Legacy: Seven Decades of Ventura College Art @Ventura County Museum

I have a dyptych on display at the Ventura County Museum.  Unfortunately, you still can't go see it in person.  The show opening happened a few days before the lockdown order here in California, and with the recent numbers of covid 19 cases rising in California I doubt you will be abe to go and see it anytime soon.  I am told that the exhibit will stay up throughout the summer and you can see it virtually.  Here is the link:

 https://venturamuseum.org/virtual-exhibits/legacy-seven-decades-of-ventura-college-art/  

Making Daily- June 24, 2020

My work is pretty intensive, I tend to make fairly big paintings and I put a lot of details and symbolism in them.  And I make them up, they aren't just a person sitting there, don't get me wrong there are many marvelous paintings of people sitting there that I adore, but I don't usually do that type of painting.   Anyway this kind of work takes a long time.  And I'm not going to lie, sometimes it's pretty exhausting.  I think for quite a while on each piece, I take notes, gather images, take reference photos, sketch ideas and think some more.  Then I assemble the pieces into a priliminary sketch or digital painting before I start.  This slow process can make it seem to the outside world like I'm not working, because I'm not posting my progress daily.  

I enjoy product as much as I do process though so I make lots of smaller things daily. This feels healthy to me, it gets me out of my head and into doing.  You may know that I'm an avid fiber artist as well as a painter, so usually I spin yarn and knit daily.  I'm working on a sweater right now, it's not perfect, but I like it.  I forgot to photograph it but I will tomorrow.  One other thing I do is I make a lot of my own clothes.  I really enjoy that and have done it since I was a kid.  I just cut out some new sweat pants for myself, you probably don't need to see those!  Just grey sweatpants.  I'm also waiting  for some interfacing I ordered from the fabric store so that I can sew a dress for my daughter Jillian which is all cut out and ready to go.  

Today this is what I did.  I'm making small paintings of animal symbols.  Hopefully eventually I will have an entire wall of these symbols.  I did the rabbits a while ago, today I worked on crows, they are not done...tomorrow.  They actually don't even look good yet!  So hopefully you will be surprised by how nice they look when I'm done.

I've had some people mention that they get stuck and don't know what to paint sometimes.  I think it's good to just paint through those kinds of times, we all go through that.  Especially lately we're all under a lot of stress with the sad and horrible political issues, and the pandemic going on.  I think it's a good idea to just paint something, look on google and make a pretty picture or string some beads into a necklace.  It helps to decompress. 

 I also ordered these tiny looms from Loome Studio!  Tiny Looms They were inexpensive and cute, I thought it would be fun to make little weavings at night while I watch tv.

Black Lives Matter and an update

There has been so much going on over the last few weeks it's hard to decide where to jump into posting again.  I've wanted to say things because it's upsetting to see how the police treat black people in this country.  It's emotionally triggering to see and to be reminded of what it feels like to be the victim of racism.  BUT it's important to look, it's important to look with your heart and take in the pain that black people have endured and are still enduring.  It's hard to make art about anything else right now.  It's hard to talk about anything else right now.  It doesn't seem respectful to ignore it, so I won't.  Do something people, go to a protest, call your elected officials, post about racism, read a book, give some money to a group doing the work; it doesn't matter what you do to help just do it.  And change your mind.  Take responsibility for racism that exists within your own life, in your speech, racist abuse (formerly known as microagression).  I am doing this, one thing I've done is to start an anti racist book club on Facebook with some friends.  I'm proud to say we have 157 members! 

Also, something that I think should have been clear to me is becoming more obvious, let's decolonize our lives, let's normalize people of color by following them and the cool things they do on social media, buy their stuff, read fiction books and cookbooks and watch movies with people of color.  I've actually been gravitating towards tv, movies, businesses, owned by POC for a long time, but that is because I am one.  But are you white my reader?  Maybe you could do the same and normalize POC.  Remember we've been taught a perspective that the white version of everything is normal and everyone else is an "other."  Become concious of this, become "woke" as they say.  Just my suggestion...let's face it if you are a racist you won't like my blog or my art.  

                                    

So I do have some awesome personal news.  I was accepted into the MFA program at California State University Northridge.  This is a dream come true for me!  I get the opportunity to study art intensively with really amazing teachers and I am so incredibly grateful.  My plan is to take the program a bit slowly, in three years instead of two because I want to do really good work, and enjoy this opportunity.  

I also want to encourage any older people (like myself), to do the things you've wanted to all your life.  It's ok to be a student in your 50's 60's and beyond.  I spent my life being a mom, I took care of my children, and then helped raise my granddaughter before I could reenter school seriously.  

