Small gift works

More frequently in the past than nowadays, I would make small works of art as gifts for people -- close friends and family. Most of the time these gifts served the same purpose as my card-making does, i.e., to figure out something prior to a series of works or as a continuation, on a small scale of an idea that is current.

Recently my mother returned a small piece I had given to her in the 1980s as she was running out of storage space. I was doing a lot of work based on dreams and made several gifts in this series, where I painted on glass and painted on the reverse side so that the image would be visible in a mirror behind the glass. The glass and mirror components would be held together within a colourful box frame, like so:

My "Grey Box" find of last year revealed the plans for several of these works.

I am pretty positive the one given to my Mum & Dad was the first.

Here is a detail of the piece above, in which the reflected image of the boat and star are apparent.

I know I made several in this series but cannot remember who the recipients were! The following 3 plan drawings may or may not have been realised as small works -- I don't actually remember. I was planning to paint the frames blue (for water) but obviously changed my mind (at least with the piece that had belonged to my parents).

 

Also in the mid-late 80s I was doing a lot of symbolic figure drawing. I am sure I planned to frame this piece, but I don't think I had planned to have a mirror behind it.

I must have had a collection of glass panels, as I painted this figure on the same size glass as the mirror piece above. I scratched into the paint from the reverse side. 

IMMA - Nick Miller & Edward Maguire Archive

 On Saturday I was at IMMA to have another look at a few of the shows there. There were three shows featured in the Garden Galleries, but I followed my daughter to the top floor to the Nick Miller & Edward Maguire Archive exhibition. There was jazz playing in the final room of the show (the sound had drawn my daughter to it), so we started at that and went backwards through the rooms.

While it's always great to see a painting show, as a painter I am always even more interested in the artist's tools, studio environment and method of working. So this final room was for me the best way to begin looking at Miller's reponse to Maguire's work.

There was even a key to the objects from the archive.

It was interesting to see the wizard costume hanging on the wall and later see it in a portrait. Theoretically one would see the painting first and then the costume, if one had followed the room chronology, but I think it works in either direction.

 Both Nick Miller and Edward Maguire are (and were, respectively) portrait painters -- Miller's work very expressionist and loose, and Maguire's almost hyper-real and controlled. In Edward Maguire's portrait of Paul Durcan (I think from the late 1970s) I could easily recognise the poet whom I had had the pleasure of hearing speak and read on several occasions in the 1980s.

I love Miller's portrait painting style. This is obviously a more recent portrait of Durcan; at least his aging wasn't a complete shock to me as I had already been made aware of the passage of time (with regard to someone else) when I saw Durcan more recently in a documentary about the Edward Maguire archive.

At IMMA, there was a display vitrine near Maguire's portrait of Anthony Cronin that contained the objects (ancient iron, pot & plate) that are included in the portrait. The exhibition was a joy -- seeing the studio artefacts in their own space, props displayed alongside paintings, jazz music (Bill Evans) permeating the space and the work of a completely different artist displayed in respectful response to Maguire's work.  I really enjoyed this exhibition of art and artefact.

fresh ginger tea mix

As part of a collaboration project in my college course I somehow got appointed "hospitality manager" (among a number of other things). Last week people involved with Grizedale Artist Residency in the UK were at IMMA (Irish Museum of Modern Art) and we hosted them in the Statecraft project spaces, letting them know about our project and giving them some mint-lemon-honey-ginger herbal tea as refreshment. It was a little bit hairy grating fresh ginger on site, so at the weekend I decided to do a bit of advance prep work for the hospitality station. I found out there is less wastage if ginger is peeled with a spoon!

I grated the ginger by machine. But the machine always leaves some end lumps when grating.

So I switched to the chopper blades and added a bit of honey.

This is a standard honey jar, almost half full with the ginger honey mix. I brought it in to class at IMMA and made some tea. Per cup I used about a third of a tsp, a little bit of lemon juice and a mint leaf. I didn't add extra honey, as I don't like things too sweet. The tea was just right!

Collage Cards 2

I have been trying to process everything from the Grey Box find of last year, and make some sense of all the various items found in it. There were so many miscellaneous sketches and cards - the cards often acting like sketches. Sometimes the card came first - as in this abstract xmas card from 1982 (I think). For a series of individual cards I painstakingly attached tiny strips of gold tape and silver paper ovals (that for me were a development from my stem-less tulip paintings); the colour was added with wax crayon and burnished. I made about 30 of them of them I think, taking care of my xmas card list...

