Art I'm Looking At: Matisse/Diebenkorn at SF MoMA

Yesterday (March 24) I went to see SF MoMA’s Matisse/Diebenkorn show (March 11 through May 29, 2017). The show has been open here for a couple of weeks. I was hoping crowds would be thin with an initial rush of interest already past, but the galleries were crowded, even on a weekday. Perhaps rain was to blame, as a ticket-taker suggested when I enquired. I sometimes had trouble getting an unobstructed view of the mostly large canvases, and I see that elsewhere in the museum they’ve made no effort to improve the signage since my last visit—wall lettering so small as to be mostly useless (and signs are much needed given the illogical, disconnected layout of the stairways). These complaints aside, I very much enjoyed seeing this close look at the influence of Matisse on the work of Richard Diebenkorn.

The exhibition begins with a timeline showing where and when the American artist had significant contact with Matisse’s work, both through visits to collections with important Matisse holdings and through reproductions (several display cases hold books about Matisse that Diebenkorn owned). The exhibition follows Diebenkorn’s career in broadly chronological fashion and thematically, starting with large abstractions from his Urbana period. A side room focuses on black and white drawings by the two artists. Many works by Diebenkorn are mounted beside works by Matisse that organizers and catalog editors Janet Bishop (SF MoMA Thomas Weisel Family Curator of Painting and Sculpture) and Katherine Rothkopf (Senior Curator of European Painting and Sculpture, The Baltimore Museum of Art) believe were particularly important to Diebenkorn or that they believe show obvious influence. Matisse/Diebenkorn presents more than 100 works by the two painters from private collections, the estate of Richard Diebenkorn, museum collections all over the US, from museums in Paris and London, and other sources, including SF MoMA’s own holdings—in total, about 40 by Matisse, 60 by Diebenkorn. San Francisco is the second of only two locations that will host the show. Matisse/Diebenkorn was at The Baltimore Museum of Art from October 23, 2016 to January 29, 2017.

Matisse: Studio, Quai St. Michel, 1916
The Phillips Collection

Richard Diebenkorn moved to Urbana, Illinois, in 1952 to take up a year-long teaching position there. He doesn’t appear to have liked the landscape much, but during his stay he produced some important large abstractions (these and the Berkeley-period pieces are among my personal favorites). The show includes Urbana No. 2, Urbana No. 4, Urbana No. 5, and Urbana No. 6 (all from 1953), pairing Urbana No. 4 with Matisse’s 1916 Studio, Quai St. Michel (shown above) and Urbana No. 6 with the French painter’s Goldfish and Palette (below). The show would be of interest just for the opportunity to see this group of Urbana paintings, but the pairings highlight similar color choices, a willingness to leave behind traces of process, and an approach to composition marked by an ever-present tension between opposing forces—tension between the abstract and the representational; between complex gestural areas suggesting motion on the one hand and static expanses of subtly modulated color on the other; between the linear and the un-delineated; between the patterned and the plain; between three-dimensionally rendered form and flatness.

This dialectical approach to composition (along with a distinctive use of color) is perhaps what most clearly makes Matisse recognizable, particularly in his highly experimental work of 1914–1916, and walking through the galleries I began to feel it may also have been the most fundamental lesson Diebenkorn learned from Matisse. Both painters were adept at creating a slightly disturbing ambiguity that generates the same feeling you get when looking at an optical illusion presenting two contradictory perspectives the brain struggles to reconcile. The real magic Matisse and Diebenkorn achieve, however, is in at the same time providing just enough solid ground to stand on that we aren’t compelled to turn away.

Matisse: Goldfish and Palette, 1916
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Goldfish and Palette is a good example of the ambiguity. It’s not at all clear what kind of space we're looking into here. The junction of the base of the blue trapezoid in the top half of the painting and the white in the bottom half suggests the meeting of a floor and a wall at the back of a room, two planes presumably meeting at a 90-degree angle, but the more-or-less centrally placed vertical black strip flattens the space—although not completely: the fine white lines on top of the black (both the two vertical lines above and apparently beyond the fishbowl and the less-assertive horizontal lines under the table-like surface that appears to support the fishbowl) argue again for a three-dimensional space (is that a door beyond the fishbowl?). The flat, supporting surface of the "table" grounds the fishbowl, but an interpretation of that surface as a table top is undermined by the incursion of blue at the left and by the black edge of the table-like plane doubling as part of what looks like a pattern on the blue wall beyond (which again flattens the space—if it is a wall; perhaps it is blue sky seen through a decorative balcony railing?). Thus, the “table top” apparently supports the fishbowl yet it threatens to fold down against the blue space at the same time, while, logically, it can’t do that because there appears to be a pair of legs under the table (or is it three?). The cross-like black lines in the upper right corner of the painting perhaps represent bars on a window, but, if there is a window there, the blue area must be a wall…and on and on.

Diebenkorn: Urbana No. 6, 1953
Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth 

Diebenkorn’s Urbana No. 6 may not be as directly indebted to Goldfish and Palette as the curators suggest, but Diebenkorn has used similar techniques to create ambiguity, even if the image is much more abstract than Matisse’s. In Urbana No. 6, we see a similar central black band, although here horizontal rather than vertical. In Diebenkorn’s painting it's this band of darkness that seems to create a flat, supporting surface; Diebenkorn’s black band functions like Matisse’s table top, supporting pale forms and red accents that suggest Matisse’s fish. The pale blue area in the upper right suggests a window, reinforcing the notion that the black area is in an interior space. The blue could also give the impression of looking through an open door at the far side of a room. In that case, the black band would seem more like a large carpet. But this is abstraction. I don’t mean to suggest one should struggle to interpret a work like Urbana No. 6 as representational. Yet the human brain inevitably interprets and Diebenkorn gives our brains just enough to keep us groping—following the example of Matisse.

Left: Matisse: Yellow Pottery from Provence, 1905, Baltimore Museum of Art
Right: Diebenkorn: Berkeley No. 47, 1955, SF MoMA

In pairing Diebenkorn's Berkeley No. 47 (1955) with Matisse's Yellow Pottery from Provence (1905), the curators look at how Diebenkorn experimented with unusual color combinations apparently inspired by Matisse. If Diebenkorn had Matisse's Yellow Pottery in mind when he painted Berkeley No. 47, he turned things on their side again, translating Matisse's representational color into horizontal bands of abstract color.

