What does "place" mean for artists?

It's been a busy few weeks here.  Last week I had the great fun of being interviewed by Kathi Grupp for Handweavers Guild of America's (HGA) wonderful Textiles & Tea online program.  If you missed the live program, you can catch the recording on Facebook here and on YouTube here.  My deepest thanks to all who attended live, asked great questions and wrote to me afterward with such kind words!  And thanks to Kathi for making it such a fun experience.

For several years now, Textiles & Tea has been one of the virtual places where we find community.  For many of us, Facebook has also been such a place.  But heads up:  I will be deactivating my Facebook account in the next few days.  You can still find me on Instagram @mollyelkind.  You can go to my website's front page and scroll all the way to the bottom to be added to my newsletter mailing list where it says Join email list--probably your best bet for keeping up with my workshops and other doings.  And of course you know to look for my blog posts here, usually the second week of the month.

On to more fun places. .  .The week before last we were in Big Bend National Park, on the Rio Grande's "big bend" along the border with Mexico. What a stunning place!  It's remote and wild and well worth the drive to get there.*  Even in January the colors and textures of the desert are stunning. I fell in love with the rose and fuchsia-tinted prickly pears (sadly, the color seems to be a response to cold and/or drought).  I saw and heard some birds that were new to me--yay! And I got close-up looks at roadrunners, who act like city pigeons begging for handouts in a place with so many visitors!

Santa Elena Canyon and the Rio Grande.  Mexico on the left, US on the right.

Balanced Rock

Prickly pears in their winter colors.

 

We humans are tiny in this landscape.

Me, scaring Sam half to death at The Window in the Chisos Basin.  Not as close to the edge as I look!

Roadrunner, blending in almost perfectly to his habitat--but he can't hide those iridescent tail feathers!

The subject of place and its importance for us as artists arose in a local fiber artists' group I'm part of the other day.  I had always conceived of place in environmental terms, a reference to the natural environment of a specific location.  And indeed I returned from Big Bend with new inspiration for my work. 

Then last week I spent two days in Louisville for an event and exhibit honoring my late fibers professor Lida Gordon.  I especially wanted to go, both to see old friends and to see the exhibit of Lida's work.  She had been scrupulous about not showing it to us students much, as she didn't want to influence our own work.  It was a revelation to me to see how fearlessly she explored multiple media over the course of her career, and to trace the thread of fiber throughout.  Apologies for unavoidable reflections in some photos.

Lida Gordon, Untitled (plaited weaving), 1976. Silk.  14" x 10.5"

Lida Gordon, Synthesis Series #5 (netting, paint), 1997.  Mixed media.  14" x 20".  Lida undertook an oral history project in Vinalhaven, Maine in which she documented the work of people who hand-netted fishing nets.  She worked with netting herself in these pieces.

Lida Gordon, Trinity (3 black, red and orange oilstick drawings), 1991. Oil stick on paper.  29.5" x 9" each, framed together.  University of Louisville collection.

Lida Gordon.  Top:  Blue Intercession (outlined vessel form) 1999.  Machine embroidery.                Bottom:  Tangential Forms (black outlined jar on white table), 2000.  Machine embroidery. 18" x 15". These pieces were inspired by Lida's deep study of Cycladic vessel forms and were typical of the work she did at the time I studied with her. 

Lida Gordon, Untitled (cast yarn balls, 5 pcs.), 2012.  Bronze.  3" dia., installation size variable

Lida Gordon, Square Knot #1 (rope drawn monotype), f. 2006. Relief print. 21" x 4", 29" x 11.5"

After viewing the exhibit, I said "She was fearless!"  She ranged widely across media, testing how a theme she was investigating could be expressed in fiber, in drawings and prints, in bronze!  In my own practice I have tended to start with the medium or technique (tapestry, collage) and then explore how to develop it there.  Lida's versatility and fearlessness remind me that I--all of us in fact--can define ourselves not just as a weaver or even a fiber artist, but as an artist, period.  No one is putting up those barriers to the forms my work takes but me! 

Lida's colleague and friend in the U of L Art Department, John Begley, writes in the brochure accompanying the exhibit:  "Interestingly this make-over in different materials often transforms the original focus and meaning into new metaphors. . .  [It]becomes a "fascinating way for an artist to probe and question their own work as well as give the viewer a way into forming their own thoughts and meaning about images that are somewhat abstract and mysterious."  

In an interview in 1979, Lida said that "the attractiveness of the [fiber] material almost becomes a problem, in that it needs to be transformed into something beyond the material, something that re-orders meaning." (Jan Arnow, "Lida Gordon, an interview", Fiberarts vol. 6, no. 2 mar/Apr 1979, pp. 50-53).  I recall that Lida was always pushing us students to press beyond technique toward concept and meaning; technique was secondary.   The primacy of concept is apparent in Lida's works in this exhibit. How is the meaning and impact of a ball of yarn transformed when it is rendered in bronze?  What about netting, when it is painted and layered?  Knots in rope. . . printed?

While I was in Louisville it struck me anew that place as a human landscape is also hugely influential.  The particular combination of people at U of L and in Louisville in the late 1990s/early 2000s proved to be immensely fruitful for me.  Who knows if I would ever have ended up on the path I did had I not been in that place at that time? 

What are your own significant places--natural landscapes, virtual spaces,  and human landscapes?  How do they influence your art?  Let us know in the comments!

* If you want to stay in the lodge in the heart of the park, go soon!  At the end of April the central Chisos Basin area of the park will close for two years as the lodge is torn down (it needs to be) and rebuilt.  Other areas of the park will be accessible, but not the central and highly scenic part.