Saturday, June 10, 2017
Monday June 12, Durban Diaries
I suggest you look up Liza Lou's work either before or after you read this book. As you read consider this journal approach to sharing an identity. Take time to listen with your heart and your mind to this story. Ponder the layers of the stories,l et it all settle within you. Then tell what what you felt. How does this book work or not work FOR YOU, compared to the first book?
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A Meditation of Fire was engrossed reading. In his life and artwork, environment plays essential role express his own identity. His life story is really struggling, and very inspiring to me. As he got his parents supports to enhance his creativity, (p7) which is unconventional subject for art. His mother critique was helped him to developed as an artist. He started his drawing since childhood, observing nature and landscape become essential part of art process later. In the book, mention about his parent’s personal sense of aesthetics. His “mother believed that the color of your clothes could influence your emotional state.” (p5) which is true in some sense, if I compared with Indian aesthetics. Each emotion is represented through particular color which is described in Rasa Theory from ‘Natya Shastra’ by Bharat Muni. For example: Shringara Rasa, meaning is love, related emotion is erotic, beauty and devotion and represented through dark blue color. Color plays important role in religion as well. Red is prominent in Hindu mythology. I clearly understand the importance of color ritual in his life and how it reflects in eyes particular and brain.
ReplyDeleteAlso belong impoverished family, but trying to make their children life better, as struggling for existence, and equality in education and job as at that particular period there are not so many black people in the store, also consider as they don’t have equal opportunity as white people had.
Art has non-verbal language to express emotions or state. I believe, artwork is not worth if it cannot hold you for while visually. When I am not able to stand more than 30 secs in front of art work and need to read the text to understand it, I am not interested to see such works which doesn’t have visual appeal. Watkins pieces have visual appeal. So many pieces struck to me like guardian series (p126), bottle from Raku fired (p117/118) snake crossing (p102), and Number 3 series (p82). “I want people to investigate my work. Different surfaces have different visual weight. In creating the textural and smooth surfaces, I’m thinking of symbolism of earth and sky, a horizon on the pot.” (p32). His work is more poetic to me with comes from religious and spiritual involvement of process of making clay, color and texture. He is an excellent craftsman and artist. Inspiration from the nature reflect on his artwork through texture, color, and shape. Layering of landscape with tactile texture make his pottery flourishing. His technique is really evolving and few of work can compared with cave art drawings.
His methodology of teaching involves experimentation which helps student to develop their own style and identity as an artist. As his life experience also reflects in his teaching and artwork. His story in captured in book is very influential for people who really wanted to understand the meaning of life.
Hello Deepika, glad to see you here! I also thought about cave art while looking at some of his works...I think that's interesting, although not quite surprising...
DeleteI loved that he remained grounded in his indigeneous lineage and maybe felt a connection to these cave paintings by the indigenous peoples in the Southwest. I remember Carolyn Tate discussing Rattlesnake Canyon and the DNA from teeth found at the site was Nahuatl. I wish I could go there.
Deletethank you..love learning about Shringara Rasa means in your culture.
ReplyDeleteI found it difficult to organize my thoughts around this book and write about it. I don’t know why was this happening to me: maybe because the book was so personal and disarmingly sincere, or maybe because it was so heartbreaking and left me with such a bittersweet aftertaste. As I was reading, my first thoughts were that this book is less about art, and more about South Africa and the terrible conditions people are living in there, and the way art can create bridges between people who apparently have nothing to share, except for hate or guilt. I still believe the last part, but I’ve changed my mind about the first one. This book has everything to do with art as is trying to answer some relevant questions. For example: what has art to offer, what impact can it have in a place like South Africa where violence, destruction, sickness, chaos, and death are everyday realities? Or what’s the point in working with a team whose members sometimes don’t know what the project is all about or don’t even care much about it? To whom does this art address, what need does it fulfill? Is it purely aesthetic, does it express the artist’s vision, or goes beyond that? I think that all these questions and their possible answers constitute the essence of Liza Lou’s writing. In Liza Lou’s works made in Durban, two different worlds collide, one marked by privilege (“I feel flattened by what the color of my skin represents. I dislike being the white lady in charge” – Liza Lou, 15) and the other by abuse and extreme poverty. However, what it matters in the end is not the work in itself but the act of making art which is mostly the act of working and being together, in a significant and joyful endeavor, celebrating the miracle of being alive. It is all about people and their journey and the work starts with an idea only to find a life of its own later. I liked so much Liza Lou’s philosophy about “the beauty that comes from letting go” (62) and the material’s capacity to find its own way of expression (“The beads, standing upright in rows like regimental soldiers, admit defeat. (…) What I had planned as carpets defect into abstract paintings” – 41; “Maybe this is what the material has wanted to be all along. (…) There has been the stripping away through time and loss and acceptance of the limitations of body and mind. And what remains is what is.” - 62).
