Did I tell you I’m reading my poetry on Thursday?

Posted on November 9, 2011 by Melanie

This Thursday, now to take place at Gallery 51, I’ll be participating in the inaugural reading of the PRESS POETRY SERIES. Jason Peabody, the summer associate gallery manager and current marketing and outreach intern, has put together this fabulous event! (Thank you Jason!!) It looks like a great line-up! Abbott Cutler, Barry Sternlieb and Hannah Fries! We’ll begin at 7:30 p.m. at Gallery 51 and it will be followed by a reception with refreshments at PRESS.

I’ll be reading some poems about running, many date back from memories of running in the Caribbean. The ones I’m reading are a bit dark. The poems about blissful running are still being written. Maybe I’ll have them ready at our reading in March…keep reading my blog for updates! But in the meantime, if you plan on coming on Thursday, email us letterpress105 [at] gmail [dot] com.

Posted in Exhibits, Letterpress, Poetry, Press | Comments Off

Happy Birthday!

Posted on October 29, 2011 by Melanie

Today, October 29th, the day I was born.

I take liberty with a selection from Vacillation by William Butler Yeats in honor of this day:

My forty-second year had come and gone, 
I sat, a solitary woman,
In my quiet kitchen,
an open book and empty cup
on the granite countertop
 
While on the backyard and forest I gazed
My body of a sudden blazed;
And twenty minutes more or less
It seemed, so great my happiness,
That I was blessed and could bless.

 

Maybe you’ve had that feeling of blessedness on your birthday, feeling the love that created you, and allowed you to be born. I strive to cultivate that feeling within myself and with how I interact with others, all throughout this year.

I know it will be challenging. I have my shadow side as we all do. But I have faith, too.

FAITH
The word Faith means when someone sees 
a dew-drop or a floating leaf, and knows
That they are, because they have to be.
And even if you dreamed, or closed your eyes
And wished, the wold would still be what it was,
And the leaf would still be carried down the river.
 
It means that when someone’s foot is hurt
By a sharp rock, he also knows that rocks
Are here so they can hurt our feet.
Look, see the long shadows cast by the tree;
And flowers and people throw shadows on the earth:
What has no shadow has no strength to live. 
        Czeslaw Milosz, translated by Robert Hass and Robert Pinksy with Renata Gorczynski
 

My mom said that she remembers a big snow storm that day in 1969, so I like to look at tonight’s storm as a reminder of that day. I had at least eight different ideas for how I wanted to spend the night, but the snow changed all of that, prompting me to look at this new year with the following attitude: Plan as best you can,  things will happen beyond your control, yet you can still have a really great time.

Posted in Family, Poetry | 1 Comment

North Adams Open Studios

Posted on October 15, 2011 by Melanie

North Adams Open Studios is this weekend, Saturday, October 15th from 10-6 and Sunday, October 16th from 10-4.

I’ll be printing at PRESS, at 105 Main Street and working on a few projects.

1. I’ll be using the Statue of Liberty cut as the visual with the text: She represents ALL of US. We are the 99%.

2. The birds will show up in two other prints, one inspired by Maurice Sendak’s interview with Terry Gross on Fresh Air, and another that I am doing for a barter. I make a print with three birds and some of the beautiful wood type and get two oak type case cabinets in exchange.

3. Various lino cuts and other misc projects.

 

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The Venice Biennale

Posted on October 7, 2011 by Melanie

I am a lucky woman. I attended Art Basel and the Venice Biennale this year. Somehow I managed to squeeze this trip into the middle semester, doing what I do best, getting every moment out of every moment.

Here I am about four hours after landing in Venice at one of the collateral events. These events take place in various apartments, churches and palazzi all over the city. One must traverse bridges and figure out which of the tiny alleys to take to find the event. OR, sometimes as you walk, you just discover one of them, and you find yourself in a building with very few people (a rarity at this time of the year in Italy), someone playing the piano, and a mix of contemporary and classic art.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here’s a great review of the Biennale from the New York Observer. I completely agree with Lindemann when he says, “The portions of the Biennale curated by Bice Curiger (the primary curator of this year’s Biennale) —the Arsenale and the “Italian pavilion”—were both disappointing.” Very few pieces stood out, craft was often questionable, and I was only interested in Christian Marclay’s movie, The Clock, which won the Golden Lion.

Lindemann also goes on to remind us in his review that just because the Biennale is curated, doesn’t mean that nothing is for sale, that just as much buying of art happens during the six months of this epic extravaganza as at any fair, if not more.

I had a great time, at least momentarily, in the American Pavilion. The United States was represented by Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla. A husband and wife duo, chosen for their performance art pieces and experimental practices, and not for their commercial appeal. One of their pieces featured an ATM embedded in a sculpture of church organ pipes. Random sounds emanated from the pipes when “patrons” withdrew money. Pretty gimmicky. Pretty silly. Read the NYTimes review here.

