The Value of Art

On the first day of my exhibition, Tree of Life, I sold my image, Cherry Blossoms, to a woman who had never bought a piece of art before.

Some people buy art as an investment. One day Artist X might (hey, gambling is about risk too) become famous and abracadabra, lots of money is made. But there is more than one kind of value.

When I was a girl, my mother gave me a small wedgewood vase for my birthday. You know traditional wedgewood: neoclassical imagery - an 18th century fantasy of ancient Greek women and children in toga-esque gowns flowing in white relief over a dusky blue background. Images a romantic girl would love - and I did. As well as feeding my dreams of fancy ladies preening, my mother was also teaching the glorious lesson of feasting my eyes on beauty.  As a young teen, she once gave me two posters - a Chagall and a Braque - the art to see in the world was getting more complex. And on my 21st birthday, she asked me what object of hers I would like as a gift. I said, "The Goya print" - an image of a captive man writhing in tortuous chains. Like my mother before me, finally, in my thirties, I put it in the back of a closet because I found it way too graphic and painful to look at. At 21 did I really not understand that the image was straight narrative - Goya chronicled the horrors of war  - as well as working as metaphor? Somehow I didn't. I hung the picture next to Bosch's Christ Carrying the Cross where Christ is surrounded by a sea of seething, grotesque, distorted humanity. I can't quite access anymore what it was that my young adult self got from looking at this pain. (At the same age I also thought grungy bars were about REAL LIFE.) With all these gifts, my mother taught me about the value of art.

I like living with art. I have a marquetry piece – it is of a floating boat constructed from carefully cut veneer shapes made by Ontario artist Stephen Haigh. I never tire of this picture. I float with the boat. Sometimes it reflects back to me an existential aloneness. Sometimes I delight in the 'trick' of the wood grain being the misty horizon line. In our kitchen is an acrylic painting by now deceased Ontario artist Kathleen Brindley of a glorious bunch of beets flying through the wild blue yonder. It conjures for me the same joie-de-vivre that Kathleen had, despite her hard life.

I could see that the woman who bought Cherry Blossoms loved it. She spoke of how hard it is to do things for herself. Once, in a time of prolonged gray, winter misery, she had called up a friend and, very spontaneously, gone for 4 days to the Bahamas. There she swam with dolphins, felt the sun on her skin and remembered that the life of Life was still there. She said that my painting gave her the same feeling.

There were a number of transactions between the woman and I. One of them involved money; another occurred on a different plane. I took a piece of my vision and with craft and experience, I wove it into my painting. Living with Cherry Blossoms, her Seeing is a little deeper, a little richer. That's value.

Obsession

My studio mate asked me a few days ago if I was relieved that all the artwork was finished for the show. Yes! The fear that I wouldn’t make it is behind me; there is all the other work to do – photographing and cataloging, organizing the food for the reception, more invitations to send out and today, hanging the show. So yes, I’m relieved, excited and looking forward to the next chapter. 

But there is another side to this story as well. The truth is I already miss the obsession of working on the show. It is a little healthier than some addictions, but it is still an addiction. When I am in the grip of obsession, I know what I have to do in the morning. There is a force that is steering the boat and I am just along for the ride.  I’m having supper, I’m thinking about the next piece of art. I wake in the middle of the night gripped by the next coat of varnish/soft gel that has to go on. I’m looking out the car window at trees and thinking about new ways to capture their forms. I love this feeling. I love the amazing power it has. I worked 12 hour days for almost 6 weeks straight. When I’m possessed I do yoga every morning, eat healthier and get to bed on time. All that matters is the art. The rest of the world barely exists.

And that, of course, is the problem – the rest of Life. I fortunately have a loving, supportive partner who not only puts up with my emotional disappearance but also aids and abets me with delicious meals and taking over the household management while I am gone. But you can’t say it is a balanced way to live.

So I am returning to the complexity of Life. Now it is time to figure out how to cook again with a broken foot and crutches. While I was possessed, I hardly noticed that I was disabled!. I’ve just  taken in that the seasons have turned from spring to summer. I begin to read the paper again. My long suffering friends will get phone calls, my dog will get more playtime. Most of all Peter will no longer feel he is living alone.

Healthier, but I sure do miss the Force.

