Big canvas

With all the traveling and jewelry making I've done this summer, there hasn't been much painting going on. Then K, whose staff just moved into a new set of offices, asked if I'd like to make some very large paintings for a 30 foot long wall in one of their reading rooms. Not exactly a commission, but an expression of support that provided a much needed kick in the pants. Yesterday after the bead show I hit Pearl Paint, aka heaven on earth, and bought 6 yards of primed canvas, some large jars of acrylic paint in my usual colors, and a few other sundries. Then on to a hardware store for some rollers, wallpaper brushes, super-sized scrapers, drop cloths, and anything else I thought might be useful.

This morning, in spite of the fact that it's Sleep-in Sunday, I popped awake early, anxious to get started. I set up shop in the empty garage, thus furthering my ultimate goal of taking over all the space in and near the house for my art and jewelry-making. I lined up my pots of paint and gels and matte medium on some chairs that are stored along the wall of the garage. The big door was wide open and sunlight streamed in.

My paintings have always been smallish - I think the largest was something like 36 x 40. One time a woman who was at our house for some reason I forget asked me if all my paintings were this "comfortable, human scale." She was, of course, from Manhattan. Perhaps I imagined the patronizing tone, but in the spirit of those Gary Larson "what we say, what they hear" cartoons, what I heard was "Are all your paintings this bourgeois dilettante size?" Things were about to change. I tore off 5 feet of canvas and the rrrrip gave me shivers. Laid out on the floor it looked huge and I wondered where to begin.

One thing I sometimes do is put down a layer of matte gel for texture, so I decided to start there. As a first step it was perfect: I could start to get the feel of working on the canvas without making any color commitments. Twenty minutes later I had used two-thirds of the big jar of medium and I was pretty happy with the result. I figured I'd let it dry for half an hour and then start laying on washes of color. I didn't reckon with NJ humidity: after half an hour it looked as wet as it had when I put it on. I decided to work on jewelry. I strung a necklace, worked out a design for a fused wire pendant and cut up the silver wire, re-strung the necklace, took pictures of a new necklace, listed said necklace on Etsy, noodled around in various forums, and finally, in desperation, did a variety of chores I would really rather not have done. Four hours later it was finally dry.

By this time I knew that I wanted to work mainly in blues and greens on this canvas and I was rarin' to go. I used the roller, the wallpaper brush, scrapers, sponges, and balled up newspaper. It was great. After half an hour, I and everything I was wearing, including the ugly but very comfortable Teva sandals I had bought in Greece when my old sandals blew out, were covered in paint. Apparently, big canvas = big mess. That layer dried more quickly, being quite watery, and I was able to put on two more before the light gave out and the mosquitoes set in.

Working on a large scale is definitely different. It made me realize that I have characteristic gestures that work for the scale of paintings I'm used to making. How to translate those gestures into the larger size? A larger implement is just part of the solution - the gesture itself has to be larger or else it has to be broken down into smaller component parts. Or maybe the old gestures just aren't right for this scale. This painting may end up being a "do over" - thank heavens for gesso - but that's ok. It's thrilling to have a new problem to work on and to be painting again. It's also pretty great to have a partner who's as excited about this process as I am.

If only I'd had an art teacher...

Even though my father was a professional musician (a drummer and band leader in the circus - yeah, I know, but that's a story for another day), I've always traced my creative inclinations to my mother's side of the family. For a long time my mother made her living by sewing clothes for people, including some pretty fantastic over-the-top square dance outfits. My youngest aunt and her husband ran a "rock shop" where they sold geodes, arrowheads, and jewelry made of large chunks of polished stone. (Once she gave me a beautiful faceted quartz crystal - I thought she'd given me a priceless treasure, until she told me it was worthless because it had a line of gold running through it. I couldn't understand how having a line of gold running through something could decrease its value.)

My other aunt, Mary, is the one I always thought of as irrepressibly creative though. She crocheted more lace tablecloths, afghans, baby clothes, and toilet paper cozies than she knew what to do with. She also made things out of those plastic mesh baskets that cherry tomatoes come in, empty bleach bottles, the tubes inside toilet paper and paper towel rolls, egg cartons, all kinds of stuff that people normally threw away. My Aunt Mary practiced upcycling before it was cool. My Uncle Frank was another crafter. He made sculptures and wind chimes out of old silverware and hardware, used woodburning to decorate boxes, and could paint a paint-by-number canvas so that it looked like a real painting.

A couple of years ago I collaborated with the art teacher at a local private school on a project that still brings me great joy. His students, ages 10 - 13, designed and painted a series of very large (5' x 6') paintings for my work place. The paintings are terrific, but seeing the kids take ownership of the project was even more exciting. These kids are incredibly lucky to be going to a school that has the resources for a real art program. Maybe none of them will grow up to be full-time artists, but they've had the experience of creating in an environment that is not just supportive of their efforts, but is also rich in resources. Their confidence in their own creative abilities was thrilling to see.

I've been crafting since I was a kid, but never thought I could be a real artist because I couldn't draw. Art class in my school was what you did when it was too rainy to go outside for recess and, as far as I can remember, consisted of making things out of books of wallpaper samples. I don't think anyone in my family thought that "real art" was something that had any relation to our lives. I wonder what my Aunt Mary and Uncle Frank might have done if they had grown up in a place and time that encouraged their artistic tendencies - hell, I wonder what I would have done. Maybe they would have lived their lives in exactly the same way, but maybe they would have felt more empowered to create on a larger scale, to identify themselves as artists, to explore the talents they clearly had. Maybe I would have started painting at 12 instead of 52.

You can probably tell I have this thing about the importance of art education. And in case you're inclined to think "art education is nice but what's the payoff?" there's all sorts of research that demonstrates what a good investment it is. So, you see, when I heard on NPR yesterday that the Navy was hoping to build another aircraft carrier at a cost of $20 billion, it made me incredibly sad. How many art classes in underfunded public schools would that fund? I have no idea, but I'll bet the answer is in the vicinity of "a lot". I've got no quarrel with the Navy -- it's been the service of choice for men in my family for generations. The story just reminded me of the criminal imbalance between defense spending and education spending in this country -- and of how happy my 10-year-old self would have been to have an art teacher to show me that I could draw.