ARCHIVES: January 2010

first month of winter down
Way too many bits and pieces

I’ve been feeling not too well on and off since Thanksgiving; heart palpitations for weeks, an extra nasty and linger-y cold, a stomach flu of some kind and a swarm of headaches. Yesterday was the first day of the previous five without a headache. It had gotten so bad, that I can actually feel the relief of not having a headache. However, while making chicken soup last evening, I cut my finger pretty badly. I’ll be okay. I’m the self-healing type, as long as I’m allowed to take care of myself.

The other day, in my booth of a studio, it was all odds and ends. I’m framing a few pieces, while trying to work in a minimum of space. Things get juggled with great frequency. There was sanding, drilling, hardware-ing, gessoing, frame finishing, wrapping, varnishing, painting, washing brushes... Yes, there was some oil painting in there. Sometimes, often, I feel it is medically necessary to keep painting.

Eight days ago, the news broke about the earthquake in Haiti. I hear 7.0 and I am brought back in an instant to the 22nd floor at the corner of Bush and Sansome on October 17, 1989, as if time and space were no barrier to anything at all. The next second all I could think was, oh no this is really bad, knowing about how most buildings in Haiti were constructed. If Kobe was awful, this was going to be so much worse. And as we all know, it is beyond devastating. So we do what we can to help our fellow human beings during times of distress. Over at Daily Kos I learned about Shelter Boxes, and I gave what I could. If you are reading this in archives years from now, there will still be a desperate need for Shelter Boxes somewhere on this wobbly planet.

Shelter Boxes are home in a box. They are built and equipped for ten people to survive for six months or more in relative comfort and dignity. Shelter Boxes save lives. They are saving lives right now.

Learn more and donate here: shelterbox.org and shelterboxusa.org.

Among tools and blankets and the tent and water purification tablets and a cookstove, among all these essential items and more are included crayons and coloring books for children. Children need to color to heal. Children need to color to grow and thrive. I love how they recognize the importance of this. It is one of the reasons they have my support. There are so many wonderful organizations doing amazing work to help where it hurts. Do what you can when you can.

posted January 21, 2010

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creative fun from almost nothing
Pillows billowing by the willows

In honor of the fat new pillow I bought last week (it's cheaper than a chiropractor)...

This monthly feature on developing unlimited creativity is best referenced from the two original creative fun from almost nothing entries from the archives; September and October 2009. Read those two entries, and the entry below will be all yours. Use the commonplace everyday to inspire your art!

Sleep and dreams
• Portray a scene from one of your dreams. Do this in any medium, in anyway you like, to best express the dream.
• What do pillows dream about while you are sleeping? Portray a pillow’s dream or a pillow dreaming.

Pillow fight
• Portray a pillow fight. This can be the classic pillow fight involving people, or maybe it is a scene of pillows fighting among themselves. Work in any medium, in any format, and without restrictions.

Pillowcases
• Make pillowcases for your bed pillows with scenes from actual dreams you have had. You can also portray something that you wish to dream about.
• Design a new type of pillowcase for a bed pillow. Think of function and/or aesthetics, such as a pocket for tissues or with a surface pattern you would like, but is not available in the stores.

Unpillow-like
• Do a painting, drawing, maquette or an installation piece based on pillows behaving in un-pillow-like ways. Work with one of the following ideas:
- A typically cold, hard structure made mostly of pillows, such as a bridge, a locomotive engine or a castle
- Warrior pillows, soldier pillows, hunting pillows, bully pillows, pillows being anything but warm, soft and comforting
- Pre-historic pillows
- Space pillows

Excerpted and paraphrased from the book;
Creatively Unblocking Creative Blocks
Author: Alexandria Levin
ISBN: 0-9743267-1-2
Published by Painted Jay Publishing
www.paintedjay.com

posted January 11, 2010

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urban wildlife
Where we get some of our stories

In an instant there was a massive shadow swooping by my peripheral vision. What on earth could that be? I looked out the window to my left, and there was a hawk sitting on the closest branch of the maple tree. A few feet to the right was a squirrel on the trunk of the tree, frozen as winter stone. The hawk kept turning his head in every possible direction, while you could see the squirrel envisioning all kinds of horrendous things in squirrelese. And in the bare split of a second that the hawk glanced the other way, the squirrel took off.

For a few minutes there I thought I was about to have an Animal Planet moment.

Of course I would have watched. And then I would have thought about that squirrel for days, and what he must have been going through minute by minute. Explicitly.

For twenty years I mostly painted figures. I was never a big fan of the figures-in-space thing; those paintings of people doing nothing but sitting or standing or even floating there. There are some gorgeous paintings in that mode, but it’s just not for me. I have to tell stories and I love metaphor, so there needs to be symbolism, my own symbolism with my own interpetations. But just the same, I was a figurative painter for a long time. This came to an abrupt end in 1996. Quite simply, the stories I had to tell were of an intensity that the human figure could not convey without a certain level of obviousness. Like stepping sideways or through the looking glass, deeper truths could only be expressed in anthropomorphic allegory. That is the best I can explain it.

Beyond that, I also zoomorphize objects. Places have spirits. Everything I paint has a soul, and this makes perfect sense to me, being something of a pantheist. I don’t paint what I know exactly, for what would be the point? I paint what I need to understand further.

I understand the hawk needs to eat to live. And the squirrel needs to live for its own purposes. I take no sides. I only have fascination and some degree of empathy for each of the creatures. This particular squirrel got away, and eventually somebody else got eaten.

posted January 6, 2010

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it being winter and all
There’s no storm like a snowstorm

Supposedly 23 inches of snow fell. Having had an especially nasty cold all week I did not venture outside to explore. But looking out the window I would say it was a foot of snow at the very most, at least in my corner of the city. I wanted to take pictures. I really wanted to get out into the countryside and take lots of pictures, but between my cold and our serious lack of a car, that was not happening.

I’m still painting azaleas, it so not being spring. I will be done with the azalea series about the time the real ones are starting to think about blooming again. Nothing happens on time. Well, almost. The abstractions I am also working on are still on time, but I am painting them in the waning months of my experiencing those things first hand, before they get relegated to the biohazard bin of unpleasant memories. All those autumn tree and leaf paintings were done in the spring and summer of last year. Most of my New Mexico paintings; backgrounds and primary subject matter alike, were painted in Boston, San Francisco, Pennsylvania...

I have been wanting to paint snow landscapes for awhile now. It will probably be spring before I finally start the series of ten or a dozen or so snow paintings I plan to do. They will be treated the same way I have been with the landscapes, trees, azaleas, period abstractions; as playful explorations with paint and brush and paddle and composition to see what else I can possibly do. I can keep very busy this way.

The boyfriend is the art historian of the two of us. I’ve got the basics down, but he knows and loves all the details. I have other passions. But through him I have discovered many painters I never would have known of otherwise. A few years back he introduced me to the work of John Henry Twachtman, and I fell hard for a few of his landscapes. From him I was inspired to paint snowscapes, and although I have yet to do my first one, they are on their way. The panels are being prepped as I write this entry.

The night it snowed, as the flurries were finishing up their work for the day, I was watching the sky through the bare branches of the neighboring trees turn from a grayish-violet to that ethereal faded rust of high-pressure sodium vapor. We find our beauty where we can get it.

posted January 2, 2010

All images and content ©2009-2010 Alexandria Levin