Birds 11 May

I'm wondering if the birds as a group (top photo) isn't more effective than the individual squares. Recurring questions of the relationship of the bird form to the background persist; I like the idea of finding some kind of unity through materials and process that allows the two to exist both separately and as one at the same time. Weaving comes to mind but it's not something I'm either knowledgeable about or equipped to  do. Another thing I keep thinking about is the idea of the birds as land forms in water, but really, the biggest question is if the ink drawings are an ends in themselves, or the point of departure of something larger.... for now I'll keep doing ink drawings.

Birds 5 May

Clyde Connell- "Lake Stilts"

Lake Stilts 1982
Mixed Media
60 1/2" x 106"

Having grown up in New Orleans,  Clyde Connell's "Lake Stilts" makes me think of the prototypical, top-heavy Louisiana lake and beach houses.  Their fragility and precarious "pick-up-sticks" quality  is even more apparent in the post-Katrina photo below. Connell lived on Lake Bistineau in northern Lousiana and was inspired, in part, by the stick-like structures and trees around the lake.

Lake Pontchatrain boat houses
New Orleans, LA
(post Katrina)

As for the shadow boxes (top photo), I love them.  They remind me of caves and nests, of making a "place" for sacred objects--  in this case egg-shaped stones, which for Connell, signified both the organic and the permanent.

In a funny way, they also remind me of the dioramas I made in grade school, taking a box and creating a tableau-- maybe a scene from history-- moving the pieces back and forth in the space to create a dialogue among the parts, to tell a story.

And I wonder about the need to contain things in boxes because I derive great satisfaction from drawing a box before I draw a bird.  Is it the safety through containment, the marking of boundaries, the desire to organize, or all of these things plus the need to make a special place for, and assign meaning to objects in our lives?
-art photo credits from the book "Clyde Connell" by Charlotte Moser

Birds 29 April

Cardinals

Photos taken by the grandson of a friend of a friend celebrate springtime, new life, and all the things that poets have rhapsodized about for centuries.  I like the berries in the nest, as well as the curmudgeonly expression of the young one.

Clyde Connell sculpture

Sculpture Group 1977

Swamp Ritual 1978
Mixed media
81" x 24" x 22"

Rain Place- Detail

Rain Place 1978
84" x 54" x 36"

Photo credits- "Clyde Connell" by Charlotte Moser

Clyde Connell- Bound People Series

Bound People series
1986
72" x 15" x 3"

Clyde Conell and Bound People series
1986
72"x 15"x 3" each

Louisiana artist Clyde Connell (1901-1998) and some of her work. You can read about her in this  article by Charlotte Moser,  the author of the book "Clyde Connell".

-Photos from Charlotte Moser's book, "Clyde Connell."

Clyde Connell- Non-persons

Non-person posts- Detail

Non-person Posts
1977
Mixed Media collage
including machine gears, chains,  gear shifts,  feathers and fibers
108" x 67"

Non-person Woman
1977
Mixed Media Collage
80" x 20"

-Photos from "Clyde Connell" by Charlotte Moser

Birds +

Birds in squares plus one (or more) elements.

I've been thinking about shapes and what they might be beyond a graphic element in the bird drawings. Is a curved shape a solid like a planet, or a membrane filled with air like the surface of a balloon?  Is a dark triangle the absence of light--a shadow, a solid wall, or an empty space, a void? What is the relationship of a bird in a square to a shape, beyond line, pattern and texture?

What happens when a foreign element-- an object, event, relationship, or even a thought or a change in a way of thinking-- inserts itself into the neat little squares we set up as our lives? What is our perception of and relationship to an uninvited, unknown, and unexplored presence? Aren't we at least a little bit curious? Just a few of the questions that have been on my mind lately....

Contour drawings after pictures of birds in
"Birds of the World as Painted by Nineteenth Century Artists"
by Hiroshi Aramata

Birds

"You can take a picture of me, but you can't take a picture of my brain."- Madeleine Vionnet

Madeleine Vionnet. Brilliant artist and dress designer, 

not to mention one of the first business owners 

to provide on-site healthcare and daycare for her employees

 -- and that in the 1930's. You can find out more about her here.

Vionnet designing clothes on her mannequin.

She never sketched her designs, believing that working in 3D was 

the only way  to explore how fabric drapes on a woman's body.

I'm very interested in the idea of taking a picture of one's brain, not in the sense of a PET scan image, but something more personally expressive that reveals the simultaneous realities we are creating and experiencing at any given moment. 


With respect to the photo above-- Vionnet and her mannequin-- I like to think about how each of her designs was influenced not only by her knowledge of tailoring, fabrics, and history of dress design, but also by the weather that day, if she'd passed a bakery and smelled fresh-baked bread on the way to work (or conversely an open sewer),  what sounds she could hear in her studio while she was working, or what she had dreamed the night before. 


I'm thinking of a fingerprint of the brain-- a fluid, multi-dimensional and constantly evolving imprint or map that describes the ongoing morphosis of  individual identity.

Image credit: Futurity

My fingerprints

Birds 27 Feb