Cold, Cold, Brrrrrrrrrrrrr

Posted on January 6, 2014 by Elizabeth Cook

Yellow Irises with Pink Cloud
Claude Monet, 1917

I know we’re all cold, but I’m especially cold because I no longer have my gall bladder to keep me warm. (See previous post.) Just kidding. It was completely useless, and I feel much better without it. But I AM cold. Day after day, the cold is insidious. I have dreams of Florida. Haven’t I heard that DisneyWorld is a hotbed for contemporary artists? I visited Taos and Santa Fe, New Mexico once, and found that it really was a very vibrant art scene. Of course I remember that I also thought living there would be like dwelling on the moon. Deserts, mesas, xeriscaping – it was all completely foreign to my New England soul.

Of course that soul is now shivering and thinking that a desert is a REALLY good place to live. (I keep wanting to type “dessert”. Would a dessert be a good place to live? Maybe a hot one – bananas foster or something else with toasty caramel.) But I digress.

We begin installation of our big second-year MFA show this coming Friday. That means that I move almost everything out of my studio and into an enormous gallery. Into which I hope hundreds of people will pour to look at the interesting art – preferably “discovering” us as artists and giving us a clear path beyond art school. I know I’m not the only one of my classmates who views graduation with trepidation and uncertainty.

Which is why I feel compelled to paint flowers. Not the disturbing images I’ve been working on for the last three semesters, but pretty flowers. Comforting flowers. Flowers full of color and polka dots and stripes. Flowers with soul-delighting blue shadows. The kind of flowers that make one think the world is all right.

Red Flower
Elizabeth Cook, 2008

Christmas – Do As I Say

Posted on December 25, 2013 by Elizabeth Cook

There are lots of wonderful ways to spend Christmas, and lots of ordinary ways, and some pretty good ways to ignore it completely. And yet I have managed to find a fourth way: It a painful lonely way which I do not recommend. So, please, do the best to cope with/enjoy your holiday traditions, or you could end up with one like mine – BAD IDEA.

Not one of my drawings – an actual photo of my pre-Christmas face (destroy immediately).

Important steps to take if you want a Christmas disaster:

First, be sure to cancel your surgeon’s appointment on December 20th. After all, your Gastrointestinal Doctor assured you that you could easily wait three or even four months before having your gallbladder removed. No problem if you reschedule for January. WRONG!

Plan a literally jam-packed ski trip but then make sure that your abdominal pains start precisely when everyone is ready to go and has reached peak excitement. FEEL YOUR HOLIDAY SLIPPING AWAY.

Spend a full day in the Emergency Room, transfer by ambulance to Yale New Haven Hospital and then barely catch your preferred surgeon so that he can squeeze you in right before he leaves for two weeks in Austria. Say goodbye to your gallbladder. Be very grateful that it’s gone. Be very sad that your ski trip is also gone. And all of your Christmas plans. Remember with humiliation, not the excruciating pain, but the embarrassing loss of dignity that goes with hospital stays. The many times that the curtains open before the robe has closed. The many strangers who want to poke you under the rib cage (WHERE IT HURTS THE MOST).

Be released in time to wish everyone a Merry Christmas as they drive off to Vermont. Spend several days alone because your suitcase is too heavy to lift and travel is out of the question. (To say nothing of skiing.) Do some laundry. Pay a bill. Watch too much t.v. Sleep too much. FORGET that it’s Christmas. Then REMEMBER that it’s Christmas.

I’m counting my blessings, most of which start, “it could have been worse.” I had a great doctor, fantastic hospital care, and I’m recovering at the fast end of the predicted 4 day to 4 week time frame. I would like to feel REALLY sorry that I don’t have delicious cakes, cookies, and pies to go with my oatmeal Christmas dinner, but I’m not allowed to eat any of those things. YAY! SAVED FROM MYSELF.

Even for me the Christmas spirit peeks through. Endless holiday movies on t.v. Snow still on the ground in Connecticut. I actually like oatmeal. And my gall bladder must have weighed 3-4 ounces AT LEAST! So there’s losing weight, which counts twice as much at Christmas because everyone else will be gaining. HAH!

