THE BARN IS FALLING DOWN

There's a warm breeze blowing across the porch of our 100 year old Wisconsin farmhouse. I look across the dirt road at the barn slowly collapsing under the weight of old age. The boys (John and his brother Walt) talk about ways of helping it out of it's misery. 

At this point are you wondering if the barn is going to be an analogy for the country falling out of favor with our creditors by not raising the debt limit. The traditions of always paying our national debt being risked by political posturing?

And did you notice I mentioned Wisconsin? I could be planning on telling you about the dozens of signs all over town for a Democrat running for Congress. We are about an hour north of Madison. I could tell about our fantasy last winter of marching and waving our posters (but we're old and it was too cold out).

Or maybe this is a story about personal aging, of each year having your major supports buckling. Knee knobs and hip girders snapping, so that your whole structure collapses. Hmmm. This could lead to a story about medicare. 

Maybe it'll be a story about Jack Kevorkian and putting the dying out of their misery.

Or maybe, just maybe, it's about the barn. This time, instead of my political harping at the end, I thought I'd get it over at the beginning. 

I'm on vacation, after all. Time to shed normality and relax. Do something different. 

Different? Huh. Let's see, I brought along two large tubs of painting supplies. Oils, which I haven't touched (sounds like home). We brought Scrabble which we play on summer nights on the screened porch at home. We cook. We eat. We sleep. And, yes, we brought our pillows.

And of course, I brought my computer. Right now John is at the kitchen table designing a bathroom on his laptop for a client. Katie's in the dining room on her laptop doing her job as a nurse reviewer. Walt is in the living room refining the new blog he's setting up. I'm in a sunny room off the dining room. I don't know what this room would be called. And you know what I'm doing. 

Last night I helped Walt set up a blog that we'll use to try to sell 265 acres of land. We'll still have 172 acres with the farmhouse, a gorgeous lake, fields leased to a farmer and the falling down barn. This is the beautiful place John and his two brothers inherited from their father several years ago.

So, vacation? I'm the same. The things I do are pretty much the same. Although Saturday Katie and I went to a flea market, something I don't normally do. Along with all the treasures and junk we saw there were a couple goodies I'm bringing home. 

But mainly it is a visual vacation. What I see here is very different than what I see in the Detroit suburbs.  In the evening we sit at a round table in the yard (with a fly biting our ankles) as we watch a herd of deer in the corn field. From the top of the hill we can look out over the pristine lake. We've seen a bald eagle and wild turkeys. 

And from the porch we mourn the death of a lovely old barn.

To see Walt's new blog click here: http://wiscproperty.blogspot.com/

Design

I just finished designing a postcard and a flyer for an art exhibit. I sometimes forget how much I liked design. Graphic design, like writing haiku, has parameters: size specifics, clarity, a readable message. It was a great pleasure.

*

I had identical twin second-cousins. Boys. Each boy was always called "Twinnie" by all the relatives, because no one knew who was who. They grew up living next door to my great-grandmother, great aunts and great uncle in the right half of the two-family flat in Detroit. 

When we were all young, the twins showed me how they caught fireflies. Since I was a girl, they said I could just watch them do it. They showed me (no touching) their great armies of green plastic soldiers. They were four years older than me, so we had very little to do with each other.

When I was a junior in high school I wanted to go into advertising. I loved the ads in Seventeen Magazine. I didn’t want to be Picasso or Dali (well, sometimes Dali). It was more the nameless, unsigned illustrations that drew me, or that I wanted to draw.

I was living at my Grandmother’s and I hadn’t seen the twins in years when one came out to the suburbs to visit us. Both the twins had recently graduated from The Art School of the Society of Arts and Crafts where they had studied advertising. One had gotten a job as an art director at a television station in Detroit, the other was an art director in Florida. 

I hung on every word Twinnie said about the art school. Then I showed him an illustration I had just finished. It was a dark-outlined, stylized fashion piece, a girl in a Pendleton plaid skirt. I had copied it exactly from Seventeen. 

He looked it over carefully, then kindly said, “Well, it’s nice, but they never use these dark outlines in an illustration.” I didn’t tell him that it was a copy, thick dark lines and all.

