Knowledge and a Barrel of Monkeys

I have happily come to the conclusion that I am the most unsuccessful blogger in the bloggisphere and this opens a great door to freedom from scrutiny. You can look over my shoulder if you like and watch me while I am thinking but your continued non input is a companionable way for us to sit.

A journey began for me several weeks ago with a master course in Art Practice and Research with Ruth Hadlow. It came at a time when I was flailing with this incessant drive to be more visible and commercial which was like a loud  flapping noise stopping me from thinking. As soon as a pirouetting child absorbed in a fantasy of ballerinas and princesses feels the adult gaze, she also becomes her own audience and she constantly watches out of the corner of her eye for approval and adulation and loses the rhythm that prompted her dance.

Ruth’s course was a wonderful antidote for that but at the same time is difficult to describe. It was if anything, like being cloistered in a contemplative order for a week with five other earnest and gifted artists. Personal attributes and biographies were irrelevant to the tasks at hand. We talked of cabbages and kings, as my father used to say, when we sat long hours talking around the subject of his impending death without ever touching on it. Understanding was found in the sopped up tears and and pearls of wisdom  that could be retrieved from the tangled threads we wove around that tender wound. 

Knowledge is an obstacle to Knowledge.(Thich Nhat Hahn, Buddha Mind Buddha Body)

There were enlightening readings which were not about their content but more about their style. There were oddments from pockets along with skilfully made artifacts and emotionally charged talismans all rubbed up against each other which were available for us to meditate on and practice some of the thinking skills Ruth presented us with. Disparate objects hooked our attention and drew threads of passion and accumulated experiences from our brains as we fashioned our own interpretations of what it was we were dealing with.

Synchronicity and  serendipity seemed to magically influence our responses but in reality the objects that hooked our attention were simply touchstones for lived experiences that had resonated in our lives and were our driving forces.

 Our analysis involved unwrapping information embedded in art forms and objects and then using those techniques as a lense through which to approach an artistic task. 

Barnacles and hibiscus caught my eye

Sometimes language traps an idea like a bug in amber and prevents it from growing but it can also liberate ideas especially if it is circumspect and dances around the edges like children poking at a dead bird . Language can be direct and descriptive, it can list physical attributes, it can allude to romantic notions or emotional ideas elicited from an object, it can talk in circles around a subject without ever putting a finger on it. Language can approach an object and wander off into nostalgic musings and then attention can be drawn again to the object with new questions in the mind. Language tends to be a linear description, except if you are speaking in sign language, which can be a multidimensional expression of emotion and action attached simultaneously to information.

I could for instance tell you the boring fact that every morning (almost) I walk around the oval a minimum of 3 times to begin my day. I walk in an anticlockwise direction and expect to see certain individuals also taking their morning constitutional and it gives me a sense of solidarity with all those who are walking. Michael Moore the documentary maker started a movement about walking in solidarity with others who are walking. His simple act motivated thousands of people simultaneously around the globe. I used to feel a certain solidarity with women who were up feeding babies at 4am.

I could also represent my walk with a list

Flock of corellas lifting off,

 newly mown turf,

 dew,

 long shafts of sunlight,

 silhouette of park bench,

  ant holes,

   feathers,

    lorikeet chatter,

     hot air balloons,

   empty drink bottle on the war memorial,

  drifts of  spent gum blossom,

     increasing numbers of coloured eucalypt leaves,

            old man peeing behind the cricket shed,

    golfers exuding early morning smugness,

  magpie keeping one metre distance with sideways glances,

 pinging kneecap,

      new hole dug on walking path by bored child,

 fallen sticks,

           streaking flash of an exuberant dog…etc

I could represent it mathematically

440metres x 3 = 1520 metres or 3 laps x 5mins= 15mins = time for 2 more laps or 2 laps x5 minutes + 1x slow lap because of THAT couple… don’t they know how slow they are. 78 breaths =I gm of fat processed and deleted.

with a reference;

The Superior vena-cava collects de-oxygenated blood to the heart aided by heart suction. This vein carries blood from left to right. Centrifugal force due to anticlockwise running helps this suction. If we run clockwise, the centrifugal force impedes suction. That is why, in olden days, health officers ensured that all carnival merry-go-rounds were run only in the anti-clockwise direction. As the heart is on the left side, for humans and animals, running anticlockwise makes the centrifugal force in the body to act from left to right. Whereas it is from right to left for clockwise running. Racing tracks, animal shows in circuses, bullock-drawn pelt on wheels, all mostly have only left turns. Stairways in temple towers have only left turns for going up. Clockwise running tires people. http://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-1416,00.html

or with an image

the walk - Jo Quirk

I could of course share the work fragments from the course but it may not lead you any closer to understanding what it was. I was introduced to the art of Agnes Martin which corresponded to my own  drawing exploration and illustrated pulse and breath.

