Off to the MFA

Hellooo my darlings! Quickie post here. My mama and I are leaving early in the morning for Boston to see the Degas show at the Museum of Fine Arts and to visit a dear family friend, Karla. We’re staying at Karla’s just one overnight and will be back in NYC late Thursday. It’s a short little trip but I’m really looking forward to it.

Also want to mention, although I’m sure you’ve all heard, that the wonderful Helen Frankenthaler has passed away. I was a huge fan. She was one of the few prominent female artists in the overwhelming male-dominated world of abstract expressionism. And one of the best, in my opinion. Many great articles and obituaries on Frankenthaler on the web. I recommend checking them out.

Here is one paragraph from the Times article I linked to above. I think it describes Helen Frankenthaler’s work perfectly:

Her staining method emphasized the flat surface over illusory depth, and it called attention to the very nature of paint on canvas, a concern of artists and critics at the time. It also brought a new, open airiness to the painted surface and was credited with releasing color from the gestural approach and romantic rhetoric of Abstract Expressionism.

Hope everyone is well. I will most likely be tweeting my visit to Boston so you can always read me there should you desire a little distraction . . and a little Degas

See you all soon!

“For Olivia, Love Auntie Claudie”

Remember when you were nine years old and your cool, awesome Aunt gave you a harmonica for Christmas? Well, my niece does. It happened yesterday at Grandma’s house:

She’s a Hajian through and through. Brava!

Birdseed, and the Birth of Christ

So I thought I had planned my pre-Christmas 48 hours thoroughly and methodically. The goal was to have ALL shopping and errands done so I wouldn’t have to leave the house today. I wanted to avoid the stores, the streets, the crowds and just stay home so I could wrap presents, prepare food to bring to my Mom’s house tomorrow, call friends, and generally chill out listening to Christmas music on the radio. But like all best laid plans, something unexpected came up.

In mid-afternoon I noticed that my backyard birdfeeder was empty. NOOOOO!!!!! I hate that. My normally crowded, chaotic birdfeeder, frequented by cardinals, blue jays, finches and a host of feathered friends, was now empty and abandoned. And of course, I was all out of birdseed. This was unacceptable. The birds won’t have anything to eat on Christmas morning!! <—– yes, I’m a wacko. So I got in my my car and drove to one of the two garden centers in my neighborhood, hoping that it would still be open at 4:30 on the day before Christmas. When I got there, they started making hand gestures shooing me out the door the minuted I walked in. “We’re closed, ma’am! Sorry.” Yeah I bet you are, you evil bird-hater. So I jumped back in my car and drove like a lunatic to the next garden center. I walked in there and all signs indicated “closing”- gates coming down, lights turning off. But I asked anyway, “Are you officially closed?”. A really cute guy who works there responded, “Why? What do you need?”. So I asked, in my best coquettish flirt-voice, “How about a ten pound bag of birdseed??”. And then, like music to my ears, he smiled and said, “Sure. Ok. Make it quick.” YAAAAYYYY!!!!

You all think I’m weird, don’t you? Well, maybe I am, but I’m a weirdo who will wake up Christmas morning to the sounds of happy feasting birds chirping outside my bedroom window. It is one of life’s wonderful, simple joys. It comforts me.

Have a warm and blessed Christmas, dear friends. Rejoice in the spirit of the season. Peace unto you and all God’s creatures . . . especially the birds

From the fresco of Scrovengi Chapel in Padua, this is the nativity scene by Giotto:

Praise Winter’s Glory

The great Bill Veeck famously said, “There are only two seasons – winter and Baseball.”

As a baseball fan myself I can somewhat relate to the sentiment. Winter. Ugh, winter. That bleak dormant interval between the last out of the World Series and the first pitch of opening day. Winter gets such a bad rap from so many corners. The short days and limited sunlight dampen our mood. The cold weather forces us to put on uncomfortable restricting layers of clothing (my personal pet peeve). Fanatical baseball fans lament winter. Beach bums lament winter. Folks who suffer from “seasonal affective disorder” lament winter. Even hibernating bears lament winter so much that they curl up and sleep through the whole damn thing

I think we could all learn a lesson from pagans, who know how to extol winter’s significance through their sacred celebrations of the solstice. From Stonehenge to Guatemala to Morningside Heights, it’s a hell of a party. Here in NYC, the Paul Winter Consort has been commemorating the winter solstice for the past 16 years with a glorious annual concert at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in upper Manhattan.

