Gluebooks On The Move

Normally when we get to this time of the year, I'm thrilled. September is the month of my birth, a time when I feel most comfortable in my skin. The leaves are beginning to yellow and the brilliant light of the Central Valley is edged with a hint of shadows to come. While the weather lived up to it's reputation, September brought a greater than normal share of challenges. I'm pleased to say that while I did my share of "pre-whining,"  (a phrase my sister coined for crossing "troubled waters" before you reach them) I met each one fairly and squarely, but with little time for the studio.

Little time, that is, until a barking good case of bronchitis laid me up for a week. While I was there, I decided to explore Gretchen Miller's workshop, Gluebook Goodness, a part of 6 Degrees of Creativity 2. (I figured I could work on it in bed!)

I loved watching Gretchen's hands at work in her video, adding images, words and smudged ink around the edges. I was particularly touched by her encouragement to "dedicate" our gluebooks to particular topics. In her hands, I watched ordinary effluvia such as receipts, tickets and tokens become the diaries of days filled with meaning.

But to what would I dedicate myself and my book? I hunted out receipts and notes around the house, but aside from one that my husband left saying: "Hallie's had hers / Dishwasher mostly emptied" I didn't find any special meanings.

My answer arrived in the form of a Sunday New York Times that my mom dropped off at my house.  It just so happened that this was the issue in which the NY Times Arts section listed all the upcoming exhibits for 2013. I turned to a page filled with Arabic script and saw the words "Crossing Borders: Manuscripts from the Bodleian Libraries."

Eureka! My book would be a tour of all of the exhibits around the country that I want to visit next year. I don't know if I'll get to all of them, but here's a partial list with bonus images:

Crossing Borders: Manuscripts From the Bodleian Libraries at the Jewish Museum, NY, NY (Check out the link above for some fabulous photographs.)

Jasper Johns: Seeing With the Mind's Eye: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Girl With A Pearl Earring: Dutch Paintings from Mauritshuis: DeYoung Museum, San Francisco

Gravity and Grace: Monumental works by El Anatsui, Brooklyn Museum, NY

I'm curious--what exhibits are on your "must see" list this art season?

I was touched and honored to open up my Gmail yesterday and find this post by Gretchen Miller on "Mindful Studio Practice," my workshop for 6 Degrees of Creativity 2.

Finding Your Voice

I've been away from my studio recently, visiting friends and relatives back in the Midwest. Whenever I go, I always come back with a fresh outlook, a new way of seeing things. Iowa City is especially stimulating, being home to storied and innovative writing programs and a virtual beehive of activity during the summer months, when people from all over the world come to hone their craft.

Each summer my old friend Carol Spindel makes the journey there to teach. Carol and I met at the University of Iowa as undergraduates in the art department and although she went on to the art of writing, we like to meet whenever we can and see how our two worlds of text and image pair up.

One morning, she arrived for breakfast with a bag of chocolates, leftovers from one of her writing class exercises. She described the exercise to me.

There were two kinds of chocolate in the bag. She asked  students to taste both kinds of chocolate and then, without resorting to metaphor, describe the tastes of each. It turns out to be very difficult, but it is a wonderful (and tasty) exercise for sharpening one's descriptive skills.

Love of writing runs in my family. As a writer and a teacher of writing, my dad was responsible for starting the the Nonfiction Writing Program at the University of Iowa. Now in retirement, he's written a number of books and helps to edit a series of books on the essay for University of Iowa Press.

When I visit, he always shows me what he's up to. Pulling me over to the old Chippendale sofa that's ruled the roost since childhood, he flipped open his Macbook. (At 80, he's far more of a Mac savant than I). He told me that he's writing a book on the subject of voice in writing, an area that he feels deserves much attention and receives little. I picked up the computer and read the title of his book: Your Self and How To Make It.

As he fixed lunch for us, chicken salad with home grown arugula, he urged me to read the first three pages. My dad is like the proverbial Jewish mother--and in addition to saying "Eat, Eat," he also urges me to "Read, Read."

His introduction talks about how when we read the words of a writer, we often feel like we know the person, and if we were to be introduced, they would already be familiar to us.  In contrast, he maintains that the voice of a writer is more like the role of an actor, an actor who can be extremely creative and versatile in creating a character.

