My Life as a Writer: The Writing Cooperative Puts My Writing Career Under the Microscope

The Bobcat who ate the canary.*

This past fall I had the honor of being interviewed by Justin Cox. It was published this week and, for those who may be interested, can be found on Medium at The Writing Cooperative.

Justin's approach is interesting. He's been interviewing writers and authors for a while, asking the same questions of each so as to see the variety of ways different people answer.

The questions he asks are: Who are you? What do you write? Where do you write? When do you write?          This is an interesting question.       Some write after dark, others after dawn. Why do you write?     Another important question, for all. How do you overcome writer's block What do you enjoy doing when not writing?

If ya wanna know, keep reading.

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Write Now With Ed Newman

Today’s Write Now interview features Ed Newman, lifelong writer, columnist, and author of multiple books.

https://writingcooperative.com/write-now-with-ed-newman-128656c20372

If you're a writer, check out some of the other writers he's interviewed and the lessons, stories and tips they have to share. https://justincox.medium.com/

Related Links

My 2019 Interview with Cirina Catania, co-founder of the Sundance Film Fetsival

A Table Talk on the Importance of Writing
Books by Ed Newman

*EdNote: The official mascot for Ohio University (my alma mater) is the Bobcat. Bobcat is also a code word for Bob Dylan fans... who are also Bobcats.

Patrice Wolf Discusses Her Life as a Painter

"Backview" from Patrice Wolf's Landscape Series

I discovered the art of Patrice Wolf by a somewhat circuitous route. At least a few times over the years I tried to make a connection with Frank Holmes, one of my Ohio University painting instructors whom I respected. This past fall I succeeded in making this connection, writing several blog posts about his work. This spring I had the opportunity to visit his home/studio in Narrowsburg, New York whereupon I also met his wife Jill Mackie, who is likewise an exceptionally talented painter. While visiting, Frank showed me a book that was produced in conjunction with a 50 year retrospective by yet another Ohio University art professor, Ron Kroutel, whom I believe was one of my roommates biggest influences as a painter. It was a privilege to share Ron's work here, though I would have much preferred seeing the show itself.

As it turns out, his wife is likewise an artist whose work is similarly impressive. I asked permission to share her work here, as well as some of her story.

EN: How did you come to recognize that you had a gift (or knack) for the arts?

Patrice Wolf: I guess I would credit the support and reinforcement from my parents. I loved drawing from life and faces in particular. I made a drawing of Giacometti before I had any art training and didn’t really know who he was. I just wanted to draw his face. A few years ago a friend told me to read “A Giacometti Portrait” by James Lord. It’s one of my favorite books. I do have a particularly strong memory of when I was around 7 or 8 years old. I was walking home from school one warm spring afternoon. Part of the walk home took me through a prairie where there were blackberry bushes that the neighborhood kids would pick. I remember stopping for some berries on the path and looking at a drawing I made at school of a Scottie dog and admiring it. Having a number of sensual pleasures all at one time reinforced the memory for me and I’m pretty sure I got a good grade on the drawing too.

EN: What was it that attracted you to pursue graphic design as a major?

PW: I needed to get a decent paying job. I was a single mom, recently divorced, and I thought it would be a creative way to make a living.

EN: What led you to pursue a Masters in Fine Arts instead?

Ron Kroutel with wife Pat.

PW: My father was a German immigrant and very talented. He had a natural knack for drawing and performed as an operatic baritone. I inherited his great respect and admiration for The Arts. I was working as a graphic designer for a printing company in Athens, Ohio, and was director/designer of the Rocky Boot account, designing/ illustrating catalogs, and brochures, etc. They wanted me to do an advertising campaign for them so I began taking classes in advertising in the Journalism Department at Ohio University. Also, having recently married Ron Kroutel, who taught painting there at the time, I became more and more familiar with University life in general. I just naturally gravitated to the Art Department. I took my first painting class and before you know it I was getting my Masters in Painting. I then began teaching full time at the University.

EN: Who were your favorite artists at that time? Who have been the artists you most admire today?

PW: I saw an exhibition of Giorgio Morandi at the Guggenheim that had a strong and lasting effect on me. I loved the immediacy and intimacy of Avigdor Arika. I had always been drawn to Van Gogh’s work at the Art Institute of Chicago on my visits there growing up and then going to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam in the late ‘80s really fired me up. Today I look to the quiet power of Spanish artist Isabel Quintanilla; Tom Thomson, one of the early 20th century Canadian Seven landscape painters; Lucien Freud; William Nicholson, the father of the British artist Ben Nicholson; and Manet’s poignant, late flower paintings to name a few.

"Flight" -- Collaboration, Patrice Wolf/Ron Kroutel

"Echo"

EN: What was the process that preceded your series of collaborations with Ron? For example, did you select a word or concept and then each interpret it? Is each of this a single painting divided in half or is it two paintings photographed side by side?