I hope you are well dear readers.  Thanks for looking at my blog, Elizabeth

List of books made by the book group:
How to be an Anti-Racist - Ibram X. Kendi
White Fragility - Robin D'Angelo
Me and White Supremacy - Layla F. Saad
The New Jim Crow - Michelle Alexander
Stamped from the Beginning - Ibram X. Kendi
Why I am No Longer Talking to White People About Race - Reni Eddo-Lodge
So You Wanna Talk about Race - Ijeoma Oluo
Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?: And other conversations about Race - Beverly Daniel Tatum
A People's History of the United States- Howard Zinn
The End of Policing - Vitale
The Hate You Give - Angie Thomas
Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower - Brittney Cooper
I'm Still Here:  Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness - Austine Channing Brown
Set the Night on Fire: LA in the Sixties
Just Mercy - Bryan Stevenson
Between the World and Me - Ta-Hehisi Coates
Lies My Teacher Told me - James W Loewen
The Color Purple - Alice Walker
Stolen Lives Killed by Law Enformcement
Coming of Age in Mississippi - Anne Moody
The Fire This Time - Jesmyn Ward

What are you doing in quarantine?

That's probably a question people are asking all over the place.  I can't believe we've been inside for six weeks now.  When I was hearing all the stories of quarantine in Wuhan I remember thinking of what life must have been like for all those people.  Honestly I'm uncomfortable, but I realize how fortunate I am, I have a home and a yard, and food I even have a few rolls of toilet paper.  I feel for the people who have to go to work on the bus or subway and are risking exposure, many can't afford not to work.  All the medical personnel that are risking their lives, I'm so grateful to them.

Anyway, what I've been doing is logging major studio time.  And I haven't just been painting but I've been sewing, spinning yarn, and knitting a lot.  I find that especially knitting with it's rhythmic nature to be of comfort.  There is something in the action of working with your hands that quiets the mind.  And you can find a calm inside.  You forget about the worries for a little while.  Craft is a moving meditation.

I am not kidding about logging those hours I just keep doing things even if they are ridiculous like decorating packages to be mailed.  

Art Trading card, and a handspun, handknit bag for my friend.  Which will be mailed in the decorated envelope.  Because she's my friend who reminds me to stay cheery and enjoy life in the moment.

One more thing...if you'd like to learn to knit here is some instruction I did...it's really short, I'm no youtube vlogger (not yet anyway), but it will help you learn a knit stitch.  Maybe I'll make a matching video to teach you to purl. 

Hummingbird

We have hummingbirds in my backyard!  And yes, in southern California we have hummingbirds year round, but this year we have a nest with tiny babies in it right outside of our patio door.  So this litte hummingbird family has become a pleasant distraction from our uncomfortable feelings while sheltering at home during a pandemic.  The Animal Medicine card book describes the hummingbird as a symbol of joy.  It says that hummingbird feathers conjure love and can open the heart.  It says that hummingbird asks us to "Drop our judgemental attitudes and relax" (Carson and Sams 214).  I really needed to read that today, I have been experiencing a lot of feelings during this quarantine.  I know its not news to anyone, we are all feeling a lot of the same things.  Part of the difficulty about staying home in a large family is finding solitude.  The exact opposite of people alone are experiencing.  And don't get me wrong, I'm a very social person normally, I love people and visiting, but I counter balance that with solitary time.  During my solitary time I process my ideas, it's essential to my creative practice.  Sometimes I wonder if the experiences we live are supposed to give us some kind of insight into ourselves. Is there some universal power guiding me towards enlightenment?  So admittedly I've been feeling a bit judgemental of people I'm quarantining with and I think that is not really making things any easier for me.  So dropping that a bit today.  I'm just going to watch the hummingbirds and make some more art.

Carson, David and Sams, Jamie.  Medicine Cards.  Santa Fe, Bear & Company, 1988.

Off the top of my head- digital life/analog life

From Model in Life Painting class

This thought just came to me and I had to put it down...so pardon me if it's raw.  But I have this flash of insight about how digital photography and videos have effected art in recent years.  Duh you might think but let me flush this thought out for a minute.

For example, I've been a dancer since I was a little girl and consequently I've done a LOT of live shows.  We used to do shows that were -when I danced at the Tikis- the same show for an entire season over and over and over again.  And the response of the audience had an immediate effect on how much you enjoyed that particular show.  I mean there were no cellphone pictures and videos capturing every moment you were on stage and tagging you with your mistakes and possibly funny faces.  Occasionally someone's dad or boyfriend would make a home movie which they would develop months later when they used up a whole batch of film, and splice the stuff together with everything else they recorded and you might go see it at their house.  Even if you flash forward to camcorders, it wasn't as immediate as it is now...no one was posting their video on the interwebs the very same day.  So the viewing was distanced from the actual performance.  In a way our experience as performers was very intimate and in the moment.  It was more like something the Buddhists talk about, mindfulness.  If the audience was lively and fun you had a fun time, if your fellow performers were in the zone you had a fun time, if things were dead they were not so fun.  But there were none of these immediate videos that we would over analyse with people criticizing themselves and each other.

