Goings On

I've been too busy to post much, but mostly for good things.  To catch up... after I posted my two options for series choices below, I found out that two of the eight members of the class are already doing series based on aerial photos or maps, so I decided not to go that route and to go with the geometric abstract concept.  That's where my heart was anyway.  My mentor/advisor had urged the map direction but I don't think I was ever on board with it.  I DO want to do maps, especially to go back to the series I started in Valerie's class.  See I called it a series.  Before it was just going to be a group of three related pieces.  :)

So I committed to doing the abstract series, and here are the three pictures I posted as my inspiration:

Ellin Larimer, Pajama Party IV

Gunta Stolzl, Textile

Paul Klee, Fire Evening

The Klee piece is the one that really pulls me in.  I love the colors.  I love the depth, the way the blocks seem to come forward off the page, and the way the title so perfectly describes it.  I don't want to over-complicate things, and I'm afraid if I look too much at Larimer, I will.  I watched a video interview of Agnes Martin, that Lisa recommended this morning, and it was very emotional.  She spent her career of over 50 years trying to shut out ideas, to open and empty her mind in order to let the inspiration come through.  She talked about how artists "today" (this was 1997) have too many ideas, and the let all the ideas over-run the inspiration.  Good words to remember.  But the most touching point to me was when she turned to the interviewer and asked, "Are you doing what you were meant to be doing?"  I think those were her words. But the look on her face was indescribable.