Paper and More

Above piece is Untitled by Howardena Pindell, 1973 Ink on punched and pasted paper, talcum powder, and thread on paper, 10 1/8 x 8 3/8" (25.9 x 21.3 cm) The Museum of Modern Art. Gift of Lily Auchincloss, 1974 © 2009 Howardena Pindell (Image is from the MOMA web site.)

If you follow Joanne Mattera's blog you've read her recent reviews of the exhibition at the MOMA Paper:Pressed, Stained, Slashed, Folded that is up through June 22. (I am hoping to get to NYC on the heels of the conference at Montserrat and see it myself.) Thanks Joanne, for the posts. This exhibition and Dorthea Rockburn's folded paper pieces brought to mind Folds, a paper and encaustic piece by Denise Stringer-Davis that is part of the Degrees exhibition on view here in Houston until the 31st at M2 Gallery.

Above: Folds by Denise Stringer-Davis, Waxed toilet paper, variable size

Besides Davis, the work of San Antonio artist Michelle Belto and myself also use paper as a major part of our work in this exhibition.
Belto makes her own paper and molds it to suit her needs. Mother's Sewing Basket is a collage of paper, Encaustic and garment fasteners used in clothing construction. She said this piece is part of a series that pays homage to the women seamstresses in her family.


My work, Slow Burn/Skin Deep below, is primarily hand made paper and wax. I didn't make the paper. It is Thai paper made of sanitized abandoned bird's nests. Thick and rough like a grass matt and very organic looking. It is part of a new series of works I call Organic Compounds.

Above: Gwendolyn Plunkett, Slow Burn/Skin Deep, 42" x 24" x 2", Encaustic and handmade Thai Bird's Nest paper on canvas on panel.

Degrees Exhibition runs through Sunday, May 31 so you still have time to see it.

In the MOMA show, the Howardena Pindell piece at the top is one of my favorites but I am intrigued by John Cage's Wild Edible Drawing No. 8, from 1990. It is handmade paper of milkweed, cattail, saffron, pokeweed and hijiki.

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Untitled, 2009 Rebea Ballin

At Joan Wich & Co here in Houston this month was an exhibition by artist Rebea Ballin whose work is not of paper but on paper. Prismacolor (black) pencil drawings of hair. Conversation with the artist in the Houston Chronicle last week is fresh and candid about how she came to this subject matter. Landscapes came to mind with my first glance at the work from the door.
No, but maybe.
A quote from her conversation with Douglas Britt, "What made me want to zoom in a little bit more was an interest in the landscape aspect of hair in the scalp, the textures and things like that."


Thurel Wright's piece above
At A Good Idea on Paper , Eleanor Jane Cardwell's blog, you can always find interesting works made of and on paper. May 22nd post features the work of Thurel Wright.

The May 15th post features Artist Valerie Jolly's work. She says "she casts objects in sticky wet tissue paper."

Interactive Blogpost-Collections, Rituals, Time: Eleanor Caldwell

Collections, Rituals - Time
Eleanor Caldwell is an artist living in the UK. She studied fine art at Loughborough and received her Master's degree in Book Arts at Camberwell Art College in the UK. I have never met Elanor but have been reading her blog for a while - A Good idea on paper . I would love to see her work first hand, having only seen images on-line. I find it intriguingly subtle and thoughtful. She is the first responder to this interactive posts. Thank you, Eleanor.

Below are pages from one of her book Encore made of drawings on Japanese tissue paper.

She says,
"I use the book to create sequences that allude to visual narratives through space or time, or both. ‘Reading’ a book is a process of waiting. Waiting for something to change, for something to happen, for some kind of conclusion. This never happens in my books. The book’s structure and inherent tactility has become an essential element of my work. Each page of a book suppresses the view of the next and previous page, the length of the book deciphers the length of the wait, and the paper itself has a memory."
(excerpt from Eleanor's statement)

Images: pages from Eleanor's sewn Inkjet Book. (sewn Inkjet images on Japanese paper)


I also want to thank artist and blogger Pam Farrell for her ISBP postings (among her other interesting posts) who gave me the idea for the interactive post. She is not the only blogger who does interactive posting but one that I read often and whose work I admire as well. Another artist and blogger, Joanne Mattera, offers interactive posts from time to time as well.

