Color: STAT!

Thinking in Stripes (before quilting) ©2011, Hannah K. Hunter

About this time of year, I begin to get a bit squirrelly, especially with the tule fog of January (and February and March).

This dense fog, named for the tule grass wetlands of the California Central Valley, makes me feel cozy at the beginning of the season, all tucked into whatever world I happen to be occupying. But like snow in colder climes, the pleasure soon begins to gray.

I long for big splashes of color, wide skies of brilliant blue and the glowing yellow sunflowers of summer. Looking out the window this morning, I knew it would be awhile.

Of course, there is a cure for this: the studio. I go in and I want to inhale great gulps of color: carmine, fuchsia, tangerine, chartreuse, coral, jade and emerald green.

I've been working on a full size quilt for an upcoming exhibit. As I tried to work out the pattern for it, I began a smaller piece that could capture my color hunger and satiate it at the same time. I wanted the quilt to be irregular, with large "bites" of color, color that could explode inside me when I look at it; the same sensation that a child might have when she pops a Starbursts into her mouth and savors the eruption of harmonic sweetness that follows.

How are you coping with winter in your domain?

For you Dad

My Dad's book

The last couple weeks have been filled with holidays; the brilliant candles of Hanukkah and the pungent sell of the spruce Christmas tree; the combined sensory experiences of an interfaith household. But, as Dickens noted in The Tale of Two Cities, "it was the best of times, it was the worst of times." Sometime between the eight nights of Hanukkah and Christmas Eve, my father was diagnosed with Hodgkin's Lymphoma and began chemotherapy two days later.
A hale 78 year old writer, survivor of a triple by pass, my dad had just had his latest book, The Made-Up Self published in last October. Following its publication, it was reviewed in the New York Times and my father was thrilled. I got to thinking about voice and wrote this post which I never published, but came back to since his diagnosis. I offer it here as a tribute to my dad and his love of voice.
Birds 3, Sara Post ©2009

Voice. The singular thing that beckons us into and sustains us in a piece of writing. Voice tells the story, plays on our emotions, evokes our sympathies. What does this in a piece of visual art?

I struck out one night with my sister Amelia to visit the opening of a show at our local cooperative gallery, The Artery, and find out. I was a bit overexposed from a week of presentations at the hospital, so I didn't expect to be seeing clearly.

You know how it is when you've been teaching and lecturing too much and not writing enough? That's how it was. Fatigue doesn't seem to matter for Amelia. Put her in a gallery and she is immediately absorbed by color and form. I flit from one piece to the next searching for something that calls to me--could it be a"voice" I'm looking for?

Since voice must be embodied to be heard, which piece will speak to me? How will I know when I   see it--what will it look like? Will it be clothed in quiet tones of umber, terracotta or ochre? Or, sparkling with brilliant patterns in red, black and gold? I'm on a blind date arranged by the gallery but I think somehow I'll recognize it when I see it.

And I do. The piece is located in a corner of the gallery and is made out of clay. Clay that is rolled thin like cookie dough and cut into irregular tile forms mounted on a birchwood panel and connected with thin lines of grout. On the tiles, in dark indigo, so dark that  its almost black, are intertwining mandalas, circles with interconnecting lines that form the stamens and pistils of plants and reach towards crows who've alighted on these "circles" of plants.

Here is my friend. I stand for a long time, reading the artist's description and wondering how I can scrape together enough money to take my friend home so we can keep talking? Provocative isn't it?  

New Year's Collaboration

Often, when we think about the end of the year, we simultaneously think ahead to a new year and what we might want to create in the future.

At the beginning of 2010, I took a class with Alyson Stanfield, of artbizcoach.com. The Blast Off course was a fabulous way to begin the new year and led me in a variety of new directions, the likes of which I never imagined. My classmates and I created plans which spanned the entire year and during the last week, I've been going over them to see which intentions came to fruition and which shriveled on the vine.

This process got me thinking. I liked the concreteness of goals and dates, but it occurred to me that I was missing another piece. It came to me when I was reading Gretchen Miller's fantastic post on her altered New Year books. You can check them out here.

Gretchen focused on qualities she wanted to bring into her life in the course of 2010. Words like "balance," "transition," and "sustain" called out to me.

These words spoke to the qualities that often underlay my resolutions; aspects I miss while hurrying to get to the results (e.g.: exercise more,  communicate more carefully, spend more time in the studio...)I forget to savor the experience, which eventually leads to my feeling of accomplishment, once I achieve my goals.

If, however, I focus on the underlying feeling of my goal, I may find that there is more than one way to get there.

