Art

A Heavenly Lake of Beer: St. Brigid’s Day Blessing

Image | | Suzanne Edminster at Saltworkstudio

I publish this each year at this time to remind us of great lakes of beer, lambs, groundhogs, milkmaids, and miracles.  This includes St. Brigid’s Blessing, well worth reading.  Tired of groundhog day?  Celebrate St. Brigid instead.

Saint Patrick, meet your better half!
3brigid4

  Brigid is a jolly saint of babies, poets, cows, scholars, travelers, and beer (the last attribution mine).  She’s a vernal saint associated with the green fire of rising spring energy. Her Day is February 2,  Imbolc. In Celtic mythology this the beginning of pre-spring, lambing, and lactation… birth and milk in the animal folk. She is a patron Saint of milk and milk givers, beast and human.

Groundhog Day was formerly Bear Day.  It’s time for us all to come out of the winter hibernation now.  Artists, this means you.  And in this year of drought,  a bit of St. Brigid’s spring rain would be very healing.

She studied under St. Patrick, founded her own convent, and tended the poor.  Some– I am one– think that she surpassed him in his time.

I often do series cow series that I associate with her, but what I love about her is this list of her best and deepest wishes for the world.  Read through to the last two lines, then get yourself a brewsky.

I would like the angels of Heaven to be among us.
I would like an abundance of peace.
I would like full vessels of charity.
I would like rich treasures of mercy.
I would like cheerfulness to preside over all.
I would like Jesus to be present.
I would like the three Marys of illustrious renown to be with us.
I would like the friends of Heaven to be gathered around us from all parts.
I would like myself to be a rent payer to the Lord; that I should suffer distress, that he would bestow a good blessing upon me.
I would like a great lake of beer for the King of Kings.
I would like to be watching Heaven’s family drinking it through all eternity.

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Screwtape for Artists, Letter 2: Studio Time

Image | | Suzanne Edminster at Saltworkstudio
Goose Game series monoprint, Suzanne Edminster
Goose Game series monoprint, Suzanne Edminster

I decided to ask my artist friend Karina Nishi Marcus to join me in a studio time game. From January 30 to February 14, we’re going into our studios every day. The only rule is to walk in and touch something. That’s it. We’re curious what effect that it may have on our productivity. We do email check ins to report without judgement how we’re doing. I’ll let you know how it goes. Care to join us?

Here’s the second Screwtape letter for artists. In case you have just joined me, you can read the introduction to the letter series here. It is a letter to the demon Wormseed, who’s trying to capture the Artist’s soul.

My Stygian colleague Wormseed,

The situation with the Artist grows worse and worse. Each day she enters her studio, your goal fades like the bright colors of the Old Masters or the wild painting on Greek columns. You,  Wormseed, have been assigned to suffer Inquisition Number 25631 to remind you to keep working harder. It won’t end soon enough. If only you could succeed as well as the your brother Ifrit did recently in the book burnings.  Murdering books is the most delicious snack after eating souls.

I’m afraid you may have to concede defeat on keeping her out of the studio, a tactic which worked so well for so long. Now you must concentrate on subtleties. Early exposure of immature work is a sure-fire way to shut off the tap. Refusal to “practice the scales” of repetitive trials is also good. Perfectionism is a superbly subtle dagger… it bleeds out their disgusting passion for making in a very satisfactory manner.

I see you have activated the string of disquieting dreams that used to derail her from her work in the past. Even those seem to be ineffective: she’s broken their code and now know that they mean she is creating something new. However, a good nightmare or emotional crisis can go quite far. Just don’t let her make any art from them, or the jig is up.

I hope for your sake that you make more progress soon. A molecule of your diabolical existence vanishes each time a brush stroke or line is applied to paper, a reversed Dorian Grey. ( You were involved with him as well, though Oscar escaped us at the end, and after such a promising start. ) I have my faceted fly eye upon you. Do not fail again.

Your ball and chain,

Screwtape

P.S. Despite our continual efforts at the destruction of beauty, new painted caves continue to be found, obscured masterpieces restored. To offset this, the internet offers so many new opportunities for degrading artists, especially if they identify with digital “fame.” The hand of the artist is chopped off and dismembered from the Work, carried out to sea in an exquisite virtual tsunami of mediocrity. Divide et impera!  

