Art and Weather

A friend shared this drawing by Pearl Eden and it seemed particularly timely. I gave an artist talk Sunday...well, it would have been an artist talk if the woman I was a guest of had allowed me to say anything! But let me back up a bit...

Three weeks ago I hung 25 pieces at an unfamiliar venue. I had two helpers whom I had never met before. One was a prominent member of the community and the other also of long-standing community importance and the same person I will call my "non-profit patron" who had invited me to show. What is a "non-profit patron"?  My attempt to have words describe the most common way an artist gets local exposure. Someone does you the grand favor (I am not being sarcastic) of allowing your work to be hung where others might see it. This person is rarely a buyer, no, but someone who has control of wall space and likes your work. Then you, the artist, spend many hours adjusting work, frames, price lists and labels to accommodate the place where the walls are. Sometimes you just get the walls for the prescribed period of time, but sometimes you need to make an appearance and talk about the work. Ideally once people see the work and like what you have to say they open up the wallet and take home some art. Sometimes the venue takes a percentage...as much as 40%...but sometimes it is a communal space that requires no commission on top of whatever the cost of the show may be. Sometimes you pay to be at the venue and then pay a percentage of what you sell too. Free is ideal of course but still involves cost to the artist...time, gas, materials, time, advertising costs. Did I mention time?

Back to my helpers...I brought them each a small gift for both allowing me to hang my work and helping me to hang it. While we were working I was avoiding any "interpretation of the art" discussions. I was more concerned about the hanging mechanisms and the fact that all the pictures were well above my eye level. Easy to do...I am only 5 feet tall after all...but it was unnerving to know I would leave the building with my neck semi permanently swiveled upward 45 degrees. These people were doing me a huge favor by helping, and the second part of their favor, one that can not be ignored, is to pronounce an opinion of the work. It is part of the bargain, their rite/right of my passage.

This show includes work about the BP gulf oil spill.When people react to work about the oil spill they let me know if they want to know the story of the art or they don't. They either want to be left alone to admire the pretty birds divorced from their meaning or they want to discuss the merits of the meaning. In this case each of my two helpers chose a different path. I didn't know how it might effect the whole show. Not until this past Sunday when I turned up to do my "artist talk"...my most disastrous artist talk EVER.

The weather outside Saturday, the day before the fateful talk, was good for chores...and we do have those piled up. But I stayed indoors and prepped for Sunday while Donna repaired the wood splitter and ran around with Rosie the farm dog. I spent several hours putting together a new set of greeting cards that showcase some bird art. I wanted to have a set comparable to the moon cards~ especially because I am nearly sold out of those at the moment. What I did not include in greeting cards was any images of my work about the BP oil spill in the gulf of mexico. That work has received critical praise and an award, but I have not sold a single one. What I need to do right now is SELL. And when someone invites you for an artist talk or gallery talk one of the lures they use is that you can and will sell. Non-profit patrons are all convinced their venue is the BEST opportunity for you to sell your work.

The disaster began right away. When I arrived I could see there was no accommodation for my silly little greeting cards~ no table or rack available despite the abundance of such things. And suddenly it was clear that the prospective audience would be downstairs...a full floor away from the art itself. I surrendered myself to my hosts and watched helplessly as it all went terribly wrong. I cursed myself for not bringing my own name tag...everyone had one but me.

The first worst part was I wasn't the one talking about my work! My host was...and she was absolutely enamored of oil spill art and its tragic birds...not a good topic for a sunny winter Sunday. My other patron/helper was there and for some reason he immediately dragged a few of us into a section of the building's basement...essentially an emergency exit... to show off a piece by another creative person. If only I had used the fire exit right then! Every moment we spent in that concrete bunker more of my potential audience/buyers wandered off, before they even had any idea who I was or what on earth I was doing there with my little canvas bag of cards and cash for change.

