What's on my desk? Two books and a brochure. "Suminagashi: the Japanese Art of Marbling, a practical guide" by Anne Chambers; "Show Your Work! 10 ways to share your creativity and get discovered" by Austin Kleon; and the January/February exhibition and program guide of the Greenville County Museum of Art. Now on with my explanation of "Why?".

The Suminagashi book is a 1991 edition brought to my attention by fiber artist Helene Davis of Paducah, Kentucky. It's a classic volume relevant to my upcoming workshop offered through the Spartanburg Art Museum's Art School. Unlike Western marbling, Suminagashi does not require additives to the water bath in which the inks float. I love the fact that although the inks can be manipulated, the resultant transfer of ink to paper is influenced by the very nature of water...its fluidity. No one print is like another. 

In the foreword of Chambers' book, Professor Akira Kuroaski writes about "sheets of decorative paper to create an aesthetic of perfect balance between the beauty of the paper, the calligraphy and the imagery of the poems" that were inked in 11th century Japan. A number of the "decorative papers" were done in suminagashi. Swirling inks, a moment captured in time, like a photograph without a discernible reference to the literal or the figurative. Suminagashi is simply floating ink snatched in its momentary evolution. Very Eastern.

Jump ahead 23 years to "Show Your Work" by the same author that brought us "Steal Like an Artist." I can't keep copies of the latter around as I am always gifting them. Both books are easy reads, just right for today's shortened attention span. Kleon is a self-described writer who draws, and who I first discovered via his blackout poetry, an exercise I've used (and credited) in creativity workshops. Pithy quotes, chalk-on-blackboard sketches, photographs, and lots of blackout examples make this 6x6-inch book an enjoyably graphic experience.

Kleon addresses a range of topics including the emotional vulnerability as well as business side of staging an exhibit. The author shares his trade secrets and encourages this level of collegiality among artists of all genres. Among his suggestions: send a daily dispatch; "A daily dispatch is even better than a resume or a portfolio, because it shows what we're working on right now." Share your taste via the work of others; "Your influences are all worth sharing because they clue people in to who you are and what you do - sometimes even more than your own work." And talk about yourself; "Have empathy for your audience. Anticipate blank stares. Be ready for more questions. Answer patiently and politely." 

Here's the chapter that surprises me - "Read Obituaries." I have begun but not as an exercise in morbidity. In Kleon's words, "Obituaries are like near-death experiences for cowards...Reading about people who are dead now and did things with their lives makes me want to get up and do something decent with mine."

Yesterday I sat in front of Sidney Dickinson's "Boy on a Horse," in the Alabama Suite exhibit at the Greenville County Museum of Art. I engaged passersby "patiently and politely" while sketching the soulful gaze of the youth astride a horse. I was here last week and will most likely take pencil to paper again next week, all in preparation for my demo during a Sketching in the Galleries session on January 25. The Museum provides Sunday drop-in opportunities that are free and open to the public, no preregistration required. During the sketching Sundays, visitors sit on stools, are loaned sketchpad and graphite pencil, and are treated to a mini drawing lesson from 2-3pm. Each week is different, with offerings of music, history, film, and demonstrations. Duke Energy is the series sponsor, but it is the Museum that should receive credit for initiating this level of community engagement. Bravo!

And best wishes for the new year to each and everyone.

The art section of Books-A-Million in Paducah, KY, is in disarray, with animé books next to fiction books next to...well, you get the picture. With no particular title in mind, I notice what captures my attention. Here it is - "Lee Mullican: An Abundant Harvest of Sun." A detail image of Mullican's 1951 "Space" pulsates, practically radiates off the dust jacket into the bookstore aisle. Why have I never heard of this mid-21st-century painter? 
The book is, in fact, a catalogue accompanying the 2005 Los Angeles County Museum of Art exhibit, "Lee Mullican: An Abundant Harvest of Sun." The exhibit then travels to Grey Art Gallery, New York University, in 2006. A clue in the foreword as to why Lee Mullican is unknown to me, and perhaps many others: he elects to work in Los Angeles during the height of the New York art scene. While the Abstract Expressionists' on the East Coast paint a dissociation from nature, a cadre of West Coast artists acknowledge nature, and tap into Eastern and other non-Western cultures.

For a time, Mullican is an integral member of San Francisco's Dynaton art group that is involved with, in his words, "...the study of nature, and the study of pattern...We were dealing with art as a way of meditation." In the early 1950s - the Alan Watts era, the artist finds Zen influencing his paintings. Perhaps it is his interpretation of what I see as Japanese aesthetic that inexorably draws me to Mullican's work. Nonetheless, for now, I reshelve the book (only to order it later online). The images attract like a magnet.

