new posts in all blogs
Viewing: Blog Posts Tagged with: The stuff that art is made of...., Most Recent at Top [Help]
Results 1 - 8 of 8
How to use this Page
You are viewing the most recent posts tagged with the words: The stuff that art is made of.... in the JacketFlap blog reader. What is a tag? Think of a tag as a keyword or category label. Tags can both help you find posts on JacketFlap.com as well as provide an easy way for you to "remember" and classify posts for later recall. Try adding a tag yourself by clicking "Add a tag" below a post's header. Scroll down through the list of Recent Posts in the left column and click on a post title that sounds interesting. You can view all posts from a specific blog by clicking the Blog name in the right column, or you can click a 'More Posts from this Blog' link in any individual post.
By:
Barbara Johansen Newman,
on 2/4/2013
Blog:
Cats and Jammers Studio
(
Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags:
Sharing the Wealth,
lost in another time,
Nostalgia, big time,
Made in America,
The passing of a productive life,
Artist Lives,
The Wheels Are Turning,
Past and Present,
Weblogs,
The stuff that art is made of....,
Why I am the way I am,
May I present....,
Collecting Great Ideas,
Methods and Materials,
Add a tag
Recently
I had the pleasure, albeit a somewhat nervous pleasure, of being interviewed by
my good friend Monica Lee of Smart Creative Women via Skype (nothing makes you more aware of age and weight than knowing you will be on camera). That interview
will go live very soon, but I thought I would share some thoughts that Monica and I never
really got to cover fully during the time we spoke, because time did, as time does in real life,
fly by.
I
have had the good fortune of being able to spend nearly one hundred percent of
my time these last forty years, making art in one form or another. I did take a
few years off when my two oldest sons were little, but when I think back on
that time, I was always dong something creative (and most of it was donated for
fundraising events of one kind or another), just not all of it professionally. Aside from that short break, it
has pretty much been non-stop all the time.
But,
nonstop at what? Well, nonstop at
art. Art in many forms and in many materials for many venues. In
short: I've been a painter, puppeteer, doll maker, soft sculpture
artist/craftsperson, editorial illustrator, children's book author and illustrator,
fabric designer, licensed artist, and now I am also painting again. I’ve also
spent a lot of time decorating houses, but, to be very honest, that makes me
zero money. It only costs me money. But that's OK. It satisfies my soul. It's a medium I have to work in almost as
much as my paints. “House--just another art material and artistic discipline."
But back to business. If I look back over all my years as an
artist, I see one thing: my aesthetic sensibility has not changed much in forty
years. I am still drawn to the same things I was drawn to in
college--characters, details, expressive gestures, and emotions. I love color
and texture and patterns. I especially like narratives. Everything I do tends
to tell a story, and the story is in the details, textures and characters.
I have written about this before and in much more detail. You can read the first accout I wrote years ago for my very first web site. It really rambles and tells the story of the earliest years. Here is the place to read that. I created an abbreviated version for my current web site. You can ready that one here.
I’m sharing some recent art here
at Cats and Jammers Studio to coordinate with the interview. I am also sharing
some of the house and other new art on my other blog, Design Rocket.
What message would I love to give other
artists? This: don’t be afraid to re-invent yourself and try new things. Life as an artist is a wild journey on a winding road. A few
years back, I posted a long post about moving in random directions in life,
seemingly as if by pure serendipity. Well, life is that but it is also by luck
and pluck, and maybe much less by design than we think. Please read that
post, Serendipity + Pluck = Life.
Much of the art here is from my 2011 Sketchbook Project, “Coffee and Cigarettes.” I
loved doing that book. I have done two others since. You can see the digital scans of my book here. And you can see the show opening containg paintngs based on the book here.
