Residing . . . + a Sale !

It all began on a Wednesday afternoon in early December: I received an unexpected email, welcoming me as an Artist-In-Residence at Château d’Orquevaux in the Champagne-Ardenne region, in the northeast of France, during their 2021-22 season. I also learned that I was awarded a Denis Diderot (whose grandson’s family first acquired the Château property, I believe) A-i-R grant toward partial cost of the residency. The clouds parted momentarily, the birds sang — a dream come true! 

The program receives applications from artists from dozens of countries. I am honored and fortunate to be selected, and to have the rare opportunity of space, and time, to work in the company of other artists and writers. Two. Whole. Weeks.  

Coincidentally, I had also recently completed a group of small works on paper for a salon-style exhibition here in Toulouse. Though it has been postponed (twice) due to the pandemic, the happy result is that I find myself in the company of a bunch of finished, framed pieces, all dressed up and ready to go.

exhibit 1: rue de l'Homme Armé

The majority of these pieces, twenty-one in total, are inspired by Toulouse, and began from life. Picture my little portable stool and me, outfitted in usual overalls and scarf, waving away bugs and greeting curious passersby (schoolchildren my favorite), many of whom offered a friendly comment or two. I love the action, the interaction, surprises, uncontrollable elements. 

Others are inspired by travels last summer to the north of France: Dieppe, Normandy . . . 

. . . with a few others mixed in, as my whim led me:

And so I’ve decided to employ the latter as a fundraising effort for the former, to offset costs of the residency, travel, and materials. I’ve lowered the prices to make them extra accessible — art, as many of us knew already and maybe are re-discovering, can be such a salve and source of joy, particularly now. Thanks to their small size they are easy to ship internationally, framed or unframed. Each purchase will go toward my Chateau d’Orquevaux Residency Fund.

All available works are on this page of my website, which I will be updating regularly. I’ve listed size, materials, and cost with each piece. The price doesn’t include shipping, which generally runs between 10-20€ to the US. Payment is possible via paypal, bank transfer (in France), or, for those in the US, direct transfer from bank to bank. So if you’re interested in purchasing one, just send me a note and we’ll make arrangements. 

And if for whatever reason all that isn’t up your alley right now, I hope you enjoy them from here, from right where you’re sitting — a little glimpse into the world through these eyes.

Feel free to contact me with any questions via the contact link here on my website, or drop me a note in the comments down below, and I’ll respond to you quickly.  

Additionally, if you are interested in portraits or other commissioned work, I love working one-on-one on custom projects, and am happy to discuss that possibility as well. Just send me a note and we’ll talk.

Many, many thanks for your support — and to you who’ve supported the project already, including Annie and Laura, I extend my gratitude! 

sold!

I'm so excited to share the work I create at Château d’Orquevaux with you! 

courage -- or as the French say, COURAGE

all photos © the awesome Patrick Betbeder

Woops! I didn't mean to abandon you for six months like that. I was right in the midst of a really important project, and I was planning to tell you all about it, and then everything veered off in a totally nother direction and I was swept away, and pressed pause on the writing in order to address a couple of practical and existential crises. 

I know you know what I mean. 

And though I also know I’m not saving the world through this blog, it’s so good to be back. 

After all this time, it was hard to know where to begin again. It’s so overwhelming, all of it. But then, three things happened, and that was all the illumination I needed. And as we all know, even just a little light these days can be such a welcome thing. 

The first was that I rolled some dice. Tossed coins, actually. 

A teacher of mine suggested it: when you don’t know quite what to do or focus on, give chance a chance. Gather all the info you can, and then — eff it, and follow your intuition. 

I had just spent several weeks with her, gathering lots of objective information — marketing, branding, income, resources, opportunities — and we were winding up our journey. 

She gave us students a game board of sorts. We picked up five coins of different sizes, to represent importance, and tossed them on the little chart to see where they landed, letting fate determine what was asking for our attention. 

