‘What I learned when I learned to draw’ by Adam Gopnick, The New Yorker, June 27th, discusses Jacob Collins‘ approach to drawing, which involves perceptual rather than conceptual viewing. The idea is to disengage from drawing symbols – conceptual schema of an arm or a face – and draw what you actually see. What you actually see may be a funny shape, a frog or an outline of a new African state, due to the play of light and shade on the body of the model. Thus, Gopnick was guided to learn to draw by ‘searching for strange shapes to break his symbol set’.

Jacob Collins in his “traditional realist revivalism” paints nudes, still lifes and landscapes. I may understand how the artist can draw a person modeling for him or cherries in a bowl by searching for shades and shapes rather than by using conceptual symbols. But doesn’t this approach break down when landscapes are drawn that contain water?

Water does not hold still for the slow musing approach to drawing that Adam Gopnick tells us Jacob Collins uses. My question is does Collins paint water using his symbol set of water?

The speakers of the last two talks at the Glen Arbor Art Association – Michael Letts on June 9, 2011 and Rachel Meginnes on June 23, 2011 – had things in common.

Both Michael Letts and Rachel Meginnes focus on geometrical patterns – Michael paints landscapes in abstract symbols and Rachel paints geometric shapes on cloth.

Both artists professed a zen-like attitude towards, what one may consider, tedious tasks. Michael paints ‘marks’ on his large geometrical sketches achieving a fabulous 3-D effect with shadows and highlights. Rachel, to generate the orthogonal grid underlying her painting, pulls threads out of fabric, usually cotton.

It was inspiring to listen to both discussing further development of their art – Michael Letts is experimenting with new motifs and Rachel Meginnes is developing a novel technology in fiber art.

Geometry and meditation are an ancient combination, an example are Mandalas, while the quest to developing new forms of art is an individual expression rather than one based on ancient belief systems.

The show is composed of interleaved groups of my photographs and Kerry’s prints. My contributions came from the Sourdough Trail project, the Cottonwoods series, and the Meeting Sky series, together with a newer set, unimaginatively called Windy Day. The latter consisted of the image above in a constellation with the following six, which are actually details of the same scene photographed at different moments.

These were strung out in a wavy line against the color-contrasting, warm brick. The large picture is 22″×13″, while the smaller ones are 9″×9″.

Windy Day set

Some of Kerry’s prints are quite large, and certainly dominate my photographs in terms of size. However, I don’t think the viewer’s experience is quite so lop-sided. What’s your impression?

Windy Day next to Anam Cara and Wilderness

Along Sourdough Trail (3 of 5) next to Tilt series

One of Kerry’s sets consisted of three grids of 9″×12″ prints sandwiched between layers of plexiglas, each depicting the same tree in front of a friend’s house, but (loosely) in morning, midday and evening light.

Composite prints by Kerry Corcoran

For this show I experimented with papers. My Windy Day and Meeting Sky sets were printed on tones (“white” and “cream”, the latter actually closer to pale peach) of a watercolor/printing paper (Stonehenge). This took some experimentation with inking profiles, and yielded less sharpness and contrast than normal photo printing paper, but that seemed appropriate. I also chose not to use glass in the rather minimalist frames, and even exposed the rough edges of the paper on two sides.

Framing with exposed deckle edge

The absence of glass not only made the paper more present, but avoided reflections, which I always find quite annoying. Hopefully the paper will stand up well, without warping significantly. It’s not so much of a risk with photographs—I can print a new one if need be.

Reflections on glass, not on paper

As I’m writing this, Birgit has posted a comment on our earlier discussions of dissolving boundaries in Giorgio Morandi’s paintings. Though not quite explicit, that idea was certainly in my head with the later work in this show. The complexity of the tree/sky boundary in Meeting Sky, with the densely ramified twigs, and the softness of it in Windy Day, with the motion blur, are two ways this idea can be approached in photography.

A bit of background: when I was working textiles, I regularly engaged in a “discussion” with quilters (some traditional, some contemporary) about whether the stitching work done on my textiles ( specifically in construction and quilting) should strive for perfection. I always maintained that my goal was “competence.” My attention was entirely on the image and impact (on, I maintained, the art).  The craft was there only to hold it together and/or to add to the art. Hence my seams were not necessarily straight and the back of the art was decent but not flawless (I didn’t bury my threads, for example, simply tidied them). I used the quilting stitches as part of the design, which meant that they were generally not even in length and that they were heavy in places and light in others; this can make the quilted art hang wonkily, requiring heroic measures to make it perform well.