Among Mullican's early influences is the markmaking of Paul Klee, admittedly a personal favorite of mine. A number of catalogue contributors cite Mullican's military time with topographical mapping as another influence on his later work. But it is the golden glow, the quietly kinetic line work that mesmerizes. And that line work in his oil paintings - a striation technique - arrives when Mullican is handed a printer's ink knife by Greenwood Press's Jack Stauffacher. How fortuitous.

And his "Tactile Ecstatic" sculptures! From 1950-1960 Mullican crafts totemic, shamanistic wall sculptures singularly both delicate and strong. Constructed of painted wood, twigs, string, and feathers, the vertical pieces range in size from 18.5 x 6 x 2.5 inches to 56.75 x 19 x 2 inches. Whether it is Mullican's childhood in Chickasha, OK, or a later affinity with Native American art - as well as pre-Columbian, African, and other non-Western cultures, the references are clearly evident. There are 10 sculptures indexed in the catalogue; I could never imagine enough of them.

Lee Mullican, 1919-1998, and wife Luchita Hurtado (herself once a painter) raise yet another artist, Matt Mullican. I'll let you explore Matt's work on your own, as his sensibility is world's apart from his father's: hypnosis for son; transcendence for father. Filmmaker and son John Mullican creates a 2008 documentary, "Finding Lee Mullican"; do at least check out the trailer.

Have I piqued your interest? I know that Lee Mullican piques mine.

One of my favorite quotes by John Berger comes from his 2005 book, Berger on Drawing: "To draw is to look...A drawing of a tree shows, not a tree, but a tree-being-looked-at." Not replicating nature but reinterpreting it, reimagining it. Berger reminds us that while the familiar is confirming, it is the unexpected that proves we are alive. The author challenges us to not merely look, but to see. My drawing students hear me repeat this, almost ad nauseum: the more you look, the more you see.

What I appreciate about Berger is how he shares what the world looks like through his eyes, filtered through his inquisitive mind. This collection of essays, originally published between 1991 and 2000, now comprise the 2001 publication The Shape of a Pocket. I can chew on one sentence in The Shape of a Pocket for longer than usual, like the hearty crust of a bread which finally yields its delectable flavor. The Shape of a Pocket is a multi-course meal where the taste and smell of the musty earth, from which the harvest was plucked, remain fresh and pungent.

Why this book? An art group in which I participate convenes next for refreshment, camaraderie, and the sharing of a favorite book. While this is my book of choice, The Shape of a Pocket is not necessarily my favorite. It does, however, quietly impact - using art both as metaphor and vehicle for exploration of ideas, philosophy, and life. "Maybe it's time to ask a naive question: what does all painting from the Palaeolithic period until our century have in common?" Berger replies to his own query: "Every painted image announces: I have seen this... Non-figurative art is no exception. A late canvas by Rothko represents an illumination or a coloured glow which derived from the Painter's experience of the visible." (p 14)

The "visible" to which Berger refers might actually be one of those rare glimpses "between two frames." To illustrate, the author muses in chapter one on the intersections of "other visible orders with our own." He references the speed of cinema film at 25 frames per second, comparing this with the cinematic speed of the human brain: "God knows how many per second flicker past in our daily perception. But it is as if, at the brief moments I'm talking about, suddenly and disconcertingly we see between two frames. We come upon a part of the visible which wasn't destined for us. Perhaps it was destined for night-birds, reindeer, ferrets, eels, whales..." (p 5) I love it when a writer condenses a concept to the level of ferrets and eels!

The more I look, the more I see. But in our contemporary, frantically paced culture, it is more difficult to look - at least for me - due to an excess of images. Berger concurs and adds a lament: "Today images abound everywhere. Never has so much been depicted and watched. We have glimpses at any moment of what things look like on the other side of the planet, or the other side of the moon. Appearances registered, and transmitted with lightning speed. Yet with this, something has innocently changed." (p 11)

Yes, a multitude of images to draw, paint, photograph, sculpt, and Photoshop. But how many of these stir us? "When a painting is lifeless it is the result of the painter not having the nerve to get close enough for a collaboration to start. He stays at a copying distance," states Berger. "Every authentic painting demonstrates a collaboration." (p 16) Cited as just one example of collaboration is a portrait by the 15th-century painter Petrus Christus, “Porträt eines junges Mädchen.” Christus reveals his model's maturity as she stoically poses, and also reveals - by capturing her probing pubescent eyes - that it is essentially the painter who is being watched and considered. Or as Berger explains, the painter and the painted are both "...participating in being seen." I find this book delightfully exhausting, in part because I want to go online to discover or rediscover all of the artworks he references (a lot).

