SILVER CRAYON 101: Big Art

6.18.2009

Big Art

For about a year in 1986 I rented a 300 square foot studio downtown on Broadway near Franklin Street. I felt that I had arrived in some way. In this space, I tried to make art that was bigger and looked like something that might be shown in a spacious gallery space. Eventually, I discovered that I really preferred working at home on a more intimate scale. At the time, I was entirely influenced by the mirage of 80s...our big expensive world was on the rise.

Toy Future, acrylic on canvas, 60 x 126 inches

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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

SILVER CRAYON 101

6.18.2009

Big Art

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