struck on Christmas eve: my beloved iMac desktop computer decided it was time to leave me, after eight years of more or less blissful co-existence. With no warning, not even a goodbye note, he just went dark, kaputt, finito. With all my precious software programmes, files etc. (not lately backed up). I won't know the extent of the damage until I can take the carcass to the Apple gods' headquarters after New Year's day but until then I'm warily typing this on a laptop which may crash any minute.
So a hasty Happy New Year everyone and please wish me digital and analogue luck, in abundance.
Friday, December 27, 2013
Friday, December 20, 2013
IT'S THAT TIME OF YEAR
when all the shopping and
wrapping, unwrapping, consuming and partying is contrasted,
in less visible ways, by acts of kindness,
generosity, helpfulness and good will towards those who
have nothing to celebrate, those whose lives are a daily
battle against hunger, cold, loneliness, fear, pain,
prejudice, abuse, exclusion, oppression.
So my Christmas image
is a madonna and child but you
can also read it as a spirit of compassion for
the children and the old and all those of any age who
are at this moment suffering, everywhere on this planet,
even in privileged societies like ours. My hope
is that there will come a time when universal compassion
is the big name in lights and the most valued gift is
the one of loving attention to those who have never received
it.
Thursday, December 12, 2013
FAME IN KENTISH TOWN
For the benefit of those who are not local, Kentish Town is the characterful North London neighbourhood where I live (to be precise, I'm on the border between it and Tufnell Park). We locals are blessed to have neighbourliness and character in abundance and one proof of this is the daily online and on-paper magazine, The Kentish Towner, edited by Stephen Emms and Tom Kihl. I'm especially delighted by it today because my exhibition is mentioned. They interviewed me last October here.
See, I can be a frequent blogger when it comes to boasting.
MORE
See, I can be a frequent blogger when it comes to boasting.
MORE
Wednesday, December 11, 2013
INFREQUENT BLOGGER'S GUILT
Of all the forms of guilt, some
of them perfectly legitimate, feeling
guilty for not blogging often enough
is possibly the most absurd. It demonstrates
an inflated view of one's own importance and also,
since the creation and upkeep of a blog is entirely
self-determined, there are no rules dictating
what the correct blogging frequency must be. Neverthless,
guilt is what I feel and I am apologising, in a roundabout
way, for a blogging blank of seventeen days. My excuse
is having been otherwise engaged, busy with things
which take priority over posting blogs and reading
blogs. Of course everyone is always otherwise engaged
yet it is such a joy when you, dear loyal readers, take
the time to stop by here and leave some words, a signal
that we are connecting, however briefly. Maybe my guilt
is mainly a sense of neglecting friends, interrupting
a cyber-flow of friendship. Perhaps that's an illusion
or delusion but it's one worth nurturing.
The private view at Café Rustique
on December 1st was well attended and the small space
cheefully filled, as you can see in the photo below,
taken by the café owner on his phone. The low lighting
and terra cotta coloured walls create an intimate ambiance
which suits the pieces I'm showing but on normal working
days, café customers are intently focused on their laptops
and rarely look up at the walls. Still, I'm glad to see
these works away from home.
Amidst the sadness at
Mandela's departure, the thought struck
me that he was one of three extraordinary men of our
time who created tidal waves of positive transformation
and inspiration which will not cease to transform and
inspire future generations: Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther
King, Mahatma Gandhi. Is it a coincidence that these
three men were not white? Perhaps a coincidence, perhaps
a signpost that the only colour which truly matters in
human relations is the incandescent light of truth and
compassion, radiating from the heart and the conscience.
MORE
Sunday, November 24, 2013
A SMALL EXHIBITION
A SMALL EXHIBITION
of artworks
by Natalie d'Arbeloff
will be held from Monday 2nd to Friday 20th December 2013
at Café Rustique
142 Fortess Road, London NW5 2HP (Tufnell Park Underground)
of artworks
by Natalie d'Arbeloff
will be held from Monday 2nd to Friday 20th December 2013
at Café Rustique
142 Fortess Road, London NW5 2HP (Tufnell Park Underground)
If you are in
London you're very welcome at the Private View from
8 to 10pm on Sunday 1st December.
