Inner Rhythms

By Gail Wallinga

Gossamer, 36″x 24″, acrylic, oil, tissue paper, & bristles on stretched canvas, painting © 2007 by Gail Wallinga. All rights reserved.

Breathless, 36″x 24″, acrylic & oil on stretched canvas, painting © 2007 by Gail Wallinga. All rights reserved.

Second Skin, 36″x 24″, acrylic, oil, & tissue paper on stretched canvas, painting © 2007 by Gail Wallinga. All rights reserved.

I paint to bring visual form to emotions, interactions, and psychological states that I experience in life. For the past 3 years, I’ve been working on a series that is loosely about the theme of connection. How do we connect or not connect with ourselves or others? What is going on at the point of intersection. Or in the space behind the connection.

Here & There, 36″x 24″, acrylic & oil on stretched canvas, painting © 2007 by Gail Wallinga. All rights reserved.

Where We Meet, 36″x 24″, acrylic & oil on stretched canvas, painting © 2007 by Gail Wallinga. All rights reserved.

Sometimes I have a specific feeling or situation in mind when I start a painting. Other times, I start by spontaneously reacting to the materials that I’m exploring. But either way, the finished painting tells a story or represents a voice in the bigger picture of my theme.

My training as a graphic designer has taught me about color, composition and trusting my decisions. When I paint, I bring all of those skills to the table. I plug into the creative stream where the designer meets the artist to create something that pleases me visually and contextually.

Gypsy, 36″x 24″, acrylic & oil on stretched canvas, painting © 2007 by Gail Wallinga. All rights reserved.

Approach, 36″x 24″, oil on stretched canvas, painting © 2007 by Gail Wallinga. All rights reserved.

I paint once a week for at least 4 hours. Sometimes I’m able to paint twice a week. But I’m often thinking about and working on my paintings while I’m not in the studio. The creative process is fed by my experience as a designer, and is constantly going on in the background of my consciousness.

About Gail:  Gail has been a graphic designer for almost 20 years, and principle of her own business, Wallinga Design, for 14 years. She designed the logotype for red Ravine and is the graphic designer of choice for our various mastheads. Besides her painting and design, Gail has passion for contemporary furniture design, photography, acoustic folk/pop music, and Godiva chocolate.

If you’d like to view Gail’s work in person, she will be participating in the Annual Autumn Show of The Rain Collective, a Minneapolis based confluence of artists. The show is taking place this Saturday, November 3rd, 2007, from 4:00 pm to 8:00 pm in the Casket Arts Building, 681 17th Avenue NE, located in the infamous Nordeast Minneapolis.

For contact information, Artist Statement, and to view more of Gail’s work, see her Rain Collective profile.

             

Postcard for The Rain Collective, Annual Autumn Show, 8.5″x 5.25″, designed by Gail Wallinga, photographs Ryc Casati, postcard © 2007 by Wallinga Design. All rights reserved.

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Dreaming Of Frida Kahlo

By Laura Stokes

Casa Azul, the home where Frida Kahlo was born, lived, and died; July 2007, photo © 2007 by Laura Stokes, all rights reserved.

Acting on dream and impulse, we found ourselves in Mexico City last weekend at the Frida Kahlo Centennial Celebration at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City. I had read about the exhibit but never thought we would go until I told a friend whose passion for Frida is even larger than mine, and somehow momentum took over. So we booked a flight and arrived late on a Friday evening, very hungry after passing on an option to buy “dinner” of potato chips and Mars bars, the current American Airlines cuisine.

The town was quiet and all the restaurants in the area were closed by 10:30. Our hotel dated from the 17th century when it served as a monastery — old, quaint and spare, as opposed to the luxurious Sheraton across the street where most Americans must have been staying, as we saw only Mexican families in The Cortez. This suited us perfectly and was consistent with our wish to melt into the life of the city. We were pleasantly surprised to see few tourists in the Zocalo, the restaurants, and the museums — selfish of us, I suppose, because I am sure the Mexican economy could use the tourist trade.

