An office pod divider becomes a stand for canvas

It was hard work with the bung wrist 'n all dragging this office divider around (it formerly hid a corner of junk, like bundle buggies), and who-knows-how clipping the canvas onto it. It's approximately 5' x 5', and will have to do. I still have to clear that corner of the living room out, cover the floor in layers of thick plastic runners, get a kind person to take a lot of stuff downstairs for me, but, it is do-able. I wasn't strong enough to staple the canvas around the back, those clips were hard enough. I am so independent I don't like to ask for help from anyone, but I did call my son, and he wasn't home. The MUSE is a slave driver, honestly.

Hands

It is a bit bizarre, but indulge me. Painted hand, actual hand, x-ray of the bones of that hand. Digitally created image of, uh, real stuff.
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An old painting, a stretcher for new paintings

Phoning lumber yards, plywood only comes in 4' x 8' sheets, and I need 5' x 6', so... I remembered this old painting of self-portraits, and dug up the post I wrote on the story behind them at Xanga, where I was blogging at the time. Reading the post brings tears to my eyes (even if I think the painting unsuccessful). Anyway, I can tear the canvas off, and staple new pieces to the frame and thus satisfy my muse (see yesterday's post for clarification). 

Sunday, 01 August 2004

This is a large painting, 4ft by 5ft, and it was many years in the making.

What I went through over it, I can barely look at it. It was my post polar bear painting. Pure soul retrieval. It consists of three actual self portraits, and one psychic self-portrait. It was about finding myself again after my marriage collapsed.

This painting had something to do with that collapse. A bit of paint on canvas, but not as innocent as it looks. After we bought our cottage, I stopped painting. The cottage was really one large room, and my children were small. After almost 7 years, I began to miss painting, which is like a need in me, and which I don't understand because nothing throws me into as much despair as painting, to paint is pure torment, it is where I throw my life on the line, risk everything, and is anything but an enjoyable activity, sort of like giving birth, it's best when it's done.

Anyway, we were having financial difficulties, but I asked my husband if I might have a large canvas for my birthday. He said no. That there was not enough money--he was still going through a case of beer a week and a bottle of wine every other night, but, for me, no.

The next year again I asked him for the same present. Can I have a big canvas for my birthday? Still the same answer. No. No money. He must have felt some remorse though, because maybe a month later he said I could go get a canvas if I wanted, but I didn't because I wanted him to give it to me as a gift, meaning for him to recognize my need to paint, and to support my talent too. He is a poet himself, having published 6 books or so, and always received emotional support from me, as well as time away from the kids to write, not to mention a typist in pre-computer days for his manuscripts.

Shortly after this we separated. It was amicable, we had a Separation Ritual, inviting the same people who had witnessed our wedding at City Hall 15 years earlier, and a party afterwards.

I told a friend at the Waldorf school that my children attended at the time about the canvas. She looked at me incredulously. I'll never forget the look in her eyes, ever. And said, "But why didn't you buy the canvas yourself?"

So I did. I was working, editing, and did have money. It cost around $100. My ex picked it up for me from the discount art store where I ordered it and brought it home on the roof rack. That was supportive, no? Or perhaps it was because I had broken the code of silence between us and told someone else and he was a little embarrassed.

It could have been the relationship, the long hard years of being secondary to my husband, of having my writing, painting, degrees considered not just unimportant but a waste of time, of my ideas, perceptions, learning existing only to catapult him to poetic stardom, and so on. But by the time 1997 rolled around I realized I had developed major creative blocks.

With much will power, I began the painting. It was like learning to walk all over again. Slow, hesitant, painful. The first image in the middle is from a photograph taken when I was 32, in the a few months after my father died. His death signified the loss of many things in my life, and my probable career in academia. She's standing in a yellow rain slicker in the mountains, mountains which I painted in and then painted out. When my father died, something died in me also, and so I painted my younger self as a way to go back and retrieve her drive and enthusiasm for learning, for life, for reaching out. Above her is another me, with antlers growing out of her head, a little older, from a photo taken at the cottage. The angel is from a photo at my daughter's second birthday party. The old woman on the right is an image after one in "Soul Cards," by Deborah Koff-Chapin (Center for Touch Drawing, 1995), and was a card I pulled almost weekly at the small yoga class I taught.

