The Clipboard file or from the Archives

drawing 101: when i teach beginners i journey through my roots, revisitng my old teachers as i transmit the knowledge so generously imparted to me. am always a little surprised by the struggle to learn triangulation, plotting, training the hand to follow the eye, keeping the eye on the object and off the picture plane, trusting the hand to follow. and using the point of the pencil instead of the smeary gray mass created when the hand has not yet learned to stay off the drawing surface.

but i like the side of the pencil, says the student. and i say there will be time enough to fool around with various ways of laying down the pencil mark. for now, just learn to see and keep your marks clear with understanding instead of playing with the ambivalent grays.

Ferrini Mirror, or what i did yesterday and today

Ferrini Mirror progress report

ferrini is coming into relief. all of the words have died down, now all there is when i work is the landscape of his visage, the materials at hand. i have run out of gold leaf. i have run out of silver leaf. i now work with what i have left of the aluminum leaf and some indigo colors.

and this brings me to my favorite Thurber response to his editor's request for a progress report on his writing: 'well, i have drunk up all of the rum.'

The Last of Nana's Garden: creeping veronica

during the few months prior to nana's move, after gramp's stroke, we systematically dug up selections from her garden; a ritual we practiced everytime i moved to a place where i had a little earth to garden.

'here take this pretty blue flower.' the pretty blue flower which we continued to pull from of the lawn edge, summer after summer. planted this flower at 8 rio drive, garrettson avenue, pine street, 22 magnolia ave, katy's garden, nancy's garden, laurie's garden, the church garden. yesterday i spent some time searching the church grounds for some of my plants and found a very small patch of the creeping veronica. i dug these up, ready to be planted in the next garden.

i will go back to the church garden for donald's paeonies, bow's lillies, nana's phlox (i hope they are the vintage white), looked for the bergamont, no luck. i also found some of the fringed bleeding heart from my garden, and of course, the 16th generation of self sown cosmos! will search the church cemetary for any of the wildflowers planted by the children.

i think katy has some of the bergamont and the last surviving ozark mountain primrose. nana freely and wildly collected flower specimens wherever she traveled. her garden had plants from arkansas, oklahoma, california, connecticut, new jersey, maine, the woods of cape ann, mrs. dean's garden, her neighbor's gardens.

the very last thing she helped me pack up was the dirt. here, get that dirt. that is good dirt.

The Molco Button!

and some more Vintage Buttons

and More Vintage Buttons!

More Vintage Buttons!

Buttons, buttons, buttons

When we get a vintage dress in need of buttons, we check our supply for a match, or a close match. I have been sifting, researching, and now realize, that some of the buttons are worth more than the clothes we attach them to. Yesterday, I discovered we have some large and over-sized Molco butoons in pristine condition. The five star gold leaf shape is covered by a perfect translucent dome.

some opalescent buttons and some metal picture buttons (pic is upside down to let us all enjoy the Knight in Shining Armor.

It is always springtime in England

five years ago today, it was raining, just as it is raining today.
five years ago yesterday, donald's headache had returned.
five years ago today, donald slept at 2, his arm slung over the side of the bed
moonstruck
he glowed
i reached to touch
then retreated to the other
bed
he finally slept.
five years ago today he collapsed
yesterday eb reminded me
(when she asked what day it was)
wednesday (me)
she asked what date?
the 7th!
(she)the last time my father was fully alive

and yesterday her school said
she could not walk
the graduation walk
on Mom's Day
because of a paper snafu, although all parties
are assured the funds will be immediately released
upon the receipt of the faxed income verification (being done this am, today)

Today eb will speak with a higher up.

She (eb) closed her call with
and now i have to tell someone else the story, again.

and five years ago, this sunday
we spent the day with donald watching the subtle
signs of life
as masses of newly shed cherry blossoms
danced the inverted tornado
which opened
around that SICU bay.

the thought passed between us, my daughter and I
he would ask if we noticed
that on PBS
it was always springtime in England.

