"The Birth of Eve"

CLICK on me!

Look ma, no ribs!

I am very pleased indeed* with how this one turned out...another one a long time in the making. The garden was quite the undertaking (and I really want to make MORE!)

(*this is code for: "I am effing unbelievably thrilled, omg I love this one!! :) :)" )

There were two demo posts on the garden here and here.  These detail the conception (heh heh) of the piece and how I made the garden)

 Below are some pictures of the layers of the figure (which is blue on clear St. Just and pink on clear St. Just.)

In terms of the image, I don't have much to say about this one...it is what it is.  And hopefully a whole lot more!

I am sure this image influenced me, although I wasn't thinking about it at the time.  (I do love The Jesus Lizard,)

I found this image somewhere on tumblr after I started this project!  But I love a good meme.

"A Play About Snakes"

 click to enlarge!

This piece took nine months to make…like being pregnant. But with snakes.

Why nine months?  Well, its true that its very detailed and it was a difficult and complex image to create, but also my work flow was really different.  During that time, I taught full time for one semester, part time another and made the piece “Our Ladies” and the garden section of “The Birth of Eve”.  I also worked a little bit on sculpture.  So it wasn’t like I devoted myself full time to this image.

Please follow these links to information as to how I made the drawing and demos (here's another post and another here and one on making the glass parts.  But, for your edification, here are the two layers that comprise the snake area completed:  (Click to enlarge)

Also: I am so pleased to share with you the fact that, because I made the drawing as an endless repeat pattern, I did pursue making it as a fabric (link) and ultimately had the very talented and lovely Karly Tufjenkian make me a blouse and skirt with the material!  OMG—I wish I could design MORE fabrics and do an entire wardrobe… but I digress.

So here’s a little essay-lette about this piece for those of you inclined to like that type of thing. What’s it all about?

Often the "story” of my pieces exists in my mind as a narrative of their creation as opposed to “about” something external.  This is no exception.  I began the work on snakes last August and the parameters I set for myself was to do something intensely complex technically because I knew that I would soon be teaching full time and that I cannot think about my own work and teach at the same time.  However!  I am most excellent at accomplishing TASKS.  So I figured I would come up with some crazy thing that would take a lot of mindless work to make.  I have always wanted to do snakes so snakes it was.  My first thought was to use the snakes as a back ground for an unresolved  figure I have in glass I am calling "Cassandra"

As I began making the snakes, more was revealed.  Get it?  That’s a reference to both my process of generating “Meaning” and the image itself.  Here I had this magnificent image of a pit of snakes, roiling and entwined but how to resolve it? I truly disliked the way "Cassandra" was interacting.  It just didn't work for me at all. 

 
  I felt I should include the human element, and being me, it took all my willpower to not put an entire figure in there.   But I just knew that that would be all wrong.  Here’s my first idea.

Its like the foot at the beginning of "Monty Python"!

Unsatisfied, I tabled the piece for a while.  When I got back to it, I was thinking about the following trompe l’oueil painting and decided that would be how I would deal with my snakes.  This brought to mind the famous painting by Charles Wilson Peale, "The Artist in his Museum" (1822)

(Oil on canvas. (The Joseph Harrison Jr. Collection.) Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts Museum: www.pafa.org)

Adriaen van der Spelt (Dutch, 1630-1673)
Frans van Mieris (Dutch, 1635-1681)
Trompe-l'Oeil Still Life with a Flower Garland and a Curtain, 1658
Oil on panel
18 1/4 x 25 1/8 in. (46.5 x 63.9 cm)

This was the source for the hands.  I saw this years ago in New Orleans.

And thus, I was finally pleased enough to move forward with my piece.  But then came a set of fresh dilemmas!  Do the hands just like the Watrous grave or less symmetrical?  One hand or two?  Can I please, please, pretty please with sugar include a whole figure?  (NO!) 

Final choice (please note, this mean I had to turn the whole thing upside down!)

I guess, I eventually came to realize I was suggesting that all the world’s a stage, and when you sweep back the stage curtain on this life to reveal the true nature, it is a den of vipers…but such beautiful ones!  And why judge so harshly?  Snakes are good creatures!

