An0An V2/2 2016

Here is the newest issue of An0An with guest contributor Michael Shannon Moore. Ready to preview and purchase. Get 25% off through May 6th with this code at checkout: MYBOOKSALE25
 
   
   
 

An0An-Volume 2/Issue 2-2016

 

By Joan Anderson

An0An

Here I am, starting again. Time to announce AnoAn Volume 2/Issue 1 
with guest contributor Mary Wright. It is available for preview and purchase here. Have a look!

Painting Patterns

For far-flung friends who want to keep up with the current class Painting Patterns, here is a sketch of the trajectory the class is taking. Using the "hunter-gatherer" style of research as an ignition point for painting inquiry, here's a way to start:

I saw this illustration in Archibald Christie's Pattern Design. The second border from the left caught my eye. I changed the orientation and on the first try (on the bottom below), I failed to see nuances; second try (on top below) was closer:

(Written text is quoted from Christie.)

As I go along in Christie, I find other examples of this same pattern (sketched below) – a carved stone capital from Assyria, a vase from Glastonbury – then it reminds me of something I've seen before, a border design from Zia Pueblo (painted in red ochre below):

By drawing it, I discover the Zia border design is actually a picture of the space around the Greek pattern! And vice versa.

The first instructions – curiosity, that briefest moment of Oh!, and drawing. Consider that mistakes in drawing are evidence of aesthetic intelligence. Drawing and mistakes we make help us see better.

We're using gouache (opaque watercolor) in class for painting sketched designs in color; later we'll switch to acrylic for larger paintings inspired by our research.

back

Took a detour and now I'm back for a while:
What's been going on? Studying French, sewing inspired by Natalie Chanin, windfall dyeing inspired by India Flint (and here), painting very small, see Index Card Paintings, working with leather, and making a series called "Raiment Sauvage:"

a skirt, tiny, maybe 9 inches

Close Encounters

Above are more flat-tops that I painted while at Mountain Water earlier this week.

Last night we rented Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the Spielberg classic in which Devil's Tower features prominently, which is why Samagra recommended I see it. The film came out in 1977, and, weirdly, I was in Wyoming that fall, not to visit Devil's Tower, had done that sometime in the 60s, but on a long fishing trip with parents and future husband. A remake of Close Encounters today would be so simple with iPhones – no banks of computers, no paper maps, no movie cameras, no instamatic film cameras, no dial-up phones, no flashlights (free app for that, too). In the movie, François Truffaut's character conjectures that all the people trying to get to Devil's Tower were "invited." Where do you go from a flat-top mountain? Apparently, into space. Isn't that what I said about the "ok plateau" theory too? My future, space…

More flat-tops

Somehow I missed seeing Close Encounters of the Third Kind way back in 1977. Friend, Samagra, tells me a flat-topped mountain features prominently in it. Will it make sense of this series of paintings? It's on the list to see. During the Aesthetic Intoxication painting weekend I added 12 more flat-tops to the series.

OK plateau

Mountain portraits, mostly with flat tops and cold weather. Jenni Lord: are these related to Joshua Foer and the OK plateau? Interesting. If so, beyond this plateau: space.

Return

Mountains, flat-topped and cold. Snow has come, finally. To open the season of return, the Festival of Iron.

Spirit

Love this jet-window photo: an offering, running river spirit? Flight from Baltimore to Boston, somewhere around Long Island, I think.

Painting weekend

A November 11th-13th workshop coming up, 6 spaces left. A fine immersion in painting. Here in Boulder CO. See details and registration form at my website.

Paint

Detail of a JS Sargent painting, society portrait, a polka dot dress… Lush, beautiful, fakery of painting, gotta love it.

From the sky

Flight to Boston, earlier drawing field patterns, then weather along a river with power plants, power plants creating their own kind of weather, clouds drifting downwind. The serpentine curves of rivers flow over the ground, so many as we fly east; from the air, patterns of flow not the real sense of moving water, but the pattern made by moving water. Just beautiful. The visible mythology of snakes & water.

Sewing

Happened upon Alabama Chanin again and her dedication to hand sewing. So, sewing again, by hand, making homely little bags for things – this one for a silver compote, a family piece. The bag is made of silver cloth that keeps tarnish at bay. I found a reference to Judith B Montano's Elegant Stitches at the AC site. Now this is a fabulous reference for decorative stitches! Trying out different ones to embellish these projects, designing & learning as I go. To the tunes of Laura Marling…

Enchiridion

A couple of pages from the ENKHEIRIDION I started in the summer. (I like the Greek spelling with the "k" and "ei".) The class ended this week, and most of us feel the process just got started. It's a curious one – writing one's own painting manual. I'm planning to keep at it, surprising connections crop up; it helps to work on it with others as their insights shed light on what we're blind to on our own.

Autumn equinox

OOPS! Forgot to post these on the Fall Equinox. One of two days you can balance eggs on end, most commonly done on the Spring Equinox and its association with eggs (Easter Bunny) and fertility. Here is the phenomenon demonstrated on September 23rd this year. Can it be done on other days? Never tried it.

Now available!

The VECTOR book, catalog of the spring 2011 show at Naropa University's Nalanda Gallery, is published & available for purchase from blurb. View some sample pages below. Thanks to my sister "vectorinis" Diane Fekete, Jen Miller, Beth Sautins, Emily Utz, and Cathy Zimmerman, aka +5. Marvelous experience working together. Finding I really like book design, ha!

VECTOR: Spirit Inventions by Joan Anderson +5 | Make Your Own Book

New bike

I visit this ditch almost every morning. Along its edge, earlier in the summer before the mower came, the chicory and alfalfa and milkweed were in spectacular bloom and fragrant. This is wild mountain water & even in a cement channel retains its own poetry. I coast along the edge and stop to gaze where it takes an abrupt turn north before it arrives at two gates that split it and send it under a highway and on to separate destinations.