Last month I shared a bit about my perspective-changing trip to London over the holidays. Part of my radically revised way of looking at my creative life comes from the encounters I had with art at the Tate Modern, Britain's (arguably the world's) preeminent museum for contemporary works. The museum's broad-ranging and somewhat quirky collection is housed in a converted power station, a fitting vessel to contain such intense creative energy.
Standing on a footbridge in the cathedral-like Turbine Hall, it's immediately apparent that the architects didn't just use the structure as mere backdrop for the art displayed. The building has its own spirit and presence, as if it's whispering soft dialogues with the art pieces.
I had an epiphany about abstraction as I admired one of Joan Miro's paintings on the Friday evening that my husband and I visited the Tate. Miro developed a personal vocabulary of symbols that he used to populate his paintings, and the full emotional force of his invented landscapes hit me all at once. I felt overwhelmed with the delicacy of his painted lines and the tenderness with which he approached each shape and its placement. Somehow he seemed to have pared down communication to its essential coding of shape, color, and line.
The sweetness of the shapes in Miro's painting reminded me of appliqued quilts, and in particular Amy Karol's quilted miniature scenes. It didn't matter that Miro's materials were those of the formal artist, while Karol's are more commonly associated with domestic crafts; both express such childlike wonder and joy, such intuitive and essential truth.
As I've worked on the felted embroidered Crewel Stones this past month, I have been trying to free myself to enter into such a playful and creative space--a meditative space of freedom and intuition and color in which the dialogue between the form of the rock itself and the caress of the wool fibers allows a narrative of colors and shapes to unfold. I am allowing myself to play and learn as I do so, and it's profoundly scary and liberating at the same time. I definitely recommend it!
1 comment:
Really interesting.
The way you write (like with eyes wide open in astonishment of the discovery of a new world) sounds like me.
A good decade ago it also was Miro who opened my eyes, even more my feelings.
The setting was very different, but also very touching and influencing, namely the Fondation Giannada in Martigny, Switherland.
I wish you a good walk on your new path to art.
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