Making Meaning with Abstract Ideas

I'm following the conversations on IUOMA more now and getting to know some of the artists and their work.  I find it inspirational! I get things in the post and these provoke reactions and experiments.  On some days i have an idea and I pursue it.  On others, everything that has been feeding me rattles around in that intuitive space.  I do much more abstract playing. This declared itself as a landscape, I called it Sea View.  But what if it were turned this way...

Conversation in Studio?
Conversation with inner self in studio?

Early morning. Not a creature was stirring so I needed to be quiet too. Nothing but a permanent marker and an envelope from the recycling house - gouache later.  Light, clutter, peace. Mother's day.

mail outgoing

My backlog of mailart had become a bit like the ironing pile. I will feel so light when I get these in the post. I could have saved 20% in postage if only I'd been more methodical. These backs show my new 'batches' approach to the B side of mailart.

Show us your Artspace still life

One of my latest Mailart 365 groups is called

Show us your Artspace

It is reassuring to see that most of the people making mailart, although attempting to order their world, look as though they work in a creative frenzy that creates a fair bit of chaos. I found lots of evidence of this in my own studio.  This mess still life pleases me.

More good mail

Cheryl Penn, a Vispo (Visual Poet), painter, mailartist was one of the organisers of the collaborative mailart book I made recently through IUOMA (International Union of Mailartists).  She sent me two pieces of vispo painted mailart today! I am trying to visualise her studio in South Africa...  It must be an exciting place! Two of the images are sewn pieces of the original canvas of the photograph sewn to the other side. Wow! Beautiful and original! But was my explantion clear?

Definately a good mail day

I get quite a bit of mailart these days, but this one from my darkroom pal, John Nordell, a Massachusetts photographer/art educator which came today is pretty special.  Not only did he have to spend a lot on stamps (it's letter/A4 size) he also must have spent a lot of time taking his christmas card envelopes apart.  Very tactile, colourful and fun!  Thanks John.

VISPO Collaborative book

Keep the cacophony

of

anit-figurative

noise 

at bay

Express emotional 

tonbality

in colour

Play with 

space

The VISPO (Visual Poetry) collaborative book project has helped me to reconnect with Richard Diebenkorn's work and I've learned much that I've filtered and tried to respond to in my pages.  

For Christmas I received Richard Diebenkorn's Ocean Park Series. 

For those of you who don't know, Diebenkorn lived in California.  He spent time at Stanford University, where I studied painting and drawing.  His contemporaries were some of my professors.  They were from the 'California School': Frank Lobdell, Keith Boyle and Nathan Olivera.  Olivera and Lobdell taught me to use monotype.  They also made monotypes with Diebenkorn. As I read the essays in the Ocean Park book I began to see my Stanford experience from a new angle.  familiar things I'd heard from Lobdell, Olivera and Boyle came back and fell into a new context. At Stanford there was a strong tradition of life drawing, a place that Diebenkorn came from.  Interestingly, Diebenkorn stopped working figuratively once he embarked on the Ocean Park series.  I am at a crossroads as have just moved into a big, beautiful studio with much light.  It was a similar impetus that triggered Diebenkorn's shift. I am curious to see the impact of a place on work, imagery and meaning. The back page (shown here) is an inkjet transfer of the view from my studio drawing table after I had completed the monotype for the front One of the interesting things I learned about Diebenkorn was that he was one of the first artists to see the world by air.  A govt scheme took him up in a plane to see the California landscape from a plane. those layers of experience do leave their mark... Not surprisingly,Diebenkorn's work was called 'visual poetry' by one critic.  One of the essays in the book is by Peter Levitt, poet etc... 'Richard Diebenkorn and the poetics of place'.  Wow what a piece of writing!  

So much fun to be involved in a collaborative project. So wonderful to have so much to learn and so much to explore ahead!