Something very similar happens in painting and art.  I have been looking at the paintings of the great Alice Neel a lot lately, she died in 1984 so her work was all pre-digital age.  Some of my teachers at CSUCI pointed her out to me when I was in school there, maybe because like me painted the people around her and her friends and family.  Her work is not anatomically perfect, but it shows the full intensity of the model and that is something so much more than just painting a rendition of a photograph.  That's what I'm getting to, that I think digital photography has really flattened the way artists see the world.  Granted there are great artists doing photorealist work and maybe it's just something different than the work of the past, no worse or better, just different.  But I'm trying to understand how it digital photography affects me as an artist.   There is such a disparity of freshness that happens when working from a photograph.  You have to compensate for things that happen in photography when you paint from these cellphone pictures, for instance the perspective on my iPhone becomes skewed.  Things that are closer to the camera become disproportionally larger, and I as the artist must compensate and try to figure out how to make it the way I want it to look.  And foreshortening always looks strange in digital pictures.  I think what I'm trying to say is that I get too distracted with making things look real sometimes and I might miss the intensity of the person I'm trying to capture because I'm not looking at THEM but a PICTURE of them.  Does this make any kind of sense to anyone else?  I will put to paintings in this post one is from a photograph I took the other from a live model, maybe they will show what I want to say.

Painted from a Photograph of my friend in a stage performance 

superimposed on a made up background

All this being said, it is really expensive and inconvienient to get a live model to sit there for you!  I do manage to talk friends into modeling for me and I'm so grateful they do this for me.  I don't know  how I will resolve this imagined problem!

A Change of Heart

Come Together

                  About a year ago I made this screen print.  I’ve never posted it basically because I’m not great at the art of screen printing, but the message embedded here was important to me.  The story of the piece is that if people on the extreme sides of the political aisle would listen to one another they would find had a lot of core beliefs in common.  And now I’m actually questioning that idea. 

It’s more than two years into the Trump administration and I just get more disappointed in the state of the world every freaking day.  Really more than I thought ever would be possible.

During the 2016 Presidential Campaign the New York Times printed two pages of insults said by Trump, you can see it for yourself here:

https://twitter.com/armandoarrieta/status/790554905819934724/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E790554905819934724&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.businessinsider.com%2Fnew-york-times-prints-donald-trump-campaign-insults-2016-10

But seriously what good does this do if everyone doesn’t read it?  Trump’s followers don’t read the NYTimes!  They watch Fox News and read Breitbart both of which sicken me.

Ideally I believe that it would be a simple answer if we all listened with open hearts to the other side. But I’m coming to the point where I don’t know if it’s possible.  This week Trump went to the U.K. where the people hate him as far as I can tell nearly as much as I do.  

AND here is my point, Trump doesn’t listen.  He was interviewed on Piers Morgan’s program Good Morning Britain, and Morgan asked Trump about his meeting with Prince Charles.  Apparently HRH talked a lot about climate change, but what did Trump take away from this?  No new insight or wisdom on the subject WHATSOEVER he just used this as an opportunity to spot light how long their meeting was…like that is the point.  That the Prince would talk to him for that long not what the heck the Prince was saying.  He definitely did NOT listen.  I’m including a link here from The Late Show with Steven Colbert if you want to see it.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBh3V-6P3kE&list=PLiZxWe0ejyv9j2ulP5zZiE0an8CDtfv3_&index=2

Hmmm.  I’m rethinking my earlier stance.  Maybe it’s impossible to talk to these people!  Maybe it’s impossible for them to talk to me because I’m not going to change my positions either.  I BELIEVE in a woman’s right to make her own health and life choices.  I BELIEVE in equal rights for men, women, people of color, LGBTQ.  I BELIEVE that climate change is happening and it needs to be addressed.  I BELIEVE in using tax money for schools and relief from student loans for the millions that need it.  I BELIEVE in equal access to health care for all.  I BELIEVE in gun control.  I BELIEVE in freedom of religion, and free speech.  I BELIEVE in peace.  So if you don’t like those things and you don’t want to hear about them you’d probably be happier if you didn’t read my blog. 

Sorry if this entry is a downer and you didn't want to hear this stuff.  I will talk about crafts and art next time.