Thank you MATS !

All my coins landed in a heap right in the middle. My first reaction was that I must have tossed them wrong (revelatory in and of itself). But then I thought, wait a sec, open up here, kid. I looked closer and noticed that all of them, aside from a couple who crossed over into “Clean Out Your Workspace”, was “Meditate to Feel More Confident”. Hm. 

We’ll call that Thing One. 

Then, Thing Two arrived. I’m not sure why — maybe because her TED Talk about the pandemic was getting lots of traction and I watched part of it — I picked up Elizabeth Gilbert’s brilliant Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear, and began to reread it. 

The first chapter is called Courage, and I was like: coincidence? 

Gilbert talks about how fear — which I refer to as my Inner Critic✳, or The Voice, when it manifests as deflating self-doubt and blanket-statement bossiness — is this thing we don’t ever fully rid ourselves of. It’s an unavoidable companion along the creative journey. 

Meditate for Confidence. Courage. The two began to percolate. 

❊

Thing Three was a torturous incident with a photographer, which ultimately resulted in a showdown with my Inner Critic. 

In a strange and swift confluence of events, I ended up, one weekday afternoon, in a gallery I’ve been wanting to visit with people I’ve been wanting to work with. After reading about an artists’ rally happening the following week, not fully clear on its purpose but a little desperate for connection after weeks inside, on impulse I signed myself up. 

At the heart of the event was a photographer, Patrick Betbeder, whom I’ve come to know a little and admire a lot, for his work and his warmth. He had taken on the task of photographing each of the event participants in his particular, inimitable, style. 

all photos © the generous Patrick Betbeder

Photos of me are not my thing. I like them only under certain limited circumstances and a good stretch of time after they’re taken. I can find beauty in everyone else; yet pictures of me slice right into the deep doubts I have about my appearance, which somehow inextricably tied to my actual worth, and being seen. Not exactly emotionally sophisticated, but there you go. 

Anyway, the idea was to go to the gallery, which was organizing the event, and to have our portraits taken by Patrick. So rather than call, I decided to drop by one day when he said he’d be there prepping the space, to arrange an appointment. 

I'm feeling a bit tired, and I leave the house having vaguely attended to my hair, not much more. I dismount my bike a bit windblown and disheveled, as per usual. Patrick greets me and says, rubbing his hands together, Great, why don’t we just do your photo today, since you’re here? 

I step back and I’m like, Whoa, hold up there. What’s the rush? 

I’m not ready today. 

Can I just come back later? When I’m really ready? Like maybe … (looks at watch) … when I'm sixty? 

But Later didn’t seem to be an option, and of course Now made the most sense. 

❊

Patrick’s in the process of taking a test photo with a young woman, and the two gallery owners are there too. It seems like it’s their daughter or a niece or something. She’s younger than I by a couple decades easy, and looks nonchalant with her red lipstick, her fluent French (damn them!). 

As I watch my friend and his process with great interest, I’m noticing a growing anxiety, as I try to mentally prepare for my own photo. Fears and doubts bubble to the surface: measuring up, to what standards I don’t know; being in a spotlight. 

They ooh and aah over the photo of the young woman, her facial structure; even its asymmetry is charming. My Inner Critic sees a window of opportunity to pipe in, uninvited as per usual. Also as usual, she is both patronizing, subtly insulting, and faux-kind all at once. 

It’s nice you’re here, dear. But you’re not really very pretty, are you? Plain is a better word. Don’t expect people to notice you. You don't really have what it takes. Try not to stand out. And wipe that funny lipstick off your face — you look like a clown. 

My turn comes. I do my best to be present, even as the IC’s drumming is getting louder. I attend to my posture, my breath. What I really want is to run away, to hide. 

We look at it the photo together, briefly. It’s like I’m high, paranoid that everyone is thinking the same thing. Sighing and rolling their eyes: This one isn’t worth fussing over; let’s just move on. 