Hope your Christmas is Merry and Bright.

Open Studios 2013 version 2.0

Posted on December 17, 2013 by Elizabeth Cook

My Mural: Large Toad

Open Studios is an endurance test for the student/artist, and possibly for the attendees as well. After all, 60 studios, each one deserving of critical attention, full of artists who grow more weary as the three-day marathon continues.

Will I be discovered? Will anyone? Will anyone come? Will they like my work? Or take my business card? Or just poke their head in my door, roll their eyes and back out quickly.

My Mural: Snake Breath

My art isn’t for everyone. No one’s is. I mean, there are even critics who dismiss the whole Renaissance. (It’s not my favorite period either, to be honest.)

These days the art world is supposed to be open to all comers. It’s okay to paint and draw, to sculpt, to make videos or performance pieces, to include the audience in the action or just make them watch.

My Mural: Snake Hat

This morning I was back in my studio, working on my mural (so close to the end, now), when I decided that it was a good time to take photos of some of the work still displayed in the Open Studios aftermath. The most colorful work photographs best, and I am still a crow, drawn to the bright and shiny. I couldn’t include everybody here, but these are a few of my favorite Second-Year artists.

Nadia Haji Omar
www.nadiahajiomar.com

Rachel K. Jantzi

Yeonji Kim
www.yeokim.com

George Isaac Davis

Donna Cleary in her studio.
www.donnacleary.net

Julie Bahn
www.juliebahn.com

My classmates are amazing. I wish I could show work from all of them. But you know how you can see it? Come to the second year shows at the SVA Gallery in January and in March. And don’t miss our thesis show in April. You’ll be amazed.

Don’t Believe Them

Posted on December 6, 2013 by Elizabeth Cook

After migrating this site to a new host because the old one (I won’t name names) couldn’t keep up with WordPress updates, I have one important thing to say: when they tell you that the process will take 24-48 hours, DON’T BELIEVE THEM! 24 – 48 days is more like it!

But happily we are back now and encourage you, if you are not already a subscriber, to please subscribe and enjoy not only today’s usual fare of art plus angst, but future angst as well.

During the period when the blog was out of commission, I saw some great shows, including Rented Island at the Whitney, the Mike Kelley retrospective at MoMA’s P.S.1, and the Magritte show at MoMa. Plus, through the group critique process I’ve seen a lot of amazing work from my fellow students in my own program, and by T.A.ing for Richard Mehl in the Advertising Department of the undergraduate school, I’ve been bowled over by what freshmen, driven and sleepless but never giving up, can accomplish.

I used to think that looking at too much of other people’s art would unduly influence my own. I don’t think so anymore. My giant paper scroll and I are doing fine together (term review in five days and I am NOT panicked. Repeat: NOT panicked). I’m pretty sure that the series of self-portraits with snakes and/or toads (not both – that would be gross) is my own idea.

If you’re interested in seeing my art, or that which is being produced by my classmates, please come visit us during our open studios next week, or plan to attend the second-year MFA exhibition that opens January 18th at the SVA gallery on West 26th (reception on January 23rd from 6-8 p.m.)

One of the best ways that artists can make a community is to show their work together and see how ideas are shared or opposed. And one of the best ways art lovers like you and me can join that community is to see art and talk about it.

Who have you seen recently?

Luckily…

Posted on November 2, 2013 by Elizabeth Cook

Luckily, in one of those art miracles that you read about, I’ve had a total breakthrough and my art is on a new track that pleases and surprises me. Ha. Not.

My art is still a struggle every day. And I work on it every day. I go to the studio with my bagel and my iPad and look around to see what fires my imagination. Is it time to draw the polka-dotted mug (again)? Should I use the rubber rat? Is it a charcoal day, or a pastel day, or a Sharpie day?

A Very Timid Beginning

I look at the enormous roll of paper that winds around my studio (and miraculously hasn’t fallen down) and I am at least satisfied that I have filled it up to the first corner. It is harder to put 27 drawings on one piece of paper than to do 27 different drawings. They have to look right together. Sometimes I want them to complement each other, and sometimes I want them to fight. Sometimes I want to make it pretty, but lots of times I’m aiming for “eeew, gross!”.