I've made a page here showing
the seventeen works which will be exhibited. Photos of
most of these paintings and box-constructions have already
been seen on the Blaug at various times but since I'm
clearing space on my walls it seemed the right moment
to put them up for sale.
* * * * *
Below is a photo of where
I slept, or rather didn't sleep, last night. The amorphous
shape on the right is a pile of builders' gear covered
with paint-spattered dust sheet. The reason I dragged
a mattress to try and sleep there was because the noise
noise noise noise NOISE
NOISE coming
from a party in a house next door was vibrating the walls
of the bedroom and shattering my ear drums. It was no
better on the floor of the living room and as the repetitious
pounding and shouting went on and on until one, two,
three, four in the morning I dialled the number for noise
pollution and shaking with rage demanded that something be
done to stop this torture. Calmly, wearily,
having heard it all before, someone took down details
and said they would try to investigate.
Ages later the noise stopped but I don't know if it
was because the noise-police arrived or if the partying
yoofs finally got tired.
Oh yes I'm ranting but maybe that's because
I didn't sleep and also because torture-by-music actually
is torture,
as used on prisoners, for
instance at Guantanamo. So how do innocent young party-goers
get away with the music-torturing of innocent neighbours?
That's what I want to know.
MORE
Tuesday, November 12, 2013
DISCOMFORT ZONE
Walls and woodwork in
twenty years of wear and tear from me and the weather
inside and outside this flat have accumulated
signs of stress which needed to be dealt with but since
there's never going to be a right time to attend to it,
I thought: why not now? In times past I would have tackled
it all myself but since I've been told I'm ageing, I've
taken the soft option and called in the workers. Soft
option my foot. I deliberately forgot the fact that I'd
have to move everything - every
single thing - all the pictures,
books, records, hundreds of things out of the
way, off the shelves and off the walls and off the tops
of cupboards covered in ancient dust. I've declared my
attic studio out of bounds but my study is where
I've piled high many of the innumerable books. Here's
a shot of one corner - on the top right are my
desk and computer, where I huddle as I type this.
old shower curtain
dust-sheet
But you know what? There's
something liberating about this disruption of my comfort
zone. The clutter is a different kind of clutter from
my usual one, which is passive. This clutter challenges
me to act, to get rid of stuff, to clean up and make
space. I've chosen to have all the walls painted white
and the flat is looking bigger already. And letting the
workmen in at 7:45 every morning forces me to change
my night owl routine. Who knew there were so many
early morning hours every day? Who knew that if you
get up at 6:30 you're starving hungry by eleven o'clock?
And who knew you can get so much more done in daylight
than you can in the middle of the night?
Do I hear
scoffing from all you early risers?
MORE
Monday, November 11, 2013
CREATIVELY AGEING IN DEAUVILLE
Given enough time to get
to know each other, the four of us would probably have
had a useful and even
inspirational conversation. But if you
read face and body language in the photomontage below,
you can get a pretty good idea of how the session actually
developed. Ludmila Ulitskaya is the only one who looks
at ease, perhaps because she spoke no English. Her Russian
translator mumbled so softly that I could barely hear
a word so I don't know what Ludmila thought but she had
a sympathetic face. David Galenson held forth longer
than anyone else in a manner that seemed defensive but
perhaps that's because I didn't agree with most of his
approach to the subject and perhaps that's because I'm
deeply involved in, and perhaps also defensive, about
the process of creation, while he is deeply involved
in the theory he
has painstakingly constructed about it. Pamela
Ryckman had done her homework assiduously and tried her
best to orchestrate the session but it was no
easy task. It was more
like a set of monologues than a discussion but if
I look disgruntled perhaps that's because
I was disappointed by the many empty chairs in the
room - only about fifteen people in the audience.
