Fascination
I have not written since the winter. A lot has happened since then. Always at the end of a session, Fall , Winter, Spring , I am enamored with the student artwork of that session. Once again I am looking back at a body of work, in love. The children have produced beautiful art, week after week. So many classes and individuals involved in art process, each one unique, sweet and challenging. I like being part of the kids wild energetic scene.
What you see on this website is only a small fraction of the great volume of artwork that was produced in the studio this year. The children’s work is intuitive and energetic, sometimes tender and joyful. I will miss it. I have tried to collect some of the images here to share with you. Work from abovoagogo is hanging in houses all over Ithaca. Look through. You can see as the students gain mastery over the page and the composition begins to gel.
The parade was great fun. Thanks to everyone whgo helped to make it happen. So many people call out “abovoagopgo abovoagogo!” as I walked down the street. This town has learned to say abovoagogo! Its been a great year.
Now it is July. Camp is begining, sculpture, puppets. There are three tons of new sand in my yard, the canopy is up and the cement mixer is ready to go. The sand box is a beautiful thing. Fascinating to watch it change, day by day. Cody and Lyal (my kids) have established their territories, creating outposts, houses, roads and dams., "Sylvestertown". There are now many more children claining their mother’s attention and working in their yard. They are staking out their territories. Here in the sandbox we see a reflection of dispute and detant. A political balance. I embrace this new sandbox, let the party begin. I will be casting until the snow flies.
Winter Eyes show is OPEN! It was a great event Dec 3rd, with art, music, food and good politics. The studio walls are dense with art. Abovo is sparkling, a visual pleasure.
The collection and the studio as it currently appears is a record of our time in the fall classes It is here on the walls, now that the dust has cleared after the opening, that I can see the gist of my teaching. Why did I chose these particular pieces for this show, out of all the hundreds of artworks that have been made in this studio since September? It is in retropect that I can see the categories and shape of my teaching.
I have looked for students to trust their aesthectic sence, to follow their likes and dislikes, with gestural images relying on instict. There are many bold expressive paintings following this edict. In other instances I have asked students to follow their imagination and their mind's eye creating fantasy and literary meaning. There is a category of work chosen for the show that is about technical mastery, a quiet discipline of rendering, victories of attention, somtimes forceful and other times fleeting, tiny yet still present and precious. I can see my emphasis with students on composition and use of color. Congratulations to all the artiists young and old who are part of this show.
Thank you Neil.
Visual Think Tank on Fracking, The idea is catching on.
Where is the warning?
There is no canary
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was gutted of its science. They were supposed to protect us with objective logic in the face of corporate interests, and then...
Next week they will meet in Binghamton. (Link) Will this be a chance for the science to be gathered together into a stronger voice? Will the evidence become clear to everyone? I am ever hopeful, however I do not think there is sufficient medal left in the agency with all the Bushy cats hogging the show.
Our collected watershed is about to be co-opted. It has been a steady chipping away, over many years, in an organized campaign. If Fracking begins, it will not stop. Water, that supports us all, flowing from one place to another with no legal boundaries will become un-potable and dangerous to our health. Buy now, pay later. There is relentless history of disastrous pollution as payment for energy. Now is later!
Visual Think Tank on Fracking is a forum to examine closely the issues of water, ourselves, energy, policy and the corporate interests through the lens of graphic representation. Art process, a close, non-linear examination can be a window into the core of something. I will commit to a course of working on these issues through drawing for eight weeks. At this time we need these visual paradigms and the interchange that they will provoke.
I am looking for a group who wants to join me in this useful endeavor on Tuesday nights, plumbers, muscisians, printmakers, rabbis, scientists, historians. Group members can come from any disciple and do not need to have visual arts skills. Marks made by people who are not artists are often the most genuine and transparent in meaning. Everyone is welcome.
Neil Zusman, Librarian, has gathered a comprehensive, and eye-opening collection of the literature on Fracking, which is searchable. This useful Fracking Resource Guide can be found on his Mixplex webite. (Link)
