Andrea Schwartz-Feit Blog

Not Just Wax, Cattails, and Epiphanies

2011-10-31T17:23:00.000-07:00

Where Am I Going and How Am I Getting There?

Almost exactly one year ago, I made my way to Wyoming to spend a month at the Ucross Foundation as an artist-in-residence. I had carved out the time with the intention to develop work that replicated my experience of place. It seemed important to me, and still does: perhaps as the experience of being somewhere is duplicated on a surface of my own making I will better understand the experience of living. Disentangling the myriad interwoven aspects of billions of forces, beings, sensations, and thoughts and then replicating them in some new order seems to be the project with which, through some years and disparate seeming styles, I am engaged.

Grazeland: Cattail Epiphany

As luck would have it, serendipity colluded with the seasons to provide my first up close experience with cattails. In a little dip in the land (undoubtedly marshy in spring) between the rock studios and the Ucross offices grow some gnarly old cottonwoods and a profusion of cattails. I took a few of those cattails into my studio. As days passed their brown fuzzy tops faded. One day, stroking the now ash colored puffier top, the whole thing burst, erupted, uncoiled. I jumped-the thing was alive!! I was shocked and delighted. But even more than that, because the innate properties of the cattails began to symbolize many things for me. I began to wonder, and still do, whether the way it lost its physical integrity was a viable metaphor for other lives and deaths. Whatever it was that had held it together and made it recognizable as a cattail was gone-it was dispersed. IT was no longer. The little bits of fluff that remained (through much sweeping and vacuuming)in my studio seemed to me the cattail soul. While at Ucross, through a process of trial and error (including a huge trial to my very tolerant and kind next door studio neighbor Gabrielle Mayer) I found a way to begin what has become the first of this new cycle of work. With its' many layered, multi-focused, in and out, painted, screwed, glued and assembled aspects, this work resembles the way things appear, grab my attention, and then fade from consciousness as other aspects take their places.

Since returning from Ucross, I continue to work within the same parameters, trying to replicate some of the many ways I experience place. A good many of the paintings done this past year are part of Not Just Wax, an exhibition at Butters Gallery in Portland, Oregon from November 2- November 26, 2011.

A Little Update...or, some shameless self-promotion...

2011-05-25T08:24:00.000-07:00

At Butters Gallery, through the month of May, on display have been some of my recent paintings. Dandelion is the most recent of the large botanical paintings shown last May. As well, two new works from a series alternately thought of as Amulets or Bardo Paintings, have been on the walls.

I also have paintings on view at Terwilliger Plaza, a retirement community in Portland. Curated by Suzanne Tufenkian, printmaker, the exhibition includes work by Margaret Shirley, Tom Cramer, Sally Finch, Suzanne and a few others. The paintings I am exhibiting, are Our Eden and Temptation, both from my 2008 exhibition Of the Body, Of the Mind.

In addition, my work is well represented in Encaustic Art: The Complete Guide to Creating Fine Art With Wax, Lissa Rankin, published in August 2011 by Watson-Guptil.

And finally, in February, I participated in an on-line residency where my work can be viewed at http://www.365daysofprint.com

Time and the River

2011-03-18T12:01:00.000-07:00

It was last spring that we, the neighbors in Bridal Veil, spotted California Sea Lions on Phoca Rock, named by Lewis and Clark for the seals they saw on this rock those many years ago. It was the first time in anyone's memory that sea lions had been seen here and the neighbor's collective memory goes back 30 years. We all got out telescopes, binoculars and cameras to watch with awe and delight. This spring, the sea lions reappeared, as did our viewing devices. They came just ahead of the salmon run, awaiting the salmon and sturgeon buffet just below the Bonneville Dam. The terrible irony, which we knew and they didn't, was that any sea lion caught gorging on salmon 3 times could be killed in an effort to save the salmon, whose numbers are much diminished as a result of our damming the river. A terrible irony it is.

This painting is the first in a series of the Columbia. And the first I have ever painted that is so closely related to the state of this particular dilemma, the state of disconnect between our human advancements and the toll that takes upon the natural world.