But perhaps that's because many talks on different
topics were scheduled at the same time on
each day of the Forum and therefore people tended
to graze buffet-style, wandering in and out of rooms
to sample what was on offer. Understandable perhaps,
but not exactly conducive to depth and concentration.
That's a lot of perhapses ...Quisas quisas quisas: remember
that old Latin American song?
I had written notes
to prepare for the session but, as often happens
on such occasions, I ended up improvising. It
all seems far away already but since we're still on the
subject, herewith
my notes:
I've been invited here because
I'm creative and I'm ageing. But I'm not going to
say how old I am because a number, when associated
with age, instantly brings up stereotypes which I
want to avoid. If you've been a committed artist
all your life you never reach retiring age - you
just keep on working, trying to do better - or as
Beckett said: fail again, fail better.
For me, creativity
is a metaphorical room I have to enter in order
to switch on the state of creativity: the state
in which I can make objects that can be
called artworks. I don't mean that I must perform
some arcane ritual before picking up a brush
or other tool, but there is a definite difference
between this state and the ordinary state
in which I do the shopping, cleaning, socialising,
internet surfing etc. The creativity involved in
writing is different: I can think
of sentences to write while doing the dishes or sitting
in a noisy café. But to fully engage in a process
which will eventually end up as physical artworks,
in whatever medium, demands a deliberate decision
to enter and stay as long as possible in a space
where anything other than
the work at hand is excluded. I can't explain what
neurons in my brain need to be activated
but I do know that it is like tuning to a specific
radio station and that I need complete silence in
order to connect.
One thing that ageing has done
is to make me more aware that I have to choose to enter
that state. It doesn't happen automatically just
because I call myself an artist. I can decide to
step into that room and make stuff (which may or
may not be art) and keep on making more
of it until my dying day, if health and energy permit.
Or I can sit back and let age creep up while
I'm surfing the internet, playing with my digital
gadgets, watching TV, shopping and so on until suddenly
I realise: hey, I'm old! I've got one foot in the
grave and the other one is wobbling!
But in my creative
space I've got loads of time ahead because
the child in me is still able to make discoveries
and perhaps produce the best work I've ever done.
It is still possible, as many artists have proved,
that you can be an innovator, a rule-breaker, even
when you're chronologically old. Creativity is about
breaking or bending the rules and ageing doesn't
necessarily kill one's inner rebel. Some will disagree,
asserting that the brain ages and that's that. Well,
even experts admit that, so
far, little is known about exactly what goes on in
the convoluted grey matter inside our skulls. So
it may be that the brains of artists...ageing and
aged....can teach the experts a thing or
two about creativity.
Something else that
ageing does is to prod me to shed, rather than to
accumulate things and concepts, getting rid of anything
that interferes with finding out what my own inner
voice is trying to say.
And now a few more photos
from the Deauville do. It was an eye-opening experience
which I'm grateful to have been a part of and I will
not forget the inspiring people I met or whose talks
I heard - too many to mention and do justice to.
Mercy Oduyoye, theologian,
Director of Women in Religion and Culture, Ghana
Wednesday, November 06, 2013
AMAZING WOMEN
WOMEN'S GLOBAL FORUM, DEAUVILLE 2013
MORE
Amazing
is an over-used word but I'm going to use it lavishly
because it's too much of an effort to hunt for alternatives
and I have an excuse: bunged up sinuses knocked
out my cognitive faculties
since I got back from France and writing a blog
post, let alone thinking of one, has been about as feasible
as climbing Everest. But here I am now so it must
mean that the wool filling my head is starting to
unravel and will, I hope, evaporate if I continue
to inhale menthol-infused steam.
Everything was amazing
from the start of my privileged journey on Eurostar in
a Premier class seat, breakfast served by solicitous
attendants, and at the Gare du Nord my name was on a
card held up by a chauffeur who took me to Deauville,
a two and a half hour drive from Paris, without my having
had to lift a finger or spend a single Euro just because
I was one of the invited speakers at the Women's Forum.