Participating in the Sketchbook Projects for the Art House Coop really feeds my artistic soul. My most recent book was titled “Strangers.” In doing that book I dedicated
it to my painting and drawing professor of my sophomore year of college, John
Patrick Murphy II. John was the head of the art department at Rockland
Community College for more than 30 years. On the very first day I met him, I shared
some paintings and he gave me advice that has stayed with me all these years: “Barbara,
draw out of your head.” Meaning, draw from the well within you that has your memories and
your impressions. And that is the way I have worked ever
since.
John very recently passed away. This post
is dedicated to him, because, really, meeting him and getting to know him was pure serendipity and it pointed me along the way on my own artistic journey.
By:
Barbara Johansen Newman,
on 2/15/2011
Blog:
Cats and Jammers Studio
(
Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags:
Music,
Past and Present,
The stuff that art is made of....,
Religion,
Current Affairs,
Thoughts and Deeds worth looking at,
lost in another time,
Nostalgia, big time,
Made in America,
The passing of a productive life,
Add a tag
It seems that this blog is often turning into a forum for obituaries of people who have moved me. That may very well be, for I if I am going to write about things that are important to me, then that needs to include losing people or artists who have touched my life. I guess as one gets older and more of those key players in a person’s lifetime pass away, it becomes even more important to acknowledge, reflect upon, and celebrate lives well lived.
Along those lines, several weeks ago I was so sorry to read in the NY Timesthat Jazz artist Billy Taylor had passed away. Here is another blog post about it on Mirror On America. I was also so sad to read about the passing of George Shearing in today's NY Times. When I want the kind of harmonic jazz that is both contemplative and inspiring, I think of Billy Taylor and George Shearing. Their music has a distinctly classy and urban New York feel to me. I love it for the harmonic, sensitive and thoughtful sound, as well as for the fact that it reminds me of early years in New York, listening to live jazz in the city. That sound reminds me of being very young and feeling the world was there for the celebrating and taking.
I was very young. A good friend of my then-fiancee, Phil's and mine, Norm Freeman, was a student at Julliard. Our summer evenings would often be like this: I would work until my shift was done at Capra's Restaurant in Stony Point, NY. That was usually until about eleven at night. Norman and Phil would pick me up and we would then zip into New York City to catch some live jazz. Getting down to the village about forty minutes later meant we could catch at least one set in a club.
And in the early seventies, you could hear some great music in the clubs at night. We most often ended up going to the Village Gate (Top of the Gate) or the Village Vanguard or the Half Note. At the Vanguard we caught the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis orchestra in a place where we would
By:
Barbara Johansen Newman,
on 9/30/2009
Blog:
Cats and Jammers Studio
(
Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags:
Why I am the way I am,
Collecting Great Ideas,
Wish I could be HERE,
lost in another time,
Nostalgia, big time,
Even tho it's make believe,
Weblogs,
The stuff that art is made of....,
Great Finds,
Add a tag
If you read this blog, you already know that I obsess about the passing of time. You know that I wish I could time travel. You know that I love antiques and Ken Burns and the Oxford Project and anything that allows me a glimpse into the past.
Now that I have discovered Google Street View, I even take trips to old neighborhoods of my past so I can "walk around" a see what those places now look like compared to years ago. Let me tell you that can be fun, but also depressing. Sometimes places look very much like they did when I was living there, like my old street and house in Stony Point, New York (but the town itself is totally different) or the house my husband and I lived in in Buffalo, NY, as newlyweds. Most of the time, however, things have changed so much, I don't recognize the neighborhood at all, or, in the worst case scenario, they don't even exist, which is the case with both of the apartment buildings I lived in as a child with my grandparents in Newark, New Jersey. Gone. Empty lots. Rubble.
The discovery of Google Street View is just one of the wonderful things I came upon when I discovered my absolute favorite, MUST VISIT EVERYDAY blog: SHORPY.
To quote from the site:
THE 100-YEAR-OLD PHOTO BLOG
Shorpy.com | History in HD is a vintage photography blog featuring thousands of high-definition images from the 1850s to 1950s. The site is named after
Shorpy Higginbotham, a teenage coal miner who lived 100 years ago.
