With the design and teaching of that course, I was attempting to “right a wrong,” and, at the time, I never fretted that my male students were not getting what they needed from academe in terms of male role models. (Now, I think that may have been a naive assumption.) I tried desperately to persuade my male students to take the course—I wheedled and cajoled. They didn’t see the point, and most often their reaction was as if I had asked them to give up a night of hanging with their buddies to go with me to see a “chick flick.” Whether they expressed the slightest interest, or not, I made sure each were intentionally invited to join in.

To an extreme, I even challenged one particularly recalcitrant young man with this statement: “You do consider yourself to be a heterosexual man, don’t you?” He: “Well, of course I am!” I then said, “So, by definition, that means you will choose to spend much of your life in the company of women and, very probably a mate who might well be an artist, too. Don’t you think it would be the most manly and chivalrous thing to try and learn about her, her heritage as an artist, and her hopes, dreams, obstacles and fears?” He enrolled, though I never knew if it was because of my persuasions or the insistence of his girlfriend that he do it.

He, as well as the other male AND female students, struggled throughout the course because the lives, work, and conditions of women artists we were examining were completely unknown to all. Even the idea of egalitarian assessment was new territory for them. They were looking through the lens of the dominant critical paradigm. Their main question: “HOW can you even compare the work of this woman artist (say, for instance, the work of Dutch genre painter Judith Leyster) with with her male contemporary (Fran’s Hals)?” “Why can’t we compare them on equal terms?” I countered.

Every discussion, it turns out, was a challenge to the all pervasive cultural myth of “the male artist as creative genius”: that there are those who are divinely ordained from birth to possess extreme talent in the visual arts, and they are always male. This myth has been handed down to us, hand over ironclad fist, since the early Renaissance when the myth was first created by Western society’s elite. “Who proclaimed it?” I asked them. “Who verified it?” “Who made it law?” It was proclaimed, in every way by the ruling majorities of society—kings, queens, popes and bishops colluded at every opportunity to keep men and women controlled. It was not only the women who aspired to a creative life—it was the men and women who aspired to anything beyond the “traditional.”

In my opinion, the “myth of the male artist as creative genius” has done as much through the years to damage the prospects of male artists as it has done for women artists. The myth was generated in a time when the marketplace for art lay neatly in the realm of royal courts and the all-powerful Vatican. Kings, queens, popes, and higher church officials bought and sold artists as if they were living luxury goods. They competed, sometimes viciously, for the status of having the biggest-named, most-wanted “male artist geniuses.” Sometimes, a woman or two would rise in their specialties to also be in demand, but the origin of the myth began there. How can any modern man feel competent to challenge the “genius” of those so-called masters? They can’t. One can’t live up to those standards in modern society because they haven’t got the supporting mechanisms of the royal courts and church. And, can we really call what the court and church did for male artists supportive? More like imprisoning. Along with the “support” came demands and expectations, often in the extreme. Consider the indentured service of Michelangelo to the papacy—no one would call his work there freely and joyfully chosen.

Then came the rising merchant class, particularly centered in the Netherlands. Suddenly, merchants and businessmen and their families could also afford to participate in the marketplace for art. The commodification of art continued here and barreled onward into the Industrial Revolution and beyond the World Wars. The more patrons there were for the purchase of art, the more artists rose to the requirements of the marketplace. Though, as the case in most market-driven economies, sooner or later, supply burgeoned beyond demand and artists couldn’t get attention, commissions, or make a living…

…at which point, we saw the rise of the “male artist as impoverished, misunderstood genius” mythology. This new iteration of the myth had its own strong appeal for certain artists and patrons. Since artists were no longer “owned” by patrons, they began to feel freer to experiment and find their true creative voices. (A good thing!) On the other hand, patrons began to feel the exhilarating largesse of “letting the artists be themselves,” and began to buy every scrap (only by certain artists, by no means all artists) they could. Still, both were indulging in the “male artists as genius” mythology with a new twist: The artists became “enfants terribles,” while the patrons became a sycophantic congregation of sheep, itching to collect.

