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Artistic
Expressions
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July2007
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Dear Marilyn,
It's July, a time for vacations, barbecues, and long,
lazy days. Did you know it's National Ice Cream
Month? In the US we celebrate Independence Day, but if
you think about it, you don't have to live here to celebrate
freedom. Whether you live in an open society or under an
oppressive regime, your art gives you the freedom to express
your deepest feelings, and that's worth
celebrating.
Lately, we've experienced a sharp increase
in the volume of undesirable email we receive. If you
send us a communication and receive a request to verify your
email address, please do so. That way your mail gets
through and doesn't get lost in the avalanche of junk.
If you've sent an email recently and haven't received a
response, it might be because your mail got lost in the offers
for, well, you know what those offers are. Once you send
and verify, you'll be added to the white list and your mail
should come through without a problem.
In this issue of
Creative Wisdom, Nancy
offers up some tips for making the most of museum shows and,
in a departure from his usual entertaining musings, John
brings us the world of sculptor Robin Antar. I share some
thoughts on patience and perseverance.
Enjoy your
summer, and don't eat too much ice
cream!
Happy creating!
Marilyn
Noble
Managing
Editor
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In
the Next Issue  of
Sculptural Pursuit!
-- Sculpture Only Competition
Winners
--
The Minimalism of Nathalie Cirino and Gavin
Ziegler
--
Contemporary Interpretive Sculptures of Hap
Hagood
-- 3-D Imaging
-- Egyptian Portraiture, The
Nasher Sculpture Center and much, much
more!
In your
mailbox and on newsstands everywhere in
July.
|
Tips &
Techniques
How To Make The Most Of Museum
Visits & Gallery Exhibitions
By Nancy DeCamillis
An important step in the cultivation
of your sculpture career is to expand your basic art
education. The more informed you become,
the more discriminating you can be. One way
to increase your knowledge and awareness is by visiting
museums, galleries, and other art venues.
This doesn't have to be an intimidating
experience. Here are some tips to help you
gain the most from the visits as you view and read about the
art. Perhaps in the process you'll meet
some knowledgeable and sharing
people.
1.
Arrive at the museum or gallery
well before closing time to allow a leisurely visit.
If a gallery is open before a posted
exhibition time, go early so you can enjoy unobstructed
viewing before the crowds arrive.
2.
Begin your visit when you are
rested and not hungry.
3.
As you enter the exhibition space,
walk through the rooms to get an overview of the works on
exhibit. Jot down in a notebook any pieces
that particularly appeal to you, but continue on your initial
tour.
4.
Next, stroll back through the show,
pausing to reflect on the works that engaged you the first
time. View them up close and then from a
distance. Notice how your perception of a
work can change as you move around it.
5.
If a work holds your interest, sit
or stand before it and take time to enjoy it.
Consider what about it appeals to you.
What can you learn from the piece that can inform your
own sculptural work?
6.
In a museum, consider taking a
guided tour with a docent. Ask the
docent questions about the exhibition. The
more you learn about a work of art or an exhibition, the
better you are able to form a comprehensive understanding of
and appreciation for the displayed artwork.
 Some fun
exercises to enhance your experience:
·
Stand before an artwork and close your
eyes for a few seconds. When you open them,
think about the first thing you notice. Is it size, a
line, the material, or a gesture? Why do
you think it was the first thing to come to your mind?
Describe this experience in your
sketchbook. Perhaps draw the lines or
shapes that appealed to your visual sense.
·
Next, walk around the work and sense the
emotion you feel when you look at the sculpture.
What does that emotion look like?
How do you think your emotional response compares with
the emotion the artist might have been trying to show during
the creation of the work?
·
Look at the piece again and see how the
artist leads your eye through the sculpture with the lines,
forms, negative and positive spaces, and gestures.
Where does the artist use repetition of shapes,
texture, and color?
·
View the work with a critical eye and
think about the sculpture in terms of the elements and
principles of art. How successful is it in
those terms? Which of the elements -- line,
shape, color, or texture -- do you think is most dominant in
this piece?
·
Squint at the work and notice what shapes
you see. Are they geometric, figurative,
amorphous, or organic?