PW: Ron and I were curious to try a collaboration. Since both of us work directly from life we thought we’d change it up and try working from photographs to see how two visions and two personalities responded to the same photo. We decided on a consistent size and format (24”x24”) paintings on canvas. We would alternate taking a photo of a local landscape, then we would each take the photo to our respective studios and make a painting of it, using it as a jumping off point to explore ideas. This would be done in secret so that we didn’t know what the other was doing. When we were finished and put the two together as a diptych, it was always a surprise. Shown side by side we see the paintings from different perspectives and sometimes an unintended narrative between the two is suggested.

EN: The cups are very cool. How large are these pieces and on what kind of surface? What was the impetus to do a series of cups?

PW: Most of them are 8”x10”, oil on canvas. They are all painted from life within arm’s reach. I think of them as meditational portraits. Most of the cups were inherited from long gone relatives and were chosen intuitively. There is something tender and fragile, intimate and ephemeral about them that I wanted to capture. Years ago while in a glass museum in Venice I spotted a small, simple, glass that was 2000 years old. It looked so vulnerable and ordinary but it had a profound effect on me.

EN: Your landscapes are especially impressive. What is your process for tackling such a complex scene and translating it to canvas? Is there an emotional attachment to this place that you sought to capture.

"Dow Lake Reeds and Grass in Water"

"Dow Lake Summer"

PW: Like the cups, my choice of which landscape to paint is intuitive. I’m not thinking of complexity at all. But maybe I should! The process of doing a plein aire painting for me is a distillation of separate moments in time. Everything is constantly moving and changing; light, wind, temperature, bugs, noises, interruptions, etc. It all gets into the painting as one fixed image. The Dow Lake series was painted in Southeast, Ohio in Athens. It was 2 miles from our home where we lived for 40 years and I definitely had an emotional attachment to the place. I didn’t intentionally try to capture any feelings I had but it inevitably seeps into the work anyway.

EN: Your charcoal self-portraits are very nice. Do you like working in charcoal?

PW: I feel very comfortable working in charcoal. It’s like oil painting in that it’s a very forgiving medium. I can make lots of changes/adjustments and the image just seems to gain in richness and depth.

EN: How has being an artist changed you as a person?

PW: Painting and drawing have given me a focus, a way to understand and analyze the world. It’s made me more humble and appreciative. I feel very fortunate that I have the ability to paint and that I can do so even as I grow old.

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Thank you, Patrice.

Related Links
Ron Kroutel
Frank Holmes
Jill Mackie

Meantime, art goes on all around you. Be enriched.

Ron Kroutel, Emeritus Professor of Art at Ohio U, Talks About His 50 Year Journey

In January Ron Kroutel, Emeritus Professor of Art at Ohio University’s School of Art + Design, celebrated the opening of a retrospective exhibition titled 50 Year Journey. As one might expect there are a variety of chapters in a journey of any length, and especially one of half a century. Though half the 36-piece show was taken down earlier this week, the other half remains on display till later in May.

Kroutel was thirty-two when he moved from inner city Detroit to rural Athens to teach at O.U. on the fringe of Appalachia. To some extent it proved to be a bit of culture shock. So begins his story in the book that accompanies his retrospective, published by the Kennedy Museum of Art where his work has been made available to the public.

"Red Corner" -- Early abstract painting

EN: In your earliest work you explore a lot of the "new channels" that were emerging, such as Pop, computer art, conceptual art.  At what point did you begin to have a feel for your own voice?

Ron Kroutel: Before I studied at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, I had no formal art training. I just loved to paint and draw. But once in college, I was intimidated by how little I understood of art history and of modern art. Cubism and Abstract Expressionism were a total mystery to me. And my lack of technical knowledge about painting and drawing was scary.

(For example, in my first painting class I had my little tubes of beginners’ oil paint and a 9” x 12” canvas board. The guy next to me made his own stretchers, stretched his own canvas and applied rabbit skin glue and an oil ground. When he began painting, he threw a jar of thick old dirty turp on the canvas and using a rag he wiped out the main structure of the still life. At that moment I began to understand what it meant to paint!)

"Frenzy" -- Oil on linen, 48"x 109", 1975

I continued to chase modern art for twenty years--Gorky, Matta, Larry Rivers, Stella, Heizer, Acconci and Beuys. Finally I caught up to contemporary art and life became art and art became life. In this void I began making nine inch square pencil drawings of possible conceptual ideas. These led to paintings that were not entirely coherent. I felt my journey had begun.

In this period of crisis I had the opportunity in 1973 to teach in Florence, Italy for three months and then to travel afterwards to Munich, Prague, Paris and London. This was my first trip abroad and it changed my life. I came back to my studio and realized that I needed to find something that was challenging and meaningful, something that needed to be painted, something not connected to pop irony or conceptual minimalism. What grew from this in 1974 was “Animus I: Anger.” It portrayed a basic human experience that was present in all human history, yet it was present in a contemporary setting. I truly didn’t care how it was received by others. I felt confident that I had found my own way.

