A Second Cup?

I didn't quite get to to point of manipulating my new coffee paintings this week. I decided I needed to do some more to build up a stash of paintings to use in my collages. I feel I am only now getting the feel of working with the coffee, as it really does have a nature all its own.

I thought you would nevertheless enjoy seeing some of these new little paintings on their own, before they are placed into larger works. I have also purchased some coffee beans to use in the planned collages. When I say, "planned" I mean only that I plan to use these materials. I do not have any particular arrangement in mind as yet.

I painted from some vintage and fine art photos. The photographers I used included Edward S. Curtis and his famous photos of Native Americans, Imogen Cunningham and Edward Weston. I found that Imogen Cunningham is the easiest to "springboard" from, and the paintings I produced based on her photos seemed the most different from their original source. I doubt that one could pick out the original photo from my painting, as it has changed a lot in the process.

Same thing for Edward Weston, but his photo compositions are frequently so austere that one sees only a pose and hardly the personality of the photographer. So the painting seems actually more mine than the photo is his, due to the fact that my own touch at least inevitably has something of my own signature.

The Edward S. Curtis photos came through more as himself. I attribute the sepia tones of the coffee to this , as so many of his photos (all of the ones I have ever seen, in fact) are sepia in tone. The ethnographic details are also a dead giveaway.

A man from Margaret Bourke-White's famous photo of South African miners... Has kind of a WPA feel to it. I think.

And a nude from Miss Cunningham...


Okay, next week, for sure, I start putting these paintings through the collage process.

Manifesto

Live your life in such a way that when your feet hit the floor in the morning, Satan shudders and says, "Shit! She's awake!"

- Author unknown

Coffea arabica

This week I have been experimenting with painting with coffee. There are quite a few websites devoted to painting with coffee. Many of them display work which is quite lovely. But I don't look at a simple painting in an unusual technique as quite enough. For me, it is an element in a painting which should speak in some way which heightens the subject matter with which I am dealing.

As you have been able to see from my past paintings, I am speaking much about those things which are commodities of one sort or another. Things which can be traded. Among these many commodities are tea, gold, fur, tobacco, cowrie shells, and even humans. I like to put these actual objects, and more, into my painting/collages for their evocative qualities and their histories. Well, okay, I don't put the humans. I'm satisfied to put the mere representation of humans into my paintings. That is, after all, my real subject: the human condition.

I hadn't worked with coffee at all, and it is a beverage with a definitely rich history, much of it Arab and African. The fragrance of it is familiar, warm and comforting. It can signify hospitality in a lonely place - pretty much all over the world.

So this week I worked up a few paintings in coffee, to serve as elements in next week's painting/collages, very much in the same spirit as I cast many coins in my gel medium technique. I used a variety of photographic sources - primarily vintage. I don't consider them to be complete works in their own right, although they could certainly stand on their own. But you may enjoy looking at them as they are, nonetheless. They were done very quickly, and there are more than you see here. This is a representative sample. Coffee samples, as it were...

An Asian woman:

A poor sharecropper's daughter:

...and a boy praying above.

If you would like to try coffee painting yourself, it is a very pleasant way to paint, because of the delicious smell which lingers in the studio, and because it does seem to respond to one's directions very well.

Use instant coffee - I used Medaglia d'Oro instant espresso coffee, which is too expensive to be using as an art material, but I only wanted a small jar and I figured espresso might give good darks. Make the "brew" very thick - don't be afraid to use a lot of powdered coffee - much more than you would normally put in a cup to drink. As you work it will become thicker and stickier. This provides your very dark color and it is a bit shiny. You can also boil it down a bit, if you want it even darker.

Next week I will put these paintings, and others, through their paces as collage elements and we will see what happens.

Coffee on paper. Sizes from 12 x 16 cm to 16 x 25 cm.

Horse Race

I've already made up my mind about this election and no one can sway me. But it's altogether too close for my comfort. It's a horse race! And that's what this painting is all about...

You have the decision as to what direction the country will take...

...and you have issues over a woman's body and her private choices...

(Yes, that actually is supposed to be a small female torso in the photo above.)

In all, it's a fine mess. Typical of American politics since the country's inception. I even left visible the raggedy edges of the French paper I use and the tattered threads of the small American flag I found on the street (I seem to remember it was after July 4th) and collaged onto this painting. I even liked the rough wood of the deck on which I photographed it.

The cast shapes are made of paper, from the same molds in which I made the gel medium forms. It works almost as well, except that the paper wants to relax back into lumpiness, unlike the gel. This gives the painting s a very rough, ungraceful look, which I think is well suited to the subject.

Vote early, vote often!

Acrylic paint on paper, cotton, silk, tobacco and postage stamp. 25 x 32 cm.

Serving God

No, it isn't art-related. But I couldn't resist this one...

Judge dismisses Neb. lawmaker's suit against God

By The Associated Press
10.16.08

LINCOLN, Neb. — An unlisted address is proving to be God's best legal weapon against a mortal but tenacious Nebraska state senator.

