July 15, 2022 Weekly Musings
Posted on July 14 2022
Announcements:
2022 Northwoods Art Tour
The summer North Woods Art Tour is right around the corner! July 28-29-30. This video gives you a little taste of what it feels like to get a behind-the-scenes looks at some of the North Woods' finest artists studios and galleries, including mine!
CLICK HERE to learn more and download the NWAT map.
Muse 5 Exhibition open through July, 2022
The artwork, "Issues That Got Out Of Hand," by Vicky Helms and poem, "Issues That Got Out Of Hand," by Bobbie Lee Lovell are being displayed as part of Christine Alfery's new gallery called Christine's Gallery. Its first exhibition is called "Artist Muse 5." For this event, poets and artists teamed up to be each other's muses. There will be approximately 40 artist and poet pairs. It is a wonderful opportunity for Wisconsin Artists and Poets to share their works to the public online.
Visions That Got Out Of Hand
by Bobbie Lee Lovell
“I’ve got this,” I said, and it wasn’t a lie — not exactly. I’m a woman, no stranger
to chaos and duty. Mama taught me
to say yes, to clean any mess I might find, any mess that might find me. I learned
to keep house, to compartmentalize:
a place for everything and everything
in its place. Even stars can be contained
like fireflies in jars. Whatever I couldn’t carry, I planted, with prayers for strong new roots.
And so it went, until a fly on the wall
grew larger than Canopus, its persistent buzz loud as war. Everything flew out of my hands, and next thing I knew, the vessels that held my favorite dreams were empty.
A storm is coming. The trees are dark
against the cobalt horizon. I’ve come
to understand the rock on which I stand
is a raft on a sea of galaxies, my whole life
a finger-snap in time. But Mama taught me well,
so here I am, posing with posies in this blush-pink frock, an image of sweetness
and calm. We want to connect the dots
into constellations, to make order and sense. I’ve still got this. But no, I will not smile.
Musings:
Visions
Featured image: Letting Go
Do you have a vision for your work? For your life? Visions are often misunderstood and unfortunately linked to morals and ethics. Visions can come from religion, politics, social issues, economic and money issues. This is why they are often tied to our morals and ethics.
A vision is just that, a vision and it should be yours alone, not someone else's. Visions are like dreams, which are also your own. As I write this I want to share some of my visions. I have visions of flight, emerging, releasing and freedom. My work centers around these visions. The visions help me when I create them. They are what assist me to ensure that the work visually speaks to you, the viewer of my work, the reader of my musings.
When you look at some of my work, you will see cages, fences, and now boxes, with “things” being released, “things” emerging from them and moving towards “freedom.” There are many works of mine that speak to this vision, “She Emerges” is one.
But here are some others:
Escape
This list continues, and there are many other examples, so I won’t list them all here. Visit my website to find more. www.christinealfery.com.
But the main idea in this musing is about your visions, and mine, and about releasing them from another’s visions. It is about finding your own vision and then visually expressing them in your work. That is how the viewer can find you in your work.
Visions Are Maps
Featured image: Visions Are Maps
Visions are like maps. They guide the individual, the self and the soul through a tangle of twists, turns and entanglements. However, visions may leave out many of the details in the process of map making, because the details cloud over the vision. Maps from a vision are more like the folded maps that you pick up at the rest stop when you enter a new state. These maps have main roads but tiny dirt and gravel roads are left out.
In both the visions and in turn the work that the artist creates from these visions, frequently the details of the gravel road are left out. Or, they leave out all the extraneous details surrounding the gravel road and just emphasize the gravel road. Why? Mainly because whether a vision is microscopic or macroscopic, it is the vision that is the point that needs to be emphasized.
How are visions different from ideologies? Visions are personal and intimate, ideologies are not. Visions often can be linked to what we sense and feel. A vision happens before reason jumps in and changes the playground of a vision. Visions can give you a personal sense of how the world should work.
Sense of Future
Featured image: Just A Little Further
What is your sense of the future? Do you wish to live in a fully materialistic environment where materialism provides a safety net you need for when tangles happen? Can you say no to the yes of the safety of the materialistic environment? Or do you say yes to tangles that may happen in the wildness of a more natural environment and actually welcome them as a learning experience.?
For me, as you might have guessed, my sense of the future is the latter. My sense of future is where progress and growth can happen, and change is a positive and not a negative. It’s where exploration and discovery and risk taking happen. My work reflects my vision for the future and my sense of the future.
Can you say yes to not having the safety net of the materialistic environment? Can you say yes to tangles that may happen in this environment? Can you say yes to chaos? Or would you rather say no to exploration and the unknown?
Where is your sense of the future? What is your sense of the future?
Spontaneity and Love
Featured image: Purple Tulips II
I have always thought that there was enormous power and energy in love and spontaneous-ness because both are uncontrollable. Neither of them can be put into a box. Take the spontaneous gesture of coming to a vista and lifting your arms to the sky. Have you ever done that? I do it all the time. There is such a release when it happens especially when it is spontaneous.
The problem though, and sorry there usually is a problem with most things subjective, is that subjectivity is controllable by others. That is, unless you know who you are, what your visions are and how you visualize yourself and the future.
Art has, well let me rephrase that, was always about the individual expressing self, their subjectivity. An artist is always very vulnerable, when they cannot control what they put out there for all to see, and it is scary. But, the trade off, don’t create, and know yourself and your vision for yourself and your future and stand by it no matter what.
I still imagine that when I enter my studio and will it with the energies of spontaneity and love. My spontaneity and my love, not someone else’s.