WEBS AND THREADS IN 2011~”FILLING THE SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE!”

As the new Year begins I am looking over the wonderful Annual Report sent out by WordPress which tells me what readers have been most interested in reading on Webs And Threads in 2011. This amazing report also tells me from which parts of the world my readers find me. While the United States brings most of them, right behind are readers in the U.K. and then India. A map is provided that tells me there are readers from many other countries. The report puts the number of readers in a very interesting way:

“The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people.  This blog was viewed about 8,900 times in 2011.  If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 3 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.” Brilliant, WordPress. Astonishing really, in these terms. This certainly provides a lot of incentive to keep writing!

Early January is always the time to set goals for the New Year. In this spirit I look forward to writing Posts and Pages in 2012 that readers will find interesting, educational, and perhaps inspiring.

I want to thank all of those worldwide who have taken the time to read Webs And Threads. It confirms the power of words and of art to add to our collective creative spirit. I especially want to thank those who took the time to consider the words and images I’ve offered and written comments. I hope to hear from more of you in the upcoming year.

Best Wishes to all for a creative and blessed New Year!

Nancy

“LUSH”

Although I had plans to wind down my obsession with the dots in my paintings, the new, large canvas, titled ”Lush”, took on a life of its own and the dots most certainly prevailed.

As with every new work, decisions are made moment by moment. “Lush” demanded an endless number of those decisions, with some hinging on the possibility of abandoning the painting altogether. Some time away usually helped see what needed to be done and kept the painting going. But I lived with it everyday, considering it even when brushing my teeth.

Sometimes I feel, as other artists do, that naming a painting limits the interpretation, but in this case, there is no doubt, in my opinion, of the descriptive power of “Lush”.

“LUSH”  2011     Acrylic on canvas      60 x 40 inches

“NEBULA” COMPLETE

The process of making “Nebula” has been one of many starts and stops. And as often happens, there were moments when I asked myself whether to go on or just gesso the whole thing over. The obsessive dot-making exacts a price sometimes, and did so here. The cost is the multiplication of decisions made and even reversed.

Today’s professional photograph marks the completion of that process and provokes the challenge of the much larger canvas waiting. Will the dots continue?

NEBULA 2011 acrylic on canvas 30 x 30"

“NEBULA”-IDEA AND PROCESS

I’ve always been fascinated with the stop-action films that record the creation of a work of art such as a painting, drawing, or collage by filming the smallest changes as the work is completed, inch by inch. This is, I suppose, more interesting when the work involves the kind of obsessive mark-making that seems to rule my work these days.

Like many of the pieces that belong in “The Threads Project”, these paintings recall the process of accretion. Whether using thread in “thread-stitches” that slowly build the object or image, these new paintings accumulate dots of color to create complex patterns. And while the idea or image that inspired them may be apparent, the actual process may lead to other directions, leaving the origins perhaps only faintly discernible by the time the painting reaches its conclusion.

By now the newest painting, called “Nebula”, a word that conjures up the whirling masses of the Universe, has taken many new turns. While the original staining called up far more minimal interests of the past, obsessiveness claimed this work as the process continued.

 ”Nebula”  

Works immediately preceding this painting can be seen in a new Page which has a slideshow and gallery of images.

NEW PAINTINGS 2008-2011

NEW BOOK~”THE OTHER SIDE OF PARIS”

After some back and forth with technical issues on the text color I think we have the final version of the new book of inverted photographs~

THE OTHER SIDE OF PARIS

This link will take you to Blurb and a fifteen-page peek at it. A gallery of images can also be found on my Page of the same name~The Other Side of Paris.

NEBULA

While  work continues on the new book of inverted photographs, THE OTHER SIDE OF PARIS, there is also a new beginning in the painting. Although I had thought to move away from color to a pair in black and white, this new work was inspired by the addition of a fresh new color by Golden, Light Ultramarine Blue, one of their heavy body acrylics. While I normally prefer to use only Golden’s fluid acrylics, this particular color is not available in that form. Perhaps this is fortuitous, as I am enjoying the buttery texture and find it blends well with the fluid acrylics.

NEBULA continues the staining process of the preceding paintings, RED DELTA and TIDEMARK. I’ve decided to document the process a bit and so keep the camera at hand for rather candid photos as I progress. From these the thought process, the decisions that are made, can be seen.

NEBULA -Day One        acrylic on canvas  30 x 30 inches

The small white areas are thick drops of fluid acrylic, as in the previous works, standing as gem-like centers for flurries of marks to come.

Some days into the painting brings a bit of intensity to the colors, and a search for pattern.

As I continue painting I realize that the link between the textile work and the painting remains strong. This painting has the range of color and appearance of a long-ago textile, dye on silk that was one of my first efforts. I often remarked that it was actually a painting on silk.

GEMSTONE       Fiber-reactive dye on silk habotai

Writing this, I am reminded of something that Louise Bourgeois wrote long ago and which I noted in one of my journals, perhaps mid-Seventies. I was searching then to find “clues” from the thoughts and writing of other artists whose works I found intriguing. To paraphrase, I believe she wrote that as artists “All we do is repeat and repeat and repeat.”  These words echo often in my own thoughts as I now look back on my own work. Our repetition may exist but hopefully we find that our “vocabulary” of imagery grows larger and continues to be inventive. The richness of our thinking can expand this vocabulary, to create what I like to think of as “The Richest Expression”. Which all leads back to my basic question, “How do the material and process affect the meaning in art?”