Throughout the exhibition, the color echoes are striking. Diebenkorn's Untitled, 1964, for example, showing a spray of flowers in a small blue bottle on a chestnut-colored table with a window beyond rendered in contrasting light and dark blues (not shown here) echoes the brown table and grey wallpaper (patterned in similar light and dark blues) in Matisse's Pansies (c. 1903, not shown). More generally, there's a range of blues in Diebenkorn that strongly echoes the blues Matisse favored. Following his autumn 1964 visit to the Soviet Union (now Russia) as part of a cultural exchange (where he toured the State Hermitage Museum, in St. Petersburg, and the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, in Moscow, both with large Matisse holdings), Diebenkorn made the paintings in his oeuvre most obviously indebted to Matisse. Recollections of a Visit to Leningrad from 1965 and Large Still Life from 1966 (below) use the characteristic Matisse blues, overtly decorative flourishes filling spaces that read as walls, and, again, spatial ambiguity. It's appropriate that Recollections adorns the catalog cover (top of this page).

The Matisse paintings Diebenkorn saw in the Soviet Union include some of the French painter's largest canvases. I was set to wondering if the monumental quality of Diebenkorn's large Ocean Park paintings was also inspired by Matisse. Diebenkorn started painting the Ocean Park series in 1967, returning to abstraction on a large scale and in earnest following a period of mostly figurative work not long after his return from the Soviet tour.

Diebenkorn: Large Still Life, 1966, Museum of Modern Art, New York

Drawings on display in a side room are instructive. Devoid of color, they make it easy to see Diebenkorn using some of Matisse's compositional tricks—in particular, the use of decorative patterns and the juxtaposition of flat and three-dimensional treatments. Matisse loved interlocking areas filled with patterns, sometimes suggestive of tiling. (It's tempting to think Matisse's 1912 and 1913 visits to Morocco inspired the habit, but he was already using this device before his trips to Africa.) The most striking example of influence among Diebenkorn's drawings is perhaps an untitled 1964 drawing in graphite and ink on paper showing a coffee cup, a plate, and silverware on a richly patterned tablecloth (below).

Diebenkorn: Untitled, 1964, Collection of Leslie A. Freely, New York

To illustrate the juxtaposition of two- and three-dimensional treatments, the curators pair Matisse's Reclining Model with a Flowered Robe (c. 1923-1924, not shown here) with Diebenkorn's Untitled (Woman Seated in a Chair) of 1963 (not shown here), pointing out that Matisse depicted his figure with volume against a flat (again heavily patterned) background, while Diebenkorn used a patterned drape to flatten his figure against background elements handled three dimensionally. I thought Diebenkorn's 1962 Girl with Flowered Background among the paintings an even better example (below).

Diebenkorn: Girl with Flowered Background, 1962
Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth

The figure is simplified, but it is clearly three-dimensional. The knees protrude, the waist recedes. One hand is behind an elbow, the other is in front of the girl's face. There is shadow below her skirt and under her chin, and her forearm throws a shadow across her chest. She casts a blue shadow on the wall behind her. The background is completely flat, and Diebenkorn muddies the relationship between the girl and the background—and here he shows how completely he's absorbed Matisse's example. The red-tipped floral curve at the girl's left shoulder (on the right side of the painting) connects with the line of trim on her collar,  undermining her three-dimensionality. The way the "horizon" line behind her is broken by the blue shadow has a similar effect, as do the connections between the shadow and the blue line of her collar (this time at her right shoulder, on the left side of the painting) and the connection between that blue line and the darker linear element on the wall behind her, just above her shoulder. The effect is to make the red and blue trim of her collar appear part of the decoration on the wall behind her.

Left: Matisse: Seated Nude, Head on Arms, 1936, private collection
Right: Diebenkorn: Untitled (Seated Nude), 1966, SF MoMA

Also of interest were drawings by Diebenkorn that show substantial reworking (pentimenti), with heavy lines overlaid at the end to mark the artist's final decision about what ought to go where—a technique Matisse used in a number of his drawings. Shown above are the French artist's Seated Nude, Head on Arms from 1936 and Diebenkorn's Untitled (Seated Nude) of 1966.

I also thought it notable that one of the Matisse drawings had been augmented (made larger) with an additional strip of paper added at its top edge. A thumbtack hole is visible in each of the four corners of the original sheet. The artist appears to have run out of space and added the paper at the top, adapting his working space to the demands of a composition in progress. I mention this drawing in particular (Model Resting on Her Arm, 1936) because I have seen film of Diebenkorn working in this way, pasting strips of paper onto a piece in progress as the composition seemed to require. Again the influence of Matisse? (I saw the film at The Sonoma Valley Museum of Art in 2015 in conjunction with a show of Diebenkorn's works on paper. The film shows Diebenkorn at work at Crown Point Press, in Oakland, collaborating with master printers Marcia Bartholme and Hidekatsu Takada, in 1986, photographed by Kathan Brown, the founding director of Crown Point Press. A review of that show is here.)

Matisse: French Window at Colliure, 1914
Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris

The Matisse/Diebenkorn show is a pleasure to walk through because it is a lucid explication by example of the way Diebenkorn learned from Matisse, but it's worth a visit simply because it's a collection of very fine work by both artists and work that we don't often have a chance to see. While I am very familiar with the Ocean Park series, for example, I'd never before seen any of the very early pieces in person, and the SF MoMA show includes Ocean Park No. 6 (1968), Ocean Park No. 12 (1968), Ocean Park No. 27 (1970) and Ocean Park No. 29 (1970). The early numbers look distinctly awkward. You can see Diebenkorn here struggling to find something he hasn't quite figured out yet. By Ocean Park No. 54 (SF MoMA) Diebenkorn has found his stride again. In the mature Ocean Park paintings, Diebenkorn reflects Matisse mostly in his palette and in the use of large, subtly varied planes of pale color broken up by linear elements, mostly lines parallel to the edges of the picture plane or at 45 degrees to those lines (although often ever-so-sligtly askew). Diebenkorn has now completely absorbed Matisse and removed the referential entirely, but, if seen beside Matisse's most experimental work, even these paintings are not so far removed from Matisse as they may at first seem—paintings like French Window at Collioure, from 1914, shown above, or his Seated Pink Nude (below).

