musings from the studio and beyond ~
dawn chandler’s reflections on art and life. . . .
04.07.2012 ~ one more
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| ~ one more ~ by dawn chandler ~ mixed media on panel ~ 8 x 8 inches ~ copyright dawn chandler 2012 ~ |
I don’t know who that woman is. People give me things from time to time, and one day a neighbor gave me a box of photographs. Among the staid portraits of stern anonymous people and pictures of Midwestern farm equipment was this image of this lovely woman full of quiet expression. I felt an immediate kinship to her
The coy little girl with the apron and sagging white tights is myself, c. 1968 or so.* Over her head floats an image of a nest with two eggs. Between the woman and the girl, a single, unlit match.
The text down the right-hand side of the panel was torn out of an 18th century book of sermons — a deteriorating book I found in a book-barn in New Hampshire a couple of decades ago. Passages of text from this book appears frequently in my collages. The panel behind the figure of the girl is a dried and pressed tea bag. Across is it is Barbara Rockman’s poem scribed with a quill pen and sepia ink in my own hand.
This is the fourth of my small works for the the Odes & Offerings deconstructed show, on exhibit at the GVG Contemproary gallery at 202 Canyon Road here in Santa Fe.
* For the record, the apron is white, the dress is green; the shoes are red. Surely there’s something telling in my early fashion sense?
04.04.2012 ~ in dream
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| ~ in dream ~ by dawn chandler ~ mixed media on panel ~ 2012 ~ copyright dawn chandler 2012 ~ |
The third of my smaller works for Odes & Offerings. Here the image of my mother — young, newly wed, in a pensive moment in the Cloisters — captured by my father’s camera. (I’ve used this image before, in my original painting for this series, “I Am a Plain Woman.”) Above her sepia image, a weighty, rusted piece of metal, nearly black. Fragments of poetry paper her edges...
04.03.2012 ~ at the improbable
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| ~ at the improbable ~ by dawn chandler ~ mixed media on panel ~ 8 x 8 inches ~ copyright dawn chandler 2012 ~ |
The second of my smaller works to come out of the Odes & Offerings project. Here I’ve incorporated a photo of a favorite sculpture I took in Italy last autumn. On the left, a scan of an ink sketch I had done of aspens; ghosted in the back, some of the poetic text of Barbara Rockman that first inspired these works.
04.02.2012 ~ these hands
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| ~ with these hands ~ by dawn chandler ~ mixed media on panel ~ 8 x 8 inches ~ copyright dawn chandler 2012 ~ |
The first of my secondary works grown out of the Odes & Offerings theme of incorporating the text of a Barbara Rockman poem.
The first thing one surely notices with this painting is the dominant figure of the nude woman, raising her hand skyward. She is a sculpture I photographed some years ago. Behind her the picture plain is divided between light and dark (day and night?), with a warm, arid, mountainous landscape suggested on the left and a dark, nebulous passage on the right, out of which emerges a ghostly figure of a woman. Fading in and out of perception are fragments of Barbara Rockman’s poem* among them I am a plain woman…..I mix paint….with these hands….
On the left are smaller barely discernible fragments of a different text: for joy….and omnipotent reign…comfort
In the lower left, a faint golden nest with two sky blue eggs; below that, un chuchotement ~ “a whisper,” in French in my father’s handwriting, lifted from one of his hundreds of french flash cards. My father’s handwriting appears in a second place in this work — In the upper left, a fragment of a wine bottle label from his cellar, with the date the vintage went into his cellar written vertically along the left side.
By themselves, these fragments have no meaning to one another. But parsed together, they begin to suggest a relationship, a story…
Autobiographical?
Hmmmm…..
03.27.2012 ~ i am a plain woman
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| i am a plain woman ~ by dawn chandler ~ mixed media on panel ~ 24 x 24 inches ~ copyright dawn chandler 2012 |
I am a Plain Woman** evolved from a painting I started almost a year ago. It was unresolved, and I was a bit stumped as to how to proceed further with it. At that point there was an underlying foundation of collaged imagery, including the maternal photograph in the lower center. This photograph was taken in 1932, and is of my grandmother cradling her newborn — my mother.
As an artist and woman without children approaching a half-century of living, ideas of childbearing and motherhood, solitude and life journeys have been on my mind. And with the relatively recent deaths of both of my parents, I find myself reflecting considerably on their lives and their influence on my own. Questions emerge that I wish I had thought to ask them. I’ve been wondering about the assumptions we make about people and their past.
The moment I read Barbara Rockman’s Georgia O’Keefe poem**, I knew it somehow held the solution for my unresolved painting.
After adding the poem to the painting, I obscured the text, only to reveal fragments of phrases that resonate:
I am a plain woman…
I sleep in a narrow bed…
These are hands that…
With the tips of wings..
sky…
how you splayed…
insisted I caress…
each..
the horses..
i want nothing…
of death…
absence..
What can a man know?
On the right, I added an image of a ghostly figure sitting in a towering cloister. This is based on a tender photograph of my mother, taken by my father just weeks after their wedding in the summer of 1954. (They were married for over 50 years, before my mother died of breast cancer in 2007).
When I started this painting, I really had no idea where it was going or what it was about. In the end, it is an Ode to my beloved mother, and the long line of strong and inspiring women in my family.
** I Am a Plain Woman is my painting in the Odes & Offerings exhibition currently on display at the Santa Fe Community Gallery. To learn more about the concept of this remarkable exhibition, and the parameters of the artwork on display, please see my previous couple of blog posts, here and here.