The painting’s a triptych. It's the old Christian tri-level world, hell, earth, heaven, only in New Age spirituality, it's grounding yourself in the earth for renewal, through your Winter, ordinary life in a yellow rain slicker, looking upwards, moments of revelation, nature, with echoes of shamanic spirituality, and the angel is one's higher self, a more wise version of oneself who can guide one through.

All in all, I worked on it from 1997-2002. It's called, "Self Portraits." After I finished it, I realized that I never wanted to paint at an easel with a brush again and began throwing my canvas’ on the floor and finger painting right out of the tube; whenever, that is, that I can work through the creative blocks that I am still struggling with.

That’s the story of the painting that I posted today.

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The Muse Doesn't Care About Money At All

My muse, oh, Muse! For about a month, when I think of painting, it is always life-sized figures on a large canvas sheet. 'But, Muse, I can't afford that, and have nowhere to staple such canvas, no walls free at all!' Does The Muse care? Not a whit. Never does. Then this and that happened, and today I bought some double-primed canvas, 60" wide and 2 yards long, or 6'. I carried it home in a roll the actor who works part-time at the art store kindly insisted on rolling it in for me ('primed canvas is fragile, it remembers crinkles,' he said). Where I will hang it while the muse has her way with painting, I don't know. I suppose call the lumber yard tomorrow and see how much 5' x 6' thin plywood boards are, and if affordable, see if the truck might happen to be in my area and can drop it off.

I would have bought more - 12' long, enough for two paintings - but had to discipline my muse. 'Enough! I need to eat, too.' And placate. 'We'll get more canvas if this one works out, ok?'

The last thing I need is more canvas piling up in the bottom of the closet. Last year I actually sewed all the strips of unprimed canvas I had lying around and made what is essentially a stage set with it (as you can see in the image I posted).

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Hey, I'm Ariadne's Thread!

clew 1  (kl) n. 1. A ball of yarn or thread. 2. Greek Mythology The ball of thread used by Theseus to find his way out of the labyrinth. 3. clews The cords by which a hammock is suspended. 4. also clue Nautical a. One of the two lower corners of a square sail. b. The lower aft corner of a fore-and-aft sail. c. A metal loop attached to the lower corner of a sail. tr.v. clewed, clew·ing, clews 1. To roll or coil into a ball. 2. also clue Nautical To raise the lower corners of (a square sail) by means of clew lines. Used withup. [Middle English clewe, from Old English cliwen.]

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clew 2  (kl) n. & v. Chiefly British Variant ofclue1.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

Definition found at The Free Dictionary.
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My last three paintings

My latest paintings. Mandate: sit, paint. Without preconception, or any idea of what I will paint. It has to be fast, because that is how these paintings are. Not overworked, this so very important. Fresh, the brush of inspiration.

"Untitled", 2012, Brenda Clews, 18" x 24", oils, India and acrylic inks on triple-primed cotton canvas sheet.

"A Palmistry, a Psalm", 2012, Brenda Clews, 18" x 24", charcoal, oils, oil pastels, oil sticks on triple-primed cotton canvas sheet. I am working on a videopoem of this poem and painting.

She Rests on Pillows in the Grass, 2012, Brenda Clews, 24" x 18", 60cm x 45cm, oil paint on 90lb archival paper.

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An untitled painting of a man

Untitled, as of yet. I just painted this. An iPhone photo taken with a daylight bulb. 18" x 24", oil on canvas sheet.

