Road Trip: New Jersey and New York, Sept 12-14, 2014

P A R T  O N E: Hunterdon Art Museum and American Folk Art Museum

Ostensibly, the purpose of this trip was to pick up work from the Hunterdon Art Museum in Clinton, New Jersey. The Hunterdon exhibition ran from May 18th until September 7th and was a beautiful second incarnation of the original Swept Away: Translucence, Transparence, Transcendence in Contemporary Encaustic. The exhibition was originally curated by Michael Giaquinto of the Cape Cod Museum of Art and it was exhibited there from May 18th until June 23rd, 2013. Very big thanks go to both museums for their  thoughtful installations and gracious hosting of our work!

Catalog cover for the Hunterdon's exhibition - Cover image is a detail of an encaustic painting by Lynda Ray

Driving, Always Driving
My good friend Binnie Birstein chauffered me all over Connecticut, New Jersey and New York this weekend, and I owe her a big debt of gratitude for her fortitude and excellent driving skills. It's true that we had a great time chatting away by the hour, eating some great food, and doing lots of arting wherever we went. I don't know how many miles we put on Binnie's car, but there were a lot.


First Stop: American Folk Art Museum
2 Lincoln Square, Columbus Ave. at 66th St., NYC
Willem van Genk "Mind Traffic" and Ralph Fasanella "Lest We Forget"
When I read Roberta Smith's review of this show in the Times, I knew it was going to the top of the Must See list. This is the first time I have been to this museum since they have revamped themselves in reduced circumstances. (If you recall, this is the museum that sold their unique building to MoMA who plans to tear it down.) The location across from Lincoln Center is great and it's right next to the Mormon Temple in case you want to pop in.

These shows were beautifully installed and I was happy to learn a few things from the installation. We visited on Friday night and unfortunately (for us) the museum was having a musical performance right in the middle of Fasanella's work, so we didn't get to see all his paintings.

And, by the way, they did not allow photography of the work so I have had to resort to the internet, thus being unable to provide titles, sizes, etc. for the most part. Those caveats aside, I loved these shows in a big way!

Ralph Fasanella, "American Tragedy," size and year unknown (to me)

Ralph Fasanella (1914 - 1997) was a self-taught painter from working-class New York with a strong social conscience. He depicted scenes (imagined and actual) of importance in American history, especially to the American worker. His works are usually large and highly detailed. The ones most interesting to me had emblems or signs at the top, usually in dark red, that hovered above the scene below. The American Folk Art Museum has a large collection of Fasanella's work and an archive of related materials.

Willem van Genk (1927 - 2005) was a Dutch painter, also self taught, but more of the visionary and outsider ilk than Fasanella. Van Genk suffered from mental problems but was able to live on his own and create a large body of unique visionary work in paintings and sculpture.

Van Genk's works are covered with obsessive marks and writing, many containing buildings, cars, airplanes and machines composed of intricately cross-hatched lines. He often uses collage of both paper and thin wooden pieces and many works have circles or hexagonal areas like large thought balloons added to scenes that contain other information.

Willem van Genk, Untitled (World Airport), 1965, 44 3/4" x 46 3/4"

Although Van Genk worked from books, magazines, travel brochures and maps, he also traveled later in life, so some of his scenes come from direct observation.

Van Genk liked to build trolleys and machinery from cardboard with pieces of plastic, screening and advertising glued on. The museum has a large collection of these displayed together although they can't be viewed in the round. Due to discoloration of the glue over time, these works have an antique, weathered look that adds to their character and interest.

Additional info and more photos: Roberta Smith's rave review, Wall Street International review


Coming up in Part Two - lots more from the road.

Color and Light From Nature

This week I was surprised to find how much my color choices had been influenced by observing nature -  or is that Nature? The funny thing is that I first made the paintings and then saw the wonderful light and shadow with all that beautiful foliage. Who knew?

"Guest Star", 2014, 14" x 14" x 1.5", mixed media with encaustic on panel

"East of the Sun," 2014, 14" x 14", mixed media with encaustic on panel

"September Blue," 2014, 14" x 14" x 1.5", mixed media with encaustic on panel

For the "Relative Geometries" show at Conrad Wilde Gallery in Tucson (opening October 4th),

More info about the "Relative Geometries" show will follow - along with images of my other paintings in the show which have little or no resemblance to anything in nature but fruit and flowers.

An Introspective Week: The Illusion of Intention

This week I'm becoming more aware of the season changing and moving much too early into fall. My eye keeps returning to one particular vignette in our neglected yard that draws me to it with its seeming perfection, just as if we had planned and carefully tended all the elements to achieve their peak in the final days of summer.

A garden picture

But we put no effort of weeding, trimming, pruning or watering into making this garden picture happen since we are operating more under the benign neglect system of gardening. This image is an illusion of intention and that idea connects me to some other thoughts this past week about making art.

How long did it take?
When someone asked me this week that question that sets my teeth on edge, I posted it to one of my Facebook art groups for discussion and input. Since there is no time clock or a widget counter in the studio, artists know that of course the answer must be that it takes an artist all her life to make a particular work, as the sum total of all that has come before it.

It got me thinking about making art as a great chain, where one piece is so strongly linked to the one before it and the one after it. A painting or a sculpture does not stand alone in an artist's work because all the work is connected, and made whole by what preceded and what followed.

Intention and accident
How much is really within our control? I'm not talking about the manipulation of a medium, but how much other factors influence the work. For example, another question a studio visitor asked me this week is why I chose the colors I used in a piece I was making. My answer was the practical response that I had those colors left over from the previous work. If that had not been the case, would I have chosen something else?

It reminds me that I used to make work no wider than 44 inches because that was the width of the hatchback in my car. There are practical constraints and influences that limit choices in making works. So in thinking about intention, how much is really accident that becomes transformed into meaning?

Paintings to be coated with encaustic before being cut up and used as elements in other works.

Habits of Mind and Hand
There are certain marks and colors that I go to in an automatic way. If I choose to make something different, am I working against myself? Will the process create new habits or lead me to see something new that resonates with me? These are questions that I don't usually think about in a conscious way but that are always there. Am I choosing or avoiding, omitting or including?

Inventing Context
I read an article in Art in America this week that referred to a statement by Janet Malcolm that she had never found anything an artist said about his or her work to be interesting. Well, she is a snarky bitch but I am wondering if the statements we make about our work can ever convey the reality of our choices. When I set my work into the context of depicting or referring to memory, am I simply choosing a context from a laundry list or is that really the meaning of my work?

Going anywhere or a dead end?

The Making
I make what I like to make. I have found it after continual experimenting, looking, comparing, trying, putting aside, and many times uttering the death sentence on those disappointing failures that deserve scraping or sanding or even tossing into the dumpster. My confidence in myself and my work ebbs and flows depending on my mood, my sales, my feedback, my personal assessment and  innumerable other factors. The process can fascinate, bore and frustrate me but I keep at it year after year, glacially moving along that chain of making, link by link, not thinking about how long it's taking.