Everything here originated in my nearby environment, from the hollyhocks and gently fading rose to a bucket of compost and the towering oak trees sans foliage. Forthwith, 15 of 69 botanically oriented images created for Loop 2.4.3 performances.
Images and words © Catherine Rutgers 2015
There’s a wonderful development afoot: my artwork is being shown during live performances. The music is by Loop 2.4.3, with projections created by Tom Burnett. Described like so on their website: “Loop 2.4.3 creates original music steeped in percussion and electronics. Upon release of the debut album in 2007, NPR [National Public Radio] called Loop 2.4.3 an original voice that ‘sounds like part of a well-thought-out tradition. Only the tradition has never existed until now.’ … Loop’s founder, percussionist/composer Thomas Kozumplik, has created a flexible ensemble that rotates players and varies in size, but a powerful sense of exploration and freedom is constant.” From personal experience, I can say their performances create a thrilling soundscape that lifts you into a previously unimagined world of sensation.
Shown above, a scene from the rehearsal, with the Temple University Percussion Ensemble, on November 3, 2015 at Temple Performing Arts Center in Philadelphia. For the upcoming performance at Alma College, Heritage Center for the Performing Arts in Michigan on December 4, I’ve been creating new images around three themes: stripes, botanical matter, and color fields. Here’s a sample of twenty stripes of all kinds.
© Catherine Rutgers
Step into my world, where we can be in love with a million things that cross our paths. The flotsam and bric-a-brac and spikelets. Trash on the asphalt. And chocolates unfolded. These are the sights that soothe the soul, pique curiosity, make us take a keener look.
Believe it or not. Read closely and you will discover that “ice is food” and magic is alive in a field of poppies that look like they should have been leopard skin.
And wouldn’t we all like to feel that irregularities and shade variations are characteristic of our fabric, and in no way to be taken as defects. Here, everyone gets a reprieve. Except for the glaciers, arctic or otherwise. But that’s a another story, to be written by gadarene tempests raging in heat through the soil of our northwestern forests.
Seventeen visual treasures await your scroll. Cheers!
Catherine Rutgers © 2015
gadarene = headlong, spikelet = a small or secondary spike, specifically “one of the small few-flowered bracted spikes that make up the compound inflorescence of a grass or sedge” – a definition that is downright poetic. Thank you, Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, eleventh edition of bliss. One meaning of inflorescence, by the way, is “the budding and unfolding of blossoms.”
Sometimes I like to check out the archives, digging deep into the image-making remnants. There’s a lot of cool stuff in there, and a lot I’ve lost track of. Even when I find intriguing possibilities, sometimes it’s frustrating because I often worked too small. And I frequently worked to the task, failing to save the layers in my hurry to finish a project, losing the traces that would make it possible to go back and revise in the way I want to now.
Before the era of gorgeous flatscreens, which is not actually so long ago, my computers were bulky and the glass was cramped. Processing was much, much slower, so save times for large images could take minutes. Having gigabytes of memory and virtual space to store data was not even imaginable. But despite the limits, it was all very exciting. Huge learning curves, urgent drive to work, marvelous discoveries. Oh, let’s rephrase that: It is all very exciting. And I am happy to be surfing through the 21st century, with new capacities and ever more extravagant possibilities.
Just for the fun of it, here are two from the vault. The first set is from 2005 and began with a glitchy text file that transformed words into two pages of stars. I’m fairly sure the collaged form was an idea for a business card. Slightly altered from the first go-round, the pale yellow orb is new and a large pale-blue squiggle scrawled across the background has been removed.
The second pair was found in a folder labeled “2008 beetles deluxe.” Which was perplexing because the only identifiable items are twigs and a fern leaf. It took two days of sleuthing, but I finally figured out that the background colors are based on a spray-painted postcard, with an abstract center that reminded me of a beetle. They’re not changed at all, except to set “The Coolness Can Be in the Details” in a desktop size, where it is now happily enhancing my screen. In number five, however, I couldn’t resist color play, rotate, and crop. Big smile. Ciao for now!
Catherine Rutgers © 2015
P.S. Here are two of my favorite art blogs. For both of them, it’s been a pleasure seeing their work evolve. Beginning with Frédéric Biver, http://fakeormistake.net, Architect, Photographer & Dialogue Promoter, whose photographic conversation is “an ongoing experimentation. Combine related images. Create a resonance, a story … It is an intuitive addiction following up a never satisfied curiosity.”
Next up, Isobel Higley, who, as of April 2020, works from her purpose-built, environmentally sustainable ceramics studio (harvesting rainwater, recycling all waste clay). Using traditional methods, with a strong personal vision, her work is available at www.isobelhigley.com. Cheers to two intriguing artists!
On the 7th of July, I completed a beautiful day by sitting on the front steps to watch the fireflies flicker above our local stretch of the Flatbush Malls and the neighbors’ lawns across the way. The Malls, incidentally, are not shopping centers: they’re narrow parks set in the middle of the street that have survived since 1899. In front of our apartment building, the kids who love to play there have named it “Traffic Island.”
Yesterday morning, it was cloudy and promising rain, which prompted a photo session of the flourishing flora before they were potentially flattened in a torrent. Sixty-six snapshots later, I realized it wasn’t possible to truly capture the intensity of emotion seeing these colors and forms evokes in life. But a bit of the glory is reflected here, including a few of the many bumblebees that were everywhere working away.
Catherine Rutgers © 2015
P.S. Here are links to two of my very favorite blogs, revealing the lushness of nature found in every season – “Leaf and Twig” by Catherine Arcolio aka seedbud, https://leafandtwig.wordpress.com/2015/07/04/shout-of-color
“Green Lizard’s Blog” https://lizard100blog.wordpress.com/setting – for delightful photos of the English countryside and fascinating tales of “grow your own, make your own, save your own, do your own” in The Netherlands, respectively. Enjoy!
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