SHOW EXTENDED!

A bit of good news.
The Transformative Properties exhibit up at the Old Courthouse Gallery has been extended through the month of March.

OPEN HOUSE
Friday, March 9, 2007 - 5-8 p.m.
(Main Street Entrance Open)

The Old Courthouse Gallery
Hampshire Country Courthouse
99 Main Street, Northampton, Massachusetts

Besides the open house, the gallery is open during court hours, 9-4 Monday through Friday. During the weekdays, only the Gothic Street entrance is open.

Feel free to stop by the Open House. I'll be around for questions, comments, conversation.

Spinning Plates

Woking on spinning a few plates at once. The cigarette texture on No Small Favor will take some time to build, so I'm also working on a revisitation of two pieces. One was completely done three years ago, but I disliked it so much, I left it facing the wall downstairs. It was the original version of Stellar Flame.

I sawed off the sculpted pieces and am using the remaining outline as a sculptural feature, adding new pieces on top of the ghost of the old piece. It will have LOTS of model's pieces on there by the time I'm done. The idea is a spilling down (or rising up?) of influences reacting to the main subject's nearly ticklish mirth.

Thanks KB, WS, RN (the younger), and TF for modeling so far...

This is one I've been working on since last August. I was trying to get a sense of strength blossoming from an upwelling of energy, almost like a wave, but it's been really mediocre so far. I'm going with more plaster pieces to give the lower section more bulk, pushing attention up toward the face. Don't know about the arm yet. I just put it down on that canvas because my hands were full, but it seems to lend something to the image. I'm trying to decide if that's a good thing, though. That's what happens when an idea isn't well formed before hitting the sculpting phase.

Head and shoulders, RN (the elder), ummmm .... chestral regions and arm, meself.

WIP - No Small Favor, sculpting phase

Continuing work on No Small Favor. After stitching on the pieces, I blend them down to the canvas surface by applying more plaster gauze. Some pieces needed to be finished; around the back of the head, the back of the extended hand, and I had to add a hint of fingers to the hand curled under the rib cage. I used an old cast of my hand for that.

Next up was deciding which areas of the canvas would receive what texture. Since this one is going to have a very textured surface, a little preparation with pencil sketch right on the canvas was a prudent way to go. Changing the texture once it's hardened even for a few hours is very difficult.

And the texture material??
You guessed it, cigarette butts soaked in latex. I've used them once before about 20 years ago and they have a wonderful wormlike texture when put down en masse. It creates a dynamic "swimming" quality to the negative space, making it seem to react to the people in the image. These were saved up by a friend and a former student. I'll be asking more people to save them for me, since this texture is very handy for increasing the presence of the energy around the subjects. Also, the most likely model for one piece that *really* requires this texture is fairly tall, so that painting is going to be huge.

A starter area of butt texture. This batch had quite a few matchsticks in it as well. They make a nice lower relief texture for the edges, before the canvas goes flat.

Old Courthouse Gallery

A relatively small crowd at the opening, but it was frigid cold and parking in downtown Northampton is tricky. Overall, a nice night, though with a couple of friends, a business associate and a good amount of strangers. I always like seeing new people.

The space is REALLY interesting. Being a long-narrow hallway, it's hard to stand back from the work, but the extensive wall space has allowed me to hang pieces that haven't fit anywhere else to date. It's just funny to stand at the end of the hall and see nothing but heads sticking out of the walls.
Wendy was a little tired after dragging stuff up the steep courthouse stairs. The cookie-induced sugar buzz took care of that. :D

WIP - No Small Favor

This is a piece I started assembling over the weekend. This is the first phase after casting and stretching the canvas. After determining placement of the cast pieces, I trace their position in pencil and go about stitching them directly to the canvas.

Two models for this one. R.N. (the younger) for the face to the left and F.L. for the full torso cast. Thanks guys!

Quoting Kandinsky

Upon seeing my student work, carefully executed representational art and works-in-the-style-of ... (insert name of choice), most people then look at my current work and ask the most predicable question. "Why?"
"You could paint portraits that are much more likely to sell."
"House portraits would be popular."
"You could be an illustrator."