This is an example of a old piece of mine that I claim has “competent” craft:

Sophie, Emerging, 84 x 73″, 2002, Materials: hand-painted cotton, canvas, silk, stretch-polyester, felt. Methods: hand- painted-and-dyed, airbrushed and commercial fabrics. Machine stitched.

Sophie Emerging, Detail

I violated all kinds of quilting craft standards here — you can probably see that the center has been lightly stitched while around it the stitching is quite heavy. I mixed materials so wildly that my friends burst into laughter when they heard that I hoped the canvas, silk, light-weight cotton, and stretch fabrics  would hang flat on exhibit. I did exhibit it, with aluminum rods inserted top and bottom, one of which got lost so the piece buckled badly (the uneven stitching, not to mention the range of fabrics, will do that).   At one point I almost took it out of an exhibit because it showed up so badly next to the much finer craft that it hung beside. We replaced the rod, which helped a little, although it always did look like sloppy craft (albeit not “sloppy craft.”)

I didn’t reform much in the following years, although I did throw away the stretch fabrics in my collection. But I continued to have discussions about how “fine”  the craft which gets put into art should be — how much it should conform to finely crafted quilts, for example, that regularly win large awards at national quilt shows. Is competence sufficient in quilted/stitched textile art?

Which brings me to the panel discussion “Sloppy Craft”. “Sloppy craft” is described by craft theorist Glenn Adamson as the “unkempt” product of a “post-disciplinary craft education.” The panel here in Portland featured The Art Institute of Chicago’s  Professor Anne Wilson (Fibers and Materiality), Wilson’s former student Josh Faught (now teaching Fibers at the University of Oregon), Nan Curtis (professor and head of many departments at the Pacific Northwest College of Art), local artist Jessica Jackson Hutchins, and Namita Gupta Wiggers, the head curator of the Contemporary Crafts Museum. The discussion was held in the Commons at the Pacific Northwest College of Art, which in itself startled me — it seemed an unlikely venue for the old Contemporary Crafts Museum. While the CCM has recently moved downtown to the heart of Portland’s art scene and has had some staff shake-ups and financial troubles, they were traditionally a quiet force for High Craft in Portland. Whereas, the College of Art (PNCA) has a highly contemporary, conceptually-based, post-modern orientation.

All the panelists have had wide exposure in exhibits and reviews and writing about their respective areas and seem clear about their own artistic journeys.

Josh Faught, according to his instructor at Chicago Anne Wilson, knows his craft (fibers — weaving, crochet, knitting)  inside and out, and is currently working in sculptural mode:

Josh Faught, Untitled, 2008 crocheted hemp and garden trellis

Jessica Jackson Hutchins, the youngest panel member, also does sculptural work.

Jessica Jackson Hutchins Convivium, 2008, table, linen, paper maché and ceramic, 52.75 x 56.75 x 53.75 inches

Nan Curtis is an installation artist (she did 52 “street signs” along 12th Ave, two blocks away from my house, signs which were posted on telephone poles, like rock band flyers, but having official government looking typeface and material). She has installed complete versions of her home (“Homebody,” Manuel Izquierdo gallery, 1998), and many other conceptual installations of that sort.

Nan Curtis, Role Model #1: She has always served him well 2005
digital photograph on gator board 22.25″ x 29.75″

Anne Wilson too works in installation mode, although her imagery seems less rough to me:

Anne Wilson, Topologies*, 2002

Namita Wiggers continues to make her imprint on the Contemporary Crafts Museum (she oversaw its transition to its highly visible downtown location) and has become a force on the Portland Art Scene. She writes and interviews extensively, is a regular participant in the national crafts scene, and brings exhibits of the highest quality to the CCM.

So, what did this diverse group of artists, three who have roots in traditional fine crafts, have to say about craft and art.

Anne Wilson was perhaps the most interesting interlocutor: she said that “sloppy” was really a sound bite, irresistible once uttered aloud. “Sloppy” indicates intentionality, which she didn’t think was the case with the art she was describing. She would favor terms like “informal” “casual” or “raw” rather than “sloppy” to describe contemporary art that has some base in traditional crafts. Most interestingly, she observed that artists now seem to “take on” crafting only when they need it.

Traditionally, a craftsperson would spend years polishing her craft, working at the highest level until she was so good she could let it go; she would have behind her all the knowledge needed to return to “fineness” if the art required it. To some extent Josh Faught fits that mold. He self-identified as a Fibers Major at Chicago, while his fellow students in fibers always made clear they were “Fibers-and-…” “…and performance,” “…and installation,” “…and assemblage,” “…and collage.” But at some point Faught let go of the fine work of Fiber Craft and turned to rawer work.