·
Look at the light and dark areas created
by the negative and positive shapes of the work and by how the
exhibitor's lighting affects the piece.
Does the lighting compliment or detract from the lines
of the sculpture?
Enhancing your viewing experience with
these exercises can further develop your critical and artistic
eye and add depth to your creative experience when you return
to your studio. |
Sponsor --
Birchwood Casey
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Sponsor -- Sculptural
Pursuit
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Artist
Profile
Lights!
Camera! Action! The Pop Art World of Robin
Antar
By John Ostlund
"If
I wasn't sculpting I would be in a mental institution. . .
." Robin Antar
Robin's got game. This
Brooklyn artist's sculpting tools are no longer just a simple
grinder and sanding wheel. She is carving
her way into the media markets of our time.
Search for her on Google and you'll see what promoting
one's art is really all about. Between her
website, blog,
magazine-television-newspaper exposure, and an engaging video on
YouTube, you might need to take a lunch break just to
decide what road you want to traverse to find out more about
the art and life of Robin Antar.
"I've been giving IT a lot of
energy," says Antar, the fourth place winner in Sculptural
Pursuit's Sculpture Only Competition.
"I'm not good at writing, so I hired a
publicist. If not for her, I wouldn't be
getting any of the PR I'm getting now. My
husband is a blog-o-maniac so he got me started on
that. I hired someone to do my
website because it constantly needs updating.
Lately, I've gotten a lot of recognition with my work."
The sculptor has received much attention
for her marble Pop Art sculptures. One of
the most popular is a giant bag of M&Ms.
The eight-hundred-pound piece overflows with colorful
rounds of everyone's favorite candy.
Another stone sculpture, not much for wearing but
something to behold, is a well-worn Diesel jean jacket with
rolled-up sleeves and a hanger to hang it on.
Her recent unique and functional wine knot series (an
organic sculpture that holds two bottles of wine) has brought
its own notice.
The sculptor sees her current work as
representing America by offering an archaeological perspective
of creating an artifact. She takes a
cultural icon and replicates that object in stone, down to the
slightest detail. Then, using gobs of
paints, stains, and glazes, she finishes the stone with the
identical characteristics of the object she
mirrored. Jeans, toothpaste, shoes and
boots, bags of cookies, and cans of soda have all fallen under
the spell of this frenetic, exacting creator, thereby making
the ordinary special.
She insists that representation as a
carving style is rigid and controlled, demanding complete
concentration. However, "In the end, it expresses a fun-ness
of the representational image." She
experiences realism as a different regimen and  feeling
than creating something abstract. To Antar,
carving an abstract piece is more of an expression -- making
organic sculpture is about her gut feeling in that
moment. Different works for different
moods.
You can't tell from the long list of
accolades and piles of press clippings Antar has garnered that
she struggles with the day-to-day like most artists. Still,
she says, "It's very difficult to switch back and forth
between sculpting and giving attention to other important
activities. Usually I'll give a day to one
or the other."
Her studio is part of her house and extends
outdoors to the street. She once had a
bicycle stolen from behind her back while using a noisy power
tool, which requires complete attention.
The now-fenced area opens to the street, providing
passersby a zoo-like view of a working sculptor and her
work-in-progress. Studio days make for
curious on-lookers and an occasional inspired
question. She loves
it.
For all the hoopla over her commercial
brand art, perhaps it's Antar's Judaic artwork that shows her
gift and range. Using combinations of
metal, stone, glass, and canvas, she constructs historic and
ritual objects pertaining to Jewish life and
customs. From the ornate ceremonial Torah
cases to the stark religious paintings and ink drawings, Antar
demonstrates her talent and diversity, giving us a glimpse
into another side of her eclectic creative spirit.
This enthusiastic artist with her
serious-minded approach to work seems always available for a
laugh, a story to tell, or a quick switch to an entirely
different conversation. At times it's hard
to know if you're talking to the fourteen-year-old high school
girl who discovered an early interest in sculpting or the
soon-to-be-fifty-year-old mother of three who has an
unquenchable passion for her art. "My ideas
come from my gut. I have more ideas than I
can produce. Sculpting is not a choice, it's
survival. I have to do it," she says.
Sculpting American icons is a real pleasure
for Antar. The challenge is how to blend
her art with the corporate business world.
