Monday, August 3, 2009

ELSEWHERE




I'm still trying to figure out how a blog fits into the landscape of information. So here's this month's attempt.

Several Orange County (New York) artists met recently and found common interest in non-representational work... actually work connected to the roiling unconscious.

"So what!" you might be saying.

Well, Orange County is a rural, beautiful area-- home of The Black Dirt and luscious, seductive
vistas. After onions and apples, plein air painters are are biggest crop. So to, coincidentally, find a few other refugees from Landscape Painting was very exciting.

We are trying to find a regular time and place to keep meeting face-to-face. But until then and in addition to that, maybe a blog can help fuel and form all this. Here's my opening statement for this new/old group, Elsewhere:

I'm very interested in arts-in-action: artists composing areas in time and space, in color, shape and texture which beckon and entrance. These environment/encounters, when successful, are profound. People are not the same afterwards. They have recognized and welcomed home a wayward part of themselves. The artist is the helper/diviner of mildly lost souls. Artist as psychopomp.

For me, this is not done through traditional arts or crafts. That's why I left furniture for the world of Imaginal Artifacts. I want to use common materials, techniques and patterns as a way to elsewhere.

So I propose a "group" called, Elsewhere, which reflects and supports each others work in exploring the twilight and liminal areas. We can help each other devise ways to be bolder and braver about folding our murky works into the world.

The other two miscreants, at the moment, are Gloria Bonelli, Linda Richichi and John F. Simon, Jr