We went with our daughter and family to the Harvard Art Museum today. What joy to share art with Roen who has not been in the Harvard Art Museum since the pandemic began in 2020. I used to take her there all the time when I babysat her. Her favorite thing was how the elevator made her feel and looking down on the atrium from the 3rd floor. But she also loved all the art and colors. She is very much an artist herself and is passionate about colors and mixing colors and painting. When I walked in with her I took her right to the Kehindre Whiley Painting which caused her to go “WOW”. She liked that there were two sisters in it and all the pretty yellow flowers. She also enjoyed many of the sculptures especially the ones of animals. But she is three and before long she was hungry and thirsty. Thankfully the cafe is open again and she was able to get a Nutella-Strawberry Muffin which she thoroughly enjoyed.
Response to Success
I was happy to learn that not only were three of my drawings accepted into the Marblehead Art’s Variations show, but that my drawing of knitting (whose title keeps changing…but is currently “The Mess We Are In” won first place.
Success for artists does not always result in better work being made in the future. Some artists have success with an image or a painting and then lock into that style or subject as “their thing” and fail to grow and progress. I don’t want that to happen to me, although it seems unlikely as I am too restless. As I return again and again to things like tangles, and folds and origami and the dolls I like to think that my work is always evolving and that each new piece is addressing something new and bringing a new energy or idea or emotion to it depending on what is going on in my head.
But showing up in the studio doesn’t mean something happens. Sometimes it is work. Hard work. And what get’s made really isn’t any good or maybe it is just part of the journey to something. Right now I feel a bit lost. I am drawing a crumbled piece of brown packing paper with rocks and the dolls. I am thinking about bombed apartment buildings and families huddled underground.
Our Fossil Addiction
I was listening to a podcast called “Talking Politics” yesterday while trying to make art. Helen Thompson has written a book called “Disorder, Hard Times in the 21rst Century”. I have not finished listening to it but it was interesting to hear somebody spell out all the events that have occurred since I was still a child that have led to this moment. The dangers of an economy based on fossil fuels has been known since the 70s. The geopolitical dangers of depending on Russia for these fuels has been a concern since the 70s. President Carter tried to convince everyone to use less energy and that didn’t go so well. And we have known since Putin came to power that he could and would use our addiction to Russian Oil and Gas against us at some point. In the first part of this podcast Helen Thompson makes our years of failure to address a known problem very clear.
And yet here we are with our climate facing a tipping point that will forever change our planet and with millions of lives at stake as a result. Our addiction to a fossil fuel consumer economy has contributed to the West’s inaction with covid and with Russia. Nobody wants to disrupt their shopping, their travel, their entertainment, their “normal” to address the problem. We turn a blind eye to the problems caused by our addiction. Every now and then a politician speaks up about the importance of change. People will write and post about the dangers of fast-fashion. We talk about bikes and transportation alternatives. Some of us stop eating meat and buy meat substitutes wrapped in plastic. But at the end of the day most in the west do not want things to change as drastically as they need to. And covid and our reaction to what we needed to do and still need to do in order to stop it is the perfect example.
We see horrors in Ukraine. We change our Avatars and buy blue and yellow paper and make signs to pretend we care about Ukrainian suffering. But I suspect if we were told millions of children could be saved from death and suffering, if we just went 6 months with a very restricted carbon budget there would be tantrums galore among the people. Even when our health is threatened by a virus we struggle to STOP so we can protect ourselves and others. We are addicted to a “Normal”, a term that is being used a lot by those who believe we are post-covid. Our calling it “Normal” implies there is no alternative or better path. And worse this “Normal” fails to address the suffering our addiction is causing because we are just doing what is “Normal”. And how if it is “Normal” can we be doing anything wrong.
The image I made is of me looking and not looking at the citizens of Ukraine as they leave their homes.
Ukraine, Climate, Covid
It is hard to wrap one’s mind around all that is happening in the world and I think the challenge for anyone who is paying attention is to try to sort out where to look and what to pay attention to. The pandemic is certainly not over so even though it might feel that way with many dropping indoor mask mandates and indoor dining filling up and the overall number of infections of covid going down. We still do not know where biology is going to take us with this and what will happen next winter.
Then there is the IPCC report. Nothing in it is new but the report is LITERALLY SCREAMING FOR US TO DO SOMETHING!!!! Not next year or in the future but RIGHT NOW.
