Interview with artist Christel Dillbohner and...Still climbing to my higher financial goal

Christel Dillbohner,  The Black Pool,   2011

489 industrial filters made from pigment and wax, 5 encaustic painted panels.
photo courtesy of the Don Soker Gallery, San Francisco, CA 

106%!! Fantastic! A major milestone...and due to your generosity! Thank you.

With just four days to go in my fundraiser, I am still striving towards 130% which would see me truly and fully funded and able to realize all 28 interviews.

By reaching 100%, I am ensured of receiving all pledges made thus far. That was my minimum goal. I am now striving to be fully funded to my higher level of 15K that will enable all 28 interviews to happen as well as be able to hire a book designer to oversee the technology needed to create the embedded videos and help layout the publication...

I am writing you from the home of Christel Dillbohner in Berkeley as I am on the first short leg of interviews that I could afford myself...Christel and I taped her interview yesterday. What an amazing opportunity to spend time with her (we'd never met before), collaborate on our interview shoot, learn of her deeply committed ideas and aesthetics and gain insight into her creative process!

I can see how enriching this whole adventurous project will be. The process of collaboration with each individual artist interviewee will enable the most inspiring of information to emerge.

A conversational approach within the taping turned out just to be a natural extension of our preparatory talk at the table as we planned a sequential approach. Christel and I found that we just got better and better with each take. The questions shifted slightly, the answers got deeper and more to the core of her artistic intentions. What a gift to experience!

Thank you for considering upping your pledge (you can choose artwork on my blogpost below at http://www.papermakingresources.blogspot.com/2011/11/donor-rewards-art-for-your-pledge-usa.html#more

With $2615 more in pledges, I will reach my higher financial goal of $15,240 and my project Contemporary Paper and Encaustic will be fully enabled.

If you can help in any way, I would be most grateful. Pass the word, contact someone you know who would be supportive, choose an artwork for yourself or a gift....Go to http://www.unitedstatesartists.org/project/contemporary_paper_and_encaustic_international_trends and support this

But the bottom line is that I appreciate all of you, my supporters, so very much. Once again, thank you!!

Catherine

Gratitude~ ....0 days to go!!

I am so very grateful for the support that my colleagues have given me by donating art towards my fundraiser Contemporary Paper and Encaustic...touched at their generosity, giving of their creative work toward this very special project.  I thank them, and I thank you for your tax deductible pledge on the USA Artists site.  Go to that link to learn more about it and how to support my project.

You can view offered works in the blog post before this one as well...take a look, make a pledge, grace your walls with superb work and know that you are enabling me to undertake a huge year long effort...walking into the studios of 28 talented international artists across the United States to learn about their ideas and creative processes.

So much to discover and absorb.  I'll give back by videotaping and editing my interviews, and sharing them in a unique publication entitled Contemporary Paper and Encaustic.  But first I have to raise the funds so I can travel there!  The work below is offered by one of the 28 artists I hope to interview:  talented Mona Waterhouse of Peachtree City, GA and Sweden:

Mona Waterhouse of Peachtree City, GA and Sweden

Flow I: size 7"x 5", Medium:  Ink jet print on handmade paper, colored pencil and encaustic, mounted on board

Yours for a pledge of $200

Choose an artwork. (Find them in my previous blog post which I keep updated with all art available.) Make a pledge and then contact me (thru the USA Artists site once your pledge has been processed) with the artist/title of the work you've chosen as a donor perk.

I've grouped these 28 artists into 4 trips...all of which will be completed by April of 2012.
I'll interview 9 artists in the first one,  which will be accomplished before the end of this year:
# 1 trip Oakland > San Francisco > Santa Cruz > Redding > Seattle > Taos > Santa Fe

So exciting!  Please consider supporting my project!  You'll also support the 28 interviewees, master artists who will be included with their inspiring work in the "portfolio" section of Contemporary Paper and Encaustic.

Mona Waterhouse,  Pod VI - Cradle    

Wire, paper, dye, medium and wax.  6 1/2" x 16" x 5"

Yours for a pledge of $550

Thank you so much~  I am so grateful for your support!

12//11 It's a countdown!! 0 days left! Thanks so much for helping support USA Project Contemporary Paper and Encaustic

Contemporary Paper and Encaustic: A Fundraiser!

