Tag: artists

Me, I’m Partial to Lower Case Letters. Very Much So.

July 30, 2015 / jeanne / 2 Comments

BarnacledBike

Some people declare themselves Artists on their business cards, web sites, blogs. You meet Them and They talk exclusively about Themselves, Their work, Their exhibits, Their plans, Their sales, Their galleries, Their families, Their creative process, Their lives without so much as a how-do-you-do to you. If They mention you at all, it’s to sell you something or ask you to do something They need done. They suck all the air out of the room and all the energy out of you. You stand there watching Their lips move, hoping they’ll soon take a break so you can escape.

Other folks create beauty all day every day. They create beauty when they paint, when they cook, when they garden, when they dress, when they make pottery, when they stitch. Their spaces are welcoming because they have comfort and goodness in mind when they decorate. Their tables are filled with delicious, nourishing food they’ve seasoned with love. Their conversations are an extravaganza of give-and-take. They are interested in you, asking you questions without holding an interrogation and delighted that you’re interested in them, easily finding a box full of common threads and ways to support and encourage you. They are artists because everything they do – be it creating something new or performing everyday ordinary tasks – is done with caring, attention to detail, beauty.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t need any more Upper Case Letters polluting my life, thank you very much. The lower casers, though? There’s always room for them at my table.

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For a while now I’ve had a hankering to do something challenging that requires commitment, can be quantified, and has the potential to change my life. With that in mind, I’m gonna’ be launching 100 Days, 100 Stories (#100days,100stories). That’s right, I’ll pen a story every day for 100 days beginning this-coming Saturday, 8/1/15. Some will be made-up, some will be true. All will be short . . . well, most all will be, anyway. Join me as and if you will by leaving a story in the comments here or tag me in a facebook post or send a link to a story you post on your blog. Use the hashtag #100days100stories and know that there won’t be any prompts or that kind of thing ’cause you don’t need it. There are stories everywhere. You and me, we just need to start looking and listening for ’em.

Lee Bontecou

June 17, 2013 / jeanne / 0 Comments

Bit2

Mara Tapp: And she [Lee Bontecou, sculptor] is also a very generous artist. She says, ‘Think whatever you want about my piece.’

Elizabeth Smith, curator: She doesn’t want to impose. She’s probably most closely allied to the abstract expressionists because she acknowledges when she was a young artist [during] the heyday of the abstract expressionists, she admired not only their work but the idea of freedom and experimentation that their work embodied and the way they lived their lives. They weren’t theorists. They didn’t talk about their work. It was intuitive. She still doesn’t want to really talk about her work. She doesn’t want to fix meaning. She wants to keep it open for people.

Bit3

Mara Tapp: Do people ever ask you, ‘What does this mean?’ What do you say?

Lee Bontecou I don’t answer at all. It’s what you see in it. What I see in it is something else. I don’t get caught up in that.

Bit4

Mara Tapp: What do you want them to take away?

Lee Bontecou: Their own thoughts, I guess, and their own feelings about it. Out in LA they were seeing something in themselves and they thanked me for maybe helping them to see something. It was the best. Not ‘How did you do this?’ or ‘How did you do that?’ but just something they had gleaned from themselves. Everybody has a different take on everything. I’ve had people come and say, ‘I didn’t see that as foreboding. I saw it as something really funny.’ That was their view. Something inside their life–I don’t know what it was, but it was good.

You don’t have to use the same medium to share the same philosophy.

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snippets of an interview found here

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Tickled to be making a guest appearance here today.

102, Envoy: Janet MacGregor Dunn of Hummingbird Hollow Pottery

October 22, 2012 / jeanne / 0 Comments

JanetMcGregorDunn FayettevilleGA

Once upon a time, I learned hand-built and slab-work pottery from a fun and talented woman named Janet MacGregor Dunn in the cutest free-standing studio that her son built for her in her backyard. Every Monday morning would find us meeting there, closing the door, and slinging and shaping mud (both literally and figuratively). Though I never really got the hang of it, Janet works with the grace and near-nonchalance of a woman who is at one with the clay, a woman who mastered the basics long ago and shoved them aside to go beyond, way beyond. Be sure to poke around her online gallery, see where she’s going next, maybe snag a beauty or two for yourself or others. (Tis the season to be shopping, you know.)

I met Janet eons ago when we worked together on a fundraising event for the American Heart Association. Janet continues to be active in local fundraising events and art shows. She took her Nancy cloth with her to several art shows and asked fellow artists to hold it. They obliged, and I get goosebumps thinking about Nancy’s drawings being in the presence of professional artists (shown here in alphabetical order by first name because that’s the way my computer prefers it) like Janet and . . .

AllenQuandee JasperGA