Monday, March 31, 2008

Metaxu





































In my sophomore year at MECA I also took a sculpture class called The Expressive Figure with John Ventimiglia. The images here are of the sculpture I made for this class. It's a self-portrait based on a dream in which I awoke to find my right hand in the mouth and down the throat of a very large wolf like dog. In the dream I knew that the dog could hurt me but that it wouldn't. I named the sculpture Metaxu which means in between. For me the mouth of the dog is about the subconscious and the creative process. I have always felt that my creativity is a sort of hungry beast and there have been times in my life when I have felt quite afraid of it, to the point of ignoring it (and have subsequently become ill...).
I put the sculpture out in the woods a year ago August to make space in my studio, and just to see how it would change in the elements (losing art to fire has made me alot less precious about my work!)

I really like how it is disintegrating and how the head now looks like a cracked egg...


Metaxu, 2004
plaster, chicken wire, collage and acrylic

Collage Portraits













Today is my friend Jo's birthday (the woman in the top portrait - Happy Birthday, Jo!) which prompted me to bring out these images. (My father was infamous for remembering birthdays. He'd wake up and say enthusiastically...

[and I stress enthusiastically here, because my father was a MORNING PERSON, and whether you wanted to be awake or not, when George was up, everybody was up...]

"Hey, it's Wally Schwartz's birthday today!" or, "Guess What! Today is Reuben Camp's birthday!" We kids did not know these people from Adam's apple and would groan and shake our heads. Of course one of the curses of adulthood is to find yourself doing the annoying things your parents did. That said, Today is Jo Goiran's birthday! It is also Will Thompson's birthday! [he was my therapist for 4 years and pretty much got me out of the fetal position, for which I'll be eternally grateful...]
I have always had alot of Aries friends.
Anyway. These portraits are part of a series that I made in my sophomore year at MECA in my Mixed Media Drawing class with Lisa Whelan. She encouraged me to work larger and to go out and buy these big sheets of luan to work on. I had a ton of fun making these, standing hip deep in a monstrous pile of ripped paper with glue bottle and staple gun in hand. I highly recommend it!
(These are not the greatest images - somewhere on file I have tifs of these that will show better detail. Until I find them, though, you can click on these to see them better).
Jo, 2004
mixed media assemblage on luan panel, 32" x 48"
NFS
Garry In My Studio, 2004
mixed media assemblage on luan panel, 32" x 48"
collection of the artist
A Pretty Colleen, 2004
mixed media assemblage on luan panel, 32" x 48". For Sale.
Lisbeth in My Studio, 2004
mixed media assemblage on luan panel, 32" x 48" For Sale.

Spit in the Fire Self, 2004
mixed media assemblage on luan panel, 32" x 48" For Sale.

Sunday, March 30, 2008

Pile Nine More on the Pyre


























Yup, gone, gone, gone, solid gone. At least I have these photos to scan. It feels good to gather these images together on my blog - it's sort of like having a little digital Day of the Dead parade...
I deeply regret not documenting my Monhegan Residency portrait series. I don't quite know why I didn't. Probably due in part to low self confidence and thinking that they were not good enough. Probably due also in part to feeling overwhelmed at that time with Lisbeth's care.
Matthew in an Italian Undershirt, 1988
pastel, oil, charcoal and pencil on Rives BFK, 22" x 30"
The Other Matthew I, 1989
pastel, oil, and charcoal on Rives BFK, 22" x 30"
John Standing, 1988
pastel, oil, and charcoal on Rives BFK, 22" x 30"
The Other Matthew II, 1989
pastel, oil, and charcoal on Rives BFK, 22" x 30"
Couple (Matthew and Friend), 1989
pastel, oil, and charcoal on Rives BFK, 22" x 30"
Female Nude, Back Study, 1989
pastel, oil, and charcoal on Rives BFK, 22" x 30"
Male Torso/Yellow Studio, 1988
pastel, oil, and charcoal on Rives BFK, 22" x 30"
Wendy with a Lincoln Perry, 1987
pastel, oil, and charcoal on Rives BFK, 22" x 30"
Jan with Patchwork Quilt, 1987
pastel, oil, and charcoal on Rives BFK, 22" x 30"