❊

In essence, fear, or the Inner Critic is saying STOP. It shows up at moments when the outcome is uncertain. When I’m doing something risky, attempting to play even just a bit bigger. 

And, in this case, it works: I do stop, for a little while. I get sidetracked as my IC takes over, and like a bad but deep dream it’s hard to shake. At first, I don't even realize I’m dreaming. 

My Inner Critic has a heyday. Because appearance is seemingly unrelated to creative pursuits, it’s particularly sinister and effective when she wants me to halt any and all emotionally risky activity. Ugly is my IC’s ace in the hole: She starts with some pretty good arguments to get me on her side, and then she finishes off with that final jab — and besides, look at you! 

That’s how mean The Voice gets. I know I'm not alone here. 

But I’ve seen this before, this feeling of depletion and deflation. It seems I can barely open my eyes and I’m kneeling, as Geneen Roth says, at the altar of The Voice. Everything is all or nothing, black/white, bad/good. I’m no good, and I never was. 

So, in a teeny-tiny parting of the clouds, it dawned on me, for just a brief moment, that perhaps this was fear manifest, simple as that. I thought back to Ms. Gilbert. I’m close to a goal, doing something I don’t ordinarily do, and then this fear arises, in spades. Coincidence? Maybe, just maybe, this was the Inner Critic, butting in unasked, to sabotage my growth. What if I’m mistaking her for truth? Perhaps my Inner Critic is reasoning, in her warped way: If I concentrate on this un-knowable un-quantifiable outwardly-dictated notion of beauty and appearance, I won’t feel the fear and the risk and the vulnerability. 

Perhaps, rather than containing anything logical, it may actually indicate that I’m going in the right direction. 

As Gilbert advises, if I am to continue on this path, then I have to figure out a way to recognize this voice of fear when it arises and know that it’s a) not me, b) not in charge, and c) not wise. It’s along for the creative journey. I don’t have to let it steer the bus. It definitely SHOULD NOT steer the bus. 

If you can’t learn to comfortably travel alongside your fear, then you’ll never be able to go anywhere interesting or do anything interesting. 

The content of my Inner Critic's arguments is beside the point, cunningly persuasive as she may be. And I do have tools to manage her. 

I’m still thinking about going back and re-doing the photo shoot, in the hope of turning up on a better hair day, better-rested, steeled and ready for any potential impact of offhand comments. But instead I’m meditating for confidence and thinking about Gilbert, deciding that if she wants creativity in her life she’ll have to make space for fear, too. 

all photos © the talented Patrick Betbeder

It really is good to be back. But I’d better get going — it’s way past Bastille Day already, and as my English student Gérard said recently during our midday Zoom call (when the asparagus he was cooking was ready), “The ring is belling”. 

Artistiquement votre, 

Una

✳ Thanks to Tara Mohr and Playing Big for the language and understanding of the Inner Critic. 

Behind the Scenes (at Musée Paul Dupuy)

As has happened several times, le petit garçon unwittingly steered me to this month’s blog topic, just by attending school each day. First it was French poetry, next a filmmaker; I won’t be surprised if I soon write about marbles, which are the thing on French playgrounds for the under-eight set. But more on that another time. 

I leapt at the opportunity when his teacher asked if any parents would be willing to chaperone the class on a field trip. I love to observe the kids together with their maîtresse, listen to how they talk and interact, and discover new corners of Toulouse. 

I was especially excited because this was an exhibition by a Franco-American artist who, I learned upon a little research, was born in Pasadena and moved to France as a child. I imagined all the stuff she and I would have in common, the conversations we might have. I pictured her, oozing Californian cool and free-spiritedness while speaking perfect French. 

Maybe, maybe not. But I also had a hunch too that there was something for me there. Something to uncover, to be reminded of, inspired by perhaps. Maybe, I thought, it will stoke a fire in me. 

