The secret of life is to have a task, something you devote your entire life to, something you bring everything to, every minute of the day for the rest of your life. And the most important thing is, it must be something you cannot possibly do.
-Henry Moore
I’ve just completed a residency at the Vermont Studio Center. In Vermont I met some wonderful artists of like minds. We visited each others’ studios, talking late into the evenings while we tussled with the various states of our practices. Some of us were there to make a specific body of work, some were taking the time to start anew. For myself, I was not interested in “production” at this time in my career; I wanted the time to step away from old habits, try some things I had wanted to investigate but hadn’t had time to do because of deadlines and professional commitments of the past eight years. I wanted to take a big reach outward, even court failure–in fact, I gave my residency a title: Joyful Bungling. Intense, vigorous, and puzzling, the experience endowed me with some new friends and a re-engagement with my initial compulsion to paint and to draw. This is slowly developing within me as I take time in my own studio back in Vancouver to develop my next body of work.
The American painter Philip Guston, in the newly released book Philip Guston: Collected Writings, Lectures, and Conversations (2011, University of California Press), talks about reaching very far, and then when the work shakes down, it can end up outwardly being only a little more advanced than the last painting you’ve done. We keep circling back.
When I returned to Vancouver, I spent four weeks as artist-in-residence at St George’s School, where I spent time painting in the wonderful Visual Arts Centre there. Some of the boys were at the early stages of learning how to paint and draw, some quite advanced. The energy of the place was contagious, so I obviously needed to respond to that. The final work I made there was this painting of the grade eights in their drawing class.
If you’re in Vancouver, be sure to check out the thoughtfully curated show at Malaspina Printmakers on Granville Island. Andrea Pinheiro has brought together five conceptual printmakers whose work contains “traces of an interaction with a material surface; marks recorded through evocative acts ranging from violence, to tenderness and devotion.”
I have received an Artist’s Grant from the Vermont Studio Center, where I’ve been invited to attend a four-week residency in March. Founded by artists in 1984, the Vermont Studio Center is the largest international artists’ and writers’ Residency Program in the United States, hosting 50 visual artists and writers each month from across the country and around the world.
After the Residency I’ll visit Montreal for a few days, then undertake an intensive gallery/museum-hop in New York City for a week. Super excited!
Excerpt from Vancouver Opera’s Blog
The things people do in the dark of a theatre.
Some people sit riveted and try to taking in everything that is happening on stage. Others glance upwards and down as they read the surtitles. And others may close their eyes and simply let the music and singing overtake them.
Not artist Val Nelson.
Val draws the opera when the lights go down. Ever so discretely and imperceptibly that her fellow seatmates do not even know this was happening. Val first came to our attention when she drew at Madama Butterfly last season.
On opening night, she was once again armed with her drawing pen to help us record the world premiere of Lillian Alling.
Ever toil away at a problem, getting nowhere, then finally give up in despair and take a shower, or go for a drive? If you have read Jay Ingram‘s book “Theatre of the Mind”, you will recognize that state he talks about, where in doing something familiar that requires little brain energy, your imagination is free to wander and relax, and “eureka!” the solution to your problem pops seemingly out of nowhere.
Creativity needs that open space in order to forge new “links” previously unrecognized. For me, that freedom to follow my instincts in the painting studio is key to making work that engages me, and hopefully the viewer as well.
Macy Gray, on a CBC radio interview yesterday with Jian Gomeshi, stated that she doesn’t pay attention to the numbers. She commented that as soon as producers focussed on marketing to teenagers, the music industry started to suffer. Gray, now in her forties, feels that there is plenty to say with her music to people who are a little older. In order to be true to her own voice, she “went back to basics” to produce her new record, “The Sellout”; the basics for her means making great music. This video is proof that she is onto something. Thank you, Macy Gray.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qX7ZsxD3Ik]Last week I went with my husband to see Vancouver Opera‘s production of Madama Butterfly. I wanted to see if I could do some drawings of the production. Since you can’t see what you are doing while sitting in the dark, there is little opportunity to self-edit, and no choice but to be free to make marks, constantly obliterating the actions that have just been carried out, without preciousness. The resulting drawings are records of movement through space and time.
This way of working reminds me of something I read about Cy Twombly, who reportedly practiced drawing in the dark when he was drafted into the army and worked as a cryptographer in 1953. Having seen “primitive” mark-making in North Africa, he was intent on recovering the directness of the unschooled, unselfconscious artist. One can’t help but also think of the drypoints and drawings of Ann Kipling. This is the kind of drawing that I find very exciting to do, something that retains the essence of a state of mind in focussed absorption.
David Hillman Curtis is a filmmaker, designer and author whose company hillmancurtis, inc. has designed sites for Yahoo, Adobe, Aquent, the American Institute of Graphic Design, Paramount and Fox Searchlight Pictures among others. His film work includes the popular documentary series “Artist Series”, as well as award winning short films. His commercial film work includes spots for Rolling Stone, Adobe, Sprint, Blackberry and BMW.
A fine example of his work is this film on designer Stefan Sagmeister, who had a gallery exhibition at Deitch Projects in New York in 2008. The film shows Sagmeister’s playful imagination at work.
http://www.hillmancurtis.com/index.php?/film/watch/sagmeister08/