I was awed by the mind-blowing logistics of organising
such an event, involving 207 speakers and 1200 participants
from 70 countries, 600 organisations, 143 journalists,
and much more. Amazingly, it all ran like Swiss clockwork
with never a hitch, at least not visibly.
My hotel was
at the top of a hill, on a vast golf course overlooking
the town - that pale blue strip in the distance is
the ocean. Below
is the view from the window of my room and below
that, moi-même in the mirror on the first night,
ready to go out to dinner (flat golden shoes) to meet
the organisers. The dinner was at
another luxury hotel where the company and the food were....amazing.
Normandy is known for its gastronomic delights but don't
ask me what I ate, or drank, because I don't remember
except that it was all super-delicious and frequently timbale-shaped.
At first I wondered if I'd
have to make a long trek down from the hotel every day
to Le CID -
Centre
International de Deauville - where
the Forum was held, but I soon realised that all possible
contingencies had been taken care of: a
fleet of navettes (coaches)
appeared at regular intervals to transport participants
to and from the venue. So much was going on
during the three days of the Forum's duration that
I saw more of Le Cid's interior than I ever saw
of Deauville but in the few glimpses I had of the town,
it seemed to me like a designer film set, all posh boutiques,
hotels and shuttered second homes, deserted except for
weekends and holidays when the well-heeled from Paris
and elsewhere roll in to play at casino, race-course,
golf or yacht.
The nostalgic old-world,
old-money ambiance surviving in a
hard-edged new world was summed up when a well-dressed
elderly gentleman hobbling with his cane down a shiny
main street came up to me and said apologetically: Pardon
madame, quel jour est aujourd'hui?
(excuse me madam, what day is today?) It wasn't a chat-up
line and he was perfectly sober and when I replied,
he thanked me politely and hobbled elegantly away.
There couldn't
have been a more vivid contrast between that tiny
melancholy incident and the forward-facing, high-powered,
high-achieving, high-heeled goings-on at the Women's
Global Forum 2013: compete, cooperate,
create. There's no way I can give an adequate report
of the event or do justice to the myriad praiseworthy
projects happening, or about to happen, in many countries
thanks to enterprising, inventive, energetic, courageous
and clever women world-wide and to organisations
and individuals who support them. It seemed odd that
I was there at all: moi, an art-worker usually found
sitting in her imitation-ivory tower, making things of
no discernable use to the real world and occasionally
blogging about it: what on earth was I doing in such
real-world company? I was very happy to be there
but wandered around in a daze, not sure where
to focus my attention. Most interesting to me were the
conversations I had with some of the fascinating women
I met. The Creativity and Aging session (the reason
I was invited) was probably the least interesting part
of the Forum, in my opinion. But I'll write about that
in the next post.
One thing I did was to take
photographs and, looking at them when I returned
home, I see that visual content almost always holds
my attention more than the verbal.
The images I gathered and remember from this experience
will, I'm sure, serve me for paintings or other media.
I share some of them below. More words and pictures tomorrow.
Heels and mobiles at the Forum
Russian-themed party given by Cartier at Deauville casino in honour of the Russian delegation
Cooking Boeuf Stroganoff
Serious Russians cooking
Blue dress, red lighting
Listening to Russian musicians
In a Russian sled
African winners
Busy legs, shiny surfaces
MORE
Monday, October 14, 2013
Wednesday, October 09, 2013
Tuesday, October 08, 2013
STILL CREATIVE EVEN IF...aging?
A few months ago I was invited
to be one of the speakers at a prestigious conference
organised by the Women's
Forum for the Economy and Society which
will take place from October 16 to 18 in Deauville, France.
Of course I accepted, as you can see by checking the
list of speakers
here.
UPDATE: the 'here' link doesn't work properly, at least on my browser. It should go to the main Forum site with all speakers pictured and full program as a PDF. Try simply entering Womens Forum Deauville in Google.
