Edison Again

Edison Jack seems to have become my latest muse. A very small, hairy little muse.

Sketch of Edison Jack, graphite on handmade paper, 2008.

Genius or Hoax?

I just watched a documentary called "My Kid Could Paint That" which some of you might know is about Marla Olmstead, the "child prodigy artist" from upstate New York whose paintings each sell well into the five figures. There has been much controversy in the last five years regarding Marla and her art. She has a dad who is an aspiring artist, but who works the nightshift at a (I think, though I'm not sure I'm remembering this correctly) Frito Lay or Oscar Mayer plant and has never gone anywhere with his own paintings. One day when he was painting, Marla asked for her own canvas and paint and the rest, as they say, is history. When, at the age of four, her work began selling for substantial prices, 60 Minutes did a story on her and based on the footage they got of her working, came to the conclusion that she didn't actually paint the pieces herself, or at the very least not without help, thus angering her parents who in turn released a documentary DVD showing Marla completing a piece from start to finish.

The documentary filmmaker who made this particular film really and truly wanted to prove that Marla does in fact paint her own works from beginning to end without any help from adults, that she really is a child genius whose work deserves to sell for the figures it sells for, but he came away from this shoot thinking what most other people have felt: that Marla's work is not her own.

The trouble, it seems, is that when anyone other than her parents point a camera at her while she works, her paintings just don't look even remotely like those seen in the gallery she is represented by. The subtle nuances aren't there, the delicate lines, the obvious dexterity, the polished and finished look of the works available for purchase. Her works that have been caught on film in progress and in fact are never seen completed, while they contain many of the same images as the finished pieces, really look like nothing more than a child's drawings of suns and flowers and scribbles. Sometimes the paint is blobbed onto the canvas and swirled into a giant mess of hideous color and nothing more. And while she's being filmed painting she also repeatedly demands that her dad help her out, that he choose the paint for her or even paint something himself on her canvas. He laughs too hard and tells her she knows that isn't possible. When questioned by filmmakers why she is doing this, the dad without fail protests too much. Way, way too much.

Having watched this film and then taken a look at the works for sale on her website, I too have come to the conclusion that if someone else isn't painting these works in their entirety, then she surely is having them seriously tweaked by someone older, more mature and with a certain sense of balance a work requires, even abstract modern art that on the surface appears to be just willy nilly daubs of paint. I began watching this film thinking how amazing it was for a very small child to possess such talent but ended it thinking what everyone else who has watched her "work" has come to think: someone, somewhere is lying. They have to be. While a great many people have stood in front of a Jackson Pollock and with scorn in their voices said, "This is garbage. My five year old could do that!" the fact is that there are few, if any, adults who could do what Pollock did, let alone a five year old. Yet Marla has a few paintings that are very similar to those of Jackson Pollock's splatter paintings. And Klee's work. And Kandinsky. Coincidence? Not likely. And while her works all have a similar thread that runs through them that enables the viewer to readily identify them as having been painted by the same hand, there is also enough similarity to many well-known works that it quickly becomes obvious that a child that young couldn't possibly be adept at so many varied techniques and styles.

So one is forced to return over and over again to the one question that has plagued so many who have not only merely watched documentary footage of Marla, but have personally spent time with the Olmstead family: if Marla paints these works herself from start to finish without aid of any kind, why is she consistently unable to do this (even on hidden camera) when being filmed? Why is the only "evidence" of her abilities as an artist filmed by her mother? These are some lovely paintings, and Marla who is now eight, is a lovely child, but an artist worthy of making hundreds of thousands of dollars for her work? Sadly, I think not.

Encaustics III

And another one from that same show.

Head Study of Edison Jack

This is a study I did last night of my chihuahua's head. I was surprised how well he sat still and posed for the photo that I used to draw this from as he's usually on the move. The lighting was just awful, but as I actually got a relatively workable photo I won't complain too much. I'm not very happy with the way his muzzle came out, but I am pleased with his eyes. Catching the light in a subject's eyes, the essence of who they are, is the most important part of portraiture and I think I succeeded here. If you saw him in person you would agree. I do, however, see every little flaw, every little detail I could or should have changed or missed entirely, but that's okay. I seldom draw which is such a big no-no and I'm clearly rusty as hell. I should be drawing far more than I do, so this isn't bad given my lax attitude since it's been ages since I last picked up a pencil for anything more than a rough sketch that inevitably gets hidden under paint. I think it's been well over a year since I actually did a drawing that was meant to stay a finished drawing. I've been thinking how I could very easily knock off some sketches while sitting in front of the TV as I wind down late at night (if only to be able to squeeze drawing time in to my day) which would flex my tired drawing muscles and keep them in working order. If I actually manage to live up to this latest expectation, I'll post more of them here.