I could go on–maybe I will in another post. But I know this, I hope I get to go 2013.

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To acquire

Posted on September 26, 2011 by Melanie

ACQUIRE, Merriam-Webster tells me this means “to get as one’s own.” But a definition is never as simple as that. The sub-categories of the definition are often much more interesting.

a. to come into possession or control of often by unspecified means
b. to come to have as a new or added characteristic, trait, or ability (as by sustained effort or natural selection)
 

I just acquired four cases and one cardboard box of very dirty, yet gorgeous wood type. I first found out about the type about a year ago, shortly after I was given the UniIII Vandercook. An antique dealer in Pittsfield had it, plus a ridiculous amount of wood type with an x-height of at least eight inches, a collector’s dream! (He sold that lot for $1600 on eBay.)

But this random, really filthy collection is not a collector’s dream, but a printer’s dream.

I tried to haggle with him in the spring. He wouldn’t budge. He had his price and he was not going to let it go for anything else. So I let him go to Brimfield, to sell it off piece by piece to those people who want to make random type collages or whatever they do with it. And the summer months went by. At least once a week I wondered about the type and wished I had bought it.

It turns out he didn’t go to Brimfield to sell it, so I heard from a mutual friend. So I decided to acquire it, not buy it, this was more monumental than that. There had been a sustained effort, even if only in my mind, in my attempts to “get it as my own.” It also feels a bit like winning a trophy, or a piece of art at an auction. This kind of thinking reminds me of my entry about Art Basel.

And finally I did acquire it!! This past Friday it arrived at PRESS. It needs a serious clean, and hopefully it will get it in the next couple of weeks.

It will make for some really, really fun printing in the next few weeks.

Stop by this Thursday for our next opening to see it in person!

Here’s a sneak peak.

 

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Let the Light Enter

Posted on September 11, 2011 by Melanie

I commend those who commemorated this day with services and events that look forward and come from a place of wanting to create positive change, those who search for the light, even when discouragement, death and suffering seem to multiply daily.

I share this poem by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper. I discovered it thanks to a fun iPhone app from The Poetry Foundation. Harper was a 19th century African American poet and civil rights activist. Her bio is an inspiration for those determined to change the world whether it is through small steps, big steps, within systems or against systems. Her accomplishments were great; she published collections of poetry, supported her family through public speaking events, and participated in many civil rights organizations. Read more about her here.

 

Let the Light Enter

    The Dying Words of Goethe

“Light! more light! the shadows deepen,
        And my life is ebbing low,
Throw the windows widely open:
        Light! more light! before I go.
 
“Softly let the balmy sunshine
        Play around my dying bed,
E’er the dimly lighted valley
        I with lonely feet must tread.
 
“Light! more light! for Death is weaving
        Shadows ‘round my waning sight,
And I fain would gaze upon him
        Through a stream of earthly light.”
 
Not for greater gifts of genius;
        Not for thoughts more grandly bright,
All the dying poet whispers
        Is a prayer for light, more light.
 
Heeds he not the gathered laurels,
        Fading slowly from his sight;
All the poet’s aspirations
        Centre in that prayer for light.
 
Gracious Saviour, when life’s day-dreams
        Melt and vanish from the sight,
May our dim and longing vision
        Then be blessed with light, more light.
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Residencies at Denali National Park in Alaska

Posted on September 5, 2011 by Melanie
Denali National Park and Preserve Seeking Writers and Visual Artists for the Artists-in-Residence for 2012


I was honored to be an artist-in-residence here in June 2008. And you can be too! Applications are due at the end of September.

Artists reside in the historic East Fork cabin, located 43 miles into the
park, for a ten day period between June and mid-September. In return for
their residency, each artist donates a piece of artwork that was inspired
by their time in the park, to the park’s art collection. Artists also offer
a public presentation for visitors at the end of their residency.

A link to the online application and more information about the program is
available at http://www.nps.gov/dena/historyculture/arts-program.htm.
Applications for the 2012 season must be submitted by September 30, 2011.
Notification letters will be sent out by December 15, 2010.

Tim Rains
Park Ranger Media Specialist
Denali National Park and Preserve
(907)683-6435
Timothy_Rains@nps.gov
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Common Place Books and Homeplay

Posted on August 31, 2011 by Melanie

I’ve been creating Common Place Books for many years now. I began compiling them long before I knew they actually had a name. Some are in spiral bound books that I began in high school. These are fairly random collections of poems, quotes from movies, sayings of friends, lists of things to do…

Others date from my time when I was studying theology at Yale and are filled with the words of theologians, philosophers and prophets. More recently, my dear friend Andrea Savitri Dasrath Hazzard and I have been sending a book back and forth that is becoming like a Common Place Book. We’ve been writing poems and quotes and creating pictures that are related to the moment.

I turn to these books when I am looking for encouragement, inspiration or a distraction. All of the above is what takes me to them today.

