Archive for the 'Artist' Category

Vox Populi

Posted July 28, 2010 * Comments(0)

I’ve an entry active at 3rd Ward in New York City.

Please go to:

thelmasmith.3rdward.com

The Vox Populi Award is based on public voting.  Take a look at a selection from the Left Turn Lane and vote for me.  Winning the Vox Populi Award will help me progress to the jurying process.  It’s a good thing to see art quilts in an artist’s venue.

Thank you for your support.  thelmasmith

Louise Bourgeois Dies

Posted June 4, 2010 * Comments(0)

This obituary is reposted from the United Kindom Guardian as a matter of fair use according to the copyright laws.  It is provided in the spirit of education.

US sculptor Louise Bourgeois dies aged 98

French-born American sculptor Louise Bourgeois has died in New York, at the age of 98.

File photo from 1990 of Louis Bourgeois

Bourgeois suffered a heart attack two days ago

Based in New York since 1938, Bourgeois gained fame late in her long career and kept working

to the end of her life.  Her giant spider sculptures have been exhibited around the world and

earned her the nickname of Spiderwoman.  Her abstract explorations of themes such as birth,

sexuality and death made her one of the world’s most influential contemporary artists.

French-born artist Louise Bourgeois' sculpture of a giant spider outside Tate Modern in London in October 2007
Although she had long been regarded by her contemporaries as one of the world’s most

important artists, it was not until her 70s that she began to attract a wider audience.

Her spider sculptures – some of which are three storeys high – have been exhibited

around the world, including the Tate Modern in London.

In a statement, the gallery said: “We were deeply saddened to hear of the death of Louise

Bourgeois this weekend. Always at the forefront of new developments in art, she pursued

a wholly personal path and was powerfully inventive, working in dialogue with the

major avant-garde movements of her time.

“Her death is a great loss.”

Bourgeois’ vast installation, I Do, I Undo, I Redo, was the first commission in The

Unilever Series for Tate Modern.  Her sculpture of a giant spider, Maman, was part

of the Unilever Series at the gallery which greeted the very first visitors in 2000.

Ann Coxon, assistant curator at Tate Modern, said: “Apart from its overwhelming

physical presence, the interesting thing is that Louise associated the spider with

her mother – a tapestry restorer – a very industrious woman always spinning or weaving.

“So for Louise, the spider is a very positive feminist statement.”

‘Enormously significant’
The artist said her main inspiration came from her childhood in France, where her father

had an affair with her governess, which her mother refused to acknowledge.

Bourgeois’ Three Horizontals was shown at the Pompidou Centre in 2008

She also used her own clothes as the basis for a series of bronzes.  Artist Richard Wentworth,

from the Royal College of Art, called the sculptor “enormously significant”  He added: “She

connected the intensely private act of being an artist with  the intensely public act of developing

a worldwide audience.  “To have worked constantly for so long and so publicly – is in a field of

its own. There are very few female artists who make it to later life and it’s very tough to be a

woman artist or sculptor.”

Three Horizontals

Conceptual artist Jenny Holzer said she “orbited Bourgeois” and that “my artist friends and

I are crying today”.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy also paid tribute to Bourgeois, calling her “a very great artist”

who “never stopped creating and renewing herself in her art”.  Bourgeois had been able to “reach

a higher truth, rich in its contradictions, avoiding the trap of the latest trends,” he added.

French Culture Minister Frederic Mitterrand spoke of his sadness, saying in a statement

that the world had lost “a great artist, indomitable and universal”.

SAN BUENAVENTURA, California

Posted November 21, 2009 * Comments(0)

Commonly known as Ventura. This is now my home. I’ve a new version of WordPress. I am having trouble figuring out how to send you images. So, let’s do it semantically.

I left the Sonoran Desert last spring after twelve years year round. The climate is extreme, the land is beautiful, and the situation was very good to me and to my husband.

About a year and a half ago I formed a plan for one year, three years, and twenty years. I accomplished the one and three year plan is sixteen months. Age indeterminant has been accomplished. I’ve moved back to the ocean as I had to come back to the water.

I’m about eight blocks from downtown Ventura. I can see the Crowne Plaza Hotel at the end of California Street. I can see the pier that was a working wharf fifty to one hundred years ago.

The view of the town, which was built between about 1860(?) and 1920, most often looks as lovely and peaceful as an oldfashioned christmas card. The old gothic church is just two blocks down the hill. I still have not made it down there for meditation.

I can see the ocean from my deck. It is an ongoing vision of solace. I don’t get down to the beach as often as maybe I should. Looking out the door, sitting on the deck, looking into the floor mirror from the kitchen even gives me a view of the sea.