"Falling Woman"-- Oil bar on linen, 60"x 60", 1985

EN: Who have been your biggest influences as far as finding your own path?

RK: Once I began painting my narrative work in 1974, I felt isolated from other like-minded artists. While Acconce and Beuys provided a conceptual stimulus for emotional human performance, painters such as Sidney Tillim, Altoon Sultan and Martha Mayer Erlebacher gave me a sense of community. As a student at Ohio University in the early 1970's, Frank Holmes initially inspired in me a belief in the validity and importance of representational painting. And Hopper and Munch always hovered in the background as a bedrock foundation.

During my first trip to Europe, all the greatest from the past fired me up. From the reliefs of Ashurbanipal in the British Museum to Maso di Banco’s great St. Sylvester 14th c. fresco in Santa Croce to Vitorio Carpaccio’s series The Legend of Saint Ursula in Venice, all made me see that ambitious undertakings like these could be a life-long involvement.

I feel about my art as Herman Melville felt about his writing, “ I would be as free as air but I’m down in the whole world’s books.”

"Rhyme: Hand & Pincers"
Pencil on Arches paper, 30"x 22, 1970

EN: Before you ever pursued a career as an artist, when did you first get the inkling that this was where you were headed? How did it happen?

RK: In grade school and high school, kids thought I would be an artist. Though my first formal education in the arts at nine was in piano studies, art always loomed as a vague goal. My uncle, Frederick D. Ogden, was a painter who supported his family with Constable-like landscapes, and his example subconsciously made a career in art as a real possibility. Also my family, all immigrants from Southern Bohemia, strongly supported education and encouraged my interest in the arts.The first one in the entire family to go to college, I had other opportunities than factory work.

EN: What were you seeking to convey in your floating figures? You seem especially drawn to movement in these.

RK: I showed an early figure painting to Sidney Tillim in New York City in 1975, “Animus III: Athleticism.” It’s of a floating runner chasing a frisbee on a gridiron. He laughed at the word “Athleticism” and said that all floating figures are about sex. There may be truth in that, but I also think they are about freedom, soaring to new possibilities. And there is also the danger of gravity. In general, I put my figures in motion because their actions are a positive statement of emotional reactions to living. They are more fun to do.

EN: In the mid-eighties you turned to horizontal, monochromatic landscapes. What was the driver for this change in subject matter and approach?

"Bridge" -- Oil on linen, 72"x 58"

RK: My turn to landscapes in the mid-eighties was determined by three main factors. First, I was running out of juice on the figure after fifteen years. I needed a new direction. Second, the Central American foreign policy of president Ronald Reagan was so upsetting to me that my figures (see “Falling Woman”) seemed too remote from my sense of life. Third, a series of seminars with will known critics made me aware of postmodern issues. Craig Owens, Robert Incus-Witten, Donald Kuspit and Clement Greenberg created for me a new context for thinking about my art. While I didn’t want to imitate postmodernism, it did give me something to resist.

Two years of blind-alleys, mistakes, false steps and failed experiments finally led to the large erasure drawings that I did from life. Done in the back of my Ford Econoline van, I drove around southeast Ohio until I found an intuitively right subject, went in the back of the van to draw in my mobile studio, and then drove around until I spotted another likely subject to add to the first. These 25 drawings were well-received and were awarded an N.E.A. Midwest Regional Fellowship.

"Athens County--Vines"

EN: Your later landscapes are especially evocative. Can you describe the evolution from your earlier work?

RK: Eventually I wanted to extend the erased charcoal drawings into paintings. A difficult transition, my process became somewhat different. Many small sketches were done in the van but then back in my studio they were combined, cut up, traced, rearranged, rejected painted on and finally assembled in a satisfying combination of images that then formed the general basis for a large painting. Everything in the painting was thus taken from life but distorted and constructed in a dark representation of our times. You can smell that air in these paintings.

EN: Anything I should especially ask at this point? That is, would you like to add anything here?

RK: My current work attempts to synthesize my early figure paintings with the landscapes. This is complicated by my need to understand my new environment in Colorado and to have my figures interact with altitude, wind and the vast space of the west.

While there are many great representational painters today that I greatly admire, I feel a certain connection with Neo Rauch (founder of the new Leipzig school), Jerome Witkin, Steven Campbell and Robert Schwartz. Again, too many to list. I always try to steal from the best!

The artist with wife Pat Wolf.

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Related Links
Ron Kroutel's Website
Article in the Athens Post about his 50 Year Journey

EdNote: Ohio U was my Alma Mater. I have many happy memories of being an aspiring young art student who spent many hours painting in Seigfred Hall. I remember some of his work from my time there. Ron Kroutel was, I believe,  a strong influence on my third-year artist roommate Steve Derrickson. 