*

The man across the street from my Grandmother’s was an artist’s rep at one of the big advertising studios. His daughter was my friend. One night I took some of my paintings over to show him. 

That was the night he slapped me with devastating news, “Advertising agency’s don’t hire women artists.”

“Why not.”

Now I swear to you, this is really what he said, “Because women paint everything in pink and baby blue.” Then he added, “ Maybe you should become a teacher”

I started doing everything in black and red. That was in 1961.

Eighteen years later, I became a student at The Center for Creative Studies, formerly The Art School of the Society of Arts and Crafts, where I majored in advertising design. This was after my first marriage, two kids, divorce, and jobs that involved copy editing, keylining and doing layouts.

*

Once I dated a man who thought that everyone should have a five year plan. He asked me what mine was. By that time I was working as a graphic designer at one of the best studios in Detroit. It was my dream job. 


He should have asked me what my twenty-five year plan was when I was in high school. 

*

Designing this postcard was fun. The card and flyer are for a group exhibit. Two art groups are coming together, TAG and The Reckless Prophets. There will be paintings, photography and sculpture. I'm a Taggie, so I'll be in the show. As you can see I'm first in the alphabetical list. Hey, there was a reason I changed my name to Arbor. 


Now the hard part: doing the paintings for the show. Painting for me is nothing like haiku.

http://www.collegeforcreativestudies.edu/

First, The Good News

On November 16th I wrote a post titled "The End of the Relationship". It was about leaving Ariana Gallery. The gallery owner rented one of my paintings to the ABC television show, "Detroit 1-8-7". She chose not to share the income from art rentals with the artists who created the work. The 50/50 split went out the window. She kept all of the $600 rental fee from my painting for herself.

I left the gallery.

Now here's the good news. You've heard the phrase "When one door closes another door opens". In December another door opened. 

An entrepreneur, who started a business representing artists to Detroit's blooming film industry, added me to her stable of artists. I haven't written about this before at her request. She has all the artists she can handle for the time being. 

I'm very lucky to have found an honest, enthusiastic, hard-working, creative woman to promote my work. She's also a painter, so she can relate to artists' struggles.  We've talked about all the excitement in town; one hundred films scheduled to be filmed in Michigan this summer.

In January she rented two of my paintings to "Detroit 1-8-7". They used the paintings on the set. A week later I got paid. Isn't that awesome!

Now the Bad News

Our new governor, Rick Snyder plans to eliminate the tax incentives for the film industry. The governor's reasoning is: why should one industry have more advantages than the others?

Within hours of Snyder's State of the State speech productions that were scheduled to come here this summer left us and headed for Louisiana. "Avengers", a film with one of the biggest budgets to come to Michigan, has pulled out.  The one hundred anticipated films has dwindled drastically.

Michigan is in financial trouble. However, the film industry doesn't cost us, it brings in money.

The governor should be looking at the film industry as tourists. Film making is a vagabond business. They can go anywhere.

They come into town and spend loads of money. They eat out, stay at hotels, shop in our stores. The set designers rent all kinds of things, including fine art from local people. The hotels, restaurants, shops, artists and many many more local people earn income from films.

Then they pay taxes on those earnings to the State of Michigan. 

Films also advertise to the world our beautiful, diverse, gritty, lush and serene State. The tax incentives are a bargain for us. Tourism? Who wouldn't want to visit the newest film capitol of the midwest. You might have lunch next to George Clooney or Clint Eastwood.

The Other Good News

The fat lady hasn't sung yet. There's supposed to be a town hall meeting March 3. We have until May for the state legislative vote. Snyder's proposal is not a done deal. 

Please, if you want films to be made in Michigan, please call your state representative and the governor. Send emails. Write letters. Share this blog post with your friends and encourage them to call, write and email. Please.

Thank you.

To find your districts State Senator:
http://www.house.michigan.gov/find_a_rep.asp

Governor Rick Snyder
P.O. Box 30013
Lansing, Michigan 48909
Phone: 517-373-3400
Phone: 517-335-7858 - Constituent Services
Fax: 517-335-6863
E-mail: Rick.Snyder@michigan.gov

Sex, Violence and Crochet

Now that I have your attention, this is a post with two stories. 

