An Artist's Legacy

There is much more to an artist's life that making the art.  To be sure, the part that drives each of us to the studio: lovely materials, lovely (we hope) images to test out, cool ideas to ponder in material form...

There is the attendant not so lovely office work: bills, shipping, orders, recordkeeping, show seeking.

And then eventually, there is the artist's estate to contend with!  What are our heirs supposed to DO with all this stuff we produce?

Hold a community bonfire and roast marshmallows?

Maybe, if that is what you want.  But somehow, neither my son nor I want to throw out or burn my life's work.

If your work is small, and desirable, you can give it away!  That's what I did a couple of years ago.  Building on existing collections and extending my requests, I offered my artists books and archives to a variety of museum and university collections with great success. But now I need to plan for my larger, newer work.

I recently attended the College Art Association Conference in NYC.  I am still exhausted from all the running around!  But that is for another post!.. This post is about one panel I attended which was worth the price of admission.  Squeak Carnwath, Sharon Louden, Jan Wurm, and Shervone Neckles-Ortiz led a panel on estates and legacy.  I had been to one before.  But this one electrified the audience and lots of info was shared.  Artists of modest means can work together to create foundations to take care of their work!  Truly modest means.  I will be studying this in the coming months. 

Click any of the links that follow to blow your mind!

http://www.artistslegacyfoundation.org/

https://www.artistestatestudio.com

https://www.archives.gov/

https://assets.aspeninstitute.org/content/uploads/2016/05/18_1108_ARIS-White-Paper-AEFI.pdf?_ga=2.102159233.1476832362.1550097300-1068812914.1550097300

http://art-legacy.com/

https://www.aaa.si.edu/home

http://www.artagencypartners.com/about-artists-estates-and-foundations/

http://www.thekunstworks.com/

https://cerfplus.org/get-ready/studio-protector/get-ready-portal/artwork/

https://cerfplus.org/news/new-crafting-legacy-resource-available/

http://callresources.org/

http://callresources.org/estate-planning-workbooks/

NECESSARY ARCHIVE INFO TO COLLECT

artwork: title, size, exhibition history, materials & processes

exhibitions: each show in a separate folder with images, press, catalog

bibliography: print out online media

audio

professional activities

contacts: collector data?

newsletters

personal documents

More Studio Life

Big old photo day on Monday was devoted to more that the Horizon piece.

I have been working on an ever expanding series of 3-d color studies.  The series is titled Widgets.  They are small, most less that 12" h.  They are built from Davey board, putty, modeling paste and what-all! Most are paired.  The goal is to develop complex color in beautifully tactile surfaces.  They are a pleasure to handle.

Now all these new pieces must be added to the database and the website.

Like I said yesterday, studio time is not all joyful creation.

Studio Life

Studio life is full of myriad activities...precious few are actually the joyous act of creation!  Saturday was cleaning day...to the very edges of the space.  Thread and paper litter was everywhere and tools were buried under stacks of this and that.  Now, it nearly gleams!

Yesterday was photo shoot day.  That involved painting my grey wall, which works for most photoshoots, WHITE to accommodate the grey horizon piece that was too big for the white walls elsewhere in the studio.

This piece was also inspired by Bridget Riley.  It is 6.5 feet wide and hangs high on the wall so you need to look UP at it.  My hope is that it brings a certain sense of peace. It does so for me.  I am considering expanding it with small sized pieces that expand it "into the distance."

Materials:  Grey outdoor canvas; digital embroidery; backed with grey felt; hung from a 3" deep wood shelf/armature.

Color Studies in sculpture

When I am tired and or lazy and watch too much TV, I have several things I do to keep my hands busy:


I draw what I see on TV.
I spin yarn (gotland right now).
I hand embroider.
I do automatic drawings where I scribble without looking.

It was the automatic drawings that led to these little sculptures.  None are larger than 8 inches or so. Hand sized.  Manipulatable.  Stackable.  There are more to come...but here they are so far.  I'm calling them WIDGETS, except for the carved one called FIG.

FIG is a tiny carving done in soft Balsa Foam (an Amaco product) with gesso and Flashe, an utterly matte paint with high pigment load.

FIG

The WDIGETS are built from book binders board, lots of adhesive, modeling paste, gesso, Flashe paint and wax.

Completing new work is:

Completing new work is always:

• slow
• curious
• exciting
• frustrating
• mysterious
• sometimes expensive

I have finally completed a few new pieces and they have each, in its own way,  ticked all the boxes above.

