Pause here for visual refreshment. CatRutgers4art is an essence: far less than everything, much more than a fragment, all original art. Inspired by my boundless fascination with natural phenomena in an urban environment, commonly leading to window-view sky watching and a lot of digging in the dirt to make things grow, I present this free-floating waltz of an undefined tempo with relish. All love from the possibilities zone, Cat
Light-emitting diodes have obliterated the moonlight. Oh, you can still see the moon, but it casts no shadows because the new(ish) streetlights are so obtrusive. They save energy, they save money … but I don’t feel any safer. I feel barraged.
When the LEDs were first installed, my brother said that I would cry when I saw them at night. I didn’t cry, just pushed it aside. But it’s a full moon now, and this morning, before sunrise, the lovely orb drew me out-of-doors and into the relentless harsh glare of their efficiency. It was unnerving.
At least I’m not alone in being sad about this. See, for example, “Ruining That Moody Urban Glow,” by Lionel Shriver, October 17, 2015. From experience, I know that the writer doesn’t choose the headline, and this headline is misleading: it’s not just about mood, it’s sleep and health and maintaining some connection to the sky and the rhythms of day and night. It’s birds and bugs who fly in disarray, and frogs and turtles whose mating and birthing patterns are disrupted.
But there are people actually doing something about it. Much like the lag that happens when I have to bundle up in scarf, coats, gloves, and boots before taking a walk in the wintry cold, it took me awhile to find them. The International Dark Sky Association and the Zoological Lighting Institute, among others, are working to understand and explain the effects of lighting, and change the ways that we use (or abuse) it.
Fact is, the brightness and hue could be tempered, which would benefit we humans and the other critters who live here, too. More research to do. Meanwhile, here are nine meditations on the chill, and thrill, of Winter. Love, Cat
Images and text © Catherine Rutgers
This piece was written on December 14, 2016.
The iconic dimension is small. But it has to be powerful. Mostly I create this type of image for folder icons and their desktop aliases. So that means I’ll be looking at them in their tiny size for weeks, or months, or even years, until the data enclosed in the folder is no longer a priority. As the work changes, they change, so they kind of trace my art history. This selection from a collection of 146 spans July 2008 through July 2013. Five years, same groovy month. Just by coincidence.
Original art by Catherine Rutgers © 2016
Merriam-Webster’s defines conundrum as an intricate and difficult problem, or a question having only a conjectural answer. Here’s one: Growing up, I was either painfully shy or thrilled to be on display. Some people thought I was “a snob.” But, really, I was just afraid to talk to them. On the other hand, as the preacher’s kid, I was highly visible and didn’t mind being in the spotlight at all.
I remember sitting at a table with my family in front of hundreds of Boy Scouts in the church gym for a dinner. I was probably 10 or 11, so it’s the mid-1960s. The scene was about as straight as you can get, which, of course means it was totally twisted. They had a hypnotist for entertainment and I volunteered and pretended to be hypnotized. Sat on a metal folding chair, closed my eyes, and did whatever he prompted. Though I don’t recall what that actually was, it resulted in the proverbial thunderous cheering and applause.
Later, when I tried to perform – flute in a grade-school talent show, auditioning for a high school band that wanted an Ian Anderson (Jethro Tull) stand-in, singing solo with a local “Up with People” knock-off – I was petrified. I didn’t get in the band. My singing debut was not repeated. I did get second prize in the talent show. I think they felt sorry for me.
Then somewhere in the late 1980s, I started hanging out with poets. The Unbearables. It was great. I made art for their Assembling Magazine, then wrote and read a poem. My hands and voice were shaking. But I loved it, and did it again, and again. Eventually memorizing all my pieces and having a pretty good run at readings around New York up until the early 2000s.
There are few things more exciting than being on stage. Really. I love it. Couldn’t tell you why I stopped. That is, until a hot summer night in Connecticut, July 2014, when spontaneously drawn into the lights and fire you see in these photographs, snapped by Tom Burnett. It was brief, silent, and it didn’t occur to me that there would be documentation. Though that’s the current nature of life, when almost everyone always carries a device that records images. Still freaks me out, and gets totally meta in 09 Night Red Cat, where another hand with another phone appears at stage right.
The conundrum here is that the moment was delightful, the photos scared me. And were fascinating. Nearly two years later, on May 12, 2016, I set them up for a post and started writing the performance story. And thought that would be it. As night shots with only ambient light, the data was thin, I didn’t think there was enough to work with to create further transformations. But the next day, that assumption proved to be wrong, and the abstractions evolved with surprising variation and strength.
They strike me as very different from the colorfields and folds that have been my focus for the past year or so. Which brings us to this question: Does the artist’s personality drive the work, or does the art take control of the persona?
Original photos © Tom Burnett, 2014. Images and text by Catherine Rutgers © 2016
A trio of fresh curves, for the opening days of summer. With love, from Cat
© Catherine Rutgers, 21 June 2016
The ones that aren’t used in the first go-round often simmer in the background, then bubble up sparkling on a brand-new tip. Once upon a time, yet still within this century, I created a mural design for a big-box retailer’s two street-facing walls, planning to enter their contest. My art in this case was all about Brooklyn: love and pride, day and night, scaled to be huge, listing the name of every single neighborhood. Excellent project.