Continuing the theme from the xmas cards, I created small works in the following year on wood blocks that I had readily available (off cuts from various projects). As I gave a number of them away as gifts a few small pieces survive, along with this piece that I kept for myself. I did a couple of larger paintings on sheets of plywood while at university, but these are no longer in existence.

From 1983 (and for several years) I had many watery dreams of figures and dolphins and this imagery made its way into many drawings and paintings. Though undated, I think this oilstick drawing dates from 1983 or 1984 and is probably one of the earliest appearances of the gold tumbling figures in the water.

I had been on holiday in Ireland in 1987, visiting my parents, and became enamoured by watching individual rainclouds in the distance over the sea and images of these clouds made their way into my watery paintings, like this one "Meeting", oil on canvas.

In 1988 I used the image of the gold figure tumbling above the water as a design on a St. Patrick's Day card for my new boyfriend (now my husband). I found stripey paper to use as gold rain and I added the green stars as a reference to a line in William Carlos Williams poem "Our Stars Come from Ireland". 

As well as making an appearance with other elements in numerous paintings and drawings, the rainclouds also appeared in their own right on a birthday card for my Dad in 1989.

The rain became a little more menacing I guess in this postcard from 1989.

I moved to Ireland in 1988 and started work on a completely new body of work as I had left all my dream paintings in Toronto. This new work consisted of a large group of figurative drawings where I covered the paper in graphite and used an eraser to draw. Later works in this series got more colourful as I drew with large oilsticks. This body of work became my first solo show, at Temple Bar Galley & Studios, Dublin in 1989. 

In February 1989 I used the theme in a Valentine postcard sent to my boyfriend in Toronto.

I have always loved the stone walls and stonework ruins found everywhere in Ireland, totally different architecture than I had grown up with in Canada. I was back in Toronto when I sent this Mother's Day card to my Mum in Ireland in 1990.

At the time, although I was back in Canada, I started work on a series of paintings based on windows from ruins which were part of my life in Ireland. I exhibited a number of these paintings in a group show at Cedar Ridge Creative Centre in Scarborough in 1992. I brought the series with me to Ireland when I returned in 1993, completed more in the series and started a tour of the large group under the exhibition title "My Tower of Strength". The exhibition opened at Siamsa Tire arts centre in Tralee, Co. Kerry and its last stop was The Courthouse Arts Centre in Tinahely, Co. Wicklow in 1998 taking in a number of galleries in between. This painting, "The Holly & the Oak", is acrylic on canvas, 122 cm x 91.5 cm (4' x 3'), 1992 is in the collection of the Office of Public Works, Ireland. The window is structurally based on Raheenacluig - the church of the little bell - a ruin on the side of Bray Head, in the town where I live.

Paper doll cut-outs!

Before I was old enough to go to school, I remember my Mum making me paper doll cut-outs to play with. Her little drawings were formulaic and I remember how she would start with 3 incomplete heart shapes which would eventually turn into a hairline, bathing suit top line and then a bathing suit bottom line (where the legs joined the torso). The paper doll had points for hands and feet and the legs were joined. But I was fascinated by how the end product was always a paper doll that she would cut out and then put under semi-transparent writing paper in order to trace different outfits over the figure, which could then be cut out. I loved these cut-outs and she only stopped making them for me when I was about 7 -- she told me I could draw better than her and could now make my own. Perhaps my Mum was just too busy (I am from a family of 10 kids, and I have 2 younger siblings) but I was quite confident also that I could make my own paper dolls. 

I most certainly did make my own over the years, but I also enjoyed ready made cut outs. Recently I was telling someone about my Ginny Tiu cut outs which I remember as my first store bought cut outs. I loved Ginny Tiu, a child piano prodigy from Hong Kong who made regular appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show in the 1960s.

 At Xmas time in the 1960s one of my favourite surprise gifts was a miscellaneous box labelled "Time for Play" and it had a big clock on it. The contents included various games, puzzles and learning cards (such as how to tie your laces, how to tell time) but I remember more than once the box included Midge cut outs. Midge was Barbie's best friend, or at least she was in the 1960s!

