Have you seen the news reports lately about the excess of office furniture? Now that folks are working from home, apparently there's too much and they're actually sending office furniture to landfills. What a waste.
Anyway, I've been wanting to get a new chair, an adjustable drafting chair actually - to replace the IKEA stool I've been using since forever. I started looking at new chairs online, adding one to my cart every now and then - and then abandoning it. I knew I couldn't do it. Then I remembered Furnish (a nonprofit store selling used office furniture in the Northrup King Building) so I headed over to see what they had. They had some nice, brand-new chairs for about $100, that should retail for $700. I considered one, but it didn't feel right for me. I wandered the store, trying out chairs. There were so many! I felt a bit like I was at the pound, searching for the right pet for me. My plan? I was going to take home the mutt that no one else wanted. And then, I saw it! This gorgeous blue, pre-used drafting chair called my name. And guess what? Only $9.99.
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What do you think of tip jars?
I've been taking notice of them lately. Of course, the tip jar is a standard sight at café cash registers. A must for musicians, they usually take the form of an open instrument case. I've seen them as hats at street performances, beer steins at bars, and I especially like the clever ones that say things like, "If you fear change, leave it here." What I've never seen, though, is a visual artist with a tip jar. I wonder why? An art fair really is nothing more than a pop-up street performance. One would think it'd be the ideal venue for creative tip jars. Maybe artists see them as uncouth? Or maybe they worry that their patrons will find a tip jar unsophisticated? I don't know, but I feel like a tip jar at an art fair makes so much sense! Artists are engaging with the public all day, displaying their work for all to see and enjoy. Why shouldn't they have a tip jar? Visitors who are enjoying the art but aren't going to make a purchase may feel moved to put a dollar or two in a tip jar. I may try it. In fact, I could set out a tip jar at my upcoming open studio during Art Attack. A creative container of sorts - asking for "art supply funds"? I'd love to see what happens. Life is like a game of chess
The Game of ChessThen another chess coincidence happened that week. While I was working at my sewing machine, I pushed play on Radiolab, one of my favorite podcasts. It just so happened that they were rebroadcasting an episode on games, which included a whole lot of interesting information about chess. My ears piqued. As I listened, I learned the chess term "out of book". This term quickly caught my fancy. If you don't know this idea - as I didn't - here's the background: there exists a "book" of all the chess moves that have happened throughout the history of the game. Although it's not a real book, in Moscow there is an actual library of all these recorded moves. This library has been kept since the 16th century and, like most things, it recently has been digitized. Basically, during a game of chess, most of the moves players make have already been made before in past games. (The digital book can even tell you how many times before each particular play has occurred!) But, not all of the possible variations of chess moves have been made before. When a player come to the point in the game that isn't in the book, the play is now considered to be "out of book". The way chess analyst Fred Friedel explained it on the the Radiolab episode is my favorite. He says when your play is out of book, "you have a position which has never occurred before in the universe." Wow. Consider that! The Game of LifeTraditions are the life equivalent of playing by the book. The book of life says: go to school, get a job, get married, have a family. Traditions can be great; they provide quick and easy answers to basic life decisions. In the game of chess, it's easy to tell when players are playing by the book. Their moves are quick and decisive. These moves are easy because the players have them memorized. They've been done so many times before that no thought is necessary. It's when play reaches the point of being out of book that the game becomes a challenge and slows down. Now, players have to think about each move they might make. They have to consider all the possibilities and all the consequences of each move and can no longer rely on what's been done before.
