Building a Studio
Five years of planning a new studio, now becoming a reality!
The tallest wall is 17', and the footprint is 32'x60', which will allow tacking up multiple large scale canvases at once to view and complete, as well giving the physical space to really breathe and expand. For years, in order to get perspective and fine tune the piece, I've been tacking huge canvases up on the side of the house on a windless day, or spreading large work out on the grass and climbing to the top of the house/studio, dashing up and down the stairs to pour paint and make marks.
The building process is extraordinarily beautiful, feeling much more like a large scale sculpture project, than building construction. Long thoughtful planning to consider shapes and balance, placing windows and doors for best light and to track the sun's movement, are now lifting off of the flat page and taking form! To walk under the trusses with the sun and sky above them, is to watch a beautifully choreographed, rhythmic dance.
Installation Inspiration
These artists' installations never fail to give me a jump:
Frederico Herrero
Monica de Cardenas
Gerta Steiner and Jorg Lenzlinger
Katarina Grosse
Sarah Szu
Jason Hackenwerth
Jacob Hashimoto
Someone Else's Pattern
Working on the gulf coast in poor weather makes the Big Studio (the outdoors) unavailable, so this small rented space defines the work. At the moment, tiny space + clean + wanting to explore = collage.
As usual, I brought an unreasonable amount of reading to catch up on. What if I cut it up and used it, instead?
What if I made no marks or brush strokes? Nothing familiar.
What if I inserted image, oh hahaha using the Edward Gorey sticker book?
What if I just took in pattern and light?
What if I came down here to work, and was completely unsuccessful?
I'm lost. Maybe I should linger here. I don't seem to have any choice.
Connection, On and Off Court
Working extra large the last warm days in November, relishing the vast elbow room of the open air on the basketball court -
In part because I kept forgetting to bring the scissors, it grew wider, then wider.
I don't quite want to dip- or triptych it yet. It's called Connection and is 68"x204"(17').
The details...
Jane Booth Paintings at Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art
Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
2004 Baltimore Avenue Contact: Sherry Leedy, sherryleedy@sherryleedy.com
Kansas City, MO 64108 Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Saturday 11 – 5 p.m. (816) 221-2626
JANE BOOTH: Color and Light
September 6 – October 26, 2013
RECEPTION: September 21, 6-8 p.m.
Water and Light Series: Balance, acrylic on canvas 54”x 42”
Jane Booth chooses to live and paint away from the city atop a ridge of land that overlooks a large open valley where storms can be seen forming miles away and stars are clearly visible at night. Looking outward nourishes and sustains Booth's inner spirit and, in turn, inspires and energizes her paintings.
Booth's paintings begin as physical endeavor. Huge swaths of raw canvas are rolled out on the floor or outside on the ground and saturated with poured color until canvas and paint are bonded as one. The resulting paintings seem a part of nature, becoming atmosphere, environment and stage holding memories of land and light, insight and mystery, longing and finding. Sensitive, subtle and honest, Jane Booth's paintings reveal wide-open spaces of strength, openness and vulnerability. Ultimately, they disclose the artist's trust in the continuity and richness of life, within and without, and express a poetic vision of creativity, intellect and passion.
In 2012, the Albrecht-Kemper Museum of Art, St. Joseph, MO, celebrated Booth's work with a solo exhibition, Jane Booth Paintings: Life Moving Through. Her works can be found in numerous private and corporate collections, including: Albrecht-Kemper Museum of Art, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Emprise Bank, Cisco Systems, H&R Block World Headquarters, Hilton Hotels, Kansas University Heart Hospital, as well as featured in Kansas then Governor Sebelius’ offices and chambers. Booth has a B.F.A. from Kansas State University, Manhattan.
Big Sky, a Basketball Court and Yellow
Large scale paintings begin on a concrete slab that was formerly a basketball court.
It's windy on this high ridge, so rocks hold the canvas in place. A garden hose is used to size the canvas.
The space - big sky, a slab of concrete, 30 yard rolls of canvases - naturally calls for paintings to scale. When they're brought inside, it's surprising how large they are.
Yellow borders the court.
Indulgence
Following a season of exhibitions, the dominant response in the studio is indulgence. Intense, garish colors are sought in all things - dreams, clothes, brilliantly hued foods on a plate - as well as on new canvases. As if to get something out of my system, I gave a week over to undisciplined unwieldy creative energy, abandoning any notion of a finished product or a successful painting. Slices of canvases follow.