One of my sisters and I made cut outs out of just about anything. We always looked forward to when the catalogues (for major dept stores in Toronto -- Eaton's and Simpson's) went out of date because then my Mum gave them to us to do with as we would. We would spend ages in our room cutting up the catalogues -- not only did we have a great population variety, but we could build flat dream houses. [With store bought paper dolls we always removed any tabs as we played with cut outs horizontally not vertically -- i.e., flat on the floor.]

I remember one time my sister and I cut up another sister's Rupert books. We actually didn't think she would mind, as we only cut out the characters that appeared in the page corners where you turned the page, Even though all the print for the stories was completely intact, we were still in big trouble...

So a few months ago I re-discovered what I now refer to as the "Grey Box". I was looking for some papers and opened a file box to be surprised that it was full of sketches, drawings and doodles which had somehow escaped the numerous purges and house moves I have made over the past almost 35 years. I was especially surprised to find two sets of cut outs that I made when I was around 17, occupying myself while I was sick in bed.

This young girl must have been my alter-ego as all the clothes are copies of the clothes I owned, except the green table-cloth dress which is based on a party dress belonging to one of my sisters. I say "alter-ego" because I considered the pose elegant while I thought I was clumsy and the figure is a blonde while I had dark brown curly hair...

These "medieval" cut outs were made around the same time. I think I was sick for a week (don't remember what was wrong with me!). I gave everyone names from Arthurian legend so Gorlois, Duke of Cornwall was the red haired man in green and blue, while the young fellow in the brown laced "leather" with puffy yellow sleeves and grey-green cape I named as Ambrosius (for Merlin's father according to writer Mary Stewart anyway!). I don't think I was naming people accurately for the legends, just the general character and names that I liked. I know at least several were just my imagination.

A few years ago there was a big Bowie "fashion" exhibition in the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. Although I didn't get there myself, my cousin in London did, and knowing how I was both a Bowie and a cut out fan sent me this memento.

Collage Cards

With Valentine's Day just a few days after my wedding anniversary, my husband  & I celebrate the days together. As artists, both of us have been making cards for years. Sometimes I go with the simple and obvious -- like this year's card of hearts:

Whereas last year, at this time, I was working on my large painting, Fractured City, so the cityscape / sunrise mostifs kept appearing in my collage cards.

Before xmas I had been working on some video footage of people jumping and skipping, for my current work research. So the white tights and black shoes of one of my niece subjects appeared in a few cards (several family birthdays around that time).

 Here are several collage cards from last year that again utilised the cityscape / sunrise imagery. I have a box of various colours and types of paper that I use for my ripped-paper collages. I am always saving or finding bits of paper that I think are interesting. The paper for the background "sunrise" in this birthday card was a pre-painted silver-leaf square on thin rice paper; I bought a stack of this paper in Toronto's Chinatown nearly 20 years ago for $1! The "lit window" squares are ripped from green tissue saved from a xmas cracker party hat. I think both the dark blue and purple might also be tissue from party hats too.

At Easter time last year I was being more literal with my portrayal of the sun as circular -- it made me think of an egg yolk. The sky is again that Chinese paper, but an "error" as it was not prepainted. The purple stripey paper and the purple "windows" are from bits of pseudo stained glass craft paper, leftovers from my daughter's childhood supplies. They are a tough paper and I like ripping them to create a natural white ripped edge.

Chinese New Year

Kung hei fat choi! We happily celebrate Chinese New Year every year. We used to live near Chinatown in Toronto so it was always a big deal in our neighbourhood. As usual, it is a family celebration with my Mum joining us. I always make a souvenir menu for her and this year, since our printer is out of commission, it was done by hand. I got a box of linoleum for xmas as I wanted to do some lino printing, and I have been sharing them. For this occasion, Year of the Fire Monkey, my husband (James Hayes) created an image based on a "netsuke" monkey carving and kindly made a print for me to use on the menu card cover.

We celebrated a few days early, as Saturday was more convenient for us! Dinner was delicious! By the way, "mei wei" means "delicious" in Chinese. "Gift tea" is Jasmine tea which is tied in the shape of a flower and made in a glass teapot so that you can watch the "flower" bloom as it is steeping. Unfortunately I did not take a picture of this.

I  tried my hand at some calligraphy to include the character for monkey with the card (opposite the menu).