In August I heard an interview on Bookworm on PBS. An author was speaking about islands and oceans. He said that there is something very expansive about facing open water; psychically and psychologically it teaches your body and your soul that there are no limits.

amen

Thanks to my good friend in Montreal all vestiges of the hack attack have been removed. It is a wonderful thing to have friends you have never seen or hugged. Thank you, thank you! ! ! !

I’ve discovered the media file for WordPress.  When I get figured out how to post my own photos I’ll do that.  For this beautiful Saturday morning with a few clouds, a silvery, glistening ocean and 69ºF, have a wonderful weekend.

OH, and a quick ps.  My daughter just phoned.  I had loaned her my Singer 99K about twenty years ago.  She wanted to know what disposition as I told her it was not hers to get rid of.  It’s being placed in the trunk of my roadster later today.

Did you know that sewing machines are like cats?  All are welcome and we don’t count as all are self sufficient.

Home Again, jiggety jog

Posted August 21, 2009 * Comments(0)

In spite of good intentions to write weekly, I’m about ten days out.

Spent the last week in Mount Vernon, Washington.  I went to attend my son and daughter in law’s yard rave.  Wonderful music, skillfully mixed, mashed?, overlaid, and selected was provided by Berto Ross.  He got a big thumbs up from me for taking The Stones You Can’t Always Get WhatYou Want with a heavy drumming back beat from another group of artists.  Lots of good music!

Deirdre,  the mother of my beautiful grandchildren, is an artist in her own right.  I’m sure if you search the link you will find some lovely images.

My daughter, Gabrielle Windsor, was at the rave. Check out her résumé and if you can provide her with a contact, please do.

Her two nearly grown sons did not travel with her.  Check here for lots more images.  She grew up in Port Townsend, Washington, and was one of the original participants in the Great Port Townsend Bay Kinetic Sculpture Race.

The Mediocrity Award  seemed the best way to reward the artistic efforts at the beginning in 1983.  It remains today.

Enough of old memories.  The Northwest always does that to me.  I am grateful for the years I spent there.  I learned a lot.  It’s nice to visit.  I don’t need to live there any more.

Actually, I need, spiritually and psychically, to live exactly where I am, here in Ventura.  I spent the end of last year and the beginning of this year searching the Pacific coast for just the exactly right small city to live in.

That I found an apartment with an ocean view is a bonus.  I came here willingly and will, no doubt, leave the same way.   No pictures today, the iPhoto says 82 remaining to import.

OH! ! ps,   I will be offering things for sale, here, on the blog.  For the first offering:

White Homespun Barley Cloth

This is 100% cotton; each thread will remind you of kite string.  It has one inch hems on the 92″ wide ends; one selvedge and one zig zagged edge.  It is seven and one eighth yards long.

7 ₁⁄₈  yards

 This  is a spongy drapery cotton.  It is normally used hung crosswize for seamless curtains or made up into drapes.  Homespun House no longer stocks the barley cloth weave; the monks cloth is the closest match.  Barley cloth, originally twice as wide, has more depth and texture.

Contact me if you would like to buy this.  I will scan a sample next week.  I will post the image.   Remember this was originally 110 inches wide and has been washed down to eliminate the shrinkage.  Price is $110 for the whole cut.  Shipping cost (FedEx Ground) will be added.  This is quite heavy; shipping may run as high as $35.  I will charge you my cost plus the cost of the container.   I do take paypal through my website; scroll down from the link.

Sorry for the long sales ramble.  That’s what happens without preplanning.  Keep in touch.  I have a second piece of barley cloth that is similar in size; I’ll have to find the card for that one.

Long ago and far away

Posted August 11, 2009 * Comments(3)

Hello, everyone,

I’m going to see if I can manage the self discipline to write on this blog at least once a week.

I have moved from the Sonoran Desert of Arizona to the Pacific Coast in Ventura, California.  Check out my view:

The View from Harbor View

The days when we have strong sun the view is even better.  Some days we can see all the Channel Islands.

We are really struggling.  The fog comes sweeping in.  Forget little cat’s feet.  This is a theatrical curtain.  Summer comes in bits and spurts.  Some days we have six or eight hours of glorious sun.  Some days it’s cloudy.

I count myself very lucky to have such a wonderful view and such a mild climate.  The desert was a place of extremes.  Being ten blocks up the hill from the ocean is a dream of temperate consistency.

Since I moved from a three bedroom house with a three car garage to a one bedroom apartment with A parking space, the adjustment has been interesting.

I’ll try to begin posting quilt books and magazine collections for sale in the next month.  I would like any feedback and inquiries if you are looking for a specific book or magazine.