only in daydreams...

The sky was a beautiful steel gray, fall is upon us, that sky doesn't lie. Burnt oranges, crispy golden yellows, and fiery reds glimmering against the hardness of the sky begging it to be warm again. The streets turned into dirt paths, cars into horse drawn carriages, buildings disappeared, rolling hills and fields bordered by thick green forests appeared before my very eyes. I held my baby in my arms, clutching him even closer for warmth. My older two boys, bouncing around in their seats, looked around in wide-eyed wonder. I had no other care or worry in the world, as I held my loves tight and close to me. I had what I always had dreamed of and longed for...my family, my home. My body warmed with invigoration as our home came into view and the thought of sitting in front of the fire with the boys brought a smile to my lips. We were home again.

Baby steps

Seeing as the end of 2010 is just around the corner, I have been doing a lot of thinking about goals for the new year and I have come up with 3 realistic and attainable accomplishments for 2011.

First, since I am well underway with paintings and drawings at present, I will be choosing 3 of my best pieces to present to the League of Milwaukee Artists in the spring where they hold a jury selection for new members. I have looked at the website several times to guage what my artist peers are producing and I am impressed and challenged :) Hopefully, being part of something like this will give me a little much-needed recognition amongst my peers as well as a boost into hopefully showing in a gallery someday.

Second, I will be choosing my best painting, drawing, and ceramic pieces (both functional and sculptural) to produce quality, solid portfolios that I will be confident in showing to galleries.

Third, I will be applying to a few art fairs in hopes of being accepted into at least one, good one. At the top is of course the Milwaukee festival of the Arts but I am sure I don't have near enough experience to get into something like this. But I have nothing to lose in trying (except for a little $$) but it should be well worth it!

These are 3 goals for my own personal growth as an artist and they coincide with many smaller goals I have with my husband for our future business. Some of these goals for 2011 are, creating a line of modern/classic ceramic goods for the home. Anything from functional dinnerware to decorative and sculptural pieces. We wil also be offering our services around the milwaukee and surrounding area schools for presenting demos/workshops to art classes, etc... For example, raku pottery is always very fun and popular.

In conclusion, I had a pretty good feeling about 2010, and overall, I do think it was a better year than those in our recent past. Although crowded with many things such as having a baby!!, and taking care of two other kids, it was pretty successful in other personal areas for us. I really am excited about 2011. I feel like we are closing a chapter in our lives and starting a new one. We have had 3 beautiful boys, but now I can say, I am ready to take on this new challenge. I see great things for us in our future, and hopefully all of our hard work will pay off! :)

moving on and looking out

yesterday i had a revelation. I had some images stored away for over a year in my mind for a painting i wanted to do. Yesterday i finally started that painting. It seems to be merging quite well with where i am at mentally with my work right now. I have been looking to move forward and step outside my usual comfort zone of straight up figurative sculpture, painting, and drawing. I plan on merging that with concepts and ideas on the current state of our socioeconomic landscape. Merging figures, landscapes and literal statements using a variety of media and techniques. I have been hoping to explore different painting styles and media combinations for sometime. It seems to fit well with the current theme i am researching.

Piece #1 standing in lines

A statement on our current divide of socioeconomic class, the downtrodden state-of-mind of a group of people, the hopelessness of unemployment and disapperance of attaining the American dream for many families. Standing in lines waiting for a chance to get help with jobs, heating assistance, food, healthcare, and shelter as each passing year people get enveloped deeper and deeper into their role as "the poor." Dreams of a home, a job, and a certain quality-of-life float away with the clouds in the sky. People are labeled as such and walk around feeling the eyes of others demeaning them everywhere they go, being looked down on as worthless, uneducated, and lazy. In a constant purgatory state between having the hope to come out of the cloud of depression, hopelessness and having the wear-with-all to get through another year of struggling to survive or ultimately succumbing to the fate you fear has become your reality and your future. This is where many people exist in time and space. Not really a part of one or the other, in a state of anxiety, confusion, depression, and survival as the sickening divide between the rich and the poor gets even larger.

lost in a literal translation

It's the inevitable roller coaster of the psyche of an artist. As soon as things are going along nicely and you seem to be happy with your work, you get hit in the face with a your own self righteous reality. As I have been merrily working along, I was perusing Milwaukee area art galleries online one night last week to see what kind of work is out there (my competition/my peers), I got this sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. My work doesn't look anything like the work that is out there...in other words high end art. This doesn't really mean it is worth what people will pay for it and honestly i found much of it to be self-indulgent and pretentious. However, I began to see my recent work as too "art student". As I backed the chair up from the computer desk and turned to tell my husband that I was afraid my work was too... (pausing to think of the word) he said "personal?" almost before I even finished my sentence.