And there is an evil genius on the war path making chaos and murdering countless innocent people so he can ….well I don’t know what he wants or why he is doing what he is doing but it is clear he gets great pleasure from exerting his power.
I did this drawing because I was thinking about “What should we (who do not have power or money or influence) be looking at?” When I showed it to my peers many did not feel this idea was coming across. It might be because I have not painted the pink stripe on the used covid tests I have been collecting and they read as cooking utensils. Anyways I like the drawing. I was using ink so I did not tighten up as one thing that has shut me down the past week or two is the fear of the blank page. When that happens I have learned that the best thing to do is take a blank page and just make marks and observe and not focus on a final image but experiment and see where my mark making takes me. I also included another drawing I did this week with ink.
Being Three is Hard
Today I was babysitting. My daughter and her family are finally recovering and getting back into old routines after their covid quarantine nightmare. I gather that there have been a few times in the past two months where Roen is allowed to watch TV while the baby is being put down for her afternoon nap. Today when I came down after putting baby Maeve to sleep Roen became upset because she wanted to watch TV while I was putting her sister down for her nap. I let her cry. She went under the table. I made her a fort in the playroom. She sat under it sobbing and every few minutes I would hear how she wanted to watch TV. I was reading my book in an armchair. Finally I knew just the right remedy. I didn’t say anything to her but I went and got my sketchbook and bag of pens and sat by the door and started to draw the trees in the backyard. I kept my focus on making my own art. Before I knew it she was there by my side telling me how she wanted to draw. I told her to get her own paper at her art desk, and she did. After asking if she could use one of my pens, and my giving her one, she told me how she was going to draw a house and her inside watching TV. I don’t know if she managed to do that as shortly after mom came down and told me she was done with work for the day so I left. Plus she is only starting to draw figurative drawings and most of her drawings are still scribbles. But I left pleased Roen was embracing drawing what she wished for but could not have. And I left her three pens and a brush from my bag of drawing implements.
This Thursday Roen came to our house. I had taken a bunch of books out of the library including a book about Henri Matisse. I read it to Roen and immediately afterwards she went to her painting area at our table and decided she was going to color areas of paper. After trying to cut it out she asked me if I would cut some shapes out for her. She still can not do more than edge cuts with the scissors so I obliged and cut a bird. Then she colored some more paper and I cut a wolf. And this repeated until we had a fish and a whale. She then wanted to glue them on a colored sheet of paper. And with my help she did. But then she wanted me to cut out a JellyFish. After my first attempt, “That’s not a Jellyfish it’s a mushroom.” I tried again. “That’s not a Jellyfish it’s a hammer.” Then tears and “I am feeling very angry”. I told her she could use the shapes as coral. “Noooooo…it needs legs” So I cut a somewhat abstract shape with tentacles. She looked at it and said, “It looks more like an elephant” But she decided to use it anyways and then agreed to glue the other shapes on as coral.
The lasting effects of the pandemic
There is exhaustion, frustration and depression among many I speak to. It is the lasting effects of this endless pandemic and the frustration with the world and our leaders. Cars and plastic are everywhere. Putin continues to play his games and world leaders continue to care more about their image and the world stage than doing what is needed. It is emotionally draining. Omicron seems to have burnt itself out but what new virus is going to emerge?
I miss travel. I miss going to the airport or the train station, sleeping in hotel beds, eating hotel breakfasts, walking new streets, attending theater, people watching and seeing new art. I am tried of our dining room table, my food, walking the crappy Cambridge Sidewalks, the salt, winter and my expanding waistline. Oh what I would do to spend 5 pounds (probably more now thanks to Brexit) to get a warm Dosa from Borough Market and eat it along the river on our way to see a show at the Globe.
I want my kids to have fun experiences like that. I definitely worry about their future and the future for our granddaughters.
On the positive side I have taught myself to mend and darn. I am having fun patching holes in sweaters and socks and making them look pretty at the same time. I had to paint them of course.
What next?
One of the hardest things for me is when I feel like I have beaten an idea to death or when I go to draw and I am no longer feeling inspired by what is in front of me. I tend to cycle back, revisiting subjects I have drawn in the past like origami, scissors, dolls and even the covid tests which I have been painting this month. But for now I feel I want something new and fresh. I am feeling antsy. Maybe it is the warm weather we are having today. I think I am also feeling a bit flat emotionally. The pandemic continues. But humans continue to pretend it is in our past. Nobody has done anything about CLIMATE. It really is ridiculous. And I cringe thinking about the future. Well if I learned anything during the pandemic it is about the value of just making work, drawing and being in the studio-space mindset.
