Accidental Abstract Expressionism

Guest Posting by my friend and writer Laura Fuller:

My sister wonders at my memory for weird details of childhood. I remember when I was four and she was seven, and Dad caught us flushing the toilet with our feet in it after 10 PM, you know, just to see.

But it’s trouble to remember what others don’t.  In my last post, I remembered that Joel and I had big plans to build a fort in third grade.  He’d forgotten this; I looked like a creep.

My Lumberjack friend drove me home sometimes when Dubai got too hot for walking. Toward June, this frequently became a ride home plus happy hour or an episode of Mad Men. I’ll remember these moments with weird clarity, for I liked them. He said something on the final ride home about the last three weeks of concentrated expriences like this – ex. college, international teaching posts – being “pregnant with meaning.” We’re purposeful on the way out the door.

Two days later, I squinted through salty contacts at my computer screen somewhere above the Atlantic, committing to language a memory from the last year:

I stood in the center of the Souq al-Arsa in Al Sharjah at noontime while the Whitneys went to see about lunch.  I stayed in the hallway, out-of-homebody and drunk on the Call to Prayer. I felt in my pocket for the Joker card I’d found in the parking lot, the first in a mysterious collection of mismatched playing cards acquired on Middle East adventures. I’d later find a seven of hearts at Wadi Damm in Oman, a queen of spades near Mt. Nebo in Jordan.

Lipton table tops and a hand-washing sink in the dining area.

Over bottomless chicken biryani, they told me about moving abroad, how their family wasn’t too excited about it. They exchanged confident smiles. Non-English-speaking men bustled through spicy air, weaving between Lipton Tea tables.  My friend proclaimed that she would one day honor this deliciousness with a dog named Chicken Biryani. I quietly tasted the idea of living a life that scared me.

Six months later, I came back.

I wonder now whether it even happened, whether she recalls naming her imaginary dog.

It’s disappointing, moments like this disappearing from the rearview mirror, leaving me with an incomplete hand of foreign cards from a deck of memories too specific to mention. No one will draw the Queen of Biryani, the Ace of Al Sharjah.

Joel invited me to write about Abstract Expressionism.

Championing this movement in a previous post, “ROCK! Music that makes the wheel go round,” Joel said, “With Abstract Expressionism, you go with the flow and surrender to the process.” This school of art heavily influenced his piece “Mindscape” and the work he recently showed at St. Cloud’s Paramount Arts Center for his FROM THE BASEMENT exhibition.  In particular, his work reflects his admiration for Jackson Pollock. Joel says, “I’m thinking about the innovative ways he used paint to bring out the essence of the material. Each hanging sculpture reminds me of one of Pollock’s drips.”

To help me understand what that means, Joel passed along a Youtube clip of Pollock discussing the activity of art-making:

“When I am painting,” Pollock says, “I have a general notion as to what I am about…There is no accident, just as there is no beginning and no end.”   He is as much a part of the art as the paint or the canvas. He doesn’t say he knows what the painting is about, but what he is about. Surrendering to the moment, Pollock says, “Sometimes I lose the painting, but I have no fear of changes, of destroying the image. Because the painting has a life of its own, I try to let it live.” He can be a part of the creative moment without deciding how it will turn out.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s crash course in Abstract Expressionism helped, too, for I knew nothing of this stuff until challenged to write about it. The Met’s Stella Paul uses language similar to Joel’s in boiling down the movement. Abstract Expressionists, she says, “accorded the highest importance to process.”  As I understand it, then, the moments spent in creating the thing are more important than the thing itself. The piece of art is only that—a piece, an artifact of the more-important creative moment.

Paul quotes the 1952 writing of critic Harold Rosenberg, who considers a piece of Abstract Expressionist art “not a picture but an event.” We call it a painting, after all, not a painted.

His very blog is evidence of Joel’s Abstract Expressionist tendencies.  Sure, it’s nice if you like his work, but he cares deeply about how it’s made, what materials go into it, what music he hears while he’s working.  All of the variables in his creative moments add to the eventual thing. If you were there while he was working, you’d be in it, too.