I secretly love to pour color and tip canvases, lifting 90 degrees the other way, rivulets forming grids. The many-squared patterns satisfy something in my brain that wants to feel order, especially within randomness, ever since getting scrambled from a head injury several years ago.
The studio floor is the ongoing most beautiful, ever-changing chaos of all.
Magenta can be a reach for depth, showing up often as drama, and I’ve been trying to avoid it, so of course it showed up too, and not subtly.
Red washed over a completely dry gray blue made this hash of eggplant with silvery shadows.
In this attitude, there were no failures this week. The primaries were wheeled out as well as their brashly conjoined color wheel opposites, and laid one over the other to make welcome dark hot tones interspersed with nondescript muddy colors. They were painted for the sheer joy of watching.
Pattern, Painting and a Pig
While painting these last few weeks, there was no conscious concept of a wet spring snow, an old Ford grill, or a pig in a pen, but those images are all imbedded in recent memory, and have shown up on canvas. Simple snapshots that caught my eye, as well as the more laborious and focused photographs of finished work, were all nestled together on my computer by date, and inspired this piece on visual process.
The Pig, and Dissolution Part I
The Ford, the Galvanized bin, and detail of Linear Series - Shadow Barcode.
Song Birds, Ribbons of Blackbirds and the Doppler Affect
A blizzard blew in 12 inches of snow, creating a flurry of bird activity at the feeders.
Within a short time, the dominant Red Winged Blackbirds took over the feeders, leaving the songbirds out on a limb.
We'd kept the songbirds fed all winter, and here it was, a major winter storm, with their food source unavailable, and bitterly cold! I wondered how much feed it would take to have enough for any bird that showed up, and scattered 30 more pounds of seed (20 pounds already out) in ten raised bed boxes, and within minutes, there were ten boxes of Red Winged Blackbirds.
The sounds of their wings thrill. They take flight all at once, the wingbeats fading in and out like the doppler affect when a train going by, a f-f-f-d-d-d-dddddddddd-d-d-f then as they disappear.
The Blackbirds quickly became most interested in the ground seed in boxes. The songbirds returned and populated the feeders!
The joy of it built up until it was a sort of ecstatic energy, that ultimately led to painting, following the ribbons of movement.
In the studio: Six windows of birds, six - six foot paintings (The Bird Ribbons Series) are on the walls, another storm, fresh snow, more bird seed, and a spotted dog - bird movement seen and felt.
Back to Tree Skeletons and Monotones
It's shocking to be back in the Midwest. The north wind blows through wool layers, the trees are bare and there are only the palest hues. There's been one hoary frost, that reminds me of winter's beauty.
Usually cold weather elicits a warm palette in the studio for balance, but right now, maybe just in the transition, it feels insincere. The monotones are reflected in the studio.
A trip to the Bloch Building at the Nelson-Atkins Museum, offered a quick transformation. Walking into the building is to be enveloped within a many hued white sculpture. As always, spending time in front of William Baziotes' Crescent, reaches deeply into the warmth of being. The tag describing it, is pure nourishment for a cold February day. https://art.nelson-atkins.org/objects/4685/crescent ,
The next morning, a little shadow and light feels like a visual ballet.
The beach is the barest memory...
The Relationship between What is Seen, and What Happens
When I'm working in abstraction, there's a natural move towards a color, a mark, and then a sort of conversation ensues that carries the piece to completion. After the a day's work, it's common to see in the paintings what's in the forefront for me experientially. Until now, unless it's referenced in a title, I've never recorded it. Creating this photo journal is causing me to take a more formal look at the relationship between what is seen, and what is created.
It's just guesswork though, who knows really where paintings come from.
The Warmth of the Sun
While the colors on the gulf are pale to intense blues, sand and shells, the warmth of the sun shows up.
Work Surface
While staying on the Gulf of Mexico, the studio is made from a 4x8 piece of plywood strung up outside. The Sun Drenched Series started here, and dried on a clothesline:
The Poetry of Fish Bones
Fish bones: stripped bare the delicate balance of life, delicately orchestrated, their perfect grace most often drifts unseen to the ocean floor.