Siege - Day 140

Just a quick note:

A FB friend posted an article about Black Civil War and Reconstruction era hero Robert Smalls.  Such courage!  Cleverness!  And - if you read far enough in the Wikipedia bio HERE  - also real kindness and forgiveness... as well as a steel spine.  Why isn't this man's story a best selling book and a blockbuster movie?  

Why isn't it required reading in U.S. history?  

I tell you, I become more and more disgusted by the lies and omissions in the Texas history books I once had in school.  Increasingly embarrassed at the gallons of moonlight-and-magnolia-swill that I swallowed without spitting.  And I was a pretty broad reader even then and, I believed, a skeptical reader too, so I did catch some lacks in that teaching... but not enough of them.  I find new insights daily it seems...  Betrayed by my schooling!

Ha!  Fool me once.

Two lessons for me from this: 1)  doubt what you do read/learn/hear, there may be a slant you don't immediately see, and 2) look very hard for the omissions... what aren't you hearing about?  In this age of disinformation and outright lies we all need to watch out.  (This is not, however an endorsement of silly conspiracy "research" involving dubious authorities and "alternative" facts.)

So, I'll be reading more about Mr. Smalls.

Next, complete non sequitur: 

Mark Bradford's painting/collages at The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth in an exhibition titled "Endpapers" :

Mark Bradford collage at Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth

Mark Bradford collage at Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth

Mark Bradford collage at Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth

Sadly, I did not note down the titles of his canvases. (But then again, I always think titles are a bit of a cheat anyway.)

I really liked the subtlety of his use of color and the subtle repetitions and variations of his building block rounded-edged rectangles (presumably the title's end paper... what is this exactly?  must research...).  I love the map-like quality - sometimes reminding me of the famous London Underground maps, sometimes more of USGS or nautical harbor maps.  

It's a different approach to collage and/or painting.  Some of the few abstract works that I think I could live with and never tire of.  Mark Bradford.  (Some more future research for me on that topic too.)

Collaging for the Stage

You do some funny stuff for the theater...

Last week was a big push on my drafting board to finish some collaged jewelry for Kitchen Dog Theater's annual fund raiser party Hooch & Pooch.  (Great name huh?)  At the same time I made a few pieces as little presents for an up-coming family event.  So my studio is still filled - FILLED! - with little bitty clips of paper.

Collage is a messy art!

My studio... my board under assault by bits of paper.

Here you can see my board pretty well buried in paper... no drawing going on today!  (Tea drinking, yes, drawing, no.)

More scraps of paper...

This necklace is based on a Kimbell Art Museum brochure for a middle eastern art show some years ago (I save paper dangit).  The image is of Persian ceramic tiles showing a romantic garden picnic... from which I cut tiny portions of the various floral motifs for the main discs on this necklace.  Other papers come from leftover Chinese soap wrappers and itty bitty catalogue illustrations of William Morris floral designs.

And more scraps of paper!

More collage...  Here are a few pins made from a reproduction of an old British game board (a bit like Bingo, I think) and the beginning of a tiny framed art piece where - unlikely as it seems - Chagall and Keith Herring designs will work happily together.

Below - more pins made from bejeweled Mexican Bingo images.

Some of my favorites.

Missed your chance to win a piece of my jewelry at Hooch & Pooch?  Donations to Kitchen Dog Theater still cheerfully accepted!  I'll make ya a pin custom as a Thank You.

(Interested in collage jewelry?  HERE's a Squidoo page I made on the topic.)

Art Museum Visits

Lately I've been popping into museums.

The Dallas Museum of Art has instituted a new free-entry policy which I think is wonderful... and probably good business too.  Until recently there was a charge to just stick your head in any of the galleries of the permanent collection, plus an extra charge to see any traveling exhibits.  Now those traveling shows still require a ticket: a hefty $16 to view three, I think, shows... one of them of Greek statues from the British Museum however, so cheaper than the usual plane ticket to see the Discobolus.

But now the permanent collection is FREE.  A price anyone can afford.  Museums, supported as they are by civic money and centers of civic pride, really should be accessible to all citizens.

There did now seem to be more people in the museum than has been true.  (Once inside the door, I bet more end up paying for the traveling exhibits too.)

I took my intern 'round a few weeks back to see the DMA's furniture and decorative arts.  The DMA really is a great teaching aid!  Their furniture collection got a serious start with the Bybee Collection of early American furniture and for years they've been adding pieces from other periods and places.  Recently they revamped a room of Craftsman and Arts and Crafts objects that includes a spectacular Tiffany stained glass door and sidelights (almost) looted from Greene and Greene's Blacker House.

Now that these collections are free, folks like me or my student can afford to visit and revisit to really study these objects.  This past weekend - having a little extra time - I visited the Dallas Museum of Art just for fun and said hello to all my favorites.

Love, love, love the new free entry policy.


The most exciting traveling exhibit I've seen lately - for free yet - was yesterday at Fort Worth's Amon Carter Museum of American Art.  This museum has had an interesting development too, from its start with a collection of excellent Western art (The Old West, like cowboys), adding/building a serious photography collection, to its present impressive collection of American art (like N. American).  The permanent collection is well worth a visit.  And always free.