I was once again charmed by Ursula Le Guin’s writing and can now go back and explore where her femininst ideas resonate with me. Everything I see has taken on a new light 

A spoon has been poked into my head and the fragments have been stirred around. Just like the game Barrel of Monkeys, you can’t pull out things that weren’t there before but monkeys that come up may be in a different order.

 When you view art and it confuses you, revolts you, intrigues you or fails to engage you, instead of making a quality judgement about it, sit with it a while and think what did the artist have in the barrel to draw on. Describing what you see and what you feel using categorical lists, similes, poetry or other manners of communication may throw open revelations to you about why you have had a particular response. Your barrel of monkeys and the artist’s barrel of monkeys could have something in common after all.

Manifesting and Incubation

In the life of an artist there is no one direct line of work to follow. It is difficult to know how a day will pan out unless you are actually involved in a project. The difficult time is in generating a project especially when responding in an emotional way to background noise.

It is important therefore to be able to surface from the miasma of idleness with a clear plan for forward motion. When an artist is involved in a project it is as if that is the only thing on earth that they were put here to do and optimism levels can rise to an unsubstantiated level. The ebb tide can be  daunting but it is also important to recognise that ebb and flow are a normal part of an artist’s way of being and to work with that.

 

When studying ceramics one bright mentor said that it is important to just go into the studio and work as if that is what you always do because the work of an artist is what generates the next project. It is also important to ask yourself what it is you want. You need a clear visualisation of where you want to be and want you to produce and  where you want this work to appear in order for it to manifest.You cannot plan if you do not have a big picture idea of where you want to be. BTW Has anyone heard a big picture idea from any of our pollies about where we are going to be anytime soon?

A few quick scribble reasons for being an artist. I am sure you can make the list much longer!

Can’t help myself. It comes out of me like breath.

Want to be famous

Want to make money

Want to save the world

Want to be remembered

Want to have a conversation. My way of being a part of something.

Therapy to help myself.

 

While it is nicer to have the conversation with others, sometimes you just need to sit and have an imaginary conversation with yourself to ask the questions. When you hear the answer then it is a matter of following some logical pathways to achieving that outcome. Sometimes the answer directs you away from the process you have been following because it is not a logical conclusion. e.g I want to make money- does art make money? Not frequently and not much. So was the original answer naive or dishonest?

Some practical things that you can pursue when you fall into the pit of doom are

1:to seek challenges to stimulate your imagination-competitions etc

2: repetitive exercises to perfect a skill

3: market research

4: choose another area of interest to focus on for a set period of time thereby giving yourself permission to step away without guilt.

5: play with your existing work, mixing it around, displaying it differently to perhaps stimulate a new idea. Imagine curating just a small fraction of your work

6: try something as exactly opposite to what you are doing as is possible eg try to make something really ugly and clumsy

7: experiment with the same idea or object in a completely different material or several different materials

8: ask people in to look and comment.

9: respond to an existing problem eg too many throw away containers, rising obesity levels, limited modern storage.

10: random dictionary slam- two unrelated words picked at random and brainstorm ideas these two words generate.

Never throw away ideas. Keep a book or scrap pile or pinboard and file them. Sometimes your ideas collection drawn in your own hand may become collectable but when dipped into occasionally can feed more ideas. These ideas percolate through your brain the more often you flick through them in a relaxed manner and when left to incubate can suddenly erupt when another random idea rubs up against them.

Pinterest is fun but unless you follow up straight from Pinterest into your own scribbled ideas you are just wasting time. Pinterest adds to your sense of futility, and envy especially if you are collecting directly from other people’s design and art pages. It also becomes a lazy way of filling you up full of other people’s stuff so that you no longer know where the real you is.

Try  instead to only pinch a part of an idea or image using a tool such as snip  (widget not showing!)and play with this little snippet. Steal another artists colour palette or a colour palette for interiors to give your work a contemporary look. I have been obsessing for a few years over Cy Twombly’s paintings and can endlessly amuse myself with snippets of his paintings embellished with my own work to create wishful ideas.

 

Try stealing objects from still life paintings, Margaret Olley has a zillion of them and I think Gwynn Hansen Piggot has given Morandi a good going over.