I have been deeply troubled, as ever, by Syria, the refugee camps, the deaths, the conflagrations. And the miners in South Africa, their horrendous treatment, not just the shooting deaths, but the survivors being charged with murder (withdrawn as of today, but it influences). This is a -just-sit-down-and-paint-woman-whatever-fucking-emerges-let-it-be- painting. From the inner self, where the cauldron burns.

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Test clip for 'Palmistry, a Psalm'- an underlayer

direct link: Test clip for 'Palmistry, a Psalm'- an underlayer (another unlisted videopoem of 46sec)

This is a 46 second snippet of 5 minute clip of the writing of the whole prose/poem on parchment paper to see if it would fit on the final painting, and I think I will make the clip the underlayer of the video, what is returned to again and again as an underlying metaphor amidst many more layers, a greater visual complexity. My intention is to include images of the hand: an x-ray, a painted hand, a real hand, a hand wrapped in a black brace. And the painting in its stages and the final with the writing. Also, some other public domain footage. The final 'video painting poem' could take a few months to finish.

Here's a blog post with the prose/poem, a recording, and images.

The sounds of the pen? Moi. The beautiful bird song, however, is from Alban Lepsy's album, Relaxation Nature vol.1.

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The Airport Lounge

             

My friend, Stephen, had a short stopover in Toronto yesterday, and I met him at the airport. He had two small bottles of wine from the flight, so we drank those at Starbucks. He showed me many quite incredible photos of his trip to Spain, abstract images, the kind an artist takes. He's currently working with glass, and was looking forward to turning his kiln on when he returned home and putting some glass in to make magic overnight (he's preparing for a group show in September). I returned the Picasso catalogue (we had seen the show at AGO together on the stopover on his way to Europe earlier in August), which, alas, I did not get to in the last few weeks to write about, and the Surrealist one, which he texted me from the Departure Lounge about - apparently that was a gift for me, ah, well, at least I went through it over a few enjoyable hours. We last saw each other 7 years ago. Who knows when next. It's a lovely friendship of mutual admiration of each other's art.

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A small sketch of my mother

Today she was restful. Probably 2" x 3" in a little old Moleskine I keep in my purse. I've been afraid to sketch my mother, who had a stroke last March. She's very thin, about 70lbs, and so I'm not sure how much my sketch resembles her. It perhaps has the quality of this difficult time, for her, for us, though.

Certainly emotionally difficult to draw, and yet, as frail as she is, there is a beauty, her skin so thin it is waxen, translucent, the capillaries, the bones evident, an inner light emanating.

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an écriture,... a dream writing

an écriture,... a dream writing (an unlisted videopoem)

Écriture. Handwriting, yes. But this is Dream Writing. You can't quite read it, but you know it is important.

A test clip for a video poem I am working on called, 'Palmistry, a Psalm.' This was taken with a Canon GL2 that I bought in 2003, and I greatly magnified one corner of the clip. My naughty, no playful, kitten was put in the bathroom for the videoing and, wouldn't you know it, her dear bleet is quite plaintively clear. If I use any of the footage from today in the actual videopoem, not sure how I will handle that. Lol.

But it's all part of the dream............


(also, titles made using the YouTube 'Enhancements' option)
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Photos taken from video on Palmistry, a Psalm

Today I did video a writing of Palmistry, a Psalm onto tracing paper on the painting. This was a 'dry run,' and the prose/poem will fit. It took hours to set up the space, moving couches, and a marble coffee table (on felt, but still), stapling canvas over my couch to the wall, two cameras on tripods, long time adjusting them over and over, lighting, and so on, including putting that playful kitten in the bathroom, she mewed but was ok, and, well, I'll see how some of the clips might work in a videopoem. Here is a digitally-played-with photo from the shoot.

In the videoing today, yes, I did begin to rip the poem, it was irresistible. It was, though, written on test paper. This is not a digitally-played-with photo. Lol.

