Andy Goldsworthy functions as an artist in a continuum of what I would call shamanistic principles: permeability, density, liminality, derivation, change, and transformation. That is, he manipulates and transforms the materials of the environment in some dynamic sympathy with them. This sympathetic approach is one that makes him keenly aware of his communication with and orientation toward the world. Because of this the work is in a very real sense suggested by the environment, the work’s parameters of possibility defined by the environment, and the artist’s intuitive making directed by the environment. There is very little “manhandling” going on here, very little ham-fisted, blundering action. His art is not an image of mankind dominating or playing flippantly with the world, but rather one of the sensitive investigator being moved forward by suggestions from within the investigated schema. His message is his articulation to the environment, not in some sort of neo-pagan hippy vagary, but in action, physical touch, biological aesthetics (i.e. basic 2D design and shape dynamics, which extends beyond the 2D into the 3D via his spatial and sensation-based investigations). The message isn’t linear like literacy or mathematics. It’s kinesthetic and alchemical. Zero irony, total being-ness. Awesome.

Get more info on Goldsworthy here and here.

The sketches I post here are ones I made during a visit I and my cousin Chris (a photographer) made to the Storm King Art Center in New York State to see Goldsworthy’s Storm King Wall. The trip was inspirational; I highly recommend making a stop at SKAC if you’re in the area.

he is an environmentalist, sculptor and photographer, using nature as his medium. i love andy goldaworthy. thanks for the reminder alba!

For my fifth graders I decided to do something fun, adventurous and media rich.  Andy Goldsworthy is a fabulous nature sculptor, photographer and environmentalist who incorporates all of those attributes into a single piece of artwork!  Born in England, but now currently living in Scotland, Goldsworthy travels all around the world creating nature sculptures which he then photographs.  It was my goal as a teacher as it was Goldsworthy’s as an artist, to challenge my students to look beyond the things they walk in and step through every day.  To see the potential in any found organic object as a possible piece of artwork is quite a challenging task! 

After showing a quick Power Point on Goldsworthy and his artwork, I gave a few examples of sculptures, and discussed composition and camera use.  Their assignment was to find one-two types of organic objects outside and create an interesting sculpture.  Once completed they photograph it, rearrange it and then photograph it again.  They may use the same materials or try new ones out.  In the end the photograph of their choice would be considered their final product, just as Andy Goldsworthy does.  All in all the students did a great job considering it was early November, most of the leaves had already fallen and the wind had swept away many of the materials that would have been perfect to work with.  Thankfully there was a little nook on the school grounds where kids found their inspiration.  Alliums (onion family), leaves, pebbles, vines and sticks made way for some very creative sculptures and compositions.  Some students struggled with keeping to just one type of organic object, while others thrived with simple yet stirking materials! (Photos to come soon)!

This coming week, all 5th graders will be in the computer lab selecting their best photograph and working on a Compare and Contrast piece.  For the final project, students will choose a specific work from Andy Goldsworthy and compare and contrast it to their artwork.  After they have done so, each student will critique and explain their artwork.  The final product will be a typed on Microsoft Word 2007 and will be accompanied with an 8″x10″ of their sculpture and a 5″x7″ of the Goldsworthy image.  All artwork will be displayed around the school for all to enjoy!

I did an interview with visual artist Marty Coleman in September. After the interview was posted, Marty wrote me a quick thank you. In response to his short comment, I wrote a not-so-short, stream of consciousness “you’re welcome” back and ended up thinking deeply about how the artistic process manifests itself across different disciplines, and specifically in my own life.

I wanted to share these thoughts with you, so I grabbed what I wrote and have posted it here — with a few clarifications along the way.

In his comment Marty wrote, “I appreciate your enjoyment of my work and your enthusiasm for the umbrella of creativity that goes over all the arts whether in music, dance, visual or some other area.”

My reply:

Marty, I had a great time catching up with you and learned so much about your art. I am a true fan. I really love the photo collage work you are doing, as well as your photography work. I had such a hard time choosing which pieces of your work to represent in the interview!

As for the artists who influenced you, I was completely knocked out by Vera Lehndorff, Robert Irwin and especially Andy Goldsworthy. Thank you for turning me on to their amazing work. Robert Irwin’s “Two Running Violet V Forms” just sends my perception into new channels of thought. And Andy Goldsworthy.  No words. I am so inspired by his vision.

I was asking myself again, why I am doing this thing – these interviews. And the answer — at least, the partial answer — is this: I do this because this is what I do to prepare, to grow, to develop as an artist myself.

