Day 8: Santa Fe & Albuquerque

Elizabeth Mesh of NM Artists for Hire

We’ve enjoyed another respite here in this magical place. I visited friend Elizabeth, proprietor of NM Artists for Hire. Her work brings artists into the community for special events, self expression and healing. We enjoyed walking the old town with Elizabeth as our guide, particularly admiring the churches.

St. Francis Cathedral, a gorgeous french Romanasque revival building. Church occupied this site since 1608

As artists we all had interesting projects to share. I was delighted that my friends Elizabeth and Jose shared their enthusiasm for feminist and contemporary art. Although Elizabeth had to go to work, she urged us to be sure to visit Site Santa Fe.

I loved the show – and especially Linda Mary Montano’s exhibit , in a way I haven’t connected with conceptual and performance art before.  First of all Site Santa Fe has a commitment to engaging and educating its audience. With their mileiu of contemporary art, too often people come and don’t know what to make of the work. The gallery guides are trained to interact with patrons in a way that bridges understanding, making challenging works more accessible.

If you are used to contemplating museum art in splendid isolation, it can feel a bit like being interrupted while shopping by a helpful clerk. But I went in knowing this about the facility and I engaged the guides as well. It was odd at first, and then wonderful to know I could ask (dumb) questions and get helpful response. For instance, there were quite a few videos in one part of the show, and one of them was mostly static. I asked without fear if this was the intended work, or a technical problem. Turned out it WAS a bad DVD!

Art is deliberately challenging, especially contemporary, conceptual and performance art. SITE Santa Fe has created a good model for helping people find their way into the work, where the museum staff are not just silent guardians, but there to enhance your experience.

I had some fun with Mungo Thompson’s Time Covers:

Mungo Thomson’s Time Covers at Site Santa Fe

More of beautiful New Mexico:

Big Sky Country

Dog Park Santa Fe

Day 5: Artkansas

I know from family legend that I lived in Arkansas when I was a baby. My young father got involved with a uranium mining outfit that never really amounted to much. They lasted 6 months before the south drove them home. (See this post for more about that.) So technically this is not my first visit to the state.

But in effect, it is. We started yesterday, rolling across the eastern part of the state which looked like endless muddy, flooded fields. I learned today, dining with a southeastern Arkansas rice farmer named Elmer that they build up the field edges and flood them on purpose, and so when the rivers spill their banks its all good. Yep, there are alligators, Elmer told me.

We rose up in elevation at around Little Rock and climbed into the foothills of Aux Arcs, more commonly spelled Ozarks. the landscape is reminiscent of northern Penn/southern tier New York state, and is indeed a deeply eroded plain as opposed to a proper mountain range. The flora is quite wonderful. swaths of wildflowers cultivated and volunteer line the highways, one favorite being this long deep red clover.

Up we climbed through valleys and vistas to the far NW corner of the state, where a chain of small cities run together into a substantial metro area. We drove through Fayetteville, Springdale, Rogers and finally Bentonville. Home of Walmart and the new Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.

We rolled into town and satisfied our need to visit a Super Center. (see vid below) Then, sweatshop clothing in hand, we went in search of the fabled Museum. Be sure to go to the Flickr (right) and look at all the amazing photos of that place. The architecture is AMAZING, the buildings nestle into the landscape like they’ve always been there, despite how original and contemporary they are. trails and gardens surround the place and we, and Tango, enjoyed those as much as the collection.

Josephine offers a Museum Review :

Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville Arkansas

My biggest takeaway from our visit to this astonishing museum complex is the building itself. Designed by Israeli/Canadian/American architect Moshe Safdie , the museum opened in 2011 with a lot of fanfare, especially focusing on the museum’s patron, Alice Walton, daughter of Sam, and heiress to a multi-billion dollar Walmart fortune.