There's a lot to see. Matisse/Diebenkorn is a show that will bear more than one visit—perhaps even three.

Matisse: Seated Pink Nude, 1935-36
Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris

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Art I'm Making: Wine Label Release, Imagery Estate

The release date for the Imagery Estate wine on which my label will appear has been set. There will be a release party on Sunday, April 9, at the winery (14335 Sonoma Hwy, Glen Ellen, CA 95442; imagerywinery.com; (800) 989-8890).

 I'll be on hand to talk about my work and sign bottles of the wine, the 2016 Muscat de Canelli. The grape is also known as Muscat Canelli, and by a host of other names around the world. According to Jancis Robinson, in her Vines, Grapes, and Wines (Mitchell Beazley, 1986), its proper name is Muscat Blanc à Petits Grains. She calls it "the real goody of the Muscat family." Like most Muscats, it usually makes a highly aromatic sweet wine. It is known for its small berries (hence the name, which translates to "Muscat with small berries") and for low yields and thus for high quality. Robinson goes on to say that many believe the Muscat family to be the oldest cultivated by man and that it was Muscat grapes that "Phoenicians, Greeks, and then Romans most commonly dispersed around southern Europe."

I have yet to taste the Imagery Estate version whose label will bear my artwork, but I'm looking forward to giving it a try and to meeting some art and wine enthusiasts at the release party. Please come on by if you can.

Rain: A Little More, for Good Measure (March 21-22, 2017)

In the past 24 hours we've had a little more rain. There was 0.80 inches in the rain gauge this morning. That brings our total for the 2016-2017 rain year at my location in northern Santa Rosa to 49.05 inches.

[Update: We got yet another inch of rain on March 23-24. So we now stand at 50.05 inches at my location. Sonoma County Airport is reporting 52.71 inches, however, which ranks 2016-2017 as the third-wettest winter on record since the 1880s, when recording began. Another 4-6 inches this year would break the record, which is 56.06 inches, set in 1889-1890. All we need is one or two more storms before the end of October.]

[Update: We got another 0.30 inches overnight on March 26-27, bringing the total to 50.35 inches at my location. The forecast is now clear for about 10 days, but who knows what April will bring?]

Art I'm Making: Untitled Collage No. 168 (Santa Rosa)

Catching up with posting some recent work, this is Untitled Collage No. 168 (Santa Rosa), from January 25, 2017. Acrylic on paper, acrylic monoprint, collage. 26.7 x 35.4cm (10.5 x 13.9 inches) signed on the mat. Signed and dated on the reverse.

This one draws on some blue papers I've recently made and on black and white monoprints with some unusual textures caused by the paper ripping and sticking to the painted glass I work from. I left ripped sections on the glass and repainted the surface before making new prints. Because the sections covered with plastered down paper layers absorb ink, I ended up with areas of mottled grey-black unlike the cleaner areas of color created by printing off clean glass.

Click on the image for a larger view. For more of my collage work, visit my collage site at http://ctalcroft.wix.com/collage-site.

Books I'm reading: Capturing the Light and The Edge of Vision

I've just finished Capturing the Light: The Birth of Photography, a True Story of Genius and Rivalry, by Roger Watson and Helen Rappaport (St. Martin's Press, 2013). Refreshingly well written, this was a quick read because reading it was a pleasure. Authors Watson and Rappaport give an overview of the history of the invention of photography by focusing on the main characters in the story, Henry Fox Talbot and Louis Daguerre, as well as on a number of other characters less well known. Nicephore Niepce, the inventor of the first non-ephemeral (if largely impractical) photographic process was familiar (I stumbled across his gravesite in a churchyard in France years ago), but others such as Frederick Scott Archer (inventor of the wet collodion process) were less familiar. The book gives a good overview of how Daguerre in France and Talbot in England arrived at two very different processes that allowed images to be captured permanently.

Lyle Rexer's The Edge of Vision: The Rise of Abstraction in Photography (Aperture, 2013, paperback edition) looks at the history of abstraction in photography, beginning with some of the photograms of Henry Fox Talbot and ending with contemporary works that stretch the definition of photography beyond the breaking point. In between, there is much of interest to see and the book seems more valuable for the many illustrations it includes than for the text, although there is some interesting back material included in an appendix, mostly writing about photography by critics and some of the artists whose works are included in the book. This is a good reference that suggests what photography is capable of when released from its traditional role as an objective recorder of the world around us (although many would argue that photography never has been that at all).

Music I'm Listening to: Two San Francisco Symphony Concerts (February-March 2017)

It's been a busy month. I've had little time to write. It's been more than two weeks now since I attended the February 24th performance at Davies Symphony Hall. Michael Tilson Thomas conducted Scheherazade.2 by John Adams and selections from Romeo and Juliet, by Prokofiev. The former, written for Leila Josefowicz (the soloist during the February performances) is not quite a violin concerto. I think Adams described it as a "dramatic symphony." Adams appeared on stage before the music began to discuss the piece, summarizing what was in the program notes. Adams conceived of the violin part as expressing Scheherazade, but Scheherezade as a strong, modern woman, and I can think of no violinist active today better to play it than Josefowicz, who is muscular in her playing but beautifully nuanced at the same time. I've seen her play three times now. I've been impressed each time. Scheherazade.2 is a complex piece, hard to take in on a single hearing, but I enjoyed it and enjoyed seeing Josefowicz wrestle with it. The performance brought the entire hall to its feet. Conductor Thomas and Josefowicz were eager to acknowledge Adams afterward, pointing to him in the balcony seats and insisting that he stand and be recognized.

The Prokofiev was familiar music from the ballet Romeo and Juliet, but it's a piece I'd never heard live before, and its always fun to hear a familiar piece live for the first time. It makes you acutely aware of who in the orchestra is doing what when. I was pleased my favorite part of the ballet, the section knows as "Dance of the Knights" was one of the selections—but, of course, it would be.

On the evening of March 10, I was back at Davies Symphony Hall for a concert featuring another fine violinist, this time Arabella Steinbacher. Marek Janowski was the guest conductor. The program included Beethoven's Coriolan Overture and the Brahms Symphony No. 4. Steinbacher was soloist in a performance of the Hindemith Violin Concerto, an unfamiliar piece that she handled with aplomb.

