My First Week of the 100-Day Project, and a New Zine

 

I started the 100-Day Project on an impulse last week, having learned about it just one day before its official start date of February 18, so I didn't spend any time planning a project or even deciding what type of project I would do. Because I had just done a couple of mini collages in my scrap journal, I figured I would keep doing that, with the idea that I would go about it as a kind of study, experimenting with materials and composition, intending to incorporate some drawing and other mark-making into my collages. Which I did, more or less.

But I was also in the midst of finishing up a zine that I had started about a year ago and then set aside because of timeliness. The zine is about the color green (possibly the first in a scattered series of color-themed zines), and when I started it last year, March was upon me already and I could see that it wasn't going to be done in time to peg it to St. Patrick's Day, so I quit working on it with the intention of picking it up again this year. 

About two or three weeks ago, I had a vague recollection about it and was pleased to discover that I had already done several illustrations and written a fair amount of text. I got right back into it and was enjoying some momentum when I stumbled upon the 100-Day Project. So after a couple of days of mini collages, I decided that finishing something I had started before was exactly the sort of thing that this project was made for.

Well, now the Green zine is done and I asked myself, what next? I have other unfinished zines and was considering which one to take up this week, and then remembered that I really needed to focus on a very mundane but essential task: gathering all the relevant financial information for our tax preparer. Unfortunately, that includes a lot of catching up on my bookkeeping. The longer I let that go the more the stress builds up and becomes a real creativity killer. As a kindness to myself, I need to devote some time to it each day before it comes down to crunch time, so that it doesn't become the only thing I can let myself do for however long it takes.

But I feel that such dull necessary tasks can fit nicely with a daily art practice. In fact, it's probably the best way to get such things done.

The organizers of the 100-Day Project encourage participants to spend a small amount of time each day on their projects, like 10 minutes or so, in order to make it sustainable. If it takes too much time, a person is more likely to drop out. So this week, I am going to heed that advice and work on something for just a little bit of time each day, and not try to complete a thing daily. In fact, I am intentionally going to take the whole week to work on one mixed-media composition, filling a page in the same scrap journal where I made my mini collages (four on a page, each completed in one sitting). Or longer, if needed. There is no deadline, after all, there is only doing.

Since I still like the idea of blending collage-making with drawing, and since I have been intrigued by a type of aesthetic scribbling called asemic writing (it looks like writing, but it isn't), I am going to use this week to explore combining that with collage and just see where it leads. I began it this afternoon. Next week, I'll show you how it's coming along.

Unexpected Art at Hennepin History Museum

Recently I met some friends at the Hennepin History Museum to see an exhibition of works by Becka Rahn inspired by objects in three local museums: HHM, the Bakken Museum, and The Museum of Russian Art (TMORA).

The exhibition, titled Unexpected Art: Surface design inspired by museum collections, features garments made from fabrics printed with motifs taken from a few museum objects selected by the artist. Each work is accompanied by a paper plaque with the image of a fancy frame, showing a photo of the original object when it was from one of the other two museums, and the artist's statement about it. For objects from HHM, the actual item was displayed alongside the creation it inspired.

The above is all paper, it just looks like a fancy frame enclosing a plaque.

Rahn made the motifs into surface design patterns, digitally printed those on fabric, then used the fabric to make garments she designed. The garment designs, as well as the motifs printed on the fabric, reflected Rahn's response to the selected object.

The paint palette of portrait artist Frances Cranmer Greenman, in the collection of the Hennepin History Museum

I was perplexed by her choice to use polyester fabric, which I thought detracted from her designs and skilled workmanship. It isn't just that I have a bias against petroleum-based synthetics, although I do, but also because such fabrics lack the crispness, body, and drape that would have shown her creations to best advantage. 

Dress inspired by Greenman's palette, with a scan of a portion of the palette providing the pattern for the colorful skirt panels.

It's possible that the polyester was better for printing on with an inkjet printer, which is what she said she used. But on a table displaying printed fabric samples, there were a few squares of cotton, and it looked like they took the ink very nicely. Despite that minor disappointment, I really enjoyed the exhibition and was inspired by it. 

I especially appreciated one she called "Glimmer of Green," where she used security envelopes to make paper collages inspired by a semi-surreal painting from TMORA by a dissident artist in the Soviet era, showing a small-town cathedral in Russia, which then became the pattern motif for a fabric that she made into a top.

As she states, the security envelopes relate to the idea that this painting, as well as others that did not conform to official standards, was hidden, secretive.

Paper collages made with security envelopes and other papers, inspired by the painting Uspenski Cathedral in a Village from the Museum of Russian Art

The collages themselves could have stood alone as finished artworks, except it appeared that such was not her intention; some of the pieces showed signs of coming detached from the background, and they were not coated or finished. 

I'm only showing you a very small sample of the works included and I do encourage you to see the rest of them up close and personal, which is quite possible in an intimate setting such as HHM, relying as they do on "Please do not touch" signs rather than barriers, so you can get really close to the works and related artifacts to examine them in detail.

In the second room, there was a board displaying a lot of doorknobs, some of which had labels identifying which buildings they came from, but most without any identifying labels. 

Detail of some of the doorknobs at HHM. The one on the right is featured in part on the exhibition postcard.

It's clearly an old object in the museum's collection of Minneapolis artifacts, and I don't recall seeing it on display before. 

It's really quite a delight in itself, and I don't recall what she made from these motifs, other than the postcard for the exhibition, and a zippered pouch for sale in the museum shop. Although some of the doorknob motifs may have made their way into this collage, which became another patterned fabric.

After leaving the museum I was walking up the street with my friend Ann, on our way to meet other friends at the Boiler Room coffee shop. As I was admiring the old apartment buildings we passed along the way, Ann commented on the architectural detail in the building facades. 

We were both experiencing a renewed awareness of and appreciation for the surface design and motifs all around us, inspired by the explorations of this particular artist.

Unexpected Art is on display through April 30 at the Hennepin History Museum, 2303 Third Ave. S., Minneapolis 55404.


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