Extended drawing - third term, week 4

"Research, archive, playing with ideas, experimenting with materials" is on the schedule.  I am lagging a bit behind with all of those; still at the "too much thinking" stage, have done very little that could be called action. Still hoping to catch up, though!

Tonight we move on the "editing, refining".

Last week Mario talked about the work of Sigmar Polke and Mary Kelly, before setting us loose  to play with ideas and experiment with materials.

"Pushing and mixing things", Polke was subversive and political. He responded to and commented on found images.  The two images below are from his 1976 series "We petty bourgois" - the grid hold it all together; it's "almost a pseudo-narrative" and it's up to the viewer to make the connections

 Polke's first works were made in 1964 - are they naive, or simply too plain?

 His work is "Capitalist Realism" - taking the piss out of the East German love of capitalist ideas.

In the Watchtower series of 1984 he gives the same image different treatmnts -

 The work of Marry Kelly shows her process. Postpartum Document 1973-79 was installed in a way that you could see development - it used her baby son's nappy liners, elaborated with text; it's confessional art.

My "idea of the week" was to use text in my Home drawings, somehow. In the spaciousness of Room 406, I used large sheets of paper and ink to play around with text, phrases taken from "Geography of Home" by Akiko Busch, which had been sitting on my bookshelf patiently for some years. Taking forward the idea of "crumpled paper = crumpled bedsheets", I took phrases from the chapter on the bedroom (which is also a way to incorporate Gaston Bachelard's quote about "home is where we can dream" -

Over coffee during the break, someone mentioned being told to "draw" text rather then write it. So I worked upside down, pencilling the shapes and highlighting them with ink in various dilutions -

In its current form - A3 size - the texts look rather like political posters ... which is not what I'm aiming at.

Mario suggested writing them on actual bedding - pillows - or using them as wallpaper. Well, maybe...

Blood on Paper, text on textiles

The Blood on Paper exhibition at the V&A in 2008 was what got me interested in book arts again - particularly memorable are Anselm Kiefer's huge books, the pages from a book by Chillida, and Cai Guo Qiang's "firework", shown here. (The thumbnails on the V&A page are clickable for more info on them, and there's an essay by the curator here.)

"Danger" by Cai Guo Qiang (via)

When I started doing the "travelwriting" on my tube and bus journey, I started thinking about "the merging of text and image" - how the names of the stations or stops fit into the line drawing. When text appears on textiles, I feel that text takes over and am suspicious of using it (nor do I like my coffee mug to say COFFEE) - but books are a different medium, in fact they are vehicles for text (and/or images). Their purpose is arguably to be read.

At the Tate's Gauguin exhibition in 2010, seeing the pineapple pattern on the blue skirt was almost like reading the word "pineapple" - I simply couldn't get beyond the "word" to look at the rest of the picture. Yet seen on the actual fabric (rather than in a painting), it would have been simply a pattern element.

Of course we "read" images just as we read words - they stand for, indicate, and signify certain things, depending on context, culture, personal meanings. All rather complicated.... you can be sure that plenty has been written about this matter.

And when we read, we want to be able to understand the stories the words are telling - we don't want the words themselves to take over, to become like earworms, or to have meanings that are secret and exclude us.

Laborious

Michelle Forsyth's  text work is a response to current events as reported in the media. One form it takes is quotes  from newspapers, when words have particularly struck her. She punches into watercolour paper.

Text Work #1, 2008, from NY Times, July 18, 1996; 20x30 inches, image from here

"Newspapers, the Internet and television shows that feature depictions of personal tragedy often foster apathetic ways of witnessing the world around us," she says. "To counter these alienating depictions of private spectacle, I favor a sensual approach to art making and imbue my work with tactile qualities of the handmade."

She has also done watercolours inspired by weaving, and a new body of work is based on the patterns taken from her husband's shirts. "These pieces are varied in both stylistic and material approach and consist of paintings on linen, wood, and weavings. Much more intimate in scope than my previous works, the process of making these paintings is a labor of love. Built by mixing a new palette for each painting session, slight variations in color are visible in their surfaces. Each work becomes a monument to the labor that comprises it."

