Barbara Rachko's Blog, page 131

Pearls from artists* # 96

 

Diane Arbus Revelations

* an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to a rtists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.

My final day at the magic shop [in Disneyland, where he worked as a teenager], I stood behind the counter where I had pitched Svengali decks and the Incredible Shrinking Die, and I felt an emotional contradiction: nostalgia for the present. Somehow, even though I had stopped working only minutes earlier, my future fondness for the store was clear, and I experienced a sadness like that of looking at a photo of an old, favorite pooch. It was dusk by the time I left the shop, and I was redirected by a security guard who explained that a photographer was taking a picture and would I please use the side exit.

I did, and saw a small, thin woman with hacked brown hair aim her large-format camera directly at the dramatically lit castle, where white swans floated in the moat underneath the functioning drawbridge. Almost forty years later, when I was in my early fifties, I purchased that photo as a collectible, and it still hangs in my house. The photographer, it turned out, was Diane Arbus. I try to square the photo’s breathtaking romantic image with the rest of her extreme subject matter, and I assume she saw this facsimile of a castle as though it were a kitsch roadside statue of Paul Bunyan. Or perhaps she saw it as I did: beautiful.

Quoted by A.D. Coleman in Photocritical, May 28, 2014, from Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life by Steve Martin

Comments are welcome! 

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Q: How do you experience art in New York?

 

 

Lower Manhattan

 

A:  As a New York artist I am very fortunate to live in a city with a vibrant, exciting cultural scene.  Simply put, art is in the air here and I take inspiration from everything I see and experience:  painting, photography, sculpture, installation, performance art, public art, dance, theater, film, opera, jazz, etc.  This city itself is an endlessly fascinating place.  Visually it is always thrilling!  I never know what I am going to see – good and bad – whenever I leave my apartment.  

I have been living here since April 1997.  The city provides a heady mix to ponder and this mix mysteriously enriches, influences, and somehow finds its way into the work.  I have been an artist for nearly thirty years and I continue to be intrigued with watching the intricacies of how my creative process evolves and grows.    

Comments are welcome!                

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Pearls from artists* # 95

Negombo, Sri Lanka

* an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to a rtists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.

Not enough people believe in the cracks in the universe that you have to wiggle into to get anything new established.  There are cracks – places that are not filled in that need to be filled in, so the edifice doesn’t crumble.  And if you believe in the arts passionately, they fit into those cracks, because without those connective tissues of understanding all we are are people who go to war every so often.   

Zelda Fichandler in Conversations with Anne:  Twenty-four Interviews

Comments are welcome!

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Q: What’s on the easel today?

Work in progress

A:  I am putting finishing touches on “Incognito.”

Comments are welcome!

Filed under: Art Works in Progress, Black Paintings, Creative Process, Inspiration, Mexico, New York, NY, Pastel Painting, Photography, Studio, Working methods Tagged: "Incognito", finishing touches, work in progress

Pearls from artists* # 94

Working on “False Friends” Photo: Diana Feit

* an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to a rtists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.

A work of art which inspires us comes from no quibbling or uncertain man.  It is the manifest of a very positive nature in great enjoyment, and at the very moment the work was done.

It is not enough to have thought great things before doing the work.  The brush stroke at the moment of contact carries inevitably the exact state of being of the artist at that exact moment into the work, and there it is, to be seen and read by those who can read such signs, and to be read later by the artist himself, with perhaps some surprise, as a revelation of himself.

For an artist to be interesting to us he must be interesting to himself.  He must have been capable of intense feeling, and capable of profound contemplation.

He who has contemplated has met with himself, is in a state to see into the realities beyond the surfaces of his subject.  Nature reveals to him, and, seeing and feeling intensely, he paints, and whether he wills it or not each brush stroke is an exact record of such as he was at the exact moment the stroke was made.

The Art Spirit by Robert Henri

Comments are welcome!

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Q: How long have you been working in your current studio?

Barbara in her studio; Photo: Elliott Jones

A:  I have been in my West 29th Street space for seventeen years, but from the beginning, in the mid-1980’s, I had a studio.  My first one was in the spare bedroom of the Alexandria, Virginia, house that I shared with Bryan and that I still own.  For about three years in the 1990s I had a studio on the third floor of the Torpedo Factory Art Center, a building in Alexandria that is open to the public.  People come in, watch artists work, and occasionally buy a piece of art. 