ReplyDeleteI loved the way the story was told. Being able to access Liza Lou’s own thoughts and emotions meant so much more than reading the story from a third point of view. Her vivid descriptions of the people she worked with, the dialogues, and the comments reflecting her doubts, joys, or fears, everything made me feel more involved in the story, which despite being short, is very intense and works on several levels. The story of Liza Lou’s work consists in fact of several stories of Zulu people she worked with: stories of domestic abuse, stories of political violence, stories of economic hardships, stories about old beliefs and magic etc. Then there is also Liza’s own story, the story of an American woman who wanted to make a sort of socio- artistic experiment and felt insecure and lonely in the beginning, but who decided to stay longer in South Africa and make her work more and more relevant for the local communities, by developing increasingly ample projects. As I said in the beginning I found this reading heartbreaking. But I can see a sense of hope in it, as well as the powerful impact Liza Lou’s projects had on the lives of these people. Besides offering them a job and a way of providing for themselves and their families, the projects offered them an alternate manner of responding to the cruel reality and maintaining sanity (“We weave when we don’t have the heart to sing. The patient minutiae of beadwork being made in a place with so much chaos, puts order to our day. Control the smallest thing. Take comfort here. Solve the problem of a tangled piece of cotton, or a needle that won’t thread. Make something beautiful. Insist on beauty in spite of everything. We toyi toyi, we march for beauty” – 45). In beauty and love stays the hope for a better future, and this is what Liza Lou and her team do. As Liza Lou puts it on her website “Art provides jobs, builds houses and latrines and education” but it is also about “loving something into existence”. “My art, what I do” she says, “is something small and it isn’t much. But maybe art can give a glimmer of what is possible, can stand on the side of love, can stand on the side of hope” (http://diary.lizalou.com/).
ReplyDeleteElena, I got to thinking about your comment "Or what’s the point in working with a team whose members sometimes don’t know what the project is all about or don’t even care much about it?" and I had to think, are they creating art? Although they didn't design the art, but as a collective I would think they are creating an artwork. So it could go both ways, I suppose. "what’s the point in working with a team whose leader doesn't know his/her team members or care to know them?" I got to think this out some more.
DeleteBeautifully written. The reality of her community, the knowledge that one project did not change centuries of abuse, but the courage to find develop new projects so that change remained a possibility. So the real questions is would you be able to expose yourself your art in this manner?
ReplyDeleteA Mediation of Fire
ReplyDeleteSo In reading this book I feel that I related so much with the way that he found his love for Pottery. I really enjoyed his stories of his childhood, nature, dreams and life. I can relate because these are the subjects that have influenced my thoughts in the type of architecture I would like to create.
Growing up in the Mexican Culture I saw a lot in my surroundings that never thought would build the person that I am today, the use of color, material, culture and religion are all in and will remain in my pallet as I continue to find what will define me as a future architect. "My mother believed that the color of your clothes could influence your emotional state. She believed that red and orange would make you more alert and happy. My father believed that painting the house true green would ensure a good harvest," pg 5 This reminded me of the way we use color in architecture and how it can manipulate ones feelings when they are exposed to them, from a feeling of excitement to one of sorrow or mourning.
Reading on his move to Lubbock and the different landscape and how this landscape influences his art, when I moved to Lubbock others would talk about what a waste land it was "There's nothing in Lubbock." Two people have helped me in truly appreciating the land, not just west Texas but all Landscapes, they all have a different beauty about them. Professor McReynolds, I have had the pleasure to be in her studio twice once in undergrad and once again as a grad student. As a grad student the studio consisted of violet light in the Llano Estacado, it was a lot of field research that took me all around Lubbock, Muleshoe and Caprock up to the Colorado River past Amarillo, So I have seen the Sand Cranes and have hiked caprock. I have watched the sun settle time and time again over west Texas with the company of the geese and the coyotes, It is absolutely amazing the way that everything in this world connects with one another. Watkins - "The light depicts a surreal vision as five white-tail deer run through tall grasses while another four stand alert this side of the tree line."I imagine we both shared the same peace. In the Fall of 2016 I embarked on a three month adventure... Land Arts 2016. During this semester abroad in our own backyard I traveled across the Western United States, always camping and being one with the land, we changed sites every three to four days across Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and Utah. One of the greatest experiences of my life, I learned the beauty of nature and what is our land. This is definitely one of my top priorities in how I will treat Architecture.