Screwtape for Artists, Letter 1

Image | | Suzanne Edminster at Saltworkstudio

Suzanne Edminster, mixed media on paper
Suzanne Edminster, mixed media on paper

The Screwtape Letters, written by C.S. Lewis in 1942, is a series of wickedly funny and ominous letters from a higher demon, Screwtape, to a sub-demon, Wormword, who is in charge of corrupting a human soul or “patient.” Of late, it has been fashionable to read of “gremlins” who want to steal your creativity, block you, and so on. I’ve never been fond of the word gremlin. It’s actually a 20th century coinage used for mechanical problems on airplanes, and is “imaginary.” It trivializes and reduces temptation to a cute, manageable,  pet-like critter  and whitewashes the tempters’ fierce battle for your art.

Artists deal with the shadow; it comes with the territory. But I think we need to correctly name our underworld enemy, and honor it with a measure of gravitas. In this spirit I have hacked the cosmic mailbox to expose some new Screwtape letters for artists, written to a certain Wormseed, who has been assigned the soul of my art. Read the original: it’s a fresh as ever today. I write these to discover what I might have to say to myself about my life and art.

My dear Wormseed,

I see you have been making good progress with the Artist.  She’s slowly slipping into a low-key despair, which is always a highly desirable state.   Since the advent of the Internet, which I had a gargoyle eating manlarge role in creating, your job is so much easier!  In some senses, the progress from the medieval artisan to the 21st “artist” has been our major achievement in the Arts.  Ironic, isn’t it, that those stone masons, as hungry and poor as they were,  accurately carved our likenesses as gargoyles. Portraiture was not dead!  Despite oppression  and all the fabulous  corruption of that  Church,  they were often closer to escaping us than the sleekly fed, well-medicated artists of today. The Cathedral of Technology holds so many new opportunities for us!

But I digress. I see she’s starting a new project.  This is your chance to make more progress.  Please amplify the level of distraction in her life.  A turn to “reality”– money, job, status, looks, and so on– is one of the best methods we know, because it is so supported by the society at large.  Involve her in her own reality show drama, as opposed to her actual life. By all means, keep her from daily walks and home cooked meals, as these fortify her, stopping up those wonderful chinks and holes through which we enter.  And DO NOT LET HER OPEN JOURNALS OR SKETCHBOOKS.  As soon as she creates even one word or line, our power begins to ebb.

If you keep her in this state of stasis, you will soon see a satisfactory decay.  Best of luck to you.  Sorry about the turn to non-toxic materials in her studio.  You can’t win them all.

Your  Master,

Screwtape

Leaning Into Twenty Fifteen

Image | | Suzanne Edminster at Saltworkstudio

lanterns by lisa
I am leaning into the curve of 2015. In November I dressed up my studio to honor lights in the darkness by decorating paper lanterns for Winterblast, solstice, and Christmas. I respond strongly to the annual winter darkness, and I’ve heard many other artists say this too. It’s a time of a lot of inspiration seeds or acorns stored to use later in the year. (Don’t hide them so well you can’t find them, though.) I chose two themes, Cave and Matisse. One is glowing in the dark recesses of the past, and one is jumping with color into the future. There’s a link to my instructions for making them at the end.

Cave and Matisse Lanterns

I did a lot of family things this year. It’s easy to overvalue the things that “show” and are visible. Visual artists do this all the time. Home, family, the elders, and ancestors are the deep roots that feed us, invisibly. I cooked a goose and that was very complicated indeed, but was delicious. It was called “roast beef” in the past because the sliced goose is brown and really does taste like beef. And why not? Geese are land grazers, the cows of the bird world. I did this as an edible metaphor to kick off my work on my new series for 2015, The Goose Game. The Christmas goose is eaten, though wishbone, stock and fat are left– the old ways. Come on over and I’ll roast potatoes in goose fat for you– I got that hint from a 1940s James Beard cookbook and they are amazing.

My Goose is Cooked and a Cat Likes It Just Fine
My Goose is Cooked and a Cat Likes It Just Fine

I’ll be starting a Goose Game monotype series soon, using Akua soy inks and etching press. You can come along for the ride: I’ll be posting process photos and blogs. January is coming to an end and a new year is unfurling like a fern frond. Lean into that spiral. Here are Saltworkstudio’s lantern instructions. Enjoy.

