Norway | Art-Colored Glasses

Otto von Münchow is a very nice man. But I don’t have to tell you that, if you’ve done any looking around the web. I’ve never even met him–in person–but it took very little time looking at his blog and ‘conversing’ with him in the process before I saw how much help he offered not only me with his photographic and creative-production insights but also shared with all of his other readers and correspondents. And then he went and shared a Versatile Blogger Award with me. I’m humbled, and I’m touched.

Yes, there are those who would say I’m tetched. It’s how I got where I am today! And where I am is in truly rarefied company, as I’ve been learning over the last number of months here in Bloggerville. I am surrounded by deeply gifted and incredibly generous fellow bloggers, some of whom have taught me more in my short stint as a web denizen than I learned from many an arduous class project and long years of practice. (Okay, I’ll still say the years of practice made it possible to actually understand and make use of some of the good stuff I’m learning here, so no, my young friends, don’t skip that part!) I know I’m one seriously fortunate person, surrounded by, as my good friend Nia aptly identifies them, a glorious cloud of “angels and muses”.

Sankt Synnøve, an appropriate patroness for adventurers!

The Irish/Norwegian saint Synnøve is one of a select group I chose to make mixed media portraits commemorating for a collaborative program with organist David Dahl a number of years ago. The fabulous Dr Dahl agreed to create a performance program with me, and despite his renown as a Bach expert, even agreed to plunge into French Romantic literature to please my whim–something he not only performed with superb fire and panache but taught me a lot about in the process. I loved the preparations: David would join me in the organ loft for a flurry of ‘howzat’ samples he played from a number of great composers in a wide variety of styles and moods and colors within the fantastic treasury of my dream realm. He told me about the background of the pieces, how and why and when they were written and by whom–and who that composer studied with–and so on. Gradually we winnowed down the possibilities as I began to talk, in return, about what sort of imagery these evocative pieces inspired. I fell in love with each and every song and movement, and with the genre yet again.

I also decided, as the good Doctor played, that the exquisite and potent Finale by César Franck was reminiscent of a solemn procession of saints, so I decided it was a good excuse to play around with a series of portraits, beginning with figuring out which ones it would most interest me to envision. My main criterion was simply that I was on the hunt for saints famous for more than martyrdom. While I recognize that being willing to die for your beliefs, whatever they are, my school of thought tends to be more impressed with how incredibly challenging it is to live for your beliefs. So I looked for people beatified and sanctified for their deeds rather than their being dead. The princess Synnøve certainly seemed to fit the bill, what with evading an oppressive forced marriage, adventuring off on the wild open sea to who-knows-where and landing in remote Norway, creating a community there, and then fending off pagan attackers. As well as a few other attributions that become even more mystical and magical. In all, a history that says this was one tough Celtic character who went to great lengths to shape her own destiny, and in so doing shaped others’ as well. Eventually she was joined in the recital processional by a number of other intriguing worthies–educators, hospitalers, rescuers of the poor and builders of bridges among them–and I found a large quantity of inspiration, not strictly artistic either.

That’s what I find in this new endeavor of mine too. A long parade of angels and muses that bring to me new knowledge of art, of self, and of life. And I am ever so grateful for the gifts!

We who are inducted into the Versatile Blogger community are tasked with telling you friends a little more about our selves and then sharing the gifts of the award with others whom we deem deserving as well. I’ve done this twice before (thank you, dear Cecilia and Nia!), so I’ll try to be succinct.

Saints Valery and Finian, leaders, builders-of-things, and my birthday brothers (I was born on their feast day). (I'll take my inspirations wherever I find them.)

Versatile Blogger Award protocol:

1. Nominate 15 fellow bloggers.
2. Inform the bloggers of their nomination.
3. Share 7 random things about yourself.
4. Thank the blogger who nominated you.
5. Add the Versatile Blogger Award pic on your blog post.