Steinbacher never lacks the ability to play lyrically when that is called for, but she excels at precise, staccato, modern music like the Hindemith, and her violin, which is rather gritty in the low register, suited the music. Janowski and the Symphony gave us a fine performance of the Brahms as well, receiving an extended standing ovation at its conclusion, with the symphony players at one point refusing to stand so that Janowski could be recognized alone. He looks a trifle frail, but he gets the job done. On the occasions I've seen him work, I've always had the impression that he's particularly good at communicating with the San Francisco performers and that they respond to him deeply, in a way that they don't with some other conductors.

Photographs of John Adams and Arabella Steinbacher courtesy of The San Francisco Symphony. Photo of Steinbacher by Jiri Hronik. Photograph of pointing Josefowicz by the author.

Food I'm Eating: Green Olives (March 2017)

I've been making black olives at home for the past few years now, making batches whenever able to get my hands on good olives. I'd never tried green olives before, but this year I had access to a tree that still had green fruit in January, so I thought I'd give it a go. They are now done. The process was much the same as for black olives, but I started with a plain water soak for about ten days, changing the water every day, before switching to brine with a change every three or four days. I finished them with just a little bay, lemon juice, and white wine vinegar added toward the end, mostly the vinegar. I've always brined the black olives from the start and finished them with garlic, lemon, and rosemary. Both methods have resulted in some pretty tasty olives. Green olives seem to finish more quickly than black olives, suggesting the ripe fruit has more of the bitter compounds that make unprocessed olives inedible.

Rain: Another Inch (March 5, 2017)

We had more rain overnight on March 4-5. I found 0.90 inches of rain in the rain gauge this morning. That brings our total to 48.10 inches so far in the 2016-2017 rain year at my location in Northeast Santa Rosa and ranks this year as the fifth rainiest year since recording began in the 1880s—and we still have a few months to go....  We are now about 20 inches above normal.

[Update: A little more rain following this has left the total as of the morning of March 8 at 48.25 inches.]

Plants I'm Growing: First Blooms—Two-toned Daffodils, Pluot "Dapple Dandy," Ceanothus "Ray Hartman" 2017

In the past couple of weeks, spring has sprung around here. On February 16, the pluot "Dapple Dandy" started to bloom. With heavy rains it went into a state of suspended animation shortly afterward, but it's in full bloom now. I'm hoping the rain won't have reduced the crop. The fruit is delicious, and rain during bloom can cause poor fruit set. February 19 brought the first blossoms on the two-toned daffodils in the front garden. The ceanothus "Ray Hartman" began blooming the following day, on March 20.

Art I'm Looking At: New Show Opening on The Art Wall at Shige Sushi—Contemporary Bay Area Photography

I'm pleased to announce the next show on The Art Wall at Shige Sushi: A show of recent work by nine accomplished Bay Area photographers, ranging from artists with decades-long careers and international reputations to a Santa Rosa Junior College student, and including work made using digital, analog, and alternative processes.

The show will run from February 28, 2017 to April 30, 2017. Opening reception: Monday, March 6, 2017 from 5:30 to 7:30. Come have a glass of wine and meet the artists.

Work by: Holly Anderson, Bill Baldewicz, Bob Cornelis, Barbara Elliott, Janis Crystal Lipzin, Maureen Lomasney, Michael Maggid, Austin Reynolds, and Colin Talcroft.

Rain: Heading for a Record (February 15-22, 2017)

Heavy rain again on the night of February 15-16 left 1.05 inches of new rain in the rain gauge this morning. That brings our total to 42.55 inches for the 2016-2017 rain year--well above normal.

[Update: As of the evening of February 19, we'd had an additional 2.70 inches of rain. That puts us at 45.25 inches at my location in northeast Santa Rosa—and it's still raining, with rain forecast to continue tomorrow and the day after. Santa Rosa recorded 47.70 inches in 1981-1982, for the fifth-rainiest year on record since recording began, in 1888. The record is 56.06 inches, in 1889-1890. Average cumulative rainfall historically for this time of year is 24.79 inches, which means we are more than 20 inches above normal! (All historical data are from Kent's Weather Center)]

[Update: And, subsequently, another 1.95 inches (as of the morning of February 22). So, the total is now 47.20 inches at my location, by my reckoning. That would make this the sixth wettest year on record, although I don't know where the official Santa Rosa precipitation level is measured or what they are reporting. I've learned over the years that even within the city of Santa Rosa there can be a variation of a couple of inches or more. Suffice it to say that we've had A LOT of rain this year. Showers predicted for the end of the week, too.]

Plants I'm Growing—First blooms: Pink Flowering Plum (February 13, 2017)

Our pink flowering plum with double flowers started blooming yesterday, February 13, 2017. This is Prunus blireiana. This tree always blooms in the first half of February, having bloomed on the 15th (2009), the 4th (2011), the 2nd (2012), the 15th (2013), the 3rd (2015), and the 5th (2016). I don't have dates for 2010 or 2014. This year the birds left the buds alone, so it looks like we'll have a tree full of flowers. In some past years, sparrows and House Finches have eaten the buds before they bloomed.

Books I'm Reading: The Blackwinged Night

Subtitled "Creativity in Nature and Mind," F. David Peat's The Blackwinged Night (Perseus Publishing, 2000) is a wide-ranging look at creativity, which, the author argues, is pervasive. As he is a physicist by training, much of Peat's discussion involves creativity from the perspective of that discipline. At the same time, the author appears to be conversant with the history of the arts, and much of the discussion seeks to establish parallels between the creativity of the universe and creativity that springs from the human mind. However, Peat argues that we are all creative (not just composers and painters and writers and filmmakers), or at least we all can be creative, in every conscious minute of every day, if we simply remain alert to our surroundings and aware of the world around us.

