Background glimpses

Calligraphers are often looking for backgrounds on which to place their words. Sometimes simple black words on a white page are just what you need. Other times you want the piece to convey something more and working onto a background offers that.

I often find myself looking at paper that has been decorated or treated in some way, thinking what a great background that would make.  Sometimes those great backgrounds sit around in my studio for years waiting for the right words to find them! It feels as if they need a matchmaking service at times.

And quite often if I can't do anything else, if my brain is numb I will spend some time working on backgrounds.  It feels artistic/creative and yet commits me to nothing and has no time frame.

So here are a few of the backgrounds that have appeared in the past few weeks...some with some intent behind them; some with no thought other than to do something, anything.

These lines are one of those days when I just wanted to do something mindless. Noela had made me a cola pen as we call them, and I wanted to test it out, so I just dipped it in ink and drew straight (ish) lines. I am maybe a third of the way across the page, but it was just what I needed on that day. Cola pens are quite free and hard to control to perfection, so I enjoyed the variability it gave me.

I had three long thin offcuts sitting on my bench and finally decided to do something with them.  They felt soft and grey, so I just worked with gouache and layered lots of paint and colour onto the paper then drew some marks and pulled some marks.  They are now quietly waiting and whispering what they need next...

As with all of the backgrounds there is no right or wrong way of looking at them, which I like...

And then with left over paint and ink I danced along another long thin page with no thought or intention at all, but ending up with some nice pages waiting for words...

The other nice thing with backgrounds is you never know if you'll use them whole, or chop them up!

Thursday Thoughts...

“There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality.” 

Pablo Picasso

I have been pondering this thought for a while.  I am not a formal or academic student of art, nor am I a painter, so I sometimes think I don't really understand all that goes along with discussions of styles and approaches and techniques and movements when it comes to painting.  So I enjoyed thinking quietly about this one for myself.

It seems to say to me that there is aways something of substance to start with, and then the notion is abstracted.  I like this in terms of the calligraphy I do.  The process I went through with Massimo Pollelo back in January, where we played with a formal hand and exploded the letters into an abstracted response really gelled for me.

I really like the way some abstract calligraphic art is almost illegible, yet you know it is based in, rooted in lettering. So it seems for me, it matters where you began, not where you ended up.

So now I find myself in synch with Mr Picasso who also thinks you started with something and remove all traces of reality.  Except I guess I don't need to remove ALL traces of reality with abstract calligraphic art...

Picasso's Green Still Life from MoMA in New York. All part of the challenge to find Roy G. Biv (aka the rainbow) the third Thursday of each month with Jennifer and Julie.  We're up to green, so feel free to join in!

Paper-making finished for now

I have finished my paper-making for the time being.  I managed to do several sessions, rescued the drying paper from storms on a few occasions and generally totally enjoyed myself, playing down below, slowly shaking, squeezing, drying. I found a beautiful rhythm and a gentle, quiet practice.

I was thrilled at how well the clove oil kept the pulp as it soaked for nearly three weeks - only right at the end did I think it was going a bit off.

Barry helped out by making me two new moulds/deckles - just had to have a couple more squares - and I continued my happy infatuation with the look and feel of the hand made paper.

So here is what I ended up with, all the photos were taken in the shadow/shade out the back:

A box filled with mini-squares, squares and triangles.

Some lovely larger squares - 12cm and 15cm.

With lovely soft edges

I experimented a bit with using some brown paper peace cranes and seeing if I could embed them in the paper as I made it. Mixed success, but there might be potential for some peace flags later in the year?

The different stacks sitting on one of our log cubes in the gravel.

So I am back to collecting off cuts and scraps of my lovely printmaking, calligraphy and bookmaking papers and saving them up for another session. I am wondering if Autumn might become the season of paper-making as the weather has been so gorgeous - still warm days and not much rain.

It was good to re-use the good paper, not waste it, and create something new from it.

Peace, stillness and preparation

Barry and I are fortunate to be preparing for a joint exhibition along the themes of peace and stillness - altho we don't have an actual working title yet.  It will be held in August at Rosebed St. Gallery in Eudlo - which is a truly delightful, vibrant and welcoming place.

I have loads of ideas in my head and lots of jotting of them into journals has occurred, wee sketches here and there, and exclamation marks adorn the pages when I think I have caught a good one.

I have been cutting a lot of paper - and my right hand forefinger's top joint certainly knows about it, and the fingertip itself is still that funny numb, but I am loving where I am headed with this one.

It is still under development, but I just smiled today when Barry and I compared notes on what we had achieved in two hours. He told stories of beating and heatings and many bowls formed. I said I had cut one page and designed another!

So, I am cutting out words and this is what they look like when I stack them.  I am quietly in love with this idea and these types of images so am gaining much pleasure from the play.

In a way I am taking you through one of those re-wind films, where you start in and pan out. The close-up of the cut letters overlaying each other.

Pan out a bit and you can begin to see words forming, but still lots of lovely layering.

