sep 16
This is the landscape I am working on today. Ink on paper, 7.25 x 5.5.” I’m just back from an extended weekend in Portland, ME.
I am in a stunning little exhibit of scientific illustration at the University of New England in Portland, ME. I don’t really belong in such exalted company but am thrilled to be included – I am, as always, a little contrary to many of my capital-A-for-art peers, in this case because I look up to scientific illustrators, and refuse to indulge in art hierarchies and would never declare illustration a lesser art form. I was honored to be a part of an artist’s panel Q&A session that was recorded (how many times can an artist say “um…”?) for posterity and for public radio. For more information on the exhibit and a nifty little flash slide show (I missed the deadline for this one, so my pieces are not included), goto: http://www.une.edu/artgallery/illustration.asp
And then there was Portland. I loved it. I met many wonderful people – it seems a city of this size is much more conducive to housing protean sorts than a place like NYC.
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Hi Cathy,
I looked at the slideshow, ‘stunning’ is a good word to describe the work. And your experience in Portland, Maine sounds really refreshing and inspiring. Send me some of that Portland, Maine wonderfulness over here in uptight Seattle! ;0)
Loved the slide show, especially the filovirus which looks like it belongs in this vid:
Missed seeing your work in this context.
More monks in art history:
http://www.usc.edu/schools/annenberg/asc/projects/comm544/library/images/294bg.jpg
Mark, off to talk to another damned artist (3rd this week)
I’m not one to talk politics, but these deserved a mention:
http://www.democraticstuff.com/Thereminists-for-Obama-Photo-Button-p/bt23707.htm
You guys are the best. I’m hitting twitter with that one…
And I have just watched the video four times. Dunno why, but we seem to have an intimate connection with Royksopp.
RE: Roskopp: in a similar vein: Euro/minimal/dance/modern, but with a soupcon of Dan Flavinism
Mark, stood up by a sculptor who was 30 feet up in a forklift outside in a sculpture park when he was supposed to be doing an interview arranged by the Aldrich. He was still going to do it on his cell, but the sound was just horrible. On artists vs scientists: To date I never have a physicist tell me when I call, “I can’t now, I’m wiping up the spilled Pi-mesons from the cyclotron floor”.
Er, It would help if I included the link (duh)
Still flustered
Aah, Stereolab…
Just received an unbelievable gift: a hand-annotated copy of one of the great scholarly studies of medieval literature (Shippey’s POEMS OF WISDOM AND LEARNING IN OLD ENGLISH) from the library of a very dear friend and former mentor, Abbott Conway, who died a year ago.
A decade back, I asked Abbott to write down the names of the people who had taught him what he knew, and I’m really glad to have that list. The lineage of my craft means a lot to me. Is it the same for everybody? That’s my question to all of you: what have you done (or not been interested in doing) to document the conbtributions of the various people who taught you, and who taught them? (Note that I’m not talking about influences here, but people you learned from directly.)
Jesse:
Gadzooks! That would be a ginormous list! I owe practically everybody. And that list has grown insanely longer as I have grown older and learned to shut up and listen as a way of life. Yes, there were formal teachers that were important, but I treat a lot of people now like I am a wet behind the ears student, including Catherine and you. I think a list of people I have come in contact with from whom I have learned zip would be more do-able.
Mark, human Porifera
But I will tell you what gives me pause: having some of my former students now as guests on my show, and learning again from them. Sort of Worm Ourobourus-ey
Mark, ever blotter and blotto
Catherine:
Q: how did you see your work in the context of the show? What pieces were in it?
FYI: Technical jobs you never knew existed (or at least I didn’t). I just had a CHAIR TECHNICIAN here.
Mark
Mark, that’s a very kind thing to say. Thank you. In the right-back-atcha realm, “Remind Me” was the tipping point (funny how the video could seem so dehumanizing, but I actually think it’s kind of cheerful), and I’ll be going to buy a Royksopp album tomorrow. Strange moments in time (I know I’ve talked about this before, but I swear things have changed even since I last wrote):
1990 — Buying music means a trip to Thayer Street, where you have at least four or five stores to choose from. (Cathy will remember this well.)
2007 — Tom’s Tracks has closed down, leaving Thayer Street with nothing, so you go to Borders, marvelling first that a bookstore is the easiest place to buy music and second, that their music section seems larger than the rest of the store.
