Tag Archives: Design

Places, Beginners

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photoWhether it’s only on my mind as a continuation of its recent theatrical theme is debatable, but I do think a great deal about location. More likely, perhaps, because whatever minute remnant of my Viking heritage remains in me is expressed in waves of desire to go, to be at or in, other places. It needn’t be out of dissatisfaction with my present; I’m simply aware at one level or another of how much great magic is Out There everywhere, luring me.

In any case, one of those relatively few things that will often set my heart racing is the image of a setting for some new act on my part. It may be quite specific–the upper room, reached by improbable set of impractical stairs, in an old clapboard chapel where I used to sneak away to daydream in the dust-glittering beams of attic light, perhaps. Other times, it might be more general, like that vague yet insistent itch to be at some glorious outdoor place defined more by its unsullied native air, free of any human-made flaw and full instead of the intimate stirrings of the natural world. Sometimes my soul inclines toward places known, and others, to something that may not yet even exist.

Perhaps the latter is my cue to see that there are places I myself should be inventing and shaping. Mayhap there is a scene–is an entire tale–yet to be writ, precisely so that I can be the first actor on its stage. Do you suppose that this is how we must address Life to fully inhabit it?

Places, everyone!photo

Characteristic Characters

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graphite drawingThere have been a few occasions in the past when I thought I would go out into the wide world, metaphorically speaking, and seek my (however tiny) fortune on the strength of my artwork. I happen to think I’m a pretty good artist. Even other, seemingly sentient and sane, people have given me reason to think I’m a pretty good artist in somebody’s eyes besides my own. Not that I would be in the least biased.

So I’ve looked into various ways to ‘put it out there’ [Ed: don’t be ridiculous. NOT THAT!], from looking at DIY publishing, either online or on-demand, of prints of my artworks or of books–I’ve got a whole stack of book pages laid out with my art and writing on a whole slew of topics and themes, all stashed away digitally for Maybe Someday use–to sending hard copy prototypes of said books and artworks to various publishers, galleries, shops and the like to see if they’d be interested in aiding me with their resources. The answer, always, has been No. All who respond with anything other than simple form responses indicate that they, too, think my work is good stuff. But the other universal response is: I’m too hard to ‘package’. After whatever amount of hemming and hawing is required in the instance, the clarification is that my work (usually referring to the visual parts, but written forms have been included as well) varies too much. I’m not same-same-same enough to be marketable, apparently.

I consider this high praise. But it’s rotten for business, as you can imagine. Yes, I’ve sold both speculative and commissioned artworks, but only privately and by word of mouth and for very modest sums and, frankly, none in quite a long time. I’ve had a number of gallery showings, but virtually all ones that I organized myself, paid for from start to finish, framed and installed and lit and removed myself (though as my family and close friends will attest, not entirely without enslaving some of them for some of the schlepping and heavy lifting)–and nearly all of these also garnering me good reviews, when I could get any critics to attend, and lots of enthusiastic appreciation from attendees, but no sales. I’m actually beginning to think they might be onto something, those crazies who sell high-end mansion properties and deal with slow sales by jacking the prices higher and higher until equally crazy buyers consider the places posh enough to capture their highfalutin imaginings and plunk down megamillions of dollars or Euros or what-have-you. Meanwhile, I’m sitting here on my little paper and digital treasure trove of creative wonders and selling occasional copies of them for pennies at Zazzle.com.

The other aspect of the critiques I’ve sought that always seem to end with ‘gosh, you’re wonderful, buuuuuuut . . . ‘ is that the same people who tell me I’m too diversified (if not wholly a dilettante and a flighty fool) for my marketable good often tell me in the same conversations that I have a very recognizable style, so no matter how much my subjects and media and moods vary, they find my work fairly easy to identify. And they say this as though they, too, think that’s a good thing. Can’t say I can untangle how the good seems to be perpetually the enemy of the moneymaking; clearly a puzzle I haven’t solved. Yet.

Until then, I keep doing-what-I-do, plodding along and enjoying the process because if it isn’t making me (or my patient partner) any income, it should at the very least be fun to do it! And I do find that no matter how much my attention wanders or my themes hop around from light to dark, from complex to childlike, from crudely handmade to semi-seamlessly digital, I see more and more the marks of my own nature and personality and style peering out at me from each work. I may draw characters that are as far from my own ‘type’ and experience and even beliefs or prior interests as can be imagined (by me), but each of them ends up being somehow a child of my own making or a member of the larger family of my creative spirit, and that’s pretty good, too, I’d say.graphite drawing

Love, Always Love

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digital artwork + text

Still Hungry after All these Posts

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digital illustration + text

Curtseying & Polishing My Tiara Madly

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digitally-painted photo

Now, there's really no need for you to go putting up any monuments in my honor or installing any statues of me . . .

