Today I really enjoyed my walk home from class. It was such a relaxing, in the moment experience. I felt like I needed to get “lost” (in a good way) lost in the city, lost in my mind (to take a short break from thinking about my work), lost in the culture of Savannah. At the beginning of the quarter our Studio Issues class read an article from A Field Guide for Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnik. I sort of revisited this article last night as I was organizing all of my articles from past and present classes. It was a good article to start the quarter off with and I’ve thought about it throughout the quarter at various times.
Anyways, back to my walk home. So for maybe twenty to thirty minutes I reached out and grabbed this opportunity to get lost and enjoy myself. I stopped at the Pinnacle Gallery and it was one of those days where I didn’t intend to walk by, it just happened. Its always fun to see what I walk by and what places I decide to go in.
Danny Simmons: Spiritual Rhythms is at the Pinnacle Gallery until November 23rd. I was attracted to the colors that he chose for his paintings. They were beautiful shades of blended color and texture that cannot be captivated in a photograph. I didn’t even attempt to take a photograph because I knew this experience was about what I was seeing then and there, and what I would remember when I left. In some of the paintings I was captivated by the mood created by color and the close up views of these colors that I was attracted to. I could have stood at one painting for hours just looking at the soft texture and color.
Two of the quotes in his exhibition book really stood out to me: ” Vibrant abstract forms are joined to one another by a continuous black outline, and they seem to dance upon painterly monochromatic surfaces.” and ” Simmons’ paintings and drawings do not have the forced notion of ‘what you see is what you get’; they possess and ‘inner necessity’, giving viewers the opportunity to respond in the same subjective spiritual manner in which the work is made.” I responded to these quotes the most with my experience at the Pinnacle Gallery. If you get a chance you should stop by because the experience at the Gallery is more inspirational than the photographs online. Click here for more about Danny Simmons.
One more thing and then I’ve got to get to get back to work. One of my professors posted this for our class to read and I thought it might help those of you out there who haven’t accepted this blogging world yet. It’s an insightful article that I thought I would share. It has even helped me to understand and think about blogs in a new way. “Why I Blog” by Andrew Sullivan. So I’ll leave you with that and enjoy the weekend!
Some of you may have seen the latest issue of Fiber Arts and one of the artists featured, Diem Chau, really got me thinking. Diem Chau embroiders on silk organza and layers this over porcelain dish ware. She works with the concepts of memory & mystery. The article in Fiber Arts is really interesting and has inspired me to continue to research and learn about this artist. I’ll post some of her work & please visit her site at 
Dichotomy
October 28, 2008 · Leave a Comment
I would like to share something that we are discussing in my Artist as Designer class with Cat Chow.
“Dichotomy between/of: the conceptual and the three-dimensional, the scientific and the romantic, the rational and the irrational, the geometric and the organic, the abstract and the figurative, the simple and the complex, the rigid and the pliable, resisting and letting go, the permanent and the ephemeral, the horizontal and the vertical, feeling/emotion and physical form, joining and cutting, construction and destructive, destruction and reconstruction, breaking and repairing, tenderness and violence, love and hate, harmony and conflict, frustration and happiness, cusses and failure, birth and death, youth and age, the isolated individual and the shared awareness of the group, the one and the other, the private and the public, sculpture and environment, art and life, addition and subtraction, interiority and exteriority, verticality and horizontality, process and object, creative vision and the final result, natura naturans and natura naturata, the passive and the active, mind and matter, repetition and difference.”
- Louise Bourgeois
I read an interview with Louise Bourgeois from the book PressPLAY: Contemporary Artists in Conversation and I found it really interesting to read her thoughts about memory. I don’t necessarily relate to her views on this subject directly but I do connect to it at some level. It has certainly made me think about memory from a different perspective. The one thing that sticks in my mind is how she stated that she wanted to give her work permanence. I really relate to that statement and have wrote down that exact sentence several times.
I have really enjoyed reading interviews in this book and definitely recommend it to anyone interested in contemporary artists. It has been really beneficial to read about different artists’ thought processes.
Categories: Class with Cat Chow · Fall Quarter 2008 · I need your comments · Research