Stir your stumps and get making or drawing or doing whatever it is that makes you an artist! We will know the fate of the election cycle in a couple of days and life will continue for better or worse.

 

 

 

Designing holes

There is a famous Australian film called The Castle in which the son of an extremely ordinary family develops a sense of achievement in the world of DIY by digging a hole . This is followed by another  bland statement a few days later that he dug another hole. The droll nature of the statement has become a bit of an icon in our family, at least, since DIY has been quite a past time.  Digging a hole is actually quite hard work and digging a deep hole is extremely strenuous but when it is finished it doesn't jump out as a significant achievement.
So it is with ceramics. Essentially the potter is capturing a hole that didn't exist before. And a hole can make such a difference to the outer skin that holds it.
We seem to have an innate sense of proportion and pre determined calculation of mass that should accompany certain proportions so that when we come upon this magical combination our minds  then  immediately click other programs into action to assess surface, colour and feel. If we are drawn first to the visual colour, we might forgo mass or feel, because in our minds it has already become a decorative item and if our calculations don't add up about weight for volume we can overlook that. These intuitions probably go back to our survival skills of picking the juiciest fruit or heaviest coconut, that would repay the energy expended in climbing for it.

It is with all these seemingly intuitive judgments that the experienced ceramicist develops a form.

Is that hole going to contain just air for the rest of its existence, hot beverages, fat ice blocks, a chunky stew or a special little treat? Do spoons or chopsticks have to wrestle with its interior? Are the contents going to extend beyond the top of the opening and therefore change the centre of gravity.

So many times when selling things at markets we ceramicists are bemused by the question "What would you use it for?" I don't know if this is because buyers want to know if they are committing a sacrilege to feed the beloved kitten milk from it or whether they think there is some secret code in the ceramics world tied to notions of value that ascertain whether a piece is going into the "good" room. Heavens to Betsy if you "use" the Wedgewood!

 

 

Sometimes I can't believe that people have so little imagination, or are so bound with convention.  The idea of a container that can be used for one tim tam and also for wasabi  or dukkah at  a dinner table is a revealation to them. Our job is not just to provide the object but also the vision to go with it. I can't believe our audience want to be dictated to.

When I make vessels I use a printed guide of the Golden Mean. It was used by artists of the classical eras and is sometimes attributed to Euclid.
1:618..... it occurs in nature through the Fibonacci spiral and it is what dictates our seemingly innate sense of proportion.

I don't use it religiously but when I have developed something new and want to make a decision about its proportion, I might just put it up against the guide. When I have made something I don't feel comfortable about it usually doesn't fulfil the proportions of the golden ratio and sometimes the addition of a higher foot ring might make all the difference or  the addition of a darker colour in one part might give a sense of grounding and balance.

I haven't got it all worked out. I struggle with every little hole I make. I fight a mind that constantly seeks novelty over pursuit of perfect form. If my work becomes too perfect I whack it or bend it or draw on it left handed. I want my pieces to resemble humanity and none of us conforms to the golden mean entirely. I fight the machine made look that comes with constant practice. I know that if I spend a week in the studio at my wheel my pieces dance off the wheel as perfect little replicas but my urge is to fight that because the gesture and nuance is lost. Regular and matching is what the buyer wants but I have always been a rebel and I am my own worst enemy. We want to choose the puppy from the litter that we feel most connected to and a bowl or beaker that fits our hand and heart.

 So bad luck if you want any of my pieces fitted neatly on your shelf and perfectly lined up. It's not going to happen and if that is what you want you are best to go to Ikea.

                                           POST SCRIPT
A beautiful video on Fibonacci sent to me by Mirta
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0tLbl5LrJ8&feature=youtu.be

Archibalds at Mornington

On Saturday I went to the Mornington Gallery to see the travelling Archibald Exhibition. Last year I missed out at Tarra Warra because we hadn’t booked and turned up on the last weekend and couldn't get within spit of the place.
This time we booked the first session of Saturday morning and arrived in sunny but chilly conditions. We were marshalled to our parking spot by the fine Rotary volunteers whose blood is worth bottling. If you are going there anytime soon, please thank them for their work. They stand there cheerfully through all weather just so that you can have a streamlined experience.

The exhibition was in a spacious gallery with great lighting and even though we were there before the crowds (highly recommended that!) there was plenty of room for viewing and some seating to sit and admire paintings from a distance. I always like to get up close and read the artist information but it is important to stand back and view as well as scan the display to help to anticipate those paintings which really grab your attention.