The subject I've been asked to participate in discussing on Friday, 18th October, along with Russian author Ludmila Ulitskaya, and Professor David Galenson from the University of Chicago, and Pamela Ryckman, American author and journalist, is:
UPDATE: the 'here' link doesn't work properly, at least on my browser. It should go to the main Forum site with all speakers pictured and full program as a PDF. Try simply entering Womens Forum Deauville in Google.
The subject I've been asked to participate in discussing on Friday, 18th October, along with Russian author Ludmila Ulitskaya, and Professor David Galenson from the University of Chicago, and Pamela Ryckman, American author and journalist, is:
Creativity and,
ahem, Aging
The ahem is entirely
mine and explains why I am simultaneously flattered by
this invitation and stupefaite that
I have turned into someone who can actually be
described as ageing. Moi? Vieillissant? There
isn't even a French word for the process. I hear
you say: fact of life, deal with it! I deal with
it by the effective method known as denial.
Who
says denial is bad? For example, it is perfectly
sensible to deny entry to burglars or cockroaches or poisonous
fumes. So, by denying entry into my psyche of the
concept 'aging' I am sensibly keeping out all the heavy baggage
that comes with it - prejudices, stereotypes, theories,
surveys, statistics. I'm not ignoring death, that
would be idiotic. But let me cross that bridge when it
comes. The period between then and now is
the present and creativity is always in the present
tense.
Does creativity change in
the same way one's body changes with time? I've
spent my whole life in the creativity game - it is
a serious kind of game - and I can't detect any great
differences between past and present in terms of creativity.
Rather than time, what has always deeply affected
creativity for me are life experiences, relationships,
places. I chose art as a child, never considering
any other profession, and choosing to be a full-time
artist is basically giving yourself permission not to
join the adult world, the world in which people have
proper jobs and proper careers and go on holidays and
retire eventually and do that thing called 'aging'.
A full-time life-long artist doesn't retire, doesn't
like going on holidays, and denies aging. Voilà. C'est
tout.
Next week I'm off to Deauville.
Will report, with pictures when I return. I leave you
with a photo of 84-year old Matisse creating with cut-out
coloured paper in 1952.
MORE
Thursday, September 26, 2013
Monday, September 23, 2013
Sunday, September 22, 2013
Saturday, September 21, 2013
Sunday, September 08, 2013
LESS OPINIONS, MORE WORK
It's hard not to voice an
opinion on the crisis in Syria and the world
powers' current stance concerning it but I'm resisting
the temptation to add to the debates, at least
online, though in conversation with friends I can't help
saying what I think. I'm aware that my knowledge of the
complex factors involved in the situation, being based
only on what I read in the media,
is so limited that any words I can say on the subject
are about as much use to the problem as the meowing
of a cat or the tweeting of birds and Tweeters. Therefore
I'm posting more artwork to distract your attention from
more serious matters, if only for a minute or two.
Here's another of the
rough black & white sketches for the book, with one stage
of the cut block lying on the table. The vinyl tile is
about 2mm thick and quite bendy so
the block is fragile because of its large open areas.
But after it's been textured with gesso, I glue it to
a second vinyl block which acts as backing and brings
it up to the right height for eventual printing. The vinyl is quite resistant and cutting blocks with a scalpel
requires a lot of effort - I wear a thin leather glove
so as not to get sore between thumb and index finger
where the handle of the knife rests. Stanley or other
chunky knives are not suitable for intricate cuts. The
second photo below shows the block upright.
And now for some entirely
different artwork. I did the little painting below a
few months ago, working fast and loose
as a break from slow, concentrated effort. As sometimes
happens, such exhalations can turn out surprisingly well
- this one's going into my Apple Series.
A Happy Apple NdA
2013. Oil
on canvas board. 25 x 30cms (10" x 12")
Another artwork, this one
from a very long time ago: a portrait of my late ex-husband
Reg which I painted in San Miguel Allende, Mexico where
I first met him, when I was an art student and he was
a teacher at the Instituto
Allende (see this part of my autobiography).
