Fresh Impressions: Part 2

Today's Part 2 focuses on the exhibit, Lessons from Things and the process of working on the still lifes that are part of it.

3.) What makes this exhibit stand out from others that have happened here locally in Davis?

Sara Post has gathered a wonderful group of artists together and given them a traditional subject, namely, familiar objects, and added a twist that is particularly hers, looking at art-making through the lens of another culture.

"In our object-rich culture, there is a tendency to skim over the presence of things, to cease to see them because of the sometimes overwhelming amount of objects in our lives. This exhibit offers an opportunity to slow down, to focus, to be with and perhaps to add to our understanding and enjoyment of objects that surround us," notes “Lessons” curator Sara Post.

Within the structure of the exhibit, she weaves in an educational component, so that the viewer comes away with more than an encounter with the works of art themselves. The unique quality of Sara's lively and provocative themes set her exhibits apart.

4.) What do you hope to gain from the exhibit (in any aspect, whether, spiritually, emotionally, or if more aimed toward the community)?

Lake Okoboji, ©1977, watercolor

The greatest gift so far took place in my studio. In order to create these still lifes, I've been reaching back into my days as a young student and drawing on my youthful enthusiasm. It was a magical time; so much seemed possible and everything was fair game for the canvas: a plein air landscape, the view from my apartment window, pieces of fruit placed on a worn wooden table.

Recycled take out containers for colored papers

As I've re-explored the subject of still life, I've been able to tap into that enthusiasm and ebullience. But there's a twist. I am older and the experience of the life I've lived since that time filters into these  collages as well. I see it in my approach; the willingness to take the objects I've studied "out of the box" and off of the linear plane. I experiment more freely with media and feel  confident in the way that I handle the colors and patterns; letting them come together in a sort of seeming randomness that is actually the result of working with composition for so many years.

The beige take out container has it all

I also look forward to the reception for the exhibit, to those equally random moments when I watch other people study the artwork on the walls and hear their exclamations as they move around the gallery. I love seeing so many people that I know from so many times of life here in Davis. I've never lived anywhere as long as I lived here: 22 years. That creates a rich tapestry of friends and acquaintances and you never know whom you're going to run into or what you might end up talking about. Perhaps I'll meet a new artist friend or even find the thread for a new series of collages.

First time around...

When my first SoulCollage® class at the UC Davis Medical Center ended, it was time for some reflection. Time to see where we'd gone as a class and where I might steer the class in the future.

It was our last meeting--a makeup class in fact. People came eager to share the vision boards that they had been working on and the cards they'd created in the intervening week.

Our class included women ranging from their late twenties to their early fifties, but despite the age differences they shared something in common.

They were peering around the corner in their lives, seeking the sense of adventure that they sensed lay hidden. Whether it was the courage to recover the brash physicality of girlhood, finding a new direction after divorce, or reconnecting to a rich cultural past, each was searching for a fresh perspective.

 We set out slowly, some of us skeptical of the power of images to guide. Over the weeks we flipped through a virtual surfeit of images, learning how to let our eyes and intuition pick out images rather than just our picky minds.

"... instead of cogitating about familiar images, scout for the unfamiliar. Your mind can't do this. Your animal/angel self can. Just page through a magazine (and walk through the world) noticing things that trigger physical reactions: a heart thump, a double take, a gasp.
The only responses involved should resemble these:
"Ooooh!"
"Aaaahhhhh."
"Whoa!"
"!!!!"
"????"

These 'thoughts' register in your stomach, your heart, your lungs—anywhere but your head. You can't produce them in response to cultural clichés or abstract ideas. Nor can you always know why your body reacts to an image." Martha Beck

The women created cards that tugged on my heart in their poignancy and beauty. Toward the end of each group we would surround the cards we'd made, studying and slowly finding our way to the heart of the meanings they contained. At first, some would profess that they had no idea what the card held and as I stared at the images, tears would come to my eyes; there was so much beauty in front of us just waiting to be seen and acknowledged.

 Since it was our last session, I asked those who had finished their vision boards to make a card that they would give to someone else. Little did I know what I had unleashed.

Yesterday, one week later, I met with the director of our Cancer Outreach and Research Program, which had sponsored the class. I'd asked Liza, the volunteer from our group to join us. A bit reticent initially,  Liza warmed up as the meeting went on. Suddenly she piped up, "Hey Hannah, Alisha said to give you a message." Alisha is Liza's good friend from childhood, an engineer who's used to depending on her logical and well organized left brain.