Glamour 1968 and The Painter known as Balthus

I've been looking at old Glamour magazines from '68/'69. The September '68 College issue (50cents!) features Serious Little Dresses photoed by Stupakoff.

The compositions reminded me of Balthus. I can't find the exact pics on-line, but I think the following from 1942 give a pretty good idea of why I was reminded of his paintings.


"The Living Room"


"The Patience"
I spent a long winter a dozen years ago copying his work. I destroyed the work in late spring.

My Art Collection: Ellyn Kroeger

Vincent Ferrini Project

Here's the current progress. Have introduced the silver mirror, refined some of the shapes. Will keep working both sides. It will be backed with thalo green light and gold leaf. I work everything out on the surface. I rarely use preliminary drawings, but, I do use reference material.

Vincent would not look at my unfinished work, whether in words or visuals.

He admonished: the poem comes fully realized, or it is not a poem.

ahem.

I try to leave each day's work 'fully realized', whole in that moment between action and inaction.

The New Perch!

This is my new perch (when it is ready):


My new nest aka My Good Workspace will be up there beneath the ridgepole:


This magpie will look at this every day.

my response to a friend's encounter with modern art that she didn't like and didn't get

i am an artist. i know what i like. i know what is art. there is a lot of 'art' that is not "ART". we all know "ART" when we see it, feel it, because it carries that certain unidentifiable: the transcendent.

then there is art that requires a conversation: you know it is art, you don't know why, you know you don't understand, and yet, something gets stirred, one finds one thinks about it, one goes back to question again,

and then there is art that you don't get right away, and then one day far into another future, something happens. the art pops into your head and you go AHA.

and then there is art that is just plain ugly. and that is it:

"there is no such thing as good or bad art.

there is just the beautiful and the ugly."
(a paraphrase of some famous artist, the name momentarily forgotten.)


look at rembrandt's side of butchered beef. it is a horrible subject. it is one of the most beautiful paintings in the world.

Audrey Flack said (again a paraphrase and rumination on her writings in "Art and Soul"): "Art is an energy exchange. the artist with the subject, the artist with materials, the artist with self. then the art goes out into the world and people view the painting. again another energy exchange. (remember physics? anything observed closely is changed) perhaps what makes Rembrandt resonate is that there have been so many viewings, so many energy exchanges, the work vibrates and resonates."

wow...i am surprised i have so much to say. thank you for allowing me to use up some of your white space to write. i think i will copy and paste this to my journal.

deb.

ps: in feng shui anything that is pointed, phallic, are energy daggers, not conducive to a healthy living or work environment. what if someone walked into them? i once got snarled by a snarley curley copper wire wall sculpture thing. not good. not ART, just violent.

St. Peter's Windows continue

Today I noticed that this warehouse is being re-habbed, or overhauled. There is a dumpster outside these three windows. The windows are getting broken. The dumpster is filling. There is a bus parked outside one of the bay doors. The school bus looks as if it is someone's home. I think this warehouse used to be known as the FBI Bldg. Duh, as a kid I always wondered why our Federal Bureau was in Gloucester. Duh, it was a family logo. I think it was Frontiero Bros. Inc.

UP-DATED: Thank you Joey! This is the former GMF building, next door to the FBI building.



I'm just a Gloucester girl with lots of memory and the desire to document my soujourn here.

I want to produce paintings based on these photos in reverse glass with gold and silver leaf.

I am in need of windows to paint on.

Ferrini, beginning

I've had images stuck in my head of the first time I met Vincent Ferrini, almost 30 years ago at a party in East Gloucester. Two white hands came towards my head followed by a blurry white face with the words 'moon face', then a laugh and he disappeared into the dark. This artwork is the beginning of my attempt to document the various intereactions I had with him.