All Fired Up



















Seven of my figure drawings taken by fire.
Another Summer's End, 1987
pastel and oil on Rives BKF, 22" x 30"
John I, 1988
pastel and oil on Rives BFK, 22" x 30"
Flight, 1988
pastel and oil on Rives BFK, 22" x 30"
Matthew at Bowdoin, 1988
pastel, oil and charcoal on Rives BFK, 22" x 30"
Wendy I, 1987
pastel, oil and charcoal on Rives BFK, 22" x 30"
Tangled Matthew, 1989
pastel, oil and charcoal on Rives BFK, 22" x 30"
Wendy II, 1987
pastel, oil, charcaol and pencil on Rives BFK, 22" x 30"

Saturday, March 29, 2008

Pink and Blue



A quick study done in between running around helping my students in my Tuesday night Life Drawing class @ MECA.
Sleeping Man in Pink and Blue, 2008
oil, pastel and charcoal on cream Stonehenge, 22" x 30". For Sale.

How I Know I'm Here



I've been wanting to post on the topic of self portraiture for awhile, and why I make self-portraits. I make them to check in with myself: they are my diary. I make them to journal, to take my spiritual, emotional, and psychological temperature, to get grounded. And to reference Kiki Smith, I make them to remind myself that I'm here. I have no earth in my astrological chart except for a tiny node in Capricorn which I've been told saves me from total space cadettehood...

I can forget where and what I am, if rattled, and I rattle quite easily. I have panic disorder. Making self portraits brings me back into my body and my feelings. I started having panic attacks in Junior High School (hey, maybe Junior High is what caused them! To quote Anne Lamotte, "The seventh and eighth grades were for me, and for every single good and interesting person I've ever known, what the writers of the Bible meant when they used the words hell and the pit.") Whatever. I have had debilitating panic attacks off and on for my entire adult life. At its worst, I am agoraphobic, becoming paralyzed with fear by just walking across a beach or an empty parking lot (my personal ad would read, "non-smoker, loves cats and kids, hyperventilates during long walks on beaches...").

So, Self-portraits, Not Sedatives.

During a crit at MECA one afternoon a painting teacher barked at me disdainfully, "Art is not therapy, Martha."
Ummm.......yes, for me, it is. (Who is it that said, "An art critic is someone who comes onto the battlefield after the war is over and shoots the wounded...?")
So, shoot me.

This same professor stated with certainty that no self-portrait is ever interesting. She claimed the genre to be a sort of "masturbation."

(Well, you are drawing yourself by yourself...in that regard I suppose it's an apt description...)

Is that so bad? I wondered why she was so caught up with content. A good drawing is a good drawing, whether it is of cracks in the sidewalk or of your own cracked reflection. I love other artists' self-portraits and am thrilled to find them. I don't know about you, but when I can see and connect with someone else's internal struggle, I feel alot less lonely. For me a self-portrait is a generous gift - an offering of that person's experience of having a body, an ego and a spirit, and all the confusion, complication and joy that comes with the package. A self-portrait provides a personal and intimate window into an individual's unique psyche: it is a baring and sharing of the soul, which I believe is a very scary and noble thing to do.

Kiki Smith
How I Know I'm Here, 1985-2000 Linoleum block print in four panels Printed in indigo on Thai Mulberry paper by The Grenfell Press 11 1/2" 172" (11 1/2" x 43" each)

Friday, March 28, 2008

Self Sacrifice



























The important thing is this: to be able, at any moment, to sacrifice what we are for what we could become.

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi


Twelve of my self-portraits that went up in smoke.


Late Summer Self, 1989
pastel, oil, charcoal, and pencil on Rives BFK, 22" x 30"
Self - Early January, 1990
pastel and pencil on Rives BFK, 11" x 15"
Self - Early March, 1989
pastel, oil, charcoal, and pencil on Rives BFK, 22" x 30"
Self - February 1986, 1986
pastel, oil, charcoal, and pencil on Rives BFK, 22" x 30"
Self with Barn, 1987
pastel and charcoal on Rives BFK, 15" x 22"
Late Winter Self, 1990
pastel, oil, charcoal, and pencil on Rives BFK, 22" x 30"
Me, 1986
pastel and pencil on Rives BFK, 22" x 30"
October Self 1986 - Is it true bondes have more fun? 1986
pastel, charcoal and pencil on Rives BFK, 22" x 30"
Left Self, 1987
pastel, charcoal and pencil on Rives BFK, 15" x 22"
Left Self with Masks, 1987
pastel, charcoal and pencil on Rives BFK, 15" x 22"
Surrendering Self II, 1991
charcoal on Rives BFK, 22" x 30"
May Self, 1987
pastel and charcoal on Rives BFK, 11" x 15"