So here’s that Pack of Facts about me:

1 – I’m one of those awful excuses for a human being that doesn’t like blueberries. There are a number of fruits I’m not crazy about for texture but in the juice or coulis form I’ll slurp ’em right up. Not blueberries. Don’t like the scent or the flavor any more than the texture. Yet the blueberry bush is a plant I happily put in my garden because I think the shrub is beautiful year-round, and even the berries are very pretty to look at. Go figure.

2 – Even a complete non-athlete (there are few who can begin to compare with me for lack of skills) can have a Sports Injury. My only-ever stitches are hockey related. Too bad I wasn’t making a brilliant goal play at the time, but at least I got a little scar to show for it.

3 – The dentist is my friend! I am something of a rarity, not only enjoying visits to the dentist but also hitting the 50-year mark without ever having gotten a cavity. That’s thanks to good dental care on top of a bit of good luck: my parents both have “normal” teeth, so it was clearly not straight-up genetics that gave them four caries-free kids.

4 – Besides some costume design and construction for theatrical productions, ecclesiastical vestments, and other clothing design/construction projects over the years, I’ve had a few evening gown commissions–favorites are probably the plastic-garbage-bag (Hefty Steel-Sak) gown in silver and black for a costume party (I labored over the hand-cut lace edges) and the plastic wedding gown made for an exhibition (that one had plastic doilies for its lace).

5 – No cigarette or smoking device of any kind has ever touched my lips. Wait: I did try a couple of bubble gum “cigars” in childhood (banana was my favorite of the chewing gum flavors, I think), does that count? But thankfully (for both my lungs’ and my wallet’s sake) I never had the remotest urge to experiment with smoking.

6 – I think my husband has one of the most beautiful singing voices I’ve ever heard.

7 – Many of my art projects arise from random exposure to topics, objects and ideas I encounter whilst “on the way somewhere else”. Ah, serendipity!

I know that some of my favorite bloggers have received Versatile Blogger recognition before, and I do know that it takes a great deal of time and effort to meet the requirements of acceptance, so for the following blog-stars, I personally exempt you from any of the responsive requisites, but I want to recognize publicly how much I admire your work.

Today’s Sparks Blogroll of Honor:
The Bard on the Hill

Sweet Caroline’s Cooking

The Seven Hills Collection

Patridew’s Perfect World

Aspire. Motivate. Succeed.

The Valentine 4: Living Each Day

A Cup of Tea with this Crazy Nia

With thanks and cheers for all that you do in the blog universe, I bow to you all! Onward and upward, my friends!

Lineage and life-stories notwithstanding . . .

While I was working on the art for my master’s thesis exhibition, I reached a sort of critical-mass point and got a bit huffy at all of the people exclaiming that I must be a real fan of Edvard Munch. Granted, my subject matter probably looked similarly dark and dreary to many; I’ve always enjoyed playing around with that black-humor borderland between gritty and witty, where vampires slurp on souls at teatime and skeletons tap-dance a cheery, leering Totentanz of delight long past All Souls’. I’ve always found great amusement and entertainment in the design and crafting of strange monstrous birds and beasts, outlandish costumes, and rickety structures to house the people that exist on the fringes of imagination. Munch’s images and stories derived from a darker real-world observation, probably tinted by his own mental and physical state of health over time, but the outcome was arguably a comparable sort of oeuvre.

Paste onto those superficial connections the knowledge that I am of Norwegian extraction in pretty much every direction if my lineage is traced out of the US, and I suppose no one could be blamed for linking the Nordic-darkness-tinged artist in front of them with the only really famous one that comes readily to mind. I couldn’t complain about being compared to a justifiably well-known and original artist, now could I?

But I did. I didn’t really like Munch’s work, you see. I thought it obsessively gloomy and depressive and I wasn’t particularly crazy about his style. I tried really hard to disassociate myself and my work from this sticky albatross-of-an-ancestor I was being put into artificial family bondage with and get people to think of all the ways in which I differed from him.