Fundraiser
*
Contemporary Paper
and Encaustic
an e-book
by Catherine Nash
*
Fundraiser

I am seeking funding 

to help me travel across the U.S. 

to conduct studio visits with 28 international visual artists: 

one-on-one taped interviews with inspiring and dynamic artists 

that will be incorporated into the portfolio section 

of my e-book Contemporary Paper & Encaustic.

For over 30 years, I've been enamored with paper and artist books and for the last 17 have avidly explored encaustic (painting with molten wax).  Contemporary Paper & Encaustic bridges these media worlds by presenting the work and processes of a full range of innovative artists from around the world in an e-publication, a brand new type of teaching tool formatted for use on the computer. 

Please help support my project!

To learn more about the project click this link
To view a portfolio of the 28 int'l artists I'd like to interview, click this link~
To see a step by step photo showcase of how I created the above cast paper sculpture entitled Sky Nest, a new work of mine from 2011, click this link~

A number of artists are offering works in exchange for your pledge.  I've uploaded imagery of their works in the next post.  Here's a link.


Thanks so very much for
your generous support!

Catherine Nash

This is a description from Lynette Haggard's blog:

Contemporary Paper and Encaustic

WHY IS CATHERINE NASH WITH USA PROJECTS? 

Catherine has been selected to participate in a new online community of America’s finest artists called USA Projects. This site was created by United States Artists to expand its mission of investing in America’s finest artists. USA Projects provides a platform for promotion and fundraising for individual artists projects. 


WHAT IS CATHERINE GOING TO CREATE?
She's got a big vision. Her book will be a full 200+ page e-book with "turnable" pages — a brand new type of teaching tool formatted for use on a computer. It will be available both on DVD or online. It will encompass both a gallery section that includes a work each from 90+ international artists as well as a portfolio section that includes a 4 page spread for each of 28 international artists with their embedded video interview within their pages. She plans to focus on how media corroborates with the expression of artists ideas and content.  

To see the artists Catherine plans to include in the portfolio section of her book, click  HERE.

When Contemporary Paper and Encaustic is published in DVD format by the summer of 2012,  it will be sold on Amazon.com as well as Catherine's site.

HOW CAN YOU SUPPORT HER PROJECT?
Catherine is seeking funding to help her travel across the United States to conduct studio visits and create one-on-one taped interviews with the twenty eight artists.

Her project fundraising has a countdown: If she reaches her goal by December 3rd, the project is a go!  Currently your tax deductible pledge will be matched by USA Projects.  Your credit card will not be charged until the results are in...

Kyoko Ibe at the LACMA thru Nov 29, '11

Ibe-Kyoko, Hogosho
129-x-147.5-cm
collection-of-the artist
©Ibe-Kyoko

"Paper is so beautiful. It shows its beauty texturally when it is between the eyes and light. When we see the fiber in paper it is alive, moving. Paper is light, weightless, freely floating in space. It is a gift from nature." - Kyoko Ibe

I visited Kyoko Ibe in her Kyoto studio in 1987 and it was a magical, inspirational opportunity. I've loved her work ever since...I deem her an international treasure for all.



Last week I was lucky enough to see Kyoko Ibe's solo show in the Japanese Pavillion wing of the LA County Museum of Art, (LACMA). One walks up the organically sinuous, spiraling walkway of Frank Gehry's design, past scrolls and screens that date back eight hundred years or more. The sumi brushstrokes and the sparing compositions have always called to my heart, not to mention that very particular 12thc. carved wood buddha statue that gives me chills every time I stand in front of it....which I do whenever I am in town.


The moving contemporary art of Kyoko Ibe is completely at home in this space of light and quietude, side by side with centuries of her heritage. There is a simplicity to the work that instantly draws one in and the poetic translation of her personal experiences resonate with me. It speaks of the transience of nature and relationships. In one work, "Once Upon a Time" Ibe has embedded letters from her mother and documents removed from the family Buddhist altar: documents that had accumulated within the altar since it was made in the 19th century. A museum label aptly describes this work to have"...an equivalently profound connection with past and present lives".



I loved what the museum wrote about her techniques in papermaking: "Ibe's purpose in making her works is to convey the miraculous strength of natural processes, allowing materials born of nature - plant fibers and water - to do their work with little direct intervention from her. Having decades of experience, she finds ways to encourage the pulp..." into her quietly moving, yet grandiose in scale works of paper.

