CATCHING UP

I feel like the White Queen in Through the Looking Glass, who told Alice that you have to run very fast just to stay where you are, and twice as fast if you want to get anywhere else. Lots of stuff happening & I hardly know where to begin.

I wrote in an earlier post about plans to collaborate with my friend Jackie in her ceramic studio. Look here. (I can't believe that was the end of Jan.!) It took us a while to get going, but for the last several months we have managed to meet every week or every other week. Sometimes it has just been Jackie and myself, and other times we have had up to 6 people participating in various projects. It has been great fun and lots of exchanging ideas and information, as this group has a wide range of expertise. I have been experimenting with various kinds of clays, working with rolling out slabs and forming shapes on impromptu "molds". I have been working with oxides and mason stains to paint on pieces. I have also been doing surface decoration on some of Jackie's thrown pieces.
I haven't come up with any finished pieces yet that are really what I want to be doing, but I am getting closer. I also have been looking at a lot of other artist's work, trying to figure out what I want to be doing. Yesterday I attended the Clay and Glass Festival in Palo Alto, CA. It was a huge outdoor show at the Art Center there. I had never been before--my friend Molly Prier does that show and recommended I check it out. She is a fabulous potter and has been teaching ceramics classes in the Bay area for years. It was a wonderful show and an incredible array of styles and methods of using clay. (I didn't really look at the glass--there was so much work there that I was overwhelmed) I went around and collected business cards (for further research) and took some notes (so I would remember what I saw) and talked to a few artists who weren't busy with customers when I was in their booths. There was also a booth there selling supplies and tools, so of course I spent some money there!
Jackie is traveling this month, so I am not going to her studio every week. So it's a good time to catch up on some other projects and plan my next steps in the studio. I have several pieces that have been bisqued & are waiting to be glazed, and some test glazes I haven't seen finished yet.
There are several things I want to learn how to do--one is slip casting and mold making. I have been playing around with slabs and forming plate and bowl shapes using existing items. But I would like to make some interesting and unique forms to paint on that could be slip cast, so that I would have multiples. Clay is so much FUN!
And last weekend, I found a great book on Kurt Weiser's work. It is the catalog to a show of his work which is currently at the Erie Art Museum & is traveling to some other venues. The book is titled "Eden Revisited: The Ceramic Art of Kurt Weiser " and it is incredible! I had seen some of his work in a magazine before, but I didn't know anything about him. It just blew me away. Check him out.
And, yes, I AM still painting and have been working on quite a few pieces. The image above--"Crow with Persimmons" is a fairly new (this year) piece. Acrylic on canvas 11" x 14". I have some other new paintings finished, but not photographed yet. Will be posting some new images very soon.
And other new exciting news coming up..........Stay tuned.

PS--I heard that Bravo is doing casting calls for a new reality TV show on artists. Who is watching this stuff?

PIRKLE JONES FILM SCREENING

Last night was the SFMOMA film screening of "Pirkle Jones: Seven Decades Photographed"--a wonderful film by Jane Levy Reed. I went with my friend Jennifer McFarland, the director of The Pirkle Jones Foundation and my friend Catherine Lyons--- another photographer and friend of Pirkle's.
Jane spent more than 3 years working on this film, which covers all aspects of his work, and is narrated by him, so that you feel as though you are sitting in his living room talking to him. The film is about 30 minutes long and beautifully done. I feel that the music that they chose for the film was especially good, adding to the feeling created by Pirkle's photographs and creating a flow from one section to another.
This is Jane's second film about the life of a photographer. Her previous film was "My Eyes Were Fresh: The Life and Photographs of John Gutmann". Jane's website is http://www.fotofinishfilms.com.
You can see the sequence of stills for Pirkle's fim on Jane's website---it's not as good as seeing the film in its complete state, but the photographs are wonderful and you can get a sense of the range of work covered. To see the stills go HERE. And you can order the DVD at her website as well.
The image shown above is a famous shot of a Black Panther protest during 1968 that was made into a poster and widely used in the Black Panther's "Free Huey" campaign.

LOSS OF A FRIEND

My friend Pirkle Jones (far right in blue sweater) with Mary & Tim from California Orchids.

I have worked for Pirkle for almost three years & we had become very good friends. He died on March 15. The following is an excerpt from his obituary.




PIRKLE JONES: AN EXTRAORDINARY LIFE

Noted photographer and educator Pirkle Jones died on Sunday, March 15 in San Rafael, California at the age of 95. The passing of photographer Pirkle Jones marks the end of an era. He was one of the few remaining artists who studied with Ansel Adams and became known for his exquisite black-and-white prints whose subject matter ranged from the beauty of the California landscape to the politics of the Black Panthers.

