Barbara Rachko's Blog, page 132
May 17, 2014
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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May 14, 2014
Pearls from artists* # 91
Mexico City
* 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.
I’m struggling a lot financially, struggling a lot to keep my group going, struggling to keep going in every way, but I feel like I try so hard because every time that I’m able to go to a college or to be with young people they need to know that there is this “anything is possible” idea. They need to at least see that. I intend to continue nevertheless. Somehow that seems very important right now. It isn’t that you go to school just to find out everything you need to get a job or something. We never thought of what we did as a job. We thought of it as our work, our life. Then there was a certain point, I think, in the eighties where people thought of their identity as this and then what you did was a job. There was a separation between the two things.
I pray that now there will be some loosening and we’ll feel this sense of, just as you said so beautifully, space and breath. No one’s breathing. That’s why I feel that doing art is so important. It makes you dig in your heels even more. It’s a life-and-death kind of thing. What is the other alternative? The other alternative is that you’re living in a culture that’s basically trying to distract you from the moment. It’s trying to distract you from your life. It’s trying to distract you from who you are, and it’s trying to numb you, and it’s trying to make you buy things. Now, I don’t really think that that’s what life is about. I’m excited because now I have this real sense that there’s this counterculture, you could say, or counter-impulse. it’s not for-and-against, but there is a kind of dialectic where there’s a kind of resistance you can actually hit against, or at least address in one way or the other.
Meredith Monk quoted in Conversations with Anne, by Anne Bogart
Comments are welcome!
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May 10, 2014
Q: What’s on the easel today?
“Blind Faith,” soft pastel on sandpaper, 38″ x 58″
A: I am putting finishing touches on a pastel-on-sandpaper painting called “Blind Faith.” Comments are welcome!
Filed under: An Artist's Life, Art Works in Progress, Creative Process, Mexico, New York, NY, Pastel Painting, Photography, Studio, Working methods Tagged: "Blind Faith", easel, finishing touches, pastel-on-sandpaper painting, today, work in progress
May 7, 2014
Pearls from artists* # 90
Walking on Spiral Jetty in the Great Salt Lake
* 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.
While it is not true that only artists understand art, for there are in every generation some people who not only understand it but also enhance its reach by appreciation, there is a freemasonry among us. We stand shoulder to shoulder, generation to generation.
Anne Truitt in Turn: The Journal of an Artist
Comments are welcome!
Filed under: An Artist's Life, Art in general, Inspiration, Pearls from Artists, Photography, Quotes, Travel Tagged: "Turn: The Journal of an Artist", Anne Truitt, appreciation, art, artists, enhance, freemasonry, generation, Great Salt Lake, reach, shoulder, Spiral Jetty, true, understand, walking
May 3, 2014
Q: Are there any final photographs you would like to share from your Mexico trip?
Museo Nacional de Antropoligia, Mexico City
Museo Nacional de Antropoligia, Mexico City
Teotihuacan
Teotihuacan
Mexico City
Museo Templo Mayor, Mexico City
Mexico City
Mexico City
Comments are welcome!
Filed under: An Artist's Life, Art in general, Inspiration, Mexico, Photography, Travel Tagged: final, Mexico, Mexico City, Museo Nacional de Antropologia, Museo Templo Mayor, photographs, Teotihuacan
April 30, 2014
Pearls from artists* # 89
Some of Barbara’s pastels
* an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
Dear Diary:
On a drifty Manhattan stroll
The kind that unearths magical treasures
I made a right turn off of Houston
Onto Bowery
And as it became Third Avenue
I came upon this old art store
That creaked hello
Its warped wooden shelves
Held new paints
A little dusty from the old building
But whose colors were deeper
Than I’d ever seen before
And at the back of the store
Up a narrow stairway
Was a tiny room
And behind a long table stood three people
(Probably artists)
Who could get me any paper I desired
Paper with designs
To collage with
Hot press, cold press
100 gram, 600 gram paper
To draw and paint on
Any kind of paper I’d ever want
Templates from heaven
And over my right shoulder
Was a tall window
Overlooking the glorious city
That has held this little room
Tenderly in its arms
All these years
And as I hugged
My rolled up package of paper
And went back downstairs
The old stairs seemed to gently whisper
“Come back soon,
We’ll keep each other alive”
And stepping outside
Third Avenue seemed more spacious
And I took a deep breath
As the world
Kaleidoscoped
With possibilities
Lovingly wrapped up
By three kind artists
At the top of the world.
