Skip to content

Posts from the ‘paradox’ Category

Mar 4

6 Comments

Opening a Studio

Mending Wall 5, ©2012, 12" x 12," Watercolor, fabric, paper on panel

Mending Wall 5, ©2012, 12″ x 12,” Watercolor, fabric, paper on panel

I recently googled the history of Open Studios and discovered that the open studios, called salons, were started by a certain Madame De Scudéry in Paris. It was a place where intellectuals, writers and artists gathered for discussions.

More recent open studios, the article said, focus on the creative act of making and sharing. And while that definition applies to studios where people are making art in a common space, I like it: a place that focuses on making and sharing.

And that’s exactly what I’m going to do April 12 and 13th, when along with 23 other artists, I’m going to be part of an open studio tour sponsored by our local Davis, CA gallery, the Artery.

I’m taking on the challenge because for a long time, I’ve really wanted to share my artwork in an intimate space; it’s intimate work and the more impersonal walls of a gallery don’t always do it justice. It looks good in a gallery, but in the home, it looks great.

When one of my friends pitched the idea to me, I bit.

I also decided to extend the open studio into my blog and for the next several posts, I’ll introduce you to some of the work I’ll be sharing in April.

The piece above is part of a series I worked on over the last summer. It’s called Mending Wall, after a poem by Robert Frost.

Before I built a wall I’d ask

What I was walling in or out

And to whom I was like to give offense

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,

That wants it down.

In the series, I explore how I put up walls with people, when I take them down and under what conditions. Walls are needed in life; the trick is to figure out what to do when.

The process of putting the text and image together was not unlike building a wall. I used watercolor paintings of jade plants, which I had cut into squarish “stones” and blocks of text from some papers I’d found at my father’s: 50 year old documents from his career as an English professor.

Lest I sound like I’m still in an English lit. class, I have to tell you that when I made the collage, none of this was conscious. I was spurred on by sensation and under the spell of memory.

Dec 20

2 Comments

“Caring for children…our first job”*

"Holding the Light" ©2010, H. Hunter, 5" x 8", SoulCollage®

“Holding the Light” ©2010, H. Hunter, 5″ x 8″, SoulCollage®

Lately, it’s been a Charles Dickens kind of time. You know, that line from  The Tale of Two Cities:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way…”

These words, written by Dickens in 1859, 153 years ago, speak worlds about today. When I juxtapose the lights of Chanukah and Christmas against the carnage in Connecticut, I wonder how we can comprehend this paradox of light and dark. I don’t know.

I took heart as I listened to President Obama speak at the memorial service for the 20 souls of the children and souls of the 6 adults.

“This is our first task — caring for our children. It’s our first job. If we don’t get that right, we don’t get anything right. That’s how, as a society, we will be judged.

And by that measure, can we truly say, as a nation, that we are meeting our obligations?…I’ve been reflecting on this the last few days, and if we’re honest with ourselves, the answer is no. We’re not doing enough. And we will have to change.“

That is a call to action if I ever heard one and it makes me take a closer look at my immediate world.

It’s easy to become desensitized working as an art therapist in a hospital–every day–a census filled with names, ages, diagnoses.

Lately that census has included more than one child who wasn’t adequately cared for; whose parents didn’t meet their obligation and left them untended, unfed, or even worse, dropped or shaken.

My mind cannot contain the range of extreme thoughts which arise, watching a toddler careen around the playroom sporting an NFL-size helmet for self-protection.

Often, due to brain injuries, these children have little or no impulse control, so put away those crayons and markers art therapist, it’s time to get moving.

The task becomes following them, holding them, talking to them, playing with them, getting down on the ground and dancing with them and in every way that I can, loving them.

In this new year to come, I challenge us all to take one small step toward the goal of caring for all of our children. What might that be? Taking time to listen, really listen when a child speaks, (put down the cell phone already!), donating time or money to an organization that brings aid to children, reading to a child, mentoring one, teaching a class at a local art center or finding a school that needs your aid.

There’s only one thing we can be sure of, and that is the love that we hold — for our children, for our families, for each other. The warmth of a little one’s embrace – the best cure for the worst of times.

*President Obama in his address to Newtown CT, 12/17/12.

Apr 26

4 Comments

The Limits of Choice

Art making continually satisfies something deep inside us and, at the same time, places us beyond ourselves.

Cathy Malchiodi, The Soul’s Palette

Choice of attention – to pay attention to this and ignore that – is to the inner life what choice of action is to the outer.

W.H. Auden

Iris bud 4/19/12, H. Hunter, 5″x7,” Watercolor

For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been on a strict 1 color diet. Yes. You read that right; not a 1 calorie diet but a 1 color one.