Part of month-long slew of contemporary exhibitions around Toulouse, a biennial festival titled Le Printemps de September (OK, yes, maybe we are a bit tardy), Nina Childress’ show was held at the small Musée Paul Dupuy just off Rue Ozenne. It was two days from opening; our tour would be a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the work-in-progress. My mouth watered. 

So one afternoon, we cheerfully herded 22 five-to-seven-year-olds through the park and to the museum, where a friendly guide welcomed us. 

Childress had dug out works from storage at the larger Musée des Augustins in Toulouse, ones made by minor, forgotten, or less-loved artists that caught her attention for formal or thematic reasons. Her interest sparked, she planned to then associate forty of them with thirty of her own. And today, she’d generously agreed to have a herd of curious enfants trample into her construction zone. 

As we waited for our tour I peered through a glass door on my right to see a bunch of the museum’s paintings, anticipating their moment in the spotlight. Out of context like this, they seem so modest and ordinary. How does putting a museum object on the floor, versus a pedestal for example, affect our experience and our critique of it? 

This one, for example?

We were greeted at the exhibition entrance by the artist at work, bralessly unpretentious in an orange t-shirt splattered with paint, carrying a roll of blue painters’ tape. Her glasses were thickish, smudged; she seemed to peer through them at us, as if through fog. 

She began by explaining the opening sign, painted in rough letters, its paint dribbling deliberately. 

Apparently the owl also finds its young beautiful . . .

…which, I thought, must imply that every parent finds its children beautiful? OK, that’s sweet, and true, I thought, right? Babies — adorable to every mother’s eye, and thank god for that. Apparently this was a fable her own mother repeated to her, about an owl who, in an effort to protect her young from a dangerous and hungry eagle, effused about how beautiful her babies were. Really built them up. So much so that when the eagle saw them, it didn’t recognize them by the owl’s description — perhaps their faces only their mother could really love? — and so devoured them as planned. 

Childress was, as my helpful guidebook told me, building her own nest of sorts at the museum and “brooding over the chicks’ revenge”. Retrieving paintings and finding something in even the most neglected among them. I think; to be honest, I’m still a little puzzled. Was she connecting the story with her own efforts on behalf of the unloved paintings? Was she critiquing the portrayal of women in painting and sculpture? If so, how does that connect with the owl story? Or is it more of an institutional critique — rethinking the museum itself? 

As it turned out I got too busy being captivated by the physical experience of the exhibition to fuss with these questions for the moment. I was immediately entranced by the sea of brown craft paper, covering the walls. Torn bits here, plastic sheets with quick sketches of precious 17th-century portraits there. People busily worked around us, discussing placement, mounting, lighting. My questions multiplied. Was what we were seeing prep, or was it the exhibition itself? 

We sat down with Childress, in the midst of the chaos, to chat. Scared her by nearly putting our sneakers on the freshly-painted black wall to our right, came perilously close to leaning on that painting on our left, propped against the wall. 

We plied her with questions; she looked at us through her clouded lenses and fielded them, clearly distracted but still, remarkably, amiable. How did you start painting? How long does a painting take? Do you like animated movies? Do you ever draw on a tablet? When did you know you wanted to be an artist? Where is your studio? What inspires you? 

Oh, she said, good question. It’s not what people think, artists aren’t what people think. 

As we sit, my eyes wander to what she’s wearing, how she holds herself. She’s unassuming, not the least bit flashy. Unpretentious and hard-working, like her work, I think. 

As I assess her physical presence, I wonder, Why am I so interested in how she looks? It dawns on me how deeply-set that is, this tendency to size a woman up based on her appearance. Even an accomplished artist who’s pouring hours and hours into a sizeable and meaningful project. I resist it, but it takes concerted effort: I sometimes still buy into the pervasive idea that looks are the ultimate statement about a woman’s value, long before the content of her ideas or character. 

I refuse to go there. I want to concentrate on her work. But on the other hand, the artist’s persona, their public face, does fascinate me. How do they turn up? How do they present themselves to the public? Do they care? How do women embrace their bodies and at the same time refuse to be reduced to their appearance? 