Framing and Hanging
Two works were accepted for a show at a gallery in Amesbury MA. I am excited because it is rare that a show’s title fits perfectly with art that I have created. But this show’s title did which is why, despite not knowing the gallery I submitted my pieces. The two pieces accepted are pieces I want to show the world so it is nice they will be hung. The gallery is also an art store and I have no idea what sort of traffic it gets as I have never been to Amesbury. But I looked at their previous shows and liked their curation.
Framing is so expensive. I had hoped to do it myself but the place that has the do-it-yourself framing is in a town that does not have a mask mandate and it seemed a bit too risky to spend hours indoors in a place where anyone could walk in without a mask and with Omicron circulating. So I will go to a local frame shop that framed the pieces hanging right now in our group show. Meanwhile I will get my self portrait framed for my parents. After seeing “A Year of Interiors” and Holly and Bonny’s self portrait they asked me why I did not have a self portrait in the show. When my mom asked me this I suddenly felt like I was in elementary school and my mother was wondering why my work was not featured or I was not the lead in some play. It is funny how even when parents are elderly and we are adults they can say something and transport us into children again.
My parents own one of the best paintings I have ever created. It is a self portrait of myself. I was 40ish at the time. We were struggling with our middle son. I felt like my father in particular was not being helpful and he had gotten extremely angry with my son during a dinner for something our son did. I was angry. And so the painting is red and orange and intense. I was full of emotion and tears as I painted it. And that year for my father’s birthday I gave him the painting. It was my passive aggressive way of confronting them. My parent’s did not see the anger or frustration in the painting. They just saw “me” and they both loved the painting and framed it. For years it was in their living room in Lexington and got many compliments from visitors. I would sometimes be sitting in their living room and look over at the painting and be amazed I had created it. Now it is in their apartment at their independent living senior community. In response to my mother’ s inquiry about whether I had done self portraits, I showed them all the self portraits I had done since the pandemic. Many are not exactly flattering and my mother did not like those. Especially the one’s where I emphasized my jowls or looked angry and frustrated. Although she did like the one I did the morning after the 2020 election…which is funny because I was bundled up as it was quite cold and the mirror was tipped at an angle so I look a bit pudgy in it. Well here is a selection of the self portraits. Try to guess which one my parents asked me to frame for them.
And more tests as covid found it's way into our bubble
We are healthy. We are testing testing testing. Covid is in our bubble. My bouquet of BINAX now tests is growing. My granddaughter calls getting a covid tests “Nose Tickles.” Children adapt so easily. I have launched our peer critique group. So far it seems to be going well. Showed the work of Peter Doig at the start of group this week just to inspire everyone. Oh how I admire his work. I brought out a very large pad of paper this week. The sort of pad I save for a figure drawing session. But I used it to draw the tests and a branch of dried Rosehips.
Covid, Climate and Art
I made a decision to give up using any plastic paints (ie: Acrylics). One reason was I wanted to keep our apartment relatively kid-friendly for our granddaughters. But other big motivator behind my giving up all acrylic mediums was my concern for the oceans and the impact plastics are having on our environment. For the past three years I was mostly focused on drawing until I caught the watercolor bug from my peers in Joel’s zoom class. The problem with watercolor is that it is hard to work large. And there is a part of me that craves a wall with a big piece of paper on it and big brushes and buckets of paint.
Our failure to deal with the pandemic on an individual or institutional level does not give me hope for our ability to handle the climate crises. I saved our discarded antigen tests from New Years. Now I have been drawing them with the dolls. It definitely captures how I feel these days. I only wish I could make this particular drawing 5 feet tall!!!
Welcome 2022
Omicron Oh my cron Oh me oh my micron....
Our youngest son lives in NYC which is having a huge Omicron wave. Our son is part of it. The school where he teaches part time went virtual on Friday. One week to late for our son. His birthday began with him Facetiming us and showing us a rapid antigen test and asking “Does this look positive to you?” And that line was as bright as any rapid test line I have seen. He turned 28 and staying at home in his apartment in NYC alone is NOT how he wanted to spend his birthday or his vacation. Fortunately he is vaccinated and boosted and did not seem to get too sick. Hopefully he will teach himself how to laminate dough and make his own croissants. My self portrait last week. My self portrait this week. It says it all!!!