Until this past year I have been adamantly opposed to making any of my pieces into greeting cards unless it is for me to gift to others or to use as self promotion. In 2010 I sold fewer large pieces and decided I needed a some lower price point items. Big mistake, especially as this situation deteriorated...as my host rattled on to individual attendees and I began to get sidelong glances of pure pity. Then the worst happened. The pity people each bought a card. One woman actually gave me pennies.

This was the point at which my non-profit patron seemed to figure out what a failure the "artist talk" was. Another pity person had dragged over a card table for me to put out some things and the non-profit patron began to gather up what I had spread out. I quickly put those things back in the bag and tried to find a graceful exit. All conversation switched to our pets and I happily tucked away my hugely uncomfortable artist persona. I came very close to gathering up all my work right then and there...all the packing materials were right in the van...but instead I smiled and nodded my goodbyes and promised to try and figure out something better for another time. A sunny Sunday and me with chores at home.

And art and weather?

Every bit of this series of events started with a storm. And then another storm, the likes of which I have not witnessed in my lifetime. The October snowstorm was a true show stopper for me. Instead of hanging work in downtown Hartford for a heavily promoted event the lights went off for 80% of CT and stayed off for most for a week or more. I snowshoed my way into a storm-related accident and spent the better part of the last 3 months trying to get control of my life back. The storm brought new opportunites...but the price was SO high. It has left the life of my non-profit patron in ruins. I think it was her shock that made her focus so on the tragedy of the oil spill birds. It was her shock that was taking the stage Sunday. I drove away wondering how I could help her, sure that my own difficult circumstances were coming to some resolution, hoping so. I drove away with more questions than answers about how life chooses pathways and feeling odd about this winter of no winter. In fact it is a balmy 54 degrees outside right now. I opened the windows and aired out the house with glee, as if it was March or April instead of January 31. Unsettling.

It has been hard for me to decide how much of the storm story to tell. I have an acquaintance who uses the internet to trumpet her personal tragedy and it never sits well with me...the mixing of blog and business and bedlam. Should I always appear be one of the happy shiny people? Should I put out an internet beg for business? Do I make it look effortless and easy? There was a painter and painting that became the talk of Open Studio...the "Portrait of a Girl with Road Kill". It was gorgeously painted and hysterical, a lot like my pretty dead birds but way better, more like the dark drama of storm clouds cracked by late day sun. Art and weather. Girl and road kill. Birds in oil. Disaster passes. The earth is so much older than I will ever be.

Murmeration

Murmuration from Sophie Windsor Clive on Vimeo.


My "Flight Pattern 22" or "22 Bird" piece was made to express just this kind of unexplained event. My friend Cathleen McClain sent this along to me after we were remembering our huge flock of starlings in downtown Hartford and had a weird bird encounter in West Hartford (although that was caused by a supergathering at bird feeders).
http://lightbox.time.com/2011/11/03/murmurations-spectacular-starlings-signal-winter-is-on-its-way/#1

Most of these sightings are in Europe, specifically the British Isles. I wonder if the flight patterns are embedded in some sort of collective memory starlings here don't have. Starlings in the US were brought to Central Park so that all the birds of Shakespeare would be represented there...same with "English" sparrows~ commonly known as house sparrows. Both breeds established themselves quickly and spread across the continent. House sparrows create a huge problem for bluebirds around here by taking over already occupied nest boxes, sometimes killing the bluebirds and breaking eggs in the bluebird nests.

When I lived in Hartford it was not uncommon for the huge flock of city starlings to be startled by the peregrine falcons that regularly hunted them. Sharp-shinned hawks also cruised through and suddenly the small birds would decamp from under the highway overpasses and find themselves clinging to the screens all over ArtSpace. I lived in a perfect spot to watch the spectacle. I could see the railroad bridge and Bushnell Park and watch the dance between resident birds of prey and the starling and pigeon flocks.