We humans can be really hard on ourselves. We beat ourselves up when we feel we did something wrong. But life isn't always predictable. If we learn anything from the game of chess - and the unfathomable number of possible plays there may be in a game - it's that not everything is in the book. Not everything has been done before. There are times when you may "have a position which has never occurred before in the universe." For me, the pandemic created a whole slew of things that never happened before. I didn't know how to make money as an artist. My two teenagers fell into depressions. Tradition was no help, life was out of book. And just like the game of chess, everything was slow and challenging at this point. It makes sense to me now: my brain needed time to process absolutely everything. At the time though, it was awful, exhausting and terrifying. I felt incredibly guilty and constantly felt that I wasn't doing enough. The problem was, that I didn't know what I should be doing. Possibility
Textile ArtHere's my art interpretation of the chess concept Out of Book. "Out of Book"
16" x 20", cut and sewn cotton fabrics, thread. Sold. © Mary Pow. All rights reserved. Spring comes slowly Spring comes so slowly in Minnesota. It forces patience upon you, however unwilling you are. Every morning you wake up to another sprinkling of snow, no matter how much you long for the flamboyant beauty of your crabapple tree in full bloom. You are tired of the waiting. You say, “I can’t take it anymore. I cannot handle this for one more day.” Especially after such a long winter. A long, bitter winter filled with trials and tribulations that scraped your insides out and left you raw. Don’t you deserve some easy beauty? The hot sun on your shoulders, flowers blooming, butterflies floating through the garden. But the world owes you nothing. If you want to find beauty, you’re obliged to notice the simple, subtle beauty of spring coming slowly. So, fine. What else can you do? You take your walk in the cold, blustery day and you notice the loons are on the lake. That’s spring. And you see that the fat robins have eaten every single berry on the tree since the last time you looked. That’s spring, isn’t it. And by the time you walk around the entire lake, and your thighs are numb with cold, you are entirely sick of trying to notice the simple things. The subtle beauty is actually making you angry, because why does it have to be so hard. Then you see something, a stalk of dead grass blowing in the cold gray air, waving to you, holding a beauty so understated that it makes you want to cry. And you walk past it, thinking, “no I won’t stop and acknowledge this. I want the gaudy in-your-face-ness of summer.” But it comes slowly. And the simple beauty is so touching that you retrace your steps to try to capture it in a photo.
Of course, the photo cannot capture what you see, what you feel – but it is there; you cannot unsee it. You must continue your day being grateful for the small things, because what else can you do. There is no forcing spring. It owes you nothing. You take what you can get. I keep them in my bathroom. For most of the summer there it is: a mason jar filled milkweed. Caterpillars in various stages of their life-cycle, munching away. I have them in my bathroom so I can shut the door - to keep them in - and the cats out. But the door usually gets left open. I tend to count them whenever I go in the room. Has a new one hatched? Are they all here? I discover one is missing, and a heaviness settles in my heart. I count and re-count. It's not there. Several days later, I find a caterpillar on the stairs. Quite a long journey from the bathroom for such a small creature. I gently scoop it up and bring it back to the milkweed. When I set it on a leaf, it curls up. It doesn't move. Starved to death. My heart aches. I could have done more to prevent this from happening. The best part of being an artist is also the hardest part of being an artist: there is no job description. You get to make up the job yourself! - but - you also have to make it up yourself. It's amazingly freeing to be able to figure out for yourself who you are as an artist, but it's also incredibly challenging and terrifying to do this. Yes: both, and. At the same time. A traditional job comes with a built-in job description. You know what is expected of you in that part of your life. When you're at work, your job is to do A, B, C.
This is a list of some important points I want to remember. A rough draft of my "job" description.
This is my life as an artist; and it's a constant work in progress.
I'm working on another painting about the line between imagination and reality. This is something that has always interested me, but more and more lately I'm understanding what it's all about for me. I've come to believe that, if we practice thinking differently, we will see that the solid walls that form barriers in our lives, are actually bars that we can slip between. As children, we're so connected to our imaginations. Magic is real, unicorns and fairies really do exist. We're filled with wonder about the world and excited because we know anything is possible. I'm reading "The Secret Garden" to my daughter and it's this idea, that there's something magical and secret lying in wait just behind the wall that I'm really interested in conveying in my art. As we grow up, we have to learn the rules. We're taught the structure of society, the way things need to be, and we learn our place within that structure. Rules are necessary, of course, but we forget that all things are possible. The rules forms walls around us that we think are real and solid. We live with those wall surrounding us for so long that we aren't able to see any other way. They are our reality. It takes a new kind of thinking to snap us out of our adulthood, to give us back our imaginations and to realize the rules are just rules, not walls. In fact, if we remember how to truly see the possibilities, how to follow our hearts, we'll find a key. If we listen to ourselves, deep inside, we'll find the door. We can get through the wall, to a secret place that was there all along, just waiting to be discovered. Want more?Here's what I'm reading and listening to as I work on my current artwork. The Man with the Blue Guitar by Wallace Stevens Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird by Wallace Stevens Between the Bars by Elliot Smith Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng Blackbird by The Beatles UPDATE!11/4/2019 This piece is now finished! After struggling with two title ideas, I decided to go with "Between the Bars". The original is available, prints will be available at some point. Contact me for details.
