The Reluctant Artist

Donna Watson, altered digital image of nest, rice papers, acrylic

Miroslave Tichy was born in Czechoslavia in 1926.  He studied painting but never finished due to communism in his country in 1948.  Tichy dropped out and became a dissident and a hermit.  He refused to kowtow to the communist regime and spent 8 years in prison.  He retreated from society, grew a beard, left his hair uncut and wore tattered clothing.  He became interested in photography but had little money.

Tichy would gather trash such as empty cans, old glasses, shoe boxes, plexiglass and other junk that he could use to make his own cameras.  For his lens, he would cut plexiglass with a knife.

  Using these cardboard cameras constructed from found materials like clothespins, spools, tubes, string), Tichy shot about 2 rolls of film per day, mostly of females caught unaware in the midst of their day-to-day activities (sunbathing, reading, riding bikes, sitting on park benches).

By the end of each day he would have about 100 shots.  While there is an element of voyeurism to his images, the women became used to Tichy wandering about and taking their pictures from a distance.

Tichy never showed anyone his photographs.  As a matter of fact, he usually threw them into a heap on the floor.  They would be stepped on, scratched, crumpled up, or left out in the rain.  Old and neglected, many of them have partially oxidized.  They are covered with fingerprints, grit, insects...they are small and oddly shaped.

The photographs looked like the mistakes other photographers would throw away.  But for Tichy

the imperfections are where the beauty resides:  "The flaws are part of it.  That's the poetry."

Many of Tichy's photographs ended up in a big heap on the floor.

Tichy lived in a small hut most of his live.   He never traveled far from his hut nor the town he lived near.  He never showed his photographs to anyone.  He was considered an eccentric artist.

He may have had a foot fetish.  A lot of his photographs are of women's legs, feet, or shoes.

It is only a few years ago that the public was able to view the pictures he took with his homemade cameras.  His first solo exhibit went straight into the main exhibition space in the Kunsthaus Zurich.

Tichy refused to go to any of his exhibits.  A number of books have published his images.  Tichy passed away this year.

"Photography is painting with light!  The blurs, the spots, those are errors!  But the errors are part of it, they give it poetry and turn it into painting." --- Miroslav Tichy

"Identity is gradual, cumulative; because there is no need for it to manifest itself, it shows itself intermittently, the way a star hints at the pulse of its being by means of its flickering light.  But at what moment in this oscillation is our true self manifested?  In the darkness or the twinkle?"

---  Sergio Chejfec,  The Planets

 

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   

50 Shades of Nora

Donna Watson, collage, 8"x8"

 

Note:  I will be teaching a 5 day workshop in San Diego in September 10 through September 16th.

The title of the workshop is Personal Expression: A Design Approach.  This workshop is open to all aqueous mediums including collage... and open to those who consider themselves representational, abstract or non-objective artists.  The emphasis is on composition, design elements and principles and personal expression.  For more information go to sdws.org. 

Nora Ephron was very, very funny.  Her passing on June 26th at age 71 spurred a flurry of tributes and testaments to her talent as a writer, director, blogger, playwright, foodie and feminist.  She lead the writing world with ardency, wit and example.

 

 Donna Watson, collage, 8"x8"

 

I recently came across some of her quotes from movies that I had seen in past years... but seeing the quotes in writing really struck me with the similarity to my own quirks.

 

source:  mylittlefabric.com/blue-stilton-porto

 

"I'd like the pie heated and I don't want the ice cream on top, I want it on the side, and I'd like strawberry instead of vanilla if you have it, if not then no ice cream, just whipped cream but only if it is real: if its out of the can, then nothing."  Sally Albright (Meg Ryan) in When Harry Met Sally

I do the same thing in restaurants!  When I am ordering from a menu I will ask to leave out this and that and put this on the side and add that...  until there is not much left of the original dish.  My family used to make comments to me about this and now they have given up and just accept my quirks.