Artists have been unnecessarily conflicted about gender and role in other ways, as well.
As if the “mythology of male artists as genius” hasn’t been bad enough for artists, there’s the issue of gender and role in the greater society that has also played havoc with our potential. Here I shall invoke the ideas and critical ponderings of artist/scholar June Wayne. In 1974, Wayne wrote her path-breaking article, “Male Artist as Stereotypical Female.” Wayne suggests that all artists have had a difficult existence through modern times because we ARE all identified by society as “female”… and therefore, incapable of intellectualism, or taking care of ourselves and our own business affairs.

At the turn of the Twentieth Century, the most manly thing a man could do for a profession was to become a builder of great new machines and monuments to industry. It was most manly to harness the power of Industry: steel, timber, oil, the rails, the roads, and the skies. Real men made themselves rich by cleverly supplying these huge demands for raw materials to build the new world.

Then came the World Wars, when suddenly the most manly thing a man could do was to enlist, go to war, and lay his life on the line for his ideals and his country. That pretty much trumps the most manly thing of being an artist, scholar, and a gentleman, or “genius artist” fought over by church and state, doesn’t it? So what about the men who, for whatever reason couldn’t or didn’t fight in the great wars? Were they considered less manly? You bet your combat boots they were. Why do you think young men clamored to enlist and get into the fray? If not entirely to fight for freedom as they knew it, then, perhaps to prove themselves as men.

If the most manly thing a guy could do was judged by his having fought and survived war, then how, alternately, could it be equally manly to express themselves through paint on canvas, words on paper, or god forbid, in theater, dance, or film. (Okay, film was much easier because that’s a case of “acting manly” rather than actually being “manly.” And there was already a rich history of men ACTING manly in film.) Somewhere along the line, society began to equate “creativity” with “femininity.” (And NOT because of an embrace of goddess spirituality and culture!) Male artists of those post-war days were inherently insecure about their manliness, and so was society. Their fear seems to have been that, if you were a creative man, you might be seen as being “feminine” at the least, and HORRORS, homosexual at the worst. (How artists who actually were homosexual survived that era, I could never imagine.) The fears of being perceived as effeminate or homosexual seems to have given rise to some pretty “macho” art and artist lifestyles: Abstract Expressionism, Action Painting (with their hard-drinking, incessantly smoking cadres) monumental, industrial public sculpture, the action adventure “rogue about the world” forms of literature [Hemingway, etc.]

And, what’s with the group portraits of these artists from those days… who are all wearing suits and ties and looking ponderously serious? An attempt to portray themselves as “manly,” dressed as all other businessmen who work a nine-to-five day to support the families who rely on them? “Look here, we are NOT sissies!”

[In this photo: “The Irascibles” protest their exclusion from a New York exhibition in 1950. Back row: Willem de Kooning, Adolph Gottlieb, Ad Reinhardt, and Hedda Sterne. Middle row: Richard Pousette-Dart, William Baziotes, Jackson Pollock, Clyfford Still, Robert Motherwell, and Bradley Walker Tomlin. Front row: Theodoros Stamos, Jimmy Ernst, Barnett Newman, James Brooks, and Mark Rothko. Photographed by Nina Leen.]

What if… after the wars, it had been decided that a man could be whatever he wanted to be, no gender stereotyping applied? What if this had always been the case? I contend the art of post-war years would have been much, much different. Perhaps these role-ambivalent “bad boy” artists wouldn’t have summarily drank, smoked, or driven themselves in convertibles to their untimely deaths (Jackson Pollock). Nor might many have had such tortured and angst-ridden existences. This is not to say that the stylistic and historical periods of art that followed the World Wars were not exciting and valuable exercises in creative production—ones from which we have seen and learned much. But, at what expense to the artist? Must an artist suffer so in order to make brilliant art?

These days are long gone now… and though the artists of today seem to find an easier equilibrium between their gender, their art work, and public perception, I feel that male and female artists of every age, genre, and walk are still plagued by BOTH mythologies: “male artist as divinely ordained genius” and “male artist as stereotypical female.” Just as women artists of all periods of history have worried, “will my art be perceived as too ‘domestic,’ and therefore not worthy of attention or sales?” Or, for women who do large, mechanically astute or physically demanding work, “Are people going to think I’m not womanly? That I might be a lesbian?” I think today’s male artists are similarly conflicted. “If I choose to be an artist, and if I make this artwork that is truly expressive of both the “male” and “female” sides of my being, will I be perceived as less than a man?” Again and again, myths of creative genius and homophobia—whether internalized or externalized—keep us from doing our best, most meaningful work.

