Joseph Solman died a few days ago at the age of 99 and as I saw the newspaper photo of a regal man standing in front of a city street with graffiti scribbles, looking forthright at the camera, I wanted to know more. There is some Solman in the indexes of the books piled on my windowsill, mostly mentions in the WPA stuff, and I had the artist connected in the loose web of my head, with Mark Rothko, but as with any artist who makes a strong body of work over a long period of time, there's a rich resource of images and ideas about Solman.
On the web:
Mercury Gallery has a number of his paintings, monoprints and drawings on their site.
His son, Paul Solman, interviewed him and Dore Ashton about Rothko.

More of Mr. Solman's story is here in his Archives of American Art interview.

Paintings don't live for ever, for sure, but sometimes some of our best paintings tell stories, speak truth even we we can't say a word anymore.
I'm appreciative of the chance to look and listen.

Rachael

Painting, drawing, weeding and writing when not working has me busy but I saw some opportunities to show work and I wanted to share them. Why bother making stuff if you don't get it out there, and how do we grow as artists if we don't put our stuff on walls and let the world tell us how to make it better?

I oughta get better at practicing than preaching but here are some opps (painting and drawing mostly, mostly from NYFA and random pieces of information)

New England/New York/New Talent 2008
Hampden Gallery (Amherst MA)
4th Bi-annual juried exhibition of new talent from New England and New York. Open to all media. No Fee.
submit 6 slides or jpegs.
by May 31, 2008
for prospectus:
www.umass.edu/fac/hampden

Prismacolor is having a contest and you don't have to just use prismacolor. Also, it's free.

I'm sure there are more, but I have to get back to painting, drawing, weeding and writing, sleeping and then working.

Thinking, plotting, planning and pretending. Bonus, tomorrow is a half-a-day off and supposed to be sunny and 70. That's big in my zipcode, we are grateful for spring when it comes...see ya...

Rachael

Because I am writing fiction lately I am aware of the little fictions everywhere. I hear the stories my fellow riders on the bus tell and I wonder how true is this, how inflated is that. So much is made up for the telling. Yet when I try to tell a good story, all the flotsam and jetsom moves in, clogs the drain, warps the plot, confuses the whole dam thing.

It was sunny and warm around here so I attached the weeds and dead leaves in the back yard. Confusion again where I want a well plotted, planned and planted medly of veggies and flowers. Sure, there are some months of work again and I might have something like that. A growing backyard in which to sit in the sun and read.
I've been reading Ann Beattie's and Lorrie Moore's short stories a lot lately. Inspired.
I'm painting too but not quite ready to show and tell. I'm not making that up.
I promise.
Smart stories from Beattie and Moore in the New Yorker:

Beattie Coping Stones

Beattie The Rabbit Hole as Likely Explanation

Moore Paper Losses

Moore The Juniper Tree
That oughtta keep you busy while I do yet another re-write, re-paint, re-plant.

Rachael

Today was a day off of sorts, a day to recoup after one of the strangest work-days I've ever worked (which left me enormously grateful to my co-workers). I didn't have my regularly scheduled writing class and although I had every intention to spend the day writing, instead I wandered, rambled around the house, read some required and non-required stories, and began to pull invaders out of the ground and start the process of nuturing some little seeds. This year I have a grow lamp (an artificial sun) and a heating mat and a schedule. This year I have a plan. There are mostly peppers in the seed starting unit right now but also some strawberries, some marigolds.

The wild onion type grass that grew like mad under all the mats of dried leaves...well that's not part of the plan. Weeding feels like a physical, ruthless, version of the kind of revision heavy writing I've been doing. I am pulling whole chunks of stuff out of the ground, deleting entire pages, and hoping that the tulips and the tales will be better for it.

We can grow stuff no matter what else goes on in the big bad world. I was struck yesterday by the compliment a colleague gave me, she said "you have the best attitude." I hope to keep my attitude fresh with some careful seeding and weeding. Less onion grass, more strawberry.

Thanks,
Rachael

I spent most of my day today cleaning and sorting, tossing out random old magazines, and donating lots of seldom worn clothes, and trying to impose some sort of order in our little house. I still have piles of things and plenty of space filled by un-necessary objects, but maybe there is more room for new ideas.

Each time I do this kind of weeding cleaning, I find projects started but not finished, threads of the same paintings and stories. The best of these will get to some sort of a finish this year, I think. I can sort of see a way to tie up some of my paper-doll people with my short stories, the weedy leafy drawings with my garden, and the hands and feet with travel.

If every drawing was a story, every story a drawing, I might have something here. Something coherent, consistent, communicative as it is creative. I can dare to dream...



As it is all so ridiculously tied to the season of purging and starting again, I tell this and then I'll turn the computer off, go upstairs and start some seeds before bed. These sketchbook pictures probably serve as the truest record of the best of my cluttered working visual and verbal method. I never really clean my sketchbook, though I ought to harvest from it more than I do.



goodnight then,
Rachael