Each essay is a course in the meal, like chapter 3, Studio Talk. I enjoy learning about the spark that ignites Berger’s imagination; to follow as he weaves his thread through thought. For example, in Miquel Barcelo's studio Berger retrieves a discarded crumpled scrap of paper with two words: face and place. These two words launch a discourse: "Whatever the painter is looking for, he's looking for its face...He's looking for its return gaze and he's looking for its expression - a slight sign of its inner life. And this is true whether he's painting a cherry, a bicycle wheel, a blue rectangle, a carcass, a river, a bush, a hill or his own reflection in a mirror." (p 27-28) The face of a bicycle wheel? Berger’s prose verges on poetry in a delightfully profound manner. "The painter is continually trying to discover, to stumble upon, the place which will contain and surround his present act of painting... When a place is found it is found somewhere on the frontier between nature and art. It is like a hollow in the sand within which the frontier has been wiped out. The place of the painting begins in this hollow." (p  29) Berger concludes, "When a painting becomes a place, there is a chance that the face of what the painter is looking for will show itself there." (p 31)

I am on page 31 of a 260 page book, the third chapter of a 24 chapter tome. My appetite is sated but there are multiple courses to come. Just one more bite, then I offer you my seat at this feast. 

When you walk into my beginning drawing class as a new student, I ask you to trace one of your hands onto a sheet of paper mounted on the wall. Then I circulate a tin containing charcoal, and white and sanguine conté crayons, representative of earth's original palette: soot, chalk, ore. I show you a photograph of an Australian cave painting from thousands of years ago, multiple hand silhouettes overlapping on a cave wall. The entire exercise reinforces the human desire to make our mark. So it is no surprise to me when Berger visits the Chauvet Cave, both literally and in chapter 4 of The Shape of a Pocket. "Deep in the cave, which meant deep in the earth, there was everything: wind, water, fire, faraway places, the dead, thunder, pain, paths, animals, light, the unborn...They were there in the rock to be called to. The famous imprints of life-sized hands are there, stenciled in ochre, to touch and mark the everything-present and the ultimate frontier of the space this presence inhabits." (p 41)

And on and on Berger writes: imagining Vija Celmins inspired by Velazquez, the gaze of the encaustic Fayum portraits, the unfinished work of Degas, correspondence with Leon Kossoff as he prepares for a retrospective at the Tate, the drawings of Van Gogh, Michelangelo in the Vatican, the late self-portraiture of Rembrandt, from oval heads to The Kiss by Brancusi, the films of Antonioni, an obstinate recluse Morandi, the awkward monuments of Raymond Mason, the sentient pain of Kahlo, Gericault's paintings of asylum inmates, refinding (Berger's word) hope in Bosch's triptych, and ending with final chapters that dive into politics more than anticipated from the previous essays. As though bitters are served rather than dessert. Nonetheless, this meal, The Shape of a Pocket, is what I imagine dining once was: long, slow, circuitous, satisfying. Enjoy.

Years ago I suspended magazine subscriptions, finding that only a select number of issues are immediately relevant. The remainder are fodder for recycling. Now, my art magazine browsing happens while sipping chai tea, sitting next to natural light from a window in a bookstore café. The bookstore seemingly doesn't mind that I am using their facility more as a library than a commercial venture. I do occasionally purchase a magazine.

What interests me is, well, watching what interests me. I take notes on names and websites for browsing at a later time. What catches my attention this trip? The contemporary artists in a Minneapolis Institute of Art exhibit "Edo Pop: the Graphic Impact of Japanese Prints"; the rusty mark making of fiber artist Patricia Vivod; the translucency of the work of Korean paper artists in "Bojagi and Beyond"; the title of Claire Campbell Park's self-published 2010 book "Creating with Reverence: Art, Diversity, Culture and Soul"; and Aurora Robson's recycled plastic installations.

The Edo period captured my attention decades ago for its aesthetics, although not for its historic cultural values. I am surprised to discover that contemporary artists bother to reference an art form from 400 years ago.

