Awakening Breath...The Finished Work

Awakening Breath, no. 1

Awakening Breath, no. 27

As promised, I am posting a couple of the finished pieces from Awakening Breath, the collaboration exhibition with my husband Johntimothy Pizzuto.  These are just quickie photos--sorry not the best views.  There were thirty pieces in all...in many ways the same and in many ways different.  Once we finally had a beginning vision of the work, we knew each would be a triptych, something resembling an altarpiece in shape.   Johntimothy created the side panels and I did the center panel.  Johntimothy is a printmaker, so the sides are built up with layers of silkscreen texture and pattern at the base, then lots of rubber stamping, both with and without stencils.  Actually those strong organic shapes that float in the space on the sides are made with stencils he carefully cut out from each of the shapes I created in the middle panels.  The middle piece has a pattern of pencil on top of blackboard paint, layered with another pattern of an organic seed or cel-like shape and the surrounding field of linework  in ink.  Each "roof" has a layer of a different pattern in pencil with an ink and acrylic drawing on top.  That's a short description of the pieces that seem to have been stepping stones for both of us.  As I mentioned earlier, we wanted to embody subtlety through layering and pattern, along with a meditative quietness.  We won't see these pieces installed until we go out to take the exhibition down at the end of September.  

I think for me, this work was very important and brought me closer to a place of letting go of the image.  I found that I was so at peace and in a flow while drawing the underlying subtle pattern in pencil and then the seeds and the surrounding lines that seem to evoke a zen garden.  There is a part of me that has been wanting to let go of the image, but another part that is tied to creating some tangible link to our daily lives through a familiar image.  But so much that I need to say is all about the intangible, the fleeting...perhaps I'll now speak in the language of abstraction.  Let's see what unfolds from here....I have a feeling it will be scrolls....

Subtleties and the Accumulation of Our Decay

For various reasons, I'm thinking about subtleties these days.  Life has been so busy and I've been frantically trying to create new work and get it posted to MissouriBendStudio, that I found I've veered a bit off course.  Am I perhaps making the work too quickly, without being true to the work, to myself, to revealing the essence of things, which only happens quiety and over time?  Part of the reason I make work that is small is that there is an intimacy in the act of making and in the viewing...small work requires a one-on-one experience, hand-held, at arm's length and it reveals subtleties that can't be seen across a large distance just at a glance.  Life is too rich, too layered and it can't be taken in without a certain slow unveiling.  In my own way, all my work is about this richness, the history of our lives unfolding, the vastness of experience in a moment, in an hour...in a life.  How can we talk about these things...visually or in language...I don't really know exactly, but it's what drive me...the longing that does not go away. And just now, a few moments ago, I read this short line from The Maytrees, by Annie Dillard and I don't think any context is really needed...it's all said right here: :"Why not memorize everything, just in case."

The piece here, Accumulation of Our Decay, was made about a year ago an is approximately 11x15", on handmade paper, and full of subtlety that is only revealed close at hand.  Layers of painting and drawing that resembles writing, as well as bits of ephemera in image in the form of cut bits of paper sewn into the floating clouds...well, this is the richness of our history, the accumulation of our decay.  I must slow down, pay attention.