Of course, you will find my personal take of art history here highly abbreviated—I’m sure to have left out salient points. However, I am interested in your opinions of this matter.

Now, get back to making your art… who cares if you are male, female, or something in between.

Some of the most challenging tools I’ve encountered are those used for woodturning. When I became interested in woodturning, it was the lathe and the gouges that first caught my attention. It turns out, there is a lot more to it than just spinning wood and making shavings. First there’s the lathe itself with variable speeds, and needing to know what speed to use for what phase of a project. Then, there are the gouges and cutting tools. What I didn’t realize in the beginning is that the tools get dull and must be sharpened. Duh! Sharpening is an art form in itself. Finally, and this doesn’t really count as a “tool” per se, but one must know different species of wood and their qualities pertaining to their suitability for turning.

After several shorter workshops and messing around with turning for a couple of years, I finally made something that really made me happy. March 2-7, 2008, I attended a weeklong session at the John C. Campbell Folk School, titled “Turning Hollow Lidded Forms,” with instructor Doug Barnes. This was an amiable group of turners and Doug was a very skilled and encouraging teacher. [Unfortunately, Doug is no longer with us. He died in July 2008.]

Jeff Fleisher, woodcarver, furniture maker, and wood turner extraordinaire from Virginia, was my next-lathe-neighbor during this workshop. He provided me with all these photos and graciously agreed to allow me to post them here. Be sure to visit his website and explore all his galleries. You’ll be in for a real treat!

That week, we worked with wet wood for the bodies of our vessels, and a selection of dried hardwoods for the lids. Doug and his helpers had cut a maple tree the day before and had brought large sections of the trunk and larger branches to the shop in large plastic barrels. After Doug had demonstrated the rudiments of turning a hollow vessel, we each picked a trunk section, and went to work.

Doug demonstrates the preliminary “opening” techniques.

Then, the hollowing with an “elbow” hollowing attachment.

We got busy designing and defining the outside shapes of our vessels, followed by the hollowing process. The wood was so wet it splattered our face shields while we worked, but it turned like “buttah!”

Jeff with his first piece of the week. [Some people managed to make several vessels, whereas I only managed one!]

Jeff’s vessel, with fitted lid, but not yet finished. And here are his two vessels, side-by-side:

I took a rather radical approach to my vessel, covering the entire body, inside and out, with black gesso. I then turned back through it to make the 1/2″ band near the bottom, and dyed it turquoise. I had this piece of turquoise that was a slab with a 3/4″ hole pre-drilled in it. I decided to make my lid out of cherry, and I wanted it to look as if the cherry handle had “grown” through the turquoise. This was a complicated feat, but I was extremely excited by the way it looked when finished.

As you can tell by my smile in this snapshot!

When I returned home, I searched through my bead collection to find just the right strand of turquoise for the finishing touch.

Voilà!

Finally, I was able to increase the white, contrast the black and put it through a “cut-out” filter. Subsequent, heavy manipulation in Photoshop made the difference in making the pattern useful in the studio.

Then, I used a function of PS that is called “find edges” and I could get an outline of the thick lines.

Once the PS manipulations were done, I sent the images off to Rubberstamps.net to have them turned into large, unmounted stamps. These are the large stamps I can use for imprinting ceramic tiles, but I also had much smaller ones made, in several different sizes for imprinting pattern into Precious Metal Clays, or porcelain for jewelry.

Here are some of the things I’ve made using these stamps:

A black and white platter with a patterned center.

A tile-topped vessel.

So far, my favorite of all is this necklace…

Black & White Patterned Necklace

Needless to say, I’m not finished with these patterns yet!

A bracelet made up of some “Alberseqsue” squares, circles, and triangles. Shown here on an aged model’s wrist:

I guess if I’m going to need a model, I should try to find someone who has better skin tone and color. ; )

And, this one can also be folded as a magnetic sculpture when not being worn…

Then, we have a necklace along the same theme of gold, silver, pewter, copper, and brass squares, circles, and triangles: In this first configuration, I like how the lower part of the necklace follows some order, but the top defies it.

