portraits and books

While in DC, I visited the National Portrait Gallery, primarily to see the Obama portraits. At the time I visited, I was the only guest in the gallery where Amy Sherald’s stunning portrait of Michelle Obama hangs. Seeing artworks in person allows you to appreciate their energy, seeing texture and detail hard to detect in even the best reproductions. There is power in the range of grays Sherald uses to portray skin tones and the crisp colors and pattern of the gown Ms. Obama wears. Tears welled in my eyes as I recalled her incredible poise and grace as she worked on behalf of our country while raising her girls. I then went up a floor to the galleries holding portraits of past presidents. There is a small roped off area leading toward the Kehinde Wiley portrait of Barack Obama. The vivid colors of the foliage and flowers in the background struck me first but as I took my turn in front of the portrait, President Obama’s strength of character and dignity moved me again to tears. Wiley’s glowing skin tones vibrate with life. I was so proud to be part of the electorate who brought Obama to office. And while I believe our republic is strong enough to survive even the most unqualified of office-holders, I’m saddened and disheartened by hateful rhetoric and refusal to acknowledge facts. The impeachment inquiries were gaining steam on Capitol Hill that very day.

I also stopped by the portrait of John F. Kennedy by Elaine de Kooning. It’s always been a favorite portrait of mine with its unconventional colors and loose brush strokes. Energy and the sense of movement just stilled emanate from the canvas.

A special exhibit at the gallery focused on the passage of the 19th Amendment, which acknowledges women’s right to vote. It was great seeing artifacts and learning more deeply about the movement and groups working to ensure this right. It made the portrait of women justices of the Supreme Court that much more striking. “The Four Justices” by Nelson Shanks powerfully portrays Sandra Day O’Connor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan.

The gallery shop includes an area filled with books, and I found several titles to take home with me. I enjoy reading fiction during waits at airports and while flying, and The Muralist looked like a great read. I’d read B.A. Shapiro’s earlier work, The Art Forger, and looked forward to reading about painters in New York before World War II. I recommend it! Ninth Street Women: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler: Five Painters and the Movement That Challenged Modern Art by Mary Gabriel is a thick volume but so interesting. I’m familiar with several of these artists and am looking forward to learning more about the others. Agnes Martin: Her Life and Art by Nancy Princethal looks to be an interesting examination of painter Agnes Martin, a painter whose abstract pieces have inspired and compelled many artists. I’m encouraging seeing titles that recognize more women artists and their influences on the larger contexts of the art and cultural landscapes in which they worked.

the flops, aka shitty first drafts

In her book Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, Anne Lamott refers often to the “shitty first draft” as she encourages writers to get something, anything on paper as a way to begin. It rarely is anything worth keeping.

The lesson applies to painting, too, and when I’m working on paper, the shitty first drafts get tossed onto a shelf or cut up to use as gift tags or to collage into other pieces. Paintings on panels get multiple layers, so there is a long process of adding and taking away until I’m pleased with what’s appearing on the surface. I started those cloud paintings during my recent artist residency at Cedar Point Biological Station as a way to get started with something. I also played around pressing leaves into paint, using dried stalks as tools for making marks and sprinkling sand into wet paint. None of these experiments yielded anything worth sharing, but were part of my exploring the place in my work. The puffy clouds will either get cut into pieces or covered with additional layers until they are unrecognizable as these particular works.

I did make two paintings explicitly based on the shapes and colors of the landscape at Cedar Point and share images below. While they’ll both get signed and probably framed, I’m really only happy with one of them. The second painting has an ease about it while the first one feels overworked. It’s also true that what I see as overworked may actually appeal to a particular viewer because it’s a bit more literal and does have some whimsy about it.

one of two paintings on paper based explicitly on the Cedar Point landscape.

Another painting on paper based on Cedar Point. I prefer this painting for the flow of the composition, the variety of textures and the sense of ease it conveys.

Shared spaces

One of the great things about participating in an artist residency is meeting other artists. Learning how they approach their subjects, what questions drive them, how they manipulate their materials to tell their stories help me examine my own methods, materials and media.

During my two weeks at the Cedar Point Biological Station, I spent time with three other artists who are doing really interesting work.
Jennifer Bockerman and I shared studio space for several days. She worked on large mixed media pieces on paper as I painted. After leaving Cedar Point, she spent a week in New York City with the Art21 Summer Institute for educators and then went back to Cedar Point for another week. She teaches art to middle-school students in Lincoln, Neb., and helps lead international trips through EFTours.
Sophia Ruppert created a table-top sculpture using parts of yucca plants and also cast plaster figures during her time at Cedar Point. We spent a foggy morning gathering fringed sage, also called prairie sagewort, (artemisia frigida) to tie into fragrant bundles. She’s completing her MFA at University of Nebraska-Lincoln next year and expects her thesis show to examine gender roles and family narratives.
Anne Yoncha worked on a large pencil drawing of prairie plants highlighted with ink she made from red cedar needles, and we spent several evenings watching sunsets and storms move across the open landscape. After recently completing her MFA at the University of Montana, she’s off to spend a year in Finland on a Fulbright grant.

I’m looking forward to following all these young women as they further their careers!

Connections and intersections

After several days working in the studio during my residency at Cedar Point Biological Station, I was eager to pedal a few miles. I loaded my trusty commuter, Sage, onto the rack on the back of my van and drove over the Kingsley Dam into the state recreation area around Lake McConaughy. I pedaled along the lake road, grateful that much of the Independence Day crowd had left the area. It was a warm, windy morning and the route offered a few small climbs on the way to the LeMoyne entrance into the park. I enjoyed seeing blooming wildflowers, waving grasses and a single mule deer watching me from under a canopy of trees. After my ride, I drove around the Lake Ogallala state park, seeing a girl running to launch a rainbow-fish kite and watching the spray at the Central Nebraska Public Power and Irrigation District facility.

As I drove back toward Cedar Point, I turned to look around the Hilltop Inn property. As I was reading the marker noting the dates of the dam’s construction, I realized the view was very close to that of the Ogallala camera taking photos for the Platte Basin Timelapse project. As a longtime admirer of Michael Forsberg and Michael Farrell’s photography, videography and prairie advocacy, I was excited to know I was near a camera that was gathering images for this interesting compilation. I looked for the camera and found it. It felt like a celebrity sighting! I suppose it just shows what a geek I can be about the Great Plains.

Plaque at Kingsley Dam noting it was completed as a public works project in 1941 when Franklin D. Roosevelt was president. The view was familiar.

and there’s the camera, mounted on this tower, taking images for the Platte River Basin Timelapse project

On Saturday, I left Cedar Point and stopped in Kearney for lunch at Tru Cafe, strolled down a few blocks downtown and into the Museum of Nebraska Art to see the exhibit “A River Runs Through It.” For so many reasons, including my ongoing collaboration around river themes with Marcia Joffe-Bouska and Tom Quest, I was interested in seeing the exhibit. And what a treat it was to see photos by Michael Farrell as part of the main exhibit and an entire adjoining gallery devoted to the Platte Basin Timelapse project.

During a storm earlier in the week, Kearney saw intense rainfalls and resulting flooding. This year has been filled with stories of rivers overflowing their banks in Nebraska, and those images and ideas will certainly affect future art-making, although I’m not quite sure yet what shapes they will take. Look for some of those explorations in an expanded exhibit of “Rivers,” which will travel to Norfolk Arts Center in December and will be on display through February 2020.