For those who haven’t been to St. John the Divine you are missing one of the most spectacular, spiritual, and magical places in New York City, if not the world. It has been under construction in perpetuity for 100 years and will likely remain forever unfinished. That’s part of cathedral’s charm, believe it or not. You often hear in conversations, “Have they finished St. John the Divine yet?”. Answer: “Nope. Still working on it.”

The solstice is arriving today in the Northern Hemisphere. Last year saw a rare winter solstice event – the miraculous coinciding with a lunar eclipse . To celebrate today here is a great video, also from last year, of the Paul Winter concert at St. John the Divine. Absolutely worth watching not just for the music, costumes, and dance, but to chase away the winter blues. Everyone, rejoice! Remember, the sun will be re-born and the light will return. And so will baseball

Holiday Hiatus

This past Saturday at the National Academy was my last day of art modeling before the Christmas break. My next job isn’t until January 2nd, and I’m feeling a little bummed. I’ve been enjoying modeling so much lately, and posing really well, if I do say so myself. But the art schools are closing, the private groups are suspended until the new year, which makes me an artist’s model without a gig. Boo hoo. Now what am I supposed to do with myself? Christmas shopping?

I thought I’d share a drawing that was done at the National Academy. The class was anatomy drawing, taught by Eric March who is a great guy and I really like working with. First we had an informative demo focusing on the muscles in the neck and shoulders, during which I offered up my clavicle, trapezius, and something called the “sternocleidomastoid”. Then, with strategically placed lighting to help bring out the forms, Eric and I set up a pose where my head was turned sharply enough to fire up those neck muscles. The class worked on their drawings for a little over two hours. They were all wonderful, but this one by Eun Young Yun was a particular standout in my opinion. She used delicate, hatching-like pencil strokes, the effects of which I hope translate well enough in this photo I took.

Eun included more of my figure than did the other students, who limited their drawings to the neck and just vague suggestions of my head, hair, etc. The result with Eun’s piece is gauzy and gossamer. It has much more elegance and sensitivity than the stiff, studied academic anatomy drawings you usually see. Rather than generic, isolated body parts, there is clearly a human life subject present on Eun’s paper, sternocleidomastoid and all!

Paint it Black

Artist’s models are expected to pose nude. This is a given. If I had to put a percentage on it, I’d say that 90% of my posing is done in the nude, while the remaining 10% is clothed. I don’t include portrait sitting in the 10% because even though the model is clothed, it’s not a clothed pose per se. The artists are only painting the head and maybe the shoulders so the clothing is incidental and not a significant element of the composition. Models can show up for a portrait session and simply sit in their street clothes. But there are occasions when an actual clothed pose is expected.

I can’t speak for other models but I personally don’t enjoy clothed posing. This is not because I’m such a compulsive exhibitionist who must have my nude body gazed upon at all times. It’s because my wardrobe is apparently lacking in artist approved colors. I wear a lot of dark colors. If you were to look through my closet you’d see lots of black, dark blues, charcoal greys, and chocolatey browns. With my coloring these darker tones are most flattering on me. Even my bathing suit, which has been requested for modeling, is black. Hey, I like yellows and pinks as much as the next person. I just can’t wear them. Even red, a color I love, only looks right on me if it’s like cranberry or deep crimson. Orangey reds not so much. But I digress.

I pose weekly for a private art group that prefers clothed poses for painting. We recently finished a pose and have started making plans for a new one that we will begin in the new year. The lady who runs the group asked that I bring in clothing from my wardrobe so we could make a selection. Here’s the problem. I know these people. They like colors. Big, bold swathes of color, a la Matisse. Frankly, I don’t have anything like that except for a pair of purple sweatpants So the lady and I were discussing this and I wanted very much to provide an appropriate outfit to please the group. She said to me, “We want it to be YOU, Claudia! Wear your favorite nice outfit, something you would wear to a special event or on a date.” A very nice sentiment and I appreciated it. However, with that description, the chosen outfit would be a black Calvin Klein cocktail dress. Friends, I love this dress. It rocks, and I rock in it. It’s a dress I splurged on at Bloomingdale’s. So I told her about it and she responded, “No, no, no, nothing black. We don’t want black.” See the dilemma? My second choice, in accordance with her description, would then be a dark grey silk dress. It’s very pretty with simple, elegant lines. Her response to that one was, “Eh.” I was O for 2.

