Janet Geib Pretti, Sculptor

Kate Wilhelm, Getting Started

The keynote speaker at the February, 2004 South Coast Writers Conference (which I have coordinated since its inception) was Kate Wilhelm.  I lost my voice to laryngitis on Thursday.  By the beginning of the Saturday afternoon sessions everything was under control and I slipped into the back of library just in time to hear Wilhelm ask everyone to close their eyes. She began describing the entrance to the school just outside the library and then said "The door opened......" and stopped. After a few minutes we opened our eyes and she asked "who walked through the door?" She went on to say there were two types of writers:  those for whom someone had walked through the door; and those who were still deciding if a person was coming through the door, after all it could have been blown open by the wind. I perked up my ears, as much as they could be perked up in my sick haze, because no one had walked through my door.

Wilhelm said the conundrum of the first group, the visual writers, would be that they would be able to get to work quickly but would end up with too few words and would always be in search of more to flesh out their stories. For the second group (the intuitive writers) - they would have trouble getting started but would end up with too many words and have to learn to cull. There was a noticeable sigh of relief from a small number of people in the room. I am sure it was from the intuitive writers. Because it is the intuitive writers, and sculptors, who have such angst over where to start, who wonder if a person is ever going to come through that door.

I was awake before dawn the next day with an urgent need to begin preparing for my first sculpture show in 12 years. It was scheduled for October, 2004, and I had been struggling with where and how to begin again for months. I was too sick for the physical work of sculpting, so I sat down at my computer to busy myself with retyping some of my old piece statements. But the words kept coming, and coming, and coming - a lifetime of words flowing through my fingers. I began scouring my workroom for the words scribbled on scratch paper that accumulate when I sculpt. I reread my graduate thesis. I sifted through slides for a record of the false starts and forgotten versions. Finally, I began to put the words and the pictures together, rearranging them, writing more words, finding words for pieces I had long avoided, uncovering words from which pieces had yet to grow. Slowly, the words began to stitch the images together and as the gaps and loose ends became glaringly apparent, I knew where to begin again. Unfinished pieces were resolved, new pieces evolved, and the parables of my life coalesced - in sculpture and words.

Mulling over a concept visually and verbally had always helped move me past the blind spots, detours and dead ends. But I used to view the words as a by-product and rarely tried to hone the words, complete them with the same care and clarity as my sculpture.  Now, I finally understand that I sculpt and write, write and sculpt. The words are an integral part of what I do, not a by-product. I am not just creating a snap shot of a moment in time, I am trying to capture the lessons learned. I need the words to dissect my life and thoughts down to the core, where my sculptures wait to see the light of day. My work is about form and negative space, but it is also about color and about words, and about life. For the first time in my life I have a string of titles, of problems, of lessons, stretching to the horizon. I know what I do, I know how I do it, and I look forward to the dialog, the lessons, each piece will bring. And, as Wilhelm predicted, I am finally having to learn to cull.

Christo's Valley Curtain, Celebrating Failure

Last summer, when Christo and Jeanne-Claude installed The Gates in Central Park, all New York was a twitter with the orange rustling fabric.  I just smiled. I knew that they would never know how it felt to stand in what I consider Christo's first gate, hearing, seeing a massive orange wave of fabric dance overhead against a deep blue sky. 

In 1972, I was home from college for the summer. I was oblivious, like most of the locals, to the fact that a major art event, the installation of Christo's Valley Curtain, was being staged less than 25 miles away in Rifle Gap. The man who years later would become my husband first got wind of it from his extended family living down valley from the Curtain. So the day after it was scheduled to be completed we packed a picnic lunch and headed for Rifle Gap, two ranch hands, a want-a-be artist and her childhood friend. We looped through the back country, approaching the Valley Curtain in reverse of most visitors. But instead of a taunt curtain stretched across the road between outcrops of rock, a portion of the fabric rippled overhead, roaring, floating like a giant wave through the blue sky. The volunteers and professional crew were milling around in stunned defeat. My friends tolerated my determination to capture the orange rolling waves with my father's borrowed camera. 

