News break

Written Sunday night:

Dear Friends,

Do you believe your news sources?

Today I went to the library to hear experts* talk about "Fake News." I hate that term, because I think the President inserted it into the national conversation for his own benefit — but I guess we are stuck with it. They said the predictable: we might prefer news that confirms what we already believe, and we should question our biases as we gather news. I came away realizing that the media are not respected, and that we all need “media literacy.” I think that means be more active and questioning -- remembering that most media are also businesses out to capture viewers/readers, and they might skew their presentation to lure us in. 

No one used the word lie when they said fake news. But that’s what it is. Depressing. 

I still love the news;  do you care about news?

Then, for relief, I went to the River City Quilt Show. . 

Love,

k

* ABC 10’s Lilia Luciano, Kim Nalder of the Project for an Informed Electorate, and Chris Nichols, Politifact Reporter for Capital Public Radio

September Sieve

I love being bombarded with information. But then ... how to absorb? how to organize? When to cry stop?

I used to have journals made of paper, but not now. Last month whenever a word or idea or quote struck me I copied it into the day in i-cal. That's them, below. Perhaps they make no sense, but that is how my attention works. Many are from the NYTimes, Art Daily, and other art sites. Quotation marks and references are scant. But they all went into the sieve that is my mind, and some will stick. Maybe you can have fun with this technique too.

• Line. artists may work with line to precisely render contours or as calligraphy on the drawing’s surface; apply touch to build tonal values or erase edges; and use traced marks to suggest elements of an imagined topography.
• Indeed, I am not sure that I can grow as an artist until I can bring myself to accept that I am one. -- Anne Truitt, sculptor
• Marlene Dumas (Cape Town, South Africa, 1953) is considered one of the most significant and influential painters working today. Her emotionally charged paintings and drawings address existentialist themes such as eroticism, grief and shame while frequently referencing art-historical motifs and current political issues. Her work also reflects on new possibilities meanings that painting can still have today, in an era dominated by visual culture.   artdaily.com
• should stop hiding who I am for fear of shocking people. He says the best way to stand up for my principles is to actually live by them. (don't remember where I read this ... )
• Lilt and Twinkle
• painting-as-writing (or, as the Abstract Expressionist progenitor John Graham called it, “écriture.”)
• unhelpful
• “We can approach our lives as artists, each and every one of us,” he said. “It’s a choice people have. You don’t have to make houses the way people always have. If you choose to, you can make every action a creative act.”  Rick Lowe
• finding my own voice came as a result of practice, focus, solitary work, and devoting myself to themes that captured my heart.  --  (not me, someone said this and I love it.)
• What vegetable couldn’t use a blast of garlic and ginger and a hot pepper or two?
• If a woman wants to do substantive work of any kind, she’s going to be criticized. Education is about growing bolder and larger.
• When I take pictures I think about nothing.  -- Issei Suda

Paint

God's paint job: sunset at St. Joseph Peninsula
(That's sand, not snow!)

Beach Walk: oil paint stick and acrylic paint

I thought I'd never paint anything but furniture and walls. Then I painted quilts. I love the strong oily smell of Paintstiks. I love to get my hands dirty with paint. I love paint color too. But the refinements of using paint -- of being a painter -- scare me. April, my media teacher at LeMoyne, made it slightly less so. Here's what I learned:

Acrylic. "When it dries it's plastic. It blocks water." April loves Golden brand. Then Utrecht, Winsdor-Newton, and finally Liquitex. Not always in that order, just kind of. Liquitex is least expensive, thinnest in color. "You might want that effect," April said. If so, buy Liquitex.

Gesso is white liquid that you lay down to prepare your painting surface. April uses it like white paint. She never buys white paint. Gesso, however, does not like permanent marker, April said.

The water-activated paints are tempera (dries chalky), gouache (you need just a dab; call it gwash), and, of course, watercolor. To indicate transparency, there are three slanted lines on the tube. If the paint is very transparent, you'll be able to see the lines clearly. For less transparent paint, the lines will be more covered up. Somehow, hue on the label means it will be more watery and permanence means high intensity.

I've got to play with all these paints, blending colors and layering until I understand them. I am going to work with the Lumiere textile acrylic and Shiva Paintstiks, leaving the water-based paints for postcards and notebook.

Happy New Year!

This morning Zing! and I walked the foggy beach at St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge. Zing! chased fiddler crabs and I watched fish jump. It was a dreamy beginning to 2012. Clark stayed home and cooked sauerkraut (which was delicious).