In that spirit, I decided to cut to the quick and locate some words for myself. Not hard to do, because they were the feelings I most often find myself lacking.
I decided to start the process while I was at work and pitched the idea to a teen, who had been moved off the pediatric floor and was feeling bored and lonely.
Her disease causes her a great deal of pain and she has a reputation for being a bit ornery.I went in with the sheer enthusiasm I felt for the project, but was still surprised when she agreed.We worked on our pages side by side, giving each other suggestions and checking in on the progress of the television program she enjoyed watching.

We met each day this week and by the end, I'd compiled the six qualities I want to focus on.


My favorite one so far is "forgive." There are
many ways in which I "miss the mark." But most of the time, I haven't--its me wanting more of me than I can give. Thus, forgiveness.

Today, my teenage patient was asleep. It's raining hard outside and the dark gloom is conducive to sleep. We didn't have a chance to put our books together. It's o.k. We'll try again Monday.

In the meantime, I'd love to hear some words that you might be thinking of for the New Year. What are your favorites?

A Seed in Winter

I walked up to the playroom door yesterday morning only to find it locked and empty. Unusual, but so was my being there first thing in the morning. After opening up, I set to work, laying out materials for an ad hoc art group; metallic watercolors, paintbrushes, lots of white paper. Soon enough several patients found their way there too. Andrea, a tall, lovely 14 year old with an endearing smile, announced that she loved winter. She told us it was the bare trees that charmed her. "I think you're channeling the East Coast, Andrea. Many of the trees here still have their leaves," I told her. "Yes," she agreed, "that's what I'm channeling." As I later thought about it, however, as she had checked in for her last in-house chemo, perhaps she was reflecting on the nascent possibility that she could be cancer free. Her body had stored up all the infusions over the last year or so and now having lost her own "leaves," she was there waiting for that inevitable spring.

In an odd way she was exactly right: this is what winter does-strips us of our leaves, our illusions and leaves us with the bare outlines of our inner and outer landscape. We have a chance to reflect on the structure of our lives. Do we want to prune them, encourage growth in a new direction? (Which one of us doesn't want to do that with the alternative being stagnation?)

That means it's time for an accounting, a consideration of the past year; what I've been able to achieve and what was left wanting. And where, after all this looking, do I want to go in my life? Usually, I start this process with a list, but after combing through my iphoto file this morning, I thought it might be fun to select some of my favorite 2010 pieces and share them in a slideshow.

What You Bring Forth

What You Bring Forth, ©1999, H. Hunter, Mixed Media

"Honey, why is it that your memory is so good about unpleasant topics?" my husband asked me this morning. He was speaking about our upcoming biweekly housecleaning, but I think that my habit could be an occupational hazard, the cost of doing business so to speak.

This week however, began with a very pleasant ending, the last meeting of our 8 week Young Adult Bereavement Art Group. I've come to love the kids in the group. Although I stop short of wanting to adopt them all, in the process of following their stories I came to care for them immensely.

My co-facilitator and I sat at the table with group members as they worked on their last project; a memory box. He had inherited a file cabinet filled with wooden boxes similar to a cigar box and they seemed to suggest the perfect container for memories. I was thinking of the traditional art therapy "inside/outside box" where you can put the feelings you share with others on the outside of the box and the feelings you hold close to yourself on the inside. I also thought the boxes could become altars, or, simply a decorated box in which they could place objects reminding them of their loved ones.

Of course the kids surprised me with their own ideas-blew me out of the water in fact. As I sat there observing them, an idea occurred to me: I could take my i-phone and shoot process pictures. I had all their consent forms and if I shot below their faces I could capture some of the magic that was taking place in front of me.

I made my rounds about the table and and saw a confluence of images that I could not have anticipated. One young woman had written "wash away 2010" Another had a found a picture of a heart formed by the thumbs and forefingers of two hands coming together (try that yourself!). Yet another person had glued the traditional "corners" used to hold photographs in an album, back in the days when you would glue these tiny corners in an album and hope that you'd done it right so you could easily slip in the photograph.

I wondered whether this young man would be adding any of his photographs that he'd found of his mother. This would be progress indeed because several weeks before he told us he had them in a box, but could not look at them.

As our time together ended, we went around the table, each sharing a word that expressed our feeling of the moment. I heard words like "blessed",  "understood" and "comforted"--and when they left, they asked us about the reunion in the spring. Unthinkable that two years ago at this time, we were putting together figures and ideas, hoping to get a grant. Today, I am immensely grateful for these young people who have shared their lives with us and for the support of our hospital and hospice, the UC Davis Children's Hospital and the UC Davis Hospice.