Memorably, he recounts a scene in Dostoyevzky's The Idiot in which a character describes how clearly and intensely he lives the moments leading up to what he believes will be his execution by firing squad (it turns out to be a mock execution; Dostoyevsky apparently based this on a real-life experience of his own) while the narrator points out that the character will nevertheless quickly revert to his habitual lack of attentiveness soon after the immediate threat of death has passed, a particularized example of the praying-in-a-foxhole phenomenon. Peat goes on to say:

We are always before the firing squad. Every conversation holds within itself the promise of a new beginning. But no matter how vivid the potential for change, it is all too easy to slip back into old habits. The theme of this book is that the habitual way of looking at things is an illusion. It is not a true reflection of the world but a fallacy. All of the cosmos, from stars to elementary particles, is essentially creative, and each time we see or look or listen, we are being creative. The trick is to stay awake, to remember who we are, and to avoid the dulling drug of habit.

According to Peat, this ever-present potential for creativity is not an attribute only of life. It extends to all matter and even to the quantum void, where elementary particles are winking into and out of existence incessantly, and some of the best passages of the book are coherent explanations of the basic ideas of quantum physics. To take just one example, The Blackwinged Night contains an excellent treatment of the idea of "the collapse of the wave function" in a subchapter with that title. This is a familiar idea to anyone who has ever read about modern physics, but never before has it seemed so clear and obvious to me.

In discussing this collapse, Peat points out that concepts accurately describing events in the large-scale world do not apply in the quantum world, saying, for example, that, while the trajectory and landing point of a cannonball are absolutely certain given nothing more than the cannonball's initial position, vector, and speed (and taking wind into account), it is impossible to say that an electron has a position or trajectory at all—that it must be described using a wave function that expresses only the probability of finding an electron in a region of space.  Yet, when an electron hits a screen of some kind, it reveals its position. Suddenly, it has location. It is in this sense that we say light is both a wave and a particle. The wave form of probability collapses at the instant the electron is manifest. I found the book worthwhile for this section alone and, in an insight that has surely been expressed by someone else before, I felt the idea of a wave function describing quantum uncertainty collapsing suddenly into something material aptly describes the process of artistic creation. The artist herself cannot describe the finished artwork until it is complete, until it is manifest. Until then, art is in a soup of creative potential that is impossible to pin down. Recommended.

Plants I'm Growing: First Blooms—Yellow Daffodils

The yellow daffodils in the front garden began to bloom today, February 10. This is a trifle late, probably owing to the rain, but not way out of line. This is one of the few plants in the garden I have a complete data set for since 2009, when they bloomed on February 5. They bloomed on February 5 also in 2010, calculating a 365-day year. They bloomed on February 2 in 2011, February 13 in 2012, February 4 in 2013, February 8 in 2014, February 3 in 2015, and January 31 in 2016.

Rain: A Year's Worth of Rain

At the end of the day on February 7, there was yet another 3.1 inches of rain in the rain gauge. That brings the total so far to 38.65 inches at my location. A site I monitor elsewhere in Santa Rosa is reporting somewhat less, or 36.3 inches. In either case, we have now had more than our normal annual rainfall, which is a little over 36 inches, and we still have several months ahead of us in the 2016-2017 rain year (October 1, 2016 to September 30, 2017). Rain is predicted for at least the next two days....

[Update: As of the afternoon of February 9, we've had another 2.85 inches of new rain. That brings our total so far to 41.50 inches at my location. And it's still raining....]

Art I'm Making: One of my collages reproduced in Kolaj Magazine

I was pleased to see one of my collages reproduced in the current issue of Kolaj, an international quarterly dedicated to the art of collage (No. 18, page 34) in an article about "collage painting." While I don't normally think of my work as collage painting, the author of the article, Ric Kasini Kadour, argues that the term is useful in describing collage work that, when representational, subordinates the collaged fragments used to "the gestalt of the picture" to create a whole rather than juxtaposing relatively independent, distinctly different collage elements to set up tension between two or more picture segments, a technique common in Surrealist collage and among the Dadaists.

The author used my Untitled Collage No. 158 (Santa Rosa), as an example of a non-representational collage that emphasizes a compositional whole. Before concluding the article by saying "Wholeness, completeness is the magic of collage painting," he said I use paper elements like the sounds of violinists "in the pit orchestra of a grand opera," presumably to suggest that in my collages the whole composition is more important than any of the individual elements, and, as I work, I am always focused first on creating a stable yet dynamic compositional whole—so, I suppose he has a point. In any case, it was nice to see the work reproduced.

Art I'm Making: Untitled Collage No. 167 (Santa Rosa)

A new collage, this one experimenting with somewhat more organic shapes than I usually use. This is Untitled Collage No. 167 (Santa Rosa), January 14, 2017, acrylic on paper, acrylic monoprint, collage. Image size 20.0 x 26.9cm (7.9 x 10.6 inches). Matted to 16 x 20 inches. Signed on the mat. Signed and dated on the reverse.

Click on the image for a larger view. For more of my collage work, visit my collage site at http://ctalcroft.wix.com/collage-site.

Miscellaneous: Photographs in Birds of the Pacific Northwest

I'm pleased to announce that some of my bird photographs were chosen for use in a new field guide. Birds of the Pacific Northwest (Timber Press, authors John Shewey and Tim Blount) is scheduled for release in March 2017. It is part of the Timber Press Field Guide Series. In particular, a clear, diagnostic shot of a Sharp-tailed Sandpiper is hard to find, it seems. My photo of the bird that appeared at Shollenberger Park in October 2011 is among the dozen or so of my photos included in the new book.

Serendipitous Art: Black on Black (February 2, 2017)

Black paint on black boards in a window painted black with a black frame. Black on black. Unintended art.

For more unintended art, see my blog Serendipitous Art.

Rain: February off to a wet start (February 2, 2017)

We had the wettest January I can remember, and February is off to a wet start. We've had 0.95 inches of new precipitation this month (February) as of 5:00PM on February 2. That brings our total to 34.50 inches at my location in Santa Rosa—which is astounding, given that normal annual rainfall is about 36 inches for the entire rain year (which runs through the end of September). On top of that, rain is forecast for the next six days.

[Update: As of the afternoon of February 5, we've had another 1.05 inches of rain, bringing the total to 35.55 inches for the 2016-2017 rain year so far.]

Art I'm Making: Untitled Collage No. 166 (Santa Rosa)

A new collage. This one draws on a batch of new monoprints in warm tones ranging from cream to raspberry red.