But my hardware and programs of twelve years ago didn’t have enough capacity to save really large files. They crashed all the time. I missed the deadline. Kept the images, however, and have often used the backgrounds since then. I like them, they’re simple and clean and lend themselves to variations. Here’s nine transformations circa February 2016, plus the tone-poem hoods in all their glory.
Images and text by Catherine Rutgers © 2016
JoAnne Lobotsky’s “Compass,” textiles and acrylic on canvas, 16 x 12 inches, 2016
There’s something amazing about witnessing an artist’s turn in her path, and if you traverse the bodies of work in JoAnne Lobotsky’s portfolios, such a moment will be revealed. After more than a decade of fascinating, frequently complex, and often slightly surreal oil paintings, her work takes a turn, concentrating on smaller, mixed-media pieces that are “driven by a need to create works without illusory space.”
I needed to know more about that statement, and was especially curious about Compass, the opening artwork for this Guest Spot! My queries generated the following explanation from the artist:
“I want to make things that exist on the same plane and in the same world as we do. Not some illusory space that you drift into, like a window you are looking through.
“My work has bumps and textures and pieces of things glued to it – I’m offering up bits of the real world. The less the elements I used in these pieces coalesce into something beyond what they are, the more I like it. Maybe it is a response to an increasingly digital world. It definitely feels like a response or a declaration.
“What was I thinking about Compass? I had just received that textile with the horses and was excited to include an image that wasn’t abstract. This is a textile that most would think of as kitsch or just in bad taste. So I was excited about that as well.
“I had also recently received the fabric with people in traditional Asian clothing. So, basically, the West meets the East … I was looking to put things together that do not usually belong together. Similarly, the black cloud and the white clouds are very, very thick, in contrast to the flatness elsewhere.
“My frame of mind was that there was nothing to lose and I had no attachment to seeing any particular outcome. I grew up on a farm, and the land was primary to my childhood. Many of my pieces reference landscape somehow, and I see this piece as a landscape. I turned it upside down and prefer it this way as it becomes even more surprising, adding the north and south part to the East and West, hence the title.
“Compass excites me – it’s one of those pieces that is showing me the way forward, and I want to do more with the ideas there, and with representational imagery.” Here’s a virtual voyage through ten other recent works. How can art be raw and exquisite at the same time? I don’t know but feel that Ms. Lobotsky creates that effect. They strike me as maps to my daily-life soul, that if I can just stare at each one long enough, I will understand who I am and exactly where to go next.
“Wanderlust,” fabric and acrylic on canvas, 10 x 8 inches, 2015
“Later that Night,” acrylic and modeling paste on panel, 16 x 12 inches, 2015
“Some Birds of the Tropics,” acrylic, faux fur, newspaper, cloth and tape on canvas, 24 x 18 inches, 2015
“Some Birds of the Northeast,“ vintage fabric, linen and acrylic on canvas, 16 x 20 inches, 2015
“Before They Knew,“ acrylic, ink, burlap and other threads, wax paper bag, feathers, corn husk and handmade paper on canvas, 14 x 11 inches, 2015
“Beginner,“ acrylic, paper, fabric, cardboard, plastic and wood on panel, 24 x 36 inches, 2015
“Detour,“ fabric, faux fur, felt, silk, paper, sticks and cheesecloth on canvas, 16 x 24 inches, including support, 2015
“Overland to the River,” acrylic, modeling paste, faux fur, cheesecloth, burlap, textiles, glitter and wood veneer paper on panel, 30 x 24 inches, 2016
“Messenger,” acrylic, cheesecloth, paper, newspaper and plastic on canvas, 18 x 24 inches, 2016
“Crossing,” acrylic, silk, modeling paste and paper on canvas, 12 x 9 inches, 2015
All images in this Guest Spot are © JoAnne Lobotsky 2016.
This is a blue beyond blue like the primal oh-my-gosh what a beautiful color blue and I’m not the only one who said so blue. Super fine amazing quality paint, dropped off at my doorstep the other day by my très groovy neighbor. As soon as I opened the can, something had to be found to be painted with it.
Voilà! A big old flat file, used for drying silk-screened T-shirts a long time ago, heavy as heck and it holds a lot of stuff. Major corner of my newly laid out studio, a place where I like to look at the fresh prints. Should have taken a ‘before’ photo – it was gun-metal gray inside and I had painted the top aluminum, which looked kind of cool but was way hard to clean and smeary on your hands, paper too. Now it shimmers.
So, snapshots, snapshots, some with a flash, then without but adding more ambient light, then I notice an accidental shadow, then try some intentionally and that, my friends, was yet another OMG moment. Forthwith: the flat file in situ, five silhouettes, and one shadow play highly altered. The ‘newly laid out’ studio, by the way, is more like rebuilt. I took everything apart, scrubbed it all, moved it around, and reinstalled the equipment. Now there’s wide-open space in the center, where you can spread your arms wide and twirl.
Secret tip for painting flat-surface metal: after using a brush for the first coat, try a roller for the second. Glorious.
© Cat Rutgers 2016