I have been through many detours in my life, I embrace each one as I would not be the person that I am today. Without one, my life would not be where I am today. The experience of Watkins near death experience reminds me of how the passion for life that I have has not always been at the level that it is. I know what it is to be hungry, I know what it is to be homeless, I know what it is to be deceived, I know what it is to have lost and I know how it feels to have your freedom taken from you, but because I have experienced this I can enjoy when I am not that much more. Watkins -"After that, food tasted better, colors were brighter, music sounded better. It was incredible."
Reading this I enjoyed the stories. I could really relate and envision what made him the artist that he is. I have a lot of stories... or so Ive been told. This is the way I envision my life..a compilation of stories that will let people really know who I am. On Watkins - The birds have used jettisoned potters' clay in their labors. The mother and father barn swallow have been flying bravely around the working potters for the past two weeks to protect their four newborns. And just as the barn swallows create shelters for themselves, the potters create shelters for their souls. James Watkins is such a potter.
Thank you. What wonderful comparisons of your life to James's. And yes, Land Arts would give you the gift of seeing the land in a new way. Use of this as you contemplate you final project and how you will continue to identify yourself.
DeleteAs I read the book I kept trying to make sense of the art showcased in the text, because it did not match the art mentioned in the chapters (fence and grass) that her group was working on. Nor did it look like her wildly colorful domestic spaces I googled. It was not until the last few pages (61-62) that it clicked for me. When she contemplated firing Nomalungsia for her crooked and misshapen work, Lou decided to retain what she described as “life and death contained in an art process” (62). She had to relinquish control and let the work become what it wants to become. Nomalungsia became a metaphor for Lou's artistic philosophy, “It too is molten, ancient, resolved. There has been stripping away through time and loss and acceptance of the limitation of body and mind. And what remains is what is” (62). I love that, regarding the self and art, letting it become what it wants to become and what remains is what is. Also, having to surrender to loss and trauma. The art showcased in the book shows the different colored threads underneath the beads, sections of beads changing direction, crumpled areas, and some slightly off lines if you look hard enough. Some areas, have similar colored beads, but they are not the same shade of blue, as in Untitled #3. Now these may be deliberate in these works, but these are also things Lou may have encountered as imperfections in earlier works. That is my observation and interpretation.
ReplyDeleteI saw a documentary, Half the Sky, so a lot of what I read in the book, I was prepared for. Anyhow, I was still impacted by the line, “It is said that a woman here has a greater chance of being raped than learning to read” (37). Followed by child and baby rape. The myth spread by quacks that virgins cure HIV is to blame.
Lou’s project seems to have had a positive impact on the community, as she mentions that everyone in the team built or renovated their homes, and a few have started their own business. Lou also played a critical role by extending interest free loans. This exemplifies when socially engaged artists have a vested interest in their community, especially the community their art making is impacting. She didn’t just make art, she exponentially impacted their lives for the good. Like the line in which Lou quoted Anne Truitt, “…I can serve them better, leaving them more clearly themselves and me more clearly myself” (61).
I think Lou, according to her diary, stayed grounded and fair. This could have easily become an instance in which “white savior,” exploits cheap labor. I think Lou was socially compassionate.
Now, the book in contrast to Meditation of Fire, I enjoyed hearing from the primary source in Durban Diaries. In Meditation of Fire, we got snippets of James here and there, and maybe the experiences and observations of the secondary source got in the way. But it had lots of photos. In Durban Diaries, I wanted to see images of her team, of the studio, the fence, the grass. I wanted to see their faces.
My hope is that each book, each artist will open a door for you (all of you) as you figure out how you will identify at this junction in your life. This book has become one of my favorites after a third read...I needed to sit with the book and get over the first impression " clueless do-gooder". And as someone who sews each bead I really had to let go of my bias to using glue.