The portrait will soon be going to Vancouver where some
of his grown-up children and grand-children live. It
was painted in Duco, the industrial paint which was used
at the art school and by many of the Mexican muralists.
I like this painting, it captures Reg's personality,
the sunny time and the enthusiasm I felt.
Reg in San Miguel, Mexico NdA. Duco on board. 24" x 36"
MORE
Wednesday, August 28, 2013
MIDNIGHT AT ATELIER NdA
The clock on the
wall is showing quarter past twelve: that's midnight,
not noon. When I next look up it will
probably say 3:30 or 4am but that's the kind of
time it usually is when I'm up there in my mansarde. I
cannot shake off the habit of working late. There must
be something about mornings which puts me off but I haven't
got time to analyse why and does it matter anyway? Getting
the work done is the main thing, never mind what time
of day or night.
Since I'm
blogging so infrequently I thought I would
show you some of what I'm doing which,
as I've mentioned before, is illustrating the long poem
by Blaise Cendrars Trans-Siberian
Prosody and Little Jeanne from France translated by Dick
Jones which will be published by The
Old Stile Press . I'm
creating about 48 images, and cutting as many blocks,
to be eventually hand-printed
by Nicolas McDowall. The photo above shows
the sink for damping paper etc. and the table
where I work out ideas. Before cutting the final blocks
out of vynil tiles, I work
out the design and colours for each image by
cutting trial blocks out of cardboard and proofing them
on my etching press.
I've had this press a very
long time and it has served me well - I printed most
of the images for my artist's
books on it. For
those who are not familiar with this simple machine,
an etching press resembles a mangle: the old-fashioned
kind that was used for wringing clothes. Except that
the baby photographed above consists of heavy solid steel
rollers, between which a steel bed is driven back and
forth by a geared wheel. Pressure is adjusted by turning
the top screws on either side of the frame. Special blankets
are laid between the top roller and the paper and plate
to be printed. The difference between an etching press
and a litho press or a relief press is that it's designed
primarily to print intaglio:
a design that is engraved or etched below the flat surface
of a plate - traditionally metal, but can also
be any material which will fit under
the etching press roller. Printing intaglio consists
of pushing ink into the lines, grooves and textures that
have deeply scarred the surface of the plate and then
wiping the surface clean. Damp paper is laid over the
plate and when it's passed under the roller, heavy
pressure pushes the paper into the grooves of the plate,
lifting out the ink, creating the intaglio image (always
embossed on the back of the paper).
More
recent presses are adaptable to both intaglio and
relief because the top roller can be lifted off the bed,
allowing blocks of any thickness to be printed. Unfortunately
my old press doesn't have this flexibility and, since
the blocks I'm cutting for this book will be printed
in relief (off
the flat surface of the block) they must be a lot
thicker than a normal intaglio plate. Therefore any
proofing I do doesn't show the same detail or texture
as it will eventually have on Nicolas' excellent relief
press.
My working process goes
like this: the text is of primary importance, it gives
me the rhythm and content of each page. I've made
a full-size (30cms x 28cms/ 12" x 11") dummy
in which I do rough drawings and/or collages in black
only. From these, I cut the first trial blocks out of
thin cardboard, proof them, then start cutting the final
vynil blocks, perhaps two or three blocks for each design
since they will be printed in colour: each colour
requires a separate block. Below is the working dummy open at
pages 8-9.
Below is one of the
finished vynil blocks for page 9: its strongly textured
(with gesso) surface doesn't show in the photo. The green
and red areas inside the main figure are actually holes
through which you're seeing the table behind. The holes
are so that the relief press rollers won't deposit ink
in those areas.
Below: roughs for pages
14-15
Printmaking demands equal and extreme
amounts of messiness and cleanliness in constant alternation.