Color is something I use lavishly in my work, a substance that I immerse myself in and then splash around like a duck.

It’s also something in which I easily get lost.

While dipping my brush in color, thinking about the confluence of hues, tints and shades, I lose track of how much paint is loaded on my brush and what color is flowing where.

This came to a head one Friday morning during a watercolor class. Stacey, my instructor, put her hand firmly on the table and said, “O.K., I want you to use just one color for the time being. It doesn’t matter what color it is, but you can’t mix two together and you can’t even mix black.” (yes, that indescribably subtle blend of cobalt blue and raw umber…)

OI!, it was already Passover; a week of the matzoh mile and now this: I’m  supposed to restrict myself to one color?

It’s been two weeks now and I’m getting used to this diet. Heck, at times, I even like it.

At the very least, it keeps things simple. While writing this post, my eyes lighted on a short interview with researcher, Sheena Iyengar, who wrote The Art of Choosing.  “When did you first have an inkling that choice has limits?” asked the interviewer. Sheena  answered that it happened while studying the effect that choice had on a group of 3-year-olds.

“Half the children were permitted to play with any of the toys in the room, while the other half were told what they could play with. I assumed that the kids with the most freedom to choose would have more fun, right? Wrong. I observed the exact opposite. The assigned group played happily; the free choice group was disengaged and listless.”

How about that? Adapting to one color has made me anything but disengaged and listless. And there are other payoffs. The first time I get the leaf-to-bud balance just right, the flower in front of me comes alive on the paper.

Despite my kvetching, I’m proud that I am keeping my commitment to a ‘year of watercolor’  and grateful for Stacey’s steady hand as a teacher and artist.  I may just stay on this new diet for a while…

Apr 10

4 Comments

Going Through, Not Passing Over

Cyclamens: renewal writ large

I’ve been thinking a lot about holidays this year, particularly the Jewish holiday of Passover.

Passover is a time of spiritual renewal, of looking back in order to see ahead. A broad theme of Passover is freedom, something so vast, that I’ve scarcely tried to contemplate it; being someone who prefers to find the macro in the close-by mundane.

I’m also someone who seeks to understand what spiritual traditions have in common rather than how they differ.

Beans sprouting in pot painted by UC Davis Children's volunteer.

The Friday before the holiday weekend, I met a child in the hospital where I work whose artwork contained just these confluences of large and small, distant and nearby, to which I would add, past and present. This young six year old girl had lost her father to incarceration and her mother to death by addiction.

When I first heard about her, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Certainly not the vibrant being who walked into the playroom eager to engage in the activity I had chosen: creating a paper Easter basket.

I like this activity because by creating a series of folds and cuts in a square piece of paper and manipulating them, you can create a real container.

Flora sat down and pulled one of the folded pieces over to her place and began to copy the words, “Happy Easter,” onto one of the squares. With great detail and many felt tip markers, she painstakingly created designs and drawings on each surface of what would become the inside and the outside of the basket.

I find it intriguing that at this stage, while the child is painting or drawing, the inside and outside are not yet determined. Enclosure can go either way, depending what she chooses to do. A metaphorical exercise about the public and private selves.

At any rate, after Flora had filled both sides of the paper, I stapled her basket together-but she wasn’t done quite yet. she took squares of soft, pastel patterned fleece and glued one to each surface of what had turned into the inside of the box.

She proudly showed me her basket, asking, “but where are the eggs?” I went on my own egg hunt and found several colored plastic eggs. I handed them to her and she tucked them into the bottom of her basket.

It seemed to me that this small child exquisitely exemplifies the theme of Passover. She lost her original home and was forced to leave for a new one (she is lovingly cared for by a relative); she had created her own safe transitional home in the basket.

Apr 27

12 Comments

Virgo Goes Back to Basics

Last week I wrote about my desire to strip my work back to basics as my friend Beth suggested (or, as she put it, “how about just painting something you want to keep?”)  I wanted to go in a new direction, but wasn’t sure how to get going. Being an ex-multitasker but practical Virgo, I was also thinking about how to come up with new work for an upcoming exhibit. I cleared up my studio, (always a good first step), reminded myself that I could keep whatever I made, and began. I put all my work in process up on the wall and decided to work on each one only as long as I wanted, so that I could flit from one to another much like the hummingbirds outside in my garden. What fascinates me now, a week later, is that by giving myself permission to keep the work, a strange paradox occurred. I was able to free myself of “Ms. Practical”  and instead, a more romantic, fanciful and humorous side of me found her voice. By the end of the week, I had accomplished more in a playful way than my alter ego, Ms Practical could ever have. Here is one of the pieces that emerged: April Rose, ©Hannah Klaus Hunter, 2010