It’s time for me to get ready to go back to school. I’ll be starting my fourth year of teaching full-time at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. I always look to the start of the school year as a new year, forget January 1st, the first day of classes is my new year. And what shall this year hold for me and my students? Hopefully loads of great experimentation, artwork and learning. I’ll also be juggling keeping PRESS open at the same time. Wish me luck.

So I went to one of my Yale books and found this lengthy passage from Madeline L’Engle’s, (who spoke at Yale while I was there and I got to meet her for like three seconds) Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art, MacMillian, 1995, pg 167.

I share it today as a reminder for myself and my incoming students the importance of discipline and work and how to look at it as play.

A life lived in chaos is an impossibility for the artist. No matter how unstructured may seem the painter’s garret in Paris or the poet’s pad in Greenwich Village, the artist must have some kind of order or he will produce a very small body of work. To create a WORK of art, great or small, is WORK, hard work, and work requires discipline and order. 
 
I learned slowly that, for me, this must be external as well as internal…One problem with the word WORK is that it has come to be equated with drudgery, and is considered degrading. Now, some work is drudgery, though it is not always degrading. Vacuuming the house or scrubbing out the refrigerator is drudgery for me, though I find it in no way degrading. And that is drudgery is a lack in me. I enjoy the results and so I should enjoy producing the results. I suspect that it is not the work itself which is the problem, but that it is taking me from other work, such as whatever manuscript I am currently working on. Drudgery is not what work is meant to be. Our work should be our play. If we watch a child at play for a few minutes, “seriously” at play, we see that all his energies are concentrated on it. He is working very hard at it. And that is how the artist works, although the artist may be conscious of discipline while the child simply experiences it. 

During my summer class we renamed homework to homeplay. I’m going to try to do that during the fall, too. Let’s see what happens.

Posted in Teaching | 2 Comments

Opening THURSDAY at PRESS

Posted on August 24, 2011 by Melanie

Tomorrow at PRESS: Letterpress as a Public Art Project the third show This One Goes to ELEVEN opens. It’s been an incredible summer of art making and art teaching for me, and this show shows the fruits of the labor of a number of really special people. Jason Peabody, Associate Gallery Manager; Pam Buchanan, Carrie Converse and Emily Cohane-Mann, aka PRESS & Co. all have incredible work on display. PRESS & Co. are really responsible for much of what happens at PRESS, from making sure it opens on time, to counting visitors, folding paper, cleaning floors, and really more! I am so grateful for their hardwork and devotion to this project of mine. They believe in it and themselves, and made art this summer that gets at the heart of their own explorations.

I have new work as well, including my series of images “The Prints that Live Under the PRESS,” A Thread Past, (featuring some really wonderful found papers that I hope someone might know of their origins), letterpress and linocuts and some artist books. It’s been productive. Really productive. I hope you get the opportunity to see all of this great work.

The opening is from 6-9 p.m. 105 Main Street, North Adams.

Here’s a preview of some of my images.

 

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Why the bird?

Posted on August 19, 2011 by Melanie

Someone asked me the significance of the bird in North Adams yesterday. The visitor was making connections between the birds in all of my work right now–and the Mike Glier giant grackle at the Porches Inn. My work is completely unrelated to Glier’s, and both are not, at least to my knowledge, related to North Adams.

My bird imagery relates to ideas of nesting and rebirth. I imagine the womb as a nest and an incubator for creative ideas, not just babies. I also see it as a gestation place for learning, gaining strength and life. The nest/bird/baby/idea that grows there then must come out somehow–through song, creation, and birth.  The bird inside and outside of the body outline tries to express this.

I then weave tree imagery with the bird to suggest other relationships. Sometimes it’s fear and darkness, which the forest often is. Sometimes it’s comfort and peace, which the forest also is.

Rilke comes to mind too, here’s a piece from Rilke’s Book of Hours, translated by Anita Barrows and Johanna Macy:

How surely gravity’s law,
strong as an ocean current,
takes hole of even the smallest thing
and pulls it toward the heart of the world.
 
Each think–
each stone, blossom, child–
is held in place,
Only we, in our arrogance,
push out beyond what we each belong to
for some empty freedom.
 
If we surrendered
to earth’s intelligence
we could rise up rooted, like trees.
 
Instead we entangle ourselves
in knots of our own making
and struggle, lonely and confused.
 
So, like children, we begin again
to learn from the things,
because they are in God’s heart;
they have never left him.
 
This is what the things can teach us;
to fall, 
patiently to trust our heaviness.
Even a bird has to do that
before he can fly.
 

 Trusting the heaviness, trusting in general, and being patient with that process is crucial for any of us to fly–to whatever it is that we need to be or do in our lives. This bounces back and forth in my brain as I create, hoping that I’m making the connections visually that will resonate for me and for others. Look for a post in the next week with some of the more recent prints that continue to explore this.

Posted in Exhibits, Letterpress, Tree Rubbings | 2 Comments