Favourite sayings

I stitched some bon mots onto strips of silk almost a dozen years ago. Mainly couching, and it was fun to do, and maybe I'll go back to this some day, padding or stretching the fabric first.

The appetite grows by eating.
No-one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
What is unsought will be undetected.
Snatch the eternal from the desperately fleeting.

After this, I started stitching longer passages from various books onto dupion, but these haven't resurfaced yet. There is something very satisfying about stitching words - you really come to "own" them - and at the same time, they become abstract shapes, so your mind is moving between these two states, and when the work is done, you are released from the limbo.

Recreational punctuation

One for the editors ... from here.

And if you work with punctuation for a living in any way, and have access to the BBC iplayer, have a listen here for a programme on stenography. The section on Hansard (which reports what went on in Parliament) is enlightening.

"As courts around the world replace human stenographers with digital recording systems, Michael Rosen explores the ancient art of stenography. Michael looks at the work Charles Dickens did in London courts around 1830, and asks how his career as a shorthand reporter influenced his work. He investigates the mysteries of modern stenograph machines, and talks to people who operate them and to a leading barrister about the different ways we record words spoken in trials and other official proceedings."

Word books

Much as I love dictionaries, I love a thesaurus better. Not a thesaurus in dictionary format - but a real thesaurus, arranged in categories, the way Roget did it nearly 200 years ago (compiled in 1805 and published in 1852).  "Proper" thesauruses are a little more trouble to use, because you have to go to the index first - and choose which definition of the word you are actually looking for a synonym for - but then you have similar concepts right there at hand, so that you can choose exactly the right word.

I found one such, published in 1962 (which is also quite a while ago now!) recently in an Oxfam bookshop - what a bargain for £2.49, hardback and all. My other version, published in the 1930s and updated by the grandson of Roget, has an interesting page layout, in which pairs of words (opposites) start at the same point on the page - for instance, obstinacy and tergiversation; perspicuity and obscurity; conciseness and diffuseness -

Via a little research on the idea of a thesaurus (the word comes from the Greek, meaning "treasure store"),  I found the Historical Thesaurus of English project, which presents the vocabulary of English from Old English to the present arranged in detailed semantic categories. It is based on the second edition of the Oxford English Dictionary and was published in two volumes as the Historical Thesaurus of the OED by Oxford University Press in 2009. It offers "a complete sense inventory for English".

Here is an overview of the classification:

1. The External World

01. The world



01.01. The earth


01.02. Life


01.03. Physical sensibility


01.04. Matter


01.05. Existence in time and space


01.06. Relative properties


01.07. The supernatural

2. The Mental World

02. The mind



02.01. Mental capacity


02.02. Emotion


02.03. Philosophy


02.04. Aesthetics


02.05. Will/faculty of will


02.06. Refusal/denial


02.07. Having/possession


02.08. Language

3. The Social World

03. Society



03.01. Society/the community


03.02. Inhabiting/dwelling


03.03. Armed hostility


03.04. Authority


03.05. Morality


03.06. Education


03.07. Faith


03.08. Communication


03.09. Travel/travelling


03.10. Occupation/work

03.11. Leisure

See a sample page - from the Emotions section, lovers and loving, here. Once, an elegant love letter was called a "nectar epistle" ... and whatever happened to "kissing kind" - meaning, being kind/friendly enough to receive a kiss -?

The HTOED usefully also gives definitions of words. It runs to 4,000 pages - and is incorporated into the OED online version.

Calligraphy gone bad

From the website of the San Francisco Asian Art Museum, which has a Chinese calligraphy exhibition ("Out of Character: Decoding Chinese Calligraphy") on till January.

Read all about calligraphy's place in pop culture here.