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Resisting a multi-media rendition of Palmistry, a Psalm

After I began this painting, a prose poem became 'an inner pressure,' and so I spent a few days writing one, and even made a little recording, and while I would have finished the painting last week by writing the poem onto the canvas, the 'inner pressure' now is to make a video poem. I don't want to! I argue with my muse: It's too much work; no-one watches them. Who needs a video? But though I have tracing paper taped to the painting for a 'dry run' on the writing - want to make sure I space it properly so it all fits on - and have sat to work, that da*n muse won't let me! So now I need to create a video space with canvas or something around it and video the act of writing, pen on parchment for the spacing, pen on canvas for the final, up close. Do you think I can manage this little task? I'm so in resistance.

Doing a piece in three media, painting, writing, and video is way too much work for one woman and yet, resist as I might, the muse is stronger and is resisting my resistance and will win out. Due to a busy week, likely won't video until next week. Oy! Is it like this for you?

The layered x-ray (real, of my wrist) and the painted hand (I was looking at my actual hand when I painted it) that you see in the first image was done digitally and would be fun to work with in a video, fading in and out of one or the other. I could do some found footage of Nazis, also. Coatlique, Ophelia, yes, if I find public domain images. Oh, and those great drawings of the hand for palmistry, palm readings. That would be fun. And so on. Lots of ideas, no will to do it. Lol.

Below is the prose/poem for if you hadn't already read it and wanted to take a look.
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A Palmistry, a Psalm

The hand is a poem. A fragmenting poem in my hand. Fingers blow in the wind like bulrushes. That gnarled branch overhanging the water, a twisted wrist. I wear a carpal bone like a pendulum, the rattle of Coatlique.

Our hands, neuronal cells pulsing nerves probing the world, soft, sensitive. In the signs in the lines on our palms a seer's language. Our journey mapped in grooves of curvature of skin over muscle and bone. Born here; die there. One, or two, or five central relationships. You will /or will not have children. This will be a difficult time; easier there. My, you are a sensualist.

They cut off the hands of thieves. Only I never stole. When was my hand severed? As a child? In the nightmare it is staked in the window, a sign for the henchmen of dictators, thieves of the freedom of souls. Herod's soldiers grabbing the first born; Nazi boots kicking down the doors of the Jews. Marked houses. Signs of those sacrificed on the altars of cruelties of power.

In my hand, you will find I've lived a clean life. Does this echo the ethical universe? Ethos is what enables order, harmony, beauty. This swollen and sore hand is emblazoned with 'the mark.'

I touch you, lying on the soft grasses of the riverbank, glide delicate fingers over your features, reading you, your body of braille. And massage you, warm oiled dance of fingertips and palm whorls penetrating knots, torments, memories. Even as my wrist flicks, and breaks.

My hand drifting downstream, decked in an Ophelia of lace and rings. Hold it; hold me.

 

A few notes on Nicole Brossard's 'Notebook of Roses and Civilization'

[I was asked to compare my writing to one of my influences - and so I have chosen to speak a little of Nicole Brossard, and a book of her poetry that I read today.]

She has managed to obliterate strains of rationality in her poetry that mine perhaps still has. Her writing flies off the edges of experience; mine clings to a coherence set in motion by the imagery. She yokes together disparate images, line after line, freed from grids of rational grammars to create a poetry of resonance, echoes, synechdotal sightings, whisps of thought turning to steam during the heat wave of the text.

Her earlier work influenced me enormously, sliding easily, as she did, between a minimalist nearly surreal poetry of wet tongues on words that touch, and touch, to a prose woven on waves turning into poetry. On my shelf, Turn of a Pang (1976), A Book (1976), Daydream Mechanics (1980), These Our Mothers (1983), French Kiss (1986), Lovhers (1986), Sous La Langue, Under Tongue, (1987), Surfaces of Sense (1989), Picture Theory (1991), Museum of Bone and Water (2003) [in which she cordially wrote: 'Pour Brenda, /Avec mes salutations amicales /au coeur de la poesie /Nicole Brossard /Toronto /10 avril 2003'], to which today I have added, Notebook of Roses and Civilization (2007) and Fences in Breathing (2009).