Here we go again
I am beginning to think the Human Race is hopeless. The media reports about Omicron are almost laughable. It is as though nobody learned the first time around what exponential growth means and how viruses spread. At least Omicron might be a milder disease and the training from 3 doses of vaccine seems protective against serious illness. But nobody seems to have learned that covid vaccines do not stop the spread of the illness, they simply protect us and others against getting seriously ill and dying. Meanwhile we are getting colds more easily this year due to our immune systems lying dormant last year. I am sure having a preschooler is contributing. UGH. Unlike last year Thanksgiving was the whole CREW: Our four parents, Roy’s sister, our daughter and Husband and their 2 girls, our son and his wife and their little girl and their dog, our youngest son and his girlfriend and us. 13 in all. We gathered at our daughter’s house and sat around their gorgeous new dining room table under their very stylish new chandelier. It all felt so civilized. I cooked up the Drumlin vegetables and transported my creations to Bedford. The babies, both crawling, dominated of course. But Roen held her own in the conversation and at one point chimed in with a comment when our kids were discussing somebody they knew from LHS who works at a coffee shop near our youngest. They were talking about how she will not be there for long because she is not particularly good at holding down a job. And Roen without missing a beat said, “And she died in the end” Gotta love verbal 3 year olds. And lately Roen is constantly trying out new words and ideas in fascinating ways. She is suddenly interested in dinosaurs and after describing what Paleontologists do I asked her if she would like to be a Paleontologist and she responded by saying, “No I just want to be a grown up”
One week later we had our middle son and his crew back at our apartment overnight along with his wife’s sister who had just flown in. Our son has completed his first semester as a college professor. It was wonderful having them here again. I just wish I had cleaning help for after they were gone. I now understand how my MIL and mother used to feel as we were leaving after staying with them. Yes they enjoyed our visit but they also always seemed a bit relieved as we were packing to go.
Cop26 & Fast Fashion
It is hard to feel optimistic after Cop26. Why is everyone still thinking about their own self-interest when the ship is sinking? I have nothing to add to this as everything I want to say has been said by activists, like Greta, and by scientists and artists (mainly Kim Stanley Robinson in his amazing book “Ministry for the Future”). And so I continue to put pencil and brush and ink to paper and work. As the summer wraps up and I get back in the rhythm of working I found myself wanting to return to using the half-penny dolls in my art. There is something about the tangle of these small fabric and thread doll house dolls that captures the current state of humanity. It helps that mixed in with dolls of mothers, fathers, grandparents and children are ambulance drivers and firemen.
As mentioned in my previous post I have hoped to reference Dante’s vision of an eagle made up of souls by combining the dolls and the angels. It has lead to experimentation with paint and drawing as I play around with the dolls on my table. Interspersed with periods where they are collected and the table is cleared and Roen is here playing with them. At 3 she loves them so much that her mother and I went on a quest to buy more. But alas they are no longer being made.
This week I added my origami into the mix. And as I was painting my husband sent me an image of a desert in Chile that is covered with discarded clothing from our fast fashion culture. The photograph resonated with my doll paintings which in a way capture how capitalism is basically just eating people up and discarding them.
The Desert in Chile covered with discarded clothing from around the world.
October 2021
I have been making art, just not as much as I hoped. It is true that now that we are not necessarily just staying at home, it is easier to avoid work. But also I decided to work on a big project and most of my work is explorations around the ideas for this project and not finished pieces.
With the Harvard Art Museum open again I decided to revisit Bernini’s angels to see where it takes me. I am trying to go in at least once or twice a week and draw for 1.5 -2 hours. I keep thinking about how I love the dark work that references Dante and I keep thinking how fun it would be to capture the angel made up of souls by combining my drawings of angels with my drawing/paintings of the dolls. I am not sure where it is going to take me
Because of covid, the grand babies, our parents and Delta I decided not to continue with Joel’s group because he is now teaching in person in his studio in the South End. I miss everyone, but at the same time an old teacher Elaine Spatz Rabinowitz invited me to join her online class. Elaine and Joel are the same generation of artists and both taught at the college level. They are both eloquent and successful artists as well. But they are different and I can’t quite put my finger on what it is that distinguishes them in their critiques. Elaine is an oil/acrylic painter although she knows I am only using watercolor and gouache right now. We talked about getting lights into my painting after I showed a particularly bad overworked painting to class. I mentioned masking fluid and she brushed it off as being a material for an artist who does not work as loosely as me. I knew right then I had to prove her wrong and discovered that I could make almost print like paintings by using the masking fluid, painting a layer, removing it and doing another layer of masking fluid and paint. Below is the result.