As each year goes by, I note things big and small that make a personal difference. 2011 was the year for:

1. Cedar Key
2. French press coffee
3. Ballet
4. Old friends
5. Clark gave me a fine sharp knife.
6. I joined a health club (and one month later it closed).
7. When I had to make a choice I picked the easy way.
8. I sold quilts. Someone loved my quilts.
9. A poem came to me complete in the middle of the night. And I remembered it in the morning.
10. I was walking Zing! and a man drove by, then stopped abruptly and backed his truck to us. He rolled down the window and I swear he tipped his hat. "With all due respect, ma'am, you are beautiful," he said. Rolled up the window and drove away.
11. Wow! Clark and I just switched our daily New York Times and Tallahassee Democrat from paper to iPad. We have cherished our morning coffee and newspaper moments for 30+ years, and were certain we'd be the last to relinquish newsprint. (Maybe we are.)
12. My cousin Mary Jo died. She was the first (in adulthood) of my generation to go.

Art Media: Ink

The Grief quilt turned into Angel, and that name gives me new energy. A purple shape in it resembles a wing; puzzling over how to emphasize this, I started layering feathery pieces. For some, yesterday I dyed snips of lace and silk with purple ink. I forgot to wear gloves; when I glanced at my hands they were deltas of color, so I sat in the sun watching rivulets of ink flow down the creases from palm to wrist. It scrubbed off, but my fingernails are still colored. I love it!

April started this, with her Le Moyne class on ink. Here are the facts:

You cannot completely depend on ink to stay where you drew the line. It's like watercolor -- if there's water adjacent, the ink will follow it. Also, you should spend enough;  don't buy cheap ink because -- I can't remember! -- maybe it is not as color-saturated. I bought a little jar of India Ink at Utrecht. April has a bigger bottle, which she decants into a little ink bottle for convenience.

Which leads to pens: We're not talking ballpoint, and not even fountain pen. An art pen is essentially a point on a stick. Or a pointed stick. Or a stick (handle) with a little circle at the tip, for fat marks. You could use a sharp twig.

Dip the pen into a tiny bit of ink. Don't waste the ink! It's amazingly concentrated.

I will try this on stabilized cotton. Hope I remember to pre-wash it because sizing is an impediment. Who knows what that means? Maybe it's harder to write on. I don't intend to wash the fabric after I mark it up, which would introduce new considerations.

This is peripheral to the purple ink I used yesterday. That was for my old fountain pen. Today I read that ink is for paper and dye is for fabric, but the ink seems to like my fabric. I suppose it could wash out or bleed, so I'm not going to wash it! To heat-set the color  I ironed it. It's an experiment; other people know the answers. I'm having purple fun.

Art media: pencil

April's class on art media at the LeMoyne Gallery is perfect for me: an overview of many ways to (pardon the art talk ) "make marks." Wednesday was pencils, plain black graphite sticks sheathed in wood. I have a long and intimate relationship with pencils; as I tend to do with everything I love, I have held my pencils too tight. The middle finger on my right hand is misshapen because I gripped so hard as a child. I still feel most myself when I'm carrying a pencil. All these years, for me a pencil has been to write. Now it is also to draw.

I thought drawing was making lines -- defining the perimeter of things.  April said you can also do this with dots and/ or dashes. If you clump them tight you make dark space. You can also crosshatch, which is slanting lines, first one way and then the other. Since Wednesday I've been looking differently at art online. I wasn't surprised to discover that my favorite artist, Agnes Martin, really used her pencil. So that's what graphite meant, describing her gray squares that I love so much. And then there's Drawings from the Louvre, coming Sept. 23 to the Morgan Library. Wow! Those artists are like God, giving life with just a humble pencil. . .  Well, OK, God didn't even need a pencil.

Wikipedia told me that pencils are graphite, not lead. We just say lead pencil because it looks like lead. HB is the European designation for our number 2 pencil. H means hard and B is soft, or black. You can see a chart here. When the number gets bigger, the graphite is harder or blacker, but not both, going all the way to 9 for each, with HB in the middle. And of course Cedar Key, Florida, was a world producer of pencil cedar until the town was destroyed by hurricane in 1896.

We are supposed to practice drawing. But first I sewed a pencil carrier because my pencils kept banging against each other in the bag. And, of course, I need to keep one out -- just to hold.