"The power of nature is so often beyond what people can control. Harnessing that power is part of Ibe-san’s expression. Having laid bits of documents, chips of mica, flakes of gold or silver, recycled indigo paper, and other precious materials onto the paper screen, she then begins to apply paper pulp behind that surface. As she adds layers and layers of various colored pulps of recycled paper behind those, some dense with calligraphy so they take on the color of gray sumi, others pink from the vermillion of seals used to sign a document, colors merge onto the surface and fibers bind with the elements already applied. Layer upon layer of pulp is added with great quantities of water, and Ibe-san relinquishes control, allowing the water to rearrange paper fibers and draw pulp into various patterns. The power of water and the strength of plants inspire this work, while the people whose writings are merged into her paper she feels to be living again through traces of their words." - Hollis Goodall, curator, Japanese Art

This exhibition is part of a larger two year project entitled Recycling: washi tales, a performance installation that was commissioned by Krannert Center of the University of Illinois. If you had great fortune, you caught a performance entitled Recycling: Washi Tales, with four stories drawn from reuse of special paper, sets, and costume all by Ibe Kyoko on September 22 at Los Angeles County Museum of Art in conjunction with this exhibition of Kyoko Ibe's work. Through the whole performance washi is being made on stage.  Hiromi Paper's (Santa Monica, CA) blog is just wonderful for those of us unable to have caught such an exciting production.  Here is the link to their description of the LA performance with a more in depth description of the four stories and photos.

Japan’s Intangible Cultural Treasure otsuzumi drummer Okura Shonosuke from the Kanze Noh Theater, whose family has been performing noh drumming since the 16th century, were among the elite participants in this performance. Directed and written by Elise Thoron from New York, other performers include dancer/actor Karen Kandel, biwa lute player Arai Shisui, specialist in ancient chant and dance Sakurai Makiko, and actor Soeda Sonoko.

Washi Tales: The Paper Art of Ibe Kyoko
Pavilion for Japanese Art, Level 3
LA County Museum of Art
September 1, 2011–November 29, 2011

Black Sun being created. Images from Kyoko Ibe's website:





















Want to know more about Japanese papermaking techniques? I found this wonderful photo compilation : they are photos of paper maker Tamura Tadashi in Kyoko Ibe’s studio (Nishiyama, Kyoto) and at the Awagami Factory (Shikoku) taken by Elise Thoron on Asian Cultural Council fellowship May-June, 2009.

It is all about the Cape!

Sky Nest
Cast gampi and abaca paper fibers into a lashed armature of creosote branches, encased in encaustic, oil stick, white line transfer.
26"h X 40"w X 10"d


I am excited to have my work in two exhibitions this summer on Cape Cod:

Sculpture in Wax Invitational Show at The Truro Center for the Arts featuring 5 artists:
myself Catherine Nash, Miles Conrad, Kim Bernard, Laura Moriarty & Nancy Natale.
June 1st – June 10th (open Mon-Fri 9-5)
Closing reception June 9th, from 4 – 6pm.

and the Wax in Motion at the Bowersock Gallery, 373 Commercial St. in Provincetown
June 2rd to June 28th, 2011
Jurors Talk: June 3rd, 6-7pm
Opening Reception: June 3rd, 7-9pm


Tsunami: Spirit Boat 
 Cast handmade Japanese kozo paper into willow branch armature and encased in encaustic. Lashed creosote branches with pigmented encaustic. Broken wooden bowl as base.
 23"h X 42"w X 10"d



The shows run while the Fifth International Encaustic Conference is in full swing, which I am also thrilled to be attending for the fourth year in a row...as a "soakin' in all up" participant, a lecturer and a post conference instructor. I always learn so much...

So many great events and opportunities along with burying my toes in the sand!

A Tucson Museum of Art panel discussion: What curators seek~

Current exhibition thru June 12th, 2011 at the Tucson Museum of Art,
Tom Philabaum: Precarious Rocks

Lawrence Gipe, No. 7 from 1962 (Manchester), 2010, oil on canvas, 65” x 80”

Approved Images: Lawrence Gipe, currently exhibiting at the Tucson Museum of Art thru June 5th, 2011

Robert and I attended a talk this past Thursday evening at the Tucson Museum of Art: curators Anne Ellegood, Hammer Museum (who has just curated the Arizona Biennial 2011), Lauren Rabb, University of Arizona Museum of Art, Brooke Grucella, Joseph Gross Gallery (UA). Chief Curator Julie Sasse of Tucson Museum of Art led the panel discussion which investigated how curators make their selections for exhibitions and museum collections.