Without Words - Paper Artworks by Kyoko Ibe

I often find it difficult to come up with the right words in a statement about my work that really gets to the sensibility of the visual image. As John Tallman said in his July 10th post on Color Chunks, musicians are not asked to paint a picture to go along with the musical composition...nor writers, or poets. But for visual artists today, it seems essential, required.

Below is Kyoko Ibe whose exhibition, The World of Yugen: Japanese Paper Artworks, is on display at Krannert Art Museum located at University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign through Jan. 4, 2009. "The Japanese concept 'yugen' is used to describe the profound, the remote, and the mysterious. Yugen is that which cannot be easily grasped or expressed in words, but rather revealed through spiritual strength and grace." Click on the title of the exhibition above to read more.

This concept speaks to me. Without Words!
But at Color Chunks, John Tallman offers artists an opportunity or perhaps a challenge, to write about a word not your art.
He says: "Below you’ll see a list of words in no particular order. Read over the list. If a word jumps out at you, if you feel there is a word that might relate somehow with the art you do, please write a few sentences on it(maybe a paragraph or two—more?), send it to me with a jpg of your work and I’ll post it on “Color Chunks.” (July 10th post)

As I see it, this offer is to relate a word to some part of your creative process, not use it to explain your painting. I see this as a creative opportunity to be playful with words, to make a creative "word document" that perhaps parallels your working process in some way.
I'm thinking about taking up the challenge. Artist Pam Farrell is one artist who has taken this challenge. And Joanne Mattera. Check out these and more at Color Chunks.

One of My Favorites-Louise Bourgeois-Thanks Joanne!

"In the classic Mapplethorpe image of Louise Bourgeois, the artist is holding a giant plaster-and-latex penis under her arm like a brobdingnagian baguette. The irony is that if she had an actual penis, if she were Louis Bourgeois, she’d be bigger than Picasso. Bourgeois is an immense talent who has been making art for over 70 years. Her arc spans Surrealism, Modernism, Post-Minimalism, Feminism and Installation Art, and her oeuvre—essentially organic and increasingly narrative—includes work in wood, stone, metal, wax, resin, fabric and found (or chosen) objects." This is from the most recent post from Joanne Mattera's blog. Read the rest along with great images at Joanne's blog. I just wish I were in New York to see the exhibition.

I do love Louise Bourgeios's work and mind. It isn't just her ability to continue to work into late age that impresses me so. It is the strength of the work in her late years that is so amazing.

I am not sure Louise Bourgeios thinks of herself as a feminist as the rest of us do but she sure sets a good example of how to do it.

How appropriate to have this post snuggled right next to Joanne's sidebar post "OXYMORON OF THE DAY: . . . . . ANTI-CHOICE FEMINIST", her reaction to John McCain's VP pick. I love it!

Congratulations Are In Order

The images below were painted by artist John Schiro formerly from Houston. The two gallery shots are part of his thesis exhibition that took place earlier this year at Rutgers in New Jersey. I don't have titles or sizes. You can get a sense of the size in the gallery shots. This post is a personal congratulation to him on his completion of his graduate work there. It is also a nod to his conversation with color. While his work would not be considered geometric it certainly participates in the dialog about color that is an on-going part of Joanne Mattera's conversation with color in her own paintings as well as on her blog.

Mixed Media, Mixed Blessing: A Visit with Lydia

Last week I had the opportunity to visit the studio of artist and friend Lydia Bodnar-Balahutrak here in Houston. In the recent past when I first moved back to Houston, we were studio neighbor's at Summer-White Studios, an entity that no longer exists due to the rapid "renovation" of older neighborhoods here in this town. Sold, torn down, new structure...BaBing!! New condos! But that is a story for another time.Lydia and her husband did some renovating of their own with their old garage in back of their house. Tore down and rebuilt into a two story wonderful space both up and down. Up is her studio and down is his shop and garage.

In this corner you can see some of the new "mixed media" pieces she has going. Besides me oooing and ahhhing over her great space and the amount of new work she has under way, (and I did plenty of that!) and just having a good visit between friends, (which we did,) we were also getting together to talk about the use of Encaustics with other media in paintings, specifically her paintings. And while our conversation did not include exactly the topic that Deanna broached in her most recent blog entry, (Different Media,) our conversation about Lydia's work, her media and her shift in content from her previous series clearly relates to this issue of being labeled as "a this or that" kind of artist.



Using Lydia as example:
Lydia is primarily a painter. She also makes three dimensional pieces from time to time. She work in oils....sometimes. She works in mixed media....much of the time. Her concern is the stability of the particular media being mixed.
Wax is a medium that Lydia enjoys because it is organic and looks organic. It has a natural translucency that is much different that the translucency produced with oil or acrylic glazes and she was hoping to use Encaustic with these new pieces.
She has used wax in previous paintings and those are holding up well.
So, our conversation revolved around the issue of stability and the specificity of materials that could best be used to get the translucency she desired. If not wax, then what?
My point: Most artists come to a particular medium because of its compatibility with their idea or must eliminate a particular medium because of incompatibility with the substrate or other media used.
I remember Louise Bourgeois speaking to that issue in a film about her and her work. Regarded primarily as a sculptor, Bourgeois makes things in a variety of media....marble, clay, wood, assemblage, bronze, etc. When asked why one piece was in marble and another in bronze, her response was that the form an idea takes often dictates a particular medium, or eliminates media when issues of fragility come into play.

Well, Lydia is not labeled an "encaustic artist" even though she uses wax in some of her paintings. I think most people including her galleries think of her as a painter, even though some of her work is dimensional. I consider her a artist who works is a variety of media. She works through an idea using whatever medium helps to make her statement. When I think of Lydia's work, what comes first comes to mind are strong personal responses related to issues of identity, spirituality, social, and political situations. Not medium!
I agree with both Joanne Mattera and Deanna Wood regarding labeling ourselves so specifically as something to avoid. I see artists using the term "combined media" as well as "mixed media" in reference to descriptions of particular works. Maybe "various media" is more accurate a description for us artists whose visual vocabulary is not limited to one medium.
I am an artist who works in various media; sometimes wax?

I do know that some galleries try to cover all bases...or media. I was told once by a gallery they already had an artist who worked on paper so they weren't interested in my works on paper. Just the paintings on canvas or wood.

New Year's This and Thats

Resolutions list finished, goals set, reservations made and the new year has begun. If I keep all my promises, I will be a busy girl.
First things first...new grandchild is due this month and I will catch the plane on the 15th and hope I get to California before He/She ? arrives. Due date: Jan.24. My daughter's first child.
CAA in Dallas comes near the end of February and I plan to attend. And then there's the Encaustic Conference in June up in Beverly, MA. Is there time in-between to get work done in the studio? There better be!
In between travel time and studio time I blog now, and this has added a new dimension to my in-house time.
I am not so patient to spend hours reading on the computer....too long winded and I'm out of there...but some blogs have caught my fancy. The ones I enjoy the most are those that are informative, witty, not too personal and have good pictures.
So far, my favorite is Joanne Mattera's blog. Exhibition reviews-informative, witty comments, good pictures, not too personal. Great! From there, Joanne has a long list of pretty interesting links on her site. I check them out occasionally.
The Forum at RF Paints, is also a good place to visit, with all kinds of good information. Besides, you can shop there too!
When I'm bored or can't sleep, I check out the artists' newly listed web sites. Beats solitaire!
But sometimes I publish a new post on my blog.
Happy New Year 2008!

See: Fair Factor: Report from Miami at Joanne Mattera's Blog

Louise Bourgeois bronze sculpture and Joan Mitchell painting at Cheim & Read, New York
http://joannemattera/blogspot.com

Second Annual Encaustic Conference June 2008

Announcements are posted on Joanne Mattera's site, Linda Womack's site, IEA site and Montserrat College site. Check them out for further information.