2008 — The music section at Borders has shrunk to almost nothing, making you wonder how much longer we’ll be able to buy music in the physical world at all.
Forgot to mention that the books arrived with a postcard featuring the waldkauz, the chouette hulotte, the wood owl. Owls are my favorites. Evidently an emblem of deception to various Native American tribes because of their silent flight, but I’d rather think of it as just…fiction!
ICH was in one sumere dale,
in one suþe di3ele hale,
iherde ich holde grete tale
an hule and one ni3tingale.
Þat plait was stif & starc & strong,
sum wile softe & lud among;
an aiþer a3en oþer sval,
& let þat [vue]le mod ut al.
& eiþer seide of oþeres custe
þat alre-worste þat hi wuste:
& hure & hure of oþere[s] songe
hi holde plaiding suþe stronge.
Þe ni3tingale bigon þe speche,
in one hurne of one breche,
..or something to that effect. “Hoo”, vs “tweet tweet”, you decide. Buddha would say: Certs is a candy mint AND a breath mint.
Mark, friend to owl and nightingale alike, but Owlet Nightjars are best of all. In 17th C Holland, the word for a nest of owls, UILSKUIKEN, was a slang term for a bunch of nincompoops.
“Wat baet er kaers en bril alsden uyl niet zien en wil”
· “I love the gallery, the arena of representation. It’s a commercial world, and morality is based generally around economics and that’s taking place in the art gallery.”
Jeff Koons
· “There were only five galleries in those days, and the artists really depended on each other socially, psychologically, and even critically. It’s impossible now. Business sure screwed up the art world universally.”
Robert Rauschenberg
· “Sorry, can’t be there…I have to change the cat box” Mark
Good choice, Mark! Digele (meaning “secret” — see line 2) is one of the great lost words that made it from Old English to Middle English but not (as far as I can tell) into Modern English. And owlet nightjars (at least from Google Images) are beautiful!
The thing about Certs makes me think (somewhat tangentially) about the appeal-to-everybody-and-offend-nobody commercials that have been driving me crazy lately:
BEAMING PERSON A: “This new chicken is hot. Seriously hot!”
BEAMING PERSON B: “But not burn-your-mouth hot.”
BEAMING PERSON A: “Kind of a smoky hot.”
BEAMING PERSON B: “And a little sweet.”
BEAMING PERSON A: “Sweet and smoky. And hot!”
Re: gallery/artist quotes: timely!
Re: my work in context with the show:
The pieces that were included were
1. a large sketchbook page with a running Greater Yellowlegs on it (beautiful, soft drawing, if I am allowed to say so), and handwriting on the topic of shorebird migration. Lots of paper and empty space. Appropriate for the show because it was species-accurate, and presented “data” in the writing. This is one of my series that curators seem less likely to put into a contemporary show, though I have ideas on that, as you might imagine.
2. a small study page with three drawings of a White-crowned Sparrow on it. This one was published on this blog when I was doing my artist’s residency at Mass Audubon last fall. Since it is “merely” a representational study, it falls nicely into the scientific illustration category.
Where the context gets interesting is that I use these as a start-off point, a warm-up or inspirational start. But they still fulfill the needs of a good science illustration in that they communicate pretty clearly, and are (almost accidentally, since it just comes out that way) accurate to the species represented.
A link to both pieces (one is a really poor jpeg, my apologies):
http://mydogoscar.com/birdspot/280/
Interesting choices. I am familiar with the White-crowned, but not the skating yellowlegs. Of all your work, and there is a lot of it, why those two? Not that I think there is anything wrong with those two, far from it, but what pushed you to choose those two out of everyhting else?
Mark
re: work choices: they were really the only applicable drawings I had left – the others are mostly in collections/homes. the new series are too far removed from illustration to be on-topic for the curators of that show.
C: That makes a lot of sense and must be an interesting balancing act you must do: selling off individual works or saving stuff for that big one-person show in the future.
Mark
yeah, it seems to be a constant issue for artists that make their living by selling work. sometimes I sell and borrow back. but now I need all the pieces in studio. I need representation, and soon, and in the right context.
dance, dance, dance.
I need a drink. oh, it’s only 1:00. maybe I’ll twitter that.
We all need a drink…we all need a dance…lalalalalalalalalalalalalala
BAM! Anna Blume is passed out on your couch.
Mark, channeling Kurt S.