Art According to Starbucks

| Suzanne Edminster at Saltworkstudio

I’m in an anonymous Starbuck’s in a LA suburb town.  It’s next to my mom’s old folks home and I use it for handy breaks and internet.  I look up and suddenly  I notice that I’ve  somehow I’ve fallen into a mixed media collage.

The drawn teapot is "finished" to the right in the negative space of sign and window.
The drawn teapot is “finished” to the right in the negative space of sign and window.

Okay, I decide to analyze the art.  Above we see a very popular style.  Its components: handwriting, chalk effect, white lines over a surface.  So ironic. Handwriting is arguably dying and it is probable the artist who designed this never saw a real chalkboard.  “Courier New” typeface is also popular with the crowd who’ve never used an actual typewriter.

Torn collage pieces
Torn collage pieces

Irregular transparent torn pieces, stencil underneath, and a painterly wash of white obscures the “canvas”.

Wall-sized mural detail
Wall-sized mural detail

It struck me that mixed media has entered mainstream art.  Notice use of maps, “encaustic”– the waxy seal– and graphite-looking line work.

Fantasy animal
Fantasy animal

The animal looks like it was assembled from transparent transfers of non-copyright material, similar to transfers from Dover beloved of Trader Joe’s brown paper bags.

Starbuck's mixed media
Starbuck’s mixed media

The original of this whole wall might have been under a yard wide.  It does look as if it was done as a physical rather than digital artwork, but I might be wrong.  A small piece photographed at high resolution can become huge.

Transparency, graphite lines, white lines, torn pieces, transfers, encaustic, canvas, washes, chalky lines:  mixed media today, and all can be imbibed visually along with that decaf soy latte.

Torn collage pieces
The drawn teapot is “finished” to the right in the negative space of sign and window.
Fantasy animal
Starbuck’s mixed media
Wall-sized mural detail

Painting Journal 2: Over Underworld

| Suzanne Edminster at Saltworkstudio
Over Underworld, acrylic on canvas, 36" x 48"
Over Underworld, acrylic on canvas, 36″ x 48″

The Over Underworld series features high horizons and chaotic, rich undergrowth. You can climb up and down the layers of it, and the black ink spatters underneath sometimes look like animal forms. The top has modern, intereference paint; the top invokes architecture, the conscious mind, technology and civilization. It’s shiny and bright, while the underpart is rough.

The concept behind each art piece is as vital to me as the finished work… often more vital. Abstract work has its own demands because it is unmoored from the anchor of representation and floating out at sea.

Students ask me, “How do I know it’s finished?” I think my true answer is that it’s finished when your dialogue or conversation with the painting is somehow complete. This is true whether or not the painting is a “success” at the moment. Ask your questions not ABOUT the painting, but TO it. If you can know it as complete, whole, and satisfying, your viewer will as well. Knowing an abstract painting is finished is also an abstract idea!

I believe we shouldn’t dwell too much on the underworld, the unconscious, the uncivilized. We don’t need to invite it. It will always come to us unbidden, as these paintings did to me.

Art Hearts

Image | | Suzanne Edminster at Saltworkstudio
A White Ago by Suzanne Edminster
A White Ago by Suzanne Edminster

This is “A White Ago.” The title was taken from an e e cummings poem. He was one of the most romantic poets of our time, and a painter.

Painting with hearts is tricky. You always are in danger of falling over the boundary into treacly greeting card territory. I liked this notion of a heart in a field of white, time sweeping away old loves and perhaps bringing in the new.

Salamander Winter by Suzanne Edminster
Salamander Winter by Suzanne Edminster

I titled this one Salamander Winter. Again a heart, but there are little salamanders hidden in the base… small fire dragons. My husband, Scott, places boards in wet places to provide little houses for real Arboreal Salamanders in our yard. In alchemy, the salamander represents fidelity and the animal that can survive the flames of adversity. Here’s wishing you luck in love.

Suzanne’s Virtual Manifesto for Artists

Image | | Suzanne Edminster at Saltworkstudio

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Why do social media at all? As an artist, you have to do it artfully, or it won’t work. It has to be authentic, interesting, generous,and beautiful.

Ironically, you can’t take it too seriously. It’s like throwing pebbles into a great sea. You produce a ripple or two. Keep them going and something interesting will come in on the tide, but you can’t predict what or when.

Here’s a hint for Facebook. Continue reading →