Exhibition in Toronto

Click on invitation so that you can read it! And here are the details in case you don't:

Diana Meredith @ Red Eye Studio Gallery

Tree of Life

An exhibition of new mixed media digital art

Reception: July 8  4:30 - 7:00 PM

July 7 - July 25, 2010; Wed-Sun 12-5

RedEye Studio Gallery

The Distillery District

Case Goods Warehouse

Building 74 (east of Balzac’s)

55 Mill Street, Toronto

T: 416-366-3393

A Material Girl

In the 70s I went to Sheridan College School of Design and Crafts here in Ontario. In our foundation year we tried out lots of different crafts and, in the latter 2 years, I specialized in ceramics. While in school I made ceramic sculpture and, after graduation, I went on to become a potter. Life took some odd turns, the way it does, and I lost my creative way for many years. Now I’m firmly back on that path and I find that that craft training I had back in the beginning is very central to my way of creating.

I understand now that the way I was taught to be a potter carried with it a particular philosophy and aesthetic. At the time I was just an 18, 19, 20 year old having fun making pots. It was the early 70s and so some of the ideas I received at school were part of the hippie zeitgeist of the times - handmade was good, natural materials were good, mass production and plastic were bad. We were taught that making objects well mattered. It was as important to make the underside of a teapot, chair or rug as finished and beautiful as its public face. We were taught that Form followed Function. One defined the purpose of the object and then found the simplest form that met the purpose. We were taught to know and respect our materials, that the material itself, the clay, wood, silver or wool would guide us in the making of the finished object. We were taught that techniques mattered, but that they weren’t an end in themselves. Design and ideas were equally relevant. In ceramics we followed the tradition of Bernard Leach, the English potter who had studied in Japan in the 1930s and, in the mid to late 20^th century, was considered the father of western studio pottery. Chinese, Korean and in particular Japanese aesthetics were held up as the paragon of beauty. No curlicues or ornamentation for us. The Japanese Tea Ceremony was preached, though, I confess now, that my understanding of it was rather sketchy - falling vaguely in my young psyche somewhere between English high tea and Catholic high mass (with some kimonos and hand made pots thrown in). We particularly took to a concept called Wabi - that the imperfection that happened in a creative moment was as important as technique and that an object that showed its Wabi - its mistakes - was more beautiful than a perfect one. Yet this couldn’t be done with artifice. The idea, the design, the making and the materials were really all one integrated act and the truly beautiful object would reflect this integration. I now see that it was all rather Buddhist.

The art scene at the time I was in craft and design school was busy throwing off technique and was embracing conceptualism and by the by, disdaining us craft types. We, on the other hand, felt as if we had secret knowledge about  beauty and how things were made. We secretly believed that there was no difference between craft and art.

Fast forward 25 years or so. I found my way back to art and, to my great surprise, found that the computer was my central tool. Working in Photoshop involved an almost vertical learning curve. I plowed through all that technique because I was so seduced by the immense visual possibilities offered. Early on I noticed that as I struggled (and oh I struggled!) to learn what particular tools or techniques were doing, my images were being shaped by the techniques. When I understood that Levels was controlling the shadows and highlights, I began to see the tonality in my images more clearly. Layer masking allowed me to melt my image components together seamlessly and lo and behold I was madly melting images together. As I dug deeper into the software, I secretly began to think that it was all rather like craft. If you don’t do your selections well, the image looks shoddy. Sometimes I felt as if I was shaping the pixels with my hands.

As my work developed I became interested in printing with all its attendant possibilities, techniques and problems. This led to what I’m up to these days – mixed media digital printing. I struggle to find a way to make acrylic paint and digital printing work together and as I do that – which is really an endless series of technical/design problems to solve – my images are shaped by that journey.

Now that my image making includes a large component of analog techniques, I’m working with my hands again. I’m preparing substrates, making patterns with goopy modeling paste, staining backgrounds with acrylic washes and discovering new ways of applying acrylic paint on top of digital ink. I love the feel of the tools and the materials. I love how the time passes as I roll coats of protective varnish over the final images. Recently, I’ve even starting studying Japanese brushwork, Sumi-e; so that I’m right back to that striped down, essential Japanese aesthetic I learned about in craft and design school.  I love that the more present I stay with my materials and ideas, the more powerful the work is. However, my 70s sensibilities have taken at least one major hit – ironically I work now almost totally in plastics. So much for the natural materials.

The images I make grow profoundly out of the tools, materials and techniques that I use whether they are digital or analog. My art making is a synthesis of my physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual selves. I love doing it because I have to be so present & connected to make it work. This way of making images is grounded deeply in the craft education I received at Sheridan. I really am a material girl.