Another example of the fine craftsperson turning to raw work after years of exquisitely fine craft is Peter Voulkos.

Peter Voulkos died in 2002 but a look at his biography shows a continuing movement through the highest worlds of craft, then into the fine art world. His craft won him honors over and over again. And his art gained him access to the most formidable museums of high art.

That model, learning the craft inside and out and then letting yourself go, however, has changed to “learning on need” which means that you might teach yourself how to sew a straight seam but can put off learning to sew curves (not to mention French seams).  And you might marry stretch/polyester to silk, which violates a lot of traditional sewing standards, for a number of reasons.

Beyond the Need to Know response of current students were a couple of other aspects of “sloppy craft.” One was the recycling of materials — trash art, one might call it. It’s everywhere these days, at least in Portland, and no one bats an eye at exhibits with “wedding dresses” made from plastic bags picked up on the streets. The other aspect of this kind of casual crafting is that it appears most often in assemblages and collage. Assemblages and collage have clear ancestors, dating back to Picasso, through Rauschenberg and arte povera and  are seen and made by thousands of people who may not even think of themselves as artists.

Two exhibits, Unmonumental at the New Museum in New York and From Trash to Spectacle: Materiality in Contemporary Art Production were specifically referenced as examples of what has happened in the national scene  when informal craft became firmly entrenched in the world of art. These kinds of works — ready-mades, gritty street junk, messy — are contrasted to the highly commercial and polished art of say, Jeff Koons’ Balloon Dog or Takashi Murakami’s Vuitton bags, which are “finely crafted brands” (the phrase used by Kathryn Hixson at the School of the art Institute of Chicago in her discussion of Trash to Spectacle).

Anne Wilson made another comment at the panel discussion that stuck with me: she said that so-called sloppy art required the highest level of attention to detail — everything counted, because the meaning of the art is  so central. No lapses into mumbling or side-trips into irrelevant detail could be allowed to interfere with the meaning of the piece. Her example was of a student working with clay and fabric, who wanted to indicate the spilling out of fluid materials from the hardness of the clay. But the student closed the ends of her fabric spillages with stitching  and that attention to a “craft” detail stopped the sense of things spilling and in some sense stopped the art from succeeding.

One audience member at the panel noted that because we are now mostly knowledge workers, with few workers in the general public who craft anything besides digital artifacts, fine craft may be accessible only to aficionados of specific fine crafts. In my experience, people are piqued by color and image and like to see stitching, but really can’t see or don’t care if the stitches are tiny or big. They are aware only the overall  force of the wall-hung or sculptural material.

In fine craft, attention must be paid to every detail of the crafting — stitches must be buried into the interior of the quilt; wood grains must enhance the flow of the entire piece and be carved and sanded to perfection. That’s the “need” of fine craft, focusing attention on the material itself. But the “need” of contemporary fine art, according to Arthur Danto, philosopher of aesthetics, is to pay full and whole attention to the meaning of the work; every detail must express the meaning of the whole.

I would add another difference between high art and high craft which is that art tends to be individually identified: Anne Wilson is the artist, even though she may work with a large crew. But much of fine craft is community-identified: the Gees Bend quilts, the totems of the Pacific Northwest indigenous peoples; African masks. The craft may be formed by a single individual, but it arises from the standards of a community. Sometimes at the highest level, the two overlap, so we may know Bill Reid’s name as one who sculpts items such as were crafted by Pacific Northwest indigenous peoples. But much of finely crafted work is anonymous, perhaps done communally. And the standards by which it is judged are set by a community of craftpersons, those who know exactly how many stitches there are in that particular inch, just by looking at it.

As Kathryn Hixson comments, trashy and fine art and craft may represent continuums rather than opposites (so I’m in the running with my middling concept of “competent”.) I am fond of Bill Reid’s sculpture, finely crafted of course, which seems to exemplify in its imagery some of the difficulties this kind of discussion is always running in to:

Bill Reid, Raven and the First Men, 1980

Reid’s humans, working to escape the clam shell, may exemplify the struggle to understand as well as produce, and to produce out of understanding, that forms the most singular element of our current state of art.

As a kind of PS, I would venture to say that Jay’s work fits perfectly into the informal craft mode, while Hanneke’s seems to harken back to the traditional crafting of fine art. And I just heard about a class in figure drawing at a local university, which runs for 3 quarters. The first quarter features only the bones of the human figure; measuring and drawing bones is all that students do. The second quarter moves on to muscles (with more measuring); the third allows for some flesh — always measured. The mind boggles, but there are at least 15 students in the class who are opting for this model of traditional high art crafting.

And this just in: in today’s NY Times,  Denis Dutton,a professor of the philosophy of art at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand and the author of “The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure and Human Evolution.” takes on the whole question of permanency in crafting and art.

* And as a further PS, I thought it might be worthwhile to present some official textual presentation that accompanied Anne Wilson’s Topologies exhibit, as a sample of the kind of thinking brought forth by her work in “informal” crafting.

project statement from Anne Wilson’s Topologies

While our society faces a growing fragmentation and specialization that seems at times to alienate us all, we have also started to view our world as a series of integrated, even entangled networks. One way we can begin to understand this contradictory state is as a matrix of field phenomena – repetitive patterns of texture, growth, turbulence, sound, light, etc., within a given system or space.

– Douglas Garofalo, architect

Textiles, in their expandable and accumulative structure, can be seen as metaphors for such a matrix. In this new project, the webs and networks of found black lace are deconstructed to create large horizontal topographies, ‘physical drawings’ that are both complicated and delicate. This work is a constantly unfolding process of close observation, dissection, and recreation. The structural characteristics of lace are understood by unraveling threads; following the impetus to remake, mesh structures are also reconstructed through crochet and netting. The computer affords another means of close observation: lace fragments are scanned, filtered, and printed out as paper images. These computer-mediated digital prints are then re-materialized by hand stitching and are placed in relationship to the found and re-made lace in the topography.

The logic of organization within the project is based on the concept of like kinds. Never exactly repeating, areas of proximity are formed on the basis of the structural and visual characteristics of likeness. There is both unity and formlessness as parts coalesce, separate, and collide.

As a physical material, black lace has diverse cultural implications in relation to sexuality, death, and gender. These aspects of material context are embedded in the work, yet are not the dominant voice. This project references many things simultaneously: relationships between systems of materiality (textile networks) and systems of immateriality (Internet and the web); microscopic, specimen-like images of biology and the internal body; and macro views of urban sprawl – systems of organization of city structures, interdependent and/or parasitic, processes of expansion. No single theme or position is privileged over another.

This project is large in scale, but the specific configuration of installation is flexible, the size determined by the space at each venue as the project travels. The horizontal architectural support is created on site — a white painted wood platform.

exhibition history

Topologies (3-5.02), 2002
Installation, “2002 Biennial Exhibition,” Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, March 7 – May 26, 2002
Lace, thread, cloth, pins, painted wood support, 31 inches high x 74 inches wide x 18 feet long (overall dimension) Topologies (9-12.02), 2002

Installation, “Anne Wilson: Unfoldings,” Sandra and David Bakalar Gallery, MassArt, Boston, September 4 – December 7, 2002
Lace, thread, cloth, pins, painted wood support, 31 inches high x 74 inches wide x 36 feet long (overall dimension) Topologies (4-5.03), 2003

Installation, “Anne Wilson: Unfoldings,” University Art Gallery,San Diego State University, April 7 – May 7, 2003
Lace, thread, cloth, pins, painted wood support, 31 inches high x 74 inches wide x 36 feet long (overall dimension) Topologies (1-4.04), 2004

Installation, “Perspectives 140: Anne Wilson,” Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, January 16 – April 4, 2004
Lace, thread, cloth, pins, painted wood support, 31 inches high x 74 inches wide x 36 feet long (overall dimension) Topologies (11.07 – 2.08), 2007

Installation, “Out of the Ordinary,” Victoria & Albert Museum, London, November 13, 2007 – February 17, 2008
Lace, thread, cloth, pins, painted wood support, 31 inches high x 74 inches wide x 20 feet long (overall dimension)

A provocative phrase, that — “sloppy craft” sends craftspeople ballistic — and some collectors, too.

20 x 30 cm detail from ‘Longing for Pondicherry’, Linen on wood, 70 x100 cm, in progress

Hanneke van Oosterhout just emailed me a detail from her latest painting showing a watermelon resting in an earthenware bowl. When I first discovered Hanneke, she was painting roses. I am able to admire one of them because it graces my dining room. Hanneke’s painting shows a yellow rose standing in streaming water while stretching upwards, both lovely and powerfully, with one of its leaves fluttering downwards.

A few years ago, Hanneke changed her motifs, now indulging in her love of fresh fruit and vegetable. She has painted still lifes of grapes, strawberries, apricots and plums with some of them resting in gorgeous china bowls. Looking at these still lifes makes me want to grab their fruit and bite into it.

While one inspiration for Hanneke’s still lifes is the lovely color, texture and taste of fresh fruit, another one is the Dutch master Adriaen Coorte.

This week, two paintings by Adriaen Coorte were discovered in a ‘drawer’ somewhere in Holland. These paintings will be auctioned at Sotheby’s for E 100,000.00 to 150,000.00. This past July, Sotheby’s auctioned another one of Adriaen Coorte’s paintings – THE PROPERTY OF A GENTLEMAN. Thus, Adriaen Coorte’s small, carefully balanced minimalist still lifes are becoming pricey.

Does the increasing popularity of Adriaen Coorte’s still lifes mean that a representational way of painting is becoming fashionable again?

There was the question of the size of the images. And the paper onto which they would be printed. And which printer. And then it was clear that without some kind of cover, the images, folded into rectangles, looked a bit like the notes I passed to friends as a  sixth-grader. So I had to find a cover. And then the images sprang open inside the cover, so I had to find a way to fasten the cover, a way which could be undone and redone, without too much damage. I had a bunch of Moo cards that I am currently enamored of that I wanted to include somehow.

Here’s the photo essay of the process:

The original strip of images:

After trying out samples of 3″ and 4″ sizes on my HP ink jet printer and 2″ sizes on my Epson pigment printer, which actually could handle up to 24-inch wide strips, I decided to go with Kinko’s laser printing service.

Now I want a laser printer.

I needed to identify the images (and myself as maker of them) with some text and ultimately consulted with a graphic designer and good friend. Good thing I did, too. She’s the one who got me to Kinko’s, who made up the pdf file for Kinko’s, who suggested a fine font, and who resized slightly the images to get the most for my money. A good professional is worth a thousand painful choices.

Then there was the cover. I decided on a stiff polyester interfacing called lutradur, which looks a bit like rice paper:

I had lots of the stuff, but most of it was white and I like the way it takes fabric paint. To get this effect, one (“one” meaning me) spreads out the folded lutradur on a table, brushes the fabric paint over it, sloshes on water so the paint goes through the layers underneath, puts on more paint, sprays on more water, a bit more paint here and there, and then realizes that all four sides of the table are pouring down water and fabric paint. There’s a reason my studio has ugly plywood floors — so I can decorate it with sloshes of over-runs.

Having cleaned up the floor mess, I went back to thinking about the covers and decided to try some other papers I had stored around the house.

Although some worked ok, the most serviceable was still the lutradur. Then the fastening of the card, so the folded strips didn’t sprong open, became an issue. After trying a variety of techniques, all dorky,  I decided that PoMo (Post-Modernism) would allow for one satiric element — a safety pin closure with the Moo Card on the outside of the envelope.

Yelps of outrage over the safety pin from both Jer and Terry, the graphic artist, sent me spinning again. It had been at least 3 weeks into this project and here I was, circling, again. I dug in my heels, scowled, sulked, grumped (but only to myself in the privacy of my studio) when Terry saved the day again.

This is something like the final product, with a even more elegant fastener yet to be inserted (she said with eternally springing hope):

These are the latest versions, with the lutradur one open, and the samples of other paper covers shown. The broken skewers, found in the basement as 2 foot long rods, will be replaced by something called “Interdental Stimulators”, which sounds silly and satisfies my PoMo irony entirely. They also look elegant, like flat bamboo fasteners. Another Terry find. Jer is out looking to buy them at this very moment.

And so is (almost) finished the tale of three weeks work on a two hour project. Done with a little help from my friends. I don’t know if I engaged in the project because I really really wanted to make these dudes or because after the intense painting in the Oregon desert, I wanted to procrastinate and not paint again.

Tell me, do any of you engage in two-hour projects that take 3 weeks and hundreds of bad decisions (before reaching good ones)? And why do we collectively engage in these kinds of frustrating, perhaps failing, efforts, which cause us to rend our hair and irritate our loved ones? Is it neurology, biology, or stupid stubbornness?

And the PS you were waiting for:  Rite Aid has discontinued its elegant wooden Interdental Stimulators for depressing (and probably more dentally effective) white plastic ones. Jer did find some smaller wooden versions that will work, if, when I immerse them in a bit of watered down paint to get rid of the hideous orange color, they don’t disintegrate. I swear — today is the last day I’m going to work at this project — except for the production line (me, myself, and I) cutting the strips, gluing them down, gluing on the moo card, and inserting (hopefully) the wooden flats.

Anybody want a card?

PPS:

Aaaaahhhhhhhhhh!