Sneak Peak: Karen Burmeister Part III and the Urge to Commit Art

One of her last works.

During the month of August I have shared a couple blog posts featuring the work of Karen Lynne Burmeister whose collages will be unveiled to the public in a September exhibition at the Duluth Art Institute, the opening reception is September 10. This is part III the first two posts being an introduction to her work followed by an overview of her life and career.

Karen was the middle school Art Teacher at Marshall School for nearly twenty years. She was a beloved teacher. The outpouring of sympathy and support from her students (and former students) after her diagnosis brought tears to her eyes. The reason she was loved by her students is easy to understand: she truly respected them and their work. She believed children had an innate ability to express themselves profoundly through art.

Karen believed with her whole heart that everyone is born with a basic human desire for beauty and self-expression, a desire that reaches all the way back to the beginning of our existence--the Caves of Lascaux and beyond. The drawing exhibited was done by one of her students. She was so taken by this drawing she framed it and hung it on the wall of her studio.

What follows has been written by her husband Loren Martel.

Last Work

Another of her last works.

As time passed, Karen’s health did not improve. Despite all our hopes, she grew weaker. She began having more difficulty both with cutting out images and working in fine detail. In the past, she’d sometimes used a type of finished plywood for her working base, her canvass. She asked me to cut her some larger pieces. She spread out images she’d previously taken from magazines and books over the years. She laid on the floor, with pillows and blankets around her.

By then, she was also battling the negative effects prescription pain narcotics have on mental acuity. Her work subsequently lost some of its verve. This tragic erosion of a rare creative vision is evident in progression from image #1 to image #3. But Karen kept working, and still managed to create works of art that were very beautiful.

The boy in the center of image #3, her final completed work, captures much of Karen’s artistic inspiration. The boy’s posture suggests all the pathos of human life, briefly thrown into a world that is, on many levels, very seductive and beautiful. Karen’s artistic eye is illustrated well by another detail of this image: the ledge the boy is sitting on is a broccoli leaf. Look closely at the shape of the leaf and the way it captures the light. The ability to see the evocative beauty of such a banal object was one of Karen’s gifts. I see that boy sitting on that broccoli leaf as the last spark, before the creative light went out. 　　

Works in Progress

This is an image from her peak period.

Like Karen’s final completed work, the first piece I included as a work-in-progress is weak in composition, though still rich in imagery. This is the very last piece she worked on at all. She was, to some degree, just using up images. She was especially fond of the image in the top center--the two women talking on an old cobbled street, backlit by shop lights and the numinous shapes of stars. She found a few new images in magazines, but only rough-cut them, because she no longer trusted the dexterity of her fingers to cut them cleanly. To create anything, much less a work of art teaming with so much life, while her own was ending, is testament to her spirit.

Though I consider it finished, and a good piece, I included image #2 as a work-in-progress, because Karen remained undecided. She was still contemplating some of the colors and the symmetry of the composition, but she was happy with it overall. She liked the energy. The piece had also gotten jostled pretty badly in her studio and I couldn’t be certain I’d rearranged all the images perfectly, before gluing them down. One more reason I included it as a work-in-progress is because there were still some lines of text scattered amid the images. Karen drew on the inspirational power of words and sometimes placed text in an art piece while she was working. I remembered where two phrases were in this particular piece, and glued them where she had placed them, just to show the process.

Karen was fond of the third piece I labeled as a work-in-progress. (EdNote: Not on this page but at the show.) She was pleased with the image and felt it was complete, but was still contemplating using it as the nucleus of a larger work. 　　

Drawings

One is struck by their evocative dramatic quality.

Karen used to say she wanted to experience something artistic in her life everyday--an exhibit, a book or a good movie. She was a perennial member of arts and book groups. Occasional trips to the Twin Cities for gallery hopping or some other cultural experience was vital for her soul. Even after finding her passion with collage art, Karen continued to attend life drawing workshops, drawing primarily in charcoal and colored chalk. As in her collages, she often portrayed the human figure in an occulted world, where shadows sometimes have shadows, and mysterious darkness is tinged with wild beauty.

Karen was also always drawn to the haunted feel of ruins. There was an old abandoned homestead along the Chippewa River in Wisconsin where we used to often walk. The second drawing is a sketch of the house. Karen naturally gravitated towards an angle in her artistic subjects that exposed entrances and exits. She was deeply fascinated by the metaphorical power of portals and passages, of secret paths and worlds hidden within worlds. 　

A strikingly surreal feeling pervades many of the pieces.

Final Statement

We spoke one final time about Karen’s art, the day before she died. She told me not to worry about it. She said, “Just throw it all in the garbage, honey.”

One of the reasons she said this I can only speculate about. I think when we approach the brink, everything on this side of the veil looks exactly as it is--mortal vanity. The other two reasons she said this, I’m certain of. The first is because she was always humble about her talent. A sweet humility was one of her most endearing traits, especially in a world where egotism is overwhelmingly prevalent. The other reason is because she was worried about the strain it would put on me, after everything we’d already been through. But there was never any question this had to be done. It was necessary for everyone to see just how gifted Karen was, and to appreciate her refined aesthetic sense. It was essential for her beautiful, unique works of art to be preserved.

Bottom Line: Don't Miss the Show

* * * *

To see more of Karen's work and read more about the pictures visit Sneak Peek and Sneak Peek Part II.

