Category Archives: ambiguous loss

Print Month!

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I know, isn’t every month Print Month?   ( I remember, as a child,  asking my Mum,  Why isn’t there a Kids’ Day, like Mother’s Day and Father’s Day?  Of course she said, Every day is Kids’ Day.)

For The Art Caravan and many art afficiandos, original, hand made, fine art prints are irresistible.  Once you get some familiarity with the world of printmakers, print studios and print shops, it’s easy to become a fan, and collector.

Each October, the International Fine Print Dealers Association (IFPDA) hosts a Print Week in New York City.   This year, Print Week has become a very accessible  Print Month of (not surprisingly) online programming and exhibitions.

Last year, The Art Caravan happily traveled to NYC to meet friends, and celebrate Print Week.  The main event was held at the Jacob K. Jarvits Center.  To say we were thrilled to attend is an understatement.  I felt like I was on a pilgrimage.

Javits Center NYC, T. Vatrt image

Javits Center NYC, T. Vatrt image

The second floor of the conference centre was devoted to booths from international and North American galleries and museums.  Artwork from Dürer and Rembrandt to contemporary artists such as Swoon were on display, and for sale.  It was exciting, inspiring and provided abundant choices for the IF You could have any Artwork on Display? game.  A few happy hours were spent wandering up and down the aisles, viewing artwork and talking to the dealers.  Here’s a link to this year’s list of exhibitors.

International Fine Print Fair, 2019, NYC, T. Vatrt image

New York being New York, the art community embraces Print Week.  What I assumed would be the main event is, in reality, one of many print-rich opportunities available in both commercial and public art galleries and museums.  Because of New York based printmaker Elizabeth McAlpin‘s knowledgable recommendation, The Art Caravan also visited the E/AB Fair. This year the E/AB Fair is sponsored by the Lower East Side Printshop.

Editions / Art Book Fair, NYC, 2019, T. Vatrt image

The Editions / Art Book Fair featured hand made print editions from individual printmakers, as well as print shops. The Art Book portion is dedicated to artists creating handmade books. Many of the artists and printmakers were present, and happy to talk about printmaking.  The Art Caravan spent several hours, over two afternoons, talking shop with printers and studying the artworks.  Click here for this year’s viewing room…..and enjoy!

Leviathian V, Marion MacPhee, 2019

Levithian II (etching), Marion MacPhee, 2016

I was particularly smitten by these gorgeous etchings by Marion MacPhee from the Glasgow Print Studio It was a highlight to talk with her about the studio, and her fabulous etchings.

Viewing prints online is not the same as seeing them in person.  The textures, the marks, the depth achieved in printmaking doesn’t easily translate via photography.  (Another example of ambiguous loss.)  This year, the experience will be virtual.  Maybe next year we’ll be attending in person.  Perhaps.  In the meantime, enjoy the multiple offerings of everything print at this year’s Print Month.

 

 

Treating ourselves

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…be easier on yourselves……Treat yourself.

says Pauline Boss, who named the psychological condition of ambiguous loss. (See The Art Caravan post about it here.)  She asserts that we are experiencing grief for our losses during this pandemic.  No kidding.  Some days- okay! many days – it feels like the world is spinning out of control.  (I think the phrase, selectively used by my mother and grandmother,  going to hell in a hand basket, is à propos.)

Dr. Boss also recommends that we acknowledge our sadness, stay in touch and be kind with others, establish rituals, and practise self care, as much as possible.

But be easier on yourselves and normalize it. Knowing that grief — those feelings that you described — are essentially normal.  So just take the day off, or do something easy on yourself.  Treat yourself.

Who are we to argue with Pauline Boss?   Exactly.

The Art Caravan offers Red Roses Sonata and Cherry Blossom Symphony by Alma Thomas as our treats for today.

Red Roses Sonata, Alma Thomas, 1972, Metropolitan Museum of Art, T. Vatrt image

I hope you can see this in person some day.   It shimmers.  It vibrates.  It’s mesmerizing.  It is remarkable.

Red Roses Sonata was an unexpected treat for me as I wandered one afternoon through the overwhelming abundance of the Metropolitan Museum in NYC.  (You know the feeling: so much good art,  but dwindling energy, and the is it too early for a tea break thought?)  It interrupted the  mid-afternoon museum shuffle and my drifting attention.  It was a beacon of energy that demanded my focus.  I remember being almost giddy seeing it.

No surprise, really,  that I had never heard of the artist, Alma Thomas.  (We all know how much attention an African American woman of a ‘certain age’ garners.  sigh)  She was the first African American woman to have a solo show at the Whitney, in 1972.  In an interview she said One of the things we couldn’t do was go into museums, let alone think of hanging our pictures there.  My, times have changed.  Just look at me now.

Her life is as remarkable as her work. She was a public school art teacher.  Upon retirement in 1960, she painted full time and produced an extraordinary body of work in the expressionist style.  The Smithsonian Magazine recently published a succinct article about her, with good images.

She is sometimes included in the color field or color school movements, although there is more energy and emotion in her work than is found in many of its practitioners.  Cherry Blosson Symphony is in the show The Fullness of Color: 1960s Painting  at the soon-to-be-reopened Guggenheim in NYC.  More visual treats by Alma Thomas can be found at artsy.net.

Cherry Blossom Symphony, Alma Thomas, 1972, T. Vatrt image

 

 

 

Art, ambiguity and loss

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Like so many other things in our lives, the Art Caravan’s travelling schedule has been suspended, due to the pandemic.  Instead of bemoaning the specific shows we didn’t see this summer like  L. L. Fitzgerarld at the WAG or Katie Ohe at the Esker  (sigh…) we are going to think about  the work of Pauline Boss, a researcher, professor, author, and therapist who first used the term ambiguous loss in the 1970s.

Doc Snyder's House, L. L. Fitzgerald, 1931

Doc Snyder’s House, L. L. Fitzgerald, 1931

Sky Block, Katie Ohe, Esker Foundation, image by Elyse Bouvier

Ms Boss defines the two types of ambiguous loss:

a physical absence with psychological presence (eg. in situations of divorce, immigration, natural disasters, adoption)

psychological absence with physical presence (eg. dementia, Alzheimers’s, addiction, depression, mental illness, brain injury)

Ambiguous Loss: Learning to Live with Unresolved Grief, by Pauline Boss

The On Being Podcast with Krista Tippett  (audio and/or transcript) provides a very good overview to Ms Boss’s research.  In her introduction to the interview Krista Tippett says You could say of 2020 that we are suddenly in a world of ‘ambiguous loss.’  The conversation with Pauline Boss is, indeed, …full of practical intelligence for shedding assumptions about how we should be feeling and acting that actually deepen stress precisely in a moment like this.

I particularly liked the July 2020 follow-up conversation between Ms Tippett and Ms Boss. This Living the Questions  (audio and/or transcript) segment is honest, affirming and, again, offers practical strategies for these strange and challenging days.

On Being podcast

In the spirit of Ms Boss’s suggestions for coping during the pandemic, The Art Caravan will continue with the ritual of bi-weekly postings.  We acknowledge the sadness and losses we sometimes feel. We will continue to enjoy fabulous, fascinating artwork, artists and ideas.  Now we have the luxury of time to share it with you.