The painting is an 18x24" piece of glass, drawn on the reverse with white china marker and a Sharpie, then layered with egg glue and silver leaf. The egg glue keeps the silver from turning into a mirror. A mirrored layer will be applied after color is introduced and the shapes are refined.

I received an email yesterday that there is grant money available for 6 artists to do public art works based on Vincent's and/or other Cape Ann poets' writing. One must be a member of SeArts to apply. My work is not based on his writing, it is a visual response to his physical 'i am everything' .

I am not a member of SeArts (tight budget: $45 is food and gas for a few days! ouch!), so I will I not apply for the grant.

I will make the work.

Other images:

Vincent driving his red car to Magnolia (I often found him in front of me when I went to my studio).

Vincent battling dry weeds in a little weedy patch in downtown Gloucester (it no longer exists).

The clearest visions: his hands, hat, sunglasses and a jagged little mouth which he held kind of straight and tense when he spoke.

Flint Public Library

15 children (age 8-15) will learn to draw next week at the Flint Public Library. I will teach them how to see via the drawing of the portrait.
Tomorrow I will go to the Art Supply and purchase 15 set-ups for children, 1 set-up for me:

Set-ups to include:

Masonite Backing Board
Good Quality Drawing Pad
Ebony Pencil
White Rubber Erasers
Clamps

the size will have to be no larger than 18x24, and that might be too big. the room has tables. ugh. am thinking about how the children can spread out to work without keeping us all confined to a very tight cubicle. draw in the hallway? use windows as easels? chair set-ups will be better.

the library is in a cramped temporary location. the new addition is almost complete and the library will return home to its entire collection within the near future.

back to the space constraint,

chairs and hinged lapboards. very inexpensive to construct with tape and masonite boards. very good.

add tape (artist and duct) to list and large drawing pad for me.

4 hours to teach the construction of the head.

I asked the librarian to place 2 objects on her desk: a tennis ball and a square box, with this question:

What shape is the human head?
put the answers in the box.
sort of a guessing game, will read answers at class opening.

Bag Lady

I'm constantly moving stuff, from home to the studio, from the studio to home, from here to work, from here to various house sits. I will be moving my home again, within the month. This will be my 4th move in 5 years. We finished moving the day before EB went away to college. EB will graduate next month from Maine College of Art and return to find her mom in another 'new' homesite. This one will have room for me to move my studio back home. I need private space to work in, and financially it makes sense to pay only one rent, and let the studio and its attendant expenses go. My current studio situation has been cooperative and storefront for more than 10 years; it will be nice to work without other 'eyes' on my work. +I will get to weed out the work.

So, what's in the bags?

upper left: personal stuff: purse, glasses, gloves, etc.
upper right: hand dyed rice paper
midlle right: wet supplies: thinners, paints, etc.
bottom center: the sorted lottery project supplies
middle left: dry supplies, pencils, brushes, supports, silver leaf

Le Beauport: Gloucester MA

Want to see the Gloucester sunset? or sunrise?
Here's the harbor cam (turned off at night)
hurry, hurry, hurry, before you miss the light.

http://www.01930.com

and here's another facing west in Lane's cove:

http://www.lanescove.us/webcam/

the art and artist are one

"Spoons"
this is the reverse of a mirror. i carved through the coating to reveal the metal, then painted with oil. reflection superimposed in photo.

Haskell View

paint
look
change
relate
complicate

knees
ache
from the squat
i use
to get
this view

down this hill
up that one

our lady spires
telephone poles
lines
rigging

killed the color

there are two
no,
there are three:

one night color
with my window
reflection
suggested

second:
black and white
day
no clouds
value, plotting

third
black and white
night harbor

soon i will
go to
the studio
maybe tomorrow.

oh.
i forgot to tell you:
i use acrylic as a meaty watercolor
very good for value studies
i use it as a drawing medium
i do not like acrylic color
and i do not like the way brush strokes flatten out
what i do like
is the easy soap and water clean up.