Alisha had spoken frequently throughout the class about her desire to go outside of the prescribed boundaries of her life. She'd also questioned the likelihood that something so seemingly simple as gluing images on a piece of matte board could hold unexpected power. Nonetheless, divers jumping off of high rocks and dancers leaping in a night sky appeared upon her SoulCollage® cards. I wondered at what point she would gather the courage to jump herself.

"So, Hannah, Alisha left this morning and she's on her way to Canada with her vision board in the back and the SoulCollage® card that Anne Marie made her in the front."

"Oh my goodness. Alisha! The one afraid to set sail. "

"And she hasn't made any plans. She's heading to Vancouver." Vancouver, the city she'd made a card for last week: a big bright nightscape of a city. "Vancouver," she told us. "Vancouver is my soul place."

It takes a lot of courage to break out and break away. People asked me afterwards if she could leave her job, "just like that." I'm betting she didn't--that she was just in need of a vacation outside of the lines. She took her SoulCollage® card back to her soul place.

We'll be starting a new class, beginning on Tuesday, September 23rd. For more information about this class, offered free of charge to cancer and cardiac patients in my area (Sacramento, CA), you can e-mail me at hannah.hunter@ucdmc.ucdavis.edu.

Top image: 4 Fold Path, Amelia McSweeny, ©2010
Middle image: Aloha Nui Loa, Amelia McSweeny, ©2010
Bottom image: Pink Dahlia, Amelia McSweeny, ©2010

Shining Star

Arms filled with supplies for that afternoon's art group, I arrived at our hospital's playroom. Three children and a grandmother were waiting by the door, champing at the bit to come in. Regretfully, I told them it would be a few more minutes, that I had to get some more supplies. They looked at me woefully. And after another few minutes of shuttling supplies, I explained we were short staffed and Grandma explained that they were having a hard time getting through a 10 hour surgery for her grandchild.

"Trumps my story! Come on in!" I said. Seriously though, its a constant balancing act between staff and patients. Shortly after the siblings arrived, in skipped Natasha, nine year old sibling of Jeremy who's been hospitalized for the last several months. It's rare that we have siblings coming daily for several months but it does happen. Natasha is a joyful child, always skipping, looking out for new friends in the children that arrive and depart, and unerring in her observations about me, noting my quirks with a shrewdness often reserved for one's own children.

Because of kids like Natasha, I try to keep the projects for our art groups varied during their stay. This requires some fun sleuthing on my part and I recently discovered the blog creative jewish mom. This former Manhattan designer turned Israeli citizen has a fantastically cross referenced blog, easy to navigate and filled with inspiring and eco-friendly projects for kids (and adults).

I picked out a sunburst project--it seemed day camp like. Although many of our kids may not have been to camp, nevertheless we like to pull in familiar associations to summer; ice cream, water play, lemonade and the like and use these to create experiences that evoke a camp style comaradery and closeness between kids.

With a little fast glue gun work by my colleague and I, we created a series of 10 or so sunbursts and opened up shop. The kids came crowding in, eager to dip their brushes into the paint and cover the rays of their suns in rainbow hues. For one five year old hadn't painted before, the discovery of paint's ability to cover a surface was revolutionary. Another three year old considered each choice of color like a seasoned pro, painting the spokes with his favorite shades of green and blue.

My focus was on Natasha. She takes each project to heart, finding a way to tailor it so that she can later present it to her brother. It tugs on my heart each time I see her brother's initials or name appear. After the initial rush was over, Natasha and I sat together painting. It occurred to me that I knew very little of what she does after the staff and volunteers leave for the day. I don't know why I hadn't asked her before, but I did then.

She told me that she often read to her little brother, or drew in his coloring books for him, or simply watched a movie together. Her words touched me immensely and I woke up this morning thinking of her.

Instead of wondering about "what I had to do today"--or which things might not be going my way, or even what I might be able to accomplish, I thought of this child's courage, her indomitable spirit and her ability to remain hopeful, inspired, inspirational and loving in spite of all that she's seen.

I recently read something the Dalai Llama said, "It is very important to generate a good attitude, a good heart, as much as possible. From this, happiness in both the short term and the long term for both yourself and others will come."*

*Many thanks to Iona Drozda for this quote

SoulCollage® card above by Anonymous

The Birth of Impressionism

No matter what season it is outside, I've learned that after a show, it's time for me and my studio to lie fallow for a bit.

It seems contradictory. Fueled by the adrenaline rush of preparation and the reception, I used to rush back into the studio, but like a cake without the leavening, the work I made fell flat and I learned to say, "Vacation time!"

I'd love two weeks in Paris so I could drink in art and a few cafe au laits, but there's that small matter of my other job and my bank account--so I've been wondering, 

What do you do to refuel? I'd love to hear some of the ways you restore and refuel yourself after an exhibit or teaching a class.

