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The Things I Used to Do – An Environmental Tale

Posted on by Sandy Webster

Elements Kimono 3
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These are large wooden panels of plywood on wood supports. They are heavy and framed using custom sized floating frames. Some were exhibited at the university where I received my BFA. I remember the press commentary about works in the show had as follows: “Sandy Webster certainly has a different way of using watercolors.” That was about it. My idea of course went beyond using my paints differently than anyone else.

I wanted to show how man encroaches slowly onto Nature and eventually completely takes over. So in this first panel (each of the main four are 28″ x 38″) I have painted the kimono that represents man in an innocent position of simply hung on a line in the breeze. The crow and the fish in the sea carry on about their lives.

Elements kimono #2
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Man is a bit more threatening here and moves forward in disguise.

Elements kimono #1
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Things are beginning to come removed from their proper place.

Elements kimono 4
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The crow has departed, and man has caught all of the ocean. The sun is getting duller.

Elements full wall elements kimono
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And finally, all that the world had to offer is now worn in the clothing of man. This piece took three wooden panels to make up the kimono with the center piece being 24″ x 60″. Bit dramatic, don’t you think?

What I did like about this work was my idea at the time and the “unusual” use of watercolors. I would rub them on with a rag, let them dry and then use my electric sander to sand some of them away. Use more paint, some graphite and sand again. The use of gold leaf was what gave them some rich areas and influenced the framer on what floating frames to use.

Two of the pieces sold out of a gallery because the buyer could not decide which one to take so took them both. The large kimono and last part of the series I gave to a friend for her home where it fits perfectly and the other two (large crow body and kimono holding the sea) hang in our bedroom. I still like them.

And I still wonder what makes some ideas so important that we are willing to go to so much trouble to see it through. What I received in sales covered the cost of the framing so it certainly is not the possibility of making money from the work. I look through my studio and wonder why I am doing the work I am now.

I think that in a perfect artist’s world there is a special landfill where all this work can keep company with others – all products of artists that simply could not help themselves. Those of us who must see what that dreamed up idea in our heads will look like sitting in front of us, completely realized.

Where I Once Belonged

Posted on by Sandy Webster

davids1
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 “It was a patriarchal system where men managed the means of acquisition and made the decisions which determined our lives. The woman’s obligation (and usually desire) was to ease those determinations into existence.  As children we knew our place, our value, and our limitations.  We also knew that we were not necessarily needed and therefore easily excused to wander and explore our natural world in complete safety and with wild abandon.”
from the artist statement about “Where I Once Belonged” – S. Webster

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All the house type structures relate to where I once belonged – where I was a child. This week I lost the last brother I had – the one who I always knew was drawing something and filling his hours with making things so close to where we grew up. We would escape out the back of the house and spend a whole weekend in the woods. We used to think that if we kept drawing the Disney characters over and over then Walt himself would give us a job when we grew up. He came a lot closer to that than I did with a career in marketable artworks – wildlife paintings and sculpture of “up North.”  He will be missed.

The Things I Used to Do in Recycling

Posted on by Sandy Webster

Recollections
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This is part of an exhibition I had out in St. Louis many years ago. There were twelve of these 3′ x 3′ canvases that I pasted bits of papers, cloth and found objects onto. Then I went into my journals – especially those writings from my times at the artist retreats that I wrote about earlier – and selected bits of them to hand write onto the work. Fragments of thought that related to imagery that also related to the month of the year. I called the series Recollections, because that was what they really were, remembrances. Here is a detail of one of them about a favorite student I had at Arrowmont. He was my eldest male student ever so far. He played harmonica, painted and made me smile, a lot. He cared deeply about things and left a me better for knowing him.

Recollections September Homer
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I liked this series. It was autobiographical in a way of showing things that mattered to me at the time. Then I changed it all. Painted over almost all the imagery and some of the text. Coated it with more shellac and drew birds on each one. They were part of another exhibition I was asked to have here where I live – maybe ten years ago. Several of these birds sold. Some I gave away later, and at least two are stacked in the storage room waiting for a proper disposal.

The full text (which is still a fragment of the writing) was placed underneath each bird.

Recollections into Crow
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Recollections May into Bird
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Recollections into Birds
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The one in the middle has an interesting story. It was purchased by a couple (the wife being a good friend at the time) and hung in their home. The text referenced home, marriage, love. When a divorce ended their relationship and she wanted to take it with her, he refused. I am quite sure he never read it – just wanted to make a point. Likely now it is in a landfill. These were interesting to do because they were done over other recollections and even now are capable of telling an interesting story. Here is a detail of one.

Recollections to Bird Red Tail Hawk detail
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The Things I Used to Do – More on Those Artist Retreats

Posted on by Sandy Webster

Beach chair at Puget Sound
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This is a photo I took at Puget Sound when our artist retreat was there for a week of working and talking and looking closely. This chair was left on the beach and looked so inviting. It was a place you could sit and forget everything, just let yourself go and pretend there was nothing more important than just letting go. But I did realize that sooner or later I would have to get back to the work I thought was important at the time. I was hand stitching with secret written spun shifu threads that were made to hold patches of old clothes belonging to my husband and I into small panels to then be pieced into a large quilt shaped like a calendar month of our anniversary. At the time of the retreat we had been married for over thirty years and it seemed like a good project to work on – commentary on being together for so long. (Now we are coming up to number forty-eight, rare in this day and age.)

Marriage
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This is a detail of what turned out to be more than five by seven. Each square is a day of the month of October. Coffee filters, spun and cut into quarters, clothes and a transparent cloth for the backing. Some days there were bits of gold, some days the thread of shifu was ragged. I like this piece and exhibited it shortly after it was finished.

Near Puget Sound
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When I wasn’t wandering the beach, I found other places to sit and write. I will be taking a writing class this next week and my head will be on character and story development. It won’t be my story but I see myself in almost all of the women I have conjured up. It is going to be good to get back to them and others that may just suddenly show up in a writing class when the instructor gives a prompt.

I sketched some of the pieces I photographed and referred to two books I was using at the time, Anne Lindbergh’s Gift From the Sea, and Gaston Bachelard’s Poetics of Space. After a year of sketching and writing in my book not only quotes from their books but my response to some of what they said, I created this work. It was a way to interpret the three way dialog we shared for about a year and ended up on another quilt piece. The pages from the sketch book were torn out and hand stitched to hand written text pages. The remains of the book became a receptacle for a small vial with a tiny burr in it. The book was embedded with soils of home and roots.

One Year Away on Exhibit
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Here it is on exhibit and a detail below. What I learned was that Anne Lindbergh came and wrote from a place of privilege and much as I loved her descriptions, I did not find her all that easy to identify with.  On the other hand, Gaston Bachelard is someone I have referred to over and over again. It is the one important book I talk about to students who are thinking about ways to visually describe space. My copy of Poetics of Space is the most dog-eared book on my shelves.

One Year Away
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And now I am going to go off and do more supervised writing, do as much listening as i possibly can, which is hard at my age (seventy-one) when my mind is in a state of constant chatter and insists I pay attention.