The careful observer will detect that it’s a repeat pattern and thus the “realism” is foiled a bit.  Is it merely a backdrop on the stage and not the main event?  At any rate, the border is there, surrounding the image to remind you “This is Not a Pipe” but an image and while I laboriously did the interior by analogue the border is the exact same pattern but reproduced mechanically.  So HA!

Dress by Karly Tufjenkian

Glass Secessionism

What is Glass Secessionism? Glass Secessionism is a movement started (on Facebook and at his school in Washington DC) by artist and educator Tim Tate.  I applaud the audacity of anyone who starts an art movement, regardless of what its all about!  Holy moly—after being a studio artist and a teacher, that anyone would have the energy to spare is admirable, to say the least.

The tenets of Glass Secessionism are covered in Tim’s essay and I heartily encourage you to please read the piece for yourself.

Much of the gist of it is:

“My premise is that to succeed in glass in the 21st century, we have to secede from 20th Century founded Studio Glass. The Studio Glass model was firmly in place. It was time to integrate into the Fine Art World. What we needed was a bridge between these two worlds, to assist in this transition which was coming so very quickly.”

….and:

“However, we believe that great art should be driven primarily by artistic vision, and technique should facilitate the vision. For too long, technique has driven the majority of studio glass. As Secessionists we do not seek to isolate ourselves from other artists working in glass, but to enhance the field as a whole.”

OK!!! Back to me! The horrifying has happened and I have a public-ish platform for my opinion and, amazingly, some people even take me seriously.  Since I am mentioned in the Glass Secessionism manifesto and am an active participant on the movement’s Facebook page, I thought, perhaps, I should say something about it…so here we go…

(DISCLAIMER!  I count Tim Tate amongst my dear friends and am a fan of his artwork.)

My response:

I have some issues, surprise, surprise!

(Some are petty gripes with the way the history is delineated.  It was my experience that this dialectic between conceptualism and technique has been there a lot longer than since the early aughts.  But that's really a detail. Why not claim Duchamp's "The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even" as the first Seecessionist piece?  If for no other reason than he only claimed it was finished when the darned thing broke.)

I am as fed up as the next guy/gal with stoooopid glass objects. But I refuse to only disparage the ones that are insufferably idiotic because they are “too techniquey” any more than the ones that are guilty of lame-ass conceptualizing.  Why, oh why do we have to go there all the time?  There being the place where production is severed from inspiration.

The manifesto expressly states: “It [Glass Secessionism] tends to start with an idea or concept rather than perfecting or exploring a technique.”  Uh oh!  I have a big, big problem with this. My main issue with the Glass Secessionism manifesto is it’s prioritizing of narrative and conceptuality above technique.  In my utopia, any system that equally favors... NO!  adamantly refuses to even recognize a space between conception and labor is the very cure for any number of art related ills.

As I said in my skill piece (and I increasingly find this trend to be a major theme in my thinking about what ails us today)...:

“The whole sequestering of concept from process in art lines up on mind/body split lines, us versus them lines and good versus bad lines—as do, ultimately, all issues that would divide art from craft. Anything that dissociates inspiration from process or soul and material will be reflected in Art versus Craft.   Skill is one end in the learning curve of process. It has little to offer as a sole criterion by which to base or assess an art experience and I can see why artists, theorists, critics etc. would begrudge so-called art works that are of this ilk. Skill for its own sake is as bereft as the notion of bad technique justifying or ensuring the primacy of concept. It must be attached to some deeper meaning for an artwork to resonate deeply.  What should be judged in an artwork is how credible and inevitable the interface between matter and spirit, be that a rude and crude modality or precise and refined, regardless of whether it is related to utilitarian function or cerebral contemplation.”

If Glass Secessionism is to make good on the following bullet point: “There are a number of facets of the glass world I purposefully seceded from: [one being] The continual tedious discussion of the faulty “art vs craft” binary”; then it is essential that it not perpetuate that binary by conceding the notion that, in an artwork, concept is something that exists outside of technique.   For that same reason, I think the movement should stop harping on the differences between vessels and sculpture.

A secondary issue is the idea of “seceding”.  Maybe I spent too much time reading about the American Civil War…but…yikes!