This is Untitled Collage No. 166 (Santa Rosa), January 14, 2017, acrylic on paper, acrylic monoprint, found paper (handwritten music), collage. Image size 25.3 x 26.3cm (10.0 x 10.4 inches). Matted to 16 x 20 inches. Signed on the mat. Signed and dated on the reverse.

Click on the image for a larger view. For more of my collage work, visit my collage site at http://ctalcroft.wix.com/collage-site.

Tidbits—RIP: Mary Tyler Moore (January 25. 2017)

I was saddened to see that Mary Tyler Moore died today. She gets a lot of credit for the role model she became as Mary Richards in The Mary Tyler Moore Show, but I'll alway remember her as Laura Petrie.

Music I'm Listening To: San Francisco Symphony with James Gaffigan and Simone Lamsma (January 20, 2017)

I attended the January 20 performance of the San Francisco Symphony at Davies Symphony Hall. James Gaffigan was back as a guest conductor (he served as the Symphony's Asseciate Conductor from 2006 to 2009). On the program was Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain, Prokofiev's Violin Concerto No. 2, with Simone Lamsma as soloist, Mozart's Symphony No. 36, and Richard Strauss's "Dance of the Seven Veils", from Salome.

It was an oddly uneven evening. The Prokofiev seemed awkward, the soloist's playing a bit tentative, the whole not really gelled. I have never heard or even heard of Lamsma before. She was certainly competent, but seemed to lack fire, which was a disappointment as this concerto is among my favorites. According to the program notes, Lamsma plays the 1718 Mylnarski Stradivarius, on loan from an anonymous source. I thought it sounded rather dark and muddy as Stradivarius violins go, although 1718 is within the period usually said to have produced his best instruments (1700-1720).

It was fun to see Gaffigan again after several years. He's matured and gained some weight, which accentuates his short stature (something I hadn't noticed before), and that was exaggerated by Lamsma's presence; she is very tall and thin (standing on the podium he was only a trifle taller than her standing on the stage)--not that appearances really matter. Gaffigan and the Symphony handled the rest of the program very well, I thought, giving us spirited versions of the other three pieces, none of which had any of the awkwardness that seemed a problem with the Prokofiev.

Photo of James Gaffigan by the author. Photo of Simone Lamsma by Otto van den Toorn, courtesy of the San Francisco Symphony website. 

Rain: Still More Rain (January 23, 2017)

More rain last night left another 0.50 inches of rain in the rain gauge this morning, Monday, January 23, 2017. That brings our total for the 2016-2017 rain year to 33.45 inches at my location. Considering that average annual rainfall has historically been about 36 inches in Santa Rosa, that means we've had nearly a full year of rain now with another eight months left in the rain year and at least another two months during which we're likely to have more rain (the rain year runs from October 1 to September 30 of the following year, but most of our rain comes between the months of November and February).

[Another 0.1 inches fell after I wrote the above, so we are at 33.55 inches. The sky is clear now and no rain is forecast until early next week.]

Tidbits—RIP: Gene Cernan

I just saw that Gene Cernan died during the past week, apparently on January 16. The last man to have walked on the moon. I believe 12 people walked on the moon. I wonder how many are still alive?

Art I'm Making: Untitled Collage No. 165 (Santa Rosa)

A new collage—a diptych of sorts that pairs a straight monoprint in pinks and orange with a blue-oval studded monoprint in streaky blue. The subtleties of the blues don't quite come through in the photograph, but this is a fair facsimile.

This is Untitled Collage No. 165 (Santa Rosa), January 5, 2017, acrylic on paper, acrylic monoprint, collage. Image size 25.5 x 15.6cm (10.0 x 6.1 inches). Matted to 20 x 16 inches. Signed on the mat. Signed and dated on the reverse.

Click on the image for a larger view. For more of my collage work, visit my collage site at http://ctalcroft.wix.com/collage-site.

Rain: Yet More Rain (January 19-22, 2017)

It began raining again late yesterday and it has been raining all night, it appears. This morning I found three new inches of precipitation in the rain gauge. It's still raining, but that raises our total for the 2016-2017 rain year so far to 30.00 inches, well ahead of normal for this time of year, and more rain already than we've had in some entire years lately. Normal annual rainfall in Santa Rosa has historically been about 36 inches. This morning the sky is blue and mostly cloudless, but rain is in the forecast for the next three days.

[As of the morning of January 20, there were 4.10 inches of rain in the rain gauge, which brings the total to 31.10 inches for the current rain year. More rain on the way....]

[As of the afternoon of January 22, we had had another 1.85 inches, bringing the total to 32.95 inches at my location—and it's started pouring again.]

Art I'm Looking at: Marvelous!—An International Exhibition of Collage, Assemblage, and Construction at The Sebastopol Center for the Arts

Conversations with someone newly met nearly always get around to a question that means "what kind of work do you do?"—even if not worded precisely that way. When I tell people I'm an artist, I always feel a little guilty, because what they really want to know is "how do you make your living?" and it's my "real job" that I live on, not art. Next almost always comes "Oh, what kind of art do you do?" and I cringe inwardly. Then I cringe a little outwardly as I say I'm a "collage artist." I cringe not because of any shame. I cringe because I can see the image that pops into the questioner's mind as I speak: the collage they envision is messy and juvenile and made of torn-up pieces of glossy magazines or it's a mishmash of old magazine ads. To most people, collage is not serious art; collage is something you do in kindergarten with edible glue and scissors with no points. The truth is, a fair amount of collage is messy and juvenile and made of torn-up pieces of glossy magazines, but the Marvelous! show, now on at the Sebastopol Center for the Arts, shows finer stuff. Marvelous! comprises more than 100 pieces of collage, assemblage, and construction chosen from over 600 entries (12 countries and as many US states are represented) by jurors Sherry Parker, Cecil Touchon, and John Hundt—accomplished collage artists themselves. None of the chosen works is anything but serious art.