Head Study of Edison Jack, graphite on handmade paper, 2008

Chicken Art

Back in October 2006 I was at an open studios in a nearby town and one of the artists had done a series of chicken paintings which were very whimsical and colorful. I was very smitten with one particular piece: that of a mama hen with a series of baby chicks stacked on her back to the top of the canvas, but it had already been sold by the time I got there. After talking with the artist, who had painted these pieces intending to donate all the money made from them to Heifer International, it turned out that that painting had been sold to a neighbor of his. He said she loved them all and didn't seem especially attached to that particular one, so he gave me her phone number to see if perhaps she'd agree to take another canvas so I could buy that one. (I spoke with her some time later and she felt the way I did, that this was far and away the best of those works and wouldn't even consider swapping. I didn't blame her one bit, but it was worth the try!) I did end up talking to the artist for a bit about his birds, his art, my own chickens and photos and paintings I have taken and done of them over the years in between more "serious work" and then I left, never giving him another thought.

Flash forward to December 2007 when out of the blue I received a phone call from a man whose name I didn't recognize and had absolutely no idea who he was until he reminded me of that chicken painting he had done of the hen and chicks that I was so fond of. Ahhh! Now I remembered. Turned out that a gallery in a local town was having a large group show of just chicken paintings. A show that turned out, surprisingly, to be one blockbuster of a show, the opening so packed with people that they were lined up down the street to get in. So many people in fact that the owner of the gallery who had flown in from Spain that evening and had arrived late to the opening was not allowed in to his own gallery because it was too full to admit even one more person and was instead forced to wait outside with the crowds until the evening came to a close. Who would have thought that chicken art could be so compelling?

The piece above (Untitled, acrylic on wood, 2007) is a composite of two of my hens, Zelda Pearl and Trixie Bee.

Encaustics II

Another encaustic in the same series, from the same show.

Encaustics I

All the Pretty Broken Glass

David and I got home late this evening and as per habit, he turned on the TV to unwind for a bit, and after scanning through a few channels, he settled on The History Channel (a good choice) and it was midway through a segment of what was probably a really cool show, though we had missed most of it. Normally, I wouldn't have even given the show more than a second's glance, not because I don't enjoy a good documentary (I do), but because the show was nearly over and I hate not seeing anything from the beginning. But this was very interesting and I found myself dropping to the chair, riveted to the screen.

Apparently there is this husband and wife, James and Cynthia Andela, who both hold degrees in engineering and who invented a machine that pulverizes glass. The machine has a series of hammers within its main turbine which is shaped like a long cylinder, and the glass makes its way through this tube starting at one end as bottles and dishes, etc, and comes out the other end smashed to bits to one degree or another. The machine sorts the refuse to remove the garbage and to be sure that like is being demolished with like and is even capable of separating the glass by color as well. Even the inside of the machine was a work of art: the hammers were handmade on a metal lathe that was over seventy years old and was found on a decommissioned warship.

Depending on where the degree of destruction is set on this machine, it can pound the glass into what looks like smooth, colored pebbles or glass so fine it's smoother and softer than beach sand. One woman said she uses the larger glass pebbles as mulch in her gardens because the machine has softened the glass like the ocean makes beach glass from our litter, worn down and smooth to the touch, but colorful and beautiful as it catches the light from the sun. It looked as though the earth had become a kaleidoscope around her flowers. The finer glass is used to sandblast metal objects, and is also used in concrete and even paints, but the larger glass, which is about 3/8 of an inch is amazing to behold.

There were endless shots of huge vats of glass in pebbles no bigger than my fingernail all sorted by color. Vast piles of blues and greens, clear glass and whites with some yellows mixed in, and reds, oranges and browns all mingling together. It was absolutely breathtaking to behold and all I could think was how much I wanted to be there in person to see all those amazing colors making prisms in the light and run my fingers through it all. Depending on the size of the machine, each pulverizer can process between one and twenty tons of glass per hour. Just imagine what that much luminescent glass looks like separated into groups of dazzling color.

This couple have also made a larger glass hammering machine to break down toilets and sinks, as evidenced by the huge piles of milky white porcelain that were shown, and even a machine to pulverize old car windshields (this was not as exciting to me). The toilet chomper though, made me think of how many pieces of everyday porcelain and fine china I have found digging in my gardens, objects broken and no longer useful and buried so long ago here on my property. I am always excited when I find a piece and wonder who the people were who used them, but to see tons of it on TV all made small and smooth was amazing.

The eco-friendly green girl in me is thrilled when I see innovations that allow us to recycle and reuse formerly useless objects, or even garbage, in new and exciting ways, and while I know this glass pulverizer is a purely industrial application, the artist in me is just thrilled to think of all that color, all that light, all that beauty in one place.

The Ugly Side of Beauty

I just finished reading a book about finding the spiritual in the mundane and being fully engaged in life, every moment of every day. No one lives their life soulfully from one moment to the next because, frankly, its impossible to do, and while artists are for the most part the same as everyone else, I do believe that we have a tendency to very often see things from a more soulful perspective than others. It comes with the job. I have frequently said that the reason why I have such a hard time selling my work and seeing it forever go away is because every piece carries in it a tiny piece of my soul, the essence of who I am, and to let that go is difficult at best. But seeing the soul of even everyday objects, seeing the poetry in something generally thought ugly (or not even thought of at all) is a gift for which I am truly thankful.