Out of concerns for safety, the Curtain was removed within days, weeks before schedule. The locals chattered irreverently about it throughout the summer, about the meaningless of modern art, the wasted money and the foolishness of putting it in a place known for it constant, prevailing winds. When the Curtain is included in books and information on Christo's long career, only pictures from its first day of being are included. 

I have always wondered why Christo did not seem to value the magic of both Valley Curtains, the one he envisioned and the one that nature imposed a collaborative role with. Both were beautiful. But the later was my favorite, it was so dynamic and fleeting, impossible to ever recreate again. Sometimes it is what we can't plan and never foresee, that humbles us and teaches us our most valuable lessons.

Pictures and project information on the Valley Curtain can be found at http://christojeanneclaude.net/vc.html.  Pictures and information on The Gates are at http://christojeanneclaude.net/tg.html.

Elizabeth Layton, the Power of Self Reflection

Sometime in the 80's, I clipped out a small article about Elizabeth Layton from the Sunday Parade. Several years later the traveling exhibition of her Through the Looking Glass show made it to Oregon. I was teaching a drawing class in a small coastal town. We decided we needed an art day, so off we went, for a 7 hour drive, lunch and an art show. I wanted to show my students that sometimes the power and conviction of the message was more important than a sophisticated, polished execution. Some students were mesmerized, others questioned the art taste of their young, idealistic teacher.  Twenty years have passed, but her images and messages are just as fresh and meanful today, as the day they were drawn.  They still have the power to move my heart and challenge my thinking.

At 68, Elizabeth Layton took a contour drawing class that inspired her to draw prolifically for the last 15 years of her life. Layton laid bare her fears and fantasies with colored, wavering lines in frank and unflattering self portraits. Her husband Glenn appeared in many of the drawings, bemused and bewildered. When I first saw her work in the late 80's, I was fascinated by her image and story. But now, after nearly 30 years of marriage, it is the portrayals of Glenn and their life together that brings a knowing smile to my face.

Layton, a native of Wellsville, Kansas came from a family of writers and journalists and was herself managing editor of her hometown newspaper, The Wellsville Globe. But she had suffered bouts of depression throughout much of her life and had undergone 12 shock therapy treatments before enrolling in a contour drawing class in 1977. Layton credits her daily regime of drawing her image reflected in a mirror, without looking at the paper, with saving her life. Consequently early drawings were dismissed as art therapy, but later the power and volume of her images earned her exhibits at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American Art, and in more than 200 art museums and centers throughout the U.S. She drew nearly 1200 self-portraits during her drawing career, giving nearly all of them away to friends, museums, and charity auctions. In doing so she raised more than a half million dollars for the arts, women’s organizations, civil liberties, mental health, medical ethics issues, the visually impaired and the Wellsville Library. I have added a small collection of her work to this website, hoping to tempt you to want to see more. Check out http://www.elizabethlayton.com for more images and information.

Deborah Butterfield, Becoming 'Political'

I have followed Deborah Butterfield's work for many years, and even had an opportunity to hear her speak in the early eighties when her star was just beginning to rise.  A couple of years ago I bought Horses, The Art of Deborah Butterfield, and read her 1988 interview with Marcia Tucker.  Tucker asked,  "What do you feel is the most important issue for you as an artist right now?"  And Butterfield responded:

"I suppose I feel that what's most important is to try to make work that advances you as a human being, that somehow pushes you to keep asking yourself questions, makes other people ask questions, and hopefully encourages them to see the world through different eyes.  When I was a little kid I wanted to be able to be inside somebody else's body and see through their eyes for just a minute.  I felt that if I could do that I could understand myself and the world so much better.

And I guess that's what art is about. .......  And I suppose that's why I make sculpture, because I feel that people have to sense my work almost as much with their skin as with their eyes, and in doing so they learn a different way of perceiving the world.  If we could each learn to step into the other for a while, we would be a lot better off.