And, another configuration of the same necklace:

And, finally… something completely different. This necklace I am calling Moss & Lichen.

I like that this one is a bit more “organic”… perhaps this will take me someplace else, entirely.
Enjoy!

A couple of years ago, my family gave me an iPad for my birthday. Apart from the many other things I can do with it [currently, reading Wild Heart: A Life: Natalie Clifford Barney and the Decadence of Literary Paris by Suzanne Rodriguez-Hunter] I have found it to be a wonderful tool for sketching ideas for jewelry designs.

I use a program called Sketchbook Pro that has a great diversity in settings for generating lines and planes: light, dark, colored, sharp, fuzzy, symmetrical and asymmetrical. I’m certain I have not yet explored the full tool palette of this application. Let’s take a look at this necklace design I drew in it:

If a sketch doesn’t please me, or it isn’t what I wanted, I simply discard it. Those that make this first critical cut are then uploaded to my “iCloud” then downloaded to my desktop Mac. From there, in Photoshop, I can alter the design in as many ways as I please. I can see, for instance, what it would look like in many different materials or treatments:

A lattice design for cutting or punching from paper, fabric, or precious metals…

For using chain or crocheted wire or yarn…

Or to plot out a pattern for beading or weaving it…

And finally…

If I should wish to make this design from fairy dust.
; )

I posted earlier about the plans for this building and how my father had designed it. What I didn’t post at the time of the planning is that, because of neighborhood covenants and issues regarding the “buffer” we had to observe between a building and our property line, we had to move the site of the studio from one place to another and “flop” the plans.

Now I am nothing if not a stickler for detail, but this process of “flopping” or reversing the plans had me busy for several days. First, I had the plans copied, full-scale in reverse at a local shop that specializes in the printing plans for architects and engineers. Then, by hand, I cut and pasted ALL the architectural instructions and dimensions from the old plans to the newly reversed ones. Thank heavens for sharp X-acto knives and archival glue pens. I simply couldn’t ask my father to redraw these 12 pages (!!!) of plans.

These two snapshots will reveal the complexity of this task!

Once the building permits were approved and posted in mid-January, the foundation crew and the carpentry crew went to work. Within two to three weeks time, this is what we have:

View from the south front corner.

View from the back.

A view from the pottery to the storage area, and upstairs the jewelry studio.

A view of the front room which will serve as a small gallery and a place for my flat file storage.

The building is a spacious 1,260 sq. feet of usable space. You can see how many windows there are… now we wait for them to be delivered and installed. Once this is done, the building will be considered “dried in” and the installation of the electrical system can begin.

I’m musing that I’d much rather be waiting for THESE windows than the “Windows” operating system that used to be the software on my former employers’ desktops.
What a lucky AND grateful woman I am!
Happy New Year to all…

Growing up in the era and the place that I did, it was often hard to take oneself seriously as an artist. This was especially true for girls and young women. Many years later I learned that my “oppressions” could also be seen as my “liberation.” I often heard, “It’s okay for a girl to be smart, but just don’t act that way in front of boys. If you act too smart, you’ll have a hard time getting a husband.” And, it seemed that from day one, our training was aimed for that goal. On the other hand, if one were expected to “act stupid” and could be convincing, everyone was put off their expectations. No one expected you to achieve anything other than a good marriage, and it was somewhat easier to become what you wished to become. I was very fortunate to have parents who encouraged my interests in art and making. (Though, occasionally, they would ask if I shouldn’t get a public school teaching certificate, just in case I didn’t make it into the big time.) Likewise, I had some incredibly supportive teachers… my high school art teacher, Nancy Lee Stewart, was the one who really helped me believe I could do it. While no one was looking, I took all the art classes I could get from junior high onward, and finally ended up with an MFA in Printmaking and Art History… as well as a university teaching position AND a husband. (But THAT is another story, and not at all the traditional one.)

So, with the background struggle of trying to become a “serious” artist, I’ve always been a bit sensitive to the ways women artists have been portrayed in the mass media. Forget about the history of Western art, where they were always portrayed as the model or muse. I’m speaking of media that was/is contemporary to my own experience. When I began teaching my course, “Women in the Visual Arts” in 1980, I decided to begin a collection of images selected from the current media—magazines mostly—that continue in this theme of trivializing women as artists. A recent spate of images from a popular outdoorsy clothing retailer set me off again… so I went to my archive of 35mm slides and retrieved the past examples… and here I give to you, my favorites:

Never mind that there’s not fresh paint on her palette!

I guess she’ll just stand in the field all day, clutching her brushes.

Then, there was a series put forth by a cigarette manufacturer… portraying the woman artist, risking her life to make her art… er, um, smoke.

And a smartly dressed gal, apparently painting a portrait of her SUV!

Chief among the insults, of course, is the idea that we’re all just “dabblers.”

And, finally, the most hysterical of all:

So, if you’ll excuse me, I must go now to load my paintbox and easel into my Jaguar, lose 100 pounds, press my white linen outfit, pick up a hunky guy, and head to the beach to do some serious painting. Oh, yes, and I musn’t forget the gin.

One of my SCSU colleagues, would reply to this very often repeated scenario, “Look, let’s say you have a barn and inside there’s a pile of dung (word substitution here!)… and you want to move the dung out of the barn… and you do so, moving it teacup at a time. It takes you two months, and you labor and labor… and you will eventually get it out of the barn. However, it’s still going to be a pile of dung!” His emphasis would be placed on the “quality” of thought and the creative spirit that should be brought to an effort of expression from the outset, rather than the incomprehensible sense of labor.

I have always said that I believe one should “play” in a new medium for at least a hundred or more hours before trying to do something “intentional” with it. Through the play, you get to know, very well, the possibilities and the limitations of the set of materials. You eek out the techniques slowly, but surely.
You gain the confidence that if you do something the same way each time, you can count, more or less, on achieving the same or quite similar results. You learn that, often, the less you can actually control the medium at first, the better. Why? Because if you started with a medium that you know too well, say ballpoint pen or a pencil, you’d never get beyond the habits you’ve attached to those media from your countless hours of using them as a means to another form of expression (writing). So, it should actually be a GOOD feeling if you can’t control the medium AT ALL. That means you’ll end up respecting its inherent properties in a much healthier way than if you attempt to force it to do things it will not.

Of course, some of the most intriguing examples of artwork are those in which the artist has figured out how to make a particular medium defy its own nature. I think of Robert Longo’s use of graphite and chalk, and I think of Judy Chicago’s sculptural china paintings. I think of the art quilts, such as those by Michael James, I’ve seen that don’t even look like cloth. I think of Pilobolus and the human body and dance. I think of Shirley Verrett and her mezzo soprano voice. I think of Fellini and his films. In my opinion, the most effective works of art are those in which the medium/technique become INVISIBLE within the context of the “first blast of joyous perception.” When we see something by which we are stirred, don’t we first say, “WOW!” Then later, maybe only seconds later, we look to see how it might have been done?

But the sheer manipulation of a medium or material in an unusual way doesn’t make a significant work of art either. (Bummer!) Conquering the medium is only the beginning. Marrying the medium with the spirit, and with the idea, is the ultimate aim. (It’s like attending the performances of children’s orchestras.) The technique and interpretation may lacking, but the spirit is there. Or it’s like attempting a recipe in the kitchen (which, of course, is one of the highest of all art forms!) It can taste great, but have a terrible texture. It can have a beautiful presentation, but taste horrible. But if we think, that at one time or another, the great chefs of the world didn’t just roll up their sleeves and “play around” in the kitchen, without purposely setting out to make something delightful on first try, we are sadly mistaken.

PLAY. PLAY. PLAY. Apologize to no one for PLAYING. Downplay your efforts to NO ONE because it “felt too easy.” Do not slip into the mindset that because you are, more or less, self-directed in this effort, it is not meaningful activity or significant exploration. Discount your efforts to NO ONE because it just seemed like too much FUN.

[I dedicate this post to my friend, Todd Tinkham, who is having the first exhibition of his photographs next Sunday.]