Above, my inking table and rollers are
about to be cleaned. This procedure has to be repeated
many times during the day because ink (I use only oil-based)
mustn't be allowed to dry on slabs or rollers. The smell
of white spirit (turps) is pervasive so ventilation
is essential. That shark-like shape on the top right
in the picture below is the edge of an open Velux skylight
window - my studio is a converted loft.
A colour proof of page 7,
using three blocks. The text is only pasted
on and not printed as it will be in the final book.
Voilà, that's it for tonight.
The time is now five past 2 am.
MORE
Wednesday, August 21, 2013
EVERYTHING MUST CHANGE
Tuesday, August 13, 2013
ALTERNATIVE UNIVERSALISTS
For a long time I've
been used to a rather hermitic, if not hermetic,
life and the presence of another person or persons
for longer than a day, whether family or friends, regardless
of my feelings for them, is something I have great difficulty
in adjusting to. Being on my own has never been a problem.
On the contrary, I need a kind of open solitude in order
to function as myself. I've had lonely times of
course - who hasn't? - but solitude is not the same as
loneliness. Solitude is an ingredient as essential to
me as air or food.
So this has been a difficult
birthday week and in order to restore my
own rhythm I went to see the Alternative
Guide to the Universe exhibition at the Hayward
Gallery. Big, bustling,
pushy crowds are not my thing but those which amble
along in leisurely fashion on a sunny day in pleasant
surroundings are fun to observe and mingle with and conversations
can be eavesdropped without having to join in - a pleasant
way to be part of society without needing to be sociable.
A bit like logging in to Facebook but not participating.
The South Bank is in the
midst of a Festival
of Neighbourhood and all sorts of things have cropped
up which weren't there before. Those yellow
banners for instance and the fierce animals and humanoid
insect-creatures drawn on walls. I don't know who did
them or whether they will stay permanently and I'm not
not sure what, if anything, they have to do with neighbourliness
but they are startling and intriguing.
Inside the Hayward I began
by going up to the level where the Museum
of Everything is exhibiting a few
works by the wonderful Nek
Chand who, like
Facteur Cheval, Simon Rodia and other so-called 'naive'
artist-builders elsewhere,
created an extraordinary magical world from recycled
materials. You can see some of Chand's Rock Garden on this video
and there's an interview with him here with
subtitles in English.
I've always been fascinated
and inspired by such mavericks: artists outside art
movements, DIY scientists with no academic degrees, inventors/engineers/architects
without qualifications, thinkers outside the outside
of any box, philosophers mocked by their peers for their
far-out theories, visionaries, odd-balls - I love them
all. And the Alternative
Guide to the Universe exhibition is dedicated to them. I only
managed to sneak a few photos but have ordered the book
and there are good images and plenty of information on
the internet about all the people featured in the show.
If you're as intrigued as I am by Otherness, please be
sure to follow the links:
BODYS
ISEK KINGELEZ (some of his models are on the upper
right in the photo below); GEORGE
WIDENER (below left).
Below: two works by PAUL
LAFFOLEY
And there's MARCEL
STORR and JAMES
CARTER and many more but that's enough to distract you
from whatever else you happen to be doing right now.
What interests me about
these and similar outsiders is that whether
they are as sane as you and I (hahahaha), a bit bonkers,
completely bonkers, hypersensitive, autistic, visionary
or any other classification you prefer, they all
speak the same 'language' and explore the same kind of
themes: cosmological, mathematical, patterned, symbolic,
universal, sometimes mystical, none of it within accepted
traditions and yet seeming to belong to a common lineage.
It's as if a part of their mind is tuned to
a wavelength beyond the reach of most minds, even
very sophisticated, erudite minds. I don't think
it's a coincidence that most of these mavericks
are self-taught, if taught at all. Maybe their lack of
sophistication is one of the factors which allows them
to be antennae for whatever arcane messages the universe
sends out. Of course any content they pick
up and transform into paintings, constructions or
words will be interpreted by their individual
personalities and culture and thus may look weird,
incomprehensible or merely charming to spectators. But
I wouldn't dismiss it too easily.
And then I went home on
the tube and saw this:
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