I hang out with that kōan. 

I returned later in the week for the opening, breath baited, to see the completed show. 

I was relieved to discover that the elements I loved — the paper, the roughhewn-ness — remained. More clear now was the conversation between her work and the museum’s. The torn paper on the walls, for example, echoed of one of the abstract paintings. 

One section contained image after image of nudes being gazed at — hers and theirs. Some coyly aware, some utterly innocent to that weirdo peering out from behind the trees. A lot of breasts, here lovingly attended to, there aggressively painted. Damn they get a lot of attention, don’t they? As if they’re the defining female feature, or have some kind of structural significance. 

The machismo in one museum piece was particularly appalling — men fully-clothed being served tea by a woman in her birthday suit, spare me — so she repainted it into abstraction. It might be my favorite: a reclamatory critical statement, and interesting in itself, simultaneously blurry and crisp. 

Mm hmm. Right. In your dreams.

It's not your eyes, nor my camera, I swear!

The artist was present; she told me they’d finished just two hours before the opening. Aside from flash of turquoise blue toenails evoking her color palette and 70s-era imagery, she seemed unceremonial. Same knee-length blue jogging pants and sandals as before, now with a dark blue hooded sweatshirt, a blue backpack slung over her shoulder. Same clouded glasses. 

She’s been working on this shit for days, I thought, and she’s finally done. She’s probably exhausted. 

On my third and final visit, I had the gallery to myself. I appreciated again the deliberateness in every detail, even down to the splattered paint. I admired her range and versatility, crude here, polished there. I longed to work at a museum again so I’d have access to their trade secrets. I thought of volunteering to help install exhibitions. I wondered how long each piece had taken to create, and how that affected my thoughts about its monetary value. 

Absent a curious friend or companion with whom to toss around ideas, I tried to practice the inquisitive approach I encourage in my students. What was I seeing? Why, for example, was this roll of what looked wallpaper cascading down the wall and spilling onto the floor? Kraft sur Kraft, Nina Childress, 2018. 

What a delicious challenge, to curate an entire space, from the moment of entry to the rounding into the final gallery. Ensuring each space is its own but also part of a coherent whole. Precision even in the apparently sloppy bits. And in this case, a call to question what we assume is going to happen, given that this is a Museum, in whom we place our aesthetic trust. 

I think of Duane Linklater’s 2015 salt exhibition at the UMFA, who took objects from the museum’s collection off their literal and proverbial pedestals and shone new light on them. How do museums shape our assumptions and opinions? Can they themselves address these challenging questions, including their own authority? As with the owl and the eagle and their view of the owlets, is the nature of reality dependent on the perspective from which it is observed?

This exhibition reconnected me to my craving to take over an entire space, from the moment one enters to how the walls are painted to how every sense is engaged. Like a piece of music: when you curate a full exhibition you could curate a journey. Make it practically irresistible. 

My own work has found a temporary home in Toulouse, at Le Pic Saint-Loup till the end of the year. I love the way restaurants like this can address the space in its entirety, too, and tend to all your senses whilst offering what could appear on the surface to be just a (really, really good) meal. 

You never know, with cafés and bars — the lighting can be shit or the whole thing can feel like a vague insult, to the place, the artist, the artwork, and all the work behind it. But at other places, like this one, even the toilettes are considered, with their hand towels, bunches of lavender, objects placed just so simply for pure visual appeal. We were expecting you, we haven’t forgotten you. Now get back to your gastronomically gorgeous repast. 

Thank you Ms. Childress for pointing shit out and for working hard despite all the forces working against you. Including yours truly, who still struggles with the notion that, for women, appearance is what it all comes down to in some kind of absurd final analysis. Thank you for being smart, and strong, and hard-working, and kind-of witty, and for continuing your work. Maybe I'll write you a love letter, dammit.