I had expected to be touched and inspired by Frida’s actual work, but so much more came to the surface as I stood in the long queues of Mexicans waiting for this unique opportunity to pay homage to one of their most beloved cultural heroes and icons. The works were chosen to exhibit Frida’s life-long dedication to and use of indigenous Mexican folk traditions and popular arts in her work and lifestyle. And by the snail’s pace of the crowd of visitors as they crept along the walls devouring each word of the descriptions and studiously examining the detail and imagery of her paintings, it was obvious that Frida must have been successful in honestly evoking a genuine connection with her audience. Frida’s reverence for the indigenous people and culture permeated her work and was transmitted to those who could most recognize and appreciate it.

Again, at Casa Azul, where Frida was born, lived and died, I continued to notice the reverence of the Mexican people for her work The same long lines of Mexicans were there as were at the museum and the same thoughtful and thorough scrutiny of the works and the memorabilia. I was struck with envy and resentment, as I have often been before, at the lack of heritage and story in my own white Anglo-Saxon protestant background, the poverty of tradition and influence and cherishing of what has passed.

I ponder the social consequences of such a lack of understanding of the significance of belonging to a culture rooted in centuries of custom and tradition and language and how that ignorance and insensitivity is manifested in my own country.

Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City, July 2007, all photos © 2007 by Laura Stokes, all rights reserved.

About Laura:  Laura Stokes lives in the Rio Grande valley, outside Albuquerque, New Mexico, where she works with great passion on matters of peace and social justice. She is also active in her community and with her daughters and granddaughter, who she happens to presently be keeping up with in Ghost Ranch.

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WRITING TOPIC – REMINGTON’S STUDIO

–Remington’s Studio, Cody, Wyoming, May 2007, photo © 2007 by skywire. All rights reserved.

The photograph is of the 1890’s studio of the artist, sculptor, painter, and writer, Frederic Remington.  You can get a sense of how he liked to create while surrounding himself with found objects, paints, artifacts, and sculpture. Though based in New York, his studio was alive with the energy of the American West; the place and the people held great meaning to him.

Remington was also a writer. And along with producing more than 3,000 drawings and paintings, and 22 bronze sculptures – cast in editions, he wrote two novels – one of which was adapted to the stage – and over 100 magazine articles and stories.

Artist or writer? Many times, the two remain forever connected.

The writing topic this week:

• Choose 1 object from Remington’s Studio
• Start with a 15 minute writing practice on the object
• Take an idea or paragraph from the practice, and write a short piece, 500 words or less

If you want something more complex, choose 3 of the objects and weave them into 1 practice. If you only get as far as the practice, that’s okay. You will have started. And the object you wrote about will have meaning to you, resting in your mind and body until you are ready to do something with it. Or maybe you never will. And it will simply have been an exercise in wild mind.

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Below are some facts about Remington that I didn’t know before researching this Writing Topic. It’s good to open to a writer or artist as a person, with a living, breathing past. A person who is much more than the historical image or soundbite, projected in our minds.

• Remington went to Yale, majored in art, and played football, but did not graduate.
• Later in his career, he experimented with the perception of color. He lightened his palette and placed his colors as they would be affected by light.
• He failed as a sheep rancher and then as a saloon owner in Kansas.
• Remington made his first visit West to Montana in 1881; many more trips would follow to New Mexico, Arizona, and elsewhere, west of the Rockies.
• In the mid-1880s, after discovering there was a market for his drawings, he turned to magazine illustration full time. His images were of American Indians, cowboys and the West that he believed to be rapidly disappearing, if it was not already gone.
• By 1887, he was sufficiently famous that another Easterner who loved the West, Theodore Roosevelt, hired him to do the illustrations for his book, Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail. Roosevelt became a good friend.
• In 1891 he illustrated an edition of Longfellow’s “The Song of Hiawatha.” He also did the illustrations for his own first novel, Pony Traces, in 1895.
• In 1898, Remington traveled to Cuba for the Spanish-American War as a journalist and illustrator. It was not a good experience, and the artist never got over the horror he saw. In “With the Fifth Corps,” his essay about his wartime experiences, he wrote of the Cuban campaign: “One beautiful boy was brought in by two tough, stringy, hairy old soldiers, his head hanging down behind. His shirt was off, and a big red spot shone brilliant against his marblelike skin.”
• In 1900, a year-and-a-half after he returned from Cuba, Remington produced his first two night paintings, The Wolves Sniffed Along the Trail, But Came No Nearer and Pretty Mother of the Night White Otter Is No Longer a Boy, as illustrations for his second novel, The Way of an Indian, a brave’s coming-of-age story.
• In 1908 one of the most prominent writers on art of that time observed in his comments on Remington’s very successful exhibition at Knoedler’s Gallery in New York City that “the mark of the illustrator disappeared and that of the painter took its place.”
• Frederic Remington was 48 years old when he died December 26, 1909 from complications following an appendectomy.