Since I usually scramble to describe what motivates the my work, I was thrilled to discover, upon finally cracking open a library book that's due in two days, the thoughts of Wassily Kandinsky. Bridging nearly a century from the time he wrote these words, it's fascinating to note how contemporary they seem, and how much they mirror my largely unspoken views. Although he would probably be appalled at my EXTREMELY deliberate marriage of representational images and immaterial subject matter, I think we'd find lots of common ground if time would bend and let us hang out in the back yard for an afternoon.

This entry is not only for those who ask me why, but as a reference point for myself, especially since I need to return the book on Thursday and these words will not let me sleep. :D

KANDINSKY'S THOUGHTS
Random exerpts from "Concerning the Spiritual in Art" by Wassily Kandinsky, 1977 Dover Edition of 1914 translation "The Art of Spiritual Harmony." (ISBN:0-486-23411-8)

• "I value those artists who are really artists ... who consciously or unconsciously, in an entirely original form, embody the expression of their inner life; who work only for this end and cannot work otherwise."

• "Every work of art is the child of its age and, in many cases, the mother of our emotions. It follows that each period of culture produces an art of its own which can never be repeated. Efforts to revive the art-principles of the past will at best produce an art that is still-born. ... Such imitation is mere aping. Externally the monkey completely resembles a human being; he will sit holding a book in front of his nose, and turn over the pages with a thoughtful aspect, but his actions have for him no real meaning."

• "Our minds, which are even now only just awakening after years of materialism, are infected with the despair of unbelief, of lack of purpose and ideal. The nightmare of materialism, which has turned the life of the universe into an evil, useless game, is not past; it holds the awakening soul still in its grip. Only a feeble light glimmers like a tiny star in a vast gulf of darkness. This feeble light is but a presentiment, and the soul, when it sees it, trembles in doubt whether the light is not a dream, and the gulf of darkness reality."

• "After the period of materialist effort ... the soul is emerging, purged by trials and sufferings. Shapeless emotions such as fear, joy, grief, etc., which belonged to this time of effort, will no longer greatly attract the artist. He will endeavor to awake subtler emotions, as yet unnamed. Living himself a complicated and comparatively subtle life, his work will give to those observers capable of feeling them lofty emotions beyond the reach of words."

Although use of the word lofty seems to me to come from an antiquated paradigm of heirarchical classes of existence, this last statement really captures why the works that I do need to be visual and not verbal. Visual art has the ability to communicate not only on a sub-verbal or pre-verbal level, but on many levels, expressing many aspects of a concept simultaneously. This gestalt experience of an aspect of being can only happen in a non-linear medium such as visual art and it allows the more subtle effects of more simple experiences to be conveyed.

For instance - what is joy?
There are many ways to experience joy. Creating a simple allegorical image of the experience of joy is impossible. It happens on too many levels, for too many reasons and with too many repercussions.

STELLAR FLAME

Addresses the experience of joy that comes from an opening of the heart. Frequently experienced at deep levels of meditation or during breakthrough Reiki sessions or after successful removal of emotional blocks through hypnosis, this opening to universal connection with all life can course through your entire being, the joy raising not only the spirit and mind, but premeating right down to the physical, cellular level.

WAVES

Addresses the joy of the opening of the heart at another level. Union with another individual soul, whether expressed physically or not, creates a compromise, a slight dissolution of the soul. In blending with another's energy, we surrender some of what we are to become something we've not been before. There is growth in this surrender and a powerful, joyful release of our contained sense of self at the same time we assert ourselves onto another. It can almost be a case of two souls merging like atoms in a super-collider.

New to Blogging

This blog will take the place of large section of my website at http://www.rosemarywessel.com .
Here I'll share my works in progress to answer what's probably the most frequent question I get - How'd you do that?!.
I'll also post any upcoming shows or events here.

As always - I love comments. Positive or not, please feel free.

Current show -
Old Courthouse Gallery
99 Main St., Northampton, MA - USA
(Corner of Main and Rte. 5 - entrance at 15 Gothic Street)

Opening reception
February 9, 2007, 5-8 pm
Main Street entrance will be open.