Folk Art Diary: Music, food, and contemporary folk art. What an ensemble.

'Jazz Piano Player' framed assemblage

©robin r kent

For some, modern and contemporary folk art can be similar to jazz music, in a way that when you see it, you like it. For others, maybe not. But I believe you can develop an appreciation for it.
In the culinary arts, if you're a gringo like me, it took small steps to appreciate Sriracha hot sauce. I've come to love Mexican food. And Thai. Of course, French. Actually I love all food. But what I thought was spicy is now mild.
It works the same way for music. I needed to hear the familiar. If it's got a good beat, I can dance to it. Goes right to my soul. I didn't 'get' Herbie Hancock at first. How can you dance to that? Now I drift along 'kind of blue' easily, painting alongside jazz greats (and smalls). Miles Davis is my musical version of Marc Chagall. Charlie Parker resembles Jackson Pollock. Guess I love music in the same way as food and art. Necessary part of life. Still have to work on my Opera chops, though. Gustav Klimt, maybe? (Want to suggest a visual artist to describe Bob Dylan?)
So, when scanning the artscene at it's dance, I find contemporary folk art in the corner, alone. How to catagorize it's persona? How to put the kind of art I paint/assemble/sculpt into words without people thinking of girls in profile with big bonnets when I add 'folk art' to the explanation? Yes, it is a melange of styles. Delightfully primitive, yet sophisticated, with a hint of visionary.

Maybe let people discover their taste for it a little at a time. There's such a rich of diversity on the contemporary folk art menu. Good thing it doesn't have any calories.

Dreams and other-worldly places

'First Cup'
mixed media wall assemblage

©robin r kent

Last night, and for a few nights before that, I've had interesting, busy dreams. Many were thinly veiled metaphors for people and places from my past. It was nice to be in familiar surroundings visiting them again.
Another dream was just a bunch of busy work. That day's schedule had been over the top and I found myself matching socks in my sleep. It was the first time I can recall editing a dream in progress saying 'this is a waste of dreamtime' and starting a 'second feature' without really waking up.
I used to read Freud's 'Interpretation of Dreams' when younger, but now I just enjoy the ride. Who needs to go to the movies?
Many times my art problems can be solved there also. It's good to get some distance on them. There's a notebook next to my bed, but I usually remember anyway.
I fly a lot in my dreams. Always have since childhood. But I never flew too high and always had to 'peddle' to stay airborne. I must have learned that while swimming in flippers. It was handy. Still is.
Gravity is something I never took seriously. As a child in bed at night, I could look at my ceiling and think of it as a floor. I could mentally walk to my bedroom's threshold, which looked like a short wall in a submarine, step over it, and continue walking on the ceiling down the hallway. It was such a pristine surface with nice lighting. And so quiet no one could hear me. Try it. It's a good exercise.

Once when I had a childhood fever, I remember my mother kneeling at my feet offering me thin slices - like shiny needles or wires - that cut the air into three dimensional surfaces. She broke that dream by washing my face. I always remembered that invisible 3d concept of volume and came across it only once more as an adult.  But that's a story for another night. 

How do you dream? Any come true? 

Time to say goodnight. 

Folk Art Diary: Timing is Everything

'Waiting for a Bite'  acrylic on antique boards

©robin r kent

If there's one phrase I'd use to sum up my life, I'd say it's 'timing is everything.'
As I get older, I find myself using that as the final adage to every story, experience, lesson I've come across, first hand or not. It always fits.
I never was particularly aware of timing when I was younger. I'd get lost in something that captured my attention and have no recollection of how long I'd dwell on it.  Cool early mornings in summer, fishing on the lake with my parents. Watching the red and white bobber drift for what seemed hours. Hoping for a bite, if the time was right.
As a teenager, I remember holding on to my friend's pocketbook as we walked through an art show or museum because if I let go, I'd be unable to keep pace. I easily fell into visual quicksand. Loved looking at art. It just felt right being there.
As an an art director, I watched as the copywriter had a new computer installed. This was the beginning of desktop publishing's glory days. That one computer could do things the whole production department took hours to do. The days of 'cut and paste' in galley form were numbered. But I couldn't get the hang of it. We didn't think of layout the same way. Who could blame it?  Written in code... not the way I approach design. And it wasn't about to budge. Almost a karmic 'your time is up' for many of us oldstyle tradespeople. The world had shifted again into another time*.
So I was forced back to my fine art roots. Always a good place of retreat. Maybe it was a rebound way onto the path of creating folk art for the years since. All I know is the timing was right.
Do you find things more easy or difficult depending on the timing? Do you see the ebb and flow of events run through your life? Many divergent factors joining together at the same time?

*Finally got the jist of photoshop last year.  Just had to wait for the timing to be right.

Folk Art Diary: Tilling the soil

'Three Carrot Gardener' folk art wood garden sculpture

©robin r kent

I have to say I was taken by surprise to find one of my long ago paintings of crows on a beautiful site called     www.crowaday.blogspot.com

Terry Davitt Powell displays sensitive, stunning art with crows always the subject. Loved looking at all the variety in themes a black bird can evoke.

This is the time I become aware of everything popping. The lilacs have gone whoshing by, and just as I started to mourn their scented passing, the mock orange flowers. With all the vernal explosions around me, how can I concentrate?
It's my busy time of year in all respects. I must avoid the distractions of hearing the grass growing, or deciding where to plant the raspberry patch, or courting too many Red Sox games.
It's time to dig deep. What to create? I've just begun to weed the brambles of my mind. And I know some unlikely volunteers always pop up. Any surprises for you?