                                                
-from the following articles:

– Insight on the News,  May 27, 2003  by Stephen Goode
–Frederic Remington and the American Civil War: A Ghost Story
–Frederic Remington Biography from the  Buffalo Bill Historical Society in Cody, Wyoming

If you want to know more about Remington, visit the websites; they are loaded with information. The studio reproduction can be found at the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyoming. The Center is a combination of five different museums, including the Draper Museum of Natural History and the Plains Indian Museum.

Sunday, July 1st, 2007

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Casket Arts Photoblog

The Northwestern Casket Company, May 17th 2007, all photos copyright © 2007-2010 by QuoinMonkey, all rights reserved.

I went over to the Casket Arts Building on Thursday to help my friend, Gail, hang her show. She recently joined the rain collective, a confluence of artists who moved into the building this week.

I took my camera along and the pleasure was all mine. The exposed brick had been restored, the studio floors had been sanded and polished to their original luster, a stunning mix of maple and pine.

The oldest portion of the former Northwestern Casket Company, which served as a casket factory until January of 2006, dates back to 1887. It’s one of the oldest surviving buildings in the city of Minneapolis.

I met owner, Jennifer Young, and we stood in the door of Gail’s studio and chatted for a while about what kind of shape the building was in before they bought it – and what it looks like now (a photographer’s dream).

The former owner of Northwest Casket Company, Robert Berny, rose from clerk to president and spent 6 decades with the company until his death in 2004. He was buried in a custom cherrywood casket.

Yesterday, the building was bustling with artists preparing for an annual Northeast tradition, Art-A-Whirl. This is the 12th Annual Art-A-Whirl; I remember the first. I had a studio in the Northrup King seed building back then.

When artists come together, the energy is palpable – vibrating and alive. I felt like I was standing in pockets of calm when I captured these images – silent spaces between the buzz of hanging oil, acrylic, and canvas on freshly painted white walls, and lunch at Emily’s Lebanese Deli .

Exit, May 17th, 2007, all photos in this post copyright © 2007-2010 by QuoinMonkey, all rights reserved.

Saturday, May 19th, 2007

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Goodbye Blue Monday, For Kurt Vonnegut

-Goodbye Blue Monday, For Kurt Vonnegut, 5″ x 7″ oil, April 2007, painting by Mike Schultz © 2007 – 2008, all rights reserved, used by permission of the artist, –posted on red Ravine, May 7th, 2007

At the time I wrote Forget Vonnegut – Jane Kenyon Lives On , I ran across this painting of Vonnegut on the Mike Schultz Paintings website under Recent Work, Kansas, April-May 2007.

The painting reflected back to me how Vonnegut’s experience as a prisoner of war and his witnessing of the bombing of Dresden profoundly influenced his writing. The 1973 novel, Breakfast of Champions, was alternatively titled Goodbye Blue Monday.

I fell in love with Mike’s paintings, most recently of landscapes in Kansas. And I think you will, too. In his Progression of a Painting you can see his process, something every writer and artist knows intimately. If the world only knew the hours and hours that went into finished pieces of writing and art, we’d be the richest people on the planet.

What I also noticed about Mike is that he tithes his art. He is generous of spirit and gives back to the world in many ways, only one of which is his provocative body of work. If you check out his Paintings for Heifer International you can find information about Heifer International and view his latest contributions. Thanks for sharing your work with the world. It’s an inspiration.

-Monday, May 7th, 2007

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