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. . . and while I love a good concert and the after-parties are outstanding, it's not necessary to write compositions in my honor and get the marching band ready for a parade . . .

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. . . and while I do love a good monetary recognition, it's hard to explain any sums sizable enough to be really impressive when our fine friends from the Internal Revenue Service start paying attention to the numbers . . .

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. . . so I think I'll just say that my heart is warmed immensely by the kind light you've shone on me, and that in return I hope that I can be a little brighter and a little more generous with my light to the rest of you, and that you will all pass it along as well . . .

Once again I have been receiving kind and generous notices of recognition over the last few weeks from my gracious blogging friends, and I’m overdue to say appropriate thanks in response. So here I am at last, with another lovely gift-basket filled with Genuine Blogger, Versatile Blogger, Sunshine, and Kreativ Blogger Awards and feeling overwhelmed as always at the munificence of the online community. These latest are conferred upon me, regardless of my deserts, by my fellow poets, artists, foodies, gardeners, essayists, music lovers, travelers and others with whom I’ve so fortuitously crossed paths out here in the ether and am enjoying the marvels of mutual entertainment and discovery.

It is with a humble and happy heart that I thank Meg, Susie, Mark, Mars, Kofegeek and Tamara. Some of these have been friendly correspondents of mine for a lovely while now, and others are quite new to me, and I highly recommend that you have a look at all of their blogs! Meg is a veteran traveler for her relatively few years’ opportunity, and always posts marvelous pictures and original thoughts and ideas about places visited and things done there. Susie writes with great good taste, artful illustration and photography, and shares stories and samples of fabulous food and outside-of-kitchen adventures, too. Mark, an outstanding graphic designer in the UK, sometime DJ and constant educated music listener, gardener and traveler, always has a wise and witty twist to his posts. Mars has lived a rather cosmopolitan life but keeps a grounded and sensitive point of view, traveling, writing moving and insightful observations about life’s vicissitudes, and seeking beauty and light in the world. Kofegeek brings ingenious humor and insightful discourse to matters of science and math, cats and coffee, and much more. Tamara is a marvelous gardener from Ljubljana who is working to create intergenerational conversation about that earthy art.

Meanwhile, I am required by the rubrics of these awards to do a little personal sharing with you, my readers, and to introduce to you other worthy bloggers, and so I am going to combine my efforts and ask that you have a good visit to some truly worthy sites elsewhere as well. Share the love!

First, 10 blogs and bloggers worthy of your attention:

Cynthia @ http://lesplaisirssimplesdelavie.wordpress.com/ (photos, thoughtfully captioned with brief yet expansive and often lyrical text)

Natasha @ http://comeduemaiali.wordpress.com/ (seriously, how can you not enjoy eating ‘like two pigs’? I know I do, oink oink) Important update announcement: I am clearly not as smart as even one little piggy, because I completely missed that Natasha had been one of my award benefactors in the first place. But I’ll pretend I Meant to Do That just so that I could pass on the other awards back in her direction! Because, and I am not making this up, she really deserves them anyway!

Becky @ http://beckyfrehse.wordpress.com/ (a longtime friend, Becky is a tremendously versatile mixed media expert, visual artist, collaborator, teacher and all-around cool person)

Lorelei @ http://incidentallearner.wordpress.com/ (rediscovering her incredible painting gifts, she’s a watercolorist and storyteller extraordinaire)

Bente @ http://bentehaarstad.wordpress.com/ (no, I’m not prejudiced just because she’s from my ancestors’ homeland, Norway–she’s a really fine photographer!)

Sue @ http://suellewellyn2011.wordpress.com/ (another distinctive and fine photographer, capturing other parts of the world, caught my eye)

Pat @ http://rantingchef.com/ (making all sorts of stellar and luscious foods sound and look fairly simple to make, and worth the effort even if not so easy)

Maggie @ http://thelittledesignstall.wordpress.com/ (a Pinterest-style blog full of gleefully over-the-top and often spectacularly inventive and gorgeous design images from all over)

Maenamor @ http://antiquityandadventures.wordpress.com/ (guiding us around scenic bits of England and Wales and sharing special local events with their fascinating stories)

Robi @ http://kabyahe.wordpress.com/author/robijiz/ (introducing cultural and natural beauties of the Philippines in outstanding journalistic and artistic photography)

Meanwhile, back to talking about myself, because I’m so incredibly exciting!