Almost Wordless Wednesday: Frank Holmes Studio Tour

Imagine what it would have been like to spend an afternoon in the studio of Pablo Picasso, Dali or Matisse. Now think about this. When my peers and I were in art school at college in the early 70s, many of the 1950's artists whom we'd adopted as new heroes were actually still painting, still producing, still active in their studios. Warhol, Larry Rivers, Richard Diebenkorn, Robert Rauschenberg -- these guys were going for another two and three decades after I finished school. What would have happened had I tracked them down and asked to see what they were up to?

Well, yesterday I had an opportunity to visit the studio (or studios) of a pair of artists who I consider equal to any of these masterful artists. The only difference is in name recognition. Today and the next few weeks I plan to share photos from my visit to the studio/home of Frank Holmes and Jill Mackie, lifelong artists whose work has inspired many and hangs in the four corners of the world... or at least, the globe's farthest reaches.

I have written about each before, and will begin with Frank, a painting instructor I met while in Ohio University before he won the Prix de Rome in 1973. (Links at the bottom of the blog post.)

A chief source of inspiration for Holmes.

Detail from Big Date. (see link below)

In the Studio, Frank & Jill

NEXT WEEK: A Jill Mackie Studio Tour

RELATED LINKS
Frank Holmes' "Big Date"
A Most Unusual Portrait: The Sarcophagus by Frank B. Holmes
The Ohio Theater Project

In addition to his own ongoing explorations, Frank Holmes continues to produce commission work for clients around the world.

Flashback Friday: The 1970 Music Scene and Chuck Negron's Three Dog Nightmare

1970 was a great year for albums. It was my first year in college and this was the music everyone seemed to be playing: Bridge Over Troubled Water (Simon & Garfunkel), All Things Must Pass (George Harrison's triple album), John Lennon's first solo album, Let It Be (Beatles last album), Velvet Underground's Loaded, Derek & the Dominos, Deja Vu (CSN&Y), Neil Young's After the Gold Rush, Santana' Abraxas, The Doors' Morrison Hotel, two vinyls by the Grateful Dead (Workingman's Dead and American Beauty), Sweet Baby James by James Taylor, McCartney's first solo album, Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out (Rolling Stones), the Moody Blues' A Question of Balance, and less effective albums by Elton John, Emmerson Lake & Palmer, CCR, King Crimson and the popular heavy metal slammers. Though not near the top of the charts that year, I also had taken a shine to Bob Dylan's New Morning and, with everyone else, the soundtrack from Woodstock, the movie. Bob Dylan's much maligned Self-Portrait also came out that year, and gosh, I liked that, too.

I remember exactly where I was when I first heard Let It Be, headphones on, after a day at the Cincinnati Zoo. I remember, too, how blown away I was by the inclusion of studio jamming on sides five and six of All Things Must Pass. James Taylor's "Fire and Rain" had an immersive heartfelt quality that touched a lot of us. (It didn't hurt his cred any that he was the first non-Beatle to record on Apple Records. And did Steve Jobs name his fledgling computer company Apple because he was a huge Beatles fan?)

Chuck Negron, 2008 (Creative Commons)

What brought this reminiscence to mind was the re-release of Chuck Negron's autobiograpchical lament, Three Dog Nightmare. His was the voice you heard on "Joy the the world, all the boys and girls, joy to the fishes in the big blue sea, joy to you and me." Unfortunately, he was ill-prepared for fame and he did the John Belushi thing, the Jim Morrison thing, the thing all too many others had done who found fame and fortune on the Big Stage. Not all of them were quite so self-destructive (Jerry Garcia simply became increasingly reclusive) but Negron's experiences were definitely over-the-top and self-destructive in the extreme. Gang members shooting bullets through the walls of your house? Bad dudes shooting your compadres and then deciding you were too wasted to waste bullets on?

Three Dog Night sold 90 million records, produced 12 Gold Albums, 21 hits in a row in the Billboard Top 20, six Numero Unos... They were the epitome of pop for a while. When I saw them at Ohio U my freshman, 1970, 11,000 people filled the Convocation Center and put on a very good show. I remember that night because there is a photo taken of my roommate and I with our dates for the evening. I was decked out in a wide-brimmed hat with some kind o suede vest and other accoutrements of hippie attire. I thought I was cool, but when I was introduced to her father six or eight weeks later, his first words were, "What is this, a clown?" (Early evidence that I've often had a tendency to take myself too seriously.)

Three Dog Nightmare is a candid memoir about the dark side of fame. By age 30 Chuck Negron was a multimillionaire -- rich, famous and talented, with all the female adulation (read between the lines) the rock star lifestyle can handle.

I traded a plush, five-thousand-square-foot, Mediterranean-style villa in the Hollywood Hills with a garage full of Mercedes for a corner of an abandoned building in a crime-ridden Los Angeles neighborhood where I slept on a filthy mattress that was found in a vacant lot. I fought to share dull, dirty needles with a collection of lost, hopeless, pathetic junkies who are probably dead by now. 

