MY GAL SUBU

I wanted to share the news and excitement about Subu.com and the wonderful blog Subu writes. ( http://suburose.wordpress.com/) Every Monday she posts a crafty giveaway that has been getting a lot of national attention and over a hundred (!) entrants to win. Last week a gorgeous necklace was featured; this week, an adorable wristlet. All the items are handmade by very talented crafters.

Not only does Subu write a terrific blog with posts about crafts, celebs (like Zac Effron!!) and wedding plans, but she also finds time to create some amazing handmade books which you can see here. My favorites are the earth-friendly recycled notebooks that can be customized with your very own colors and stamps. Inside the books are recycled papers with all different kinds of images on them. They are really cool! She recently completed an order for 250 of these great little books! Can you imagine! Here they are all ready to be shipped.

I also love her new folded travel notebooks with side pockets and room for a pencil. They are so new she hasn’t posted them on her Etsy site yet, but I bet she will soon. Actually, you can see some photos of them on her Flickr page.

She is a member of the Pittsburgh Craft Mafia and has been very involved in the Pittsburgh craft scene. Where does she get the energy, you might ask? I don’t know for sure, but maybe from her father. Definitely not me.

The photo above is of some of the buttons and doo-dads she keeps in a glass container to adorn those recycled books. Wouldn’t you know, the buttons are recycled, too. They are part of a collection she inherited from her grandmother (the original Subu) and great aunt. Some of them have also been rescued from old garments about to be thrown away.

Please check out Subu (aka Emily). She is a never-ending inspiration to me. Did I mention she is my daughter?

Content and photos copyright 2007 by Janet Towbin.

ARTIST V. PAINT: I WON!

Janet Towbin, from the Milano Series, mixed media on canvas, 2007, 24″ X 24″.

I think I finally hit my stride in the studio. Last night I completed a new canvas that I am very happy with. The square format works well and the colors turned out better than I had hoped. I think it’s a winner. Hopefully, this painting (and others) will travel to Santa Fe at the end of the month to be in a new gallery. It’s all in the works and I don’t want to jinx the negotiations by giving out too much information. I will post again when things are more certain.

It has been a struggle these past couple of weeks and it didn’t seem like I would win the battle of paint vs. artist. But I got over the hump of working in a small, cramped and horrendously messy space and found that ever-elusive sweet spot of creativity. Whew! Whenever I face a blank canvas, I am never certain I will be able to find my center of creativity again. It is like searching for a valuable gem put away for safekeeping, and then freaking out because you can’t find it right away. You know it’s there, you hope it’s there, but where is it??? Well, that was me, freaking out in my studio just days ago.

Now that I’ve found the “gem” again I am worried I will have to stash it away as classes begin in two weeks and I have tons to do to get ready for them. I need to plan my classes week by week, organize materials, books and projects, prepare syllabi, compile art supply lists and all the other organizational paperwork necessary to begin. I am also reading several books on feminism so I can properly discuss this topic in conjunction with a collage project I intend to assign my students. The project will be to read Herland (a book about a feminist Utopian society) written in 1915 by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and to create a…. Ah, I don’t really want to say exactly what the project is, yet. I will eventually divulge the information, but not until my students hear about it first. But here’s a hint: it involves flags…

Bathed in War’s Perfume by Walt Whitman, 1900

BATHED in war’s perfume—delicate flag!
(Should the days needing armies, needing fleets, come again,)
O to hear you call the sailors and the soldiers! flag like a beautiful woman!
O to hear the tramp, tramp, of a million answering men! O the ships they arm with joy!
O to see you leap and beckon from the tall masts of ships!
O to see you peering down on the sailors on the decks!
Flag like the eyes of women.

Finding a poem that compares a flag to a woman is brilliant! I love Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. How serendipitous that I came upon it just now as I was writing this post.

There is a saying in medical schools and teaching hospitals about how to become proficient at a task: “See one, do one, teach one.” Teaching is truly the best way to learn anything. I just worry I might be learning more than my students!

Content and photos copyright 2007 by Janet Towbin.

CINDI’S PRINT STUDIO

Today was more than just a great day. It was terrific! I accomplished so much and it feels great to be that productive. Creatively productive.

I spent the whole day at C.R. Ettinger’s studio in Old City. I managed to work on 4 different etchings and they all came out better than I had hoped. I have been struggling with one of the prints for almost 2 years now, and I think I finally resolved it by making the aquatint a good bit darker. There is one more color trial proof Cindi has to print for me so we can nail the right color. No photo of that one yet–but soon.

Kaleidoscope I and Kaleidoscope II have been through many incarnations and stages, but today’s additional lines etched in KII have added depth and strength to the print. No photo of KII but Kaleidoscope I has 3 new bands of aquatint and the print is completely changed. The whole pattern is stronger and the color-range has been extended. Even though it is a 2-color etching it looks like there are 4 or 5 colors in it. Amazing what a little bit of aquatint can do…

Here is Kaleidoscope I before and after the additional aquatint:

KI–2nd state

KI–3rd state

There is another little print I worked on with tons of cross-hatched lines that is loosely based on some work I saw (amazing stuff) by Gego (Gertrude Goldschmidt) currently on exhibit at The Drawing Center in NYC.
Gego’s art is truly inspired stuff…her hanging sculptures are made of delicate wires that cast intricate shadows on gallery walls. And her drawings make me salivate. No kidding…I really want one of them! Almost as much as I want a print or drawing by Agnes Martin.

Well, I guess my wish list will have to keep growing for now–there’s little chance that a work by Agnes Martin is in my future–or a Gego, for that matter. Thank God there are museums and galleries where I can go to see work by these marvelous artists.

There are wonderful books available about both artists. Check out these titles at Amazon.com for Gego and Agnes Martin.

Content and photos copyright 2007 by Janet Towbin.

BEGIN SIMPLE

The first step is always the hardest. Whether it is making the first stroke of a brush on an empty canvas or writing the first sentence in a brand new journal. Beginnings are downright difficult. But it is always just a matter of beginning. 

An important part of being creative is the ability to edit things down first. There are so many wonderful resources in our world (real and virtual) from which to gain knowledge and inspiration–and hundreds of thousands of creative people to use as role models.  This wealth of visual bounty can be overwhelming and daunting to the artist.  But it is also cause for celebration.

So how does one begin to make art when there is so much out there that has already been done? With so many choices, where does one start?  Clean a space and then go for it.  In other words, edit out whatever is extraneous, start simple and build it up as you go. Keep at it.  As long as it takes. Or as artist Mary Judge said in a recent lecture (and I am paraphrasing her), “You really only need one idea; you just need to go deep with it.”

For additional insights into how to begin any creative work, I recommend Anne Lamott’s book “Bird by Bird” or Natalie Goldberg’s “Writing Down the Bones.” Both books deal with creativity in a joyful and common-sense manner.

To see some incredible artwork utilizing simple materials and ideas that have been built upon ad infinitum, you might check out Leonardo Drew (love his massive expanses of rust within a wooden grid), Jean Shin (look at the umbrella series and the cut-off pant legs), Tara Donovan (straws and papercup clouds) and Vic Muniz, (especially “pictures from junk” series and the portrait collages made from magazine hole punch dots). Their work always inspires me and sends me over the moon. I love the way they accumulate and build-up simple objects into massively large and complex topographical universes. Begin simple, then move into complexity by adding, building and accumulating. One thing leads to another, and another, and another—and then you have it.

Less may be more, but MORE is certainly a lot more interesting!

Content and photos copyright 2007 by Janet Towbin.