Folk Art Diary: A Trip To The Candy er, Hardware Store

'Milkman' folk sculpture

©robin r kent

I remember being dragged along as a six year old or so, doing Saturday errands with my father. One of the most dreaded stops for me was the hardware store. 'Too much stuff with too little color (dull grey), and what was the point of it all?,' I thought. How boring.
When I grew up I found myself still as the companion in hardware store stops. My energy immediately drained when we hit the threshold. It was a man's world in my mind. Let's get outta here. How boring.
But as I grew into creating contemporary folk art, I found I was missing the tools and thing-ys needed to make the wood sculpture and assemblages do what I wanted.  I gradually understood those thing-ys had names and functions.
Come to think of it, the workbench in my family's basement belonged to my grandmother. She was the daughter of a Swedish boatbuilder turned carpenter. Must have some of that dna. My favorite childhood toy was the wooden cobbler's shoe: you'd bang the (colorfully painted) dowels down into the sole and then flip it over and hammer again.

Self Portrait with Tools

©robin r kent

It all began to fit together. Um, maybe not so boring.......

I started to notice what a difference 1/4 inch of a screw length can make when it bores into your palm. Or how a dull bandsaw blade can set off the fire alarm without any notice.* And the classic purple thumbnail caused by a misguided hammer, or my favorite moniker for it's cousin: 'the persuader'.  No wonder they call some folk art 'naif' or 'naive art' and 'art brut.' Not boring at all.
My bookkeeper thinks it funny that under 'Artist Supplies' I have the following listed:
band saw blades, exterior screws, fastener bits, panel nails, washers, baling wire. Well, bailing wire in Vermont, anyway. All these little silver thing-ys have a function.  When I see them now in their boxes hanging on the store display, I can picture them already doing their job.

Glad to be part of a profession where some of it's skill comes from evolution and intuition. How 'bout you?

*It lends an atmospheric mood to the shop with low hanging clouds of smoke - a similar ambience can be found in my kitchen while I sear a steak in a cast iron pan.)

4-Eyes View the World

Vermont Ain't Flat  Acrylic on Masonite

copyright Robin R Kent

I just got new glasses. With all the bells and whistles. These lenses do everything but wash the dishes. First, they are the new and improved prescription which had been longed for for too long. (Newly retired ones were circa 2007.) Have you noticed when you get new glasses, your eyes are not in sync? Gives me a 'fresh eye' when objects look like they're in a 3D movie. Everything slopes downhill. The ground sure ain't flat. They also change color with the sun and the lens line disappears between the distance and reading part.  I'll look like a movie star and a lot younger in these babies. Especially when I take them off to check. Yep, still dewy complexion with no age lines...
But I've always loved my earliest memories of not seeing well. Such sweet fuzzy views of the world. I finally got glasses around the third grade and what I saw wasn't pretty. I was forced to face reality. These were not your rose colored glasses.
Gone were the soft-focused pastel colors of sky and clouds, of tree leaves and grass. For the first time, I saw the grass and all its blades.  I could almost see each santoku edge and imagine my father sharpening them one at a time during Sunday's predinner ritual. All nature had turned against itself - diamond reflections on the water that cut, and again too bright; light and dark colors competing against each other. No more blending into one. Why can't we all get along? It hurt to look.
That experience has made my contemporary painting style what it is. When I'm creating in my contemporary folk art world, the favored element is volume. Guess it has to be when I do sculpture. OK - in painting, I like mass the best. And blending. Milton Avery paints how I choose to see. Big blocks of mass with soft edges. Nothing persnickety. No minutia. Well, can't resist some dots or graphic additions at the end...but I never was an edgy person.

Art Zen: Go Slow

'Meditation Box' Commission piece

I was tickled to find myself as 'Guest Artist' on Folk Art Mary's blog just a day ago. Although we're different, Mary and I create folk art out of wood. I felt like I hit the jackpot coming across her blog. And I recognize some of her previous guests as artists I have long admired. I'm a starry-eyed folk art groupie.

Back to earth. With the start of the season here in Vermont, I've morphed my artist persona into a car jockey, squeezing in new work deliveries. (April 2nd post) There's only so much one can do in a day. Blog or drive? I've begun to not push as hard. I allow myself the time.
So now I'm mulling over my current quandary: time. How to use it wisely to still get important things done. Like a circus clown's long balloon, I squeeze at one end and it slips away. I'd rather it be like a log of salami, and cut it in chunks. Nope. Doesn't work that way.
The last decade or so, the cultural goal was 'big'. Bigger houses, living large, etc. Now it seems the word is 'fast'. Multi-tasking, multi-texting. Less sleep, more goals.
But that seems to be slowly changing too. I've become a guilt free member of the slow movement. I've always had the potential. And the proof is I lose track of time while puttering in the barn workshop. That's the charm of being an artist. Call it 'problem solving' while it is really 'day dreaming'?  Useful time? Guess so, when it shows up somewhere down the road in future projects. What other job can say that? "Oh, no problem - take your time and just tinker around..."
And I've watched others looking at my art.  It slows them down too. The long meditative pause possibly turning into a small grin. Maybe that's part of the attraction for art lovers. Art Zen. A visual meditation.