Yesterday I was trying to teach my ten year old granddaughter, Julia, to crochet. You should really know how to do whatever it is you're trying to teach someone else. I basically muddle my way through a ball of yarn and end up with a scarf. These are diet scarves. If I keep my hands busy, then I won't be holding food. 

Julia has about four rows of her scarf begun. And being that I'm a crappy teacher, her rows are wonkie. I finished my scarf. It was too wide, to short and also wonkie. So I un-crocheted it into a nice ball. Julia was appalled that I was taking the whole thing apart.

I told her that part of the pleasure was in the doing of the thing, and redoing if it wasn't right.

In the wee hours of the morning I had a memory that connects to this. 

When I was 27 I took an evening sculpture class from Sergio DeGiusti, who is one of Detroit's best sculptors.  We were using terra-cotta clay and had nude models. By the end of the first class I had a lovely little female figure. That's when Sergio told us to put our creations back in the plastic bags. What? Just squish them up? Most of the class was appalled. But, but, THREE hours were spent on this sculpture. 

Sergio told us that these sculptures were not precious. That they were not art.  That they were learning exercises.

One man was very upset. He said that if he went home without any evidence, his wife wouldn't believe he was at a class. 

The final night of class, instead of the usual models, an older man was going to pose. I was relieved that we were going to do head studies and he wasn't going to be naked. (Hey, I was 27, what do you want.) 

The sculpture class was twelve weeks long and after several weeks Sergio must have thought we were making art. We got to take our sculptures home.

It was traditional that at the end of the final class everyone went out for beer. Somehow or other I ended up being volunteered to take our OLD model to the bar in my car.  So I had his clay head in the backseat and him in the front seat.

Afterward I had to drive the model back to the school. When I stopped the car to let him out, he didn't get out. Instead he grabbed me. What! This old man, that I was being nice to by giving him a ride, grabbed me. I let him know I was not happy in not so nice terms, and booted him out of my car. I drove home, shaking, furious.

The next day that lecherous man's head was sitting on my kitchen table. Now here's the violence part, so take the kids out of the room. I looked at the head of still wet clay. I poked him in the eye. I pulled off his ears and punched him hard in the face. Wham! Pow! Blam! Splat!

The bust was busted.

Here's the take away: everything we make is not precious, sometimes it's learning.  And also it's really fun to punch clay.

The End of the Relationship

I've left a long term relationship. It's over. Our goals didn't match anymore. A long term relationship should have mutual respect, a common purpose, and trust, especially trust. I've left the art gallery that has shown my work since 2001. 

Sunday John and I brought all my paintings home.

In September I wrote a blog post about the people from "Detroit 1-8-7" choosing one of my paintings to use on the show. There were a couple things I didn't mention on the post. Like when I signed the release form I asked the gallery owner if we were being paid. Her startled response was something like, "Oh, umm, oh, well, I guess I'll have to ask them".

Huh?

Well, that bothered me, so I had a conversation about it with Google when I got home. 

Google's response was confirmed a week later when I went to see a show at a gallery in downtown Detroit. I happily told the gallery managers that a tv show was going to use one of my paintings. They told me that movie and tv people had been renting art from them too. RENTING. Renting for 20% of the value of the art for a week. 

It took me several weeks of stewing before going back to the gallery to have a little chat with the gallery owner. I'm a mild mannered Democrat, I don't yell at people, I'm not fond of confrontation. Also I had to decide if I really wanted to leave the gallery. Where would I go? Would I feel rudderless, homeless, lost. 

It turns out that, yes, the gallery owner is making 20% on the art rentals. She asked the tv people if she had to share the money with her artists. They said it was her choice. She's choosing not to. 

I acknowledge here that keeping a gallery open is expensive. 50/50 sharing of sales has always seemed fair to me. She has to make a living too.

And after all, it involved a lot of work for her, she told me she spent two hours on paperwork and packing the selection of art they took (I think it was seven pieces from different artists). I mentioned that my 48" x 48" painting took 30 hours to paint. The painting's value is $3000, 20% of that is $600. So for her 2 hours of packing and paperwork, that's $300 per hour. That's just from my piece. What about the other artists?

She said I get exposure if my work is on the tv show. Hmmm. There isn't a sign over the art saying Lynn did this. There isn't a credit line at the end of the show that says, "Painting in the dining room by Lynn Arbor". Also they may rent art work, place it on the set, but it doesn't necessarily ever show up on screen. The gallery owner still gets paid.

