Enough Already --- Day 3/237

Walk: JCCSF, Trader Joe's
Distance: 2 miles and take yoga class



  Deer leaving the city via Golden Gate Bridge (during rush hour).

Drawing, Pt. 2 --- Day 3/236

Walk: Fillmore Street
Distance: 2 miles and home yoga practice



Ciwt thought she detected rolled eyeballs when she asked the gallery manager "What is drawing?" Maybe it wasn't exasperation over a stupid question but a genuine reaction to the complexity that is the answer.  Drawing turns out to be a very vague term indeed and difficult to define.  Not a single, unchanged  entity, it's an activity that's continuously mutable, constantly adapting to new forms, emerging technologies and conceptual attitudes.

It certainly includes mark making which most children do and where Ciwt's skills have found their current limit: .  Somewhere in her childhood, getting  a roof right was quite a shock to her visual and motor skills and the beginning of her understanding that drawing is about skills she didn't know about yet and would have to be taught. For whatever reasons she chose to stay pretty close to stick figures and arrows on simple maps to give directions to friends.

But of course throughout history and to this day many - in and out of the art world - have developed their drawing skills.  These are the people who have made cartoons for tapestries, illuminated manuscripts, created visual maps.  In early civilizations drawing and language developed together, as calligraphy did in China.  Drawing is part of many worlds besides fine arts: architecture, medicine, advertising, science to name a few.  And many cultures such as Maori body tattooing. And it's definition, scope, materials, surfaces keep expanding with technology as perfectly illustrated here in San Francisco recently with David Hockey's huge and proficient iPad drawings.  *

When Ciwt thinks of drawing it is usually in a Western fine art context where drawing was THE fundamental skill.  Particularly with the development of Art Academies during the renaissance, drawing courses which taught techniques (eg, perspective and foreshortening) for naturalistic, three-dimensional representation were mandatory for several years before the student could move on to the 'significant artwork' of painting or sculpting. When artists did move on, they used various media to draw on boards and later paper to generate ideas and solve problems, such as composition and layout.

But the drawings remained with the artist as tools; no patron would consider drawing to be a collectible art form. This began to change during the eighteenth century when artists such as William Hogarth and Francisco de Goya engaged in caricature** to comment on the changing social and political conditions arising from industrialization and urbanization.  Concurrently there were developments in printmaking which enabled the circulation of such work in newspapers and leaflets. Then came the camera, film, the whole modernist movement where drawing, individual expression, painting, sculpting, technology became and are becoming more and more intertwined.  And the question "What is drawing?" became more and more elusive - and growing more so every day.
                                                                                                     

*** ****

*****


*David Hockney, Yosemite National Park, iPad drawing
**William Hogarth, Columbus Breaking the Egg, 1752
***Lascaux Cave Painting
****Leonardo da Vinci, Horse drawing for sculpture, ca 1462
*****Pablo Picasso, Guernica Sketch 6, 1937                                                          (CIWT To be continued.....?)
                                                                                                                                                     

Drawing, Part 1 --- Day 3/235

Walk: Marina Theater (A Most Wanted Man - 2), Chestnut Street
Distance: 2.5 miles and small home yoga practice

Recently a friend recommended a drawing show at one of our downtown galleries, and yesterday Ciwt was able to get there.

It was more extensive than the usual gallery show which allowed some her old (unasked) questions about drawing to surface.  She took a look at one of the first ones:

Patricia Watwood, Dress

And felt on solid ground.  Yup, that's a drawing.                              

Then she began to be blown away by the sheer technical proficiency of the next image:
 
Chelsea Herron, At the Crossroads (and detail), chacroal on paper                         

and many that followed would be mistaken for photographs from a distance - or even up close!
 
Deborah Lloyd, The Last Dance, charcoal              Kevin Moore, Moments Before, charcoal on paper


Leah F. Waichulis, Venture, charcoal and pastel on paper

She thought this portrait was photographic in its life-likeness

  Timothy Jahn, A Ginger, charcoal on paper
Until she saw the next one 
                                           Luis Enrique Lantigua Dominiquex , Tantrum, charcoal on paper
 and then .
                Emma Hirst, High Steaks, charcoal & pastel on paper      

  As the show went on, Ciwt encountered colorful images, some traditional
 
 Brian O'Neill, A Life Well Lived, pastel
some out there  
                         Chelsea Herron, My Very Eager Mother, pastel

By the time Ciwt had studied all 107 images - different shapes, sizes, colors, subject matter, media - the unconscious question she has had for many years finally surfaced.  So she went over to the gallery manager's desk and asked it:  What is Drawing?

To be continued......

It's Been Done** --- Day 3/234

Walk: Union Square art galleries
Distance: 3 miles and take yoga class



Ciwt liked Joan Rivers.  She remembers her in that small Upstairs at the Downstairs room she played in the early New York days.  Right out of the suburbs - A-line skirt, pumps, sweater set, beehive, there may have even been pearls.  And, even then, that mouth combined with the right on topics and such intelligence.  A combination of endearing and outrageous.

Of course the outrageous won out and sometimes on TV her shrill bite  could be alienating. Especially when she was being a self-appointed fashion maven. Let's face it, taste truly wasn't her strong point. And what can you say about that face? But Ciwt saw her about a year ago just down the block at the JCCSF, and, all mixed in with the brilliant potty (some would say cruel) mouth, wig and plastic surgery, there in person was that bedrock endearingness. Ciwt was glad to encounter that again after all the years.




**"I've learned: When you get older, who cares? I don't mince words, I don't hold back. What are you gonna do to me? Fire me? It's been done. Threaten to commit suicide? Done. Take away my show? Done! Not invite to me to the Vanity Fair party? I've never been invited!"   ---  Joan Rivers

And Again Go Round --- Day 3/333

Walk: Marin, various
Distance: 1 mile and home yoga practice



Beatriz Milhazes, Panamerican 2004, Acrylic on canvas, 198 x 179 cm

A poem by Wallace Stevens came wafting back to Ciwt today from her college days when he was one of her favorites. The first verse in particular puts her in mind of the sense of Beatriz Milhazes's art that seems to start somewhere and just go and go through colorful, mostly joyous swirls and linear passages until at some point she reaches a resolution.  It also puts Ciwt in mind of the spirit in which she walks - often the same paths but each time an adventure through the unknown to a sense of completion for that day's walk.  So many years of walking like that;  such a gift. Wallace Stevens was also a lifelong walker - or, as he says, mere circulator.

The garden flew round with the angel,
The angel flew round with the clouds,
And the clouds flew round and the clouds flew round 
And the clouds flew round with the clouds.

       Wallace Stevens, The Pleasures of Merely Circulating (1st verse)

Wearable Art --- Day 3/232

Walk: Union Square (dentist), Fillmore Street
Distance: 20 blocks



Accessory?  Did you say accessory?*  As it turned out, Ciwt stumbled (or however it happened) into just the accessory she needed this season.

*See CIWT Day 3/322

Smiling ---Priceless (Almost) --- Day 3/231

Walk: Union Square, Mindful Body
Distance: 16 blocks and teach yoga class



(A little necessary fine tuning of that smile for Ciwt tomorrow)

This is not a Rothko --- Day 3/230

Walk: Hood
Distance: 2.6 miles and home yoga



It's the super-duper new caulking on Ciwt's tub that takes 72! hours to dry.

15 more to go!!!