Material Honesty is a term I learned while studying architecture at the University of Washington, Seattle. They were very big on teaching us future architects how to be true to our building materials.
Although I'm not designing buildings now, I do think about material honesty quite a bit while I work. I've come to love the idea of hinting at my process and using materials in the way that works best for them. Using the idea of Material Honesty in my artIf I'm using pastels atop a colored paper, then when I'm finished I feel that one should be able to determine that I used pastels and a colored paper for the piece. Here are some ways that I accomplish the idea of material honesty with pastels, illustrated with details from my artwork "I Dare You".
Being expressive; not photo-realistic For me, my art is about expressing a mood and getting at the heart of what inspired me in a subject in the first place. For the painting shown here, I had taken multiple photos of my model. In one of the photos, her eyes really drew me in. They seemed to be almost daring me, the viewer, to take her on. I absolutely love the strong, determined expression on her face. Of course, the gorgeous sunlit hair only added to my desire to paint the image. I'm not interested in creating a photographic replica with my work. It's much more interesting to me to express myself and the media I'm using. For this piece, I used a specific set of colors and very expressive mark-making to get those original inspirations down on the paper. In the end, I do feel that I captured the ideas that prompted me to paint this image in the first place. With each new piece I paint, I'm learning more and more about pastels and their specific abilities. I hope to continue to add to my list of ways to use them honestly. Of course, the best thing about art is there are so many different ways to approach it! What do you think? Do you think it's important for artists to be "honest" with their materials? When is it fun to fool people by being "dishonest" with materials? 😄
I realize that I haven't been at all outspoken about the body of textile art I'm currently working on. Lately, I've been thinking about what I want to say in my artist statement for the upcoming exhibition of my work. It seems an almost impossible task to get down all the thoughts I have while I work into a one-page, 18-point-font statement! Yesterday I wrote down a sentence I heard Joshua Johnson say on the radio: "How you see the world depends on where you look." It's a timely quote for me. I'm interested in viewpoints, and humanity, and creativity, and how we're interconnected, and how we each see the world. Thoughts about these ideas float through my head while I work. I take little notes about things I hear and read, and somehow, they all seem connected to a larger idea I have forming in my mind. It's hard for me to put these ideas into words, so I put them into my art. Everyone sees/experiences/understands the world slightly differently. I don't know if there is a right way or a wrong way to see things. I think maybe there are just different ways. Together, all these different viewpoints add up to create the world of humanity. Personally, I think we probably need them all. Who is to choose which ones we don't need? Everyone has a different viewpoint. Everyone has a different opinion. Maybe, instead of thinking one way is right and another one is wrong - if instead we're open to the 'other' - that is the best way. Listen to other people, learn from their experiences of the world, ask them what they see, what they notice; hear their opinions, respect their viewpoints, be curious. If you can be open to the other, your world can only expand. I invite you to see my textile art in person at the exhibition "Orient, Disorient, Repeat". The opening reception on May 23rd starts at 5:30pm with artist remarks at 6:00pm.