I also found out that no other artist has questioned being paid, or so she said. 

Maybe because I spent 25 years of my life making art for a living, I'm used to getting paid. When I was a graphic designer I did the work, wrote a bill, then someone wrote a check. 

Of course, there was the time that I designed a brochure for a woman who grew orchids. She didn't like the design. Said her son the printer could do a much better, more creative, more professional job. When I got up to leave (taking my design) she said, "You can leave the design." Yeah, right.

It seems that some people think that if you love doing the work you do (especially artists, singers, musicians) that your reward is in the pleasure you get in doing it. You don't really need to get paid. 

If my brain surgeon loves cutting into heads, no one questions that he should be paid. Wait a minute. I don't have a brain surgeon, but you get my point. If someone wants to use your art, you should get paid. It's not brain surgery, but it counts.

Things NOT to do to Avoid Painting

Or how I didn't feel like painting and broke my head instead.

Some days are like this, gloomy, too quiet. Funky. I spent a few minutes in the studio. Stared at everything and walked out. Went down the basement spent about 5 minutes watching my wonderful new Daniella Woolf DVD, "Encaustic with a Textile Sensibility". I had watched the whole thing a couple days ago, but somehow was too restless to watch more than a couple minutes again. Came back upstairs, looked in the refrigerator. Turned on the living room tv. Turned off the tv. Looked in the refrigerator again. Went back upstairs to the studio. Felt the paint brushes. Left the studio. Poured a cup of coffee. Opened the dish washer. Put a dirty bowl in. Wiped the counter. Grabbed a wood tray to put back in it's place. Fell over the opened dishwasher door.

Ahhh, that last item… That's what you really shouldn't do to avoid painting. The wood tray hit the floor and evidently my head hit the edge of the tray. There was blood, blood flying out of my head. I managed to extract myself from the dishwasher door and went into the bathroom. I looked like a cheesy horror movie…my face totally red with blood. I rinsed my face and went to the kitchen for a clean cloth and pressed it into my head hole. Found my phone. Called John.  

Twenty minutes later he arrived and took me to the hospital for stitches. Four hours, 3 inter-stitches, 8 outer stitches, a cat scan of my head (no internal bleeding), an X-ray  of my right hand (no broken bones), and insurance forms signed later, we headed back home.

I'm fine, a few bruises here and there, and an ugly forehead. By the way, if you're going to try this yourself, it's a good idea to wear bangs.

Reminiscent of Hitchcock films, I'm including a picture, blood looks better in black and white. 

I was renaming myself Jill (of Jack and Jill fame), however Jack was the one who broke his crown. So go ahead, call me Jack.

Hey, Guess What!

Okay, so here's the story. "Detroit 1-8-7" is a new show on ABC. It takes place in, AND is being filmed in, you guessed it, Detroit.

A couple days ago designers from the show went to Ariana Gallery and choose several pieces of art (paintings and sculptures) to use on the set. They're using a house in Grosse Pointe and felt it needed some brightening up. My painting "Overboard" (shown above) was one of the ones they picked. Yesterday I went to Ariana Gallery and signed a release form. I hate to sound star struck, but this is very exciting.

They're only using the painting for two days before returning it to the gallery. What impresses me about that is how organized they must be...how tightly scheduled and timed everything is. There's a possibility the painting won't be used, or may be seen for just a fleeting moment. But still. It's cool.

There's a lot of filming going on around here these days. Ann Kuffler, owner of Ariana Gallery, told me that there are 11 films currently being made in the area, and there have been several occasions when production people have come into her gallery for art.

So, check out "Detroit 1-8-7". It's on ABC and premieres Tuesday, September 21st at 10:00 pm EST. I'm told "1-8-7" means homicide in police talk. Michael Imperioli (Christopher from the Sopranos) is one of the stars. If it's good, maybe it will have a long run and help our economy.

Sunrise

 "Black Lake" is an older painting that, I think, has the feel of a sunrise or sunset.

One morning before 7:00 I was driving east down the expressway. Forecasts predicted rain and thunderstorms that hadn't happened. Ahead of me a wedge of the dreary gray, cloudy sky broke open and unveiled a glowing pink. Then edges of the clouds around the pink became fiery gold. It literally took my breath away. 