A Douglas County District Court judge has thrown out state Sen. Ernie Chambers' lawsuit against God because the Almighty wasn't served a legal notice. And the judge doesn't seem to think it's possible to find the Almighty's front door.

"Given that this court finds that there can never be service effectuated on the named defendant this action will be dismissed with prejudice," Judge Marlon Polk wrote in his four-page order on Oct. 14.

Just over a year ago Chambers, the longest serving — and maybe the most powerful — state senator in Nebraska history, sought a permanent injunction against God. He said the Almighty had made terroristic threats against the senator and his constituents in Omaha, inspired fear and caused "widespread death, destruction and terrorization of millions upon millions of the Earth's inhabitants."

Chambers has said he filed the lawsuit to make the point that everyone should have access to the courts regardless of whether they are poor or have the means of billionaire Warren Buffett of Omaha.

But the judge ruled that under state law a plaintiff must have access to the defendant for a lawsuit to move forward.

Chambers, who graduated from law school but never took the bar exam, thinks he's found a hole in the judge's ruling.

"The court itself acknowledges the existence of God," Chambers, who is not returning to the Legislature next year because of term limits, said yesterday. "A consequence of that acknowledgment is a recognition of God's omniscience. Therefore, God would have actual notice of that lawsuit."

"Since God knows everything, God has notice of this lawsuit."

Chambers has 30 days to decide whether to appeal the decision and said he hasn't decided yet whether to file one.

During a court appearance in August, while sitting a few feet away from an empty table reserved for God and God's attorney, Chambers argued that courts and the U.S. government already routinely take notice of God.

Courts swear in witnesses with an oath that includes the phrase "so help me God." Plus, the Pledge of Allegiance describes "one nation, under God," and U.S. currency proclaims "In God We Trust."

Chambers regularly skipped morning prayers during his 38 years in the Legislature and often criticizes Christians.

Hula Rula

Kuhi no ka lima, hele no ka maka.

"Where the hands move, there let the eyes follow."

- Hawaiian Proverb (A rule in Hula. And not a bad rule for Art. Trula.)

Poltergeist

Mine is a truck possessed by mischievous spirits.

While driving my '99 Ford Ranger, my windshield wipers suddenly come on for no reason and copious amounts of washer fluid are squirted nonstop over my windshield. Consequently, I can't see to drive. My window is now squeaky clean, but that doesn't help me get to the studio.

Fortunately, there is a Ford dealership within walking distance and I expect to get my truck back sometime today. After the exorcism. But until then, there is no new Art to be seen here. Sorry.

Technical difficulties.

Please stand by.

Crazy Quilt

I didn't have a great deal of time today so I simply began to piece together fabric at crazy angles on a small piece of Arches paper. It began to remind me of a crazy quilt, those quilts which were all the rage in the late 19th-century. Later, during the Great Depression, saving scraps of fabric became pretty crucial and feedsack and suit quilts became the fashion. One can still see examples at flea markets of quilts pieced together from men's suits. The colors are often somber and warm, but they are handsome.

My crazy quilt is a portrait of the times, in this country and others, in which everyone is stitched together into one bigger piece of work. We must be frugal, with every scrap saved and reused.

Acrylic on paper, silk and leather. 16 x 25 cm.

The Dancer

Acrylic on paper and silk, with shells, bone ankh and glass beads. 25 x 32 cm.

Guilty!

Nearly a year after our trial in Grosse Pointe Park's Municipal Court, Judge Carl Jarboe has found my husband (not me!) guilty of "erecting signs without a permit". They are talking about my paintings, friends, not any kind of "signs" that I've ever seen before. The only sign I have on my property is a "Beware of Dog" sign.

Meanwhile, of course, all around me I see campaign signs, Halloween decorations and lawn sculptures, none of which required a permit and no one else has ever received a ticket for their decor or their particular forms of expression. Later, we will see Christmas decorations, including huge Nativity scenes that stretch from one end of the lawn to the other, and yes, painted flat cut-outs with Santa Claus and the Holy Family. What is the difference between those displays and mine? Only the City knows...muhahaha...

We are appealing, naturally.

Criminal Art

The Sieve

This is a painting about offering someone your best - poetry at your lips - and having it all go through their head like water through a sieve. This has been my experience lately.

Acrylic paint on paper, silk and leather with 22k gold leaf. 16 x 25 cm.

Man of Flowers

Basically I did this very fast little painting because I wanted to paint a man, instead of my usual feminine subject matter. It is merely a piece of burned-out velvet silk and two pieces of flowered silk. The profile of the man was suggested by the accidental cut edge of the burned-out velvet scrap, and it reminded me of one of those massive Easter Island sculptures. I painted gold metallic paint into the silken part of the fabric and let the velvet pattern stand.

Years ago there was an Australian film called, "Man of Flowers" (dir: Paul Cox, 1983) about an elderly man who pursues aesthetic and sexual (the two are equated in the film) satisfaction from three things; art, flowers, and the nude female form. He is considered eccentric, lonely, and in need of psychiatric help, until he proves that in fact he is more a whole person than most men.

Acrylic paint on silk and paper. 20 x 27 cm.