DeleteI now , as you so beautifully say, there is so much more than just a pretty table top book.
Also, reading about how Lou ran her studio and her team, puts Judy Chicago's Feminist Studio Workshop in perspective.
Deletegreat point...Chicago was a tyrant and tends to take all the credit
DeleteDurban Diaries made me feel so many different emotions but mainly an admiration to Liza Lou. I have to admit I started reading the book without looking at the art on the back first. When Liza mentioned "beads" I automatically thought how can beads have such an impact that it end up as a book and after reading the first two pages I answered my own question. I really enjoyed how beads created this connection that ended up touching so many people. I will like to say that the world needs more people like Liza Lou, people that are willing to help others despite their culture, religion or nationality.
ReplyDeleteShe took a different culture and tried to blend them together, teaching us that we can always learn from other cultures, have less boundaries and be more supportive. Her philosophy is so rich in so many ways. During the reading she mentioned knowing someone was stealing " let her go. I felt humbled by this theft, at the sadness in it, the desperation." (p 19). She saw the problem not just like the problem but what's behind it. As of for many of us, we tend to judge people without really knowing the story behind it. She was just open to help and be friend to everyone and it was great to read how people ended up appreciating her. My favorite part of the book was when Fikile says "Do you know who is Moses, leading the Israelites? You are our Moses" (p 48). That felt so sincere, grateful and beautiful. This gave us an idea of how people truly appreciated what she was doing, how they all became close to each other and how people wanted to help each other in many ways (like helping other getting a job).
Reading about African culture was shocking. So many desperation, anxiety, violence, etc.. It is just terrifying how different cultures are in this century. We are used to living in a society where you can be whatever you want to be. Reading about how violence is accepted, the amount men pay to get married, not to mentioned the discount per fault, the rate of HIV by rape just made me feel helpless. It also amazed me the lack of information, so many incorrect myths that they still believe in.
This book really impacted me and it is one of the most fascinating books I've read so far, it had such a wonderful meaning. After reading the book, I can see something more behind her work of art. The work of art by itself is beautiful but now I can see it is also a reflection of someone that's trying to make a difference in the world.
Karla,
DeleteInteresting that you questioned how beads could make such an impact - I was familiar with Lou's work so it I didn't consider asking such an important question. I was very weary of the issues of labor, however. I wondered how a meaningful collaboration/social interaction with the community could occur under such circumstances.
Remember this book gave us an intimate look at the everyday life of one group of women (and men) through the eyes/experience of one very success artists. I assure you there are pockets of poverty in the US and around the world. It is a powerful story, told in a format normally not associated with art/ art making. Not many can be this honest.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, I love reading books like Durban Diaries. Not necessarily the diary part or the point of view, but the process part. In a book like this, I think the diary narrative was an appropriate way of seeing the process. This has become one of my favorite ways of viewing art. To me the process is very important and as an artist, really just makes the art more enjoyable. I put a lot of emphasis on the process in my own art, teaching, and even when I am coaching. Maybe that is why I paid so much attention to it in this book. Another enjoyable part of this book, as other have mentioned, was watching the art become what it was going to become. I think most artist like to have an end goal and a "product" in mind when they start. However, throughout any project, eventually it will start to find its own identity and become what it is meant to become.
ReplyDeleteLike many collaborate projects, the deeper you get into the journal, you start to see that it is becoming as much, or more, about the relationships as it is the project. Really interesting to see this short trial turn into a multi year endeavor. Commitment continued to grow and both sides. Relationships deepen. I am currently working on a very large mural with one of my students for a local coffee shop. From the beginning, I wanted the mural to be what the coffee shop owners were asking for (a memorial to their veteran son who was killed in action) and a blessing to the community. My intention was for the mural to involve a large group of my students, but that's not how it turned out. Only a few showed interest, but through the process, I have really enjoyed getting to know these students better. I have learned stories about their personal lives as they have mine. I have learned a lot about them as artists and where their real passions lie in art. Collaborative art is fun that way.
Finally, the other side of this journal that really got to me was way of life these people endure. I don't know if any of these stories were new to me, but hey certainly take on a different mood when being told in first person and just reported.
I can relate to your appreciation of seeing process. Recently, I have come to a place of valuing the facets of process to arrive at a richer understanding of meaning within artworks. It was interesting to how you see the journal as evidence of deepening commitments and relationships.
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