In his novel Bluebeard, Kurt Vonnegut writes as a fictional character named Rabo Karabekian, a retired former Abstract Expressionist painter whose paintings no longer exist. They destroyed themselves because of the materials he used, leaving nothing but the memory of their creative moments.

Rabo explains why even before his work was lost, he couldn’t compare to the real masters of Abstract Expressionism.  He failed to paint time in motion: “life, by definition, is never still,” he tells us. “Where is it going? From birth to death with no stops on the way.” He calls it a “miracle…which was achieved by the best of the Abstract Expressionists,” that for their work to be great, “birth and death are always there.” The moment accounts for its own changing place in time.

There’s solace in knowing that to Abstract Expressionists, the creative moment is the art.  For better or worse, time travels, and we have no choice but to go with it or risk missing new moments.

But if we spend our moments in a way that respects their quick passing–creating something, collecting cards– that is, if the thing you’re doing qualifies as art in and of its active self, you can remember that art when you look back, stoneware vase or abandoned playing card in hand. The magic is in the moment, and the moment moves.

Joel: “So Don, when do you know when to stop working on a piece?”

Don: “When someone hits me over the head with a baseball bat.”

Don Reitz, Abstract Expressionist in Clay, quoted during “Potters As Sculptors, Sculptors as Potters: NCECA Pre-Conference Symposium” Flagstaff, AZ, 2009.

FROM THE BASEMENT: Exhibition by Ceramic Artists of the Paramount Arts Center

Ken, Brady and I share studio space in the basement of the Paramount Arts Center, in downtown Saint Cloud, MN.  We installed a pottery and sculpture exhibition in the gallery space right across from our studios.  Hope to see you at the closing reception June 29th!

                                   

          

Also, heres some awesome music that inspired the show, the title and a bit of the artwork.  Thanks Radiohead for putting some of your best stuff out in the world for free!

 

ROCK! Music that makes the wheel go round.

Rock is definitely my favorite type of music to throw to.  After a few hours of Red Hot Chili Peppers I just feel like I made more pottery than if I had been bobbing my head to Mr. Sunshine on my Shoulders, John Denver.  I do think mellow music can be great for detail work or anything tedious.  For example, when I mix and test new glazes I like some old Coldplay, like High Speed.  Here’s an image from a bunch of testing that I did during my senior thesis in Spring, 2010 on the Nuka glaze:

I’ve never been a fan of tedious work that takes a lot of concentration.  I’ve made tedious work even since freshman year in college, but I like to work fast.  I made this one for a cardboard project in our Intro to 3D Design class.  It was partly the result of a whole lot of Smashing Pumpkins.

    

In Spring 2009, I went to Northern Arizona University to see 6 artists at a 2 day workshop. Don Reitz really stood out in my head because of his style of working and because his sculptures seemed really fresh.  His process reminded me of drippy paintings by Jackson Pollock.  This is my favorite way to make artwork: fast and direct.  With Abstract Expressionism, you go with the flow and surrender to the process.

Don-Reitz-Throwing-3-Images-Joel-Cherrico-Pottery-Abstract-Expressionism-in-Clay-Flagstaff-AZ

For me, the Red Hot Chili Peppers embody this artwork in their music.  Anthony Kiedis belts out catchy vocals and lyrics hidden in random sentences that would be grammatical nightmares.   Flea’s bass lines have a huge presence in every song, and they meshed perfectly with John Frusciante’s melodies and Chad Smith’s loud, fast beats- good luck finding a drummer that hits his drums harder. The band writes each song from jamming- just rockin out together and letting the music flow.  With Frusciante now pursuing his solo career, he trained in little Josh Klinghoffer to live up to his legacy.  After releasing their new single I’d agree with Rolling Stone that their “juicy funk-pop groove” isn’t going anywhere.  I have a feeling I’ll still be throwing pottery and sculpture to the Chili Peppers for decades to come, hopefully with the same energy embodied by their music, Abstract Expressionists and my Mindscape sculptures.

Take it from Dave Grohl, drummer of Them Crooked Vultures and lead singer/guitarist of Foo Fighers.  He rocks with the best of them and knows there are few things in this world that can get you going like a heavy rock song.  Well, maybe a FRESH POT!!