“Art Supplies From Heaven,“ by Judith Ellen Sanders, published in “Metropolitan Diary,” NY Times, April 6, 2014
Comments are welcome!
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April 26, 2014
Q: Do you have more photographs to share from your trip to Mexico?
Museo de Antropología de Xalapa
Museo de Antropología de Xalapa
En route between Xalapa and Chalcatzingo
En route between Xalapa and Chalcatzingo
Chalcatzingo
Chalcatzingo
Comments are welcome!
Filed under: An Artist's Life, Art in general, Inspiration, Mexico, Photography, Travel Tagged: Chalcatzingo, en route, Mexico, Museo do Antropologia de Xalapa, photographs, trip
April 23, 2014
Pearls from artists* # 88
Teotihuacan
* 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 men like Ayers, it occurs to me, this temple is civilization. The masses, slaves, peasants, and foot soldiers exist in the cracks of its flagstones, ignorant even of their ignorance. Not so the great statesmen, scientists, artists, and most of all, the composers of the age, any age, who are civilization’s architects, masons, and priests. Ayers sees our role is to make civilization ever more resplendent. My employer’s profoundest, or only, wish is to create a minaret that inheritors of Progress a thousand years from now will point to and say, “Look, there is Vyvyan Ayers!”
How vulgar, this hankering after immortality, how vain, how false. Composers are merely scribblers of cave paintings. One writes music because winter is eternal and because, if one didn’t, the wolves and blizzards would be at one’s throat all the sooner.
David Mitchell in Cloud Atlas
Comments are welcome!
Filed under: An Artist's Life, Art in general, Creative Process, Inspiration, Mexico, Pearls from Artists, Photography, Quotes, Travel Tagged: age, architects, artists, blizzards, cave paintings, civilization, composers, cracks, create, David Mitchell. "Cloud Atlas", employer, eternal, exist, false, flagstones, foot soldiers, great, hankering, ignorance, ignorant, immortality, inheritors, masons, masses, minaret, peasants, point, priests, profoundest, progress, resplendent, role, scientists, scribblers, slaves, sooner, statesmen, temple, Teotihuacan, throat, vain, vulgar, winter, wish, wolves, writes
April 19, 2014
Q: Can we see more photographs from your Mexico trip?
San Lorenzo Tenochtitlan
Lake Catemaco
La Finca Hotel, Lake Catemaco
El Museo Tres Zapotes
At Tres Zapotes
Suit of armor, Santiago Tuxtla
Santiago Tuxtla
Popocatepetl
Comments are welcome!
Filed under: An Artist's Life, Art in general, Creative Process, Inspiration, Mexico, Photography, Travel Tagged: colonial, El Museo Tres Zapotes, La Finca Hotel, Lake Catemaco, Mexico, photographs, Popocatepetl, San Lorenzo Tenochtitlan, Santiago Tuxtla, suit of armor, Tres Zapotes, trip
April 17, 2014
Ignore Everybody: and 39 Other Keys to Creativity...Excerpt
Of course it was stupid. Of course it was not commercial. Of course it wasn't going to go anywhere. Of course it was a complete and utter waste of time. But in retrospect, it was this built-in futility that gave it its edge. Because it was the exact opposite of all the "Big Plans" my peers and I were used to making. It was so liberating not to have to think about all of that, for a change.
It was so liberating to be doing something that didn't have to have some sort of commercial angle, for a change.
It was so liberating to be doing something that didn't have to impress anybody, for a change.
It was so liberating to be free of ambition, for a change.
It was so liberating to have something that belonged just to me and no one else, for a change.
It was so liberating to feel complete sovereignty, for a change. To feel complete freedom, for a change. To have something that didn't require somebody else's money, or somebody else's approval, for a change.
And of course, it was then, and only then, that the outside world started paying attention.
The sovereignty you have over your work will inspire far more people than the actual content ever will. How your own sovereignty inspires other people to find their own sovereignty, their own sense of freedom and possibility, will give the work far more power than the work's objective merits ever will.
Your idea doesn't have to be big. It just has to be yours alone. The more the idea is yours alone, the more freedom you have to do something really amazing.
The more amazing, the more people will click with your idea. The more people click with your idea, the more this little thing of yours will snowball into a big thing.
That's what doodling on the backs of business cards taught me."
Hugh MacLeod in Ignore Everybody: and 39 Other Keys to Creativity
Comments are welcome!
* an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
www.barbararachkoscoloreddust.com