" It has a very steep learning curve for me," she
says. The complexities of copyright law
have tested her capacity and will. Undaunted, she continues
doing the work that stirs her most.
What's next for the New York
realist? This summer, Antar is planning her
favorite sculpting sojourn
to Colorado, where she plans to turn a thousand pound block of
red travertine into an oversized bottle of
ketchup. The foodstuff carving will be
filmed, edited, and produced into a thirty-second television
commercial, and then submitted to the Heinz "Top This" TV
Challenge. With hard work, persistence, and
a bit of good fortune, Antar hopes someone will buy the
ketchup bottle, commission a bigger one, and then she'll sell
little sampler bottles along the way.
She lives in the city and lives for her
art. Taking art out into the world is her
job. Robin Antar is very good at what she
does. Don't be surprised if you find her
'Coming to a Theater Near You' very soon.
PHOTOS (Top to Bottom):
DIESEL JEAN JACKET,
limestone, 27 x 23 x 6.
DIESEL JEANS, limestone, 29
x 12 x 6
Permission to use images given by Diesel USA, Inc.
MILANO COOKIES BAG, marble,
resin, 3.5 x 15 x 8. Pepperidge Farm, Milano, and the
Pepperridge Farm Milano Trade Press are trademarks of PF
Brands, Inc. and used with permission.
|
Sponsor -- Southwest
Stone Carving
|
Sponsor -- The
Artists Refuge
|
| End
Notes
The Power of Patience and Perseverance
By Marilyn Noble
Patience and perseverance have a magical effect
before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish.
John Adams
I recently received an
email from a writing friend I've known for years.
We belonged to an on-line writing group almost ten
years ago and have stayed in sporadic touch ever
since. A gifted writer, she started a short
story when we were in the group together.
Her excited email told me that she had turned that
short story into a novel and then sold the manuscript to a
publisher. That little story, ten years
later, is going to become a book. She's
about to realize one of her life's big dreams.
Some people might be
thinking, but it took her TEN
years! I don't want to wait that long to
achieve my dreams. I want it
now! We all hear stories about people who hit
homers their first times at bat. There's
J.K. Rowling, the single mother who sat in a coffee shop to
write her first novel, which became one of the most successful
and lucrative enterprises in literary history.
On a more personal scale, there's the new artist in
your studio who took up sculpting last summer and just got a
huge commission when a Fortune 500 executive passed by and saw
his work in the window. We hear and repeat
those stories because they're not the norm -- for most of us,
success requires the two big Ps, patience and
perseverance.
When you begin to create
your art, you probably don't take shortcuts with the
process. You know if you don't have the
patience to fire the clay long enough or sand the stone
through all of the grits, you won't get the result you
want. It's no different for your art career
as a whole. It takes patience to apply to
galleries and shows and then wait for an answer.
It takes patience to continue to build your work and
refine your techniques even when your pieces aren't selling
well. It takes patience to handle the
business aspects of your career until you enjoy enough success
to hire somebody else to do it for you.
While you're developing
patience, you also have to cultivate perseverance.
That comes from a belief in your work and your dream,
and knowing that you can't sit back and wait for someone else
to discover you. We've all known people who
created great art, wrote wonderful stories, or had amazing
business ideas, but never achieved success.
Usually that's a direct result of a lack
 of
persistence. Of course it feels defeating
to get piles of rejection letters, and it's boring to spend
hours researching markets. Studying,
constantly improving your skills -- that's hard
work. It's much easier to sit around and
visualize your accomplishments and wait for them to
happen. But visualization without taking
action to move forward, without perseverance, is merely
daydreaming. And while daydreaming in small
doses is an important part of the process, without persistent,
patient action, you won't get
anywhere. We live in a
culture where speed rules, where immediate gratification is a
way of life. That's fine if you want to be entertained
by flipping a switch on your computer, cooking a
thirty-second meal in your microwave, or traveling to the
other side of the world in a few hours. It's no way to
run your creative life, however. Think of your art
career as a long journey - have the patience to know you'll
reach your destination, and keep putting one foot in front of
the other to move yourself along the path. And while
you're at it, don't forget to enjoy the experiences along
the
way. | |
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