?!?DOES ART MATTER?!? February 2009

2009-02-09T08:22:00.000-08:00

As we find our way this new year, this new season of hope, I have begun by finishing old things. I have repaired old paintings and tackled completing some that were left leaning against studio walls. I'd been waiting for the insight and/or courage to resolve the annoying issues that force me to leave a painting undone (an irritation that grows as time passes)-the difference between the painting's visceral reality and the image in mind and senses.

I ask you:Which is the true painting?
The painting itself answers. As one sees it on the wall, it grabs our attention or allows us to pass by with only a glance. That is answer enough.

But does it matter? Does Art matter? These are tough times; I've been hearing that on the radio and television, seeing it in the newspaper headlines. And even in this new season of hope, our elected officials have again allowed Art to be relegated to the fringes. Our Senators have voted to allow an amendment to pass which will deny any funds from the multi-billion dollar stimulus package to be directed to the Arts-museums, galleries, education, even disallowing designing landscaping around roads built with stimulus money!

Clearly, then, we see: Art does matter! It matters enough that it has its own amendment. What other field of human endeavor has its own (exclusionary) amendment?

This is amongst the most depressing and bewildering situations of our time. Businesses find enough money to develop video games and new uses for expensive electronic toys, the government finds enough money to listen to our conversations, engage in wars all over the planet, yet we can't seem to find the funds to support our children, aged, sick, indigent, artists, or factory workers. What then have we said about ourselves? What do we value? We value celebrity, grown ups' toys, wealth, politics, armaments, research and development, the spy class, the technology class...What do we devalue? People, regular old people. And the things that enhance the lives of regular old people.

Hell, as Zen Master Seung Sahn described it, is a place where people sitting at a dining table heaped with food are starving. Because these people's arms don't bend at the elbows, although food is abundant and within reach, they can't get the food into their own mouths. Heaven, as the good Zen Master described it, is the same table. The same people. Whose forks and spoons pick up food and feed it into their table-mates' mouths. All stomachs are happy.

Unless we die a calamitous unexpected death, each of us will one day need help getting food to our own mouth, getting to the doctor or bathroom. Each of us will, at some time, have in our family an artist, a homosexual, a black sheep, a high school dropout, a rebel, a member with chronic, congenital, or mental illness. Any of us could lose our money, our home, our insurance, our invulnerability.

Now is a good time to question our values, to examine the path we've traveled to the present. Do we like what we find? If so, continue onward. If not, find another way. I would prefer my world to include more heaven than hell. I would prefer a grassy, wild flower berm to a cinder block divider on the highway I travel. I would like a painting on my wall. I would like access to medicine. I would prefer children in schools to young adults in prison. I would prefer more people in one home to investors with three. Wouldn't you?

This artist's blog appears with NO ART. Our Senators support an amendment that takes art out of the mainstream, declares art frivolous, and sets artists aside as people who perform no useful function and deserve no support. SO close the Smithsonian! Drape black fabric atop the paintings on the walls and sculptures in the hallways! Take the crayons away from the children! Mow the landscape free of flowers and plantings! Put down that novel! Shut off that IPod! Close the theaters! Put those violins away!

In this new season of hope, we've voted for a world without art. Does it matter?

2008-11-24T10:50:00.000-08:00

Mind and Body: Paintings at Butters Gallery November 29-December 20

The Body
"Since Adam and Eve ate the apple, man has not refrained from any folly of which he was capable."
Bertrand Russell, The History of the World in Epitome (quoted in its entirety)

For the second time in my artistic career, I find myself working with the story of Genesis. Almost two decades ago, at a time of great change in my life, I made a series of works on paper that dealt with some of the images of Renaissance painting and the symbols of Western civilization. Last year upon my return to Oregon from a great adventure that took me cross country for love and brought me back when the whirlwind subsided, I found myself trying to make sense of the previous few years. What better place to look than the basis of it all, the beginning, the human story?

For this series of paintings, in a departure from my prior work which included neither plan nor ruler, I have recreated some of the elements of Genesis: the garden, the trees,man and woman, serpent, some creatures of the sea and others of the air, and,of course, the apple.
The paintings are formed by gridding out each panel and painting each rectangle separately, suggesting that we are seeing the process of creation, things as they were in the planning stages. I want the viewer to experience the image as if it were in in its beginnings, as if the flesh were not yet flesh, as if the people, the serpent, the garden were all still in some formative stage, as if, in fact they were still being imagined and not yet physical.