The traveling exhibit?

Poseidon by Romare Bearden - believed fair use as this is a review 

and for educational purposes, image found HERE.  Copyright, of course, Romare Bearden

Romare Bearden: A Black Odyssey.  Now I have to admit to a shameful ignorance of Mr. Bearden until almost ten years ago when the DMA had a show of his collages.  Since I make collages myself, I was absolutely fascinated with his work.  The colors!  The shapes!  The meticulous craftsmanship.

He goes about his art differently...  Where I use "found" pictures to create my narratives, he sometimes does that - usually to create human figures - but mainly uses cut/shaped colored paper in a Matisse-like, mosaic-like way.  One technique that intrigued me was that he sometimes sands the glued down papers to abrade and soften colors and edges.  The work in that show concentrates on the history and experience of African-American life, often with an urban flavor, and always with an emotional sound-track of jazz and blues... music which the artist said inspired his collage technique.

The show at the Amon Carter featured Bearden's ink drawings inspired by Homer's The Illiad and his images, both collage and later watercolor, for The Odyssey.  These are not exactly illustrations of Homer's story so much as a retelling of the legend, emphasizing and underlining elements that spoke personally to Bearden, who had long studied the story.  The first, most obvious, difference in interpretation is that Bearden has made the characters black and often specifically African, like his impressive Poseidon.  (All kinds of societal/historical commentary with that choice... also much bolder graphics, having crisp black cut-outs instead of wimpy pinky-tan ones.)  The Odyssey becomes here a metaphor for the African diaspora.  Another striking re-emphasis is the strength of all his female characters.

There is little use of found images, instead Bearden uses those strongly Matisse-like fragments of paper but in colors even Matisse might not have dared.  Gorgeous!

There's a quote in the explanatory film about use of color in Bearden's career: "He wouldn't let himself use color until he could use color 'that would walk around like the big men.'"

There are big men and women in his Odyssey.


The Smithsonian's explanatory film is a You Tube video HERE.

New Squidoo Page

As a followup to that last POST on collage jewelry, I just wanted to announce a new Squidoo page on (what a coincidence!) making collage jewelry.  HERE.

The "Eye" pendant, by me, copyrighted even if you could find all the weird bits to make it.

Collage Jewelry

As part of Kitchen Dog Theater's fund raiser, I made some collage jewelry.  I used to make a lot of larger collage work (the biggest being a 6' high Pegasus for Dallas' public art competition some years ago), but since I've gotten so busy with theater design I haven't had the time.  Collage is, as you might expect, time consuming.

But I've been enjoying these small scale works.  And they've been getting a good response too: this necklace literally sold off my board before I could even get it to Kitchen Dog.  (They got the check.)

"Mattise" necklace front - collage and found-jewelry base, by Clare Floyd DeVries

"Mattise" necklace rear - collage and found-jewelry base, by Clare Floyd DeVries

I love the free-wheeling aspect of collage, the purely intuitive response between one scrap of an image and the next.  

In this piece colors came first, fragments of anything really: soap wrappers, catalog illustrations, an insurance company flier, a photo of a mosaic.  Then I saw the red-red-red Matisse dining room wallpaper (with its lady).  It had to be followed by the perfect-shade-of-purple other Mattise woman.  The back side of the necklace, with its oyster shell-like gnarly texture seemed to demand muted shades of the front's vibrant colors.  Those paper fragments include more shards of mosaic and the flowers of William Morris wallpaper.

Be Sure to Buy Your Tickets to...

Hooch & Pooch 2012

saturday, march 10 ~ 8p-11p I've made coolo collage jewelry again this year for in the Doggie Bags... Come and see if you win some.

Experimenting

I've know for a while that I needed to get serious about learning to use the computer for collage - scissors and glue being only one short step up, nowadays, from chipping flint.

Today I had time to goof around.  Here's my first experiment:

Titania herself courtesy of Inigo Jones

Collage Site

An interesting site for collage - scroll down a ways.  Paper Digital Art

Cool New Image Source

Just found a wonderful new blog... thing... an addendum to a blog, like a lean-to addition on a house.  Anyway.  A cool source for images in virtual collages at MudBay images.  Check it out you graphics types.  i can see I'm going to need to follow the main blog that goes with it a while...

Arts Fund Raiser - Paaaartee!

Tomorrow is Kitchen Dog Theater's cool annual Hootch & Pootch party.  Always good fun.  Buy your ticket right here: Party Pass!

Go!  spend money!  Support one of the best theaters... well, in a loooong travel in any direction, frankly.  We do New Work - hardly anyone else does - better than that, we do Good Work both new and old.

So go party.  And if you buy one of the mystery bags you might get lucky and find one of my unique collaged jewelry pieces.  This year I made a big assortment, from silly bejeweled Mexican Bingo card badges to serious silver and collage art necklaces and pins.   Adorn yourself with micro-art.  (Whoever gets the Humpty Dumpty locket... I almost kept that.  I did keep the Tweedle Dee Tweedle Dum pin with the goofy hand-blown glass beads.)  But there's the Tahitian lady on mother-of-pearl and the "language of flowers" necklaces up, literally, for grabs.  Catch Humpty quick!