Around our bird feeders at home in Broad Brook things have been quiet. There has been no snow cover since the October snowstorm that devastated the trees and we are wondering if our birds from the "forest edge" like grosbeaks and indigo buntings will not nest in the changed landscape, that it will not provide the cover they are used to. Spring will tell. One of these autumns I want to travel to Scotland and watch the spectacle of murmeration.

There's just something about a church

This week, via a series of events stated at Open Studio Hartford and after the abrupt cancellation of my show at the Butler-McCook House due to that devil of a storm October 30, 25 pieces of mine migrated from the West Gallery of the Simsbury Public Library to the Unitarian Society in Hartford. I hadn't been in the building since the late 1980s and I can't even remember exactly why I was there then but most likely it was because of something supportive the Unitarian Society was doing for the gay and lesbian community. At that time Congregationalist churches, the church I was brought up in, were voting congregation by congregation  about whether or not to be "open and affirming" of  gay membership. Neither of the churches I attended as a child and adult held such a vote. Politically we were working hard at that time to pass hate crimes legislation and civil rights legislation that could end human resources policies that openly violated the rights of gays and lesbians to live and work in peace and segments of communities and organizations were actively working with the lobbying effort.

The building was fascinating then and it is still striking. The gallery space extends in a circular fashion around the sanctuary in the center and the construction of the whole thing is, to me, like a shallow nautilus with a large center. My pictures look good there, if I may say.

These are tumultuous times and it is nice to have had the work out continuously. Originally my work was scheduled to be shown at a restaurant in the area and in the aftermath of the storm the restaurant closed for good. In our own lives the full tally of the cost of the storm is still coming due and  if you told me I would be switching form one type of CT landmark as a venue to a completely different one I would have tipped my head a bit, like Rosie does, wondering what could precipitate such a change.

 In a quick aside I did have one inquiry in the last couple of months asking if my price was "firm" on a certain piece. I think people are reprogramming themselves to ask if they are getting the best deal just as common sense, but sometimes the question as posed to an artist seems  like unnecessary commentary on the value of a piece. This woman summed it up quite well: http://www.somersherwood.com/?p=126 . It is a calculation that relates pretty directly to the labor intensive detail of my own work. Yes, with the exception of my mother, the price is firm. Mother is a whole other story.

So, back to the church. I am unabashedly comforted in a place of worship, no matter what the type of worship is. I am sure that is not the experience of those around me so my discussions of spirituality over the last few years has been limited to my good neighbor Fred, who reads extensively on the subject and talks openly about his experiences, thoughts, and feelings regarding religious practices and beliefs. And we had such a strange series of weather all of 2011 I think most of our talk has been relegated to our Yankee-like obsession with the weather. Often the weather completely prevented over-the-back-fence conversation!

This is my first art show in a place of spiritual gathering except that summer I had an outdoor show of loose canvases painted and nailed to trees for a several days long music festival. Of course I would consider a stand of trees a sanctuary. We even call the front room of our house, the one with a wall of windows facing the sunset, the "sanctuary".

This Unitarian Society building went from simply being a place to hang work and became, when I stepped gingerly inside, some ancient feeling washing over me head to toe, as if I suddenly lay down in a generous soft patch of moss outside in the field, with only nature as noise and a wide blue sky view. It held a comfort that caught me off guard. I still am oddly unnerved but not in the least surprised. It is as if I am afraid someone will ask me to explain myself. It is as if I am afraid no one will ever ask me to explain myself. Usually that contradiction applies only to the art...not my whole self.

In these days of short light it is easier to talk about the discomforts....the itchy cold, the wreath dropping needles, the electric bill, the unease left by big storms that changed us, really changed us. To say I am frustrated or envious or impatient falls more easily from my mouth than the really oooey gooey center of me...loved, comforted, fed, warm and grateful. "Grace" was my word of the year for 2011. Donna and I decided together it needs to remain a watch word but we need a new one too. The new word may lie in these experiences of comfort that sneak up on me.

Life shifts shapes. I'm going along. Yes, I'm coming along.