I’m for integration and for preserving the union but should that not be possible, I far prefer the following scenario:  in my utopia, the forms formerly known as “Painting” and “Sculpture” will soon be banging at the gate of Craft begging for entrance.  At that time, we should do our best to graciously admit them to our wonderful, wonderful world with malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the art world’s wounds

"Mother and Child"

I had the occasion to write about a specific piece recently, “Mother and Child” from 2006.  I figured I would share it on the blog.

Size: 34” x 23”

Materials: stained glass, sandblasted, engraved, vitreous paint, cold

paint, assembled with copperfoil and displayed in a lightbox

Exhibition history:

“Burning Inside” solo show at Claire Oliver, 2007

"Judith Schaechter, New Parables in Glass", Claire Oliver Gallery, 2008

"Pretty is as Pretty Does", Site Santa Fe, 2009

In 2006 we are in the midst of the conflict in Iraq.

Prior to that, in the early 2000’s, I had developed a strong interest in the American Civil War (1861-1864) and had, for several years, confined my reading to that subject alone.  I was struck in my reading by fact that, for the most part, men sacrifice their lives and women?  Well, women sacrifice their sons (in the Civil War, there were no female soldiers).

How heartbreaking it is.

sketch (drawing, photoshop) for the piece

When making “Mother and Child” I sought to express these dual, entwined losses by referencing the “Good Shepherd” image.   I will say, that at the time I did not know there was a named tradition for that pose (I am not religious)—I found out later.  One thing about it I found appealing is that it is a form of a pieta.  At the outset, I was merely selecting the poise for its poignancy, implications of strength, sorrow and weariness.

As always I was highly concerned with the female figure’s facial expression and posture.  I tried to convey the many emotions she might feel in her position; grief, pride, hope that her son’s death was for a worthy cause, and a sense that she must be strong just to go forth another day.

 

The surrounding imagery of the red tree was also intuitive.  To me, it has come to signify, as a plant often does, growth and life.  And yet its leaves also resemble flames so perhaps, at least visually, it hearkens its own destruction.  The sun beats down on the scene in stylized pink rays, which could be a sort of nuclear apocalyptic look or graphic flag-like image.  I wanted a color as unnatural and alarming for the sky as I feel war is as a condition for humankind. 

The border is based on the yellow plastic “caution” tape placed around construction sites and crime scenes.

another reference for the piece

I do not typically work with overt political messages, this window was one of my few attempts to address global events and I tried to do so on a personal, one-to-one level and in a non-didactic way.

Kill Skill

Exitus Acta Probat --The outcome justifies the deed

"The outcome justifies the deed"

Gardening

Ladies and gentlemen: here is the Garden of Eden, completed.

Click on it so you can actually maybe see it, if you please!

It is the bottom half of a piece I will be titling “The Birth of Eve”…all those plans, of course are subject to change.

 Sketch (photoshop, human hands)

I posted process shots here and on facebook and... oh look!  Here they are again:

 For god's sake click to enlarge!

The process is as follows:

1. Sandblast glass  to get some areas clear (on  the red layer sandblast to clear where anything will be blue, green, yellow, pink or clear . Sandblast the blue to clear where anything will be red, orange, yellow, pink or clear.  Sandblast the pink to clear wherever you want things to be blue, green or clear or yellow.  Is that confusing?  No worries!  You don’t really have to conceptualize this that much—just sandblast!!!! )

2. Use permanent maker to delineate design

3. Engrave flowers on both layers

4. Paint, then fire the paint

5.  Engrave a bit more

6.  Paint again and fire

7.   Last paint and fire (if it needs it)

8.  Silverstain and fire

9.  Engrave the silverstain

10.  Firepolish

Also for your perusal are images of the layers separated.

 These lead lines are fake so you can read the image easier.

Now  that the how-to is evident, go off and make one of these suckers.  I dare you!

ESP Work on Exhibit Opening May 23!!!

The Battle of Carnival and Lent, Judith Schaechter's new exhibition at Claire Oliver Gallery, tackles one of the most  fundamental struggles known to man, the war humankind wages between good and evil.  Dancing on the psychological border between spiritual aspiration and human suffering, the Artist questions the association of an environment of confinement/reflection in the name of self betterment and the harsh realities of the physical experience of imprisonment; She is  speaking about the 'prisons' we all encounter, be they mental or physical.