Art is very important in terms of politics; not just in a literal way, meaning that we should all do work that is overtly political, but in the sense that we make the step of transference into someone's otherness."   

I make art to understand me, my time, my place. It is the place that I learn to live within my own skin. It is through the sharing of it that it becomes 'political', as Butterfield defines political.  With each piece I try to pare my experiences down a common denominator, not to what makes them unique.  And it is always my hope that if I can get it close enough to right, you, the viewer, will experience a moment of transference and walk away with a sense that you have brushed past a fellow traveler. 

If you would like more information on Deborah Butterfield, the Greg Kucera Gallery in Seattle has created a web page for her at http://www.gregkucera.com/butterfield.htm.

Wes Magyar, Inspiration in Unexpected Places

I arrived at Denver International Airport last August hungry, cranky, and sleep-deprived after sitting on a plane with a malfunctioning computer for two hours in Oklahoma City.  My connecting flight was long gone and the reward for my ridiculously early wake-up call - being able to arrive home (a 5.5 hour drive from Portland) before dinner had evaporated.  Instead, I was facing a long layover with no way to notify my husband.  I dawdled my way through breakfast, explored the shops, and was resigned to finding my gate and settling in with a book.  But high above the concourse, Wes Magyar's SEMBLANCE peeked over the mezzanine rail. 

The Best of Colorado show had just been hung.  What an unexpected gift.  The vibrancy of his colors, the precision of his brush strokes, left me wanting to know about the couple, and their unfinished conversation that seemed to linger unspoken in the space between them.  More paintings by Wes Magyar can be found at his website, www.wesmagyar.com.

I became a sculptor in the first place to say things I could not say with words, but more and more I find myself grappling to find the image and the words. Mulling over a concept visually and verbally helps move me past the blind spots, detours, and dead ends.

Holding the Void by Alberto Giacometti, and Raven and the First Men by Bill Reid are favorites of mine. I am awed by their makers' audacity and drive to tackle such grand ideas, stripping them down into concise, complete pieces. I live a simple, small town life; I coax and pry subject matter and inspiration from everyday life and events. Yet my intent is the same - to give shape to an idea, not an object.

John Berland, Sculptor & Teacher

Fortunately for me, Colorado State University art majors had to take four "samplers", in different genres of art before declaring a major. I entered college intent on becoming a painter, but John Berland was the sculpture teacher. Our first project in the sculpture sampler was a modeling, molding, and casting project. Watching the nearly 3 ft high women, mid-thigh up, begin to take shape in a circle around the model, was a magical, magical time. Mold-making and casting was hell. We cast in body putty, and because it was body-putty, we painted them. I was hooked. But, because I painted my first sculpture, I don’t think I fully understood that choosing sculpture meant giving up color, for in the seventies painted sculpture was rare.  Though I probably wouldn’t have changed that decision, because at the time I did not understand how essential raw, pure color is to my soul.

There were no brutal group critiques in the sculpture department. At the end of the quarter, I had my one-on-one review with Berland, where together we would assess the current work and plan for the next quarter. There was no competition with anyone but myself. Everyone worked and struggled together. Berland was skilled in the techniques of sculpture, especially casting, and he taught them well.  I am always surprised when my mom sends me articles about the international renown sculpture scene in Loveland, Colorado, that no one seems to remember that Colorado State University was just down the road. It was John Berland that nurtured a love for sculpture in the area and his well trained students that kept the first foundry staffed and afloat with plenty of work to cast.

John Berland seemed to view his real job as one of nurturing the creativity inside each student. It was never just about form and how to make it, but also about why we made art, and what was the intent of the work we made.  He worked daily on his own work in the studio along side of us, modeling a work ethic, showing that art is a journey, ever evolving with something new just around the bend.

More photos of his work are posted in my John Berland photo album.  The pictures were scanned from a memory book made for his wife and children after his death.  I thank his wife, Yvonne, for generously loaning it to me.  At the time I was intent on capturing the images.....not the titles.  All references to them are based on memory, not fact.