On copying

"The power of a text is different when it is read from when it is copied out. Only the copied text thus commands the soul of him who is occupied with it, whereas the mere reader never discovers the new aspects of his inner self that are opened by the text, that road cut through the interior jungle forever closing behind it: because the reader follows the movement of his mind in the free flight of day-dreaming, whereas the copier submits it to command." - Walter Benjamin

Is this like calligraphy, someone asked. Not really - instead of attention to the shapes and linkage of letters, making them into words, the attention of the copyist is on the text and the writer's construction of the text, in the slow speed of the copying (rather than the fast speed of the reading). It's about discovering what the writer meant, rather than what the reader makes of it.

Another question was, What does the copyist do - is it just plain writing? I think there are (at least) three sorts of copyists (apart from calligraphers, who are enhancing the text by the visual qualities of the lettering).
1. scribes, making a copy of a text for archiving or dissemination, in the absence of other technology
2. samizdat copyists, making a copy for dissemination, in secret
3. compilers of "commonplace books", collecting various texts that interest them in a notebook
The copying might be in plain handwriting (no.3), in an approved style of handwriting (no.1), or even with a typewriter and carbon paper (no.2) - though I feel that with the typewriter, the power of the text is different from handwriting.

How's that again?

From the cookware department of John Lewis -

So.... you can use it in the oven, and it'll be safe in the freezer and the microwave, but you shouldn't use it there ... ??

I think they mean: Do not use on the hob.

Is it dishwasher safe?

What the label doesn't say - which the labels on some other casseroles said - was to let it cool before washing. (The shock of cold water on a hot dish can crackle the glaze.)

Art I like - Jessica Rankin

White Cube, Hoxton Square, is showing drawings and "sewn pieces" by Jessica Rankin till the end of the week (7 July). I found it intense and satisfying.

The exhibition is called "Skyfolds 1941-2010" and draws upon maps of the sky and constellations, stitched onto organdie or drawn on huge sheets of paper. A book is available but doesn't show the current work, so I didn't buy it, but looked long and hard and took notes -- and thought about how these configurations and methods of depiction, and what lies behind them, ties in with my current work. The stitched circles are so much like the "memory holes" that developed during the winding of my memory ball, for example. The stitching on transparent fabric looks effortless, with long thread ends dangling at the back, and blocks of colour made with long stitches. The connected stitching that forms the writing is a technical lesson.

The working methods look simple and straightforward, but because of the amount of labour, the effect is rich and dense and various. Here it is described as "a tangle of language and images, slowly and painstakingly released by the artist's hand"

It's interesting to note that she was taught to sew by her babysitter! She's inspired by all sorts of writing, especially the Lunch Poems by Frank O'Hara - which* make another reason to be grateful to Chance that brought me news of this exhibition this morning ... so glad I went, so glad to connect with the work of this artist. And with O'Hara.

*He wrote something I loved a long time ago and am delighted to re-encounter (read it all here) -

Mothers of America
                               let your kids go to the movies!
get them out of the house so they won't know what you're up to
it's true that fresh air is good for the body
                                                              but what about the soul
that grows in darkness, embossed by silvery images 
and when you grow old as grow old you must
                                                                  they won't hate you

Don't try this at home

This is "An anonymous author’s novel written on the walls of an abandoned house in Chongqing, China" - I found it here and though it's a wonderful image, it made me feel so sad. And frightened. It plugs into all sorts of facets of the human condition.

Here's another image of Chongqing - the city is on a bend of the Yangtze river, which floods in the summer. The floods in 2010 were the worst in a decade.

Ribbons of words

Among the many images of sculptures of Jaume Plensa, this caught my eye

Usually he uses words/letters to define the human form - and the blogger who previously used this photo takes issue with the practice: "I was distracted by the type. Why has he used a sans serif font? Why are the words in English (although, I subsequently discovered that he does use other languages)? Am I supposed to read the text? Why doesn’t he write a book instead of creating sculpture?" - indeed, why?

However, ribbons of words have intrigued me for a long time - the medieval sort found on tapestries and in paintings, rather then name tapes (though name tapes have their own possibilities) -

Is there a name for these ribbons? They're not quite cartouches... and not speech bubbles in our modern sense.