I hoped that in the process of making these paintings I would come to some greater understanding of myself, the human folly of which I partake, and the meaning of something. Alas, my experiment did not work. I understand no more about folly than I did when I began.

The Mind
"...what does being human mean? Being human means no meaning, no reason, no choice. But if you get no meaning, no reason, no choice you get BIG meaning, BIG reason, BIG choice..."
Zen Master Seung Sahn, 1988

"...You say I am repeating
Something I have said before. I shall say it again.
Shall I say it again? In order to arrive there,
To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not,
You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.
In order to arrive at what you do not know
You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.
In order to possess what you do not possess
You must go by the way of dispossession.
In order to arrive at what you are not
You must go through the way in which you are not.
And what you do not know is the only thing you know
And what you own is what you do not own
And where you are is where you are not..."
T.S. Eliot, "Four Quartets"

In the series of Mind paintings I play with the simplest of things: a few colors, a gridded panel, circles. As in the Body paintings, I have used the ruler and added the use of stencils to make my shapes. Still, with so little of my own handwriting infusing the work, the writing of my mind makes itself known.

These paintings are about relationship. The way things act upon each other. The way things come together and move apart. The way proximity and distance make a statement of their own. The relationships of parts to a whole.The way, with so few elements at play, so many variations are possible. The way things change. The way one element acts upon the rest.

Is there intrinsic meaning in any of these elements? In their placement, color, relative size? Or is the entire construction a construction of the mind? I find comfort in the Zen Master's statement and the musing of T.S. Eliot. These Mind paintings reflect my musings on the subject of meaning through the existence and interaction of just a few simple elements.

for information and/or discussion, please email me at :andrea@schwartzfeit.com
please also go to www.buttersgallery.com and/or www.schwartzfeit.com to see more of my work

Punctuated Equilibrium

2008-09-01T10:19:00.000-07:00

Punctuated Equilibrium, a theory of evolutionary change as environmental causes affect a species, has some social applications as well:

" ... models of change from different domains and found similar patterns between the way that change is thought to occur in biological species according to the theory of punctuated equilibrium and the ways adults, groups, organizations and scientific fields develop. In general, the original formulation of theory has been used to explain patterns of change in groups and organizations where periods of "stasis" are punctuated by brief and intense periods of "radical" change. Two widely known applications of the theory of punctuated equilibrium in the social sciences are in organizational theory and in the study of small work groups . As some researchers have noted, these applications of the original theory have shifted its focus of attention from "a theory about change in populations to a theory about change within entities" from Wikipedia

In a personal sense, as I come dangerously close to becoming irrelevent, space junk, like a member of one of those religions that ban sexual activity and therefore evolve themselves right out of existence, I make my feeble attempt to barely keep up with the new and hereby enter the blogosphere. Woohoo! I'll be using the blog as one way of updating my website and elaborating upon some of the ideas and issues that inform my work as it progresses.

In my current work, I am making correlations between issues of anthropology and my personal life. Using the macrocosm to describe the microcosm. In the series of encaustic paintings I am working on, I use color, texture, rectangles and circles to describe issues of relationship and change. My Zen teacher used to say that if you want happiness, world peace, enlightenment,et al, all you have to do is keep the correct relationship with all you encounter. Though simple, the task is not easy. So many variations are possible; some occur by choice, others by a moment of carelessness. There are lots of mistakes, and some of them lead to new directions and areas of interest. As the series progresses, I am often compelled to follow a direction I hadn't contemplated, one that, while unintended, sends me down a path more alluring than the ones I had chosen. From the first small paintings of about twenty squares and two circles in metallic powders and lipstick to the increasingly complex pieces I am working on now with hundreds of rectangles and circles, using every combination of material available, the issues remain the same. The same way one wants something exciting to happen in life every so often, sometimes that desire appears in painting as well...

For information and/or discussion, please email me at:

andrea@schwartzfeit.com