I think almost anything could be improved by the addition of browned butter (beurre noisette), possibly including a plain spoon about to be stuck in my mouth;

&   I have rather excellent printing (lettering) skills because my cursive handwriting, though perhaps interesting to look at, is almost indecipherable even to me;

&   If I don’t sleep at least nine hours a night I am not very likeable company;

&   Classical music is often my go-to choice, but there are others that have particular allure for me at different times or under varying circumstances, i.e., Blues music during physical labor, vintage ZZ Top, Oingo Boingo and Van Halen on road trips, reggae on a beachy sunny day, jazz and swing for hanging around people-watching in a cafe, and so forth;

&   The smell of coffee is heavenly to me, but I don’t drink it often and then only as flavoring for lots of cream and sugar;

&   Perhaps because of my temperate Northwest upbringing, I think of green as a perfect neutral color, just as much as the traditional black-white-grey-brown palette;

&   I’m not particularly girly (in the ruffles and bling and pink sort of pop-culture way) but I am fond of being female and even sometimes live up to sex stereotypes, if accidentally;

&   Not much of a crier (maybe I tend to try to be stoic when genuinely sad), except at the most silly sappy stuff, but I am an inveterate hugger and hand-holder;

&   I’m so old that I went to a school where there were no lockers, only a cloakroom; that the houses and cars in the neighborhood were all generally left unlocked; and that the older kids piled loosely in the backseat of the car while the baby sat in Mom’s lap up front;

&   I’m so young that I think Bucket Lists are for people thousands of years older than me because I have all the time in the world and naively believe that I will get around to anything that matters enough, eventually.

On that note, I really must finish this up for today and get it posted, because despite my limitless future I find that blogging is a time-consuming joy and can easily eclipse numerous other activities that may well turn out to be worth the doing if I don’t get too obsessed and distracted leaping around the meadows of the Internet in the grand company of my many admirable blogging playmates and mentors and companions.

High Baroque in Low Places

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Craftsmanship is not one of my greater strengths. I credit myself so far as to say that I have a pretty good eye for fine craftsmanship. But when it comes to my own work, I’m impatient, short of attention, and lazy enough that I’m always that dilettante rushing through to get the job done and hoping it’s enough to hang together as long as needed. Until the homework is graded; until I can hire a professional to come and do the job properly; until I have escaped notice as the maker of said shabby construct.digital photocollageI have an honest recognition of the limitations of my skills, I think, if it is perhaps slightly magnified by my lack of gumption toward improving them in numerous areas. I could argue that I’m doing my part to support true craftsmen in their arts by not competing with them unduly, but anyone would see through that excuse, I’m afraid. Still, I am awed quite genuinely by the beauty inherent in passionate craftsmanship, whatever the cause. I love the artistry of beautifully handmade or hand-finished objects, whether they are intended as art or meant as humble functional things, everyday items that we might pass over in their daily use but for the marvels of their refinement and Fit.photoI’ve long been equally taken with the ridiculousness of both badly designed and foolishly impractical objects that were intended to be functional. Perhaps it’s the extreme contrast they have with fine craftsmanship. It’s silly enough to make something that by virtue of its careless design does not or cannot accomplish that for which it was meant, but often that very malfunction is trumpeted by the sheer ugliness or oddity of the object: one can see by simply looking at it that it won’t work or will be seriously flawed. It takes no time or effort to amass quite the collection of weirdly inept designs, from Patent applications right on up to the failed products remaindered and forlornly dusty on store shelves, and one can be endlessly entertained by the verbal autopsy of such strange husks from top to bottom–gadgets and gizmos meant to do so many unrelated tasks that they were too obviously cumbersome and ill-integrated to accomplish a single one of them. And dressed up in badly applied finishes of bizarre colors probably in hopes of distracting the customer from all other evident failings, but only drawing attention to the inherent cheapness and outlandish impossibility of their ever working as promised.

But there are so many things of the opposite sort that I think it’s too easy for us to gloss over what’s right in front of us or under our very fingertips as beautifully conceived and crafted objects worthy of our admiration for both a thing and its maker. Yes, it’s natural to admire the loveliness of the bow made for a Baroque Violin or the delicate carving on a lute, for a painting or sculpture or print made with evident and painstaking care. But it ought to be equally impressive to any of us when we pick up a dinner fork that is perfectly weighted and fits smoothly in the hand, to eat a marvelously tasty meal that has been made with such loving attention that the addition or removal of any tiny thing would be superfluous to its elegance–even if that meal is a profoundly rustic stew.