In April 997 an opportunity to move to New York arose and I didn’t look back. By then I was showing in a good 57th Street gallery, Brewster Arts Ltd. (the gallery focused exclusively on Latin American artists; I was thrilled with the company I was in; the only fellow non-Latina represented by owner, Mia Kim, was Leonora Carrington), and I had managed to find a New York agent, Leah Poller, with whom to collaborate.  I looked at only one other space before finding my West 29th Street studio.  An old friend of Bryan’s from Cal Tech rented the space next door and he had told us it was available.  Initially the studio was a sublet.  The lease-holder was a painter headed to northern California to work temporarily for George Lucas at the Lucas Ranch.   After several years she decided to stay so I was able to take over the lease.  

My studio continues to be an oasis in a chaotic city, a place to make art, to read, and to think.  I love to walk in the door every morning and always feel more calm the moment I arrive.  It’s my absolute favorite place in New York!     

Comments are welcome!

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Pearls from artists* # 93

Chalcatzingo (Mexico)

* an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to a rtists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.

The times in between things are always very hard for me, and there have been times when I felt that I’d never have an idea again, or that I’ve explored everything that I possibly can because as the years go on you have the backpack of your history.  How do I find something new to work with?  I read a beautiful book by Mable Dodge Luhan, who lived in New Mexico and started Ghost Ranch in the 1920s.  She married a Native American, Tony Luhan, who lived in the Taos pueblo.  She said that she noticed in the pueblo that in the winter everybody had very soft moccasins and they tiptoed around.  They hardly talked at all and it was very, very quiet.  She asked why they did that, and they said, “Mother Earth needs to rest.  We are making it so that Mother Earth can rest so that in spring she can come forth.”  I felt that that was so comforting; to actually nurture those times where it seems so empty, to have faith that something will happen if you savor those times, not try to push against them or fight them.    

Meredith Monk quoted in Conversations with Anne:  Twenty-four Interviews, by Anne Bogart

Comments are welcome!

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Q: Why do people need art in their daily lives?

 

With Ida Bagus Anom, Mas, Bali; Photo: Donna Tang

A:  That is for each person to decide, but as someone who devotes every waking moment to my work and to becoming a better artist, I cannot imagine my life without art.  

I will tell you a little about what art has done for me.  In my younger days boredom was a strong motivator.  I left the active duty Navy out of boredom.  I couldn’t bear not being intellectually challenged (most of my jobs consisted of paper-pushing), not using my flying skills (at 27 I was a licensed commercial pilot and Boeing-727 flight engineer), and not developing my artistic talents.  In what surely must be a first, the Navy turned me into a hard-working and disciplined artist.  And once I left the Navy there was no plan B.  There was no time to waste.  It was “full speed ahead.” 

Art is a calling.  You do not need to be told this if you are among those who are called.  It’s all about “the work,” that all-consuming focus of an artist’s life.  If a particular activity doesn’t seem likely to make me a better artist, I tend to avoid it.  I work hard to nourish and protect my  gifts.  As artists we invent our own tasks, learn whatever we need in order to progress, and complete projects in our own time.  It is life lived at its freest. 

My art-making has led me to fascinating places:  Mexico, Guatemala, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, France, England, Italy, Bali, Java, Sri Lanka, and more; and to in-depth studies of intriguing subjects:  drawing, color, composition, art and art history, the art business, film and film history, photography, mythology, literature, music, jazz and jazz history, and archaeology, particularly that of ancient Mesoamerica (Olmec, Zapotec, Mixtec, Aztec, Maya, etc.).  And this rich mixture continually grows!  For anyone wanting to spend their time on earth learning and meeting new challenges, there is no better life! 

Comments are welcome!

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Pearls from artists* # 92

 

Untitled iPad photo

* an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to a rtists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.

To avoid disappointment in art, one mustn’t treat it as a career.  Despite whatever great artistic sense and talent a man might possess, he ought to seek money and power elsewhere to avoid forsaking his art when he fails to receive proper compensation for his gifts and efforts.

My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk

Comments are welcome!   

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Q: How would you define art?

Barbara’s studio

A:  At its core all art is communication.  I personally believe that without the component of communication, there is no art.  The expression of human creative skill and imagination becomes art when it is appreciated for its beauty, complexity, emotional power, evocativeness, etc.  A sympathetic and understanding audience is essential.   

Why might artists fail to communicate?  Perhaps they haven’t mastered their medium sufficiently to elicit a reaction from the viewer.  Perhaps the viewer lacks the necessary artistic, cultural, or intellectual background to understand and appreciate what the artist is communicating.  Maybe the viewer is distracted or preoccupied and not looking or thinking deeply enough.  There are many reasons.

Comments are welcome!

 

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