So you see that clothed pose requests are, for me, a bit of a nuisance. I want to satisfy artists’ needs, but my wardrobe is my personal wardrobe. What am I supposed to do? Nude is sooo much easier. I take my clothes off and we’re good to go. It’s great. But my question for artists is this: what is wrong with painting black? John Singer Sargent used tons of black. Madame X is a notable example. And here’s another from Sargent, Mrs. John Chapman, from 1893:

It’s not just this art group which has caused me this wardrobe problem. I once showed up for a job that was supposed to be nude but at the last minute they decided to do clothed. Since I was given no prior notice, all I had was the clothes on my back. Guess what I was wearing? A black sweater. And predictably the group wasn’t thrilled. “Don’t you have anything else?” they asked, as if I travel around with a fuschia tutu on a regular basis.

The Birds, by Pierre Puvis de Chavannes:

I have a theory about this. I’ve observed that black, and darks in general, appear all over artworks from past eras. It seems that bright palettes came into popularity with the Picasso/Matisse Modernist period. Then abstract expressionists took color to an extremely prominent level. Something has changed with the collective eyes of painters in that they can’t find visual stimulation anymore without the presence of blatant in-your-face colors or patterns. Would anyone today create a painting like Whistler’s Mother? I wonder.

It’s a most bizarre phenomenon. One time, on my break, I was chatting with an artist at her easel. As I sipped my coffee I looked down at her well-organized palette and asked, “Where’s your black?”. She made an incredulous expression and replied, “I don’t use black!”, as if I was crazy to even ask such a question.

In this piece, James Tissot took on a black dress AND a black umbrella. A Widow, from 1868:

If someone can explain to me this black-aversion among painters today I’d really appreciate it. I hope it’s just a phase because I can’t afford a whole new wardrobe! Or else, I may have to stipulate that, as a professional model, I am “nude only”.

That Time of Year

Hi everyone! Just a quick post to say hi and let you know that I’ll be quite busy the next few days. Working a modeling double today, modeling double tomorrow, and then family day on Sunday, which will be brunch and a holiday concert! Really looking forward to that. On top of all this I can’t seem to kick this darn cold. I went to a Christmas party last night and felt good, so assumed I was all better. But never assume. Woke up this morning and it was back. Ugh. Pesky thing. It is that time of year.

So no Museworthy posts until next week. But remember, you can always follow me on Twitter! Be well my friends. Gotta run now, but see you all very soon!

Woman Sleeping Under a Tree, Odilon Redon, 1901:

Little Dylan Drummer Boy

I”m a big fan of Christmas music. I’m also a big fan of Bob Dylan. That doesn’t necessarily mean I would enjoy those two things combined. Or would I? Hmm. Since the holiday season is here and it is Music Monday, I say we go for it.

Bob Dylan recorded a Christmas album in 2009 titled Christmas in the Heart. He gave all the royalties to the charities Feeding America and the World Food Programme. While the idea of Bob Dylan singing Christmas songs was initially, and perhaps understandably, met with skepticism, the album received generally favorable reviews.

This video for the track “Little Drummer Boy” is a unique piece of art. The work of New York based filmmaker and animator Jeff Scher, the video is a visual treat. Scher used a process called “rotoscoping” (I had to look that one up) in which animation is traced over live-action images. For this video, Scher used crayons and watercolors to trace over heartwarming scenes from classic films. The result is pretty fantastic.

As for Dylan’s vocal rendition of the song, well, what can you say? I don’t mind it. Again, I am a Dylan fan and I give him all the credit in the world for attempting to sing beloved Christmas songs, and especially for the altruism of the project. Sure, his voice sounds like that of an aged burnout folk singer. But there’s something quite touching about the whole thing, and Jeff Scher’s marvelous video animation has a lot to do with it.

Watercolor in the Works

It’s just a late November tree on a street corner in Queens, NY, a few blocks from my house. Though it will be completely leafless imminently, it was still hanging on to its remaining leaves as of two days ago. I was on my way to work but had to stop and take of picture of it. My plan is to do a watercolor

I think what inspires me here is that even though the leaves are sparse, they are still gorgeous and vibrantly colored. That’s one of the many intriguing occurrences of autumn – trees entering a stage of winter slumber, but going out with dazzling brilliance right up until the very last minute, until the final leaf has fallen to the ground. Autumn is sometimes misconstrued as a time of shriveling and withering, but it’s not. The transition from autumn to winter is vigorous, active, and dynamic. Nothing moribund about it at all.

So here’s the deal; I have Alizarin Crimson, Permanent Rose, Cadmium Yellow, Sap Green, Yellow Ochre, Burnt Sienna, and a few others. What I’m not sure about is how to approach this. Should I sketch it first then do colored details, block it in, diagram it, or just wing it from the get-go and let loose and see what happens? I welcome all suggestions!