The previous two books that I digested - Pema Chodron's "When Things Fall Apart" and Natalie Goldberg's "Long Quiet Highway" - are rooted in the Buddhist traditions. Although I am not aligned with either Tibetan or Zen Buddhism, there is a thread that runs through Eastern philosophy that does connect with my art, my life. In fact, I noticed these two book titles while scanning yet another but more contemporary book, "Crafting for Calm."  If you have perused Campbell Park's book "Creating with Reverence," I welcome your thoughts.

And then there are the organic plastic (this sounds like an oxymoron) installations that Robson designs, working at a scale about which I simply daydream: BIG. My daydreaming has, however, recently propelled me to apply for an intensive workshop and a 2-week artist retreat; places where I'd explore the methods and means to not just visualize, but potentially manifest my musings. I'll keep you posted on the outcome. Not only do I enjoy the environmental aspects of Robson's work - both socially and visually, I enjoy her "Links and Inspiration" webpage listing several dozen influential artists. Among them is one of my former university instructors, Martin Puryear.

My initial thought: small world. My second thought: big world. It's all connected in an enigmatically, delightful way, right here in the magazine section of Books-A-Million.

The past three borrowed books that I have digested reveal themselves to be as much about world history as the history of art. The Lady in Gold: The Extraordinary Tale of Gustav Klimt's Masterpiece, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer by Anne-Marie O'Connor; Strapless: John Singer Sargent and the Fall of Madame X by Deborah Davis; and Stealing the Mystic Lamb: The True Story of the World's Most Coveted Masterpiece by Noah Charney. The common thread in all of these tomes is actually not the fate of the art nor the artists, but the unspeakable fate that befell Hitler's human victims. As enlightening as these books are, I cannot recommend them for a light summer read.

So what draws me to such books? Iconic images that continue to impact our world, famous artists who are household names, and a desire to better understand how art and its time interact.

Case in point: Klimt's "The Kiss" is repeated, reinvented, and reissued in every imaginable form, from coffee table book to coffee mug to museum print. It is now one of those ubiquitous images that we all know but no longer see. How can we bring fresh eyes to "The Kiss," the "Mona Lisa," "Vitruvian Man," or any masterpiece turned advertising staple?

Yet the artist is able to bring a fresh eye in creating his original. For example, the introduction of gold leaf and a personal iconography into Klimt's work is purportedly influenced by his visit to San Vitale Basilica - where he beheld Byzantine gold mosaic tile shimmering around the visage of Empress Theodora. But it was the prestige of being painted by one of Austria's premier artists that drew the sitter for "Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer" and Klimt together, at a time when portraiture took years - three, in fact. When the commission was complete, its 1908 unveiling was not only to Adele and her husband, but to Austrian society as well.

A similar scenario unfolded 24 years earlier for John Singer Sargent at the 1884 Paris Salon with the unveiling of his portrait of Virginie Gautreau. Neither portrait now shocks our modern sensibilities, but in the context of their day, they pushed the edge of their era's "envelope." Adele's body melds into an abstraction of form and symbols while seductive eyes gaze unabashedly at the viewer; Virginie's highly-coutured and contoured body flaunts a fallen shoulder strap. Both portrayals are sensational in every sense of the word. Today, we barely react to the shock value of oversized nudity in the up-close-and-too-personal style of popular artists such as Jenny Saville.

Speaking of nudity, it is Jan (and Hubert) Van Eyk's Adam and Eve who upstage much of the work on the 12-paneled Ghent altarpiece (completed in 1430-1432 for the now St. Balvo Cathedral). The degree of realism in these nearly life-size figures caused a stir for centuries, eventually resulting in reproductions to replace the two offending panels. Adam and Eve are clothed in animal skin; sanitized for the changing times.

Personally, I am disappointed that the story of the actual painting of the altarpiece, and of the two portraits, encompasses only the first few chapters of each book. The authors then quickly move onto lengthy discussions of heirs, provenance, and religious, military, and political history. Could the Ghent altarpiece speak, oh, the tales it would tell about the attempts on its life and the desires of its many masters for domination, including imprisonment in a salt mine by Hitler's henchmen. Hitler coveted art - his rejection and frustration as a young artist perhaps a motivation - to a degree that endangered the very things he sought to secure. Among these is Klimt's portrait of Adele. Through heroic efforts, all three artworks survive to confound and entice us; to only partially answer our queries.

After willing myself through the chapters on the human atrocities that occur alongside the travails and travels of the paintings, I find that I care less and less about these "masterpieces."  O'Connor's closing chapter speaks eloquently to my own thoughts. "What is the value of a painting that has come to evoke the theft of six million lives?" How many artists never had the good fortune to create their masterpiece? Heavy reading, not recommended for the beach.