Paper bags. Utilitarian and plain, yet beautiful all the same. They aren't just brown, but carry woven within them a multitude of colors from the pulp fiber used to create them. Their cheap little hairs poking up and out from their surface, the little ruffle on the bottom edge where they have been glued together and the inexpensive ink that's used to print the shop's name that sits lightly on the surface of the paper, not rich enough to penetrate and seeming to want to keep as much distance as possible between it and the bag itself, as if the ordinariness of the brown paper somehow embarrasses it to be seen there.

Old flyers posted on lamp posts and trees by the residents of a town. Sheets of colored paper flapping in the breeze, their tape and tacks now barely holding them on, faded from the sun and the rain, and contained within them a stranger's hopes and dreams, joys and sorrows. Directions to a party, a yard sale, a lost dog or cat. Have their happiness and sadness, their aspirations and celebrations faded away like their long-past announcements? Or do they still feel the shadow of happiness that party warmed in their hearts? Are they wistful about their prize possessions, sold to strangers on a sunny morning? Has their sorrow yet healed at the pet that has forever disappeared or even better still, are they still reeling from the joy of the pet's miraculous return? Are their feelings as transient as those posters abandoned on public street corners?

Rusty pieces of metal. There's a metal junkyard in my town and it sits on the "bad" side of town, where just about everything is ugly and full of unhappiness: row houses with peeling paint, children without proper yards playing in the streets, noisy traffic, people shouting at each other. But the pyramid of rusty metal that towers behind and high above the fence that surrounds the metal dump calls to me and so I drive by there regularly, watching its metamorphosis from one week to the next. Car parts, tools, fencing, poles and appliances, building materials and the skeletons of old metal furniture that all used to have individual identities but are now all the same shade of sunset orange, all with a previously useful past and now equally forgotten and discarded. It's one of the most beautiful things here in town. The neighbors around it complain about the ugliness of it, but they simply can't see its soul, see the poetry in its existence.

A pile of bones left on a harborside rooftop. Old cigarette packets, ballpoint pens, candy wrappers, stones, bits of tar from the roof itself, shells and bones, all washed clean by the elements and blown by the wind into one corner of the roof where it sits in a canted pile resembling a tiny sand dune comprised of little pieces of garbage transported here and dropped by the many swooping, screeching residents. Now bleached mostly white, but with some small yet startling bursts of color from a scrap of paper or a piece of tin not yet faded to obscurity.

The aisles of a supermarket. A relentless visual attack by a million different products all screaming for absolute attention, a cacophony of color, a symphony of sizes and shapes. Our cupboards at home the bastard children of what the grocery store has to offer our hungry eyes and stomachs. Ever look in someone else's shopping cart as you pass them by? You can usually read a bit of the soul of that person by what they are pushing before them, a story that is sometimes lovely to read and sometimes terribly lonely and sad.

It's important to really see the world we live in, not only its beauty but also its dark underbelly, the side seldom considered pretty or worthy of our attention, because there is just as much soul to be found in a pile of garbage as there is in a Monet at the museum. See the world through an artist's eyes for one day and you'll be surprised what you find. All you need to do is look for it.

Spray Paint

I've discovered that I love spray paint. Good old fashioned cans of spray paint. While I haven't as yet incorporated it into any "serious" work yet, I've found that I'm using it more and more in my journals and in the test pieces I do in preparation for the real stuff, so it's only matter of time before I start to use it in the finished products too.

David suggested I buy an air brushing system because it would be far more versatile, which is true. I would be able to mix my own paints which would give me a virtually limitless range of colors and the numerous nozzle tips would give me greater control over my spraying (though with some "professional" spray paints, there are individual nozzles that can be fitted to the cans). Still there is something very hardcore, very visceral about a plain old can of spray paint in one's hand and making something beautiful with it. There is nothing quite like it, in my opinion. I recently was working on a page in an art journal of mine that was comprised of concentrated watercolor ink, watercolor marker, acrylic paint, oil marker, photographs, paper, and an oil based enamel spray paint that was unbelievably vivid on the page. The only down-side was that it took days for each application of even small amounts of the spray paint to dry enough to add the next layer. Patience is not my strong suit, and even though in the end it all worked out fine, having it take nearly two weeks to lay in the background for just a page in a journal was irksome.

Still, there is nothing like spray paint. Not only do I like to work with it, but I like to look at other people's work with it too. Two of my favorite things go hand in hand in this respect: art made with spray paint and trains. I love to stand by the tracks and watch freight trains from across the country rumble by, each car beautifully painted by an anonymous artist located somewhere between here and there, wherever "there" might be. And while the talent and the abilities vary wildly from graffiti to graffiti and from car to car, every once in a while a boxcar painting will come along that is substantially more articulate and intricate than all the others and I am blown away by the talent that that artist has and I always wish that I could meet the person who made it, or even better still, watch them work, can of spray paint in their hand.