THE OTHER SIDE OF PARIS-NEW INVERTED PHOTOS

Having received the proof copy of the new book of inverted photographs, The Other Side of Paris, I see that some tweaking needs to be done but most importantly, the color of the text has not been correct. Blurb, to their credit, is re-printing for me at no charge.

In anticipation of the final version of the book, I have created a page,  THE OTHER SIDE OF PARIS, which gives a look into that project.

RED DELTA

At last, a post. It has been a busy and challenging summer, and somehow painting has not been much a part of the last month or so. Between an amazing week in Paris in mid-May with incredible museums and exhibitions, and family events, there has been little time to do much more than look longingly at the nearly-finished “Red Delta”.

But the painting is finished, joining the series of TIDEMARK and DELTA. “Red Delta” continues the use of textural contrasts, patterns of dots, and the usual obsessive mark-making that began with the  series of canvases such as DREAMING OF INDIA.

As with the earlier “Delta”, “Red Delta” is a square, thirty inches by thirty inches, one of my favorite sizes and shapes. Borrowing from an architect’s description, I like the “gravity” of the square, while this size is large enough to evoke a presence without inviting huge expanses to complicate the complexity of layers and marks.

RED DELTA 2011 Acrylic on canvas 30 x 30"

Although the actual act of painting has been fairly absent for a while, the mental work of painting has not, nor is another part of art-making, digital photographs. The next work in painting seems to point in the direction of a pair, one black, one white, but continuing the type of surfaces of the “Delta” pieces. Meanwhile, I have just finished a new book of inverted photographs called “The Other Side of Paris”. I will post a link and information on this project as soon as the initial proof copy has been received.

TIDEMARK

The new painting, which I call “Tidemark: Clear Blue”, reveals one more example of how work develops and how, over time, links to much earlier work can be seen.This painting follows the directly-previous paintings such as  DREAMING OF INDIA, a triptych and related smaller paintings which combine thin washes with thick applications of fluid acrylic “dots” and the rather obsessive small marks which search out and form patterns. The painting is actually a re-working of an early “web” painting, “Clear Blue” which I painted in 2004 but never felt quite sure had reached its definitive state. The original painting’s use of the triangular cream and white stitch-mark is revealed under the thin veils of color painted over it.

This photo shows the middle stage of the painting as I began to layer thin washes which left a darker edge or “tidemark” as the pools of fluid acrylic dried.

I realized as I worked on the painting that the staining and puddles of color and resulting tidemarks were much like a particular technique I used in my hand-dyed textiles years ago.

The next photo shows the technique in textile dyeing for which the painting is named. A tidemark in textile design is often a negative result in which dark edges in the dyed area appear as salts and chemicals dry. I decided to make use of this effect to my advantage and created one of my earliest designs by utilizing this “fault”.

PETRA     Fiber-reactive dye on habutai silk     36 x 36 inches

Below, the finished painting with details:

TIDEMARK  acrylic on canvas  48 x 24 inches

DETAIL

DETAIL

Allowing the puddles of paint to dry results in edges which form “fences” like the tidemarks in the textile dyeing process. Putting color on cloth in textiles using tidemarks clearly offers similar expressive opportunities in what is thought of as painting in a more formal sense. Without realizing I was again blurring the boundaries of “fine art” and “craft/design”.

DIGITAL DRAWING IN THE THREADS PROJECT

 THE THREADS PROJECT contains a large proportion of work which relates to my first love in life, drawing. Although I didn’t realize it when this “series” began in 2001, (developing into an enormous body of work over more than six years), the questions I set for myself and the means I used to answer them helped me to expand my definitions of drawing on a very personal level.

I owned my first computer at the time that this experimentation began. Installed in it was the basic Paint program. I stumbled upon it and began to play a bit with the idea of drawing digitally. Immediately I began to see the linear relationship to my threads pieces and began to work with this in color and black and white.

BEATRICE’S  THREADS  2002

 

STRINGS  2002

THREAD LACE 2002

THREAD LACE II  2002

As “The Threads Project” progressed the idea of using actual thread and layers came into the work. This 2003 piece used thick thread sewn to tulle. Beneath the cream thread lies a single black thread. The earlier digital drawing, along with others, explored the idea of layers.

SINGULAR  2003  Thread, machine-sewn to tulle, hand-sewn to Okawara paper 14 x 11.75″

The digital drawings provided yet another method of using the idea of analagous images, but in a way entirely unanticipated. The linear quality of these digital drawings echoed that of thread of course, but also changed my ideas of what exactly constituted a drawing in my previous experience. The need for paper or any other physical support was unnecessary. The images remained “virtual” until printed in some way. Until then no boundaries existed except the frame of a monitor or computer screen. These images could be understood as thumbnails or “sketches” for other work such as an installation or sculpture. They could be fully-realized works on paper or fabric using a printing method of some kind. They certainly bore evidence of the maker’s hand yet not in any way I had ever before used.

 One other element of the digital drawings was the use of inverting the images. This experiment provided a method that again, proved fertile much later when I began to work with digital photographs.

INVERTED THREADS  I  2003

Black and white digital drawings as well as more digital drawings in color can be seen in the Page -DIGITAL DRAWINGS FROM THE THREADS PROJECT.

LINEAR STRATEGY BLACK VI  2002