Drugs eventually ate the flesh off my bones and poisoned my mind to the point of dementia. I was hospitalized more than a hundred times and was a refugee from more than three dozen drug-treatment programs. The ugly tracks on my arms mirrored the scars on my soul. It was a sick, sad, self-indulgent existence. Eventually, I just wanted to die a junkie. But, for some unexplainable reason, I was saved.

* * * *
In some ways its just another "excess story." I'm curious how much of this is just "the American way." The famous Tolstoy observation comes to mind here: "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Negron's created his own personal hell by being a self-centered jerk, and he did it his way. Now that he is performing again and "living the dream" I pray that it is with a greater sense of humility, with afterparties of a different character than he was accustomed to in his prime.

Meantime, life goes on all around. That is, if you are one of the survivors. 

Veteran Painter Frank Holmes Discusses His Prix de Rome and Life as an Artist

"Out Front" Oil on canvas. 68"x61" 1979 (click to enlarge)

"I think the idea that art is everywhere isn't true. Art is made. Beauty is everywhere." 
 --Frank Holmes    

I met Frank Holmes when I was an art student at Ohio University. He'd gotten his Bachelor's at Pratt Institute and just finished seven years of teaching when he came to Athens to work on his Masters degree. I remember the stir it created because somehow the word got around that he was an incredible painter and I made it an aim to get into one of his classes. At some point we saw his work, either in a show there in Siegfried Hall, or perhaps a visit to his home, and I was pretty much floored. His paintings of interiors were so intricate and detailed, and showed a complete mastery of the medium. They were also totally at odds stylistically with the abstract expressionism that was so in vogue.

During his time there while getting his degree he won the Prix de Rome, an elite prize in which only a few hand-picked artists receive the opportunity to spend an all-expenses-paid stint making art in Italy, studio space included, at The American Academy in Rome.

"Out Front" (detail, upper left corner)

The American Academy in Rome is a 120 year-old operation modeled after the French Academy. It was at one time independently funded with a three-year free ride. Now it's more all-inclusive for fewer years. Holmes had a friend at Pratt who won the grant in 1962 when it was still for three years. When Holmes won, it was down to two—still a fabulous grant, two years with no obligation other than to do your work.

Upon returning from Europe Holmes went to New York where he had lived before his years at Ohio U. I had a couple artist friends who were Ohio U. grads and one of them told me he had seen Frank while in New York. I asked for a report on how he was doing and I was told he was painting a piano, that he had a loft and had spent a whole year doing studies on this grand object. That was the last I heard.

Out of the blue this memory was recently triggered and I began wondering whatever became of this incredibly talented painter who had won a Prix de Rome and sought to make his mark in the Big Apple. A few minutes on Google directed me to a gallery that represented him and I made inquiry. I got lucky. Here are some notes from our first dialogue.

EN: Can you briefly summarize your career since I last saw you, when you won the Prix de Rome?

"Books with Tang Horse" 22"x 30" Oil on Canvas (1999)

Frank Holmes: That's a big order, Ed, almost 45 years have passed! What I can say is that life has been, more or less, very good. I've been blessed to be able to do what I wanted, which was, and is, to paint. Winning the Rome Prize was a high point, for sure, and I cherish my many memories of it, including the day I got word I'd won--March 19, 1973. I was ecstatic. I had long had the Prix de Rome on my mind and finally felt my work had a chance. It all seems like a dream when I think of it now. I was teaching as a one-year guest member of the faculty at O.U. and had applied to the Academy with very high hopes. When I won, I was especially happy to be heading to Rome with my Masters, rather than job-hunting with it.

My career has changed a lot in the last 25 years. I work on a commission basis pretty much only now. I had different galleries through the years and have sold most everything I showed. I didn't, however, save any money. My last gallery, a high-end Japanese gallery in New York, was forced to close in the early nineties when the Japanese economy collapsed. I had a contract with them. They paid me a stipend, which kept me alive and was great, but they owned outright everything I painted. When my last show with them closed, I had no paintings and, basically, no money. Lucky for me there were still people who wanted my work. They found me, I'm happy to say, and even though I had to tell them I didn't have anything available, I explained that I would do something specially for them if they wanted--enter commissions. It was an approach that worked. The interested party and I would discuss what of my work they'd been attracted to and I would propose to do a sort of "relative" of whatever it was for them--something similar but different. I'd make a sketch for their approval, we'd discuss size and cost and other particulars, sign an agreement, and I was off and running.

There were variations to this theme, of course, but it worked. This is how I've functioned for years--and I'm grateful. The problem is, as before, when the painting is gone, the money is gone. This means I can't cover the time it would take to produce enough work for another show. If there are commissions, all is well. If not, i don't know. That's where I am now. I'm just finishing a commission of a highly decorated Egyptian sarcophagus. The client is very happy with it, which I'm glad of, but I've always had a commission waiting in the wings. For the first time I don't.

