The Long Journey

Haven, assemblage by Donna Watson  SOLD

Autumn is a paradox:  Summer is trying to linger as growing cycles for many living plants are coming to an end.  The Japanese have a word for this - aware - which means "beauty tinged with sadness."  

Eternal Truth, Assemblage by Donna Watson  

There is a crisp edge of coolness in the air as the light of summer becomes grayer and rain appears in the distance.  Even on the sunny days there is a coolness in the air softly singing.

Narrative, Assemblage by Donna Watson

As the silence of autumn creeped up on my lingering summer lights,  I worked on 5 assemblages.

I found this silence calming as I worked in my studio.

Reverie, Assemblage by Donna Watson   SOLD

The push and pull.  What do I add here?  Put there?  It takes time with so many choices, so many small decisions.  How do I translate what I am thinking... feeling.. into the small bundles and compartments?

Closeup, of Eternal Truth, assemblage by Donna Watson

The boat shape represents the long journey.  The short journey is from summer to autumn.  The long journey is a mystery, couched in the cycle of life.   

"Only nothingness can hold everything.  Something can never hold everything.  Be in the moment."

Closeup of Assemblage, by Donna Watson

"All through autumn we hear a double voice:  one says everything is ripe; the other says everything is dying.  The paradox is exquisite."  Gretel Ehrlich, The Solace of Open Spaces

"Rain on roof outside window, gray light, deep covers and warm blankets.  Rain and nip of autumn in the air; nostalgia, itch to work better and bigger.  That crisp edge of autumn."

The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath, 26 August 1956 Paris

The Museum of Innocence

 Donna Watson Assemblage:  Antique Shinto Box, bird nest, bird eggs, sumi brush, Asian coin, Asian game pieces, joss sticks, reproduction of a crow skull

Orhan Pamuk, Turkish writer and winner of the Nobel prize for literature published his novel titled MUSEUM OF INNOCENCE in 2008.  He also spent years, and all his Nobel prize money roving and searching Istanbul's junk shops and market stalls looking for bits and pieces with which to furnish the novel he was writing.

In the novel, Kemal, a prosperous man has a love affair with a lower class shop girl and cousin, Fusun.  After ending the affair, Kemal becomes obsessed, over a period of 2,864 days, of obsessively collecting objects, like cigarette stubs that Fusun had smoked.

Pamuk, the author, also began to collect objects to assemble and correspond to the families and impassioned lover's stories in the book. 

Pamuk spent many years creating a museum to house the thousands of objects he collected for the novel.  The museum is housed in a wine-red four storey building constructed in 1897, in Istanbul, Turkey.

The museum consists of 83 cabinets, each representing a chapter of the book.  The novel's wealthy protagonist, in love with his cousin, soothes his despair by collecting everything that she has touched, and he decides that all these things must be displayed in a museum.

"The Museum of Innocence - just like the novel - is about the line between fiction and reality." -Orhan Pamuk

The first display greeting the visitor is the cigarette wall with 4,213 cigarette stubs smoked by Fusun.

The exhibit is accompanied by a film reel, shot by Pamuk himself, showing a woman's hand movements as she smokes and taps a cigarette.  Beneath each stub is a handwritten note about the day in which the stub was stolen.

"I think that if museums, like novels, were to focus more on private and personal stories, they would be better able to bring out our collective humanity."  Orhan Pamuk

"Most of us, faced with a traumatic loss of life or love, find consolation in attaching ourselves to objects."  Orhan Pamuk

Before writing his novel, Pamuk began to buy a large number of objects from shops at the flea markets in Istanbul.  Instead of writing about the objects and then looking for them, he did the opposite.  He went shopping first, and wrote his book based on all the things acquired.

When Pamuk was younger, he dreamed of becoming a painter and devoted himself to art.  As he became a writer, the visual artist in him became dormant.  "The artist lying dormant in the depths of my soul has been looking for an opportunity to come back to life." --Orhan Pamuk

The novel and the museum are concerned with entirely different sides of the same story.  This is why visitors to the museum do not need to have read the book to appreciate the displays in the museum.

A ticket to the museum is printed in each copy of the book.  When visitors arrive at the museum with their books, they can show the ticket page and have it stamped.

"Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your soul according to the fashion.  Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly."  Franz Kafka   

Gathering Histories

Lynne Perrella has been very generous and sent me this wonderful packet of old papers, forms, documents and music sheets, seen below. It is obvious these papers are filled with past personal histories and journeys.

