This one's gone.

It's ruined. It was a fire casualty and as we are doing our taxes now I'm learning (like a bazillion artists from the gulf coast I bet) what I can and cannot deduct as an uninsured loss. To sit down and write up an art obit (but now I can't find that project!) would be a really good process for me because I still find myself pissy that the painting is gone. It's been blurred, and wet, and worn and is so different that it won't again be the Vermont painting I made in a month of serious thought as the world went to war and I made breakfast for a group of strangers that soon became friends. It won't again be the painting that was as much about being where I was as missing where I could have been (with my aunt, with my husband, with the marching protesters). Color. That's really what's mucked up in the painting now. But then lots of things aren't around anymore.
Ms. Mabel Dwight is gone and her portrait of Roderick Seidenberg strikes me as stronger, more passionate and important as I read more about her life, her loves, and her social convictions.
I have more of the busy and less of the loose time to relax and create but I ought not to complain, so I won't. goodnight,
Rachael

I'm not the only one. I have a couple of friends who (like me) are trying to make stuff, to work, to read, to work, to think, to work, to play, to work, to learn, to make more stuff (drawings and paintings for me, thanks), and to do a little work. Day job or freelance or whathave you, the income producing projects are a big pain in the neck only because, well, I seem to keep thinking about them long past the paid-point. I have ideas about things for work while I'm taking the garbage out. I think about all these things that I ought to be able to leave at my desk but my desk leaves with me and I don't really have good separation skills.

So one of the things I'm doing lately is reading up on the American art made in the 1920s, 30s and 40s. The heyday of the John Reed clubs and the time when all of Ben's print collection was coming together and when Davis and Benton (how bout them eggs?) were having pissing contests and Isabel and Mabel and Peggy were making art. This is really the stuff I've been interested in a big fat long time, in part because the images (like this Mabel Dwight print, orginally captioned My God, Maybe There's Something to it...) reward lots of looking and in part because the artists had to figure out how to make art when everybody was careless, then everybody was broke, then everybody was headed to war. I've been lugging a good book around about the federal art projects. Stuff I'd learned a smattering of when I was in grad school and am happily re-learning now. But there's a delicious irony that the work I'm working on when not at work which is leaving me less time to make art was a make work project which in a time of need gave artists time to make artwork that made them a little money, gave them a little confidence and reassurance, and filled a helluva lot of post offices.

Yep, and there was an artists union, too.

I'm back to the books and then the studio and eventually sleep but a couple of nights ago I swear I dreamed about Sacco and Vanzetti...yeesh...I wanna know how this is all gonna come out when I have a couple of weeks to paint and draw and connect art and social meaning because I'm going to Penland. I got in and got a work study and I'll have some time to make art with meaning and some meanings to make art about...

maybe,
goodnight!
Rachael


More about:

the federal art projects

the New Deal Network is a very good place to start

This is a smart site made by a schoolteacher and his students

Here's alittle piece about the resources at Case Western thanks to Karal Ann Marling

On a walk yesterday, I was walking around trying to figure out how my neighborhood works. What street connects to which street and where is the big house that the man who won the lottery bought and where are the schools and why so much silly trash here and there and especially how can it be so lovely and so almost spring? The miracle of the sun, the almost 60 degress, the daffodills...

And anyway, I had my sketchbook and I would stop here and there and note things and draw stuff and I felt like my secret would come out for sure but I really needed to draw that tree, note that shadow, decide whether or not to pick up the ice cube tray for pressing into clay. And I noticed a pack of teen and almost teen boys sitting on the steps of a house. They noticed me and asked, "what are you doing lady?"

"Drawing"

"What for?"

I'm not saying they are wrong, I'm not saying I'm wrong, but I tried to explain why the tall tree with bare branches that is taller than any of the houses around here and was so starkly contrasted against the 4 oclock bright gray sky was worth staring at. It was worth drawing. It was worth seeing. One of the kids looked at me with almost recognition and a bunch of them laughed, but I didn't stop them and they didn't stop me. And that's what I like about America...

There's good stuff around the blogosphere that's been up a while but I haven't had slow time to explore:

Tracy Hegleson has a helpful post about how she tracks her work. I'm getting better but long to have a system that efficiently efficient.

radio interview-er sounded so gosh darn excited I wanted to ask her to shush and listen more but that's not really the point, I guess. And then there's Charity's story which is the true stuff...


And finally, there's Peggy Bacon's interview with the Archives of American Art. I liked reading it but then I wander around drawing trees so, go figure...
take care,
Rachael

The other day we sat down for the reason you sit down in a bathroom. Not to read so much as to do what needs to be done but on flushing I heard a snap. I lifted the toilet bowl tank and found a broken cord. So I pulled the part I could pull and manually flushed the stinker. We own this house, though, so we own this problem. So began a week long process of research and development. We bought a kit and last sunday, instead of going upstairs to paint, I took the toilet apart. Yep, I took my toilet apart.
It was pretty exciting for me and in lieu of making art, I made my toilet work.

That's been the feel of it around here. Not so much active art making as active living, observing, and idea gathering.

I'm waiting for some filberts to come in to work on drawing with my brush. I'm reading again about William Gropper, and Peggy Bacon, and Thomas H. Benton and all things art and politics in the 1920s, 30s and 40s. And I'm obsessed with reading the Fast Company and New Yorker magazines (today I read Dan Baum's chilling and fascinating story about the collapse of the police in New Orleans).


I'm still learning not to worry about the not exactly active periods of art-making, the moments when it seems I'm filling my head not filling pieces of paper with marks and meanings. Even if I ignore my sketchbook for a couple of days, if I am brewing, stewing, fixing and filling up with ideas...it oughtta be OK.
More soon, friends, but all of a sudden, I'm itching to make some art...
bye,
Rachael

This day was a rare treat. A day off, alone time, time to do laundry and sit in my studio looking and thinking and feeling for a good long time before I actually made any marks. I have been wondering why I paint the way I do but then when I do paint the way I do, it is right. I can't intellectualize this. I am an instinctive, trust my gut, follow the colors, do what I believe in painter.

That is my strength even as it is the thing that often gives me pause.

When I am crazy busy at work, when I am sitting on the bus, when I am forming friendships, I'm not worrying about being a failure or a fake or a fraud. But sometimes when I am alone in front of a blank piece of paper that ridiculous freezing fear comes back.

Today I fought it off by running downstairs baking bread, fortifying myself, and heading back to the attic and attacking the paper. Once I got started, the paint flowed, the colors got together and started fighting. A painter I much respect as a teacher and friend told me the other day to embrace my "contrasty explosions" and they came out today. But so did the more subdued slips of shapes and the revision revision revision that was drilled into my process early. The thing I simply have to remember is to go up to the attic and engage. When I avoid it, when I over-worry it, when I get wimpy and make little steps but no bold actions doing the stuff I love to do...well, yick. I don't want to do that. I will paint. I will instigate.

Yes, so, I have no pictures to show of today's fight but I will link to more info about the Starbucks show because that's been requested and they are very much for sale, for show and tell, and fabulously framed (thanks Jody!) and hanging around as further proof that when I fight the good fight, sometimes it even works.

take care, troublemakers!
Rachael