NEW ORLEANS ON SITE RABBIT'S MOON     STUDIO JOURNAL

During our stay here in the Big Easy we are trying to chronicle as much about the area as we can for you.  They one thing about a new environment for artist is that you have new eyes, nothing is common place.  In your own world one becomes used to seeing things and forgets to look closely at times.  When ever an artist is in a new environment, it is like you have fresh eyes, you see every thing anew.  It is a like a shot of adrenaline, hundreds of new images coming at you and every thing seems new..because it is to you.  We were coming out of Drago's Restaurant (a wonderful seafood restaurant) and across the parking lot these electric lines outside a building.  The white on white, the shapes forming an abstract composition of alien tentacle like soldiers, and the lines almost in motion..like wind blown...still frozen in motion from Katrina and the wake of destruction it left. The straight lined contrast of the bricks against the curved caps of current connectors makes for an interesting juxtaposition.
These make me think of Louise Nevelson and her mono toned collages in New York.  See what you think.  I will include some of Nevelson's work for you to compare.
I am not sure yet how I will use these photo's in my work, or just let the work be the photo...but I seem to want to do more, so we shall see where it leads. The more i look at them, the more they speak to me and seem to want to say more!  

STUDIES IN LINE, SHAPE AND TEXTURE 

Metairie Electric Lines         photo by elizabeth gordon  

Metarie  Electric Lines          photo by elizabeth gordon

Louise Nevelson                            from google image

from google image

GIVE YOURSELF A TREAT, GO TO A NEW AREA, A NEW ENVIRONMENT, TAKE A CAMERA OR SKETCH BOOK...AND THEN SIT BACK AND WAIT..IT WILL BE IMAGE ON IMAGE, NEW SMELLS, NEW SOUNDS, AND NEW IMAGES.  I PROMISE YOU IT IS A TREAT FOR THE ARTISTS'  SOUL.

A Woman Artist Even My Mother Could Love/Strong Women in Art

Louise Nevelson 

I taught art in public schools for many years.  I always tried to find interesting ways to teach children about art history. I had to make art history come alive for them.  I brought home videos to review for class, one of those was of Louise Nevelson as an older artists. 

My Mother, who was also aging and worried about her wrinkles, was captivated by Nevelson's life and looks.  She told me when she got older she could at least look as interesting as Louise Nevelson! 

Louise Nevelson/google image

Louise was born in 1889 in Russia not long before my Mothers birth in 1913.  Women born in a generation of war, depression and strife.  Louise went to the art student league and studied art.  She later married and was expected to be a good wife who moved in her husbands world of socialites.  It was not a world she could thrive in, she left her husband with her young son Myron and went back to New York City.  It was there something interesting happened....one of those odd things in life that lead to amazing things later...she and her son wandered the streets of New York collecting wood for heat.  The wood was not a log, or wood from a forest, but wood from old buildings and wood that had been worked or crafted for use.  That very wood would give Louise the idea for her wood collages later in her career and big her signature work of her life!  

Wood Collage Sculpture by Louise Nevelson     google image

I think it is difficult for us to think of the tenacity and strength it took for this woman, in an era when women were not allowed to do much, still succeeded and made her way. She challenged the idea of what women were allowed to paint and what society dictated women could do.  The following excerpt is from Wikapedia about her role in the women's movement. As you read through this you will see the sexism she dealt with in her life and the art world.  


"Louise Nevelson has been a fundamental key in the feminist art movement. 

Credited with triggering the examination of femininity in art, Nevelson challenged the vision of what type of art women would be creating with her dark, masculine and totem-like artworks.^[1] Nevelson believed that art reflected the individual, not "masculine-feminine labels", and chose to take on her role as an artist, not specifically a female artist.^[25] Reviews of Nevelson's works in the 1940s wrote her off as just a woman artist. A reviewer of her 1941 exhibition at Nierendorf Gallery stated: "We learned the ar

tist is a woman, in time to check our enthusiasm. Had it been otherwise, we might have hailed these sculptural expressions as by surely a great figure among moderns." Another review was similar in its sexism: "Nevelson is a sculptor; she comes from Portland, Maine. You'll deny both these facts and you might even insist Nevelson is a man, when you see her Portraits in Paint, showing this month at the Nierendorf Gallery."^[26]

Even with her influence upon future generations of feminist artists, Nevelson's opinion of discrimination within the art world bordered on the belief that artists who were not gaining success based on gender suffered from a lack of confidence. When asked by Feminist Art Journal if she suffered from sexism within the art world, Nevelson replied "I am a woman's liberation."^[22]"

Eva Hesse/Pioneer in a Man's World

Eva Hesse has been one of the most interesting artist I have studied and her work early influenced my thinking about my art and the experimental nature of media.  Her story is one of tragedy, loss, and struggle.  She died at young age, yet made an indelible mark in the art world.

 For me Eva identified the scientific part of art that I love, the experimentation and discovery.  In her work I find the intellectualism that is missing in representational art.  In a world dominated by men in the art world she was a persistent force that refused not to be heard.  Her body of work now is looked on by other artists and critics as being a crucial step in minimalism by humanizing a normally cold structural movement.  If you are looking for beautiful representational art, you will not find it here.  What you will find is an artist involved in the discovery of new media, she is creating through experimentation with new materials.  

New York and the modern art scene has not always been friendly nor accepting of women, one could say there is a downright prejudice among museums and galleries to carry male artists work primarily.  That is why pioneers like Eva Hesse, Judy Chicago, Nancy Graves, Elizabeth Murray, Georgia O'Keefe, Louise Nevelson, Louise Bourgoise, Cindy Sherman , Niki de St. Phalle, Yayoi Kamasu, and others are so important.  They took on a male dominated art wold and persisted.  Women throughout history have played an important role in the art world, but in the past were not always recognized, many creating work that was credited to the men they studied with.  

I was fortunate to grow up with three strong women in my life: My Mother, my Aunt Josephine and my Grandmother.  Each were role models in their own right and gave me a gift of what it is to be a strong woman and define yourself in a male world.  They were accomplished women who persisted no matter the obstacle and succeeded.  I grew up with curious intellectual female role models, who taught me to think for myself and seek out the world on my own terms.  Strength of character was their mantra.  So it is in this vein I honor Eva Hesse and all the women artists who have made their mark in a male dominated art world and always persisted.