ART HISTORY: Really great trip to the Harvard archive/storage facility in Somerville, near Boston. My meeting with Christina Rosenberger was excellent. Our research interests on Martin are so different, but we had a lot of questions in common and some similar perspectives on the work. She’s also a much more experienced scholar than me, and she was happy to give me lots of advice on things like taking good photographs and how to approach big commercial galleries with odd questions on pieces of art (like my current obsession with Martin’s aluminium frames).
I also got to view some really excellent Martins. The phrase “Kid in a candy store” springs to mind! Of particular interest to me was a pencil on watercolour grid from 1960, which seemed to be deliberately intended to soak, wrinkle (almost destroy) the thin paper on which it was made. I made approx 6 pages of sketchbook and written notes on this drawing as I think its unusual texture, set off by pencil lines which almost seem to score the paper (they don’t, it’s just a clever trick of perspective) will feature in my dissertation. It was an inspiring day – and also made me appreciate my boyfriend who not only found us a place to stay with an old friend, but also partied all night with said friend, and still drove me to the archives before 9am the next morning! True love if ever I saw it.
I’m a little worried about the writing up phase of my dissertation, which should have started already. However, I plan to begin that on Wednesday now that a lot of my archival visits are complete… well, complete is totally the wrong word here. It’s more like, my archival work for the next few years (if I choose to continue) has just begun. The archives and stored paintings of Martin’s are so rich, and so understudied, that there is a real opportunity here to say something worthwhile and hopefully original.
DRAWING: Drawing month is going well. I’m finding the interest and response quite overwhelming, especially from other artists and illustrators. I’m making some new friends and viewing lots of interesting art work too. I’m having to work hard to fit my own drawing practice into my schedule. It seems corny, but having to present my ‘Saturday Sketchbook’ online each weekend is really forcing me to keep pushing forward with it, for fear of looking like a fake blogger who can’t keep her own project going.
That said, I’m certainly learning a lot about drawing, looking more closely at other artist’s drawings and have started finding myself getting all fidgety and frustrated if I miss a day or two of my drawing time. Which is exactly what I wanted… I’d love to form a drawing habit so that I can go on improving and looking and touching and critiquing and observing long after July’s Drawing Month project is over.
