People like to say that things happen for a reason. If that's true, I think I've found the cosmic reason behind my being in limbo at work. It's given me tons of time to focus on my own work as an artist.
I'm currently floating around a high school with next to no responsibilities. My only actual duty all day long is to go and assist the librarian for an hour and a half during the two lunch periods, so that she can have a lunch break while still keeping the library open for kids at lunch. As far as actual responsibility goes, it's pretty simple. I have more years under my belt working in libraries than I do teaching, so that experience makes it even more simple. And relaxing. Working in libraries has always been relaxing for me. Not satisfying as in the "this is what I want my life's work to be" sort of a way - but relaxing by way of being very low stress kind of work.
I've been wiling away the rest of my daily work day by spending time in two different art classes. One with the new art teacher at the school who is teaching painting and drawing. She teaches very differently than I do... it's nice sometimes to be able to share my subject matter with the kids in her class when they need help... but lets be honest - I spend most of my time in there reading and flipping through art history books, absorbing photo after photo of artwork important enough to have been published. The other classroom I visit is run by a guy who teachers with a style similar to my own. He's easily one of the best art teachers I've met in the public school arena. He's also very busy with his own projects. He is a clay artist, and we've had a number of interesting conversations that leave me reflecting on a variety of topics ranging from brand new ideas for my own work to thoughts about what drives an artist's process for making art.
A little over a week ago I picked up a book that has been sitting on my bookshelf waiting for me for some time. It's a book that Hillary gave me, called Color. It's about the history of pigments. It talks about where they come from, how they were first used by people, sometimes it talks about folklore surrounding a particular pigment, and sometimes just interesting little facts about particular materials that we use. (for example, our No. 2 pencils are yellow today because way back in history when Americans were first trying to market pencils, there was a well known excellent graphite mine in China. Although the graphite in American pencils at the time was likely not from China, the pencils were painted yellow to associate them with the Chinese mine anyway).
During these past weeks that I've been floating around with nothing to do, and through a number of conversations with another thoughtful and purposeful artist, I've been very inspired and prolific in my own work. I strongly suspect that my lack of actual work to do in the classroom has made a lot of extra space in my mind for me to think more purposefully about my own work. It's given me a number of fresh ideas to explore. My only problem in my own work lately is lack of actual time at home in my own studio to realize the ideas floating around in my mind all day at work.
My clay artist co-worker challenged me by giving me a slab of clay, and asking me to approach it as if it were a canvas. to approach it as a painter, rather than a sculptor. This act alone lead me to contemplate how much the materials we're using as artists drive our own creative process. As a painter, I can do nearly anything to the canvas at any point in time during the painting process. With clay it's a different story. Clay changes over time, making particular actions have very particular consequences at different times throughout the artistic process. For example, pressing something forcefully into the clay at the beginning of the project, when the clay is still fresh and wet will result in a well formed hole pressed into the clay. However the same action days later when the clay has dried out could result in cracking, potentially even breaking the entire project into pieces. Once it's fired, the action would simply be impossible. Working with clay involves thinking about time, and planning more adequately than an artist working with paint. It's no wonder that I prefer paint. It suits my practice very well. I'm the type of artist who likes the ability to make changes to the entire project at any given time. I like to be able to destroy the image and start over. I like sitting with a painting for a long period of time, getting to know it, building a relationship with it. I enjoy that intimacy with a piece. The rigid rules surrounding the stages of working with clay limit that kind of a relationship with clay. The clay did, however, allow me to explore texture and edges far more than I have ever been able to do in painting. I enjoyed the organic edges I was able to create. I have always been somewhat dissatisfied with the rigid rectangular (or occasionally some other shape, but always rigid and geometric) edges of paintings. Occasionally a build up of paint at the edges will provide a little irregularity in the edge, but nothing close to the organic edges to the piece I was able to achieve in clay. Cutting and gouging into the clay to create space was also instantly rewarding. Attempting to do the same with a painting has been challenging, and has certainly been more difficult to do, though not impossible.