Kathryn Del Barton’s painting of Hugo Weaving won the Archibald and it is so obviously a painting by her hand.

It is not a style I particularly like though that is just personal opinion. I bristled a little at the appropriation of aboriginal dot painting which makes up about one third of the image simply because I do not understand its purpose or whether it adds real meaning to the painting.
I loved Joshua McPherson’s portrait of Ella ( a child actress) for its straightforward beauty.

 

 

Abdul Abdullah’s portrait of Tony Mundine called The Man shines in the space and I believe it will go onto become an iconic image in Archibald history.

Sally Ryan’s classical portraiture of Dr Catherine Hamlin is a fitting and dignified portrait of such a wonderful and wise woman and shows warmth and respect.

I would love to know more about Pilbara Land Council Representative, Wilfrid Hicks portrayed by Julie Dowling. His eyes are engaging warm and full of humanity.

 

Michael Stavros Painting Bad Dad evoked images of the TV series The Slap (just in my weird head) and was fascinating and beautiful.

 

 

I was intrigued and moved by Guy Morgan’s self portrait with Peter Pan after Retinal Detachment. It is strongly coloured like a print but up close the whole background is dotted with fine splattered ground which is apparently applied with an eye dropper. He described the moment of his retinal detachment as a sensation of light popping and sparking and I could identify with it intensely having ruptured my eardrum on a number of occasions and if I could have painted the experience, that was true for me, like a blown fuse misfiring. The sensation of the experience while viewing the image was strong and appalling as my sight is something I would miss so much.

Mertim Gokalp’s painting of Billie Brown is powerful and conveys a lot about the calibre of a man who has come here as a very recent immigrant and in a short time made a connection with an Australian actor at the end of his life and revealed him to us in such a new and profound way.

 

Jules Francois Archibald set up the trust in 1920 which enables The Archibald to be awarded each year.

The conditions of the Trust read

 

‘I direct my Trustees... to provide an annual prize to be styled “The Archibald Prize” for the best portrait preferentially of some man or woman distinguished in Arts Letters Science or Politics painted by any artist resident in Australasia during the twelve months preceding the date fixed by the Trustees...’

So it is very loose interpretation of the rules to allow Carlos Pagoda’s painting of his father a 97 year old uneducated self sufficient gardener to be a part of the exhibiton.

 It is a fantastic and unique painting of a no doubt unique man but in my mind does not qualify for entry. If his father were famous for disseminating his garden styles I believe it would be a different matter. But then again the Archibalds have always been full of controversy.

Maybe one year I will have a go. Here's one of my son of many persuasive words and if I had had my say he would be a garrulous lawyer!

 

 

 

Horizons

If you have ever tried to create an abstract image it is extremely difficult to avoid creating a horizon, or creating an organic form which represents a living entity.  The human mind just reads geo references into any images and fills in the gaps because it is trying to make sense to categorise the image. Shortly after that, we form an attachment to the image because it has special resonance for us.

Our minds are constantly seeking patterns ,which is probably why we can constantly observe cloud formations or find faces in linoleum patterns. A fun site that is dedicated to this phenomenon is  http://facesinplaces.blogspot.com.au. On a separate note I think the rise of Asperger’s and spectrum disorder minds may be a boon in future as our world becomes more complex and we seek minds that can find patterns and order out of chaos.

I like this little trio of objects together at the moment.

 

L . Jo Quirk horizon platter   C. Cathie Phoeda painting acquired at Linden Postcards exhibition   R Kath Wratten vessel

Flinders Teapot Festival

Sharyn Masson prickly pot

It looks as if the rest of the week is going to continue with fine weather so if you have time a perfect day out is a trip to Flinders on the Mornington Peninsula. The new Peninsula Link will get you there seamlessly though I can't guarantee that for the return trip!
StudioatFlinders is an artist run gallery and for several years has been mounting the Teapot Festival. It runs for one week more (til 14 April) and as well as the teapots there is a boggling array of arts and crafts displayed in this double shop front. Flinders has defintely developed from the lazy old backwater I knew as a child and is a very genteel hamlet with eateries, wineries and galleries to fill the day.


Marlize Myburgh's honorably mentioned decal pot and Jo Quirk
tiny pot

 

Leap of Faith

How does any project get started? You just have to get past the chicken stage and stop thinking about flight.
You know you have the skills ... check
You know you have the ideas....check
You have the audience but it's the peanuts gallery making the running commentary that you have to shut up.


Stalled...

Just dive in!