I love plunging into the research part of my career. I have whole notebooks dedicated to prep materials for a given concert, show, or group of songs.  I approach my preparation in a multi-dimensional way: through the music, the text, the character, her emotions, what she is doing during the song, and how she feels about it — and more.  It seems to me that every creative person has their own  approach unique to their work.  The idea is to  to get beyond the usual 3 dimensions  and dive beneath the surface to discover the subtler truths of creativity.

These interviews are an opportunity to explore the individual ways in which an artist thinks, processes, and works.  As a singing actor, my preparation has evolved over time and experience. It is the most natural thing in the world to “dive in” to a song  and to immerse myself in the immediate information, i.e., the musical score and the words attached to it.

That immediate information eventually gives way to the subtler “underneath” stuff: the exploration of the song’s inner life. That’s where new ideas, new views, new sounds, new avenues of expression always emerge. I love to come out the other side overwhelmed by and loaded with all that new stuff!  I need that! I thrive on that!  Then through the rehearsal process I work with all that “new stuff.”  I explore and experiment until I can discover the truth of my own choices for performance.

As a performer, my work is highly collaborative in nature. I depend on collaboration with any number of people.  I am never up there on the stage alone.  There is my accompanist(s), which would be one musician or a whole orchestra and often other singers and/or actors.

But there are those other collaborations too, with the composer and the lyricist, and ultimately my imagination, the place where, if allowed, Inspiration pours in.  All these “folks” are on stage with me when I perform.  They are there, even if they left the planet hundreds of years ago.  Their life lies in the clues and road maps left behind in their musical scores.

Diving in to explore, experiment, and discover the truths and clues left behind are a daily part of my work.  So when we have the opportunity to communicate and collaborate with artists in our lifetime – what a privilege that is! What an amazing thing it is to know a little more about what makes that composer or that visual artist, i.e. Marty Coleman, tick first-hand!

That truly informs my own imagination and work.  And… I figure that if this is deeply interesting to ME, then it MUST be interesting to others out there! How could it not be?  Hah! LOL! : ) Julia

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The next two interviews coming up will be with

Watchfire Music Composers

Robert Collister and Carolyn Kardinal.

Read Marty Coleman: He MAKEs Absorbent Art

This example of the art of Andy Goldsworthy from the Autumn, 2009 CraniOcean.Calm Newsletter, from the film, RIVERS AND TIDES

what is it to blend with the environment?  can the environment respond?  and what is the experience of blending with another living being?

“When I make a work I often take it to its very edge of collapse and its a very beautiful balance”.

My wife and I were driving westerly this evening into an orange sky that looked like it was getting squeezed into orange juice by a black press, 5% orange, 95% black sky…  It looked surreal.  I love those moments.  I like what Andy has to say.

Nature has influence.

I recently wrote about the beautiful art of Andy Goldsworthy, and how it moves me. Natural materials adapted into new organic forms, his works are sometimes massive arches of stone or huge walls, and sometimes extremely ephemeral, a ‘throw’ of powdery snow into bright sunlight, an opportunistic ‘rain shadow’ or an ice sculpture that is at once both illuminated and destroyed by the rays of the rising sun.

After writing that post I was recommended to watch Rivers and Tides, a documentary by Thomas Riedelsheimer about the artist and his work in Nova Scotia, Southern France and near his home in Scotland. Today I had to travel to London and back for work, and I decided to watch the film while I was on the train. It was a beautiful and yet disorienting experience.

At times he seems a quiet, insular, almost isolated man, but then we see him with his wife and four children, a well-known member of his local community. Nevertheless, quietly-spoken, he evidently feels most at home when he’s working with ‘the earth’ and its materials, whether stone, ice, leaves, mud or wood. His work can be painstaking and painful, in that he works with ice in the crepuscular light on frozen riverbanks, or building precarious cairns of stone and wood that threaten to collapse (and often do).

Watching him work is a calming, meditative experience. By the time I emerged from the train at Paddington I felt distinctly out-of-place, almost unsure what to do next. The contrast between the raw beauty of his work and the peaceful environments in which he creates it was a complete contrast to the steel and glass and noise of the station.

But its images have remained with me all day: the gushing streams and bubbling white water, the pools filled with dandelion flowers, the immensely long chains of leaves, the ice cairns and arches. It’s truly beautiful, and I recommend it wholeheartedly. You can watch it on YouTube…

I am in love.

With Land Art, that is.