Real Snakeskin, Fake Me

I realize that I am drawing several narratives, starting at the far left and moving to the right. Besides the polka-dot mug and its various adventures, there are the small blue people who seem to be reacting in horror. What is their story? There are the self-portraits with snakes and rats. Why do I have snakes and rats coming out of my mouth? If I knew, I wouldn’t have to draw it. I draw to find out.

There is a fairy tale starting, and I’m not sure where it’s going, but I like fairy tales (old, original fairy tales) because they so often combine the charming with the shocking.

Once Upon a Time

I got the very good news on Halloween that my first choice thesis advisor, Stephen Maine, selected me back in the double-blind, three and a half twist process that the office uses to match us up. It was while talking to him that I had the idea about the big paper to begin with, although clearly some subconscious giant origami still lingered.

More Pills, Please

Maybe when I’ve drawn all 30 feet of my paper I should fold it into a graceful paper swan. Now THAT would be a thesis project!

Horror Vacui

Posted on October 16, 2013 by Elizabeth Cook

Graduate school rewards exploration. That is, until it doesn’t.

Snakes and Ladders

Last week I handed in my thesis proposal, and during the process of writing, rewriting, rethinking, rewriting, self-doubt, and more rewriting, I realized that it is called a thesis project because it is meant to be a connected body of work.

What’s For Dinner?

Which rules out the explorations I’ve been making: gouache paintings, suicidal paper dolls, murdered rag dolls, self-portraits, drawings of pill bottles, board games with snakes, and woodcuts. In the past year I’ve been all over the place, and it’s been fun, in a wholly stressful way, but now I need to focus.

Murder Crib

Step One: clean my studio. This was either a desperately needed activity or an excellent form of procrastination. I gave away rolls and rolls of colored paper (the raw material for future failed giant origami), several excellent pieces of studio furniture, including my favorite pink chair, primed panels, boxes of still-life props, and a gorgeous ten-foot slab of half-inch glass. The Barbies I kept.

Step Two: hang cream-colored drawing paper, 42″ wide and 30 feet long, around three bare walls of my now empty-ish studio.

Terrifyingly Blank Paper

I’m going back to drawing. Not on pads of paper, but all over my walls. In public. I’m terrified about the mistakes that I’ll make, but I know it’s time that I face my art, my skill, and my talent and see if it’s enough.

And it just keeps going

I have one and a half semesters to go. In no time, SVA is going to throw me out into a brutal art world (some people call this graduation) and I’d better be ready. I have to replace my teachers’ evaluations with my own. I have to stand up for my art.

And I have to start now. It’s that simple, and that difficult.

Making Paintings

Posted on September 28, 2013 by Elizabeth Cook

Stuart Davis
The Mellow Pad

I’ve always had trouble making abstract art. I admire the ability, but it’s difficult for me to overcome the delight I feel when I capture a likeness or represent what I see. For me, abstraction isn’t easier than representation (the “my kid coulda done that” school of thought), it’s harder.

I love creating the illusion of space and depth on a two-dimensional plane. Some abstract artists embrace the same challenge, and some work hard to avoid making any allusions to the natural world.

Jackson Pollock
Number 8

In my second-year seminar class last week we read articles about Alfred Stieglitz, the ground-breaking New York Armory Show of 1913, and several of the artists working then. Not all artists are good writers (of course, not all writers are good painters), but Stuart Davis, a painter from that period explained abstraction in a way that makes the most sense to me.

Stuart Davis
Swing Landscape

In his article, “Autobiography” (included in Diane Kelder’s collection Stuart Davis – Praeger Press, 1971), Davis discussed why he hated when viewers asked what his paintings were “about”.

“There is no simple answer to these pesky questions because in reality they are not questions about art at all. They are in fact demands that what the artist feels and explicitly expresses in his work be translated into ideas that omit the very quality of emotion that is the sole reason for its being.”

He goes on, “In the first place let me say that the purpose of so-called “abstract” art is basically the same as all other art, and that it always has a subject matter. In fact the difference between ‘abstract’ and ‘realistic’ art is precisely one of subject matter. It would be more accurate to say that it is a difference of aspects of the same subject matter. The ‘abstract’ artist lives in the same world as everybody else and the subject matter available to him is the same.”

“…But the development of ‘abstract’ art has not been merely a matter of temperaments. It is the reflection in art of that attitude of mind manifested in scientific materialism by which the world lives today. Through science the whole concept of what reality is has been changed…. why should the artist be questioned for finding new realities in his subject matter?”

Stephen Maine
HP12 – 0301

Or perhaps in Hamlet’s words,

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,

Than are dreamt of in your Philosophy.”

My seminar class is taught by the wonderful abstract painter (and writer) Stephen Maine (www.stephenmaine.com). Here he is in an interview with Gorky’s Granddaughter discussing his paintings and his process. If I could paint like he does, I might give up reality, too.

http://www.gorkysgranddaughter.com/2013/09/stephen-maine-august-2013.html

The Ubiquitous Celebrity of Lenin

Posted on September 18, 2013 by Elizabeth Cook

The Propeller Group
Monumental Bling

In a lovely example of synchronicity, I am suddenly surrounded by Vladimir Ilich Lenin. When he was alive, being surrounded by him was rarely lovely, I believe.

First there are the readings for this week’s Seminar – about the Russian Constructivists, Kasimir Malevich, and the government-directed art produced in Russia after the Revolution and World War I.

Lenin as Jay Gatsby in The Great Gatsby

Secondly, as I was hopping the galleries this afternoon I ran into Lombard Freid Gallery at 518 West 19th Street (lombard-freid.com). Their new show by The Propeller Group is titled Lived, Lives, Will Live! which is based on a quotation from Kim Il Sung (founding dictator of North Korea) who said, “Lenin lived. Lenin lives. Lenin Will Live.”

The exhibition shows Lenin as he might be viewed today – wearing bling, trying on new hairdos a la Leonardo diCaprio, and riding high on the global spin machine. Everything old is new again.

Lenin as Jack Dawson in Titanic

Which leads me to synchronicity part 3: the fact that I am just finishing rereading one of my favorite books: Lenin’s Embalmers by Ilya Zbarsky and Samuel Hutchinson. This is the fascinating story of the decades-long job of the Zbarsky family to preserve Lenin’s body so that it could remain on display to the public. Their own lives were dependent upon pleasing Stalin for years, and then ironically they had to preserve Stalin (and Mao) as well. Lenin is still on view in the former Red Square in the former Leningrad, but Kruschev had Stalin removed in disgrace and buried in 1961.

Lenin’s body on display almost 90 years after his death.

Imagine going to Graceland and being able to see Elvis displayed in a glass coffin. After the creepy frisson down your spine, it might be kind of cool, in a Walking Dead kind of way.

I recommend The Propeller Group exhibition. It is a very clever take on publicity, fame, and the kind of celebrity that lives on after death. (Think Marilyn, or Ho Chi Minh – whose body is also preserved).

If you can afford a team of scientists working around the clock, year after year, just think of the wonderful legacy you too can leave.

Open Season on Art

Posted on September 9, 2013 by Elizabeth Cook

There is enough brilliant and exciting art in New York to fill every gallery from floor to ceiling. Which is not the same thing as saying that all New York galleries are full of brilliant and exciting art. They are not.

Mike Womack
Observer Effect
Installation View

Saturday was a beautiful day, and several friends and I went gallery hopping in Chelsea. We visited five or six galleries and saw bad paintings, bad videos, and bad sculpture.

Mike Womack
Hypnosis Drawing #9 (Earliest Memory of Pain)

But we also saw Mike Womack’s exhibition Observer Effect at Ziehersmith (516 West 20th Street), which was truly stunning. Mr. Womack has cast concrete around his own drawings so that only the edges of the paper remain to be seen by the viewer. This is very provoking in the best possible way. What might the drawings be about? Why are they hidden? Do they relate to the shapes in which they are encased? Why would an artist make work and then make sure no one can see it?

