Ah. It's absolutely beautiful today and I have the day off. My studio is cleaner, my head is clearer, there is food in the refrigerator. This post will be short because shortly this writer will shift back into her painter self.
The other day actually I did a short career talk at a school of the arts (think FAME) and tried to explain how I have two interwoven lives: a life as a artist and a life working in the non-prof arts field helping to grow and support other artists. I told the teens how I personally saw the two roles as working together, even if some weeks I was more a manager and some weeks I was more an artist. I wonder if I would be much good at one without the corrective of the other...

A hand shot up. "So, uh, how much do they pay you to be an artist?"

It's tough. That moment when you realize that no-one will pay you to be an artist. But then, the kids kept listening and I think some of them got it. The work is it's own reward. If you have to make it, you make it. The same old, same old: nothing worth doing is easy. I returned to my busy schedule and desk piled high with a smile and a sense I'd helped in some small way.

And this weekend, I saw some contemporary prints. Both the Handprint Workshop ( the view from here ) and ULAE are all over Rochester, which is itself home to a print club. I missed the talk but did manage to get a good healthy does of Renee Stout and Barton Lidice Benesand even a little Terry Winters (not this stuff , but one big red wonderful print).

OK, I'm off to muck up that perfectly clean studio. I'm back to work and my attempts to center tomorrow but today I get to be an artist and nobody has to pay me nothing for that.

take good care,

Rachael

Back from our mini vacation and I'm back on my mini obsession to center clay. Some time last night, some time tonight, lots of attempts, lots of mess, trying to trust process while I learn technique while I patiently practice is an excellent corrective to my arrorgance with drawing. Well, maybe it isn't arrogance, but it's hard to break old habits, hard to remember how much further there is to climb up the mountain when you feel safely camped out on a hill. I've been drawing fer a lawng time. My hand naturally grabs for a pencil, normally wants to make a mark, feels right when drawing lines. With clay the whole thing is new. There are parallels of course, and a few times I've worked and watched the clay move from one thing to a new thing in moments.

Only all of those things were sloppy hunks of wet dirt. I sorta managed to get sorta centered a couple times. It all got mucked it up at the end but part of this process too, is learning to pay closer attention. Last night I held a couple of forms in a few different stages of drying and felt the clay's weight, the object's form, the balance of the whole thing. I listened carefully to everybody else's problems and solutions (all of my fellow students have plenty of experience, I'm the first grader in the 11th grade calculous AP class). I watched in horror while my teacher turned my wheel speed up several notches (I'm getting used to it).

This whole wacky process of stepping back to the beginning of the making process is thrilling, scary, frustrating, maddening and magic.

Feels good. So what are you learning?

take care,
Rachael

oh and there is art in western new york (more proof)

Just got home from Washington and I'm sunburned from wandering around that big shiny reflective city staring at cherry blossoms and relaxing. I hadn't realized how much I missed my MARTA until I found myself sketching on METRO (in my sketchbook, not on the train as Haring did , but essential for me).
The thing I wanted to tell you about is the Frackler (well, the Freer and the Sackler but the thing is that we never knew which one we were in, they blend together so we called it the Frackler). Simply our favorite discovery and not so much of a singular discovery (everyone sent us there) but with peacocks and buddhas and breathtaking ceramics, we were enthralled. The lobby at the Frack had a presence, a strange bit of a narrative, a striking smell, a mazillion broken porcelain products...
more soon, Rachael

Tyler suggested art bloggers make museum wish lists and mine is simple, radical, and honestly based on the almost 10 years I've been working part, full and intern-y in museums:

free admission

late hours that work with working schedules

missions about education, not money

good pay for museum staff (grumbly curators are grumbly because they can't pay their student loans)

a manadatory job switch for one day each month for all museum staff, docents, and board so that everyone understands what the various roles are

museum leaders should be engaged in the museum not the country club

and if everyone who believed in a museum (any museum) sent that place a check earmarked to the program or a fundamental need (maintenance say, or preschool art education) those programs would be clearly seen and supported.

I've got more to say but no time to say it. So that's that. Hope it helps,
Rachael

My shoulders hurt. My fingers tingle. And there is a real exhilaration in trying and trying and promising to try again. I started my very first pottery on the wheel class . Yep, after all my years of hanging around art schools I've avoided and avoided and avoided sitting down at a pottery wheel and trying to turn a hunk of clay into anything graceful, anything balanced, and anything at all beautiful or useful or (gasp!) both. But this town is fulla potters and every other person I've met has a wheel in their basement. A teacher I know impressed me with her patience, her knowledge, and her convincing argument that even a kid like me can get centered. It's early in the process no doubt, but I am excited about the learning and the physicality.

I'd practice more this week but instead, I'm skipping town. We're headed to Washington this weekend to celebrate a magic wedding, see some art (I like me some Fauves, sure do), and spend some time with my husband. I like walking around new places with that man, love to draw while he people watches and love to explore.
A blog treat is Anna's neat little bit about Ted Kooser, who I'm pretty curious about, too.
So, that's it perhaps for the next few days while my shoulders heal and my eyes open a little wider and take in a lot of new stuff.
See ya,
Rachael