago—To stand or sit at work?—and I was inspired to answer their call for photos of standing desks. And here's a previous post with some other additions I made to my arrangement.

Reflections on the '70s

Sally Cavanary Baker sent me this in an email about the blog:

I think that there is a much older person in you somewhere because you made me remember the little things we used to do when I lived a hippy-like style in an Oregon cabin during the 1970's. No locked doors, everything shared, happiness in the homegrown and handmade. Pinned outside our front door would always be a scrap of paper with thoughtful words or a favorite quote.

First of all, thank you Sally for thinking I am younger than I am although I am beginning to think that I should make more rather than less of my age (60). Anything I have accomplished has been due to the work and reflection of many years. Rilke's line from Letters to a Young Poet, "Patience is all," is my guidepost.

Sally's message made me think fondly back to the '70s. While it is often described as the time of polyester and disco, for me it was the era of macrame, a grain grinder, and folk music— a kitchen with barn board walls, a radio tuned to WCAS in Cambridge which played folk music from dawn to dusk and was silent the rest of the time, and whole grain bread that was a jaw exercise as well as an eating experience (quite pleasant to the initiated and less so to those who were not).

It is also called the 'Me Decade" and it was for me in the sense that finding a direction for my life was a major absorption. In 1970 I was a college student at the first of the three schools I attended before graduation. As 1979 came to a close, I was a beginning calligrapher with a year of daily work into the craft and a love of letters, letterform, and the words they formed. In the meantime I had married (1974), had several jobs, embarked on several educational paths, and eventually picked up pen and ink. I had worked in an office, taught swimming for the Boston School Department, and taken courses in Teaching Certification with the goal of eventually becoming a special education teacher, Children's Literature, and Chemistry with the thought of becoming a nutritionist. In a strange way, I found that being married made me feel more pressure to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. One major question was settled—I had a life partner. Now for the most personal one—what would I actually do with my time on this earth.

Having grown up with traditional education viewed as being of prime importance, my first attempts at a life path after college involved further study in academic institutions. I also spent a lot of time making crafts. I took a pottery class where I struggled mightily with the wheel and ended up making some primitive hand-built pieces. I sewed some clothes but had more misses than hits. What looked dramatic and willowy in the pattern book looked preppy and bland on me. I painted designs on shirts, embroidered purses and shirt collars and army jackets and knapsacks, drilled holes in tin cans for candle holders, created cards for every holiday, and made macrame wall hangings and necklaces.

At some point I began to have an idea that I wanted to have a creative life. I remember thinking that I could approach it one of two ways. I could do the very '70s back-to-the-earth thing and learn how to make what we needed for our life—clothes, food, furniture, etc.—everything would be handmade although not necessarily of the highest quality or craftsmanship or I could find one thing and become really good at it and make it my calling. I ultimately chose the latter although I still enjoy making simple everyday things and brought lettering and then books into daily life as best as I could.

In some ways, I now feel like I am reconnecting with those earlier days. After many years of narrowing my focus, I am opening up again. While I was working hard to forge my path as an independent educator without the support of a school system or institution and establish myself as an artist, I had children in the house (with two kids six years apart, the child-raising part of my life was longer than those who have a small family closely spaced together). With the kids going or gone from the nest and the closing of the in-the-schools-phase of my teaching career, I now have more time for myself. I always thought I would dedicate that extra time to serious pursuit of my art. This would be the time for me to have a traditional art career with regular shows in galleries.

Now that I am here, this is no longer what I want. For one, I find that I work slowly and in fits and starts which does not make me a good candidate for commercial galleries. I'll leave my fundamental issues with art and commerce for a later post. In addition, I know now that the need to share that was my initial impulse for teaching is deep in my blood. I am taking some of this time to reach new audiences with community projects and adult and family workshops. It has become less about the techniques of bookmaking and more about sharing the joy of quiet moments of simple creation.

The 1970s was the beginning of my life as an adult—a time of discovery and exploration which brought both joy and struggle. In this second decade of the twenty-first century and seventh decade of my life, I am trying to continue the exploration, make it more about the joy than the struggle, and share that joy with as many people as I can.

image from a birthday card I made in the early 1970s