Mike Womack
Hypnosis Drawing #15 (Earliest Memory of Drawing)

The concrete and wood forms remain wholly visible, and are interesting enough on their own to hold our attention. One never forgets, however, that each one is also an art tomb. That makes the crucifix-shaped installation even more poignant. What vision died here?

Mike Womack
Hypnosis Drawing #3 (Earliest Memory of My Mother)

The press release for the show (read it on the way out, NOT the way in) gives a very specific description of the process through which Mr. Womack made his pieces, and why. It’s quite compelling (and you can see it on the gallery website www.ziehersmith.com) but I think I prefer making up my own stories. Go to this show and then let me know what you think.

Sol LeWitt
Untitled (gouache)

The other exhibition that grabbed me on Saturday was Sol LeWitt. He is rapidly becoming one of my favorite dead artists. Perhaps it’s because he’s ubiquitous, although that could work equally against him. Right now there’s a huge LeWitt installation at Paula Cooper Gallery at 534 West 21st, and it’s very worth the walk to see LeWitt’s preliminary gouaches and the final enormous work to which they led (originally completed for the 1988 Venice Biennale). You can admire his mastery of color, as I did, and then wish you lived in an apartment big enough to install his work, as I also did.

Sol LeWitt
Wall Drawing #564: Complex forms with color ink washes superimposed

That would cost you $1.2 million, and rumor has it that’s just for the plans, not including the actual painting.

If the art in the galleries was always bad, I would stop going. It is not. There is always at least one magical piece, or one independently creative new artist who is worth seeing. Just when I think I am out, they pull me back in.

Still Crazy After All These Years

Posted on September 1, 2013 by Elizabeth Cook

Low Tide – Old Saybrook

I spent a large part of last week and the Labor Day weekend back in my Connecticut home town, relaxing a little before the start of the new school year. It was wonderful to catch up with my family, to turn off my work email, and to do almost nothing productive. But I did stop in at my undergraduate art school, Lyme Academy, to view the current alumni and student exhibits, and I was struck both by the quality of the art and how different it is from what I see in New York.

Jack Broderick’s
La Boca

Lyme Academy teaches the skills needed to produce representational and figurative art. At the School of Visual Arts where I’m getting my M.F.A., skills are rarely discussed, and aside from a few of us diehards the students are not producing representational work. It’s all abstract, and conceptual, and performance, and video.

Alex Cox
Untitled

When I’m in Old Lyme, my heart sings to see blue shadows cross nude figures and then climb up the wall. When I’m in New York, I respond to pain and ugliness in art. In Connecticut I will spend two or three hours drawing the random still life on the coffee table – emphasizing light and dark, perfecting the ovals that represent circles in perspective, and working very hard to achieve a likeness of my subject matter. There is no such thing as too much time spent drawing the label on a Poland Springs bottle.

Andrea Anderson’s
Max Thompson Chevy

But in New York I draw with my left hand to achieve an unattractive immediacy. Everything is faster and uglier.

One of my New York pieces with an unquotable title. At 8 months old, it is due for urban renewal.

One of my New York pieces with an unprintable title. At 8 months old, it is due for urban renewal.

So after this weekend, I finally get it. Rural coastal Connecticut is full of the seascapes and portraits that are made by artists who know in their bones that life hasn’t changed much in fifty years, and is unlikely to change much in the next fifty. The tide will always take six hours to go out and another six to come in. It is possible to paint on the beach for hours and not see more than a dozen people, at least once school starts.

Still low tide in Old Saybrook

But in New York, a 20-year-old building is considered old and ripe for tear-down. Walking people regularly race cabs at intersections because they’re in such a hurry. There are beggars on half of the corners I pass. My realizations aren’t new or profound. You have just to look at Andrew Wyeth versus the Abstract Expressionists, or Edward Hopper lighthouses versus Mondrian’s Broadway Boogie Woogie. Where we live and work greatly affects what we make.

I guess my question now is whether it’s possible to go beyond back-and-forth and actually integrate what’s happening in the various art worlds. There is pain in small-town New England, just as there is great beauty in the city. But am I a good enough artist to show you?

the least untrue / elizabeth cook

"Of all lies, art is the least untrue." -Gustave Flaubert