"I look out the window and I see lights and the skyline and the people on the street rushing around looking for action, love and the world's greatest chocolate chip cookie, and my heart does a little dance."  --- HEARTBURN 

 image by Donna Watson,  please note the chocolate chip cookie

Again, I do the same thing!  When I am traveling in cities or towns I will search for bakeries because I am always searching for the best chocolate chip cookie...  in the world!  And I have found 2 of the best chocolate chip cookies so far.  One is in the Birdcage Bakery in Soho in New York City.
The other is in Honolulu Hawaii.  I recently visited my mother and found the best chocolate chip cookie at Island Vintage Coffee Co. in the Royal Hawaiian Center in Waikiki.

my cat Suki, squeezed into a box too small for her, sleeping, put into this blog post just for the heck of it

 

Nora Ephron was a hybrid... she had a journalist's gift for observation and a humorist take on life.

She frequently told the story of the deathbed advice of her own mother, "Take notes".

 

Nora wore her achievements lightly.  And she had plenty of achievements.  With all of my hopes, and dreams, and goals in my art and my life, here is HER most famous quote from the movie WHEN HARRY MET SALLY:

 

"I'LL HAVE WHAT SHE HAD."     

 
 


 

 

A Path

Donna Watson, acrylic collage painting, Imprint

"When you're lost in the woods, it sometimes takes you awhile to realize that you are lost.  For

the longest time, you can convince yourself that you've just wandered off the path, that you'll find your way back to the trail head any moment now.  Then night falls again and again, and you still have no idea where you are, and it's difficult to admit that you have bewildered yourself so far off the path that you don't even know from which direction the sun rises anymore."  Elizabeth Gilbert

   image by Donna Watson, Osaka Japan

"It may be that when we no longer know which way to go we have come to our real journey.  The mind that is not baffled is not employed.  The impeded stream is the one that sings."

Wendell Berry

   image by Donna Watson, Kyoto Japan

"This is your road.  Only you will take it.  And there's no turning back."

Olav H. Hauge

image by Donna Watson, Kyoto Japan

"It may be that when we no longer know what to do,

we have come to our real work

and when we no longer know which way to go, 

we have begun our real journey."

Wendell Berry

image by Donna Watson, Kyoto Japan

"You see, I want a lot.

Perhaps I want everything:

the darkness that comes with every infinite fall

and the shivering blaze of every step up."

Rilke

 image by Donna Watson, Nara Japan

"Will you rewalk that path with the stone lanterns

over and over again in dreams?

and wake to walk

the path you've created in your own temple?"

Nancy Neva Gagliano

           image by Donna Watson, Kyoto Japan

What we call the beginning is often the end

And to make an end is to make a beginning.

The end is where we start from.

T. S. Eliot

  

"Every moment in your life is a turning and everyone a choosing.  Somewhere you made a choice.  All followed to this."  -- Cormac McCarthy

My Confession

Donna Watson, collage, 6"x6"

I have a confession to make.  I am a procrastinator.  I procrastinate on starting new projects.  Heck, I  procrastinate starting old projects.  I even procrastinate my blog posts.  I do not have a problem working in my studio on my paintings and collages.  I have a problem trying to start projects that are art related, at the computer for example.  I have never given much thought as to WHY I put off starting new projects until I read an interview with Susannah Conway.  She has written a new book titled THIS I KNOW.  You can find out more about Susannah at her blog here.          

image by Donna Watson

Anyway, back to the interview.  She was asked if perfectionism was an issue for her.  She answered "yes" and that her procrastination was closely related to her perfectionism.  And I thought, omg, I am a perfectionist too.  I set high standards for myself.  I realized I may be putting off new projects because I fear it won't be good enough.

  image by Donna Watson

As someone who loves the concept of wabi sabi... mainly that there is beauty in imperfection... I still have this perfectionist streak in me.  

  image by Donna Watson

I have recently started... and finished... several projects that I have been putting off for months now.