August 2021
The summer is always a slow for me as an artist. As one fellow farm worker said to me, our attention turns to the earth and growing things. I am doing less farm work than in the past due a shift in Lindentree’s operations and my decision to spend my workshare energy over at neighboring Drumlin farm. Tuesday I spent time at Drumlin planting beets with volunteers, crew and workshare members. Matt Celona is a very impressive farmer. I was amazed at how rich and fluffy the soil felt as we put the tiny fragile baby beet sprouts into the ground. When I got home the dirt easily washed off me. It is an interesting contrast to Lindentree where despite the focus on farming organically the soil has been allowed to compact and become hard. Meanwhile the planet is burning. Torrential rains are falling. It is crazy how much worse this is than what Al Gore showed in his movie “The Inconvenient Truth” and how foolish we were to ignore what scientists were telling us back then. And still nobody seems interested in doing the work to stop the train from careening over the cliff. It is capitalism. We are all addicted to shopping and buying and shopping and our cars and planes. Nobody wants to stop. Nobody is willing to stop.
All the grand babies are now no longer within walking distance. We are cycling regularly out to Bedford to see Roen and Maeve (and of course Shira and Nick as well) . I miss having them all nearby. Last week we had Isaac and his girlfriend here and that was so nice. I don’t miss the cooking or cleaning associated with feeding everyone but I definitely miss their constant presence.
Trying to force myself to work without falling into the habit of just drawing flowers. I have so many flowers this summer. I take a painting I am not happy with that features dried and dying flowers and I wipe an area away and put an image of myself in a “Lush Prison” (title courtesy of Sally). The painting feels right for the moment.
Summer 2021
CoVid rates are as low as they have been since the start of the pandemic. Hurray for Vaccination.
My babies are moving. I know I shouldn’t complain they are all still relatively close. Our daughter and husband bought a house in Bedford MA. Our middle son and his family are moving to Hanover New Hampshire where he will be an assistant professor at Dartmouth . Our youngest son is moving off the island of Manhattan (Harlem to be exact) to Brooklyn (Williamsburg). I am happy for all of them and what these moves mean for them, but I will miss our Pandemic gatherings at Leslie College with our oldest 2 and their families. Things change. Roen has morphed from a toddler into a full blown Three-anger. She is so funny. One of her favorite things is to do s’periments with food coloring and water. She can mix colors for hours. She is now part of a cohort of kids who regularly go to Larch Road park. They know each other’s names. Like a collection of little rascals they range in age from 2 to 5. The kids think my name is “Grandma” cause that is what Roen calls me.
So like an expanding spiral the kids are still close but moving farther away. We will still be connected.
Inequality, unfairness, cruelty, selfishness and human nature
We participated in an interesting theater experiment put on my a small theater in London we love, Almeida. i confess I missed the Almeida bar, which has good food, as well as the Ottolenghi cookies we would buy across the street. I miss the energy of Islington. But this particular Zoom theater experience was different than others because it involved you (the audience) interacting one on one with an actor or actress. I don’t want to give too much away in case they do the performance again and you can be a part of it.
Being a teacher at Grandparent Pandemic School has become a bit of a chore lately. Oh how I love that little girl and I do enjoy having her visit. But she is also exhausting now that she is older. She is so ready to participate in preschool and spend some of her days around other kids. If it were not for CoVid and I was babysitting her regularly we would be going to the library and music class and doing things where she was able to be around other children on a regular basis.
Quarantine Art
Vaccinated, Celebrations, Family and more (From last year)
vIt was a momentous week!!! Our entire extended family is all vaccinated except for the babies and Roen. My in laws and our youngest son came up from CT/NYC. Roen got to meet her Uncle Isaac in person. For half her life he has been the uncle who lives in my computer. The two hit it off in person and immediately became best friends.
I spent the weekend hosting and for the first time our dining room table was clear of the piles of art work created by me and Roen. It was free of brushes, paint and yogurt containers filled with water. All the chairs were being used as chairs and not flat surfaces for storing things. Saturday night as our large group sat around the table and babies cried while we laughed, we could hear laughter and chatter coming from neighbor’s houses all around us. People whose vaccines had finally kicked in, combined with the CDCs new mask recommendations and the beautiful spring evening meant that people all over were gathering with friends and family. That sound was so joyous.
