Circles Within Circles

 

When I last wrote about painting persimmons with Stacey Vetter, a number of people asked me to keep them "posted." I had the best of intentions but my production took a sharp downturn high up in the hills of Carmel Valley.

While my son Ben played golf on the tiered greens of Saint Lucia Preserve, I hid myself behind a Valley Oak and began to paint acorns and oak leaves. The sun was hot and rather than creating distinct layers,  the walnut ink pooled on paper. After an hour, I had only a few clusters to show for my efforts. Discouraged, I decided to report my findings to Stacey the next week.

Stacey took a survey of my results and prescribed painting circles. "Circles??" I asked. Not one to stand on ceremony, she picked up her brush and began to demonstrate what she meant. As I watched her, I noticed that she handled the brush with a deftness born of deep practice. The brush seemed to swirl around with no hesitation.

I took up my brush, discovering that it intended design on its own--and performed the opposite of hers. Frustrated, I reminded myself of the revered book by Shunryu Suzuki: "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind." "It's O.K." I assured myself. I have to work against my own grain when I put myself in a place where I know very little and I need to have a high tolerance for mistakes.

I decided to persevere. As I did, I began to notice little things: how as I came around the bend of the curve and the brush seemed to be running out of ink, it would disperse just enough ink to easily close the circle. Slowly, as I repeated the circles, I began to feel the delight I experienced as a child on ice skates when I figured out how to spin. Soon I was spinning the ink. Circles and more circles. On hot press. On cold press. On rice paper. On banana paper.

My next challenge was to create a shading in the circle. Stacey explained that I would need to paint a piece of the circle and then stop; making sure to leave an organic shape, quickly rinse my brush and then, with precisely the amount of water as I had just shed of pigment, finish off the circle.

A few days later at a studio time with my friend Linda, a landscape water colorist, I decided to try my hand at it. She sat down to complete a gorgeous landscape of Lake Tahoe and I brought out my circles. She glanced over after a while and noted that how boring it must be. Her comment caught me by surprise. I had become completely involved in the act of touching paint to paper and watching it react.

In its own way, it was as fascinating as observing a patient in her hospital room. How did the first stroke lay down? (Is the patient alone in her room?) What kind of organic shape should I leave? (What kind of expression does the patient have? What is the tone of their speech?) Does the paint granulate as it begins to dry? Is it a staining or non staining pigment? (Does she want to cover the entire paper or work in just a tiny corner?)

Like the beginning of William Blake's poem, "Auguries of Innocence," it seemed that I'd discovered "a world in a grain of sand."

To see a world in a grain of sand, And a heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand And eternity in an hour.

After I explained to Linda what I was seeing, she too got caught up and soon we were both exploring the depths of her vast collection of colors. They were seductive, those circles, and she couldn't resist trying her hand at a few.

I'm not sure where these circles will lead and I'm sure a few of them will land in collage works. In the meantime, I'm taking time to relish the turn of the brush.

Sitting on My Hands

©2011, Hannah Klaus Hunter, Ceramic Cat Grief Mask

I like to imagine that there are as many ways to say good bye as stars in the sky. Like stars, each goodbye is unique, with its own distinct light. This was the last week in our bi-annual Young Adult Bereavement Art Group that we affectionately call "YABAG." Perhaps its me, perhaps it's time passing, but it seems that each group gets better and better.

In the first week we ask what brings each person to the group. One young woman's response, "Art, Bereavement, Support," formed the personality of our present group. That's what we did.

Aside from piloting my way through my own childrens' teenage years, facilitating through the 8 weeks is one of the most difficult things I do, and, at the same time, the most subtle. The knowledge of when to speak and when to refrain from speaking, when to lean on someone just a bit so that they'll speak even without feeling pressured is as delicate a process as inserting an IV needle.

For 8 weeks these young adults came week after week to sit with us and wind their way through their dark tunnels of grief. Each week, after the evening was over, my co-facilitator and I told each other that we wanted to adopt each one of them. Certainly, I wanted to rescue them from their pain. And, since that wasn't possible, I spent a lot of time figuratively sitting on my hands.

During the last two weeks, group members paint clay masks that they've made several weeks earlier and construct a memory box containing images and symbols that speak to their memories of the person who died. Often these are not literal pictures of the person, but images they've found in magazines or pictures they've painted inside and outside of the box.

I think of this box as a tool kit. Alongside the memories residing invisibly inside the box, there is also the knowledge of the coping tools they've learned in the group; how to address the non-grievers, how to approach a holiday without feeling you're about to fall off a cliff and how there are others like you with whom you can travel. Going it alone becomes an option rather than a necessity.

As the group ended that night we sat quietly. My co-facilitator and I had said our goodbyes. Group members expressed their wishes that the sessions could continue longer ("I could paint for hours"), but I thought that as usual, they would take off quickly, disappearing into the darkness of night. But they sat. And sat.