What is land art?
A bit of an art history lesson for the people:
Land art (also known as Earth Works or Earth Art) is an art movement that began in the US around the 1960’s-1970’s, in which landscape and the work of art are inextricably linked. Sculptures are not placed in the landscape; rather the landscape is the very means of their creation. The works exist in nature and are left to change and alter with natural conditions.

A few very famous Land Art arists include: Andy Goldsworthy, Robert Smithson and Christo and Jean-Claude among others. One current Land Art artists that I love is Richard Schilling (also known as escher).

I’ll stop boring everyone with the history of it and just say….
this is something I intend to pursue.

I am in no way qualified to discuss the natural art of Andy Goldsworthy. I can’t discuss his often temporary creations in learned analytical terms. I can only respond to them as a breathing, organic being. I can’t rationalise why I respond the way I do: in fact, I don’t want to. My reactions are entirely spontaneous: utterly visceral and emotional, unlike my reactions to any other artist’s work.

A few years ago, when I climbed the hill from the car park in Grizedale Forest in the Southern Lake District, I already knew I was looking for his ‘wall that went for a walk’. I had seen pictures of it before, but when I encountered it, among the scrub and bracken, snaking in and out of the edge of the woodland, I was left breathless.  I grinned like a loon at its insanely complex construction, and loved its irreverence. I marvelled at its craftsmanship. I loved it.

Andy Goldsworthy uses natural materials to create new forms which are often surprising, often deliberately temporary. Ice sculptures are built overnight to melt in the morning sun. Cairns of pebbles are constructed, then swept away by the next tides. Sometimes there’s a sense of decay, but always a gentle, awesome beauty.

It’s clever, but not in an intellectual way. He presents us with natural substances in a (sometimes) manipulated form that in itself creates a new natural proposition, making us reflect on both the original and manipulated manifestation of nature.

One of his more famous creations was the series of Midsummer Snowballs. Fabricated in a freezer using snow transported from the Scottish Highlands, this was a wonderful piece of cognitive dissonance.  Positioned around the City of London, these massive snowballs could only have been created by man. But here they were, in London, on Midsummer’s Day. And then they took days to melt, revealing yet more layers of dissonance, as the snowballs were filled with feathers, or pine cones, or barbed wire, or wheat. All this is catalogued in a terrific book, capturing not only the reactions of onlookers, the disparate ways in which the snowballs disintegrated, but also Goldsworthy’s own thoughts.

Most of Andy Goldsworthy’s work is displayed through his amazing photgraphy. Much of this is catalogued by the Crichton Campus of The Univesity of Glasgow in Dumfries, near to where the artist lives. This is a fantastic archive.

There are countless other sources online, perhaps most notably a group on Flickr. I guarantee you that I can’t do his beautiful work full justice. I just hope that you too will be silenced into a moment of reflection, stunned by its simplicity and skill. It might not change the world, but it made me think about my relationship with nature, and I think I’m more respectful, and thankful for it.

Last night, the bf shared with me a beautiful documentary about artist Andy Goldsworthy called Rivers and Tides. It was a slow peaceful film about a man who creates (mostly) temporary art in natural surroundings. It may be old news to some but I was floored. The man is a damn genius. His photographs and this film are the only ways he can preserve the painstaking efforts involved in creating these stunning pieces, with no tools others than what nature provides. Rainbows of leaves in still water, spiderwebs of stalks suspended in air, coiled shells of rolled up leaves places in the nook of a tree branch, swirls of icicles passing through rock, bloody waterfalls of ground iron rich stone, green snakes of leaves held together with thorns winding down a river… He opens up in the film about his thought process and emotional connections to what he does. Here are some pictures of his work, which really don’t do any of it justice.

]]> http://onbeingboth.wordpress.com/2009/10/08/finding-interfaith-spirituality/ Thu, 08 Oct 2009 00:20:03 +0000 Susan Katz Miller http://onbeingboth.wordpress.com/2009/10/08/finding-interfaith-spirituality/

I subscribe to the theory that spirituality is primarily a neurochemical response to music, dance, beauty, and sense of community. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I seek out the rush of spirituality, and have found it in synagogues, churches, nature, and concert halls. I have felt that rush in a crowd of people transported by the live music of Bob Marley, the Grateful Dead, Regina Spektor.