Pirkle’s photographs defined the Bay Area. San Francisco skylines with the fog rolling in and cloudscapes appear. Pirkle honored the working man: grape pickers, migrant farm workers, and cattle herders.
He was attracted to the abstract compositional elements he saw in construction where he photographed workers dancing with concrete and I-beams.

Pirkle’s love affair with the San Francisco Bay Area began when he came through San Francisco on his way to the Pacific during World War II. After the war, he returned to San Francisco to enroll in the new photography department at California School of Fine Arts headed by Ansel Adams. This brought him into the circle of Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Dorothea Lange and Minor White. The creative energy of the time was electric. Pirkle met Ruth-Marion Baruch who was also a student in the photography program and a poet. They were married in 1949 at the Yosemite Valley home of Ansel and his wife Virginia. Adams said “I think that Pirkle Jones is an artist in the best sense of the term. His statement is sound and resonant of the external world as well as of the internal responses and evaluations of his personality. His photography is not flamboyant, does not depend upon the superficial excitements. His pictures will live with you, and with the world, as long as there are people to observe and appreciate.”
Pirkle’s enthusiasm for art and life led him from his tenure as a student and assistant to that of a collaborator and teacher. Pirkle was a renaissance man---a master of his own ideas as well as having the gift to inspire and nurture the creativity of others.

“I am not concerned about style for style’s sake.
Style is as natural as breathing.
If you are true to yourself, you’ll be original.”
Pirkle Jones

Jones’ life encompassed almost a century and his time in photography represented 70 years of work. Pirkle’s legacy was his ability to bring together and express the diverse elements of the world as he saw it, and to communicate his excitement and love of creativity through collaboration and inspiration. He was a great pollinator—buzzing with ideas, touching many people and spreading his infectious enthusiasm. Pirkle was “percolating” all the time. Pirkle Jones chronicled the people, politics and landscapes of Northern California. Photography historian, Nancy Newhall has written that “There are a handful of photographers who have achieved the stature of poets, and Pirkle Jones is one of them.”

Some of Pirkle’s outstanding contributions include:

The “Death of a Valley 1956” a collaboration with Dorothea Lange, which documented the final year of the Berryessa Valley slated to be flooded upon the completion of the Monticello Dam. Published in 1960 as a single issue of Aperture magazine under the name Death of a Valley, this essay remains a powerful testament to the price of progress.

“Walnut Grove 1961”a collaboration with Ruth-Marion Baruch that recorded the portrait of a dying California town.
“A photograph is not real.
The moment we make a picture we become political”
Pirkle Jones

“Black Panthers 1968” a collaboration with Ruth-Marion Baruch that characterized the changing political and social upheaval sweeping across the country from the Bay Area in the Summer of 1968.. Pirkle and Ruth-Marion connected with the Black Panthers through their involvement with the Peace and Freedom Party. Their Panther photographs become the iconic face of the Panthers and carry both a significant beauty and compassion. In 2001, Greybull Press published Black Panthers, 1968 with an introduction by Kathleen Cleaver.

The “Gate 5” series which documents the counter culture houseboat community of Sausalito, California during the late 60’s to early 70’s.


Pirkle Jones's other achievements include the Photographic Excellence Award from the National Urban League and a National Endowment for the Arts Photography fellowship. His photographs have been exhibited at museums nationwide. Jones retired from teaching at the San Francisco Art Institute in 1997; he led workshops in California, including Yosemite workshops with Ansel Adams. In 2001, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art mounted a retrospective exhibition Pirkle Jones: Sixty Years in Photography. The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art exhibited Pirkle Jones and the Changing California Landscape in 2003-2004. In 2004 he received an honorary doctorate from the San Francisco Art Institute. His most recent exhibition in 2009 was “Looking for Mushrooms: Beat Poets, Hippies, Funk, Minimal Art, San Francisco 1955-68” at Museum Ludwig in Cologne, Germany. Jane Levy Reed completed the documentary film “Pirkle Jones, Seven Decades Photographed- From Pictorial California to the Politics of the Black Panther Party” in 2009.
Pirkle lived in Mill Valley, California for over 40 years. He retired from 28 years of teaching at the San Francisco Art Institute in 1997. Upon the passing of Ruth-Marion Baruch in 1997, he established their archive and endowment at Special Collections, University Library, U. C. Santa Cruz. Pirkle leaves behind an extensive network of friends, colleagues, caregivers and former students. .