I hope to see you there! I'll be more than interested in hearing your viewpoint. Individual things can be fine on their own, but are we missing something? When separate pieces are designed to work together, we get another thing entirely: the whole. I visit a certain large Midwestern town every year or two. This particular town is really just your average American place. It's filled with chain stores, traffic lights, cars, and parking lots. The buildings are all individual businesses. Each one has its own usual look, arranged on its own property, allowing for easy access into each parking lot, without regard for much else. The overall look of the town is haphazard. When we drive through the town, I always feel sad about the place. I used to think it was because I was being a bit pretentious, with my background in architecture and design. On first glance, I dislike the order-less-ness of it all. The buildings are all over the place. Nothing lines up and nothing goes together. There’s a lot of asphalt and concrete. Green space is absent. I hate all the traffic lights. Apart from a few grumbles to my husband, I always kept my thoughts to myself. But lately, I've been reflecting more deeply on my feelings about the place. I’ve uncovered what is it about the town that makes me feel sad. It’s not what is in the town, but what is missing from the town, that gets to me. I see all of the lost opportunities. By developing in this aimless way, without regard for an overall plan, so much is lacking. Sure, you can live in a town like this. But what are you missing? Let’s say you live in this town and you need to do a bit of shopping. You get in your car and drive toward the business area. Multiple stop-lights try your patience as you frown at the rain and wish the light would turn green. Finally, you pull into the parking lot of the store. You park your car and quickly walk across the asphalt expanse to the door. You go in and get your shopping done. On the way back to your car, you see an acquaintance coming out of her car and you say hello. The drizzle prevents you from chatting and you both dash away and get on with your day. As you drive away, you notice a new store and you consider going to check it out. To get to there you’ll need to go through another traffic light, park in another parking lot, and walk through the drizzle again. The thought of all that bother prevents you from stopping. Instead, you drive home through all the stop lights, annoyed at how long it’s taking. You arrive home feeling stressed out and slightly angry and you aren’t sure why. You snap at your spouse. Consider, instead, a town with a cohesive, overall plan. All the individual parts are still there, but they work together as a system. It's almost magical the difference it makes. Here’s another scenario: You need to do a bit of shopping. You drive downtown and park your car on the street and walk the half a block to the store. Along the way you pass trees and greenery planted alongside the sidewalk. You breathe in deeply and feel a connection to nature. You notice a new shop and pop in to check it out. You realize this place is the perfect place to find a gift for your hard-to-shop-for relative. You feel happy to have discovered it. As you leave, you see a friend coming out of the cafe next door. You sit together on the bench outside the door, conveniently kept dry from the day’s drizzle by an awning, and chat about your lives. You smile at each other and wave good-bye. You are enveloped with a feeling of well-being from seeing a friendly face, and you’re prompted to say hello to the next person you pass on the sidewalk. He smiles and says hello back and makes a comment about the rainy weather. As you continue on, you feel a warm sense of community at having shared a common moment. You go about your day, get your shopping done, and go home, feeling calm and happy. You don’t even realize why you feel this way. You smile at your spouse. *** Sure, we can live without good design, but when it’s there, things are better. Organization, order, and planning get a bad rap. Spending the time up front to to put a plan in place is sometimes seen as a waste of energy and resources. And I get it, when resources are short, corners need to be cut. Design seems the likely corner to trim, because most people do not even notice good design when it’s there. Design’s job is to literally be in the background, to make things run smoothly. The outcome of good design is a feeling of calm, ease, and happiness. And since humans are a social species, that feeling is passed from one person to another. And life is better for everyone. *** What do you think? Do you ever notice when some things are combined thoughtfully together, the resulting combination is even better?
How about an orchestra? Each individual player is an excellent musician and each instrument sounds great on its own. But, with a conductor to guide them to play as one, the resulting music is amazing. What about colors? Yes, the color blue is lovely in and of itself, but when you place a certain shade of yellow next to it, well, together the combination simply sings! Even pictures on a wall can benefit! Photos and artworks are wonderful on their own. Hang them up any which way and you’ll get to admire some of your favorites. But, take a little time to arrange them thoughtfully in a group, and the whole room benefits beautifully. What wonderful whole can you create with a little organization and a plan? |
Mary PowI am an artist and designer based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. My specialties are textiles and pastels. Categories
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