River People, River Art

What kind of water person are you?  Years ago an artist I knew decided to leave his small river town residence and business in order to move to the ocean.  He said "I hate river people.  River people are just slow and dull."  I'd never heard anyone before stereotype people's personalities according to what kind of water they resided near, so his pronouncement surprised me and stuck in my memory.  I love living near the river.  I think I must certainly be  "a river person" by now, having lived by the Delaware River for many years. It wasn't always so.

THE RIVER DREAMS HERSELF INTO EVERYTHING,©JoyKreves '13

I grew up in the land-locked Midwest where the sky is the main event due to the flatness of the land.  Trees and tall buildings seem to just perch on the land while they grapple with the sky.  The uninterrupted acres of cornstalks in my home state had plenty of sky to rustle against.  When I moved from suburban Chicago, Illinois, to New York City, I definitely noticed a difference in people's personalities.  A Midwesterner was not so likely to have a public quarrel.  Arguing was saved for the privacy of your home.  Politeness was valued and practiced much more amidst the land-locked.  In NYC I was amazed to hear people unselfconsciously shouting, arguing, or expressing all sorts of emotions in front of whatever public surrounded them.  Without the sense of pressure from all that sky bearing down, people seemed to spark with an electric energy.  "Please" and "thank you" were not a main staple of interactions or words to be thrown out from habit, but were more selectively doled out.  I've barely been back to the Midwest since moving east decades ago; certainly much has changed now, but back then people from the two environments acted significantly different.  Undoubtedly some of the difference was because the population in the Midwest was so much more homogenized than that on the East Coast, but was any of it caused by features of the landscape? How much does the landscape affect a person's personality?

Having lived on the East Coast, close to the Delaware River for years now, I've grown very fond of the river landscape and it's surrounding environment.  Admittedly, I haven't spent enough time near the ocean to conclude anything about "ocean personalities," but I surely must be among the ranks of the "river people" my friend detested!  The water that flows in earth's rivers is mirrored in the blood running in our veins.   Although I am far from a traditional artist, living near the Delaware River has definitely influenced my creative thinking so that many of my artworks involve water somehow.  I truly understand why so many  painters have flocked to this area and found it a rich source of inspiration for their landscape paintings.

I, however, am inspired by the river in a different way.  The river flows, and along the way the water collects stories and builds history.  You can never see an entire river at once except perhaps from space, so you have to experience a river one section at a time.  This is how you view a hand scroll, also.  You wouldn't expect to take in the entire scroll painting at once.  I've been thinking about this aspect of rivers and hand scrolls for several years and have been interested in creating artworks that unfold in a cinematic time.  

I finished two such works this past week.  Because I wanted to make artworks that imply a continuation beyond their immediate boundaries, I decided to make ceramic scroll stands with paper art that one could either scroll through or experience in a non-participatory way. 

ON TALKING, graphite & colored pencil on mylar on stoneware scroll stand, ©Joy Kreves

In "ON TALKING" I wrote a narrative about talking in my family.  Because I hear conversations as sound weavings, I wrote as if on a loom's warp and weft.  In the center of the scroll the writing almost forms a kind of plaid.  The resulting words can be read with some focus, but also function in a purely visual way.  This piece can be viewed in the juried "MERCER COUNTY ARTISTS 2013" exhibition opening at Mercer Community College Art Gallery, Communications Bldg, 2nd fl, 1200 Old Trenton Rd., Trenton, NJ, beginning on Wednesday, March 5th, the reception on Wed. March 13th from 5-7pm.  The show runs through April 4, 2013.

ON PRACTICING RESTRAINT, ©Joy Kreves '13, mixed media.

I left the pure beauty of the paper unmarked in the second scroll sculpture, "ON PRACTICING RESTRAINT."  You can scroll beyond the title writing, but all you will find is the lovely translucent mylar paper hanging above the textured and glazed slab base.  I'm working on more of these scrolls, intending to paint and write on them.  I love the format.  It is the format of a walk along the river.  Perhaps I just see it that way because I am "a river person."  What kind of water person are you?

