Susan Field's journal - February 2007

S u s a n F i e l d gualala, ca

Journal

New studio

February 1, 2007 – Thursday (National Freedom Day)

Garbage pickup is tomorrow. I went back to the bin and retrieved a roll of pebbled wallpaper. Tore off a yard of it, just in case. Also dug out F’s old brown leather boots that he wore while we were dating in college. I’ve kept them in my studio all this time, thinking I might draw them. They’re scraped on both toes, and look the 30 years that they are, but I still can’t part with them.

A gift yesterday at the Swarm Gallery in Oakland: Elise Morris’ works on large paper, 96 x 52”. I realized again that I’ve wanted to work that big for years, and now with the new studio, I can. I’d like to tack up a wall’s width of large sheets and just go from one to the next, fairly fast, making marks, moving on, returning/moving back. That would be satisfying, and I wouldn’t be fixated on getting one drawing just right. I remember an instructor’s assignment years ago: sketch 50 self-portraits in something like 5 minutes. I started out trying to get a likeness, but after a minute or so, just gave up and worked fast. Loved it when a mark in one drawing suggested something to try in the next. By the last sheet, it wasn’t my face anymore but an emotional state -- distress from a woman’s rudeness earlier in the day.

So I’d love to recapture that process on a larger scale.

Rothko at the Berkeley Art Museum was another gift. I sat on a cane chair before his painting, a red-orange rectangle poised over dark blue. The red made me think of a large opening I could fall into, if only I could first cross that dark blue threshold. His works often feel that way to me. There’s always that catch, a price to pay maybe, some fear to face.

February 4, 2007 – Sunday

Brought up another carload of stuff – paintings, black bags of raw sheep’s wool, a lamp on its tripod. Plus boxes of stuff to donate: old Artweeks, some metal frames, mats of various sizes.

I went to Pay ‘n Take yesterday morning. This is the last flea market for a month, while the community hall is painted and refurbished. The crowds are good-natured, though there’s lots of mad jostling and grabbing for jewelry, toys, old silverware, dishes. If you arrive even 10 minutes after the opening rush, you’re out of luck, everything’s been picked over.

Was looking for a rug for the studio & grabbed some nubby fabric off a table that was close enough – one of those wall hangings you see tacked up over the fireplace in hunting cabins. This one shows seven horned rams on a mountaintop – it’ll probably work just fine under the drafting table. Also found some turquoise beads and sequins, some blue ric rac.

Met the studio landlord to exchange keys – he’d installed a new lock – then vacuumed before unloading the car. PG&E had turned the electricity on during the week – power! The landlord said he’s designing a home for a woman who’s an artist. “You’ve got studio space??” she asked him when he’d told her about mine. “Not anymore,” he answered with a laugh. I’m glad I got my space when I did.

February 6, 2007 – Tuesday

Went shopping at Savers yesterday, browsed around the far back corner where an overhead sign reads “More than You Bargained For”. Saw an area rug crumpled on the floor, black and white with hints of pale rose. My antennae went up. Started unfolding it and an elderly woman in a jaunty hat came over to help. The rug was large, maybe 6 x 10’, heavy, a little frayed at one edge but not bad. She started asking, in a British accent, what I thought it was made of. She didn’t like synthetic fabrics, she said, and smoothed down a corner. We guessed it might be cotton, but neither of us was sure. We inspected it on both sides. It had small white checks against a black background, geometric shapes that’d be good to have in my mind’s eye as I worked in the studio. I must have been grinning, because she said she liked to come here to watch people, especially those who were happy, who were getting something for next to nothing. You meet the most interesting people, she said; I was thinking the same about her.

Carried the rug under my arm to the checkout. The tag read $12.99. The cashier asked if I was over 55; I nodded. Got the rug for $11.26. Ha! One advantage of getting older, anyway.

Packed the car up later in the day, since it’s supposed to rain for a long stretch. More donated frames and a box of cassettes (“Je T’Aime à L’Italienne”), my rug, the mat cutter in its cardboard box, the Fuzz Ballies piece in its glass gallon jar. Bungie cords criss-crossing to hold things in place for the winding drive up the coast.

February 12, 2007 – Monday

When F. and I were in the new studio replacing the overhead bulbs, the metal works shop next door was open. We could see someone in there welding, orange sparks flying. Right now, a pickup truck’s backed up against the open door, and I can hear men’s voices, pneumatic tools, sanders.

So now I have three rugs in my place. Sitting on the floor looking at them, I realized they’re really telling me about different threads in my artmaking. The rams on the mountaintop rug with its orange sun is schmaltzy, bargain basement, cheapo stuff that I love to track down in thrift stores. The gumboots that I’m currently embellishing, with their beads and doilies and safety pins, are part of this.

The black & white rug, by far the largest, gives me structure. I like its low-key colors – pale plum, ivory, beige – and its checks and zigzags. The geometry makes me think of when I use slide mounts in my work, and the formality of the sewn drawings.

The third rug – the shaggy sheep’s wool one – is wild, textured and earthy. It makes me happy. Wool is what I used in Gravestone Bib, and the texture reminds me too of the fur cape in Princess, the horsehair pieces.

These three seem to anchor me. I like that.

February 17, 2007 - Saturday

Am sitting on the studio floor, wrapped up in the sheep’s wool rug. I should have brought my jacket; the ocean breeze through the open windows is cool.

Music is spilling out of the metal works building next door, a woman’s voice, “Midnight at the Oasis.”

I’ve read some chapters in Michael Kimmelman’s, Portraits, where he meets artists at the Metropolitan Museum and they talk about various works. Here are some quotes I like:

Kiki Smith: “A lot of my effort in the last few years has been about trying to interject decorative elements into the fine arts, by using beads or sewing or whatever. I don’t want to be owned as an artist by traditions, which dictate that, hierarchically, certain subjects or ideas or techniques or materials are innately high art while others aren’t.” (hear, hear!)

Elizabeth Murray: “Cézanne was the first painter I saw when I was a young art student: it was like knocking on a door and hearing an answer… I was looking for some reason to be an artist. And then I saw a little still life by Cézanne and it was like a voice saying hello to me.”

And finally Brice Marden, whose show at SFMOMA opens this week: “When things are getting very static in my work, I go into nature, where there’s an energy. If you’re just in the studio, you repeat yourself and get clichéd.”

Later, I take a walk along the beach – the waves are coming in from a deep, far place. Light shimmers off the water like taffeta.

March 2007