SILVER CRAYON 101

6.24.2009

Late 1970s Domestic Life Photos

I purchased the Pentax K-1000 with money I earned waitressing while living in San Francisco during the first years after completing college in 1974. I enjoyed walking around The Mission photographing the neighborhood, but my personal environment became more of a subject.

Linda Street apartment kitchen...I was ironing this cloth to set the design I had painted using masking tape to create simple geometric patterns that reflected the new wave sensibility blossoming at that time (think TALKING HEADS 77). I sewed these fabrics into pull-over blouses and kimono-style robes for my friends.

I moved to NYC summer of 1979 and found this apartment on East 6th Street, where I spent many hours sitting at the window (facing southeast) watching the action on the street below...frequently drinking beer and smoking....watching for friends who would call up my name to throw down the front door key.

The hankies and buttons belonged to my grandmother, Doris. She and my grandfather sold their home when she moved into a nursing home soon after I moved to New York. I inherited a nice collection of vintage domesic items that turn up in my home and art.

6.23.2009

Early 1980s Still Life Photos

Dolls in shop window in Amsterdam

Depression Lunch

Colored Eggs

1982 Public Image Gallery

This tiny gallery on the lower east side held theme shows every month or so. I submitted pieces to a few of them. This show's theme was DEATH.

10 x 8 inches, gouache on paper

6.22.2009

1983 Early Paintings - Sign & Symbol

Charlie Mendoza gave me a large roll of rag paper that he found in the trash. I got a lot of mileage out of that paper, as I created about twenty oil pastel drawings and acrylic paintings.

Words (40 x 42 inches)

Mortal (50 x 44 inches)

Future (40 x 442 inches)

Future (40 x 42 inches)

6.21.2009

1983 All Fools Show

All Fools Show was a large group event that took place on several floors of a warehouse in Brooklyn. My rooftop installation was painted with housepaint...each side of the structure was about 10 x 8 feet.

Swimmer

6.20.2009

1984 New Directions

I attempted to work in a larger scale by combining two canvases. Revelation was shown at the January 1984 exhibition, Revelations, at Middle Collegiate Church on East 7th Street. It was a large group show with a big, loud opening. I ran into my college painting teacher there. Ten years out of college, that moment felt like some kind of milestone.

Revelation (canvas, 84 x 48 inches)

By the end of the year, I began experimenting with assemblage and collage.

Mendoza's Music (paper, 62 x 37 includes)

Where To Begin?

For some time now I have been retracing my steps and looking back on my creative process.

I take inspiration from the film Our City Dreams, a beautiful film by Chiara Clemente. She begins by announcing that as an artist she has to live in the biggest, loudest, dirtiest city. Therefore, she lives in New York, as do the other artists she profiles in her documentary. Growing up with a famous artist father, she has left New York and returned again on her own path as a filmmaker. Francesco Clemente was one of my favorite 1980s artists, during that decade before the internet changed the nature of visual art.

She weaves together her story with the stories of five women artists. New York is the seventh character whose special charms nurture the creative life.

The film opens with a striking quote by Susan Sontag...I was not looking for my dreams to interpret my life, but rather for my life to interpret my dreams.

This sums up perfectly how the mystery of the inner life motivates the urge to create.

I am especially moved by the passion of the young artist, Swoon, who was born in the late seventies. She is currently orchestrating a spectacular display of junk rafts now floating in the water by the 2009 Venice Biennale.

I relate to the slow and steady work of Kiki Smith, who talks about turning fifty and feeling a need to walk the cultural terrain of my life and work.

The terrain is often difficult to make sense of, but patterns do emerge and I value in the time and energy I have devoted to making art.

I notice that I have less need to manifest material creations as my appreciation for seeing and imagining increases. Much of the older work shown here resides in a dusty attic, growing warped and weathered.

The responsibility for material creations does become a real concern. Meditation teacher/artist, Chogyam Trungpa, once warned students that art can sometimes become a form of environmental pollution. I think there is some truth to this.

Performance artist, Marina Abramovic, talks about withstanding pain, exhaustion, and danger in the the quest for the emotional and spiritual transformation of her art. New York is a good city for artists because life there is difficult. She emphasizes staying in condition through adverse conditions and quotes the Sufi idea that the worst is the best.

Sometimes the worst conditions and the worst life inspires the best art. I entered the arena of art therapy with the idea that art is medicine for healing. It is not always the pretty picture that heals.

Making things has always been the natural urge...making, arranging, selecting. Today I made blueberry pancakes and french roast coffee for breakfast outside in my improvised private garden on a stone driveway that reminds me of the beach...portable pots of flowers instead of beds.

The art of life is an endless creation. Art is also work and requires mental and physical stamina. Art can be good for your health and it can wear you down. Art can keep you young.

I will construct my own kind of retrospective here as a work in progress. As a kid I enjoyed drawing and sewing. Although the idea of becoming an artist held romantic appeal for me, I had little understanding what that life was really about, but by my second year of college, I had discovered nothing that engaged me more so I became an art major in the early 1970s. After exploring all the mediums, I gravitated to making things over creating images.

Out in the world after graduation, I learned to create designs using a batik process with dyes and wax that I could then sew into a variety of items. Later in the decade, I began taking photographs with a new Pentax camera. One form seemed to lead to another...drawing, printmaking, painting, ceramics, sewing, clothing and fabric design, batik, collage, creative writing, art therapy, blogging.

Lately, I stick with some small-scale collage paintings and much of what I do is digital...writing, combining word and image, blogging. I have a collection of slides, photos, and historic events that document some of my path as artist.

These elements could be positioned in different ways, depending on the point-of-view, but the pages of this blog are manipulated to correspond with chronology. Beginning with a statement of what inspired this project, I then start the memoir with some early work from the 1970s and continue up to the present time...more like a book than a blog. As you scroll down the page time moves closer to the present.

A work in progress, this is an outline of content that I will likely add to as more items are located. I look at these familiar images with the same curiosity of flipping through a family photo album of earlier versions of myself. I find the digital representation of the whole more compelling than any one piece taken alone.

Thanks for looking.

Pat Pendleton