Two other things tug at my memory in connection to these ribbons of words - an article I once read about them, and have largely forgotten; and a textile artist who weaves figures onto ribbons and then folds the ribbon back on itself and sews it together into cloth. I am resisting searching for these, as that might lead to all sorts of byways and much use of time that needs to be spent otherwise.

Spacing in text

While finding out whether Virginia Woolf actually had bookbinding skills (she did), I came across an article that tells of her development as a typesetter (and how this influenced her writing), in which this passage about the use of space seemed worth flagging up:

" Identifying space as verbal art is a technique used by Woolf; in novels like Jacob’s Room or The Waves, Woolf was in constant dialogue with the printer, ensuring that the spaces between scenes were of a precise thickness. The absence of words, or the space in between scenes, becomes another source of meaning; space becomes verbal art in the same way in which Woolf practiced a linguistic art."


The absence of words as a source of meaning .... "nothing is something". The words are a thing, and the space they occupy - or leave empty - is also to be "read" as a thing.

More than meets the eye.

Again, one thing leads to another, and in trying to find a picture to break up the run of words, I came across this:

Spacing imposed by the publishers of an e-book (boxes added). Segue to an opportunity for a rant on stupid hyphenation, but I'll spare you that. Nonetheless, it's a reminder of why carefully-printed (or re-printed) books are SO much more pleasant to read than the "flexible" electronic format - and gives me a chance to quote another bit from that original article about the Hogarth Press -

" Woolf’s use of spacing, variant punctuation, and emphasis on words as single, constitutive units, exposes the printed rectangle of text on the page as a form of meaning, one as important as the narrative itself. For example, Woolf breaks up the shapes of words in order to replicate spoken language—how stress is placed on single syllables. When Archer calls Jacob, he shouts: “Ja—cob! Ja—cob!” and when Mrs. Flanders summons the two boys, she calls, “Ar—cher! Ja—cob!” Woolf’s separation of their names in this manner renders it difficult for the reader to avoid the physical shape of words. Yet Woolf exposes the paginal skeleton even further: two lines of space separate these initial shouts, secluding these broken syllables from the rest of the textual body. Indeed, throughout Jacob’s Room, Woolf experiments with spacing; four lines of white space separate some paragraphs, while other paragraph separations are thinner. Woolf, therefore, in structuring the book according to the spaces between scenes, not only considers the visual composition of the page but also how the absence of words—as indicated with blank space—becomes another origin of meaning. "

Book du jour - reusing a dictionary

Needing a book without pages - just a cover and spine - I took most of the pages out of an old school dictionary. (More about that later, perhaps.)

While I was tearing them out, one by one, the headwords continually caught my eye. My first attempt at recycling the dictionary words uses the page TIGRESS to TITAN. The words look a little lonely on the page, a little purposeless without their definitions. The cut-up page is not without interest, though...

To stick the words onto the page - they are tiny! - I sprayed the back of the dictionary page with 505 (repositionable) spray, then cut them with a scalpel and lifted them into place with the tip. The sheet of paper had been scored with parallel lines to help placement.

Rather than doing more "big pages" like this, I'll fold them in half and do a dozen or so to make a "proper book". My original plan came from the "line as text" idea, and was to sew through the middle of the words with fine thread to hold them on the page. That might be tricky with words on both sides of the page, as I envisaged when thinking of a "proper book" ... but having the words just on the right-hand page means that the left-hand page really would have "lines as text".

(Two days later....) The words are glued onto graph paper, which makes it easier to align and position them. One dictionary page fits onto one graph-paper page -

The temporary adhesive is not to be trusted, so, using the finest thread I had, and bobbin thread to match the graph paper, I ran a line of machine-stitching through the lines of words -

The stitching makes them almost illegible - is it some kind of subconscious erasure? And ... what to do with the thread ends, to keep them out of sight?

They tend to cling to each other when brushed into the middle - hence the title of the book - Combing the Alphabet -

It comes in a plain brown wrapper.

