Been through some tricky times this last month.
Going to say now that July has been really hard to get through.
Flower from our garden
I’ll get to that but first I want to get this down because I’ve been feeling the frames of Australian Mortimer Menpes (1855-1938) for some time now. In his time he was The Man, but his reputation faded following his demise, despite leaving behind several hundred paintings and prints. So prolific!
He spent most of his life in London, but also travelled widely and particularly to Japan, where he loved the aesthetic general vibes
For me, I love his sculptural take on framing or housing artworks; he gave them grounds, places to live. The proportions are so well judged.
Anecdotal fun fact re Mortimer, he totally styled up his exhibition venues, bringing in plants and furniture and swag just like we do on social media, but without a camera. He sold a vision, and he sold it in buckets, he was a huge success and made a lot of money; but being fashionable is ephemeral, and that’s something to watch out for, kids. Because he faded away and now its the frames, not the paintings, that bring the attention. But then it could be said that he designed great frames, and then needed paintings for them. And I guess thats a legacy right there.
The frames are timeless. I think relief sculpture
Alexander Archipenko, Médrano II, 1913 (Guggenheim); painted tin, wood, glass, and oilcloth. “Though always devoted to sculpture, Archipenko played with the boundaries of mediums throughout his career, devising dimensional painted reliefs…that he called “sculpto-paintings.” (MoMA)
Love sculpto-paintings!
An absolutely bonkers idea of mine 6 years ago but there is still something there and I’m heading back its way
Trying to avoid landscapes
I’m using fabric scraps. When I made those two quilts earlier this year it freed me up and brought it front of mind.
Also making spangles, cutting sequin-like dots by hand from gilded fabric, they come out so nicely non-circular
I collaged drawings of lace and arranged it so the flow is percieved rather than logical. Industrially produced lace fabric is knitted in a way, so thread travels on pre-programmed patterns with thread looping with adjacent threads. I chopped that fabric up and put it where I wanted it, thus subverting the paradigm.
I want a movement and a lightness, drifting. Like memories. How my mind drifts and time feels like loops.
The fabric appliques dont strictly follow the movement of the painted lace; they’re different experiences of time.
Most of the time I am in tears before reading the last line of this poem, or from even thinking about it
High Flight
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
of sun-split clouds,—and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of—wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air ....
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew—
And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
6 years ago
Looking back, I feel like I was a lot braver about my work 6 years ago. I’ve been rejected by so many art prizes and react by hobbling myself and policing ideas and dismissing them and that is wrong.
I’m not listening to anyone’s opinion on this
Still working on it. Have to trim the chain tassels
baking
better than killing
Nutmeg walnut cake but not so great I thought. I have become obsessed with Nutmeg and Walnut baking
Walnut & nutmeg apple pudding, which is a sponge made with ground walnuts on top of apples cooked in nutmeg and its that good. Fresh grated nutmeg will blow your mind I have to say nutmeg again.
[My fiend Vanessa Stockard and Hillside Frameworks]
Very like this framing. Subject-wise, Vanessa borrows from Velazquez’ portrait of Pope Innocent X Pamphilj which I saw in Rome last year, but I like this frame better. Its extremely good.
Germanier’s spikes made from deadstock pencils
Some beading embroidery screenshots. Its like being pregnant and seeing pregnant women everywhere. Every scroll brings more beading.
This was my third pudding, this time pears with nutmeg and walnut because that’s how I nutmeg manage things. Please regard my food styling with compassion. I had a fancy spoon involved at one stage but it just didn’t work out. Food styling is way more complicated than it looks.
Every piece, a sheet comprised entirely of hand woven beads
Another thing I’ve been thinking a lot is Liza Lou and she is fantastic to listen to here and here and here. “We might string sentences together, follow narrative threads or watch plots unravel…[but] beads, like words, have a cumulative effect – laid down one by one, they develop structure, meaning and rhythm”.
Glass beads
Then I read an interview with Julia Powles via BlockProjects which in part reads:
“BP: What can painting reveal that language cannot?
JP: Well language can of course reveal a lot. But painting operates across several sensory systems simultaneously, it is predominantly felt before it is thought. A different kind of understanding occurs through the sensation of experiencing painting. Words can often be fixed or definitive, while painting opens us up to overlapping emotions and complex ideas that can be many things – immediate, delayed, certain and contradictory. In this sense painting echoes our engagement with the world, as something we can only really know as a sequence of everchanging vantages.”
But more importantly, she says:
“How do I exist and how can I be connected to others?
”
Not a new idea, a very old one, but still so urgent.
And here we are. We’ve arrived at the pointy part of June-July and now, August
So it turned out to be cancer. I mean they said it was, but I think I am supreme, so it wasnt happening to me. So come the operation and it turns out it is cancer. Its very treatable and I’m sure I’ll be fine, but the last several weeks have been hellish. Hellish. Multiple hospital admissions and so much crying. I have cried so much
Including flowers from our garden, things that helped me through weeks of hospital…..
finding out
where they hide
the biscuits
And this one. I like all her music. Reminds me of Noga Erez a bit in that both are particular….people with strongly particular musical expressions all of their own. Its so good to be in someones else’s world.
This song came out like nine years ago but man what a particular song: Lost on you
I’ll never be the same as before, but life and thats all I’m going to say about it.
What a mess
Frequently thinking “dont need any more beading on this” and do more and its been good having this to work on. Been sitting down. Still have to trim those chain tassels
Endless rearranging but I’ll tack these fabric shapes onto the canvas & then do other stuff to them. Some beading. I dont know. I’m burning with a sense of limited time and just…
just
…tryna figure shit out.
I’m very tired at the moment
I’ve hardly left the house in weeks
See you end of August