Clearly, I’m not alone. All mystic traditions make use of these same elements to inspire spirituality, and the fact that these elements are common across the lines of dogma and theology, across even the boundaries of monotheism, polytheism and atheism, confirms my interfaith perspective. The Chasids, the mystics of Judaism, know the power of dancing and chanting, as do the Sufis, the mystics of Islam. The Jewish Renewal movement is reclaiming this power, uncoupling it from the orthodoxy of Chasidism and merging it with a more progressive framework.

Many recent studies have tracked the shift by Americans away from religion, even as they seek and experience more spirituality. Other studies have implied that it is spirituality, not religion, that breeds happiness.

As an interfaith child, I have had profound spiritual moments in the dim stained-glass light of Chartres Cathedral, while listening to Bach’s Easter Oratorio at the Peabody Conservatory, while dancing and chanting a Shlomo Carlebach song with Rabbi Tirzah Firestone, and while dancing and chanting a Sufi zikr in the thin air of New Mexico’s Sangre de Cristo mountains in a sacred grove at the Lama Foundation.

My interfaith children have deep grounding in the specific traditions of Judaism and Christianity bequeathed to them by ancestors. So you could say that they have “permission” to access the swell of emotion invoked by singing Handel’s Messiah in Saint Stephen’s Episcopal Church at Christmas. And they have “permission” to feel the primal call of the shofar penetrate their souls. But as interfaith children primed to seek out the spiritual, their comfort zone expands far beyond these two inherited traditions. My 12-year-old son has gone on more than one Buddhist retreat. My artist daughter feeds her soul on the ephemeral outdoor sculptures of Andy Goldsworthy. Deep is good. Tradition is good. But for our family, more is also better. We want as much singing, dancing, beauty and community as we can fit into our lives. We seek out these experiences wherever and whenever we can find them.

He MAKEs Absorbent Art:
An Interview with
Visual Artist Marty Coleman
Part 1

Read Part 2 of Marty’s Interview

Marty Coleman is a visual artist who has been working in multiple mediums throughout his career.  Based in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Marty works in his own photography, design and art studio, MAKE Studio. In 2008, Marty’s “napkin art” piece “America The Beautiful” was included in Time Magazine’s Person Of The Year 2008 edition on Barak Obama.  Recently, Marty  published his first book, ‘The Napkin Dad’s Book of Absorbent Ideas’.

Visual Artist Marty Coleman

I knew Marty from my college days in San Jose, California at SJSU.  Marty was earning his Master of Fine Arts degree, and I was an undergrad music major.  During those student years, we became friends at a successful downtown dining establishment and art gallery, Eulipia Restaurant, where we were fellow waiters.  Eulipia was well known for its California Cuisine, and it was a major gathering place for artists, art aficionados, opera enthusiasts, serious art collectors and diners.  Indeed, it was a deeply creative (and truly gastronomic) atmosphere in which to work.

Almost twenty years went by where Marty and I completely lost touch, and through the Facebook revolution, we recently reconnected.  Back in the day, Marty was the wise-cracking sage who presided over the less experienced wait staff (I was in that group for a time).  Today, it is fascinating and fun to catch up with Marty on his progress and evolution as a full-time independent artist.

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Here’s our interview/conversation:

JW:  Tell me a little about your background — where you grew up, what interested you as a kid, what kind of influences affected you as a child that contributed to your becoming an artist.

MC: I grew up on the beach in Southern California, moving to Connecticut in the summer of love, 1967.  Talk about a culture shock.  I moved back to California at my first opportunity.  Landed in Hollywood!

My Grandfather was my main influence in me becoming an artist.  He was a very good amateur painter.  On the one hand, he let me play in his studio, work at his drawing table, learn about his wood working equipment, etc.

Archipenko

Just as importantly though was his influence through being a collector of fine art.  He had a great collection of mid-century regionalist prints and drawings, as well as a number of larger paintings and sculptures.  He had a silver plated figurative sculpture by the Russian artist Archipenko that us grandkids would touch and stare at for hours because of it’s very cool cubist style.

Later, my mother inherited many of my grandfather’s art pieces and they surrounded me in my home as I was growing up.  It is no mystery why I ended up going into printmaking and drawing with my focus being on portraits and figures when I went off to college.

My interests as a kid were typical in many ways. I loved to swim in the ocean and the pool. I loved to make plastic models, mostly of monsters from movies like the Creature from the Black Lagoon, the Mummy, Frankenstein, the Werewolf, etc.

JW:  Why am I not surprised at this monster revelation?!