Handwriting on fabric

Head over to Deborah Boschert's blog for a tutorial on handwriting on fabric. She gives the practicalities (use plain fabric, back it to stiffen it, keep the writing at the same scale, exaggerate certain elements). Her writing isn't meant to be read, just to be another fabric print.

For me the exciting thing was that often she writes about the ideas and themes in the quilt that the fabric is intended for. What a good way to put some "intention" into a quilt, up front! Or what you find yourself writing on the fabric could be a starting point if you've found other fabric you want to use and are fishing around for an idea of how to develop the design. When it's cut up, the handwritten fabric won't reveal your deepest secrets, but doing the writing will free your mind and clarify your purpose.

"Grow Illuminated" (from Deborah's website) shows how she uses handwritten fabric in the background.

Oddly put

Also seen (but not photographed):

Hot and cold meals
available all day

Art I like - Lesley Dill

Some of Lesley Dill's sculptures use paper, some metal, some - like "A Spider Sewed at Night" - are wire -

Many of her works are voluminous (but unwearable) dresses, incorporating words -

Hinged poem dress

Her prints combine the body and language -

In an interview, she says, "You have to work; work to make money to support yourself, to make art you have to be ruthless and disciplined. After ten years of awful art I feel I got lucky. I went to galleries and made friends. Then I got accoladed with galleries. Its really important to exhibit your work."

She also says she reads all the time: "That’s part of the engaged reverie. The reading is where my work comes from. That’s how I found home, from language."

Often I find that reading the words "takes over" the visual aspects of the art, but not so much with Lesley Dill's words and work. Is this because the words don't read easily, and the shapes do?

Anagramicism

What can you do with a word? 

A TON IN ASH is a poem by Rob Giampietro in the style of Emmett Williams’s SWEETHEART.

See the entire book at http://linedandunlined.com/files/ton-in-ash.pdf

Galley proofs

Erasure - and replacement - are very visible on galley proofs, something that has disappeared with electronic publishing. Here's an example of one of Philip Roth's galleys -

Roth was asked about the last phase of writing a novel being a “crisis” in which he turns against the material and hates the work. He said that there's always this crisis, with every book: 'Months of looking at the manuscript and saying, “This is wrong—but what’s wrong?” I ask myself, “If this book were a dream, it would be a dream of what?” But when I’m asking this I’m also trying to believe in what I’ve written, to forget that it’s writing and to say, “This has taken place,” even if it hasn’t. The idea is to perceive your invention as a reality that can be understood as a dream. The idea is to turn flesh and blood into literary characters and literary characters; into flesh and blood.'

When you got to the galley proof stage, the book was almost out of your hands - the agony almost over. In the 'old days', after the manuscript went to the publisher, there would be a hiatus before the author got galley proofs - a time to step back from the MS a bit, and then a chance to make changes on the proof, perhaps at both galley and page proof stages. Nowadays, when the electronic MS is delivered, the author has pretty well seen the last of it.

Then and now, there comes a point when you just have to let go. Not so easy sometimes ... possibly harder than getting started?

Book du jour

The text contained in the second ... what to call it ... room within a book? ... is a comparison of Simone Martini's angel, painted in Italy in 1333, with a Bhodisattva painted in Japan in the eleventh century. The emphasis in the comparison is on the mystic qualities of the figures.

Before opening the book at random to start copying text, I embossed some letters onto the paper, but they completely disappeared under the writing, except in certain lighting. If the letters contributed anything to, or interacted with, the text, they could be left blank (perhaps). Well, another idea tried and rejected! I used a heavier pen for the "inside" and a very fine one for the four columns of text, which are revealed only upon close inspection. Reading from one side to the other* will give you nonsense (but it's not nonsense when I write it!) -

It has shiny white covers and is not terribly interesting on its own -

The one in black covers is "one I prepared earlier".

*with a Bhodisattva with an eleventh  prevalent in his time: Italian,  so largely depends, is not  flamelike movement to the forms
century Japanese artist, there are  French, and the lingering static but moves in sinuous  The suggestion of fluttering
very striking similarities. The  vestiges of the Byzantine  rhythms that at once animate  in the angel's wings an