Lacking The Sounds of Silence

Climate change has certainly emerged as a strong contender for the top spot on a list of contemporary crises.  You've probably received those questionnaires sent out by political parties, asking you to rate topics of concern according to which you think needs the most attention.  Issues including climate change, overpopulation, water purity, nuclear disarmament, human trafficking, child abuse, food safety, the economy, human rights,  freedom of expression, etc., are all very important and in need of our immediate attention.   For many artists, these issues influence, inspire, or are reflected in our work.  EARTH/BRAIN EVENTS, my own recent series of twelve small collaged "Lamentations",  addresses the physical and psychological distress from climate change's extreme weather:

Oil Spill Lamentation, ©Joy Kreves, 8 1/2" X 8 1/2"

Fury, ©Joy Kreves, 8 1/2" X 8 1/2"

Flood Lamentation, ©Joy Kreves, 8 1/2" X 8 1/2"

Hurry! (Evacuate), ©Joy Kreves, 8 1/2" X 8 1/2"

HOT, ©Joy Kreves, 8 1/2" X 8 1/2"

Arctic Melt Lamentation, ©Joy Kreves, 8 1/2" X 8 1/2"

Washed Away Lamentation, ©Joy Kreves, 8 1/2" X 8 1/2"

Survival Instincts, ©Joy Kreves, 8 1/2" X 8 1/2"

Desert Brain, ©Joy Kreves, 8 1/2" X 8 1/2"

Ocean Cry, ©Joy Kreves, 8 1/2" X 8 1/2"

Green Submergence, ©Joy Kreves, 8 1/2" X 8 1/2"

Forgotten, ©Joy Kreves, 8 1/2" X 8 1/2"

Another kind of crisis you may not have given much thought to is the lack of silence.  Now this does not mean a lack of sound, and certainly not a lack of noise.   Silence is something else.  In ONE SQUARE INCH OF SILENCE, Gordon Hempton writes, "Today silence has become an endangered species.  Our cities, our suburbs, our farm communities, even our most expansive and remote national parks are not free from human noise intrusions.  We've reached a time in human history when our global environmental crisis requires that we make permanent life-style changes.  More than ever before, we need to fall back in love with the land.  Silence is our meeting place."  He states, "Our typical anti-noise strategies - earplugs, noise cancellation headphones, even noise abatement laws - offer no real solution because they do nothing to help us reconnect and listen to the land.  And the land is speaking."  Hempton has recorded a variety of examples of what we can hear when there is only the land speaking, with no noise.  What does this have to do with visual art?  Plenty!

In my own artwork I decided somewhere along the line not to pursue the narrow purity of minimalism's "less is more," and "it's all space and light" (in spite of my love for Robert Ryman's white on white paintings).  For me, a busier visual palette is a more realistic reflection of our times.  But Hempton's ideas have gotten me re-evaluating my own attitudes again.  Where this will lead I do not know.  I have a tendency to throw an awful lot at the viewer, who may not be up to being still enough to sort all those visual stimuli out in a meaningful way.  Is it really my job to sort it all for them?  I don't want to feel that I am "dumbing it down" for anyone.  Would my ideas be better emphasized against a backdrop of visual silence? What would my increased visual silence look like?  Stay tuned...

Monet Pink Dogwood Platter, ©Joy Kreves, ceramic

For a complete artistic non sequitur, consider the DANIELS CLAY WORKS 4-person show, in which I'll exhibit my best functional ceramic wares like this Monet Pink Dogwood Platter, opening January 26th, 11-1pm at The Bank of Princeton, 10 Bridge Street, Lambertville, New Jersey.  Every spring I try to catch the dogwood blossoms at their best to impress into a clay piece.  This platter was colored with multiple layers of glazes and ceramic stains.  No crisis here, just the sound of nature quietly smiling.