It was interesting to note the differences in curatorial approach between that of a university museum curator and an economic based gallery director.

In response to questions posed by Sasse, the participating panel corroborated on almost every point. They maintain lists of artist names which they may track for years. Anne Ellegood of the Hammer includes artists whose work "troubled or confused" her, images that strike her and make her think. When creating a new idea for a show and considering the juxtaposition of particular artists, Ellegood examines and asks, "What are they doing that resonates with each other?"

The Hammer Museum is part of UCLA and Senior Curator Anne Ellegood is particularly moved and excited by their current show entitled All of This And Nothing, the sixth in the Hammer Museum’s biennial invitational exhibition series.

"All of This And Nothing" exhibition installation. In the foreground:
Evan Holloway
Emperor Ideal
2010, Brass diptych. 41 x 39 1/2 x 1 3/4 in. and 102 x 96 x 60 in.

In the Hammer Museum's publicity about the exhibition they write:

"The first major exhibition at the Hammer to be curated jointly by the museum’s chief curator, Douglas Fogle and senior curator Anne Ellegood, this exhibition presents a wide range of media including painting, sculpture, drawing, installation, sound, performance, and the moving image. The artists explore fundamental questions about our experiences of existing in the world and in the potential for art to reveal the mysterious and the magical. Reaching beyond exclusively visual references, many works incorporate aspects of music, literature, science, mathematics, sound, or time into their subject matter or structure. This group of inter-generational artists closely considers the process of art-making in their work by playing with scale, the ephemeral quality of their materials, the nature of time and language, and the relationships between the objects that they create. Their work explores ideas of disappearance and reemergence, of shifting visibilities, as well as the beauty found in the everyday. These artists resist notions of autonomy and completeness in favor of openness to multiple interpretations over time. For them the value of the work resides more in the process of its making than in the resulting objects. "

Ellegood goes on 4-5 studio visits every Friday to see new work and have conversations directly, striving to create a relationship with an artist over time, and considers herself to be an artist advocate. Ellegood claims that art fairs have gotten more homogenized lately and, although she still attends numerous fairs, she finds them tedious and overwhelming, preferring a more direct approach through the studio visits. It is "impossible to get on [her] private list" through just a cold call so to speak: Ellegood finds new artists via recommendations from other artists and colleagues in the curatorial field.

All three panelists agreed that they consistently look at shows in alternative and gallery spaces, stating that to be considered for a museum show, an artist has to have a proven track record. They all felt it was vital for an artist to have a currently updated web site.

Lauren Rabb of the University of Arizona Museum of Art (UAMA) consistently peruses the ads from Art News and Art Forum in her search for new artists and for inspiration for exhibition ideas. Discussing the UAMA exhibition that just closed, The Aesthetic Code: Unraveling the Secrets of Art, Rabb emphasized that she curates specifically for the University of Arizona audience, creating exhibitions that tie into curriculum in varied departments on campus.

LA based artist Melanie Stimmell, who co-founded the Street Painting Society and the Street Painting Academy, creating Cream and Crumpets with Marie as part of the UAMA's The Aesthetic Code.

Certainly, exhibiting within a university gallery or museum offers an artist an opportunity to express ideas that explore a deeper resonance, creating with a unique non-monetary influence.

Brooke Grucella, curator for the UA's Joseph Gross Gallery, is particularly proud of a recent show she curated of Gregory Euclide's, entitled real, unnatural and unsustainable. Euclide utilized the entire gallery space to create an installation that explored Tucson's populous growth in a landscape that lacks abundant water resources. Check out Euclide's site for great shots of this pertinent work. "Euclide’s work physically references the tension between our wants and our need to preserve the natural world.

below:
Gregory Euclide, installation 2010
real, natural and unsustainable
Joseph Gross Gallery, University of Arizona



Etiquette for submitting exhibition proposals was discussed: Include a thorough description that refers to the site specific; Consider utilizing Google SketchUp to create a 3d mock up; Include a realistic budget as well as the to-be expected résumé, artist statement and images.

The Hammer Museum regularly works with artists through Hammer Projects, "a series of exhibitions that focuses primarily on the work of emerging artists, and reflect the Museum’s commitment to contemporary art by providing international and local artists a laboratory-like environment to create new work, or to present existing work in a new context."

Perhaps most interesting to Robert and I, were the final garnered bits of information that came from Julie Sasse at the end of the panel discussion. She paraphrased from a lecture by David Pagel, a critic. This generated more additions from the panelists. Here is a list of attributes that an artist whose work catches their eye embodies. The work is:

• insightful
• sincere/passionate
• skeptical/dark/probing
• not necessarily about craftsmanship
• visually compelling
• investigation with materials
• experimentation with play
• does it "play well with others"? [curatorially]
• does it move me?
• does it make me think?
• does it make me dig deeper?

The more I have thought about it, the more I feel that for my personal list of attributes, I would have to add that a work must embody:

• craftsmanship seamlessly merged with content
  
• beauty

Beauty as in the Japanese aesthetic shibui - a beauty with inner implications, as described by Soetsu Yanagi in The Unknown Craftsman: A Japanese Insight into Beauty: shibui "..is not a beauty displayed before the viewer by its creator; creation here means, rather, making a piece that will lead the viewer to draw beauty out of it for himself...beauty that makes an artist of the viewer."

In our discussion afterwards, Robert and I agreed that some beginning artists don't realize that the creating of art that resonates deeply can take years of deep investigation and output. A focused inner search and a finding a personal vision evolves over a long period of time. Rather than trying to make works that fit with current trends or for a specific curator's aesthetic, an artist should be seeking and excavating personal imagery. I also think we all need to come up with our own list of attributes that art that magnetizes must embody.

Creating with an authentic voice.


[Every year, we offer workshops in our Tucson studio that assist in developing a personal body of work. Catherine teaches Expressing Your Authentic Voice: Making Art with a Personal Vision and Robert teaches photographers Finding your Personal Vision.]

Textural Space: at the Conrad Wilde Gallery's "6AEI"

artist Brandy Eiger with work from her Prayer Book series

works by Lynette Haggard, Rythmo Box series (left) and Karl Kaiser, Summer Leaf (right)

The Conrad Wilde Gallery's exhibition, the 6th Annual Encaustic Invitational, currently showing in Tucson, AZ, features 20 established artists from across the United States. Last night was the exciting artist talk and opening reception...so wonderful to have artists fly/drive in from as far as California, Florida and Texas. The show is up thru March 26th.

The event started with a very well attended artists' talk given by attending artists Brandy Eiger, Cari Hernandez, Rodney Thompson, Sharon Kyle Kuhn and myself.

Rodney Thompson spoke of his intrigue with the horizon and how it can become metaphor for the "dissolution of what is now and what we will become".

New Earth by Rodney Thompson

Cari Hernandez with her work entitled My Fragmented Life (below)

Cari Hernandez said that when she begins a work, she "takes pause to connect" with and become aware of what she is experiencing internally. Expressing her emotional state is the focus for her imagery.


works below by Jane Allen Nodine, Trace.054; and then Toby Sisson, Everything is Happening All the Time III

work below by Molly Geissman entitled Doing Time 38

work below by Fanne Fernow entitled Prayers for the Earth


Sharon Kyle Kuhn (below with her work entitled The Strength of Smyth and Long) expressed her curiosity about how the recycled objects she uses within her work, might some day "act as historical markers for our [social] character."

Above works by Gwendolyn Plunkett, Sun Spots-Solar Minimuim, Solar Maximum (diptych) (above)
and Donna Hamil Talman, Sentieri 14 (below)

artist Margaret Suchland with her work entitled Marking Time n. 11

Opening Reception shots:

work by Deanna Wood entitled Discovery (above)

above work w/detail above by Ruth Hiller

works above, from left, by Alison Golder, Alignment of Six; Ruth Gooch, Alchemy N. 3, and Deborah Kapoor, Of The Flesh

Painting above by Willow Bader entitled Red Cumparsita

Vesica, above by artist Catherine Nash
encaustic painting, gossamer thin Japanese kozo paper
with encaustic monoprint, oil stick filled sgrafitto
24"h X 36"w

When it was my turn to speak about my triptych entitled Vesica, I described how the sky holds the ultimate touchstone for me. I am fascinated with how, through time, humankind has sought to explain and fathom the mystery of our being: in these bodies, on this planet, in this galaxy through mathematics and science and religion.

Sacred Geometry superimposed over the landscape: The Vesica, a shape created by two overlapping circles is a mathematical diagram that has held and carried much meaning through the ages. In particular, the translation that greatly intrigues me is that one circle represents universal consciousness (the archetypal realm) and the second, empirical consciousness (evidence based). Where they overlap is balance. I seek balance within a world and life that cannot be fully explained. I am willing to live in balance within the mystery....