The blog is run by Dave, who posts the most magnificent high resolution pictures of years gone by. I do not know any personal information about Dave, except that he has some facinating looking family members whose mid century pictures he occasionally puts up on the site.
Each day, he shares several pictures, most scanned from glass negatives. Because of this, when you click the link to view the images at their full sizes, the clarity is astounding. Often, I feel as though I am right there, standing in place, a hundred years ago, or more, in real time. I look for small details of every day life, like clothing, furniture, signs, etc. I look for things that give me an idea of what even the most mundane aspects of living were like so very long ago. The size and sharpness of the posted photos allows the viewer to linger over the images like a detective looking for clues to a crime. I do that, only I am looking for clues to the past. Is the shirt soft looking? Is that a package of gum? What did they buy in the drugstore? I am less interested in the specifics of who the people were or where the shot is taken. I want small details. I am looking for that feeling of being transported over time into the spot where the picture was shot, imagining that I am there, and the time is now. I want to capture that very moment.
My favorite shots are those that are street scenes or store interiors or average neighborhoods with average people milling around. It is those scenes that really transport me back and allow me to pretend I was truly there. Perhaps it has something to do with actually having lived a childhood in the 1950s where much evidence of the early 20th century was still very much around and a part of my everyday experience. A lot of the places I frequented as a kid in 1958 still looked as they did 50 years before, so much of this imagery takes me back to my own childhood. Like now. Think about it: many things around us now also look the same now as they did 50 years ago. And now, what was common or familiar to me in the 50s, is officially one hundred years old. Time flies, doesn't it?
Make sure to read the story about the kid, Shorpy, the namesake of the blog, who was a child laborer from Alabama in 1910, and whose picture I have put above. Check out the pictures of Shorpy taken by Lewis Wickes Hine (a photographer who took a great many wonderful pictures in the early 20th century and who sadly died in poverty, unappreciated in his last years for his great photographs) and read what little is know about this little worker.
Aside from the pleasure of the time travel experience I have when I linger over the wonderful pictures, I enjoy the comments left by people who visit the blog and who have plenty to say about the photos. The comments are almost as much fun as the pictures. And a lot of these people are doing the same as I: looking for clues to the past hidden in the details.
You can become a member of the site ( which I have been meaning to do, and will make myself do today!), which makes leaving comments easier, and also allows you to post your own pictures.
The real danger of visiting Shorpy? You can lose yourself for hours and hours, going over all the wonderful pictures archived on the site. I did that several times this past summer. I lost myself in the pictures and in time. It really is the closest thing to a time machine I have found for a long time. Hey, I think I'll go grocery shopping, circa 1964. What what wonderful junk food I'll find...
When I look around my house and see the enormous amount of stuff I have managed to collect and inflict on my family, I sometimes feel...well..a little guilty. I wonder if they would all somehow live a life of minimal objects with a different mother and wife. I think my husband would clearly live is less clutter. He is very neat and organized by nature. Not anymore. I corrupted him. He sort of "caught" whatever it is that has always ailed me, and he now subscribes to the same sort of busy look in decor that he has come to know and love. In a way, my kids have, as well, though I doubt that they will ever be as far advanced with this malady as I am.
With those thoughts in mind, you can imagine how utterly relieved I was to read an article in today's NY Times about renowned urologist and Columbia professor Dr. John Lattimer, who passed away at the age of 92, and left behind a life's collection of oddities that certainly puts my mundane assortments of objects to shame.
I think I would have found Dr. Lattimer to be a kindred spirit. The article points to the fact that he was an only child of two only children. So was I. It mentions that somehow his collecting was an effort to hold on the the past. I agree. And it is more. Somehow owning a piece or two of the past, helps to grasp the present. I would even go so far as to say that it increases understanding of the future.
