Rush to the Finish Line

Yes, it's coming on Christmas, this is the time to sell, and if you're lucky, people buy.

I have made more salt and pepper cellars for the Savory Spice Shop and had room to fire one of my new McMansion Bowls, a new endeavor.

I found some ways to make the S&P cellars more easily and better, though they look the same as the previous batch. They were popular and sold out, so now let's see if they'll move. There's only 9 days until Christmas.

The McMansion Bowl needs a more correct name that is not offensive to those who dwell in the housing developments in the former farmlands of New Jersey.

The bowl functions like a specimen tree in a landscape - a focal point in the setting, with uncluttered space around it. It is functional though, and could hold fruit or keys, pinecones, or anything else one might imagine.





Fun to make, I don't claim it is an original idea, but I like the look. It is a wonderful canvas for playing with glaze effects, and I think this combination is a good one. I am excited to make more.

I have sculptures and a drawing at the WOW Pop-UP Gallery which just opened for a one week stint. It's worth a shot to be "seen", even if no one buys. The point is, for many of us, to share the work and move it out so one can make more!

Embroidery is ALIVE in Princeton

Embroidery is an old art, and a traditionally female art. At one time, with other needlework, it was one of the few art forms acceptable for women to practice.

The embellished logo for the Arts Council of Princeton

Last month an exhibit of embroideries was created by the hands of Princeton town folk, some experienced and some beginner crafters. "Interwoven Stories; A Community Stitching Project," was the brainchild of artist in residence, Diana Weymar, and was sponsored by the Arts Council of Princeton.



















Almost all of the embroideries focused on the town and people's memories of Princeton. I have lived here for over 30 years, practically a native compared to most people, who live here for a few years then move on. So the images are familiar to me - even the older memories such as the long defunct establishment - Edith's Lingerie.

There were images of favorite places, much frequented by many of us who live in Princeton, such as the canal tow path, where we go to walk and bike.

And of historical places, like the old Quaker Meeting House, which by the way, is still the meeting house for the local Quakers.

The alcove reading room with a round window in the Princeton University Art Museum is the chosen place to portray by this embroiderer.

There were embroideries about local trees, a favorite subject of mine, too, such as this one about a tree around the corner from me...

... and another in my same neighborhood, from the little one block long Race Street...

... or the original Princeton Oak, the resting place during battle for the fatally wounded General Mercer during the battle of Princeton. In place of the massive oak there now grows its acorn offspring, still with the post fence surrounding the sacred ground.





Trees are apparently strong influences for embroiderers.

Others plied their needles in writing prose which made sense. The project participants had each been given a white rectangle of cloth embroidered to look like a piece of notebook paper.

Many town residents took part in the project, and these were just a few that interested me. 

The last one I share is this one, an exuberant swirl of stitches that depicts the night sky, here in this little dot in the cosmos, Princeton, New Jersey.

Bertoia's Studio and Sound Barn

I found myself passing near Harry Bertoia's studio on a trip with my husband to Pennsylvania and took the opportunity to visit there. I was introduced to his work at the MAD in NYC (see the last post) and was eager to see more.



We met Harry Bertoia's son, Val at the studio housed in an old stone building, a former Ford dealership, on busy route 100 in Bally, Pa. Val is himself a sculptor and his work was everywhere, some a spinoff of his fathers wire sound sculptures and gongs, large metal plates cut in organic shapes and suspended from the ceiling. We tried some, striking the gongs with mallets and strumming the wires of the sculptures to hear their other worldly sounds.















Val was a very authentic guide, telling us of his father and his mother's lives, and seemed to take joy in doing so, and joy also in making the music. In the studio, he demonstrated the effects of a huge hollow gong, having us guess how it made both high and low tones.

the forest on the barn road

After this introduction, we followed Val in our car several miles on back roads into the wooded hills. We were greeted by an attention seeking cat at the barn, a part stone, part timber structure that Val said was 360 years old. 2016 - 360 = 1656? Could that be right?

the area around the barn was scattered
with sculptures and structures and one tabby cat

Inside the barn, the entire main floor was filled with sculptures with microphones hanging from above. It was a sound studio and a gallery in one. There we sat in a row of Harry Bertoia designed chairs (the famous plywood and wire Eames chair were designed by him, Val said) and listened to him perform. We let the sounds wash over us, all the metal gongs and wires vibrating with what Val said was a healing music. It was mesmerizing, and we continued to listen after he sat down and the vibrations slowly quieted and stilled.

Then we played too.

Magical.

Outside again, the cat coming along with us, we walked to the large gong and the stone where Harry and his wife, Brigitte are buried.

























Val gave me a DVD, a CD and a warm hug before we left. This glimpse into his world touched on new ideas, people and activities of which I was unaware. Just one phrase gives a hint of it: "Gong Camp!"

Val is continuing his father's explorations. The Bertoia studio is not only a memorial to an important artist, but an inspiration for work in progress. I felt privileged to be there to experience it.

MAD Again

The Museum of Art and Design on Columbus Circle in NYC can be counted on to have mind expanding things to see and people to learn about. This past visit, three of the special exhibitions touched me deeply.

COILLE  HOOVEN

First were the weird figurative sculptures by Coille Hooven. She works in porcelain and rarely uses colored glazes so the pieces are overall white. Many small and medium sculptures and vessels of a non-utilitarian nature populated the space, mainly depicting animals and unclothed females. The figures were transformed in some way or in settings that were alternately dream-like or nightmarish in feeling.

Symbolism is everywhere in her work, and in the informative texts that MAD always features as part of their exhibits, one can learn that the vessel can be a symbol for the soul, the moon a symbol for transformation, and a shoe a symbol for a metaphysical journey.






Coille Hooven was born in 1939, a month after her great-aunt, M. Louise McLaughlin, the studio potter who pioneered underglaze and china painting techniques in America. Hooven believes she is guided by her great-aunt's spirit, and if that is true, the guidance has been an effective one. Hooven too, has been "a maverick, " developing her own artistic vision while working in academia and alongside some of the country's most famous ceramicists (Voulkos, Arneson) during her long career.

MARGARET AND CHRISTINE WERTHEIM

Crochet Coral Reef: TOXIC SEAS is an amazing, colorful and important exhibit. The two artists, sisters Margaret and Christine Wertheim, and their organization the Institute of Figuring, collaborated on huge sculptures based on the form of coral and reef flora and fauna.

At the entrance to the exhibit is an enormous net filled with plastic (left) that the sisters had collected. They had done an experiment, saving all their plastic disposables for one month, and were shocked at the amount they amassed.














A wall-length blackboard presents a timeline of CO2 levels in the atmosphere over time and the history of plastic, with its development dates and production figures.




















Crochet is the preferred technique here, using audio and video tape, plastic bags, plastic netting, plastic toys, and other plastic trash, with more traditional crochet yarns to construct the sculptures based on real sea creatures.

Pod World - Wire and Beaded, beaded wired
sea creature by Sarah Simons,
knitted wire sea creature by Anita Bruce

Besides the Wertheim sisters, other craftsmen/artists contributed smaller and often exquisite works to the exhibit, such as the installation on the left.

I was informed, alarmed and awed by the exhibit. It accomplished communicating an important message that I can only hope becomes widespread.

HARRY BERTOIA

Still from a film about Harry Bertoia's sound sculptures

I was not prepared to be awed further that day, but that is what happened in the next exhibit on the floor below the Crochet Coral Reef.

Harry Bertoia became known for his wire furniture, but he was so much more than a furniture designer. He created jewelry, prints, musical instruments and sound recordings of incredible inventiveness. He was also, it seems to me, a man with deep insights.

Bertoia created a collection of sound producing sculptures with metal rods and wires that made sounds as they struck together. He called the sculptures collectively "Sonambient," and he made hundreds of recordings of his compositions (or were they improvisations?) on reel to reel tape.

The MAD makes their exhibit available to patrons to try their assemblage of sound sculptures at select times. I could only listen on headphones to recordings when I was there, and heard an otherworldly sound, rich in tonal layering. The stone barn in Pennsylvania where his Sonambient was set up is apparently still there, and can be visited.

Bertoia's Studio

The prints and the simple linear designs of his wire jewelry were difficult to photograph and don't show to their advantage here, but were exciting for me to discover.

Some prints were displayed with jewelry in the museum's cases.

Harry Beroia is buried on his property in Pennsylvania under a 10-foot diameter gong, his largest sculpture. Seeing his art, hearing his recordings and reading about his life and work, I gained an impression of a man who developed and grew in his understanding, to the very end. In his words, his life was...