Among the goals of the show's organizers was to suggest that collage, assemblage, and construction form a diverse and vibrant segment of the art world and to point out a recent resurgence of interest in these pursuits among artists around the world. The show is certainly diverse (and it's a challenge writing about such a big show: its scope can only be suggested; inevitably, worthwhile work gets left out). Artists from Argentina, Canada, France, Germany, Greece, Japan, the Netherlands, Turkey, South Africa, South Korea, and Uruguay are represented. Although the majority of the work is collage (both traditional and digital), the show includes free-standing construction, table-top assemblage and construction, and wall-mounted assemblage and construction, as well as pieces harder to characterize: among these are altered books, an electrified mannequin (Spenser Brewer's Tesla Man), and something I personally would call a sculpture that looks rather like an exotic Southeast Asian fruit (shown here—beautiful, however you categorize it). Materials include everything from the detritus of human activity to porcupine quills. It's a large show likely to reward more than one visit.
Above: Octopus Egg, Susan Danis (Albany, CA), purple glass light bulb sockets and terracotta.

Collage (and its three-dimensional siblings assemblage and construction), usually is considered to have been born from the early Cubist experiments of Picasso and Braque (who together coined the term "collage" from the French word coller, meaning "to glue"). Although there are precedents (as far back as Western Han Dynasty China), collage as we know it today is of the 20th century. It is quintessentially modern—both in the sense of being of comparatively recent origin and in the art historical sense of association with Modernism as a movement in art.
Above: River Triptych, Lynn Skordal (Mercer Island, WA), inkjet images, found paper, ribbon, old book covers. 

At the same time, collage artists are a nostalgic bunch; while one school of collagists relies heavily on artist-made materials, another and perhaps the dominant school in terms of numbers of artists at work, seeks to evoke the past or the exotic by using found materials that point to centuries recently past or even to ancient times or by using materials that pre-date the medium itself. Antique stores and junk shops, discarded books illustrated with engravings, Asian calligraphy, and long-defunct magazines are favorite sources of raw materials for these collage artists. When done badly, collage of the nostalgic school looks forced and it relies on fetishizing the past. It is often fussy and busy-looking; it's easy to create chaos and noise with bits of the past. (Even in good work, the fetishizing tendency sometimes sneaks through in the way artists describe their work—taking care to tell us a book cover used is from 1875, for example, or that a bit of photo used is not just from an old magazine but from LIFE magazine, as if age itself or the reputation of the source necessarily transfers merit to the work of art.) When done well, however, collage artists using found materials create plausible new worlds or they project us into imagined pasts that are coherent and seemingly inhabitable or they at least keep their work focused, simple enough on the surface to allow us room to question what these bits of the past might mean in their new context. While the answers to the questions raised are not always clear, at least the questions themselves seem coherent, and the best collage work, whether nostalgic or not, always exhibits a sophisticated sense of composition.
Above: Tesla Man, Spenser Brewer (Redwood Valley, CA), vintage 19th and 20th century parts.

A good example of the nostalgic work in the Marvelous! show is Jane Murphy's Boy, in which a found photo of a young boy has been transformed into a playing card. We see the front of the card, but the lower third of the card seems to simultaneously show a design on the reverse. Below the playing card (which is framed by a pale duck's egg green, a color itself evocative of the past) is a piece of ruled notebook paper with illegible writing and a yellowed cellophane tape stain. Off to the left of the notebook page are scraps of map, other paper, cloth, and labels, that, taken together, look map-like, echoing the bits of actual map. In another echo effect, smudges in the two upper corners of the piece act like numbers in the corners of a playing card. Boy is quiet and contemplative and much more complex than it seems at first—without being busy.
Above: Boy, Jane Murphy (Petaluma, CA), found photo and paper, house paint, and pencil on vintage band card.




Lita Kenyon's Aerodynamics 3 uses an old magazine photograph to evoke a past era. The yellowed fragment of an engineering diagram, too, is evocative of the past, but the collage is at the same time utterly modern, relying as it does on a hard-edged, geometric composition comprising only three elements—a study in simplicity. There are echo effects again; three strong elements in the center of the page divide the sheet into three segments. The diagram fragment, the red shape, and the white space between them form another unit built of three elements. The red, the strip of white at its left, and the flanking triangle of black that encroaches on the photo form another triad. When I say "modern" here, I mean in the art historical sense. But modern art itself is now nostalgic. Modernism was born more than 100 years ago. Modernism is antique.
Above: Aerodynamics 3, Lita Kenyon (Edmonds, WA), mid-century fashion magazine cut-outs, clippings from discarded engineering manuals. 

The absurd forms another strong current in collage, a current that has its source ultimately in Dada and Surrealism. Jenny Honnert Abell's Book Cover No. 115, for example, drops us into a parallel universe where birds have human heads and perch on branches in deep space. An old book cover with stains (that uncannily evoke stars and a spiral galaxy) creates that space while simultaneously drawing our attention to its independent existence as a real-life object—again an object evocative of the past, an old book cover. Collage of what I'm here calling the nostalgic school is particularly good at reminding us that we are looking at artifacts. Lynn Skordal's River Triptych (pictured above) uses book covers to create a triptych that suggests a Christian altarpiece. Religious imagery is evoked not only by the arrangement of the panels but by the glowing light on the hands and their cradling of the image on the central panel in a way that suggests veneration, but where we would expect to see a holy figure, we instead see a dissected head floating over a sun-washed riverscape, with a halo not of light but of smaller heads on pins. River Triptych creates a view into an absurd but plausible world, while exposed edges of the book covers tug as back into the real world at the same time.
Above: Book Cover No. 115, Jenny Honnert Abell (Santa Rosa, CA), boar's hair, glass eye, gouache, collage on book cover.

When collage is in a more abstract vein, it still relies mostly on found paper or cloth—on real-world artifacts. Pieces in the show by Mark Eanes, Louise Forbush, Susan Friedman, and Molly Perez are good examples of this approach. Perez's Throttle, for example, combines ripped paper fragments with pieces of cloth, the paper sometimes blank, sometimes with writing on it, the cloth sometimes plain, like blank canvas, sometimes printed. Perez creates an abstract "painting" with colored paper and cloth as her paints. Cheryl Dawdy's Sunrise, Snowy Field, a small but beautiful piece, is easy to miss but well worth more than a quick look. Here the artist takes the idea of painting with paper in a slightly different direction; Sunrise, Snowy Field is highly abstract, but here collage is used to reference reality directly by picturing a real-life scene, even if the scene depicted may be imagined. Dawdy uses subtly colored paper and tissue to suggest a snow-covered field at dawn, a bank of heavy clouds in the distance.
Above: Throttle, Molly Perez (Healdsburg, CA), mixed media collage on board. Below: Sunrise, Snowy Field, Cheryl Dawdy (Ann Arbor, MI), colored and printed papers, tissue. 