EN: What were some of the emotions you felt as a painter in Italy?

FH: Italy was overwhelming, for sure. There's fabulous art and architecture and history everywhere you look. I'd been there once a couple years before, and been introduced to the highlights--Florence, Venice, Rome, Naples, etc., so I had some idea. The American Academy was a world unto itself. Being there with the many other prize winners--composers, architects, classicists, art historians, etc. made it a completely unique experience—some of them remain my dearest friends. The Academy building is a wonderful place—it was a big, beautiful dormitory. We were all taken care of and, for the most part, all of us flourished. Some wanted to integrate with Italian culture and some just wanted to do their work--I was one of those. I integrated well enough to fall in love with Italy, that's for sure--it was a pleasure from beginning to end.

When I arrived at the Academy, my studio was being painted and refurbished so I had to wait a couple weeks before I could get to work. This down time allowed me to take an in-depth look at Rome, which I did--on foot mainly. It was a great introduction to the many, many marvels that are everywhere. I soaked them in. If I'd been able to get right into my studio I would have missed this wonderful experience. The extra time also allowed me to focus on what my goals were and what I hoped to accomplish during my time at the Academy.

"Dusk Call" The enhanced immediacy of 3-point perspective. 

I brought a painting I'd begun in Ohio with me to Rome--rolled up in a tube. It was a large realist interior--it's the painting that ended up being titled "Dusk Call." By the time I got settled into my new studio I was ready to concentrate on it and work hard, which I did for the next couple of months. By Christmas, I slowed down and enjoyed the holidays. I was glad to relax a bit and in January took an inspirational trip to Paris—the Louvre and anything else I could cram in. When I got back I was increasingly aware of the freedom I had. knew I didn't have any obligations, but it was more than that and slowly it became an enormous cathartic force. It caused—or maybe allowed—me to do all sorts of things I never would have otherwise.

Amazingly, I felt compelled to change how I was painting and to stop work on the big interior I'd brought with me. I sought out parts of my creative self that I had put aside to do the work that had won me the Prix de Rome. It was bizarre. I wanted to see these parts of myself again. They weren't things buried deep inside, they were right near the surface. I became a different artist. Not a different person, but definitely a different artist.

I did abstract paintings--big and small, abstract paintings, abstract figurative collages, sculpture, wood cuts--all sorts of things that were way off my Prix de Rome path. Still, they all seemed totally right and natural to me--I didn't feel I was cheating or going astray. Even the director of the Academy loved my new work, which was very heartening. This "off road" wandering that I indulged in for the better part of my two years is really what made my Rome experience especially meaningful.

EN: So what came next? How were you changed?

"The Bath" Oil and acrylic on canvas. 46.5"x72.5" 1970-72 (click to enlarge)

FH: When it came time to plan for my return to the U.S. I started thinking about what I'd done and what a major departure it was. It had been right, certainly, but it definitely off the track I'd intended to follow when I arrived. I had come to Rome with the idea I would work hard for two years, produce good paintings (I hoped) related to what had got me there, and go home to New York and get a good gallery to represent me. I decided this was still possible. I felt if I finished the painting I'd stored away, which was related to the work that had won me the prize, I'd have a chance. I geared up for a push. It was like coming back through the looking glass. I put the big painting back on my easel and soon was into it again. It was an odd reversal of what had happened a year before.

"Rudy" Acrylic on canvas. 67"x 58" 1979 (click to enlarge)

My pre-Rome work, the paintings that could be said to have won me the grant, had taken several years to produce. Almost all of them showed single figures, sometimes two, in carefully delineated interiors. The figures were pretty much inactive, but somehow mysterious and compelling. One was a man soaking in a bath, his head back and his eyes closed; another was of a man draped on his back across a bed, pouring over the edge, arms outstretched above his head. It isn't angst exactly, but those figures, without my even intending it, are—at least seem to me to be—thinking about life and wondering what the hell to do about it. I didn't realize it at the time, but now I think that's really what was going on. They simply represent my questions about life's meaning. These two paintings, however, were about 3-point perspective as much as they were about any question.

When I had my first show in New York in 1979 at Monique Knowlton Gallery, a few 3-point perspective paintings (including those two) were in it. They were pretty dramatic and made the walls vibrate. Most everything sold and the show got very good reviews, many of which cited the unusual perspective. The New York Times' John Russell called it "space that seems to bend like a penknife." The non-3-point paintings were lauded, too, but the real hook, and unique aspect of the show definitely was 3-point perspective.

As soon as that show was over I started thinking, and worrying, about the next. Even though two years between exhibitions was the norm, I decided to wait only one. I wanted to capitalize on my success as soon as possible, and knew I couldn't repeat the 3-point "extravaganza" if I took two years, or even three. Fitting the pieces together all these years later is a little difficult and I can't quite get to the reason waiting only one year seemed best, but it did. I suppose wanting to keep the ball rolling was a big part of it. I knew I'd have to quit my teaching job to do it, and paint every waking minute. Without that income I'd have to borrow to make it through. My gallery lent me money against sales to come.