When we sit in a chair, do we notice not only how pretty, how well suited it is to the general character of the room, but also how the height of the arms supports our elbows just so and the curve of its upholstered back is designed to magically adjust to the lumbar spine of each individual sitter? Do we ask ourselves, Who made those helicopter blade fittings so exquisitely that after sixty years the contraption not only still flies the way it was made to fly but is a supremely wonderful geometric confluence of sweetly fitted parts, a sculpture of its kind, as well? Do we remember to look at the window sashes on that old house and be moved by how the intensely focused care of their making has enabled those ancient wooden single-pane mullioned windows to keep the home’s dwellers snug through 150 winters and summers?digital photocollageI hope that I, for one–as poorly equipped as I am myself to create that kind of grandeur in simple things, and too impatient to strive for better as often as I should–will always take the time at least to pay homage to the real craftsmen and women among us. To notice the attention to detail and graceful touch that they have applied to rebuilding stone porches, stitching a brocaded lining for a coat, painting a portrait of an old woman because her lined face is marked with history and pain and beauty and not because she is famous or has the money to pay for a portrait. To say Thank You to those who have made something fine and elegant and Right simply because it was what they were compelled to do.

Art in a Tuxedo: Why Black and White is the Perpetual Classic

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graphite drawing

No matter how old-fashioned the content or style, black and white imagery still has things to say . . .

You know that I’m wild about color. I’m a sucker for the extravagant and flashy and juicy and yes, even subtle, stuff you can do when you play with colors of any kind. But despite my persistent dalliances with exotic color, I always come home eventually to good old black and white. Unlike other relationships, though, this is not an instance of messing about with the dangerous and glamorous side and then coming home to what’s staid and safe and un-challenging. No, indeed.

For black-and-white work has its own tricks and secrets and deliciousness. There’s a good reason that all of the areas of design that feed on trendiness–fashion, architecture, print media, interior and industrial design, and all of their kin–go through cycles of obsession with black and white treatments of their star features. Why are the halls of power and wealth still ruled by black-limo-riding people buttoned down in their black suits and little black dresses? Not so much to show conformity and adherence to the rules as to assert ascendancy over them, a touch of indifference to them, and personal peacock significance that transcends them to the degree that they become merely the frame for one’s individual importance.

It’s no surprise to those who design anything, art or otherwise, that black and white work brings its own set of problems, and shares many others with color work. You still have to think about content (pictorial and psychological) and how you want to convey the right message or storyline with those. You still need to deal with space, volume, proportion, texture, shape, line, style, character, and all of the other ephemera that determine how–or whether–your message is getting across. But like that problem of playing or singing so-called simple music, where the performer’s every note, every interpretive move, is laid bare by the familiar and seemingly uncomplicated structure of the piece and thus lies open to the criticism of the least educated or experienced listener, black and white imagery can appear to be the path of least resistance, the easiest mode, for accomplishing any design goal and is therefore frequently scrutinized with a different and less discerning eye. The truth of the matter is that any technical or theoretical approach in any medium is as easy or hard as any other and depends more on how far the artist is willing and able to push to achieve her ends. If people look at my work with the attitude that it looks terribly hard to have made, that doesn’t change the reality of my process or the end product any more than if they look at it and sneer that their fourth-grader could do much better. Both are probably right some of the time!

All the same, there are some sophisticated possibilities in black and white alone that don’t need the interjections of color commentary to keep things interesting, either on the production end of the equation or in the concrete result and our responses to it.

Black and white stuff has come to have connotations in our western culture having to do with things like formality, businesslike attitude, clean simplicity, and expertise, depending on the context and mode of its use. Beyond that, it has the ability to stand out, in this age of constant bombardment with imagery, information and busyness, as a sort of unexpected moment of visual respite that calls to us. And as a compositional tool, it just plain never goes out of fashion. Getting the right contrast in values, intensity of edge and surface, and delicacy of line is a demanding and rewarding process that will never be boring. A fabulous black and white picture carries a cachet that sets it apart from anything that can be achieved with color, no matter how brilliant and fantastical the color may be.

graphite drawing

Old as it is, black and white imagery will always stay on the cutting edge . . .

If Strunk and White were Couturiers

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graphite fashion design drawings

Everything old is new again . . . again . . .

Fashion Week has just ended in New York. I tremble with the thrill of it right from the top of my Philip Treacy Toilet Seat Hat to the scarlet soles of my agonizingly tall Louboutins. Even the non-Twittering world is atwitter. Oh, okay–having confessed to you my dark past as a wearer of safety orange fake fur, I can assume you might recognize me as somewhat less than slavishly devoted to following the dictates of the clothing cognoscenti.

