September 26, 2010
By Chrissy Roshak
I’m in limbo at work right now. I was displaced from my classroom, and I’m still waiting to be placed at a new school. Honestly it’s been pretty boring. I still go in to one of the high schools, but don’t have much to do without a classroom or students right now. I prefer to think things happen for a reason, and I think I’ve found the reason (or at least some purpose) behind this work limbo. It’s given me a ton of (much appreciated) time to focus on my own artwork.
My work day is pretty boring. I’m just floating around a high school with almost no responsibilities. My only actual duty all day long is to go and assist the librarian for an hour and a half during the two lunch periods, so she can have a lunch break and still keep the library open for kids during that time. As far as actual responsibility goes, it’s pretty simple. I have more years of experience working in libraries than I do teaching, so that experience makes it even easier. Relaxing too – working in libraries has always been relaxing for me. Not satisfying in a “this is what I want my life’s work to be” sort of a way – but a relaxing and low stress way to spend my work day.
Beyond the library lunch break, I’ve been spending the rest of my work day bouncing between two different art classes. One with the school’s new painting and drawing teacher, and the other with a ceramics teacher who has been there for awhile. The new painting & drawing teacher has a very different teaching style than I do… it’s nice sometimes to be able to share my subject with the kids in her class when they need help… but lets be honest – I spend most of my time in there reading and flipping through art history books, absorbing photo after photo of artwork important enough to have been published.
The ceramics teacher is quite a bit more engaging, and teaches with a style similar to my own. I’ve found a lot in his class to be inspired by. He’s one of the best art teachers I’ve see so far in public schools – he’s both knowledgeable about his subject, and knows how to make it interesting for the kids (even the ones who otherwise aren’t into art).
The ceramic teacher is also busy with his own art projects and we’ve had a number of interesting conversations that have lead to a lot of reflection on a variety of topics, including new ideas for my own work and thinking about what drives an artist’s process. This kind of conversation with another thoughtful and purposeful artist has been inspiring and I’ve been more prolific in my own work lately. I think all this down time in the classroom has created a lot of extra space in my mind to think more purposefully about my own work. I’ve had a lot of fresh ideas to explore, and plenty of time to think about them. My biggest problem lately is lack of time in my own studio to actually work on the ideas floating around in my mind all day at work.
My clay artist co-worker challenged me with a slab of clay, and asked me to approach it as if it were a canvas. To approach it as a painter, rather than a sculptor. This alone lead me to think about how much the materials an artist uses drives our creative process. As a painter, I can do almost anything to the canvas at any point in time during the painting process, with relatively few guidelines to keep it from cracking and flaking later.
With clay, however, it’s a really different story. Clay changes over time, making timing very important to the process. What you do to clay can produce very different results at different times throughout the process. For example, pressing something forcefully into the clay at the beginning of the project, when the clay is still fresh and wet will result in a well formed imprint of the object. However doing the same thing days later when the clay has dried out could result in cracking, or even breaking the entire project into pieces. Once it’s fired, the same action would be impossible.
Working with clay involves thinking about time, and planning more meticulously than working with paint. It’s no wonder I prefer paint. It fits my practice so well. I like the ability to make sweeping changes to the entire project at any given time. I like the option to destroy the image and start over. I like sitting with a painting for a long period of time, getting to know it, building a relationship with it – and the lack of a time limit for different stages makes that possible. I enjoy that intimacy with a piece that takes place over an undefined period of time, and I think the more rigid rules around the stages of working with clay would prevent (or at least limit) that kind of a relationship with clay.
The clay did, however, allow me to explore texture and edges more than I have ever been able to do in painting. I enjoyed the organic edges I was able to create. I have always been kind of dissatisfied with the rigid rectangular (or occasionally some other shape, but always rigid and geometric) edges of paintings. Occasionally a build up of paint at the edges will give a little irregularity to the edge, but nothing close to the organic edges I was able to achieve in clay. Cutting and gouging into the clay to create space was also instantly rewarding. Attempting to do the same with a painting has been challenging and definitely more difficult, but not impossible.
My clay piece is currently drying and waiting for its impending bake in the kiln. I expect the changes that happen in the kiln will completely change the look of the piece. One of my biggest frustrations with clay is that I create a piece to look a certain way, and then everything changes once it’s been fired. The physical shape of the thing will stay relatively the same. Unless I’m very unlucky and it explodes, it’ll just shrink a bit. But the colors will change. All of them change, and some of them change dramatically (as in sometimes yellow becomes red, or pink becomes green, or red becomes black). I love color above all else; I love all the subtle and delicate differences between colors – and the uncertainty about what will happen to the color in the kiln drives me crazy.
