Quilting Women and Tibetan Monks

I'm a great advocate of finding common links between disparate cultures and people - I make that sense of shared humanity the primary tenet of much of my teaching - so I was pleased to see that today's NYTimes articles about the Quilt exhibit at the Folk Art Museum (the final exhibit before it turns the building over to MOMA) and the Tibetan Arts exhibit at the Newark Museum gave me new material. The organizing principles of quilt making and of the mandalas of Tibetan monks are both reflections of a similar human need - for order, pattern, and regularized meaning and beauty. Quilts seem much less exotic - homey, crafted of familiar low value materials such as simple cottons or even discarded clothing, normally made by women whose arts are traditionally less valued than the brawnier arts of men, they come into being to serve a practical purpose - warmth for a bed and a spark of color amid the drabness of daily life. Tibetan mandalas, on the other hand, are made as a means to touch the divine and act as a form of prayer. They are painstakingly constructed, colored grain of sand by colored grain of sand, according to ancient traditions of iconography, by revered holy men. Part of their meaning is that they never last - like fragile life itself, the physical reality of the mandala is soon dispersed to the winds and gone. What remains is only the truth of the memory. But is that so very different from a quilt? First, note the pictures and see the fine use of geometry and mathematics in both forms. But similarities go deeper: like the iconography of the mandalas quilt patterns were often revered as a connection to a personal or community history with designs being passed down from generation to generation. The Tibetan community of monks relates as well to the communal activity of quilting bees. Yet surely much of the historical handiwork of woman was created painstakingly in isolated living rooms - no matter how much effort went into each careful stitch there might be no one to notice but a few family members. As with the ephemeral mandalas, the creator of a quilt had to find in the act the satisfaction of creation. And with the exception of cloth work preserved with care, like these quilts at the Folk Art Museum, much is gone forever, used up with constant wear - blown away by the winds of time. Both these exhibits display works of great, and very different beauty and meaning, but together they say something deeply true about being human.

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2011/05/12/arts/design/20110513-folk.html
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2011/05/12/arts/design/20110513-tibet.html

Working with Flowers - you're invited!

Flowers, like children, are tricky subjects for artists. Both have such innate sweetness and beauty that the challenge is to find something to say that isn't cloying or sentimental. Flowers have been on my mind lately as I've been preparing work for a show that opens tomorrow. It doesn't hurt that the flowering trees and tulips in my city neighborhood are particularly lush and fragrant this Spring, too - every step out the door brings a feast of color and fragrance. Most people know Van Gogh's Irises - for the extraordinary price they commanded a few years ago as much as for the spectacular image of strong lusty life he created - but he wasn't the only one who tackled the subject and came up with something unique. Georgia O'Keefe is another familiar in the language of art and flowers. Where Van Gogh celebrated the twiny vigor of a healthy patch of earth, O'Keefe stepped up close and gave us intimate, forceful portraits of individual flowers. One of Van Gogh's important influences was Hokusai, who with other Japanese Ukiyo-e artists made prints of familiar scenes - these irises are an example of Hokusai's keen eye and lovely sense of arrangement on a page. One of my favorite flower artists is Rachel Ruysch, a still-life painter from the Dutch Golden Age of the 17th century - this little painting is a poem to the beauty of flowers but with a rich gravitas that contradicts any lingering sentiment. I've included one of my paintings, a spray of tulips in a white vase. Please come to the show if you're in the Philly area - you'll see not only my work (with some of my handmade artist books) but also that of 4 other artists, including weaving, ceramics, watercolors and drawing. 

2nd Floor Front Gallery - 1704 Walnut Street, Philadelphia PA 19103 - Wednesday May 4 5-8pm (opening), Thursday May 5 Noon-6pm, Friday May 6 4-9pm, Saturday May 7 Noon-5pm. (The Gallery is in a working architects office, an interesting space located at Walnut and 17th St near Rittenhouse Square) 

Tricks and More - Ron Isaacs

A black dress speeds by, trailing sleeves and dry branches. A fine old christening dress disintegrates into chalk lines on a blackboard. A man's white dress shirt, circa 1875, sprouts a small forest of branches. You're in the world of Ron Isaacs, master craftsman and trompe l'oeil magician. There is mystery everywhere, writ in solid evidence on the walls of the Snyderman-Works Gallery in Old City, Philadelphia. Isaacs works in wood, birch plywood, to be specific. Delicate dry leaves, smooth gabardine, fine crocheted lace, wispy muslin with embroidered borders - all wood. You read the label, note the fact, and then return to the work without believing it; your eyes and mind tussle against each other in a rich and interesting game. There is knowledge of past masters here - William Michael Harnett especially, with his delight in tactile deception and fine detail - as well as a sense of the past, and of time passing. An autumnal theme runs throughout, recalling the twist of the heart that comes with the turn of that season. There is a hint of death in the air, evoked not only by dry leaves and bare branches but by the nostalgia implicit in the styles of the clothes. Someone once lived here, these works say. One, titled Improve Each Shining Hour, is a dress of a particular green with cream polka dots - a 40's icon complete with neatly buttoned sleeves and collar, here presented with cutout boxes filled with scissors (also wood - don't forget!) It recalls the neat tidy tasks of women - sewing, handwork - the slight wrinkling of the fabric visible at close range reminds one of a time before permanent press, when the iron and ironing board were a daily presence. One box, squarely over the pubic area, has a large pair of scissors pointing straight down - a hint of sex, perhaps, but perhaps not really the point (the scissors have a blunted tip.) A spring note appears in the work titled Overtaken, which sprouts colorful yellow and purple iris buds, rising out of the hem of a deep blue/green dress with demure lace collar. They bring a fresh damp smell into the air, but again there is a slight ominous note; the nostalgic style of the dress seems to have it sinking gracefully into a fecund swamp. The christening dresses (there are two) are sweet and delicate but perhaps most of all they carry the sense of lives lost. The Queen of January is a masterful work. The rich finely-detailed fabric, a tea-dyed ivory color, is thick and expensive looking; this christening took place in winter in a northern climate - or was it used to guard a tiny lost life against an eternal cold? The dusty spray of dry leaves shooting out of the skirt speak of both possibilities. There is so much to Isaacs's work - this exhibit is a pleasure for the senses and the intellect.
At the Snyderman-Works Gallery through May 14th
http://www.snyderman-works.com/exhibitions/nature-morte-transfigured-sculptural-still-life