RISING TIDE-A NEW PAINTING

Rising Tide-2014_acrylic and oil on canvas_42"x45"

 Dearest Readers,

This is the newest painting in my “wings” series. Over the last two years, the wing images have morphed into rising, surging shapes that merge the metaphor of transformation with the imagery of something good bubbling up inside me. I’m solidly moving along a spiritual path, meaning a way of seeing myself in the midst of something bigger, something cosmic. Future blogs will explore this direction further.

Below are the five steps in the development of Rising Tide, beginning with the initial “test” painting on kraft paper completed in 2012 in my Center Street Studio, Rutland Vermont. 

"Threshold Wings" 2012_35" x 39"_Acrylic and oilstick on kraft

I love each phase in its development, like a proud parent nurturing a child into maturity. Beneath the final piece lie the ghosts of earlier versions. I find this comforting. Should I have stopped at phase 2? or 3?  I think not. Something was missing that I needed to unearth from inside me, and lead up to the surface of the painting. I'm grateful to be a painter, using the language of art to speak to the viewer, to find out about my world of vision and imagination, and maybe discover who I might be. Such fun!

Phase 1_Rising Tide_Background_acrylic and gesso on canvas

Phase 2_Rising Tide_Underwater Ghost_acrylic and gesso on canvas

Phase three-Joyous eruption

Phase four-mapping and controlling

Phase five-premature aging, circumscribing the joy

Final Phase-Rising in the cosmos of infinite space

THE THIRD ACT: CONTEMPLATING AGING

“In the long process of digging down in the heat of summer, I discovered strength, moderation, and bravery. I no longer felt the need to ask Mom about the nature of death. I had instead created a deep place of my own for thinking, and abiding–a place that confirmed my power in old age”- Cecelia Kane  

 

The Mother Hole-Proposal Drawing 2012

Dearest Readers,

The quote above is part of my artist statement used as wall text at ATHICA to accompany my documentary photos of digging “The Mother Hole”, an environmental work performed in 2012 at The Carving Studio in West Rutland Vermont. Many of you followed my blog that summer as I described my thoughts and the physical process of seeking answers to questions of self and death.  Athens Institute for Contemporary Art (ATHICA) in Athens, GA is currently showing them in The Third Act, a group exhibition about the final stage of life, running from January 18-March 2, 2014. In addition, the curator, Lizzie Zucker Saltz selected 12 of my 60+ self-portraits that also question the meaning of self and identity. 

Cecelia in front of the Mother Hole progress pics

Kane-Twelve Self-Portraits from "How Am I Feeling Today?" series

Below are my favorite pieces in The Third Act show. At the bottom are the documentary photos of my 5-week creation of “The Mother Hole”.

Malena Bergmann-The Final Hour, a kinetic sculpture with an actual EKG of the artist's step-mother's heartbeat during the last hour of life.

Tom Hussey-Reflections-The Scientist, one of 8 photo prints

Karen Hymer-from Skin Series-Self Handarm

Ann Rowles with Porosity-crocheted pelvis and spine

Peter Nelson-On Dying-Video of 20 somethings lip synching words of seniors discussing death

 And here are my Mother Hole Progress Photos :

Future Hole Site-Cecelia and Etta James (my dog)

Early Dig

Continuing Down

Dig Site

Testing the branches in the hole

Fashioning the ladder

Close up of lashed rung with double clove hitches and square knots

Close up of stacking pattern of marble shard wall

Building up the wall

Marble lining complete

14 foot aspen ladder in lower hole

Final Mother Hole in the Field

A LOVE STORY IN 37 SECONDS

Rising Tide meets the kids from Variance/Invariance

Dearest Readers,

Meet the stars above of my new video,  (a love story).
 My unfinished painting, Rising Tide is on the left, and the group of paintings on the right are part of Judy Rushin's collaborative project, Variance/ Invariance. Judy used to live in Atlanta and is now teaching painting at Florida State in Tallahassee.
 

This love story is my contribution and interpretation of Judy's collaborative project.

She mailed kits of her interlocking, wood panel paintings, and asked that artists use them in a fresh, fun (my word) way in their lives. Here's my resulting video–a brief affair between two styles of painting. You can see them cavort below, or on YouTube at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0wsyjNfm2U

 

 Read more about the project in Judy’s own words at: http://varianceinvariance.com/

The resulting works will eventually be exhibited in galleries and museums according to the project website.

See some of the latest participating artist installations at Judy’s blog: http://judyrushin.blogspot.com/

Many thanks to my son Osman who laid a tarp on my studio floor and taped it down as a background for the love story. And thanks to my daughter Ayla visiting from Portland OR who positioned some of the panels within the painting as I shot the scenes.

TWO SHOWS CLOSING

The Fullness of Being - 35" x 39" Acrylic on Paper, 2012

Dearest Readers,

Ta-Da! Allow me to re-introduce The Fullness of Being, aka Wings3 a painting on paper that first appeared in a blog of mine back on June 24, 2012. 

For a year I’ve been working on paintings of rising or surging shapes that have morphed from wing imagery into more genuine depictions of something essential that’s been bubbling inside…a flowing of contentment I think, within the ups and downs, fears and joys of my life.