CASCADE

The first one completed is CASCADE.  It is a multilevel digital embroidery piece inspired by the stripes of Bridget Riley.  The surfaces float at various real levels and cascade to the floor.  The modules are formed around 1/4" plywood.  On the wall they attach to screws with magnets.  On the picture plane, they are permanently affixed with bolts and tubes.  The one little module that hangs off the picture plane is velcroed for safety in shipping and storage.  The floor modules are 2-sided.  60" x 28"

STAX detail

STAX

The second piece is STAX, also inspired by Bridget Riley.  It is built of 3-dimensional modules, mounted on a lovely walnut frame.  Had to use my non-existent upholstery skills to make these modules!  However, my old bookbinding skills came into use:  I built the forms from book binder's board, sewed the half tubes and then stretched and upholstered using a curved coptic stitch needle! And then I did woodworking! 13.5" x 47"

This crazy mixed media piece started as Bridget Riley stripes, a color study gone awry. The colors lay dull and flat on the rich fabric.  But after hours of stitching, I could not quite throw it away.  It hung around for quite awhile, indicting me not only on my color/thread failures... but also asking what might be next.

Meanwhile, STAX was in process.  Digital embroidery is always backed with a variety of stabilizers to support good stitch outs.  Think: Pellon or INTERFACING if you sew.  Some stabilizer can be torn off the design when it is done.  In making the modules for STAX, I tore away a series of near perfect stencils;-)  So, I used them to block out new areas of color on this piece and  continued with oil pastels and pastel pencils. It has no title yet, but I do love it.  It has mysterious sense of depth.

The next pieces in the queue are very complex...or at least LARGE.  There is a lot of sweat equity ahead before there is much to show on the embroidery front.

Ruminations at the end of the year

It has been, as usual, a busy year.  Somehow, the studio always "cooks."  Yes, there are lulls and times that it feels like a true slog through quick sand, but the pull of the joy of touching materials keeps pulling me onward.

In March, my brother Jim helped me hang Eros and Thanatos in Richmond, VA.  He will do the same at Seminole State College, in Florida, sometime in 2019...unless he is traveling the world.  He caught my parent's wanderlust.

In May, Kim Matthews and I hung our show Platonic Dualities, in Robbinsdale, MN.  It seemed like an unlikely location for a financially successful show...but it was.  The gallery, Kim and I promoted the heck out of it and people came and spent money.  It was a huge push to put this show together on relatively short notice.  Afterwards, Kim and I promptly fell into studio quicksand!

There were 10 or 12 group shows as well, from Alaska to Brooklyn, NY.  Small things, big things, and various things in between.

And now, we approach the new year in some form of transition, also as usual.  Something about the arbitrary change of numbers on the calendar always makes me try to evaluate, muse and plan.  It has only just begun.

The biggest decision concerned my ageing/my studio.  The size of my studio is barely adequate.  The 3 flights of stairs are periodically a lot harder than they used to be, especially in the summer when my arthritis hurts almost constantly.  I briefly thought about developing a property, probably in the suburbs, where I could live and work in vast space. But, I have wonderful friends and neighbors who look out for me here, in this neighborhood.  I also know what it takes to MOVE, to renovate and recreate a daily life. I just do not have the energy to take that risk again!  So, I got in an ageing consultant, made a few minor changes around the house, and committed to stair lifts!  I'm STAYING until the end, or a wheelchair, whichever comes first! And I will never stop working in the studio. Old artists never retire.

In Consideration of Bridget and in need of feedback

About a year ago, my friend Kim and I traveled to NYC to see the Louise Bourgeois show at MOMA.  While we were there we toured the blue chip galleries of Chelsea and saw a small show of Bridget Riley.  I was blown away and her works stayed with me.

I went on to experiment with some of her colors in thread and in three dimensions.   Here's the problem:

I originally designed the piece IN CONSIDERATION OF BRIDGET 1 to cascade the elements down to the floor.  Now, when you exhibit in galleries you do need to provide an option, a platform, that is perhaps NOT the floor, so people do not just kick the elements by accident.  So, I grabbed a stretcher covered with a hand dyed fabric to see if the SIZE was right to perform as a platform.  It was a correct size.  AND it was lovely all by itself, instantly becoming IN CONSIDERATION OF BRIDGET 2.

Today, I wrapped that stretcher loosely with the matching blue fabric and placed it on the floor as originally intended.  There are clearly more elements than needed for the cascading effect. 

BUT HERE IS WHERE I NEED YOUR FEEDBACK:  Does the floor cascade overwhelm the wall movement?  Is the floor element, even reduced in size and number of elements, a detraction? Should I forget about adding this?

In Consideration of Bridget 1 (@ 60"h x 28"w))

In Consideration of Bridget 2 ( 22h x 17 w, floor or table installation, meant to be handled)

Should this be Bridget 1?