MC:  My father was an aviator and paid for me to be in a boy’s flying club from the age of 13 on.  I got my solo license on my 16^th birthday and my private pilots license when I was 17.  He had hopes at some level that I would go into aviation but, to his credit, he never pushed me. He saw early on that I was an artist and wanted to be an artist. He encouraged that, as did my mother.

JW:  Was there one defining moment that made you choose art as a profession and life style, or did it happen over time as the sum of many smaller moments – or in a completely different way?

MC:  The defining moment came when I was born.  I never wasn’t going to be an artist.  I never had any doubts nor entertained any other profession seriously.

JW:  After childhood, who or what were some of the influences that helped to shape your course as an artist?

MC:  I went to Brandeis University for a year or so and the print and drawing professor, Michael Mazur, was influential. I was just an undergraduate, taking beginning courses, but he taught me individually a number of times, and we talked often about creating art.

The #1 lesson I remember was that art was a physical activity.  That my hand and arm and shoulder should move in the way the subject moves. That if it is a straight and hard fence I am depicting, then my hand should have that hard gesture. If it is grass, with it’s sharp staccato rhythm then I need to move my hand to emulate it.  What is the thing doing? How can you move yourself to reflect that thing?

JW:  That is so akin to an actor’s process!  You are finding the character — knowing your subject, understanding how the character physically moves and discovering how she feels – and then literally becoming that character through the physical “reality of doing.”  I love to discover the universal elements or qualities that underlie all creative expression, regardless of the medium or genre.

MC: It is the same with me as a visual artist. I love to truly ‘see’ who and what a person is. What they really look like.   Part of the joy of doing photographic collage work is in finding the disparate elements of a person, their jewelry, clothing, feet, hair, surroundings, and combining those things with the face to create a portrait that says more about who that person is than just the face by itself.

Marty Coleman: "Portrait with Door to the Future"

Among artists I found myself most attracted to people who used narrative imagery to tell stories. Edward Hopper, Rembrandt and Matisse are the most influential 2 dimensional artists for me.  Roger Brown from Chicago is one of my favorite 2D artists.  Roy Lichtenstein is as well.

Edward Hopper                                               Rembrandt

Henri Matisse, Roger Brown and Roy Lichtenstein

One of my art heroes is Vera Lehndorff (formerly known as Veruschka the 60s super model).  She spent 16 years doing a project called ‘trans-figurations’ where she painted herself to match her surroundings.  Many have emulated that idea since, but she took it deeper and farther than anyone else.

Vera “Veruschka” Lehndorff and a work from “Trans-figurations”

Robert Irwin, the west coast environmental artist, is someone whose work I love. It is all about the transformation of a space with the use of translucent material so the space remains intact but is perceived differently.

Robert Irwin: "Two Running Violet V Forms"

One of the most important lessons I learned from him is in the simple title of his biography, ‘Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees’.  I taught this again and again to my art students over the years.If you really want to see something, forget the name and all its associations, all its symbols.  An eye has a very obvious visual symbol attached to the name (think Egyptian illustrations of the perfectly formed symbolic eye).  But if you really want to see a person’s eye,  you have to forget that and look at how the lines, colors, shapes, and contrasts really are in that particular eye. When you do that, you will really see ‘it’ instead of keeping the symbol in the forefront and never understanding that eye.

Finally, the best artist working today in my mind is Andy Goldsworthy. He is also an environmental artist, using only natural materials on his forays around his native british countryside.  His work is the grand and elegant artistic expression of that unexpected moment of joy when you walk around a corner on a hike and see a little pile of stones that someone has piled together in a fun way, or a bright red piece of tape on a tree in the middle of nowhere.

Andy Goldsworthy: "River"

Andy Goldsworthy: "Sticks Framing A Lake" sculpture

I know that many of these artists I am most enamored with aren’t working in the same arena I am right now. But I hope to move into a broader landscape for my work in the same way that these artists have. They inspire me.

Funny enough, though most of my work now is in photography (photo-collage) I have much more of an affinity for those who have been defined as artists throughout history and presently than those who have been seen as photographers.

Marty Coleman: "Cog Nation"

Marty Coleman: "Heads Growing Side By Side"

Marty Coleman: "The Logical Fallacy Stripped Bare By Her..."

What I mean is that there has historically been a separation between the photography world and the art world.  I came out of that art world and now happen to use photography as my media but I still see myself as an artist and look for others who are artists, no matter what the media.

JW:  Marty,  I have seen you work in a lot of mediums – painting, drawing, photography, photo collage, etc., — what does it mean to you as an artist to work in multiple “genres”?  What impels you to do that?