Lynne Perrella is an author of books, including ART MAKING: Collections and Obsessions. Her collages and assemblages, like the one below, illustrates her ability to gather old histories and re-create them in a new and exciting way. Find more of her collages and assemblages at her website here.

Barry Smith, from Australia, is a sculptural artist and metal worker. He sent me this wonderful bowl below, which he created from 'beaten' metal. Thank you so much.

Barry recycles materials like rusty metal and weathered wood. Below is a teapot he made with a brass cylinder, echidna quills and a copper pipe. You can find more of his metal works at his blog RustnStuff here.

Maureen Brouillette lives in Texas and is a friend of mine. She uses travel photos, post cards, old maps in her collage paintings. You can often see nostalgic imagery of old buildings that depict old histories that we still see around us today.

You can find much more of Maureen's mixed media/collage paintings at her wonderful website here.

Glenn Skien, from Australia, is a printmaker, book binder, collage and assemblage artist. He collects and reuses old objects, old papers and books with the idea that he is discovering old histories. He then creates new meanings with "an awareness of a connection to the transient nature of all things." -- Glenn Skien

You can find more of Glenn's intriguing and intelligent works at his website and blog, Silent Parrot Press, here and here. He layers his imagery with old papers and objects, evoking real life and personal histories past and present.

Pour yourself like a fountain.
Flow into the knowledge
that what you are seeking
finishes often at the start,
and with ending, begins.
-- Rainer Maria Rilke

Personal yet Universal

These are bits and pieces of cloth, old papers, wood and old rusty metal I have collected this past year.

This book, Hannelore Baron: Works from 1969-1987, by Ingrid Schaffner, was published on the occasion of a traveling exhibition managed by the Smithsonian Institution in cooperation with the Estate of Hannelore Baron and the Manny Silverman Gallery, Los Angeles. You can still find this book used, along with other gallery pamphlets/catalogs at Amazon.com. The Manny Silverman gallery in Los Angeles still represents her works. (None of the images in this post were taken from this publication. )

"Everything I've done is a statement on the, as they say, human condition...The way other people march to Washington, or set themselves on fire, or write protest letters, or go to assassinate someone. Well, I've had all the same feelings that these people have had about various things, and my way out, because of my inability to do anything else for various reasons, has been to make the protest through my artwork...." ---Hannelore Baron

Hannelore Baron was born in Germany in 1926. Her parents were proprietors of a small fabric shop. In 1938, during Kristallnacht (Nov. 9th), Baron witnessed the destruction of her home and the beating of her father. The family hid in the attic and her father was imprisoned at Dachau. Her mother was later arrested. Baron and her brother escaped to Luxemborg, and her parents later joined them. They eventually managed to sail to New York. Over the years she experiences a number of breakdowns and bouts of cancer. Her work goes through a number of transitions as she moved into paper and cloth collage and wooden assemblage. In 1989, there was a retrospective exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in New York.

For Hannelore Baron, 1926-1987, making art was a meditative form of experience and communication. She favored materials that were fragmentary in nature and familiar from use: scraps of fabric, wood, string, wire, game pieces, and labels. Together with her own cryptic drawings, she formed small collages and wooden boxes. Baron sought to compose what she called the 'message'-- an imagery of suffering and human hope. --- Ingrid Schaffner

"The materials I use in the box constructions and cloth collages are gathered with great care. The reasons I use old cloth and boxes is that new material lacks the sentiment of the old, and seems dry and hard in an emotional sense. ...I have always worked only for my own satisfaction and if the work is shown and accepted it is a wonder and coincidence to me because it was never intended for that." ---Hannelore Baron

I first saw Hannelore Baron's small, intimate works in a gallery in Seattle, in 1996. I had already seen her works in a book and knew a little about her-- that she had escaped the Holocaust and her childhood memories and adult struggles had informed her work at a deep personal level.
But knowing that small amount of history did not prepare me for the first impression and impact of seeing her work in person. I could not take my eyes off of the small pieces. I became very quiet, the busy city and traffic noises disappeared. I did not want to leave. The works touched me in such a deep way that I still can't explain or understand. But I did realize that this is what art works should do-- make us stop, make us look again and again...there should be a feeling of personal familiarity and universal humanity... a connection.

I would like to dedicate this post to my new found friend, Aleksandra, from the Netherlands. You can find her wonderful blog, New Times Arrived, here.

How Poetry Comes to Me
It comes blundering over the
Boulders at night, it stays
Frightened outside the
Range of my campfire
I go to meet it at the
Edge of the light.
----- Gary Snyder