My clay piece is currently drying, awaiting its impending bake in the kiln. I strongly suspect that the changes that happen in the kiln will completely change the look of the piece that I created. One of my frustrations with clay is that I create a piece to look a certain way, and then everything changes once it's been fired. Though the physical shape of the thing stays relatively the same, it does shrink a bit. Worse, the colors change. All of them change. Some of them change dramatically (as in sometimes yellow becomes red, or pink becomes green, or red becomes black). For a person who loves color the way that I do; loves all of the subtle and delicate differences between color, the sometimes uncertainty about what will happen in the kiln is enough to drive an artist crazy. Though changes can, of course, happen to paint over time, they are (usually) not as dramatic as those that happen in the world of clay.
An example of paint that does change as dramatically - which I've learned from experience as much as I've learned from the Color book I'm currently packing around - is with lead white paint. There are caves in China that were painted in the middle ages using lead white paint, and in some places that white paint has turned pitch black. It has to do with a chemical reaction, and depends on what other pigments the color was touching. Even in modern painting the pigment can be somewhat unstable. It's not a paint that is very popular in modern painting, though it is still available to American artists (it is actually banned or restricted in some countries). I've used it, and I do like the paint. Using it, I can easily understand why artists would continue to use it, even knowing the dangers of lead poisoning. I do have a tube of Flake White (lead) in my paintbox, and I do use it on occassion, but the way I more regularly use lead white is in a primer. There is no better way to start a painting than on linen primed with lead white oil ground. It's much like the difference in wearing polyester compared to silk, with lead white ground on linen being the silk, and acrylic titanium white ground on cotton canvas being the polyester. On occassion, though, the lead white will become yellow with age. I have read that you can place the canvas out in the sun to restore the original white, but I haven't tried it (yet). I was cleaning up and organizing my studio yesterday, and came upon my box of unused, folded canvas, one chunk of which had been primed years ago with lead white - and just as Ralph Mayer warns in the Artist's Handbook, it had become quite yellow with age. It was too late in the day yesterday to attempt placing it in the sun, but if we have another sunny day in the near future, I will certainly attempt it.
Before I got around to cleaning and organizing my studio yesterday, I did go upstairs to do some painting. I have been working at home on a self portrait lately. This is highly unusual for me. I have drawn them in college before, almost exclusively as an assignment, but to my recollection, I don't think I have ever painted one. It's very new territory for me, but one that is definitely holding my interest. So far I have begun the painting as a charcoal drawing of a self portrait, covered with two separate layers of paint, each being a different self portrait, one layered on top of the other. I have a feeling there will be several more layers of work, covering those that already exist, before it is finished.
As I completed my work for the day on the self portrait, it occurred to me that it was hanging on the wall, directly facing another piece that I haven't touched in several years. The one on the opposite wall began as a charcoal drawing that I was compelled to begin when I came dangerously close to losing my best friend several years ago. It has been sitting unfinished, waiting for me to discover the mystery of what steps come next, for years. I've kept it on the wall, looking at it occasionally, wondering what step should come next. And the realization that I was literally facing my best friend in my studio - in the form of two paintings probably cut from the same roll of paper, and approximately the same size (both about 4 ft tall by 3 ft wide), told me that it was time to work on that piece again. Though they were certainly both designed to work as pieces separate and able to stand on their own, I can't fight the feeling that they've become connected, even if that connection is only the friendship I share with my best friend. Though they're connected by our friendship, I do feel that the two paintings will likely develop in rather different ways. One is an exploration of myself, while the other is an exploration of my friendship and feelings of potential loss. To prepare for the next steps (finally) on the piece inspired by my best friend, I simply covered the charcoal with a layer of clear acrylic medium. It didn't disturb the charcoal much, but did make it entirely possible to paint over the charcoal without disturbing it or destroying the paper later. It's a small step, sure, but it is progress nonetheless. stay tuned for more, but to check out the juxtaposition I found in my studio yesterday, see the two paintings (though one isn't technically a painting yet) below:
