PAULA WHYMAN

I'm headed to an artist colony for a few weeks to continue working on my novel, so I may not post here too often during that time. But before I go, I want to let you know about some things that are going in the art and lit categories that I'm sure you won't want to miss.

Artist Sara Klar has work on exhibit at Standpipe Gallery in Chelsea, as part of the show called "Taking Shape," along with James Bills, Alec Dartley, Peter Dudek, Raymond Dumas, Douglas Goldberg, Sue Havens, Michael Lee, Elisa Lendvay, Abraham McNally, Christopher Saunders, Zoe Pettijohn Schade, and Christopher Schade.

Standpipe is located at 150 West 25th St. between 7th and 6th Aves, New York. The show opens runs from October 13 to October 29.

Artist Craig Cahoon has work on exhibit at Covington & Burling LLP, 1201 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington, DC, from September 27 to December 16.

Also, check out this new Wikipedia entry describing the dizzyingly productive career (so far) of multimedia artist Tim Guthrie.

In publishing news... Gargoyle #57 is now available. In its 600 pages (!) you will find a huge selection of fine work from the innovative to the traditional. Full disclosure, my first ever flash piece, "Another Story," is included in this issue. In poetry, a shout out to Alex Chertok and Barbara Crooker, whom I was lucky to meet at VCCA. I only wish you could hear them read their work, because they are both wonderful readers. And in fiction, Bettina Lanyi, Meredith Pond, Rae Bryant, Janice Eidus, Meg Pokrass... There are so many great writers represented here, I know I have probably missed someone--I apologize!--but it's 600 pages, like I said, so... Gargoyle, carefully edited by Richard Peabody and Lucinda Ebersole, is always worth the wait.

And, finally, if you have not yet seen the brilliant new online literary journal edited by novelist Leslie Pietrzyk, you need to check out Redux. The idea is to reintroduce worthy stories and poems that were published some years ago in print-only journals, introducing them to a new readership online, offering them a second life, if you will. I particularly admire the story "Clockwise," by Dana Cann.

That's all for now. I will post updates when possible from the wilds of New Hampshire.

Visual artist Sara Klar has one of the most interesting biographies of anyone I know. As a young woman, she broke with the insular culture in which she was raised and left all that was familiar behind in order to start her life over again, without the support of her family or community. In the process, she was forced to question what she was always taught about how she was supposed to live. She eventually became a visual artist, exhibiting in Brooklyn's Sideshow Gallery and Janet Kurnatowski, and garnering favorable reviews in The NY Artworld and Saatchi and Saatchi, among others.

I met Sara at VCCA last year, and I recently had a chance to visit her Brooklyn studio, where these photos were taken (with my Blackberry--not the best way to show art--better views can be found on Sara's website). Sara's paintings--which as you can see are very large--are the result of a continuous process of assembling and disassembling, building and destroying. She adds layer upon layer of completed paintings to a canvas and then peels, tears, gouges, and cuts away at it in a process of approaching understanding. As in life, unearthing truths is not a neat and orderly process. Sara told me that if she understands a work before it's done, she destroys it and starts again.



I thought about this in terms of my own approach to fiction. This is why I never write an outline (and I don't know many fiction writers who do); I don't want to know what's going to happen. When I begin, I may have an idea what a story is "about." I'll have a starting point for action, a character, and maybe a high point or big event to work toward--which, by the time I reach it, will probably have changed. I don't want any more information than that; I want to discover it as I go. If I find out too much and I'm still far from the end, I'm in danger of disengaging.

In many ways, Sara's approach to painting is the physical manifestation of the writer's revision process. When you have a draft, you have to go back and peel away, cut away, even inelegantly gouge out pieces of it in order to get it to the place where it works. And usually it's at that stage where the real meaning becomes apparent.

In addition to her paintings, Sara has her own interior design consulting firm. Her focus is on one-on-one consultations that, as she explains, "directly address the impact of emotions along with color, shape and function, within the design dialogue."



In her new practice, Design. physical>>>>>emotional>>>>>transitions, she guides people through the process of reimagining their environment while coping with powerful and complex emotional circumstances, such as new babies, second marriages, retirement, divorce, a death in the family, or other dramatic life style shifts. It seems to me that she's succeeded in integrating her approach to painting with what she learned from her difficult past, and applied it to her design work. I wish I had had her help when I was deciding what to do with my late aunt's furniture, which still sits in my living room, though it is both too big and too small for the space. Although it has no sentimental value to me, in what may be a major cop-out, I merely reupholstered it instead of replacing it. Maybe Sara would have convinced me otherwise. It's uncomfortable furniture, and I hardly ever sit on it, preferring instead either my Lazy-Boy recliner or a giant beanbag chair. And I think that's all I'll say about that.

Meanwhile, I hope that at some point Sara will decide to write her story, because it's a good one.

Sculptor David Garratt's work was on exhibit recently at Artspace in Raleigh, NC. If you ever have the opportunity to view Garratt's fascinating sculptures, I hope you'll do so. I missed the Artspace show, unfortunately, but I did catch his exhibit at Sweet Briar College's Babcock Gallery last fall, and wrote about it in this space.

I find it remarkable that Garratt does not use models. Some of his works are self-portraits, but most of the time, he sculpts faces from memory, based on passing glimpses, or from his imagination, in an attempt to capture a moment, or a fleeting emotion.

David is a resident artist at the VCCA.

Ralph Eaton is a Roanoke-based visual artist who says people who see his work sometimes compare him with the bully toy-mutilator from the Toy Story flicks. But his art is anything but mean-spirited. He uses a wide range of ordinary objects, and for some projects, he deconstructs and reconstructs old stuffed animals he finds at thrift shops. Here, he scorched a teddy bear, and I helped. While another artist held the bear at the end of a long pole, and Ralph operated the blowtorch, I took pictures. I therefore admit my complicity in this bear-burning.





"The game I like to play is making the familiar unfamiliar," Eaton explains. "The sculptures are intended to amplify the absurdity of objects that dominate and clutter our culture."

There is of course the added excitement of doing something a little subversive to cute and cuddly toys. My kids thought it was awesome.





Sometimes the stuffed toys are stand-ins for people, Eaton says, "to contrast outer appearances with inner realities. Cured teddy bears are 'cured' of their cuteness to reveal their dysfunctional condition."


Above is a wall sculpture that Eaton will photograph and reconfigure digitally, with similar goals of creating alternate views of reality.

Eaton's work has just been selected for New Waves 2011 at the Contemporary Art Center of Virginia, a juried exhibition, and in March, he'll be a featured artist at Roanoke's Marginal Arts Festival. Check out Ralph's website for a much broader range of his projects (and much better photographs!).

If you're in or near the Philadelphia area, don't miss this exhibit now opening at the new Philadelphia Museum of Jewish Art. Works on view include "A Basket in Two Waters," a painting by my friend, Shari Seltzer. Seltzer's work is previewed, along with others, in the exhibit catalog.

The works on exhibit were created in response to murals in the ancient synagogue at Dura Europos. The Dura Europos Synagogue murals are the earliest known examples of Jewish Art (250 AD).

Here's a brief description of Dura Europos: A Greek colony on the Euphrates River near the modern town of Salhiyé in Syria, and the site of the earliest known Jewish diaspora synagogue. First occupied by the Babylonians, Dura-Europos was built as a military outpost by the Seleucids about 300 BC. About 100 BC it was captured by the Parthians, and then in AD 165, it was annexed by Rome. It was destroyed by the Sassanids in 256 AD.

Seltzer has described herself and her work in the context of another exhibit, and I think it generally still applies to this one:

"I view the world as a miraculous place. And I work to translate my sense of wonder into the visual. My creativity is nourished by the flexibility and freedom of working in multiple media. . . The patterns and layers I see in the world are conveyed in my artwork. The joy and playfulness of producing art makes it richer."

"The Dura Europos Project: An Ancient Site Revisited Through 21st Century Eyes" opens this Sunday, Dec. 5th, with an opening reception from 4pm-6pm. The museum is located at 615 North Broad Street, Philadelphia, inside Congregation Rodeph Shalom. Admission is free.

Took a quick trip to NY this past weekend. Here's a photo-based recap. FYI, all of these photos were taken with my Blackberry.

Shots of the Guggenheim. I highly recommend the current exhibit, Chaos and Classicism, which follows European art between the World Wars. I'm sure I didn't know they don't allow photos inside the building...until I was told...








Below is part of a series I took while in a taxi, crossing the 59th Street Bridge. The Sopranos and Sex and the City were shot in Silvercup Studios; however, I knew nothing about that when I took the pictures. I just like the sign and, even before I saw the Lee Friedlander exhibit at the Whitney, I liked the idea of taking the photos with the car window obstructing. That's the Citicorp building in the third photo.







The cafe at the Whitney.





Faceless crowd.

The Artist came home from school one day and told me, "My friends think I'm the best artist they know." He is, at the moment, drawing fanciful buildings that combine different architectural styles. He is also drawing monsters that he thinks up in his head, as well as faces, in which he's working out how to portray different emotions. He does most of these drawings in school. (He's 12.) I possibly should discourage that particular behavior, but if he maintains his grades, I don't see the harm. And, probably I'm biased, having spent most of the 7th grade reading novels in the back of every class. Which did not negatively impact my life one bit. (Except for the occasional unbidden John Jakes flashback.)

Faces, detail. (I had trouble doing photos of notebook paper...) I like "Skeptical," upper left. The Artist likes "Pissed Off," lower right:

Crooked House:


A few days later, The Artist showed me two drawings of a person, and asked me which one I thought was better. I said, I like the arms on this one, and the head on that one.

He was extremely frustrated. He said, "I'm trying to draw Captain America, and it's not working."

Why Captain America? I asked. I've never seen him draw something that didn't come out of his head.

So he finally admitted that another boy at school criticized his monsters and claimed to draw superheroes that were even better. He challenged The Artist to draw a superhero that would be as good as his. The Artist was feeling defeated because he couldn't copy an existing picture (from a comic book) in a way that he felt was satisfactory.

I told him that while copying someone else's work was a good way to learn, it was not the same as being the one who thought of it. I told him that it was a sign of great creativity and talent to be able to draw something you invent in your own head. The other boy might have technical skill, but The Artist had vision.

He felt better about things after that. The next day, he told me he drew a portrait of his math teacher and gave it to him. I didn't get a phone call yet, so I'm assuming it was a good likeness.

The other night, I went to the opening for the juried exhibition, Porous Borders, presented by the Washington Sculptors Group. The exhibit includes two pieces by my friend, artist Julia Bloom, which she started at VCCA (if you watch the video, there's a brief clip of her at work).

The exhibit showcases a wide range of interesting work, and I enjoyed it, but the evening started off strangely, with the dispersal of pepper spray in the Metro tunnel, which left me hoarse and coughing for the rest of the night (and the next day). Things continued rather absurdly with the appearance at the opening of DC Council Member (and former Mayor-for-Life) Marion Barry. It reminded me of the old days, when he was mayor; he would show up around town to be seen and make a stir, not because he had any particular attachment to or interest in what was going on. But I suppose every politician does that.

At the reception, I chatted with a doctor who described himself as a specialist in underwater medicine. He treats people who have the bends, and other related ailments. It never occurred to me that there was such a specialty. I thought of the Radiohead song, "The Bends," and asked him if he knew about it. I wondered if, musically, it was a realistic representation. This doctor, whose wife is a visual artist, asked me how the abstract visual art on exhibit might inspire my fiction. But what I was thinking about after that was, where can I put a character like that in a story, a doctor treating a patient with the bends, and what a great metaphor it would be for something...

Then, a friend and I had dinner and talked about the fuzzy side of memoir--What is it okay to make up, and when does it become a lie? (More on that another time...) It was a nice restaurant, but we kept hearing someone shout incoherently from the bar area, which we couldn't see from where we sat. I started to feel like I was stuck in the film "After Hours," and I mentally prepared to run from the Mister Softee truck. But nothing more happened, except this guy continued to punctuate our meal with bizarre growling sounds.

After that, I decided to avoid metro and catch a cab home. My friend and I have a joke that whenever we get together, I have a weird cab experience. Usually, what happens is a cab driver pulls up, looks me over, and decides he doesn't want me, then leaves me on the side of the road. This time, the first cab that pulled up wasn't my cab, but someone else's, so I shared it part of the way with a conventioneer from Hackensack. We talked about art and medical supplies for a mile or so.

When the conventioneer got out, the cab driver told me that he was an artist himself, working with metal and wood. He said that when he was young, people around him discouraged him from pursuing art as his career. They warned him that he could never support himself that way. They might have been right about that, of course. So he gave it up and did other things for years. But now, he told me, he was getting back into his art. If I had to guess, I'd say he was in his early sixties. He said soon he would need to reduce the time he spent driving his cab so that he could work on his sculptures.

Then he talked about "giving people what they want" in order to make money from art. He mentioned Andy Warhol, "that knucklehead who wasn't very talented, painting soup cans."

I said, well, no one else had done that before. No one knew you could do that and make it into art.

And then he told me about his friend who sculpted with wire, but couldn't sell his work until he started making roach clips. "Give the people what they want, and you do okay," he repeated. "Like those women getting filthy rich selling cupcakes," he added.

I think we were getting out of the realm of art at that point. But the takeaway was a story you hear again and again, about people being driven away from the work that really matters to them, because it's not "practical." But art doesn't exist for purposes of practicality. Anyway, I'm not going to talk about the value or purpose of art here, that's not my point.

A long time ago, I was at dinner with two couples, including a guy who was up for partner at his law firm. I was the only one at the table who wasn't a lawyer; at the time, I was an editor. Another woman at the table was near a breakdown because she was so unhappy working as a lawyer. It wasn't fulfilling her in some fundamental way.

I said, "Look, you don't have to do this. Your work should make you happy. It shouldn't be miserable, it should be fun." When I said "fun," the men at the table looked at me like I stepped off a space ship.

The one who was making partner said, "What the hell are you telling her? That she shouldn't be a lawyer? Work isn't supposed to fun."

And then the woman burst into tears.

I said, "She should do what makes her happy. The world will not miss one less unfulfilled lawyer."

I don't think I was invited to dinner with that group again. And that was okay with me. But I wonder what that woman ended up doing. I never heard.

What I was thinking the other night, listening to the cab driver, was that we have to stop letting other people's fears force us into lives that don't belong to us. If you don't do what you're passionate about, you'll eventually suffer in some critical way. With any luck, that won't involve pepper spray.

I'm chatting with award-winning artist Tim Guthrie, over at Stephen Elliot's website, The Rumpus.net, as part of the new Mini-Interview Project. Check it out!

Tim does such a range of work, from subersive political installations to traditional Old Master style paintings, I could do ten interviews with him and not scratch the surface. I've mentioned his work before here.

The talented artist, and friend, Craig Cahoon, has artwork on display right now at The Joan Hisaoka Healing Arts Gallery on U St. in DC, as part of a show called Traces. The show is a tribute to the memory of Jutta Phillipi Eigen, a longtime DC resident, composer, pianist, and physician who died of cancer in 2002. Traces includes work by artists Elise Wiarda (the curator), Daniel Brush, Renee Butler, Yvonne Pickering Carter, Joan Danziger, Sam Gilliam, Kitty Klaidman, Dale Loy, and Jean Meisel.





Craig is pictured below with Nebel 1, 2009, which he completed at the VCCA, with assistance from the Cafritz Foundation.



A photograph like this really isn't an adequate way to view this work. The paintings have a luminescent quality that's visually arresting in person.

All the art is for sale. The Joan Hisaoka Healing Arts Gallery is a nonprofit gallery associated wtih the Smith Farm Center, an organization that provides therapeutic residential retreats for cancer patients.

The Gallery is open Wed-Friday 11-5, Sat, 11-3, and by appointment, 202.483.8600, and is located at 1632 U Street NW. The show runs through Jan. 30.

For the next ten days or so, my friend Tim Guthrie, the mixed-media artist, will post phases of his work on his blog, ArtsyFartsyTim, for your viewing pleasure.

As the mixed-media name implies, Tim covers a lot of ground, both personal and universal, including video, shrines, portraits, and large-scale projects that have a political edge, like mapping of nuclear test sites. The project he's posting on his blog now is from a series of portraits called "Extraordinary Rendition." It's been up for a few days, so you may need to scroll down to see the first few stages.

Here's a shot of Tim with one of the finished drawings in the series, appearing at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha last year. So you can see the scale.



See the rest at ArtsyFartsyTim.

And don't forget to try the nifty Baconize function! Especially useful if you missed breakfast.