Less common is abstract collage made entirely or mostly from artist-made papers rather than found materials. This type of collage stands in contrast to the nostalgic type. Its approach is more cerebral, focused on composition for its own sake, less reliant on the inevitable associations that attach to artifacts. There is no attempt to evoke another time or place. Collage of this sort creates non-referential abstract spaces that resist dialog with the real world (although human minds stubbornly insist on finding "pictures" in even the purest abstraction). Liliana Zavaleta's Displaced 7 is such a work, constructed as it is from painted papers of the artist's own making—although the title suggests the dark brown form split by the sky-like blue in the upper third is the displaced (or at least interrupted) "7" of the title. Perhaps a clearer example is my own piece in the show, Untitled Collage No. 157, made almost wholly from monotypes I create myself. The work is entirely non-referential.
Above: Untitled Collage No. 157, Colin Talcroft (Santa Rosa, CA), acrylic on paper, acrylic monoprint, found paper. Below: Displaced 7, Liliana Zavaleta (Milford, NY), mixed media collage on paper.

Diverse as it is, it's hard to say how representative the Marvelous! show is of collage, assemblage, and construction around the world today. The jurors had to pick from among the works submitted for entry. The sample was necessarily skewed toward the US and California simply because the show was best advertised close to home. That said, I noticed comparatively few pieces with any kind of political flavor (only three—the pieces by Serhan Turgut, Judy White, and Sally Briggs), although political commentary has been a prominent aspect of collage historically. The most overtly political piece in the show is by Turkish artist Turgut. In his Fear, we see a black and white photo of a man in a hat. On top of the hat, a workman builds a roof. A crew puts up walls in front of the man's mouth. Below the work crew, large white letters on a red ground spell FEAR. I noticed also that collage, assemblage, and construction appears to be a segment of the art world where women are conspicuously active. Of the 102 artists represented, 73 are women.
Above: Fear, Serhan Turgut (Ankara, Turkey), paper, collage.

There is not enough room to mention all the other interesting work in Marvelous! (although I especially liked the pieces by Olga Lupi, Barbara Wildenboer, Carol Dalton, Janet Jones, Koji Nagai, Peter Dowker, Deborah Salomon, Katie McCann, Antonia Rehnen, Rafael Bottino Pirez, Pål Misje, Michael Waraksa, Cynthia Collier, and Jef Arnold, among others—so many others). I've tried to give a sense of the diversity just within a small selection of the collage works presented, barely touching on the assemblage and construction in the show (with notable pieces by local artists Cat Kaufman and Rebecca Trevino), or on the altered books, or any of the pieces from the world of digital collage. Suffice it to say that the organizers have succeeded in bringing together a diverse body of high-quality work that achieves the goal of highlighting the creativity of artists working in collage, assemblage, and construction today. Highly recommended.
Above: Farewell, Antonia Rehnen (Groningen, the Netherlands), polymer print, collage. Below: Cutters, Peter Dowker (Lac Brome, Quebec, Canada), vintage papers, acrylic medium, collage.

Showing simultaneously at The Sebastopol Center for the Arts are Reflections Within—The Reliquary Series, a show of assemblage pieces by Valerie L. Winslow, in Gallery II, and Stranger Than Fiction, a show of exquisite collage work by two of the Marvelous! jurors, Sherry Parker and John Hundt, in Gallery III. Both shows deserve reviews of their own. In addition, two workshops associated with the Marvelous! show are planned. Cat Kaufman will lead an Assemblage Play Workshop on Saturday, January 28 from 10:00AM to 3:00PM. Jenny Honnert Abell will host a Wacky Portrait Collage Workshop for kids Sunday, January 22 from 1:30PM to 3:30PM.
Above: Mission Improbable, Sherry Parker, mixed media collage.

Marvelous!—An International Exhibition of Collage, Assemblage, and Construction is on view at The Sebastopol Center for the Arts, 252 S. High Street, Sebastopol, CA 95472 (707 829-4797) through February 12, 2017. Admission free. Tuesday through Friday 10:00AM–4:00PM, Saturday and Sunday 10:00AM–4:00PM. Closed Mondays.

Books I'm Reading: Machine Beauty

I've just read David Gelernter's Machine Beauty: Elegance and the Heart of Technology (Basic Books, 1998). I don't remember when or how I acquired the book. It was among those long unread on my bookshelves. It's quite out of date now in some respects, but not uninteresting because of that.

Gelernter makes one central point in his thin volume: that beauty is the essence of good design and good science. He defines beauty as the combination of simplicity and power. He has a lot to say about what is beautiful in computer software and about Apple Computer and the beauty of the Macintosh user interface—for example, arguing that Microsoft's theft of many of the Macintosh's features for Windows is proof of the superiority of the Macintosh interface. The book was written when Windows was comparatively new, when all computers were grey or beige plastic, and people made fun of the Macintosh because it was cute. This last irks Gelernter in particular, but we have made progress: Machine Beauty seems outdated precisely because much of the thinking he laments has receded. Today, few people think it strange that their phone is a slim, pretty slab of electronics with an attractive, intuitive, icon-based user interface. At least in the realm of computers and mobile devices, good design has largely prevailed.

Food I'm Eating: Curing Green Olives (January 2017)

I've cured ripe black olives in the past, olives from the tree in our yard and from a neighbor's tree, but never tried to cure green olives before. Usually olives are starting to ripen here as early as October, depending on variety, and nearly all are fully ripe by December. I had access this year to a number of trees at a winery tasting room where I work part-time. One of the trees has green fruit even now. I don't know what variety it is, but I decided to try green olives.

Recipes for curing black olives with brine always start with salt water from day one. Most green olive recipes, however, recommend soaking the olives in fresh water to start and then finishing them in brine. Recommended water soaks seem to range from four days to a month, with many recipes recommending 10 days. I'll probably seek a middle path and try waiting about two weeks before switching to brine. We'll see what happens. In the meantime, large ripe olives from another tree at the tasting room were already looking good in early November. Those olives are now finishing in brine with a touch of vinegar, lemon juice, rosemary and several crushed cloves of garlic. They are just about ready (below).