Mixed Media Sculpture, Charcoal Drawing and Photograph by Marty Coleman

I just never have thought of art as being within one genre or realm.  I understand it makes it harder for those judging my work to make decisions about where I am going to go or what they can rely on, but if they know me and my work they actually do know they can rely on it to always be recognizable as my work.

Marty Coleman: "The Stranger Juxtaposition #7"

JW:  What does creativity mean to you?  How is it expressed in your life as well as your art?

MC:  Creativity is creation.  Creation can’t take place without an open minded approach to possibilities.  Creativity is about fun.  I like to make people think and smile, those two things are my goal.

Here are the projects I have done in the past few years that weren’t primarily ‘art’ but combined creative thinking and creative fun.

Painted my picket fence to match my Dalmatian, Oreo.  The kids walking home from school would hear a barking fence:

I tore down a dropped ceiling in my kitchen and replaced it with recessed lighting. The remaining holes in the ceiling I covered with ceramics my daughters had made in elementary school.  I had a ready place to show off all their stuff and it didn’t take up any shelf space. And they didn’t get dusty:

I tore apart a 1915 upright piano (after getting it appraised and trying to sell it) and used the wood to make a 2008 bookshelf.  I am using more pieces from the piano as a frame for a 3Dimensional figurative piece that will be sold in a breast cancer charity auction later this year.

I remodeled my living room/dining room/entry way/staircase/upstairs hall (all seen at the same time in the open floor plan of the house). I used dark and light striped wood for the flooring along with an orange carpet. The walls were a deep gold, pale yellow and a deep red.  Nobody would think in advance they would go well together, but I knew they would and they did. The house sold in 8 days and when it was up for sale a year later we went to the open house incognito.  The realtor talked about how the house was the result of a very good artist a couple of owners before and that it had gotten a great response as a result.

JW:  Marty, you have a keen sense of humor – a wry wit and an often “warped” or “left of center” way of looking at the world.  Do you think of that as a part of your art or does that inform your art?

MC:  I think it informs my art. It is as if I speak two languages (or more).  The first language is the one inside me. It is me.  Then I ‘speak’ in my other language, the language of art, and I translate me, the first language, into the art language.  The humor is changed slightly, maybe milder, maybe funnier, maybe a bit more obscure and referential instead of straight out obvious.  The wit and warped me finds it’s way into my art somehow!

From Marty's Postcard Series: "Extra Hot Postcard"

JW:  You mentioned in a past conversation that “how Inspiration is accepted, allowed and nurtured” is of great interest and concern to you.  Would you share what you mean?

MC:  Here is the crux of my belief about being an artist.  Courage, perseverance and love are the three main criteria to being an artist.

You must be courageous. That means you must admit what you love and admit it to the world. So, you are inspired by God.  You must have the courage to tell the world that, knowing that some will say ‘God, what a dopey idea’. Or, ‘she’s in a cult’, or ‘how schmaltzy can you get.’  I am primarily inspired by women. I love them. I love how they look, how they make themselves up, how they look nude, clothed, sexy, plain. I love getting up close to see pores and freckles and scars and tan lines and wrinkles.  I admit that, knowing some will say I am just a dirty old man (or used to be a dirty young man).

Marty Coleman: "Wind ow"

I have this inspiration.  I have to accept that.  I have to allow it in my life. I have to nurture it. That means I have to find a way to turn that inspiration, obsession, passion, whatever you call it, into something positive and valuable for myself and others.

Marty Coleman: "C with the Pacific in her eyes"

Many are inspired but don’t have the courage to admit it.  They don’t want the world to know they love leaves, or bugs or roadkill or 7 headed monsters or naked men.  They are worried what people will think. They are worried about judgment and their reputation.  So they pursue some other path they have less passion about. As a result their art is mediocre and forgettable.

Inspiration comes to your door but it doesn’t mean you are going to let it in.

This concludes Part 1 of my interview with Marty Coleman.

Marty Coleman: Bubbles of Love

Read Part 2
Check out  The Napkin Dad
and what spirituality means to Marty Coleman and his art.

examples of Marty’s napkin art

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About Marty Coleman

When I asked Marty to supply me with his bio, he jauntily referred me to his site.