Despite being by nature shy and introverted (yeah, I can hear your gasps of astonishment over there, but it’s quite true), I’ve always gone my own way when it came to dressing myself. It may have begun as a bit of a defense mechanism against my self-consciousness on wearing plenty of hand-me-downs or an instinctive rebellion at recognizing my own mousiness. Whatever the cause, I started fairly early to accessorize with an eccentricity of sorts. Eccentricity is always easier to defend than failure to conform, even if the expression of each is wonderfully similar to the other. Uh-oh. Does that mean they’re a variant form of conformity?? What a disconcerting conundrum! Excuse me whilst I swoon on the divan for a moment, won’t you? There. <Fanning myself coquettishly.>

Now, I can look back on my youth and say that there was a time when I would have made an excellent Goth. Pillaging tendencies aside. Naturally as pale as an iceberg and mum as a mummy, I could’ve slipped into some painful-looking post-Victorian getup and been right at home, but the trend, had it existed, would’ve seemed far too participatory for such a wallflower. More logical that I wear my black veil inwardly and merely retreat into wearing rather sober but unostentatious girl-sized menswear; Dad taught me how to tie a proper Windsor knot and I got my grandfather’s beautiful classic fedora off the top shelf of the closet. I even snagged a great pair of period wingtips at my favorite thrift store and earned my one bit of style critique in them from a little child standing near me in a shop one day who tugged on her mother’s sleeve and said in a bemused stage whisper, “Mommy, that lady’s wearing men’s shoes!” If I felt more girly on any occasions, I might as likely have gone for something a bit librarian-ish as any frilly stuff. I was better suited to be prim and buttoned down, what with having a figure that always tended more toward Long Island Iced Tea than a Hurricane.

I might have enjoyed the Steampunk look, too, for its winking humor and skewed sense of history, but not only did it not exist as an entity yet, it would likely have competed too much with my general cloak of invisibility. I didn’t want to be noticed, but I also didn’t care to blend in with others so much as with the scenery–a much safer perspective to be a non-participatory observer and sometime critic, naturellement.

5 mixed media drawings

More clothing and costumes from thirty years ago . . .

The other day I read an entertaining article written by, an art critic assigned by his paper to cover the menswear shows of Fashion Week. Clearly, he felt himself in the role of anthropologist far more than that of design interpreter. That, of course, is precisely the issue with observing fashion nowadays. You’re likely to see either a parade of such haute-landishness as can be “worn” by (or somehow installed upon) the models nowhere but on a runway, or else garb so lacking in imagination and originality that you’re hard pressed to term it designed. The latter was evidently the case in the realm of menswear at this year’s shows as witnessed by the poor critic-reporter.

Everything new is old again. Perhaps it’s simply in response to the extremes of the couture fantasyland that we get such reactionary tameness and dependence upon stuff that’s most generously interpreted as retro when it simply lacks imagination. I am far from disliking the traditional or the historically referential (you did read the paragraphs just preceding this, no?) but it does seem just as slavishly conformist and uninventive to show mere color and cotton-content variations on the uniform of the day than to play with the range of possibility.

I always sort of felt that that old bible of American English usage, Strunk and White‘s venerable Elements of Style, ought more accurately to be named Elements of Structure, enumerating as it did the foundations and underpinnings of good form that make good writing a mode of communication no matter how artful the window-dressing of a writer’s style. In the same way, I’d love to see the mavens of fashion, if they really want to be both clothiers and designers, challenge themselves more often to do something truly original upon the foundations of those practical structures dividing the wearable from the merely showy. How far can they push those seemingly infinite possible variations when making new and different combinations, groupings and overlaps of color, texture, shape, drape, weight, trims et al.? The haute couture runway is grand entertainment and supremely good theatre at its best, but it’s so divorced from the world of wearable design it’s as though Messrs. Stunk and White had taken copies of the Canterbury Tales, Ulysses, Huckleberry Finn and Ginsberg’s Howl, and having imbibed a quantity of the aforementioned mixed drinks, looked at each other and said “By cracky, that’s some dandy use of the English language; we could all learn from it,” then jammed it all into the bookbinder’s equivalent of a Vitamix, bound it in gilt-edged leather, and pronounced it the perfect how-to for would-be wordsmiths.

mixed media costume parody

Mostly, if I get too involved in trying to be trendy and fashionable, I'm just the class clown. Not that there's anything wrong with that . . .

Now why is it that suddenly I’ve got this urge to write my blog in iambic pentameter while wearing Chanel and handmade cowboy boots?

Pass me that Iced Tea before I faint again.