 "An immersion into the vast recesses of the unconscious leading to the realization that the inner world is as immense as the cosmos outside...

Awareness of life is the purpose of life..."

Modern Heroics and MORE!

In the jumble of teeming streets, amidst the clash of architectural styles that is Newark, New Jersey, there is a fine collection of art and artifacts housed in the Newark Museum. I journeyed there in the backseat of a Honda Fit (THE car of choice on my street of tiny driveways) with two neighbors to see an exhibit called "Modern Heroics; 75 Years of African-American Expressionism."

Modern Heroics







Here is one of the museum staffers who was so friendly that she offered to take my photo with the large collage, Landscape with Camouflage, by Mickalene Thomas. At first I refused, but then I thought that perhaps it would be a good thing as then, one could see the scale of the artwork. When she had a hard time with my camera I took her picture to demonstrate.








It was a small show of what some might call "messy" artwork. Some were made from scraps, painted sometimes in a slap dash fashion.  A few were by "outsider" artists, child-like in their technique or naivete. There was humor, passion and mystery in this show, and it illicited a mixture of feelings in me.

There were two each by Bearden, Minnie Evans, Sallie Mae Rowe, and Norman Lewis, also an Emma Amos whose New York studio I remember visiting in graduate school at Banks Street College.













Here are two more pieces from the show: a painting by Norman Lewis and a sculpture by Kevin Sampson. I have become enthused by friends description of a recent show of Lewis' in Philly that I missed, but thus far I have only seen his work in a book. So it was with pleasure I saw an actual painting and a small drawing of his as well.

The Madjet is made from detritus found on the streets of Newark. It was inspired by Egyptian mythology, the label tells us, and an outsider artist's giant ark that once stood in a Newark vacant lot. For the artist it is symbolic of a spiritual journey. We are all on a journey - our life is a journey. I think if one pays attention to the spirit, or even if one doesn't, it is evolving or devolving as we so choose.

Nigerian Policeman, concrete, 

1991, Sunday Jack Apkan

I found many more sculptures and artifacts in other areas of the museum of interest to me. I spent a good deal of time in the traditional and contemporary African exhibits where the figure is a common subject.

Sokari Douglas Camp created this larger than life-size, steel figure of a male masquerader in 1995.

"Gelede" is a Nigerian performance that celebrates mothers. The woman on the figure's head represents the artist herself with her two children. In the tradition, men dress up with masks and costumes and act in skits satirizing mothers and society. An interesting tradition - why not? Mothers are loved and reviled both, let's face it. I know.

I stopped in my tracks when I saw these tall, ceramic figures. If I were an animated character I would have hearts streaming out of my eyes. They are towering, thin, and riddled with cracks. It is a wonder that they are standing. And I also wondered, how were they fired? Lying down?
























I learned that Etiye Dimma Poulsen, an Ethiopian-born artist living in Belgium, created these rather sad, stalwart figures over the years 1996-1998. She first fashioned an iron armature, covered it with clay and fired the sculptures in an outdoor kiln.

A Yoruba master craftsman, Bangboye created this "Epa Headdress" sometime in the early to mid-20th century. How anyone could possibly wear this very large and no doubt very heavy object on their head is hard to imagine. None of the symbolism or story behind the imagery is explained on the museum signage, but it appears rich in meaning.

Another drop dead, wonderful sight to my eyes were these striking, black painted steel sculptures by Algerian artist Rachid Koraichi. Les Priants, from 2009, is an ensemble, only four of the eight sculptures are shown here. The artist is a master of Arabic calligraphy and is inspired by Sufism, the mystical branch of Islam. I love them for their grace and expressive linear movement - not easily accomplished in steel.

And lastly, a few pots that interested me, for their qualities of simplicity, or craftsmanship or lack of fussiness that refreshed my self-critical being.

Two pots from Africa:

terracotta storage vessel, 20th century, Molowi

terracotta pitcher, early 20th century, Algeria

And from America:

olla, ca. 1000-1100, Anasazi

Bough pot with two necks, 1957-58, Katherine Choy

Much, much more to see at the Newark Museum, but that is all for one visit. Thank you Cate and Pat for inviting me on this excursion. It was worth the traffic hassle, don't you think?