None of these projects had a deadline which is why I could keep putting them off.  I seem to really need a deadline.  What helped me get started was to make a list of my goals and priorities.  I looked at it every day.  And I began to slowly check off some of my projects.  One of my projects was to make my first hand made book.  Check! (more about my book in my next blog post).  Another project was to get my small collages set up at Etsy.com/shop/donnawatsonart.  Please check out my new shop at Etsy.com (see sidebar).  

  image by Donna Watson

Now I wonder how many other artists are perfectionists and procrastinators.  Where do you fit?

  image by Donna Watson

There is a website called Smith's Magazine's Six Word Memoirs which you can find here.  

image by Donna Watson

I tried to come up with my six word memoir.  Breath in, out, in the moment.  Kick in butt, get to work.  Then I realized these are really more like actions and not really like a memoir.  So here is the one I settled on:  She has faults, but good intentions.

  image by Donna Watson

One life.  Six words.  What's yours?

NYC Art Scene

Donna Watson,  Connections 3,  acrylic/collage

I had a wonderful trip to NYC to see my son, Matt's graduation from Columbia University with his MFA.  We ate in fabulous restaurants and bakeries, went shopping in Soho, and went to several books stores where I looked at many art books (and came home with a few).   My son now has a website which you can find here and below is one of his paintings.

Matthew C. Watson, oil on copper, 9"x11"

I did see some very interesting exhibits at some of the NYC museums.  One of the artists I discovered at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is Taryn Simon.  She is considered an art documentary/photographer and the name of her exhibit is A Living Man Declared Dead and other Chapters I-XVIII.  She spent 4 years and traveled to 25 countries researching and recording bloodlines and their related stories.

In India, Taryn Simon located living people officially declared dead, a predicament involving corrupt

bureaucrats scheming to take their properties.  In Bosnia, she followed the bloodline of Muslims killed by Bosnian serbs.  

In each scenario, she would photograph any family member who would pose for her.   

Another artist, Cindy Sherman (b. 1954),  has a huge retrospective at MoMA.  She is widely recognized as one of the most important and influential artists in contemporary art.  Sherman has spent many years creating her unique form of art... dressing herself up in costumes and make up and then photographing herself in different poses and backgrounds.  

Drawing from an unlimited supply of images from movies, TV, magazines, the Internet and art history, she has worked as her own model.  She is her own photographer, model, make up artist,
hairdresser, stylist, and wardrobe mistress.

With an arsenal of wigs, costumes, makeup, prosthetic, and props she alters her physique and surroundings to the point of being unrecognizable as Cindy Sherman, the artist.  She explores issues of identity, representation, and feminism.

Tacita Dean (Great Britain) has an exhibit at the New Museum in Soho titled Five Americans.  Using mostly videos, she captures portraits of 5 important American artists and thinkers:  Merce Cunningham, Leo Steinberg, Julie Mehretu, Claes Oldenburg and Cy Twombly.  These 5 large almost black pieces (with faint, light writing) captured my attention when you first enter her floor of videos.

Her installation provides insight (the still moments of these artists conveyed in videos) into the way that film making intersects with painting, sculptures, writing and dance.

Klara Liden (Germany) also has an exhibit at the New Museum.   Liden scavengers the streets of cities all around the world for discarded materials, which she uses to build sculptural hideaways, scaled to her own body.  Her exhibit is titled Bodies of Society.  And yes, it did look like she had taken trash cans right off of the streets of NYC and placed them in the museum room.  She radically alters the space of the museum in order to expose it to the material and political realities of the world outside.

She engages with the folds and fabrics of cities she passes through, adapting public space to her own needs in the creation of a more intimate environment.

"They [critics] don't grasp that art tells you things that you don't know you need to know until you know them, that there's no way to know beforehand what might strike you, and that art isn't about understanding, it's about experience."  --  Jerry Saltz, Frieze Magazine, "Writing Wrongs"