Silly. Turns out, though I still credit myself with having a far more uplifting personal history than his was, what with my generally idyllic existence from day one, we do have a lot in common. When I saw the Munch museum in Oslo for the first time, I was beginning to see why folk might make connections beyond simple Norsk blood, from ties between us in some of the fundamental issues of interest topically and right on through to how we might apply our media to paper or canvas, how we both would wrestle through a whole series on the same subject or even remake the same picture in different media and styles over time to see how we could effect a different outcome with each attempt. I started to notice that there were evidences of similar drawing gestures and brush strokes, an impressionistic looseness with paint and pastel, that were more often similar than not.

What did I do? Rebel against it more. Silly. By the time I really started to come to terms with this whole idea of being on a path not so very different from Edvard Munch’s artistically, no matter how unlike in experience and life, it was kind of a fait-accompli, something that everyone else had acknowledged long before I was willing to do so. As I say, I was already winding up my grad school time when I began to come to grips with saying, Yeah, this is all right with me: I do so like green eggs and ham. I mean, just because Munch was Norwegian-rooted and an artist and explored darkish subjects and I could be described by exactly those same terms doesn’t mean I can’t like him or admit to it!

Once I finally leapt that completely unnecessary and self-imagined chasm, it was easy to begin finding common ground in a lot more places, affinities with a lot of different art practitioners, than I had been open-minded enough to see before. Amazing how much more I can learn when I’m not wasting all of my energy on resistance. Which is, after all, Futile (I have it on good authority). The next step, and a very long and winding road of steps at that, is the one of recognizing what can be gained by learning at the feet of the masters and of those whose place in history and the popular mind is perhaps well established, while still being myself one of the multitude who ‘work the middle’–all of us laboring at our art, our craft, learning and honing skills without any particular expectation of fame or longevity or remuneration to follow.

The short answer: everything. Why would I continue to refuse all offers of insight and inspiration and the potential to learn and grow and delight in what my predecessors–living, dead, famous and obscure–can teach me! Yes, I have learned among other things that great resources of such knowledge can be dug up with a bit of persistence on my part, or as in the case of good old Edvard Munch, shoved at me until I quit whining and pay attention. Or, as in the case of Alf Hurum, handed to me on a silver platter.

Hurum remains an obscure Norwegian and unknown to most Americans, indeed to most people outside of a relatively specialized cadre in the art and music worlds with good reason to know of him. But he was, it happens, a fine composer of piano and violin works–and somewhat influenced by, you guessed it, Edvard Munch. His reach was greater than one might guess not only because his compositional work remains both playable and listenable after lo, these many years, but also because, having married a woman from Hawaii and grown interested in her roots, Hurum spent the latter part of his life in Hawaii and there helped to found the Honolulu Symphony, among other things.

My learning of him was quite simple and straightforward: my brother-in-law, a fine pianist teaching at the University of Agder – Music Conservatory in Kristiansand, Norway, arranged for me to have a commission to do a portrait for the school when they were refurbishing their then-concert hall. This led to my studying up a little on several Norwegian musicians over time, including Hurum, and producing a set of portraits from which the administration could choose, and most importantly, to my hearing some really lovely music I’d never have otherwise known. Even better, my brother eventually did a research project that led him to make a marvelous recording of Hurum’s piano music (Eventyrland – http://www.rockipedia.no/Vault.aspx?entity=1169501), and now I have the privilege of using that as inspiration whenever I wish to listen to music while making art yet again.

I have no expectation of creating a lasting legacy and occupying any spot as a well-known character like Edvard Munch. I don’t even fantasize about lingering for generations in the ken of a refined and fortunate circle in the way of a lesser-known but also gifted artist like Alf Hurum. But I can surely perpetuate what joys there are in simply making art and learning from those betters who have preceded me in it, from here in my own quiet little corner of existence, and that is glory enough for anyone.

Little known, but not unsung . . . influential, but almost secretly so . . .

Art-Colored Glasses

Original poetry, essays, artworks, photographs & musings on whatever moves me…

Tag Archives: Norway

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Hail to All Who Labor in Obscurity! . . . and Pay Attention to Your Teachers

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