"Prone" 51"x 84" Oil on canvas, 1977  

I was confident I could make good paintings that weren't in 3-point perspective, and I wasn't all that driven to do another 3-point painting—not right then at least. What I was driven to do was to follow up on a painting that had been in the first show that was hardly any perspective at all. It was one of the more recently completed pieces and was distinctly different from everything else. It was titled "Prone," and showed a female nude lying on her stomach on a black velvet sofa. The view was low and straight into the sofa's front—I call it a "perpendicular view."

I'd had the idea of doing more paintings along these lines and this seemed the perfect time to do it. I felt I could do enough of them in ten months for a show which, amazingly, I did. There was less acclaim, though some. John Russell again wrote a nice review in which he referred to me as a "practiced enigmatist," which I've always been proud of.

TO BE CONTINUED

Ten Minutes With L.A. Artist Kim Abeles at the Intersection of Problem Solving and Curiosity

45' x 42' Paper Person constructed with trash generated on Earth Day.

When I was an art student at Ohio University there were a half dozen Siegfried Hall peers for whom I had especially high regard as artists with sufficient talent and motivation to make a mark as career artists. One of these whose work impressed me at that time was Kim Abeles. Upon graduation we were like seeds scattered to the wind. In the 90s the emergence of the internet enabled former classmates to occasionally find one another and I had the good fortune to re-connect with her and during an L.A. business trip visit her studio there. It was an invigorating experience, confirming that my instincts and expectations had been accurate.

Today Abeles has received recognition on several continents, having produced an immense body of thought-provoking, imaginative work. I asked if she might allow me to interview her here that I might share her ideas and work with my friends and readers.

EN: As a career artist and art teacher, can you explain why art is still important today?

Kim Abeles: From a wide view, culture – meaning all the arts and creative expressions – is what can hold society together, framing life so we can stop and feel it. Metaphor and hand-made beauty make us feel whole for a moment. If a person were able to spend their life entirely walking the earth and living off the land, the result would be the art form. But in our contemporary world, that scenario is only in dreams.

Art is the place where problem solving and curiosity meet, only falling short when the art is stuck in emulation of itself.

EN: When I visited you in 1998 I was impressed by many of your works, but especially the series of presidential plates. Can you explain briefly what you were doing with that series?

KA: The Presidential Commemorative Smog Plates came about when I kept hearing George HW Bush anointing himself as the “environmental president.” He did push for the Clean Air Act, but on the ground, in smoggy Los Angeles, I wasn’t able to see much difference.

The Smog Collectors materialize the reality of the air we breathe. I place cut, stenciled images on transparent or opaque plates or fabric, then leave these on the roof of my studio and let the particulate matter in the heavy air fall upon them. After a period of time, from four days to a month, the stencil is removed and the image is revealed in smog. To quote a stranger, they are "footprints of the sky".

I created the first smog Collector in 1987 while working on artworks about the “invisible” San Gabriel Mountains, obscured by the smog as I looked from my studio fire escape in downtown Los Angeles. In the 1980s it was common to hear people insist that it was fog, not smog, that filled the air.

The Presidential Commemorative Smog Plates (1992) are portraits of U.S. Presidents from McKinley to George HW Bush made of smog on porcelain dinner plates with their quotations about the environment and business hand-lettered in gold. The plates were left out longer depending on the environmental record of the president.

EN: I remember, too, you smog-etched dining room table. How many other smog-stencil etchings did you create?

KA: Forty Days and Forty Nights (Forty Days of Smog) is an installation with a central element as a dinner table made with smog on glass, car mufflers for table legs, assemblage details, and suspended chiffon chairs. The idea of using domestic imagery, homes and the places where we are meant to feel safe, were perfect counterparts to the dangerous environmental catastrophe that we had created with our cars and factories.

I made a few of these table settings, most recently for the Museum of Art and Design in New York. Dinner for Two in One Month of Smog was shown again this past spring at Kunsthal KAde in the Netherlands. In this case the smog-dinner appears directly on a table cloth. Zoe’s Highchair reveals her lunch made in smog on glass.

Other subjects for the Smog Collectors include the cave paintings of Lascaux, images of the body, industry and to-scale translations of American landscape painting and photography. We live in the contradiction that the dangers are out there, beyond, and that we are safe in our homes. Since the worst in our air can't be seen, Smog Collectors are both literal and metaphoric depictions of the current conditions of our life source. They are reminders of our industrial decisions: the road we took that seemed so modern.

EN: Your art definitely challenges peoples' thinking and, hopefully, conscience. What have been the primary themes your work has addressed?

