Artweek…2011

Here’s a little story…two girls met in art class in 7th grade.  They became friends.  They dressed in black (like “beatniks”) and took the El to the Loop to the Art Institute to “hang out”…and many years later they began the annual “artweek” visitations. Sometimes in Carolyn’s studio in California, sometimes in mine in Salem.  This year, mine.  Both wound up on the west coast, far from Wilmette Jr. High School, which has been torn down…

This year we had a lot to talk about…and the week hinged on the talking.  We were in very different places…Carolyn working on “The Guardian” series of drawings for a show opening October 7th in Fort Bragg, me dinking around after a curatorial spring and summer, a summer filled with quilts and gardens, trying to work my way back to 2D.

We began and ended with a drawing exercise that, while it didn’t produce great drawings, was incredibly interesting.  We each sat with a piece of paper.  We could not look at each other, we could not speak.  She drew something on her page, I drew something on my page…and by the time we quit we were “on the same page”…if you know what I mean…

and the next day it was right to work…Carolyn’s “Guardians”…one third day of the dead, one third Nepalese myth and imagery, one third pure Carolyn

Carolyn played with gouache

and pastels…

meanwhile at my end I finished a wax piece

and did a couple of little metallic paintings

but mostly fooled with some collages…partly because they were closer to the piecing I’d been doing all summer…and, inevitably, the week came to a close.  On Carolyn’s last night we had our “exit interview” but the drawings reflected our mood of overload…

and then the oh no moment had finally arrived…

and she was gone…

…but we’ve hatched a plan for a series of paintings…starts soon at the end of the month…