Without the time or the money to visit Paris, I figured the next best thing would be to visit the Birth of Impressionism exhibit, an hour and a half down Interstate 80 in San Francisco.

My sister and I piled into the car with lots of water, and munchies and headed off. It was a beautiful blue sky day and a whopper of an exhibition.

The DeYoung Museum is the only museum in the world to host this show from the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. The exhibit is arranged so that you can trace the artistic movement from the French Realist style (approved by the official Government Salon) to the original and inventive style we now call Impressionism.

My sister and I walked through galleries painted a deep salmon and hung with paintings by Courbet, Manet (that challenger of tradition!),  Pissaro, Monet, Renoir, not to mention Berthe Morisot and Cezanne.

In the past, I've walked through galleries with the feeling that people who lived and worked before me simply belonged to another human race entirely, but this time was different. There's a piece of growing older that helps me to understand my place in the parade of human history and human art history.

As we left the museum, surfeited by our visual feast, we entered out into the brilliant blue San Francisco day. The sound of a brass band issued from a nearby band shell and we went over to investigate. In front of the shell, a couple waltzed and a young child spun around, twirling to the music. The band in their red uniforms with navy blue epaulettes played on.

It was almost unreal, the clarity and perfection of it all. Had I popped up in the middle of Mary Poppins in the park with Burt?

As I look back, it occurs to me that clarity is the gift that paintings offer us. They give us a very personal and distilled view of their world. If we in turn, give the paintings our own sustained looking, we are gifted with this clarity.

I took it in, my invisible gift and carried it home with me to the small Central Valley town where I live, rich with possibility and almost but not quite, ready to begin again.

If you live near San Francisco, or are planning to visit there, The Birth of Impressionism continues until September 6th, If you're not, what visual feast is going on near you?

Pictured above: From the top: The Swing, Pierre Auguste Renoir, View of the DeYoung, Still Life with Soup Tureen, Paul Cezanne, Entrance to the DeYoung with me and a mysterious stranger.

Send in the Archetypes

Do any of you remember that Leonard Cohen song, "Send in the Clowns"  Judy Collins sang in the mid seventies?  It began to play in my ear last week for no reason that I could think of.  I used to listen to Judy Collins as a teenager, but I thought Clowns a mournful, depressing song. What to make of this?

After several days of hearing this soundtrack in my head, I was in the shower (my modern equivalent of a cave in the Himalayas) when I remembered a SoulCollage^® class I had taught the previous week on archetypes.

For those of you unfamiliar with this concept, archetype is a word that has been around for a long time, but was popularized by psychologist Carl Jung. He wrote about the muses, guides, challengers and gods who dwell in the realm of the invisible. Present across time and culture, they originate in our collective unconscious.

The best way to give form to these presences is through images-which is what I was telling the class when all of a sudden, mid-sentence, I looked up, towards the "EXIT" sign posted above the door. I could have sworn there were half a dozen invisible presences swooshing through the entrance.

Call me crazy, and I'm sure several students thought that, but I had the idea that we were about to have visitors and I confess, I was very curious to see who might turn up. Have you ever wondered who is dwelling in your inner abode?

Pat B. Allen, in her excellent book Art Is A Spiritual Path, notes that:
Guiding images are waiting for us if we choose to receive them...These images may at first feel unfamiliar and startle us. In fact they come to restore balance...Our task is to learn to dance with, to flow with, these images...The images all arise from the place of infinite possibility, and that place is the core and basic home of every person. 

I asked everyone to browse our collection of magazine images and the thick, fat magazines we'd collected and to let the images choose them rather than the other way around. By holding the simple intention of wanting to discover our internal guides, an amazing thing happened. 

Six distinct archetypes emerged on the cards over the next hour and a half. I was delighted to meet my own Alchemist Buddha (pictured above). As I looked at the others' images and listened to their descriptions, I had the feeling that the class was somewhat shocked. It was a bit like the tale of Aladdin and the Genie. They had no idea that something so powerful would emerge when they glued images to matte board.

One student, Jeanette, who had imaged the Indian goddess Durga, discovered after googling her over and over (just to make sure), that the qualities ascribed to Durga were exactly the qualities that had sent Jeanette back to graduate school and straight into her new career. As I watched Jeanette grab her hair and repeat "WEeeiiirrd..." I had the feeling I was witnessing the beginning of a great new relationship.

I'd love to hear about your experiences with archetypes.

Pictured above: 
Alchemist Buddha, ©2010, Hannah K. Hunter
Mom Goddess, ©2005, Hannah K. Hunter
Seer, ©2008, Hannah K. Hunter