I'm one of those people who have to take it on faith that sometimes the most important thing I can do as a therapist is to listen and be present. An old mentor used to caution me over and over: "Don't rush the river." But I've always found so much comfort in doing.  It makes me feel better. But as I pondered these young people the next morning, I realized why they continued to sit for so long. There was  comfort in simply being together. No words, not even images were necessary. They and their memories could dwell comfortably in the half-light.

New Beginnings

Summer Palimpsest, detail, ©2011, H.Hunter, 28" x 27"

Every day, like most everyone, I find a flock of e-mails waiting in my in-box. Yesterday, one of them stood out, catching my notice, the words evoked a turning, an awareness that something new might be on the way.

My friend Sara had written a description for a class she calls "Art Makers," a class for people who are curious about the process of being and becoming an artist. The class has been going on for a couple years now and each season, she changes the theme to correspond with her observations on the previous class.

She noted that this fall class would focus on process, "--on taking apart our work and putting it back together, on looking and seeing with "art" awareness, on re-affirming how we work best."

I'm taking those 5 little words "re-affirming how we work best," to heart.

All summer, I've climbed the stairs to my studio, a space where I cocoon myself and spin out my threads, watching them accrete until a small but perfect quilt emerges on the wall.

I like to cut quirky rectangles which can be only be matched up with persistence. When I finish, the last thing I want to do is to quilt the layers together.  I decided to take the pieces to a professional quilter whose work I admire. After they were quilted, I showed them to an artist friend. As I laid them out, she cleared her throat. "Hmm...I think I should just say that I really like to exercise total artistic control. " That small pebble of feedback caused a landslide of insight.

Rather than seeing the quilting as a necessary step that needs to be added to properly finish the process (and God knows why I thought that since I'd already broken a slew of quilter's rules.)--I began to see the stitches on the top as a layer of drawing. That in fact there were four layers: the backing, the batting, the quilted pieces of fabric and the thread quilting on top. I saw it like an architect's model in which layers of drawings were placed on top of each other to convey the finished building.

Artmaking involves skills that can be learned.  The conventional wisdom here is that while "craft" can be taught, "art" remains a magical gift bestowed only by the Gods.  Not so. In large measure becoming an artist consists of learning to accept yourself, which makes your work personal, and in following your own voice, which makes your work distinctive. --Art and Fear

While I can't say that I became a sudden convert to this notion of quilting as drawing (in fact I even took the last two quilts, Miss August and Miss September, right back to the pro), I've tucked the knowledge away for a time that doesn't have a limit on it, a time when I can ponder these layers and find a way to connect them in a way that leaves my own mark, one of acceptance.

New Leaf on Life

This little panel is going on view next week at one of my favorite local art spots,  The Artery. I've been experimenting with collage on hardboard panels, creating rectangles of stacked horizontal strips of paper juxtaposed with rectangles of various shapes and sizes. These short stacks are reminiscent of books, books that I pile by my nightstand in hopes of making my way through them, one by one, before I fall asleep at night.

Arbor Vitae, ©2011, Hannah K. Hunter, 8" x 8," Collage (paper, leaf, watercolor)

The title, Arbor Vitae, or tree of life,  refers to my obsession with the Tree of Life and also makes an allusion to the way in which Jews refer to the Torah as "Etz Chaim,"  the tree of life.

I've noticed that with the advent of Facebook and blogs, it's harder and harder to sustain my attention on a single book. I'm working on that, focusing more on the books surrounding my bed and a little less with the omnipresent white rectangle on my kitchen table. Books: sweet trees of life.

Thread Talk

© 2007, H. Hunter, Polihaliai Beach, mixed media

How often, after all, do we take the time to look back, review and in this way, renew our relationship to our work? Yesterday I had the pleasure of speaking to a local guild of embroiderers about my artwork. I decided that if I was going to share some history with them, I needed to do some digging.

After some searching, I came up with three separate images: a stack of books, a marsh and an Amish quilt. Pretty disparate images--but like reducing a fraction to the lowest common denominator, I had come up with the structural bones of my creative process, each one grounded in some vital part of my history.

The books: I often spent my summer days stretched out on a sofa or a hammock, after carefully arranging a pile of books beside me which I devoured one at a time.

Michigan Marshland

Marsh: a scene from early childhood in Maine where I spent time chasing peepers and later, growing up in Michigan, where instead of peepers, I gathered reeds for weaving.

"Amish Abstractions"

Amish quilts: when I saw my first one in the University of Iowa Art Museum, it struck me as a visual form of haiku. With only a few colors, a quilt conjured a landscape.

It tickles me that as I look at my present work, I find traces of the words, reeds and quilts which informed my early visual blueprint.

©2007, H. Hunter, Dancing Rings 1, mixed media

It makes me think that there is something something mysterious yet inevitable about the images which dwell within us and arise out of our experience, recombining in powerful ways that we cannot predict.

Succeeding experiences build upon each other and yet, as we work with them in our studios, they come into being, slowly but surely, like a photograph appearing for the first time in its alchemical bath.