Further out and you can see how the letters are fitting on a page, yet the pages are still are on top of each other.

Here I've separated the pages a bit so you can see more of them as individuals.

A bit further back again and you can see I have done 5 pages so far. And if you look closely you'll see the notes to myself and the pencil marks - these are only trial pages

Back where it all begins with lots of 'roughs' - sketching words, using pens,trying to squeeze them into page limits, tracing paper to transfer them to the trial page and so on.

So, there are still more words to write, and a set of final pages to complete and then a book to create from them somehow. I still have a long way to go with this one, but as my artist statement says, I work slowly, often meditatively...

Thursday Thoughts...

“Well-run libraries are filled with people because what a good library offers cannot be easily found elsewhere: an indoor public space in which you do not have to buy anything in order to stay. In the modern state there are very few sites where this is possible. The only others that come readily to my mind require belief in an omnipotent creator as a condition for membership. It would seem the most obvious thing in the world to say that the reason why the market is not an efficient solution to libraries is because the market has no use for a library. But it seems we need, right now, to keep re-stating the obvious. There aren’t many institutions left that fit so precisely Keynes’ definition of things that no one else but the state is willing to take on. Nor can the experience of library life be recreated online. It’s not just a matter of free books. A library is a different kind of social reality (of the three dimensional kind), which by its very existence teaches a system of values beyond the fiscal.”

Zadie Smith

I love this defence of public libraries! They are indeed quite unique public spaces, filled to the brim, places where books are borrowed, and art is shown, and stories are told to toddlers, and children do craft and groups gather and meet, and Justices of the Peace sit quietly and witness your documents and children and adults share computers and others make the daily visit to read the newspaper in a comfy chair and...so much more.  These are just my observations of a small country town library.

Whenever I pop in I gaze in admiration at the range of activities happening and the ease with which everybody seems able to do the bit they want to do. Libraries are such open environments - open to ideas and welcoming of people, they seem so democratic. You don't need to sign up to believe in anything or or pay anything or commit to anything, just to show respect to others as you share the space.

Zadie Smith is right that there are very few free places left, that don't encourage, promote or require expenditure on your behalf.  Libraries loan books for sure, but they are and do so much more.

©2012 Fiona Dempster - detail outside New York City Library

Gorgeous greys in Goondiwindi

Barry and I made another road trip to Goondiwindi on Sunday-Monday to collect some art from a show. The Aspect Art Show is  a great show and it's wonderful to see such talent, such gorgeous art  and such enthusiasm.

The show is held in a corrugated iron building at the Showground in Goondiwindi and when we were there yesterday I just fell in love with the greys...

Sometimes you don't need many words.

Another great day at Buderim

I am lucky to have a  great group of calligraphers down the hill, up the road and up another hill - about 30 minutes drive away.  Every now and then they invite me teach something and today I ran the workshop on"Modern Versals" that I was supposed to teach last October when instead of teaching, I took to my bed for a fortnight with the flu.

Today was much more fun!

The Calligraphy group at the Buderim Craft Cottage are talented and enthusiastic calligraphers, and always open to exploration. We talked about the history of Versals and what makes for 'modern' versals. We focused on drawing the letters, rather than writing them.  This takes a little while to adapt to as you tend to be lighter-handed when drawing letters and less firm and direct than when writing them with a pen. As calligraphers you kind of have to untrain your brain a bit and re-wire it briefly.

I have developed my own style of modern versals which I use a fair bit, and folk practiced these.

Ater lunch we talked about some of the elements that make versals modern and things we had observed and spoken about in several examples we had studied.  I asked the group to try to incorporate some of these design elements in their work, testing and checking the impact they had, working out how many you could incorporate in a line without it getting too busy etc.

In lots of ways I find Modern Versals very free-ing and very forgiving. They allow for a little bit of this and that without breaking the rules too much.

I am a strong believer that art should be of its time, and these letter forms allow us to acknowledge and respect the history, but also give them a contemporary expression, which reflects us as we are in the 21st century.

The group did fabulously well and hopefully have gone home with lots of ideas about how they could use these letters in their own work.  Thanks to the group and to some of the artists shown in more detail here - Greg, Noreen, Helen, Helen and Margaret - for allowing me to share their work sheets. .

Thanks again!

Thursday Thoughts...

“Socializing is as exhausting as giving blood. People assume we loners are misanthropes, just ­sitting thinking, ‘Oh, people are such a bunch of assholes,’ but it’s really not like that. We just have a smaller tolerance for what it takes to be with others. It means having to perform. I get so tired of communicating.” 

Anneli Rufus

I think more folk than we realise actually like being alone, enjoy that time, find it necessary even in order to do what they do in their lives.  I think it's a great descriptor "we just have a smaller tolerance for what it takes to be with others". That describes it pretty well for me - it's not that I don't like people, I do, I just don't seem to have as large a supply of the energy needed for the exchanges that are involved in socialising. I just get tired.