The building has everything that warms my heart and satisfies my soul. An intelligent and balanced relationship with the natural surroundings of water and wooded hills. Outwardly slanted glass walls bringing the natural setting into the interior spaces. Dramatic verticals that counterpoint the bowed and curved roofs of the several pavilions. A beautifully choreographed dance! This museum is designed to be seen! From many perspectives — inside and out, above and below — there are new delights. And yet the gallery spaces are quietly straightforward, not trying to grab attention away from the paintings and sculpture. A different philosophy than the two Franks: Wright and Gehry.

We took a break somewhere between the 19th and 20th centuries to walk with my dog Tango through the beautifully designed woodland trails that circle the museum. Tango, by the way, is a most excellent travel companion, zoned out in the back seat when we’re on the road, or patiently waiting our return when we’re out and about.

Josephine’s First Walmart Experience:

Day 1: Departure!

Today’s journey took us from Accokeek to Richmond to Wentworth NC.

We launched a bit late but in good spirits:

In Richmond we visited the studio of artist Janet Saad Cook, who makes art from light. Here are some of her Sun Drawings   projected on the ceiling of her office:

Sun Drawing by Janet Saad Cook

Here’s Janet & Josephine, with our sidekick, Tango:

Janet, Josephine & Tango

Travel across mid-southern Virginia was beautiful, rolling uncrowded road (US 360) and beautiful spring greens.

You can feel the culture change when you cross the North Carolina line, and soon after we arrived in Wentworth just as the sun was setting. Tomorrow I will take pics of the beautiful gardens here. We aren’t going anywhere tomorrow, and that’s fine by me!

View Larger Map

Solar Flare: Spring, and Creativity Surge!

This awe-inspiring video made my day. I was mesmerized by the slo-mo rain of fire and hypnotic music. What a universe we live in!

Beyond the inescapable awe of contemplating such a life-giving solar furnace in action, and it’s profound beauty, I see a visualization of the creative spirit. There is something inside us, something powerful, seething, churning and growing, that eventually has to burst forth.

This engine of spirit, this passion to create burns within all of us, and emerges when we flow with spirit and create from the heart. How awesome is that? You are made of star stuff. You are magic.

Always Weaving a New Story

Yesterday I did a cool one-day workshop called Storyweaving, which is a unique method of working our creative subconscious to reveal and retell the stories we live by.  The workshop leader is Carol Burbank, my dear friend, and I’ve had the privelege of watching her grow as a teacher and healer (and I helped her create the web site. **iz proud of her & me**). Check out her site for upcoming workshops, classes, talks and more.

We gathered in the morning and got started with some meditation. It was a nice group of four, all of us women of a certain age who are moving bravely into life changes.We worked with group story-telling and then made ‘self portraits’ to discover images, themes, tools to help us with our current transformations.

I took this workshop before, back in December

At that time my art piece revealed a protective angel-self who held my hurt and depressed self. You can see her, held in the angels’s heart, at left, curled into a tight dark ball.

At the time, I judged the self portrait as ‘art’ and was embarrassed by the sugary fairy angel. But in time I became very grateful for her energy watching over me. It was a tough year last year, and there was much healing to do in the dark of winter.

This time I made two images.

In the first,  I wanted to get the literal idea of the body as temple (in Hawaiian: hei’au) out onto the page.

I was obviously working with feeling large and heavy, going for a sense of sacred and ancient goddess. Hawaiian is one culture that honors the fat body as beautiful. I have a pretty hard time doing that, but in working on this I began to enjoy the lumpy lava body, her serenity, and all the lush gifts that were brought to her.

 

 

 

 

Once I got that idea out, it was easier to work more dreamlike way, less cerebral control. I chose colors and drew without looking for about half of the picture. This one reveals a flowing, evolving bright rosy energy.

There’s a sense of moving hands, red with life energy, and growing embrionic and vine-like growth. It’s luminous, expansive, moving. No more hiding now, it’s all about unfurl and grow.

BIG changes in three months!