I know my current work is personal and my intention with my work was to brush up on my drawing skills and maybe prepare something for a future painting. But I have come to have a soft spot for these works more than just painting preps. I love the softness of the line and shadow, the stark yet quiet contrast of the light and dark, the peacefulness of the pose, and the simplicity of the subject matter. Maybe this is because I have grown as a person since I have had my children and have a respect and appreciation for those subtle moments. Maybe that's all these works are meant to be. AlthoughI have always struggled to come up with something "avante guard". For example, I was browsing through a website of an old professor of mine from college and was awe struck my his artist's statement. It was pages long! And very much in depth not only about a culture of people and the way they live, but about the geographics of the landscape and it's isolation and the affect this has on the people who live there. It was very much a careful and in-depth study and interpretation of a socially relevant subject matter. I was really intimidated and suddenly I felt very small as an artist. And i didn't necessarily get it...what I do get is what i know. Am I doing the one thing I can't stand about other artists; creating selfish art?? After so many years of creating art in school and trying to please professors and getting through grueling critiques, I made a promise to myself that I am going to create art here on out because I love it. I have nothing to prove anymore. But I still strive to be a sensitive and relevant artist.

I tend to drift toward the human psyche when I create my art. I go inward, not out. It's who I am. But I wonder if this is my calling to create "outside the box" so to speak. Getting out of my comfort zone may be just what I need to do...

turning the page...

Since i have been creating art, most of it has been of dark subject matter. This is completely normal for me, as i am a person who often dwells in the dark parts of the mind. I am fascinated by all that is capable of the human brain and mind and how that interprets into life's situations. But for awhile now I have felt stuck in this dark realm; that is automatically where I go when i have an idea for a piece. I will never leave that part of me totally, it is a big part of who i am as an artist and a person. In more recent works it is more about the fine line between between the dark and light realms of the mind, or how there must be dark to have light, there is beauty in the breakdown,etc... I have had this need to revisit those pieces and thoughts and i have been struggling as to whether let them be or keep coming back and reinterpreting them. I got this jolt of inpspiration today when i thought of some new pieces...paintings, drawings, and mixed media. Airy and light and delicate, lots of line, contrasts of light, dark, delicate, and strong. I am in a happier and more well-balanced place in my life and it is only normal for the progression of my work to go down that same path. I am excited about this new direction. Like I said, I cannot ever totally leave the dark subject matter, it is me, and it is true to life...you cannot have light without dark. There is just a little more light these days :)

Why art is important cont'd...

So I left off in my first part of this blog sort of "on the fence" about whether an piece of art needs to have a grand meaning in order to be a true piece of ART. But, watching the finale of "The Next Great Artist" last night, I found a truth. What a true piece of art is to me is not only just something that evokes a truth/meaning to the viewer and inspires a connection between the two but also must be technically inspiring as well. Case in point, Peragrin, the last female artist standing in the final three...she had great interpretation through objects and molds that she manipulated in one way or another. But it just felt like something was missing...besides interpreting a thought through objects, what is her artistic skill? I believe the judges may have felt the same thing as me since she did not win the competition. Same as Miles, the other runner up in the competition, who took enlarged pixelated images and displayed them through a conceptual piece. I get that, but to me the concept is what it is; the concept. He forgot the other half of his job which is to tell us the story with his skill as an artist. In my heart I believe art is more than just interpreting an idea...a true artist has to have the technical skill to bring life and humanity to the piece. I think Peragrin and Miles' pieces were more about the object and their literal translation than they themselves using their artistic abilities to subtly convey a story to the viewer.

I know two weeks ago I was critical of Abdi for the opposite reason. He has so much technical skill but he did not put any emotion or heart behind his piece. In the finale, something must have clicked for him. He was the only artist, in my mind, that used his beautiful drawing, painting, and sculpting talents and combined it with eloquent thoughts, stories, and ideas to subtly evoke our imaginations and really draw us in.

I cannot answer the question "what is art?" I don't know that it's meant to be answered and it is most definitely not my place in this world to believe i have a solid answer to that question. It's comparable to asking "is there a God?" The question alone evokes many emotions and strong opinions in people and each person has there own answer whether it is belief, disbelief, uncertainty, etc...But we all know in our hearts and minds that we are only human and we do not know. I can only try to piece together things that i am learning along the way by being the best artist i can be by being true to myself as an artist and as a person. All i can do is keep challenging myself in order to seek the truth about art and life.

Pensive 5: Dreaming

Sleep to Dream

sleep to dream, sleep to dream
i live the day, so i can sleep to dream

dead alive, awake in dreams.
extraordinary things,
meaningful things.
this is why i sleep to dream.

i am a hero
when i live in dreams.
in my sleep
i live in dreams.

sleep to dream, sleep to dream.
i live the day, so i can sleep to dream.

night fall brings so many things.
in my dreams
i am me again.

this is why i sleep to dream...