I’m glad he did!  Here’s what Marty tells us (abridged) in his own words:

“About:

• I have 2 degrees in art, a BA and a MFA. I emphasized printmaking, drawing, and photography.
• I taught Beginning & Figure Drawing, Design & Color, and Art Appreciation for 9 years at the college level.
• My work started out in grad school as photo-realist drawings. I liked the photos better by themselves so I started doing photography and photo-collage on its own.
• I continued to draw and paint, but from live models not photos, with imagined narrative imagery behind the portrait.
• I also started doing some commissioned photo-shoots; black and white portraits and figures.
• I left teaching and went into computer art. I moved, along with my family, to Oklahoma to get my first job in that industry. I created Educational CDroms for kids, and that led to Internet Design.
• I stopped creating large scale works or exhibiting my work during an 11 year period in which I worked and helped raised my 3 daughters. I did, however, continue to create a large amount of artwork on a small scale, including the napkins.
• When my youngest graduated from high school, my plan was to re-enter the art world as a practicing, exhibiting artist, which is what I am now doing. I am currently a full time independent artist, photographer and web designer. MAKE Studio is my business.
• In 2006 I fell in love with and married a wonderful woman, Linda. With the support of her and my 4 daughters (added an exceptional step-daughter in the marriage) I am continuing on my chosen path.
• That is what this is ‘about’.” Read the whole story!

My writing coach gave me a suggestion that is the basis for this post. We were talking about passages that don’t fit at the moment of editing. He suggested I create a file on my computer to save each line I deleted- to create a cache of words ready for the right spot in a future paragraph.  This idea is drawn loosely from the work of  Gerald Weinberg.

As I thought about the image of fieldstones I remembered the work of Andy Goldsworthy, a stone artisan.  His work is beautiful to look at and he has several books of photographs.  This is one of his pieces-Sheepfold. If you look at this wall segment you see many shapes, sizes and colors of stone. They are like the passages used in stories, carefully collected and shaped to fit an exact spot, part of a larger composition.  There is layer upon layer in this wall, much as each story has layers of meaning. I want to express myself in a stacked, dimensional way, each word ripe with meaning… with the potential to draw each reader into the story.

On the surface, it appears simple. Get a pile of rocks and start stacking.  As I imagine the process it starts with an individual connection to each stone. I pick the stone up with my hand, rubbing my fingers and my palm over the stone, feeling and absorbing the texture, the heat, it’s color.  I would know the stone, it’s weight, the side to place facing out, the top from the bottom.  That exercise would also lead me to its companion stone, the ideal match to butt up against my first stone, to shore it up, support and enhance, compliment the placement.

I envision a rough sketch, pencil on thick textured white paper, drawn with rapid strokes, rough but definitive.  The artist willing to bend her ideas and allow the stones to take on a shape of their own.

For my birthday my son bought me Roget’s Thesaurus. It’s a huge book, weighty and packed with words… I could spend hours wandering through it.  When I got home from work the book was sitting on the floor in the hall, unwrapped, with a penciled note wishing me luck with my writing, signed with his love.  His girlfriend called later to apologize for the gift, saying that she had tried to direct him but was left frustrated by his insistence on buying this book.  She had nothing to apologize for, except maybe something of her own making.  My son is an intuitive individual.  He knew it was the right gift and persevered. I think he made the perfect choice; it is his statement of understanding-of the passion that binds the two of us together. He is a stone mason, aspiring to become an artist he has begun collecting stones for carving, for shaping, for creating.

It was a wonderful gift he found for me; his confidence and his hope that I succeed.  His understanding of the tools one needs in perfecting one’s work. This book will be a reference point for shaping and crafting my stones.  To invite an infinite numbers of possibilities. Each word lending itself to permutations untold as I compare the words, hold them on my tongue, view them on the page. Allow them to fit together to bring the reader along on my journey with me.

Intuitive 320.9 

Verbs: be intuitive, intuit, feel, have a feeling about, go on one’s feelings, perceive, divine, have a hunch, follow one’s hunch, feel it in ones’ bones, have a funny feeling about , have a gut feeling or reaction, just know.

I’d seen it before. Brilliant then. Brilliant now.

Andy Goldsworthy is so charming, I’d be content to watch him read the proverbial phonebook, but to see

is to be in awe. So simple. So alluring. Intriguing. Compelling. Inspiring. A reality check through breathtaking creativity.

Not the least of my admirations of Goldsworthy is his superb ability to make conceptual art accessible. As a curator I often been asked to explain Why is that art? It can be a tough (but fun) question to answer. And one that Andy Goldsworthy does in the best of artists’ way, by showing more than telling.