That all got me to thinking about the class I'm about to teach, 6 Degrees of Creativity 2. The class, Still Point in a Changing World, Creating a Mindful Studio Practice, is geared toward helping students get over the hump of thinking that studio practice is only for people who have the skill of Rodin or Picasso, or have the luxury of not working a day job. I'm interested in helping them to employ art as a means of mental, physical and spiritual balance. And in the activities which ensue, I hope that they'll find their voice.

Maybe you can’t see what is somebody else’s to see. But maybe, just maybe, you can see what is yours to see. So what is yours to see? This is a great question to ponder, to make your own, to let live inside your bones and your pores, and to guide your life.--Jon Kabat-Zinn

A Year of Watercolor

Since I've been studying watercolor, I wanted to find a way to create a practice. In the same way as one would create a meditation practice, I wanted a painting practice. No judgement, just watching drops of color as they arise, disperse and flow together.

'My Year of Watercolor' started February 14, this meant that I would paint one watercolor each day for the next 364 days.  That was the only parameter I set for my practice, just the dailiness of it. There was no specific amount of time, no size of paper, color scheme, no decision to go black and white. But then I started asking myself those very same questions about which I had not wanted to set parameters!

What size should the paper be?

What kind of paper should I use? Should it all be the same kind of  paper?

How long should I paint?

What if I need to sketch  first and don't have time to watercolor?

If you notice that the operative word in these questions is should, you're not alone. I noticed it too.

Then, impatient to begin, I started painting on watercolor paper I had in my studio and set about to ordering more and quit my fussing. In short, I jumped into painting mode. On my walks I had to resist the temptation to slip into neighboring yards to clip blossom-bedecked twigs.

The daily routine has become a refuge in my overly-crowded days, an excuse to meditate.

Reality and Resolutions--#2012

At this time of year, people talk a lot about resolutions, goals or even words they want to live by. My question though is "How are you going to do it?" Fortunately, you also hear about the scaffolding--the underpinning of the resolutions. Scaffolding answers the question of how do you get from point A to point B? Last year I set myself the goal of creating a new website. I've had two websites designed in the past, and naively, I assumed that the work was in getting the site up and running. It didn't occur to me to factor in the cost of keeping the site up to date.

The Second Story Studio, my second site

Some years older now and wiser, I realized that I needed to create a site I could update myself. That meant keeping it simple without the bells and whistles attached--the really cool things that web designers come up with.No funky fonts, dark backgrounds with white type--just the straight stuff, in other words, "Gallery Minimal."

My first site: hkhunterarts

I decided to go with WordPress, a blog format that allows me to have multiple pages and, like this Blogger site, make changes and updates to my heart's content.

I hired an artist friend Chris Beers who does IT and design for our local gallery, the Pence, and together we figured out a way to create a clean site where the colors of my pieces sparkle. We even included two tutoring sessions so that I could learn to do it myself.

So there I was with my squeaky clean site and a host of new jpegs to load on. The only thing is, that between the time when I learned the tools (before the holidays,) and when I was ready to employ them (after the holidays ), I simply forgot how.

I remembered my secret weapon--a book Chris had recommended: Teach Yourself Visually: WordPress. I picked it up and decided to have a go at it. I dreaded the thought. Me and instructions...hmmm...kind of like my ninth grade Algebra course--never know where I'm going to end up...

Using an old study trick, I looked at my watch and decided to read for half an hour with studio time as a break. I kvetched inwardly. Oi vey, the terms: trackbacks and feedbacks and permalinks! The funny thing was, fifteen minutes later, I was swimming with the permalinks. I even got into it so much, I brought it along to a doctor's appointment with me.

So, I'm learning to load on the jpegs and pretty soon, I'll be able to launch my site...As Billy Crystal noted in Analyze This, "It's a process."

Welcome to my home away from home: an online studio where you can see my artwork, find inspiration and read about my double life as an artist and art therapist.

The new kid on the block: hannahklaushunterarts.com

                         Copyright 2012, Hannah Klaus Hunter.  All rights reserved.  All artwork & material on this site is copyrighted by the artist.