We have been pondering lately how different people's bodies are calibrated differently and some of us just don't tolerate as much of something (caffeine, sugar, fats, onions...whatever) in their diets as others do. And it seems I am just calibrated a bit differently, and don't have the same amount of energy for being with people, especially in groups, as others do. And that's fine really.

I enjoy people and their stories, I enjoy chatting one on one, I enjoy dinner parties with friends and coffee catch-ups, and I really enjoy coming home and being quiet.  For work-work I often have to facilitate large groups or host events for up to 500 people and I give out a lot of energy and perform.  I do it, I often enjoy it and yet I know I will go home exhausted. My supplies are depleted.

I just like being reminded every now and again that it's OK to be the quiet one, the introvert, the loner.

©2010 Fiona Dempster - detail of perspex engraved over paper "In silence stillness comes..."

Old posts hold stories...

Ken has got us all organised for another COMA exhibition - this one 'for the love of trees...' will coincide with the Woodies - the name affectionately given to the Wood Expo held here in May each year.  The works will be on show at the Woodies on 4 & 5 May, and also at the UpFront Club in town for a few weeks afterwards.

The size was 12 inches x 24 inches or the same in cm and either landscape or portrait.  I am not one for canvas, so looked around the block and started seeing things happening with some of the old fence posts we have lying around.

Given that old fence posts were once trees, I figured I had a link.

I described my vision to Barry and he helped me out by cutting the posts to size and assembling them.  It's the sort of thing I could probably have done for myself, but it would have taken me ages. Barry gets this stuff and does it with ease.

The fence posts I chose had lovely notches and niches and rusty nails in them. Loud sigh.

They inspired my fiddling with barbed wire that I wrote about here, and I knew that I wanted those niches to hold books.

So... I made lots of little books using my embossed and de-bossed pages, and popped them into their niches.  I knew I really wanted one niche to look like a bookshelf.

I gathered some more old barbed wire and cut it to size and held it in with rusty old spikes.

I love it when  a piece you imagined in your minds eye come to fruition in a way that pleases you. I like the contrast of the grey timber, the cream paper and the rusty wire; they all seem to work together somehow. There is warmth and strength, gentleness, tenderness even, and respect for worn and used old things.

So to see the complete piece, here's an inside shot and an outside shot of  "Old posts hold stories".

The next stage in the dance

Susan and I were both somewhat trepidatious about our personal contributions to this book, and came together at her place a little bit uncertain as to how it would all unfold and what we would do.

Originally I had thought we would swap our pages/pieces and then sit together and stitch them into a snaky - type book, which you can lay flat or interact with and have as a mini-sculpture.

Susan also thought about maybe stitching the pieces together as a quilt, and somehow hanging it in perpsex so that both sides could be viewed.

As we sat and chatted and pondered what next, I was playing with the pieces. We talked about how would you choose which pieces to have up or down?  How with each piece there were two stories and for each up-side or down-side there were four options of design to consider - my travels, Susan's travels, my b&w graphics, Susan's b&w graphics. And of course, the orientation of each piece added another four choices.

So I played and we both felt good that even tho my travels side was different - it still worked well with the other designs. In fact our 'travel language' is markedly similar, so no matter what the design the two would look fine together we decided.

But how to choose?

A random selection of both sides of both of our pieces? In random placement across the grid?

Or do a random allocation of the black and white graphic design sides?  Even if you went this way, there are still so many ways to combine them - the sequence, the orientation of the pieces, the orientation of the full piece...

Try the reverse and randomly allocate the travel imagery?

With some scrumptious detail...

Or go a bit more organised and do a row of mine and a row of Susan's b& w graphic design side? But which ones combine across a line? Turn each piece around a few times? Alternate the rows or put Susan's two together then mine? Vertical or horizontal?

Can you feel the exhaustion settling in? Our minds were getting a wee bit warped as we considered all the permutations and combinations.

Alternating the travel pieces...

Oh, and back to the beginning again in a way, with both sides of both of us on show, but this time in a sort of a systematic allocation.

And with such lovely details.
Sigh.

So after we sat and chatted and played, it became clear to us both, in a shy but certain way, that in fact we had just collaborated on an unbound book.  Both of us work with the unbound book, and both of us felt that the interaction and play this book encouraged would allow so many stories to be told, would allow whoever 'read' it, to also 'write' it, and would take on so many lives and expressions.

To bind it in a sequence and leave the story limited to that telling, simply felt wrong.

It was unexpected in a way, but not a real surprise.  It is one of the joys of this collaboration that we often find ourselves doing something we hadn't planned, yet which is perfectly right.

So then talk turned to how to house this wee book; and we decided to get together another day, to make a box for this book and also one for our envelope book from the end of last year.

For me, I was thrilled with where we ended up and once again delighted with how well our work gelled and came together, given that we both worked in complete isolation and had no idea what the other would be bringing to the table.

I am calling this book 'Serendipity". Thanks again Susan - I think this one was perfect for its time and I really liked our gentle unfolding of it's true nature.