While down in littlehampton we went over to Chichester for the day and visited the Pallant house gallery. This is a fantastic gallery. I noticed a bag designed by Paul catherall, who has worked at the print centre and also a piece by Susie macmurray, who gave us a talk in the Manchester city gallery once a couple of years ago. The collection is fantastic with a focus ok twentieth century British art. By 2012 it is hoped that the gallery will be free but in the meantime families can get in cheaper on Tuesdays. There are some key works by Ivon hitchens, ben Nicholson, Christopher wood, peter Blake, Richard Hamilton, joe tilson. www.Pallant.org.uk

I just read that the most primitive reptiles still around are the turtles.  The oldest turtle fossils extend back nearly 230 million years.  It wouldn’t come as a shock to see that pushed further back in time as new discoveries are made.  The fossils at the Falls of the Ohio predate the turtles and represent life during the Devonian Period about 370 million years ago.

Normally during this time of year the fossil beds would be exposed and you can walk very far out upon them.  This, however, hasn’t been a normal year!  I’ve dipped into the archives to show you a turtle sculpture I made a couple years ago that remains a favorite creation.  In this image, the Styro-turtle is crawling out of a shallow pool of water that it was using to stay cool.  It can get very hot out on these rocks during the summer.  The remains of ancient corals can be clearly seen in the limestone.

When I make this work I’m really more interested in the images that result.  For me, it’s about seeing the trash I rearrange and reconfigure in the context where these objects were found.  This turtle needs to be seen in this particular environment which has played a large role in shaping the materials I use.  This is meant to be “a collaboration with nature”.  Andy Goldsworthy has used this phrase to describe his work and friends have  compared my work to his.  There are similarities in that we both like working out in the elements, using what is on hand, and taking a photographic image that is the visual record of that day and place in time.  There are also differences.  My work here is figurative while Goldsworthy’s is more abstract.  He prefers working strictly with natural materials while I use artificial ones too.  The state of moving from the natural to the artificial I feel describes our current condition well.  Goldsworthy travels to some of the beautiful places on the planet to make his art, while I decided to interpret this one place near where I live.  I feel we are collectively like the turtle in the above image…on the brink.  Will we turn back or go over the edge?  By using the garbage I find here I believe I’m not only illustrating part of the problem, but also suggesting an alternative.  It’s by encouraging and using our universal creativity that we have the best chance to reconnect with the environment that sustains us.

This piece turned out nicely and so I kept it.  Later it found a good home with my gallery representative…who prefers the sculptural models over the images!  To each his own.  With real turtles, one of the distinctions that shows up even in the earliest animals is the presence of the shell or carapace.  In my polystyrene version, the shell is special too.  It is the remains of an old bicycle helmet.  Other materials used include:  coal for the nostrils and mouth, plastic aerosol nozzle tips for the eyes, a plastic bleach bottle mouth forms the collar where the turtle’s neck joins the body, driftwood legs, tail, and neck, the rest is Styrofoam.  All found on site.

The head pivots around where it meets the body and there is one other special feature of this piece.  It can only be seen by turning the turtle over.  The body is a Styrofoam human head used by wig stylists!  For me, it adds another layer of meaning.  This is one of two such Styrofoam heads I have found at the Falls of the years and worked well with the foam helmet.  A pocket knife was the only tool I used to make this found object sculpture.

the summer journey…

to the heart stirring  Dia Beacon

and the mind-meltingly beautiful Storm King.

There are countless reasons why I think these two art centers are the best I have ever experienced, but if I had to boil it down, it would be that in both cases its somehow a combination of the brilliant rawness of the subject matter (i.e. insanely perfect curation) and (at the risk of sounding like a space-case) the general feeling that each piece has been there for an eternity.

Merits would also include the incredible ability both places have to make you completely forget time and allow you to feel so grounded that you flat out become a 10 year old. Not to mention the most beautiful steel windows ever, perfect natural light through box factory monitor skylights, being alone in a room with a Richard Serra, warm breezes across wildflower  meadows, wrinkled green deciduous tree-lines against pure robbins-egg-blue-skies, the sparkle of the quiet Hudson, and the softness and joy of summer permeating everything. I really can’t get enough.

more stolen pics here.

I’ve just been doing some research for work-related art projects and have discovered the most AMAZING place, just here on our doorstep, with sculpture by the most incredible artists, and a fantastic vision and resource for Scotland…  I’d not heard of it before, although apparently it has only in the last couple of months opened it’s doors to the public.  I wanted to share my discovery of Jupiter Artland with you.  I’m currently planning visits and workshops and more visits and more workshops…

Andy Goldsworthy