My husband and I have often joked about what our poor kids will have to deal with when they need to figure out what to do with over 100 cookie jars, even more pieces of carnival chalkware, tons of cowboy stuff, and a gazillion vintage tablecloths, not to mention everything else in this house.
But this we can guarantee them: they will not have to deal with anything even remotely similar to the type of relics being sort by Lattimer's daughter Evan, as she catalogs his vast collection for sorting for auction, discarding, and keeping.
How do I know this? Read the article. What gives me the right to sound so damned cocky, pun intended? This fact: I do not have in my posession, for example, anything even close to being Napolean's penis.....
People always ask me where ideas come from, for stories or illustrations. I usually give a variety of answers based in fact or fiction, but the real answer is ideas come from everywhere, and from nowhere. What makes an artist an artist, what gives them vision, is that they have trained themselves to investigate the nowhere to see and hear from all that surrounds them, to absorb it, and translate it back.
Suspense writer Stephen King, in his book “On Writing” says that ideas are constantly flying around in the sky, and it’s the writer’s responsibility to reach up and grab them. To illustrate that point further in terms of sketching characters to life, I had drawn a character called “Sister Cat” for one of my picturebook manuscripts about kid ghouls. Sister Cat is a sister to the main character, Velma the Vampire, although the biological conjuring of that relation is left a mystery. They are ghouls after all, and anything is possible. At first, Sister Cat looked like this…
Cute in pink, but a little too cat-like to be a real sister. So I waited for something to fly by..
Right before Valentines Day, during a break from the drawing board, I scanned a picture of a swan into photoshop, and did a little conjuring myself. The end result shown here is 2 swans forming a heart….and if you look long enough, a cat appears in the middle, a cat with wings. On Stephen King’s advice, I reached up and grabbed it…
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
. . . . . . And Sister Cat in action with Velma the Vampire…
Sister Cat came from nowhere, but there she was, staring at me all the while, waiting.
An aMUSEd vision…it doesn’t get better that that!
.
.
Terri Murphy
Remember the photos of Ruth McNally Barshaw as the Mad Sketcher all during the weekend of the SCBWI Winter Conference?
It's up HERE!!!
Yay, Ruth! What a treat to finally get to see the weekedn through your eyes.
PS: Ignore any slanderous references to Barbjn! I swear I am innocent of all charges.....
...but this comes to you with only the warmest wishes for a great holiday season!
If I can resist the urge, I will try to take a little break from the blog and focus on some other things: family, kids' books, Christmas, kids' book, guests on Monday, kids' books, going to New Hampshire, and kids' books. Oh, and then I might think a little about books for children, too.
Enjoy the season!
I have never aspired to be Miss Domesticity.
Yes, I used to spend lots of time cooking--sometimes even liking it! I bake the meanest blueberry pie you have ever had. I also have almost 30 years worth of Bon Appetit and Food and Wine in stacks that I even sometimes took recipes out of.
Yes, I love to decorate my house, and even thought about being an interior designer. Except, if you saw my house, you would realize that unless potential clients love cookies jars, carnival chalkware and plaster bust Elvis lamps flanking their couches, they might not want to hire me.
But that aside, I am totally out of the closet when it comes to being NOT NEAT. And that is in keeping with things, since half of my clothes at any given time are also totally out of the closet--or drawers, as the case may be. The surface of my dining room table, the official dumping ground for all that enters the house, makes an appearance briefly just before it gets set for Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners, and then it goes under cover again until Passover when we host a big Seder.
I used to be a little embarrassed about my lack of interest in being Suzy Homemaker. Eventually, I realized that if you are raising three kids and also writing and illustrating, something has to give. In my case, it was my husband. He had to give up the notion that a house has to stay in order at all times. He actually had to give up that notion even before we had kids. I never believed it myself for one minute.
So now I have the New York Times to validate my sense of decorum, if not decor. Check out this article by Penelope Green in this morning's House and Home Section.
And then check out my current dining room table: