Studio Notes - March 2022
Many ideas in the works, always a good feeling. Now the work of making them real.
To read:
A beautiful poem about art and life, very timely. And to appreciate it even more, click here to listen to it.
Musée des Beaux Arts
About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just
walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy
life and the torturer’s horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
-W. H. Auden
To see:
Stories: Women of the Bible in Contemporary Book Arts, Maine Jewish Museum, Portland. March 6 to April 28
From my curator’s statement: “Stories give form to time, behavior, emotion and the physical world. Without stories, there would just be randomness. There is always truth in a good story even if it never really happened. And so it is with women in the Bible. We look to their stories to tell us a truth.
And who better than book artists to retell a story? These five artists, Jessyca Broekman, Rebecca Goodale, Jan Owen, Annie Lee-Zimerle and Sandy Weisman were asked to respond to the stories of women they found between Genesis and Malachi in the Bible. They were asked to look at their stories with a perspective both contemporary and personal. Here you see the results...beauty, humor, honor, gratitude...in contemporary book form.”
To do:
If I knew what to do, I would tell you. Suggestions: If you pray, pray. If you can afford it, give to Ukraine relief. If you have opinions about American action in Ukraine, contact your representatives. If you are an artist, refer to the Auden poem above and decide how you proceed. If you are a human being, laugh, love and grieve, preferably all at the same time. But do not, please, do not give up on hope.
Coming up:
The 11th Annual Portland Show at Greenhut Gallery, Portland. Forty-six Maine artists on the theme of the city of Portland in various mediums. Always a community favorite. April 7 to May 28, 2022.
The Sensuous Line at Cove Street Arts in Portland. Drawing, wirework, paper and rattan sculpture, painting, steel, basketry, weaving, printmaking exploring the line as structure, content and expression. June 16 to August 6, 2022. I am curating and participating with nine other Maine artists.
Spring debuts this month. Crocuses are rehearsing their lines for opening night and the birds are tuning up. The audience is oh-so-ready. Welcome, Spring. Let the play begin!
All best,
Lissa