Recently
I had the pleasure, albeit a somewhat nervous pleasure, of being interviewed by
my good friend Monica Lee of Smart Creative Women via Skype (nothing makes you more aware of age and weight than knowing you will be on camera). That interview
will go live very soon, but I thought I would share some thoughts that Monica and I never
really got to cover fully during the time we spoke, because time did, as time does in real life,
fly by.
I
have had the good fortune of being able to spend nearly one hundred percent of
my time these last forty years, making art in one form or another. I did take a
few years off when my two oldest sons were little, but when I think back on
that time, I was always dong something creative (and most of it was donated for
fundraising events of one kind or another), just not all of it professionally. Aside from that short break, it
has pretty much been non-stop all the time.
But,
nonstop at what? Well, nonstop at
art. Art in many forms and in many materials for many venues. In
short: I've been a painter, puppeteer, doll maker, soft sculpture
artist/craftsperson, editorial illustrator, children's book author and illustrator,
fabric designer, licensed artist, and now I am also painting again. I’ve also
spent a lot of time decorating houses, but, to be very honest, that makes me
zero money. It only costs me money. But that's OK. It satisfies my soul. It's a medium I have to work in almost as
much as my paints. “House--just another art material and artistic discipline."
But back to business. If I look back over all my years as an
artist, I see one thing: my aesthetic sensibility has not changed much in forty
years. I am still drawn to the same things I was drawn to in
college--characters, details, expressive gestures, and emotions. I love color
and texture and patterns. I especially like narratives. Everything I do tends
to tell a story, and the story is in the details, textures and characters.
I have written about this before and in much more detail. You can read the first accout I wrote years ago for my very first web site. It really rambles and tells the story of the earliest years. Here is the place to read that. I created an abbreviated version for my current web site. You can ready that one here.
I’m sharing some recent art here
at Cats and Jammers Studio to coordinate with the interview. I am also sharing
some of the house and other new art on my other blog, Design Rocket.
What message would I love to give other
artists? This: don’t be afraid to re-invent yourself and try new things. Life as an artist is a wild journey on a winding road. A few
years back, I posted a long post about moving in random directions in life,
seemingly as if by pure serendipity. Well, life is that but it is also by luck
and pluck, and maybe much less by design than we think. Please read that
post, Serendipity + Pluck = Life.
Much of the art here is from my 2011 Sketchbook Project, “Coffee and Cigarettes.” I
loved doing that book. I have done two others since. You can see the digital scans of my book here. And you can see the show opening containg paintngs based on the book here.
Participating in the Sketchbook Projects for the Art House Coop really feeds my artistic soul. My most recent book was titled “Strangers.” In doing that book I dedicated
it to my painting and drawing professor of my sophomore year of college, John
Patrick Murphy II. John was the head of the art department at Rockland
Community College for more than 30 years. On the very first day I met him, I shared
some paintings and he gave me advice that has stayed with me all these years: “Barbara,
draw out of your head.” Meaning, draw from the well within you that has your memories and
your impressions. And that is the way I have worked ever
since.
John very recently passed away. This post
is dedicated to him, because, really, meeting him and getting to know him was pure serendipity and it pointed me along the way on my own artistic journey.
I live for this kind of photography: haunting shots of once lively and active places, now in ruins. There is something that hits a nerve somewhere within me that makes me look at the disintegration of old structures, and see it not just as it is, but as it must have been.
There's a lot to read and a lot to see in this wonderful photo essay about New York's North Brother Island and abandoned Riverside Hospital from The Kingston Lounge, which may soon become another favorite photo blog for me, right up there with Shorpy. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves and the history tell it's own story.
Simms Tabak was one of very favorite illustrators, if not THE favorite. He very recently passed away and since I find that this blog seems more and more to be about losing artists who have touched me, it would be terribly remiss to not talk about Simms.
Although I got to know his books through reading them to my youngest son, Ben, I actually got to know his art when I first used one of his designs to wallpaper the room of my middle son, Mike. That was more than 22 years ago. Sadly, I cannot find a single image to post to show that lovely wallpaper. And it has been long papered over. It do remember that it was leaping kids, a boy and a girl, doing jumping jacks or something to that effect. If anyone has any left or knows where I can get some, PLEASE contact me!
I just discovered a wonderful video created based on his Old Lady WHo Swallowed a Fly book. It is narrated and the music sung by Cindy Lauper. I think this may be the best video adaptation of a kids' book I have ever seen. It seems that I cannot embed it. But go to Youtube and watch. It is totally worth the time.
I think my very favrotie book was the Caldecott wining, Joseph Had a Little Overcoat.
I think that this book is everything one can want in a children's book. It is has a page turning quality, with a lovely repetitive rhythm. It is fun. It is also beautifully illustrated, without being tight and self important and self congratulatory, not to mention pretentious, which is what so many kids' book art is. Not this book. The art has a wonderful mock-primitive feel that is actually extremely sophisticated and extraordinarily satisfying, from an artist's point of view. Any artist, even in the absence of liking kids' books, would love and appreciate this artwork. The art stands completely on its own. To be honest, a lot of art for kids' books may hold up in the children's book
It seems that this blog is often turning into a forum for obituaries of people who have moved me. That may very well be, for I if I am going to write about things that are important to me, then that needs to include losing people or artists who have touched my life. I guess as one gets older and more of those key players in a person’s lifetime pass away, it becomes even more important to acknowledge, reflect upon, and celebrate lives well lived.
Along those lines, several weeks ago I was so sorry to read in the NY Timesthat Jazz artist Billy Taylor had passed away. Here is another blog post about it on Mirror On America. I was also so sad to read about the passing of George Shearing in today's NY Times. When I want the kind of harmonic jazz that is both contemplative and inspiring, I think of Billy Taylor and George Shearing. Their music has a distinctly classy and urban New York feel to me. I love it for the harmonic, sensitive and thoughtful sound, as well as for the fact that it reminds me of early years in New York, listening to live jazz in the city. That sound reminds me of being very young and feeling the world was there for the celebrating and taking.
I was very young. A good friend of my then-fiancee, Phil's and mine, Norm Freeman, was a student at Julliard. Our summer evenings would often be like this: I would work until my shift was done at Capra's Restaurant in Stony Point, NY. That was usually until about eleven at night. Norman and Phil would pick me up and we would then zip into New York City to catch some live jazz. Getting down to the village about forty minutes later meant we could catch at least one set in a club.
And in the early seventies, you could hear some great music in the clubs at night. We most often ended up going to the Village Gate (Top of the Gate) or the Village Vanguard or the Half Note. At the Vanguard we caught the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis orchestra in a place where we would