Pensive 4: Why art is important

I'd be lying if i said this subject did not take up a lot of my brain space. I guess it's important to me since i feel the need to justify why it is i do what i do (or want to do!) I've tried to be one of those people that says the meaning of it all doesn't matter. If you can make a beautiful piece of work for the sake of it's beauty and feel no need or reason to justify it's creation and existence, then that is ok...I, however, have failed at that. I cannot, as hard as i try, just do the work.

I don't remember ever having to think about it because ever since art always had meaning. It was just another way of expressing my emotion and is an important extension of who i am. I know there were times that i used to paint something because it "looked cool" but there were also times that i jumped out of my bedroom window with a bottle of liquor at midnight because i wanted to be cool. We do things in our evolution as a person that simply does not make sense. Immaturity and ignorance will do that to a person.

Music and art were always an integral part of my life growing up. It was pure and raw back than. No one questioned how or why i did what i did and now that i am older, i wouldn't expect anything more from a person who teaches secondary level art classes. No insult intended, it's just through my experiences at that time that i came to form such an opinion about art taught at the secondary level. I had always believed in art and it's importance, but I had no confidence in myself as an artist back then, and it wasn't until college when i truly though, hey, i think i may have something here. Sure, i was not the perfect technician, but i realized there was something behind what i was doing that many of my peers (a) didn't have, and (b) had no understanding why they should have.

I was struggling with a pretty severe and debilitating anxiety disorder around that time but it was when i was making my art or debating about art that i was alive and invigorated. I had one art history class in particular that sealed the deal for me in terms of meaning in art. It brought two major truths to my attention, which are (1) that life imitates art and (2) the role of art as a record of humanity.


Art Imitates Life
If art is supposed to imitate life, than it should be full of meaning. Do you fall in love just to fall in love? Do you have a child just for the sake of creating a life? I think there are people that do this. Most of us fall in love because we've found a person we really connect with and we deeply care for that person and want to create a life with them...because we want a meaningful existence. We want a purpose, we want to love and be loved back, we want to be good people and be successful and raise a happy family. All of the things that life is about. If art imitates life, then this is what art should be about. Connecting, loving, giving, receiving, sharing, experiencing, emotions, etc...
So is art without meaning considered art at all? Is there any art without meaning? The person doing the creating must have had some intention of portraying a thought or a feeling just in the act of wanting to create the piece. For example, some critics may say that a beautiful piece of pottery stands as a craft and not a piece of art. I tend to disagree. I have been in the presence of beautiful works of pottery that connects to me on an emotional level due to the content of it's form and beauty. Do we have a right to judge the content of the art? Do we judge the content of a person's life. Definitely.

Art is a record of humanity.

Art is a record of our life, our culture, our society, our world at this moment in time in the existence of human life. Open up an art history book and you are getting both a visual and written history on the world. I believe a person can gain more knowledge from looking at art history. You get all the facts in regular history books, but with art history, you get to experience the state of the world's cultures and events on a very personal and emotional level. Future generations will look back on art created in this time and see our political views, our ways of life, our cultural rituals, etc... It will portray what was happening in history and what our hopes and dreams are for our future as a human race. Art is a permanent thread in the fabric of life. A reflection of who we are as a people. So if there are people who want to make "empty art" or simply art for art's sake then so be it. That is simply a reflection of who that person is and that person is a part of our culture and society as much as the next.


In saying that, the interpretation of our society through art may not be so literal. For example, if i look at Duchamp's "Fountain" piece of 1917 in a literal translation, i would think that artists were really into displaying urinals as art. And that is obviously not the case. But when i look at this piece and analyze the social and cultural trends of that time, this piece represents an important movement in the the way people began to perceive art and life at that time. If a urinal is accepted as a piece of art, than anything must be acceptable as art. Then art does not have to have beauty or meaning, in fact, it is grotesque and meaningless. And that certainly is the testimony of the piece. If we look at the whole lot of artists doing art for art's sake at this period of post-modernism, than we see that there was a whole cultural movement of art for art's sake. And if life imitates art, than what does this say about life...it is ok to live life without purpose or meaning and that's exactly what we accept and do. We do what we want, when we want, and how we want. We are selfish and do not care about content, morality. or consequences. And trust me, i am not on the verge of spouting out about religion and morality, etc...in fact, i am agnostic verging on atheist, however, i am speaking about the state of humanity.


Recently i have been watching a show called "the next great artist" (and trust me, it is anything but that!) that again has ignited a fire inside me about the content of art. To me, it's simple. The contestants must fulfill challenges in order to move ahead and ultimately becoming the "next great artist" (haha!) One challenge stands out in which the artists were instructed to use child hood art supplies and inspirations to create a meaningful piece about how their childhood influenced the person/artist that they are today. One of the artists drew a bunch of small symbols (nike, ying/yang, sports logos, etc...) because that is what his classmates would ask him to do in school because he was the "artist kid". Is it me, or did that challenge completely blow over his head? Is that a sign of how empty we are becoming as people? There was nothing thoughtful or meaningful about that at all. If that person is going to become "the next great artist" then i am scared for art!


