Tag Archives: Leslie Roth

Fertile Ground

In addition to pumpkins and apples, changing leaves and crisp temperatures, a much-anticipated harbinger of fall in central Vermont is the beloved annual Art at the Kent exhibition in Calais. If you aren’t familiar with it, follow this link to acquaint yourself with the curators who accomplish this massive feat each fall, the distinctive venue which is as much a part of the show as the art itself, and specifics about this year’s exhibit, “Traces”.

I took very few photos when I visited last week, so this post is not a virtual tour. However, I can’t encourage you more strongly to go see for yourself; think of it as a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow — a beautiful drive through a lovely part of the world, arriving at a unique treasure of an exhibition.

What I keep thinking about in hindsight is the artists who had work in multiple mediums on display. I found it enlightening that the curators chose to represent the breadth of their practices as opposed to showing only pieces from a single discipline. Creative ground is fertile. As a viewer, I enjoy considering the potential expansion of an artist’s thought processes as one medium feeds another. Or perhaps, that’s not the case. It’s entirely possible that the only way to say what needed to be said was via another language. Either way, it added to my experience to see the variety.

Many of us branch out in our work, for any number of reasons. Cross-pollination deepens our discoveries, ultimately enriching both our experiences in the studio and our results. Diversification gives us more substance to draw from in future work.

The path from Point A to Point B is often circuitous, inconsistent and complex, but it usually ends up being well-worth the ride. Pay The Kent a visit; I’m sure you will agree.

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My friend and sculptural knitter Leslie Roth introduced me to Scottish knitwear designer Kate Davies a number of years ago. I have since knitted from Davies’ patterns and also read and been moved enough to write about her book Handywoman. While I’m not a regular follower of her blog, I dip into it from time to time, always enjoying what I find there. Her recent post “September Feeling” is one to share…its sentiment is as lovely as the accompanying photographs. If you feel a strong sense of connection to the place you call home, I think you will be able to relate.

Keeping Track

The Museum of Craft and Design in San Francisco is currently exhibiting 100 of Anne Hicks Siberell’s Concrete Journals. A bookmaker and writer, Siberell has been a visual diarist for decades. Initially inspired by the permanence of ancient clay cuneiform tablets, she has made several hundred collaged “entries” marking personal and world events by embedding collected ephemera within concrete that she then carves and paints once it has dried.

Too bad the show isn’t a little more convenient to see in person, but in lieu of that, don’t miss Siberell’s website for examples of her journal tablets and other work.

The urge to keep a record, to act as witness within our own lives and of the world at large, is ubiquitously human. For the reader/viewer of these works, experiencing the intimacy of another’s story is a gift. The first time I realized the empathic enormity to be gained from learning about someone else’s day-to-day was in middle school, reading Anne Frank’s diary. It was an important lesson at a time in life when one is largely self-absorbed.
May Sarton’s Journal of a Solitude had a tremendous impact on me in college and, as noted in a post from May 2020, resonated just as strongly soon after the pandemic confined us. Meanwhile, I have just begun Anne Truitt’s Day Book and look forward to the lessons she too will have for me.

John ©2023 Elizabeth Fram, Watercolor and colored pencil in a 12 x 9 Fabriano Venezia sketchbook. Our life drawing group has revived! So lovely to spend several hours on Monday painting directly from a model in the company of others.

Thinking along these lines, I can’t tell you how many written journals I have begun and deserted over the years. My inability to follow through has always made me a bit sad. But after looking at Siberell’s work and learning of the appellation “visual diarist”, I realized that I have been keeping a diary of sorts all along.

A sneak peak at my current work in progress. Oh – that blue! This model has such knowing eyes, which may well figure into the title. The gloppy yellow hair strands are masking fluid which I’ll remove eventually, but for the moment it keeps those areas safe from paint.

A trip back through my “catalogue” of work so far: pastel paintings, art quilts, textile collages, drawings, sketchbooks, and current stitched portraits and house & garden pieces, is just as much an ongoing record of personal events and experiences as that of any formal written diary. And then there is this blog, which I have maintained faithfully and regularly for the past 8-1/2 years.
So it looks like I have indeed been keeping track after all. To underline the point, note the title of this post from May, 2020, also linked above. How very reassuring to know that everything hasn’t just evaporated with the years.

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And to leave you with a smile….artist friend and animal lover Leslie Roth shared a follow-up to my last post that you won’t want to miss : Vermeer’s newly discovered dog portraits. Be sure to note the date of the article!

Finding Resilience Through Art

“The studio is a laboratory, not a factory. An exhibition is the result of your experiments, but the process is never-ending. So an exhibition is not a conclusion.” ~ Chris Ofili

Last week, on my way to deliver my pieces to the Gruppe Gallery for our show “Tucked In”, it felt a bit like moving day. The back of my car was filled to the brim with work made in 2020/21 to mark many sides of Covid as I had experienced them: ten dyed and embroidered houses supported by foraged branches and a dozen framed portraits of friends who’d graciously shared selfies of themselves at a time when getting together socially, let alone for in-person drawing sessions, wasn’t possible.

One view of the exhibit, with Leslie Roth’s “Tick Eater” in the foreground on the left.

More than 15 months ago, Dianne Shullenberger, Leslie Roth and I began to scheme about putting together this exhibit of the work we’d been making since lock-down began. In the face of so much despair dominating the past couple of years, we wanted to offer some good news.

This selection represents half of the portraits I have on view.

A frequent topic of discussion between us had been how grateful we all felt that we’d had our art practices to help us get through this crazy time. It seemed important to share with others that hopeful perspective and the sense of resilience we gleaned from our work. The end product of those discussions is Tucked In: Resilience in Small Moments.

Another view that includes my houses, a couple of portraits, and one grouping of Dianne Shullenberger’s watercolors on the right. These photos don’t get close enough to show the finer details of all the work in the exhibit. I hope you will come to the gallery to take in those nuances in person.

It wasn’t just the fact that going to the studio offered regularity and purpose – although it did and that was huge – but our work also became an outlet providing solace and even something of a protective shield of normalcy against the chaos brewing outside our studios where everything seemed so topsy-turvy and out of control. This show is a feel-good manifestation of how we each, in our own way, found and tapped into pockets of positivity in the face of a global pandemic — through our homes, our gardens, our friends and our wildlife neighbors. The common denominator being our art practices.

And while what you will see at the Gruppe Gallery through June 19th is a culmination of the work of a specific time, it is also an example of how (certainly in my case, by branching out into 3-D work) those months were, as Chris Ofili’s quote references, a time of experimentation. His words remind me that every exhibit is just another mile marker along a path, not the end of a journey.

Please join us for the reception on Sunday, May 15 from 1-3pm if you can.

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I don’t consider myself a birder, but I am definitely a color-lover.
I have been reading The Feather Thief by Kirk Wallace Johnson. It’s part natural history lesson, part true-crime, nestled under the umbrella of the world and art of fishing flies. I keep running to Google to check out alls sorts of unfamiliar birds mentioned in the book.
These spectacular photos, and this link, will give you an idea – as they did me – of what the fuss is all about.

Banded Cotinga

Lovely Cotinga

Spangled Cotinga