KA: All of my work is about engaging in the world and trying to understand using art to transcribe complex issues that are always layered with meaning. Through the course of my career, my work has brought together biography, geography and environment. I have focused on subjects including the urban environment, feminism, aging, HIV/AIDS, labor, mental health, violence, and collective memory.

Though my work addresses a broad scope of environmental and social concerns, the soul of the art always engenders a discussion about the role of the individual in society.

The individual is not a separate organism moving around independently, but rather a dynamic speck in the movement of all things past to future. I am awestruck by our efforts, our foibles, and our successes, and by the way these three are inseparable.

Some of my work is permanent and made for public spaces. Other projects are intended to engage through the project with kids in schools or with community groups. The projects involving participants are created with hands, for them, and as the focus audience. In this way it is like gift giving. We each come with our own voices and must have a willingness to really listen, even if it takes bit to hear.

EN: Your work has brought you international recognition. How did this happen?

KA: The Smog Collectors opened up my work to a wide audience. But I also had a large-scale mid-career survey, Kim Abeles: Encyclopedia Persona A-Z toured the U.S., and through South America sponsored by the United States Information Agency. It was curated by Karen Moss for the Santa Monica Museum of Art and was sponsored by the Fellows of Contemporary Art.

Between 1993-97, I travelled with the exhibitions to Forum for Contemporary Art, St. Louis; Fresno Art Museum; National Museum of Fine Arts, Santiago, Chile; Museum of Modern Art, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Complejo Cultural Recoleta, Buenos Aires, Argentina; Centro Cultural Consolidado, Caracas, Venezuela. Art Resources Transfer, (A.R.T. Inc.) in New York picked up the show and a culminating version of the show was presented in1999.

All artists need people who champion their work. This provides a very nurturing support and encouragement, as well as a practical aspect that has to do with exhibitions at important art institutions, and additionally in my case, museums based in the sciences. There are many people I could list early on who believed in my work, including Lucinda Barnes who was most recently the Chief Curator at the Berkeley Art Museum; Bill Bartman who was a gallerist, publisher, and founder of Arts Resources Transfer; and, Diane Perlov who is Deputy Director for Exhibits at the California Science Center. As I typed up this list, scores of other people poured into my thoughts, professionals who helped me along the way. These are people who continued to believe in my work regardless of changes to my methods or experiments with uncharted forms.

EN: In what ways have you changed after a career in art and in what ways have you remained the same?

KA: The physical work in the studio is always at the center of my efforts. I continue to be making art in the dark with a small flashlight, so to speak. I prefer to be a little lost, locate my bravery along the way, regain faith when I misplace it, and appreciate that this is where my gifts were given.

I do believe that art has the means to transform the way people look at the world. It is like a fragrance that later reminds a person of a tangible place or feeling. We can become numb in the world we occupy, and art is challenged to be more true, more meaningful, more heartfelt.

I went into art with communities of people very early in my career. In the 1980s, I would hear grumbles about this kind of work. People saw it as social work and not to be equated with art. This has of course changed considerably, and now “social engagement” is one of several terms given to this genre.

The core of these artist experiences will inspire us through this truly horrible moment of national and international violence. And art, from visual ideas to spoken word and all the forms, are urgent to grasp. We have lost a lot of the poetry in our lives, and I mean that as literally as I do metaphorically. A poet reading still needs the listener who has a passionate heart.

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For a more comprehensive look at the work and thought of Kim Abeles visit her website at kimabeles.com/ 

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A Little Known Fact about the Squirrels of Ohio University

In the second quarter of my senior year at Ohio University in Athens I lived in an efficiency apartment downtown. My one room space was upstairs in the rear of the building next to an exit where rickety black metal stairs zig-zagged down to the alley.

One morning in early spring as I stepped out the door onto the landing I noticed a squirrel affixed to the wall about eight feet above my shoulder. He had a look of terror in his eyes. I attributed it to his situation, seemingly stuck on the wall and unsure what his next move should be. He was approximately three stories from the ground and I surmised that this would be a nasty fall should he leap and fail to reach the staircase.

Though he may have simply been spooked by my sudden appearance, my heart went out to the cute little critter. I decided to fetch a broom which I proceeded to hold out toward where he tightly gripped the bricks. Springing into action, he bounded down the broom handle, sharp claws startling my wrist as he leapt to the stairs and scrambled to a more sensible place to play.

This memory came to mind this weekend while I was doing research on the concerts I saw at Ohio University from 1970 to 1974. From one website I was able to download the History of Ohio University, which though incomplete on the matter of concerts did make for an interesting read. For example, I learned that squirrels were intentionally introduced to the campus in 1908. They were Ivy League squirrels, brought here from Harvard University. The OU Board of Trustees felt this wildlife would benefit the university.

I, for one, never knew our squirrels were imported. I do know that they were appreciated.

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Photo Credit: This one is actually a Minnesota squirrel, captured and shared by John Heino Photography. We cannot tell precisely what his alma mater is, but we're working on it.