Schaechter's title window in the exhibition (and the largest in scale), inspired by the 16th century Brugel painting with the similar name "The Fight Between Carnival and Lent", contains 96 figures (almost all previous Schaechter works  contain only a single figure)
locked in a mythic battle between virtue and vice.  Depicted here by somber monks and garish clowns, hilarity and mayhem seduce impulse control; no blood is spilled in the Artist's rendition; here, softened by humor, we see the constant battle we face between our will, our desires, and our choices.

Inspired by the history of Philadelphia's notorious gothic castle-like structure,  Eastern State Penitentiary, where they were on temporary exhibition, these 17 works draw on mythology, the Bible, and even famous works of art from ages past.  Schaechter's archetypes struggle with an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other, exploring in turn the stories of Atlas, Prometheus, Noah, Icarus, Mary Magdalene and Andromeda.

Along with the figurative/narrative windows, there are a matching number of purely decorative patterned works which Schaechter calls "militant ornamentalist", a nod to the great strength of 13th century European cathedrals, such as Chartres.  Although ornamentation suffered in popularity during the Modernist period of art history, its power to move people has not been diminished.  One has only to look to the great traditions of Islamic or Asian art to see the hypnotic and spiritual relevance ornamentation has.

Elisabeth Argo, Curator at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, says of the work, "When I saw Judith's new works, my thoughts went to Guernica, Bruegel and Diego River's murals on industry or Otto Dix's paintings looking at war.  She's (Schaechter) looking at this moment and the issues of humanity and those artists were too."

Says Schaechter of these works: I have strong feelings about this work appealing to those who are in transition, those who have known pain, grappled with despair.  The parallels between cell and cathedral go beyond just appearances.  In a church the windows are charged with profound meaning; the "windows" here are more than a mere "ray of hope" for the churchgoer and incarcerated alike.

For more information on the Gallery and upcoming events please contact:
 Claire Oliver Gallery
513 West 26th Street
New York, NY 10001
(212) 929-5949

Info@ClaireOliver.com

www.ClaireOliver.com

Twitter and other social media noose.

Hey!
I am tweeting now.  I am @juditschaechter  (No "H" in Judit!  Apparently, my name is too long. :P)
 Having already done this, I think its too late to be "udithschaechter" which has a nice ooky ring to it.
Please follow me...
I intend to use the twittering to notify people of important stuff regarding exhibitions, but also other stuff I find that may be of interest if you are into my artwork, into my taste in imagery or are a former student of mine.

I also have a tumblr.  I recently upgraded my template so it wasn't so boring and horrible to look at.
The tumblr site is exclusively devoted to "fine, fine images"...  What I mean by that is images that could be described as visually.............OMG!!!!!!  I am having a total core reactor meltdown trying to find language to describe this.
OK--I like images that are:  ambiguous, dark, visually intriguing, well designed, beautiful,  whatever any of that means...
Subjects I am interested in:  natural history, old prints, illuminations, alchemical and other esoteric stuff, anatomy, mythology and old illustration.  Go have a look and see for yourself.

The one thing about tumblr which keeps me from posting literally thousands more images is that my files are on my hard drive and rarely give any indication of the source or the artist' credit.  This is a huge ethical issue on tumblr (and the internet in general) and I would really feel lousy tumbling things without giving credit.  However--many of the makers, artists and authors are dead...like I say, I have TONS of stuff I would love to post but as it is, I mostly limit myself to to reposting what I find on flickr and tumblr.
Please weigh in on your feeling by writing me a comment...
Should I go for broke and post endless amazing stuff with less credit (to makers or to where it was originally found on the web) or should I only post when I can give a source?

Finally: I have updated the template and appearance of this blog.  It was...um...really old.  Now you can tweet a post, post it to Facebook or email it, should that tickle your fancy!

I hope these changes to my virtual life improve your experience with the Noose and House of Rats etc, etc.

The garbage of eden

I posted a series of in-progress shots to Facebook and I figured I ought to follow up with a proper explanation for those who are interested. And while we're at it, here, for the tech nerds, is a link to the demo tag featured on this blog.

Don’t forget you can click the images to enlarge the pics.