Having just read Notebook of Roses and Civilization, I don't find the same connection points, moments of pins of light crossing from two different maps of a parchment of words, maps of mist, and yet I feel kindred, inspired, awakened to a world freed from its rational, linear, narratorial tethers in Nicole Brossard's expansive lexicon. The acrobatics, sudden shifts of image, signalling of moments in sparse truncated syntax, fleeting referents, in a vast field of signs, of Deleuzian-like multiplicities. What connects is the consciousness of the poet who does not describe a stable world, who describes her inner world for us, her readers. Who pulls us in to her vortex of meanings collapsing meanings until even the bones of structure are charred:

i arrive at this page burning.
others use the word light
to shake up reality. Let's see
if standing up you grab tomorrow naked
out of order (p55)

As Gertrude Stein writes of Picasso in her book, Picasso:

...this problem remained, how to express not the things seen in association but things really seen, not things interpreted but things really known at the time of knowing them. (Beacon, 1959: 36)

Brossard has long loosed the world of association and writes, not stream-of-consciousness, but from a rarified poetic. Images freed of their contexts held together by the undercurrent of emotions of the poet:

the poem can't lose its momentum
make you suddenly turn around
as if the sea
were about to surge up at your back
in pages of foam and foment (47)

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[I don't think these words scrawled in pencil in my writing Moleskine today after reading a book of poetry constitute a review of a book of the French Canadian poet, Nicole Brossard, but they perhaps incline that way.]

 

A Canadian classic, the Four Horsemen

Canadian classic, the Four Horsemen, sound poets.

bp Nichol

Raphael Barreto-Rivera

Steve McCaffery

Paul Dutton

From the a clip from Ron Mann's documentary, Poetry in Motion (1981). It was posted 5 years ago on Google video. It's also on YouTube, but in a lower resolution. I chatted with bp at a party I helped to organize for my ex way back in the mid-1980s. bp liked my quiche lorraine, if I recall. He was sprightly, outwardly sort of 'hippy-ish' perhaps, but mentally as agile as any high wire rope walker. Later on, in the 90s, Paul used to come by our house, and talk with my ex. Though I wasn't writing or painting in those days, I had a library of a few thousand books and could hold my own in conversation. I knew lots of bookish things, I guess, which Paul seemed to appreciate. Anyway, this is a bit of trip down memory lane tonight. bp died in September 1988. He'd gone into hospital for an operation to remove a cyst on his spine, a routine operation, and died on the operating table. Completely unexpected in such an operation, and tragic. Tonight I found concrete poems that he'd composed on one of the first Macs, way back in the 80s. What he would have produced had he lived. Though that is a mute statement, isn't it. Glad we have what we do of what he did create.

 

The bones, the x-rays, the bones...

Very likely a bit demented. But because I had to get copies for specialists I am seeing, I now have two CDs of x-rays of my wrist (from two different labs, I might add - this lady has been footing it about the city). An Intern said that while there was indication of FLAC wrist in the May 28, 2011 x-ray (osteoarthritis due to multiple injuries), he saw no fracture. The August 1, 2012 x-ray apparently shows the fracture. Damned if I can see it though. Sort of, maybe.  But I definitely see that there is no cartilage left between the scaphoid bone (in the wrist) and the radius (one of the forearm bones). So that's the OUCH. What's worse is I'm thinking of using these x-rays in a videopoem of the Palmistry, a Psalm painting and poem, which is really demented. Lol.

And, anyway, I need a place to store these for future reference, and Bloggers' search engine is way better than Picassa's. Keeping them in Draft in this blog doesn't really work since I'd be likely to delete the post without realizing it at some point.

So, herewith I place photos of my bones in the public domain (uh, ok, in the unlisted album domain). Lol. :)



Then, uh, I, uh, added a detail of the painting, and then, uh, combined them. See, a Conceptual Art piece!



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