Another thing that sparked me on this show was a statement by a "famous New York painter" by the name of Richard Phillips who was a guest judge. He advised one of the contestants, who was having concerns about how her art would connect with her viewers, that "she should not worry about the viewer." If you just worry about connecting with yourself then you'll magically connect with the viewer. I feel bad for that poor girl who was given such a horrible piece of advice. If art imitates life, is that how you live your life? By not worrying about what anyone else thinks/feels? Just worrying about yourself. Sadly, this seems to run rampant in our culture and is definitely reflected in art that we see today. I always think about the viewer, I do not create art for my own self indulgent wants. I create art to connect with other people and i think about everyone including myself, my children and family, and any person who may view the piece.

I think i will always struggle with this debate inside my head and heart. But, i am definitely coming into a better place about what art means not only to me, but to our society as a whole. I am constantly seeking new challenges and running into new questions on this topic. For instance, can we ever answer the question "what is art?" It may not be meant to be answered. Maybe categorizing and judging art would take away everything about art that makes it so mysterious and wonderful; the freedom to express oneself in any medium and realm imaginable. But there certainly are some constant truths that cannot be denied: humans will never be able to be without art; art and life imitate each other and art is a reflection of who we are as a society. Life and art are constantly challenging, and evolving alongside each other and one cannot survive without the other. I know a little more about what art means to me. It makes me connect to people and humanity and become an empathetic person. Art also allows me to express and understand my own thoughts and emotions, so in turn, i can evolve and grow as a person. By searching for meaning in life through art and looking for meaning in art through life i have become more enlightened of how and why people feel about and experience life. And i think that is what we all strive for in the end...not so much in understanding our literal questions and wonders about life, but connecting to others about the things in life matter the most to us. And this is why we create and express ourselves in such a manner; this is art.

Pensive 3: Reasons

I feel like I need to address the "dark" subject matter and imagery in my art. Not only for the sake of the viewer of the piece, but also to put the pieces of the puzzle together in my own head. I do not make art to exploit my problems, whine about past and present afflictions, etc... I have always been fascinated with the darkness of the human mind; the human mind has amazing power and control over both a person's mental and physical well-being. I am not intending to come across as an angst-ridden person who never grew up emotionally. That is one of the worries i have that the viewer may interpret this as.

To me there is a fine line between the dark and light in life. You may find yourself dwelling in the dark regions of your mind, but it is what you do with it and learn from it that counts. From dark, comes light. Sort of a "beauty in the breakdown" type of scenario. That is why I am fascinated by the delicate nature of the balance between the struggle of the "dark/light" in my own life. It is a very familiar situation in my life. Ever since I was a small child, I struggled with a severe anxiety and panic disorder. This is where I get imagery of either "continuing to fall or learning to fly" or as in the piece "Fear not, for you're still breathing" where i have images of a surreal figure coming to "save" a person who is on the brink of death. I think in my own mind, that "ghost image" is me coming to my own rescue. It is symbolic of the realization of taking control of one's life and not letting the situation control you. Which also brings up another fascination of life, which is how the human mind can be so strong in which we can take control of bad situations and make them good, however, we can also be swept away at any second without any chance of controlling what happens to us.

These issues come from a real place inside of me and i am very connected with and attatched to them. I have worked very hard to become in tune with not only my mental self, but also my physical being. However, no matter how personal these issues are to me, I always strive to make a connection with my viewers. It s my main goal to create things that can help people in some way to connect with others and themselves. So it is not my intention to be a "dark and disturbed" person/artist, but to explore the delicate beauty of coming out of the dark and realizing the light.

Two of my favorite quotes:

"The night is always darkest before the dawn."
"Cast me gently into morning, for the night has been unkind."

Pensive 2

my art has been my therapy over the years. Letting the things out and dealing with them. Mulling them over for hours, days, weeks, months...even years, and then trying to figure them out...has helped me come to terms with the issues in my life. Once the piece is created i feel like i have put it to rest. Although, i am now revisiting certain pieces, i don't think things were resolved or dealt with at the time that they were originally created. But once i preserved these issues i feel like i can move on.

Now that i am at a different point in my life, i feel like i can properly deal with certain things in my life in a rational way. This allows the creative process to be what it should be. Before i was such a mess of emotions trying to release things into my work, i couldn't focus on many technical aspects of them. I have learned that i need to keep things in perspective and not let my emotions control my life. I need to focus on connecting with my audience in the creation of the piece. I cannot solely make it about me. That is selfish, and selfish art does not connect with other people, therefore completely eradicating the purpose of why i make art.