I’ve been craving long, involved near-to-impossible projects since completing Eastern State.  Since I draw so many weird flowers, I had the idea for this garden image and you can see here I worked it out in photoshop. (The procedure: the flowers were doodles I scanned, cleaned up and “painted” in photoshop, then I put them together.  I had a real bee in my bonnet that it should be en endless repeat, at least on the horizontal, and repeat it does.)

I also had a doodle of this woman kind of rolled up in a ball.  I will often pair doodles of figures with doodles of other stuff to see how they go together  (photoshop allows me to try out literraly hundreds of combinations in minutes.)

.…In this manner I generate what passes for an “IDEA”.  Anyway, the balled up woman falling into the garden was too awesome and thus the seeds were sown (get it? Get it?) for “The Birth of Eve”.  The title came last and it may yet change.

In working with the glass I gave myself the mandate gentle suggestion to improvise.  If my work looks like the drawing, I am generally not amused.  And by that, I mean I go into a state of rage and melancholy usually reserved for world wide eco-political disasters.  Just kidding.  ANYWAY:  I wanted to improvise, to learn something new, and test the boundaries and whatnot.   Ultimately, it seems to me I improvised more with the drawing than with the material.  Deep sigh…

What we have here below is the blue and the red glass well on their way.  The glass was cut and ground to shape.  Then it is sandblasted, in most cases, with little or no detail added.  I then went into it with engraving tools and files to get much more detail.  In this image three sections also have black paint fired on.

In this image below, all the black paint is done. (2 firings.)

This image is the gloriousness of silverstain before its fired.  It looks like baby messed his diaper.  When it’s fired it looks the same.  UNTIL…it is washed off and underneath the schmears is bright yellow.

And look!  That’s yellow all right!  A Chernobyl nuclear urine nightmare of yellow!  I just slop that stuff on, fully intending to engrave tons of it off.  Sounds like extra work?  Muhahaha!  I love extra work!

And here’s that yellow tamed.

Here are some images of the layers completed. 

The top image is the blue—you can see that there are two different blues here.  One is Lambert’s blue on clear and the other is St. Just 221 aqua which I had to comb the hills and travel the earth to find.  When I am done with everything I think I going to do to torture the glass I fire polish it (1330f).  With all that engraving and sandblasting, there’s a lots of frosty texture which really makes it hard to see the image when its layered.

In this case, I did not fire polish the St Just as it turns nasty.  So I coated it with a very thin layer of Golden acrylic varnish, which claims to be archival until cockroaches have evolved to become our insect overlords.

The bottom image is red, duh!

Then…I add a layer of pink glass.

The top image is what it looks like on the pieces so far, with no sandblasting.

Below is the layer on its own.  Just like the St. Just, none of this is really amenable to fire polishing, as it tends to turn colors and actually get more opaque kind of defeats the purpose.  So I use the varnish on this too.

And voila: here’s the whole thing together. Am I done?  I dunno, actually, I have a few tweaks I want to try….really, really high risk tweaks in that if I do them and they look awful, I will have to redo the entire red layer…

Doodles

I wanted to scan some of my teenaged doodles for a lecture so here they are.  I was constantly doodling as a teenager (and I still often do, but less and less do I find myself in a situation wherein I can doodle and this is NOT GOOD for my art work!) These are all liberated from their original context, but I can tell you, they were all on pages of notes from classes and homework.  I always got my papers back with big red comments about "NO DOODLING IN THE MARGINS!!!" Well, I showed them, eh?

Anyway--I would doodle anything.  So long as it was a human!  But as you can see, some are "realistic" some are more abstract, some more expressive and some more observational.  Most are done with ballpoint because I was in the classroom.  But as a result of that "training" I now use ballpoint most of the time.

The thing about doodles is this:
When one is a young artist, casting about to find their "artistic voice"...well this is it.  This is the stream of raw material which effortlessly comes out and here you are, the young art student, struggling like mad to be profound and meaningful...to have something original to say.  In my case, I looked in books, libraries, museums, classrooms...I sweated bullets and stewed in my own juices over this...only to find what I had been seeking was there the whole time but I was still seeing that red ink:
"NO DOODLING IN THE MARGINS!!!"

So I stopped doodling in the margins and now I doodle over the whole page!

By the way: my cat Spock's nickname is Doodles.