This painting recently appeared in a group show entitled More at the Sellars Gallery, Brenau University in Gainesville, Georgia, September 17-December 15 2013, sponsored by the Women’s Caucus for Art-Georgia. The show title predisposed many of the visual works to be abstract or conceptual, and open to interpretation on many levels. Below are a few of my favorites in the exhibition.

Remnant 23-Maggie Davis, oil on canvas

Remnant 24-Maggie Davis, oil on canvas

Untitled 1,2, 3-Madeleine Soloway, ink on paper on board

More Work To Do In The Garden-Angie Dachs, oil on canvas

Enmeshed-Ann Rowles, mixed media crochet

Help- Sarah Landrum - Mixed Media on panel

A few words about this cool otherworldly venue…

Brenau is a small women’s liberal arts college founded in 1878 as a Georgia Baptist women’s seminary, originally an institution for the education of women to be teachers. The gallery is located inside the Simmons Visual Arts Building, in a line of stately turn-of-the-last-century buildings along Centennial Circle.  

Sellars Gallery located inside the Simmons Visual Arts Center

Centennial Circle with Simmons Visual Arts Center, near right

Dorothy Smith Hopkins, Class of 1932

I felt as if I had slipped through a wormhole back to the early 1900’s. A portrait of Dorothy Smith Hopkins, Class of 1932 hung at the side entrance to the gallery. Her significance to the college was not explained, but I love her bubbly, debutante-ish persona, captured in this oil painting by Charles Naegele. 

Dr. Thomas Simmons, & Lessie Southgate Simmons, oil on canvas- A. Edmonds

 Oil portraits of two early educators, Dr. Thomas Simmons, former president and teacher & Lessie Southgate Simmons former teacher and the building's namesake hang near the door. 

Pearce Auditorium lobby-Brenau University

  A passageway connects the visual arts building to the Pearce Auditorium, a space that seems suspended in time back to the turn of the last century. When I visited, the building was well lit but devoid of sound and people. Framed black and white photo-ghosts of women’s classes and team pictures lined the the far wall, probably 100 years old. 

Gainesville is known for its chicken processing plants, but walking around Brenau opened me up to the possibility of a rich historical layer to the city, population now at 34,000.

Kane in front of 60 portraits - Shambhala Center, Decatur GA

 My self-portrait series, “How Am I Feeling Today?” is finishing a two-week run at the Shambhala Meditation Center of Atlanta. December 7-December 21, 2013. Three rows of 60 portraits of my changing feelings are displayed in a variety of media and paper along a 23-foot wall in the main Community Room. The Center is tucked behind a bamboo-bordered entrance way at 1447 Church Street in Decatur, Georgia. Here are a few site shots from their website. 

Plaza-Shambhala Meditation Center of Atlanta

Main Building-Shambhala Meditation Center of Atlanta

Meditating in the Shrine Room-Shambhala Meditation Center of Atlanta

AM I MY FEELINGS?

 

Day #3: Cosmic

Dearest Readers,

A few years ago I initiated a daily artistic test to answer the existential question, “Who Am I?”–  specifically, ** “Am I my thoughts and feelings?” 500 years ago, the French philosopher and mathematician Rene Descartes thought so. He famously declared, “Cogito ergo sum”…”I think therefore I am”.  He ignored the squishier category of feelings. As I age, and look at my mortality, I’ve been using art as a language of self-discovery. My process is often diaristic and quotidian. I think this harkens back to my Catholic upbringing. Repetitive prayers like the rosary, saying novenas (prayers for 9 days, 9 months or some sequence of 9’s), or walking the 14 Stations of the Cross were predicated on the idea that if one held a question or prayer in mind, an answer might be forthcoming after sequential repetition. I am not religious anymore in this manner, but the residual practice often emerges as an artistic framework.

Day #32 Groggy

“How Am I Feeling Today?” is a series of self-portraits of my feelings in a variety of media and paper stocks. They are based on 89 days of morning photos I shot of my face in 2009 staring into my bathroom mirror.  Each day I asked myself to name my feeling of the moment. (bored, calm, groggy, nervous etc.) 

 

Friends Deb, Tony, Karen, Wayne mugging in front of my mugs in 2009 at Henley Studios, Atlanta

I wrote the feeling in lipstick on my forehead and photographed my face in the mirror. Last year I began to paint and draw each one. I’ve completed about 60 so far. There are 89 photos, the number of years my Mother lived, a-not-so-obvious layer of meaning and self -identity for me. 

 

"How Am I Feeling Today?" at The Dalton Gallery at Agnes Scott College

Fifty-five of these portraits are now on view at The Dalton Gallery at Agnes Scott College in Decatur, GA as part of the show, Material Witness. If you are in the Atlanta area this Saturday, Nov.16, there will be a closing reception from 3-6pm. Three artists and myself will be speaking briefly at 4:15 about our work. I hope you can join us. Food and drink will be served. The address is 141 College Avenue, but the gallery is actually on McDonough St just off College.

 

Day #56: Moody

I’m posting the remaining portraits as I complete them on Facebook–usually one a week. “Moody” is the current one.  

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**ANSWER: I quickly discovered that I’m not my feelings, or my thoughts. They change rapidly throughout the day, and from moment to moment. I think Descartes was using the idea of thinking as a way to describe consciousness as the seat of self. I tend to agree with him…but that’s a subject for another artistic endeavor.