Since we are always writing our story, it’s important for me to resist the old gloomy myths that hold me back from all the good I can do.

Make Art, Celebrate Democracy!

It’s been called the biggest peaceful transfer of power on the planet. Today’s Inauguration celebration is the 57th such ceremony held by our young republic.For all the miseries and injustice from sea to shining sea, it’s a day to consider what we have as a nation.

 

In 2008 Artist Andrew Purchin took his easel and paints to the Mall and painted the scene ala plain aire. The experience inspired him to invite artists to join him this year.

Purchin said:

If every American made art of some kind for at least five minutes a day, Americans would become more reflective and innovative and our political climate would change for the better.

Keep an eye on his site at A Thousand Artists for the unfurling of American creativity!

Footprints

For a Michigander, summer seems to last forever in the Southern Maryland. Of course, I’ve been preoccupied with the Big Move, but today, a fortnight past Equinox and I’m marveling: suddenly the forest has been glazed with transparent  yellow. Leaves are floating to earth on the steady breeze off the river like a shower of golden coins.

new abode

My new abode is in the same neighborhood, but a world away. As someone who craves wilderness and loves the river I’m in heaven. From my former home I could walk to the bank, library and grocery, and often heard the highway sounds, despite my wooded setting. Now, I hear only the wind (boats and planes too, occasionally).

My former house was a grand home, a generously proportioned and welcoming space. I adored it and enjoyed it to the hilt. As a single woman I managed to create a family home: a place of gathering, shelter and community. I built the most wonderful art workspace I’ve ever had, and I shared my hearth with many beloved friends and fascinating strangers. The house earned many names: Clearwell, School of Witchcraft & Artistry, Home for Wayward Girls, Pet Cemetery and finally, the name that stuck: The Holy Unpredictable Manor.

Alas, in recent years the Holy Unpredictable Manor came to be more of burden than I wanted to carry. More time, more money were needed to keep up the property, and I was changing, moving toward  something new, where my efforts and direction were not based so much in the material world. I see it in my creative life as well. Having just purged and relocated my studio, joyfully selling and giving art to many people and places, I’m struck by the physical load of my painters life.

Writing is occupying more of my attention, as is digital art, and these are so much more portable than the crates of supplies and stacks of canvases I just relocated.

new outdoor studio

I’m not abandoning my painting. My love of that 15th century technology goes on, there are landscapes I long to dwell in on canvas. And I have students now, a new generation curious about the Old Ways. But I see a bigger picture, and a smaller footprint, for my life going forward.

Art Moves Us, and I am Moving Art!

I’m in the throes of moving my household, but more importantly, my studio. This is the part of the house I will miss the most, since my new temporary space doesn’t have such a wonderful workspace. But I’ve discovered treasure buried in the challenge of going through nearly ten years of artistic accumulation.

It’s wonderful to see all my work together.

My helper hung it all over the house, floor to ceiling: recent, older, small, large, figure and landscape, she hung things I would never have considered finished or for public view. I sold some of  those! Maybe my evaluation of my own work isnt always the best evaluation.

Some of my old work is much better than I originally thought.

Chartres Cathedral ©2008 Patrise Henkel

Said helper put stacks of unfinished canvases outside for people to rummage through, and a neighbor appeared at the cashier table with one I was surprised to see. I was selling canvases to be repainted, and this was a heartfelt painting I never finished, as I lost my confidence in it. Seeing it again years later it looked pretty amazing to me, and I had a major pang of regret that I hadn’t completed it. I looked at my neighbor, a fellow artist, and saw how much she admired it, enough to buy it and hang it in her home. I felt the tug of the old ways of thinking, and caught myself making disclaimers and apologies for it not being better. Then I saw her post about it on Facebook. I can let my work move out in the world, making room for the art that’s waiting to come in NOW. Wow.

I can throw out old work.

I used to be afraid I could never recreate something, so I had to hang onto things to prove I’d done them. In a way, that’s true — I’ll never make things that same way again. But I can create new, anytime. I trust my Muse!

Moving on is important, and clearing out the old makes room for the new life and creativity to come. So Out with the Old! If you want a bargain on some art, leave a comment.

Acrylic Painting: Almost Infinite Options

A Bigger Splash by David Hockney,
1967, acrylic painting.

I’m exploring acrylic painting again, after a hiatus of five or six years. In 2005 a bout with asthma found me attempting to replace oils with acrylics for my landscape painting – an experiment which frustrated me a great deal.

My plein aire work in oil-on-paper relies in part on the sinuous fluidity of oil itself, something I cannot recreate with acrylic mediums.

Fortunately, the asthma is gone, and I have returned to oil  painting the way I love to do it. With acrylics, I learned to avoid trying to make it do something it did not do well, to let the medium be itself.  Acrylic paints are, forgive the pun, amazingly plastic, as in malleable, changeable, flexible.

Recently, my students have been asking how acrylic and oil are different from the watercolor they have been working with. Since I teach a transparent approach to watercolour, I think the addition of opaque white into your palette is the first major change, and it can change everything!

This Artist Daily  post shows just a few distinct styles achieved with acrylic paint.

There are wonderful possibilities for collaging with acrylics, since the liquid mediums function well as both glue and varnish for paper and other items.

• Acrylic adheres well to many sufaces and is very durable. Here’s a post about painting onto cardboard. Recycled art surface!
• Newer mediums, extenders, gels, pastes and additives mean you can paint in watery films or heavy impasto, and everything in between.
• I’ve even seen artists build rich layers of acrylic paint film onto glas, peel it off in strips and weave the strips into sculptural forms.

Got some acrylics? Get them out and try something new today. Here’s few ideas

• Collage with pretty papers, old greeting cards, wall paper, fabric, ribbons, photos , movie tickets, torn up watercolours.
• Paint ala prima onto scrap cardboard – a simple still life with beautiful fruits, painted juicy and bright.
• scrape ridges of paint with a palette knife, putty knife, or even finger paint!

Have fun! Post your work in a comment!!

See the World through your Heart

One of my fangirl friends posted a wonderful definition:

Art reveals the world as seen through our heart.

We are accustomed to seeing in a practical manner; it helps us navigate our lives safely and efficiently. Red stop sign, black on white words, the pattern of a human face — But can we see more, differently?

I challenge my drawing and painting students to awaken their visual brain, see the pattern, shape and colour in the world anew, in order to show the inspiring world of natural form. I love to watch the eye-hand-brain connection take off in a new student, I feel like I am revealing a hidden world.

We are so capable, so miraculously sensitive, with our human perception, and we are so astonishingly unique and original in our view: the same flower painted by 6 artists is a remarkably different statement. There are the obvious differences in style and skill, yes, but then there is the ocean of experience each of us brings to the creative table.

Imagine we each had our own spoken language, how challenging it would be to know anything, share with another! Fortunately we have the common language of images, but we each have our own vocabulary of symbols and shapes and ideas that influence the creations we make and share.

And the strongest of these are written in our memory and emotion, written in the heart.

Why is that little girl in love with ponies? What makes my friend dance when she wears sparkles? There’s a certain ocean green blue that takes me to the sea with my dad at age 5. You won’t have the same symbols or the same stories, but we share a good deal of common ground. The sea, the water, evokes a shared joy in those who resonate with it. My mermaid-loving singer friend and I share a love of the watery colours and the deep swirling emotion that goes with it.

Her husband, born and raised in suburban Maryland, responds to stones you might not even see in the ditch, but he finds bears and owls and whales hidden in them. He can see them before they are made; I can only see them once he’s carved them.

Open your heart today, let your heart’s voice ring in you. Cherish yourself.

And share a little HEART ART today, at your own hearth.