* * * *
Burmeister's work was scanned by CPL Imaging, a premier service agency for art reproductions and preservation. They will likely be available for purchase at some point in time.

Meantime, art goes on all around you. Hope I see you at the opening.

Sneak Peek: Karen Lynne Burmeister, Part II

Tuesday I shared a sneak preview of the upcoming exhibition of Karen Burmeister's dramatic collage works that will be on display at the Duluth Art Institute this fall. Art critic Ann Klefstad purportedly said Karen's work, "made my hair stand on end." Since I have only the highest regard for Ann on all things art related I felt compelled to pay special attention to Burmeister's art.

After sharing those initial pieces, I learned that Karen was an exceedingly special person who touched many lives. This is a continuation of the story behind the work. What follows are insights into her life and work as presented by her husband Loren Martell.

Influences
Karen owned several art books and was always bringing home more through inter-library loan. She admired and studied the masters, from Raphael to Matisse. She was intrigued by some of German Dada artist Hannah Hoch’s photomontages. She had a print of Hoch’s “On With the Party” on her studio wall. Some of her more contemporary influences included Jess Collins and David Hockney. She loved Collins’ collage, “The Chariot: Tarot VII.” She savored the rich tapestry of Hockney’s early photomontages. “My Mother, Bolton Abbey” hung in her studio. Despite the negative critiques of some of Hockney’s later decorative landscape paintings, she liked “Winter Tunnel with Snow,” and also had a print of it hanging in her studio.


Early Work

I can’t recall every influence that drew Karen into collage, but she was drawn to it almost overnight. The medium seemed to have been made for her, first of all because she loved to search for beautiful, interesting, evocative images. She was always perusing second-hand stores and garage sales for old magazines and books. Combining and arranging these images to create something entirely new quickly became her chosen way to express herself artistically.

These early works show how she was experimenting with the art form--with color, image placement and space. Compare, for example, the dense mosaic of image #3 to the sparse use of space in image #2. Her use of the human figure in these early works resonates with a theme that prevailed in much of her work--the interface of human beings with other forms of life, with the world. So intimate is this intermingling, boundaries sometimes blur. Human forms morph and merge with other life forms, throughout her art.

These early works test boundaries and feel experimental. They are filled with Karen’s exuberance from discovering a new medium that worked for her. 　

Transitional Work
Three prevalent traits show an evolution of style in these works. One is the obvious reduction in physical size. Another is a more concentrated focus on composition. The smaller pieces seemed to coincide with a desire to create scenes more tightly knit and cohesive. Also, if you look closely, you can see an evolving creativity with space and form. I see these beautifully detailed scenes as setting the stage for the next, most-creative phase of Karen’s work.

Peak Work
This is when Karen was at the very peak of her creativity. I would describe her inventiveness of space and form during this period as brilliantly imaginative and deft. At times she was able to create a wonderful illusion of movement. The images seem to float on currents of air. Look at the row of bowls arcing across the base of image #6. Use of color is often striking--the reds and greens in image #11, for example. Bright, vivid colors are dominant in this artwork, yet a pocket of darkness lurks in the center. Children are juxtaposed with a more sinister figure--dark and hooded.

Elements of the human and natural world often compliment one another, at times merging throughout these compositions. They also often contrast, creating an effect that celebrates beauty, while simultaneously evoking the capricious, mysterious, dark and sometimes dangerous side of existence. A few of the last pieces were completed in early winter of ‘12/‘13, after Karen had been diagnosed, but was still strong. All these works are, without question, very fine art.

Post Peak
When we received the distressing news of Karen’s diagnosis, we both immediately thought of her art. We hoped immersion in what she loved would boost her strength. We hoped it would help cure her. Karen’s work changed as the winter of ‘12/‘13 progressed. These pieces were done late in the winter, when Karen was beginning to slip away. A cursory look at the work is all that’s required to see much of the fine control of detail she’d once possessed had been lost. The work focuses less on spatial relationships, and more on the elemental power of the images themselves. Reasons for this change are of course based solely on speculation, but the bottom line is that she was succumbing to a terrible disease. On top of increasing physical challenges, Karen’s condition obviously exerted physiological and emotional influence on her creative impulses. She often worked on several art pieces simultaneously; all the work from the winter of ‘12/‘13 were finished from pieces previously started. Some of the images--like the bay leaves strewn across the couch, in image #3--had been lying around in her studio for years.

The five works included in this category of the exhibit echo some of her early compositions, as though she was returning to her roots. It no longer achieves the same inspired, delicately ethereal flourishes of space and form as the art designated for this exhibition as Peak Work. It is not comparable in sheer artistry, but still has power. There is a clarity of composition, a still-vital spark of artistic passion. The last piece--image #5--stands out uniquely from anything else she ever did. I think of it as her last starburst of strong creative energy.

TO BE CONTINUED

* * * *
The opening reception for Karen Burmeister's Life of Beauty show will be Thursday, September 10 at the DAI in the Depot. This blog only shares a portion of what you will see on display at that time. The event is free and open to the public.

Burmeister's work has been scanned by CPL Imaging, a premier service agency for art reproductions and preservation. They will likely be available for purchase at some point in time.

Meantime, art goes on all around you. Hope I see you at the opening.