A little over a week ago I picked up a book that has been sitting on my bookshelf waiting for me for a long time. It’s a book my friend Hillary gave me, called Color by Victoria Finlay. It’s about the history of pigments. She talks about where they come from, how people first used them, the folklore surrounding some of them, and sometimes just little known facts about the materials we use.
[For example, No. 2 pencils are yellow today because of a well known graphite mine in China that used to be known for its excellent graphite. Back when Americans were first trying to market pencils, they wanted people to think of that excellent quality when they saw the pencils, and they did that by painting the pencils yellow. And that’s how I learned the racist history behind yellow #2 pencils. (The graphite in American pencils at the time most likely didn’t even come from China, so it was also pretty ugly false advertising).]
The timing of reading this book and digging into the history and nature of the pigments I use has been perfect. As I sit here comparing oil paint to working in clay, I find myself immediately comparing how much the color changes during the creative process. Of all the paints of I’ve worked with, I’ve always appreciated that the color of oil pigments changes the least from start to finish. It’s usually imperceptible, and one of the reasons I love working in oil. (Acrylics tend to darken in ways I find frustrating, and the few times I’ve used watercolors, they’ve always dried quite a bit lighter than they appeared while I was working on the piece). Changes can, of course, happen to oil paint over time, but they’re usually not as dramatic (and definitely not as quick) as the ones that happen in the world of clay.
There are exceptions, though. It’s art, of course there are exceptions. There are pigments that do change dramatically, which I’ve learned from experience as much as I’ve learned from the Color book I’m packing around. Lead white paint is one of them. There are caves in China that were painted in the middle ages using lead white paint, and in some places that white paint has turned pitch black. It’s a chemical reaction, and it depends on what other pigments the color was touching.
Even in modern painting lead white pigment can be somewhat unstable. It’s not a very popular pigment anymore, and although it is still available to American artists (but sometimes difficult to find), it has been banned or restricted in other countries.
I’ve painted with lead white pigment, and it was a great experience. I completely understand why artists would continue to use it, even with the risk of lead poisoning. I do have a tube of Flake White (lead pigment) in my paintbox, and I still use it – but my favorite way to use lead white is in a primer. There is no better way to start a painting than on linen primed with lead white oil ground. It’s like the difference between wearing polyester and silk.
Lead white can yellow with age, though. I have read that you can place the canvas out in the sun to restore the original white, but I haven’t tried it (yet). I was cleaning and organizing my studio yesterday, and came across my box of unused, folded canvas. One chunk had been primed years ago with lead white – and just as Ralph Mayer warns in the Artist’s Handbook, it had turned pretty yellow with age. It was too late in the day yesterday to try setting it out in the sun, but if we have another sunny day soon, I’ll certainly try it!
Before I got around to cleaning and organizing my studio, I did do some painting. I’ve been working on a self portrait. This is kind of an unusual project for me. I’ve drawn them in college before, and almost exclusively as an assignment. I don’t think I’ve ever painted one. It’s new territory for me, and definitely holding my interest. I started this project with a charcoal self portrait, then covered it with two separate self portraits in paint, one layered on top of the other. I have a feeling there will be several more layers on top of these before it’s finished.
As I finished working on the self portrait for the day, I realized it was hanging on the wall, directly facing another piece I haven’t touched in several years. The one on the opposite wall began as a charcoal drawing I was compelled to create after I came dangerously close to losing my best friend several years ago. It has been sitting unfinished, waiting for me to discover the mystery of what steps come next – for years. I’ve kept it on the wall, looking at it sometimes and wonder what it wants next, but so far it has been silent. And then yesterday the realization that I was literally facing my best friend in my studio – in the form of two paintings probably cut from the same roll of paper, and approximately the same size (both about 4 ft tall by 3 ft wide), made me wonder if it’s time to work on that piece again.
These two pieces were definitely designed to work as separate pieces, but it feels like they’ve become connected, even if that connection is only the friendship I share with my best friend. Whatever connection they share, I do feel like the two paintings will develop in distinctly different directions. One is an exploration of myself, while the other is about friendship and created directly through processing pain and (almost) loss.
I did prepare the piece inspired by my best friend for whatever comes next (finally). I covered the charcoal with a layer of clear acrylic medium. It didn’t disturb the charcoal much, but did make it possible to paint over the charcoal without disturbing it or destroying the paper. It’s a small step, but it’s progress.