My first thought was to wish for my camera. Capture it. Keep it forever. Savor it. Share it with others.

We've all gotten emails of breathtaking photography. The photographer was there at that precise moment of beauty. Snap. Captured. When we see those images on our computer monitors we whisper, "wow".

But as painters in 2010, I think we need to do more than capture the perfect sunrise or the beautiful flower. The goal should not be to repeat natures perfection. Could that be considered plagiarizing nature? But rather we should create something new. Something not seen or known before. Something we can "wow" ourselves with.

PS. keep in mind that tomorrow I may paint a hydrangea. In art the rules (especially mine) are meant to be broken.

Weeding

Something has happened to my garden. I don't know whether it's some kind of blight, heat, neglect because of the heat, or just the Dog Days of August.

It's looking really bad.

We're having a lovely cooler morning, so I spent a couple hours cutting out sick leaves, and completely eliminated some cucumbers that want to rule the world.

As I was cleaning up the garden I was thinking about painting. Painting and gardening have this in common; it's important to know what to weed. Is there a cucumber in my art that wants to dominate? Should I let it? What if it's a round yellow cucumber. Interesting to look at. Sweet. How much room should it get?

Final thought: gardening, painting and writing are all enriched by thoughtful editing.

Primary Colors

A few weeks ago Treena Flannery Ericson called, and with many apologies for asking, asked if I would donate a painting for a fund raising auction. It seemed like the perfect way to nudge myself back into painting. I adore Treena.  She's the gallery director at the Scarab Club in Detroit, and the Scarab Club has been good to me. The first juried show I was ever in was at the Scarab Club in the early 70's. 

The Scarab Club was founded in 1907 by a group of artists and art lovers. The main gallery is a bright, big space. Perfect for enhancing art. http://www.scarabclub.org/

The fund raiser is called Primary Colors and they wanted art that was confined to the basic primaries, plus black and white. After some messing around with acrylics, and I do mean messing, I decided to do a tryptic in encaustic. 

It's been 85 to 90 degrees here and humid as hell. I'm naturally assuming hell is humid. So I get out my blow torch, electric griddle, and electric frying pan. I figured I was already very hot, so a few more degrees wouldn't kill me. It didn't. In fact, encaustic is a great medium to do in the heat. If your sweaty brow drips on the art it just evaporates. Picture what can happen to a watercolor.

So I'm painting… fusing layers and layers of pigmented wax and damar varnish. Carving into the layers and fusing some more. 

Thank you, Treena.

If you are unfamiliar with encaustic, I'll tell more in a future blog.

Studio Cleaning 101

Maybe the first thing to do to get back into painting, or making any art, is to clean up the studio. My space had become a place that I didn't even want to be in, let alone make art in. I didn't even like looking in the open door. Why have I saved every yogurt container, every jar. Certainly some will be handy…but 50? 

I've been reading, "Scaling Down, Living Large in a smaller space"  by Judi Culbertson and Marj Decker for a few years now. It's my bathroom book. Does everyone have one of those? Anyway, my digestion must be pretty good, because the book has been there forever.  They suggest (we've all heard this before) making separate piles. Trash. Recycling. Keep. 

It hasn't been that hard, except for the bad paintings.  Usually you can paint over a painting that you no longer like. However, if I got run over by a truck tomorrow, would my family know which paintings I was planning on recycling into new and better art? I saw a Degas exhibition at the Detroit Institute of Arts a few years ago, and I'm sure some of the sketches were never intended for the public.

So here's the plan.

1. Put all of those art tragedies together in a pile or box that says "not for public consumption," or "trash," some indicator that you don't ever want these shown. Will your family toss them? Or think they're precious? Hmmm, what if they toss the really good ones?  

2. The next step is to gesso up the watermedia pieces, melt down the encaustics, paint over the oils. 

3.  Really icky paintings…remove the canvas from the stretchers and toss the bad work.

I spent some time squeezing closed tubes, shaking bottles of liquid acrylics on the hunt for hard, dried up old paint to toss.

So am I ready to paint. Maybe, but first I have a whole bunch of cucumbers to pick.