Knitted Torpedo sculpture from the Torpedo Factory

Yesterday we went to Alexandria in Virginia to the Torpedo Factory, which is, of course an old Torpedo Factory which is now a converted space for Artist’s studios and galleries. I like this sculpture and the painting above because of the “message” it convey’s. Although, I must say it looks like a condom. Maybe that’s the protection against war?

It’s on the waterfront maybe 20 or so minutes from Washington DC in Old Town. Which is certainly worth the effort–both Old Town and the Torpedo Factory!

Artists studio spaces at the Torpedo Factory

Mya Bruno created a amazing body of work during her lifetime! The work has a softness and honesty in it’s intention that portrays a life fully lived.

I’m sorry, dear, but love is like
A fragile lace
That’s beautiful to contemplate
But has no place

As cloak against the cold
Realities of life
Where bitter winds of doubt
With keenness of a knife

Assail the luted soul that love
Has got in thrall
And feed the aching heart
On bitterness and gall.

Why love should breed such misery,
I do not know.
And I am truly sorry, dear,
But it is so.

by Arthur Carlos Sweet 1935

“Gentle Things”, Mixed media acrylic with lace and stitching, 30“x22”, © 2012 Belinda Chlouber

I recently finished this piece inspired by my Grandfather Sweet’s poem “I Like Gentle Things”. My mother’s poems are far more visual with imagery and my grandfather’s with deep heartfelt feelings. It’s an interesting difference. At first it was hard to find images/inspiration in his poetry but now that I have “tuned” into the poems it seems like it’s flowing!

The translucent bird image and the flower on the right have excerpts from a short story my mother wrote “Woman not Born Beautiful”. Which I hope to get into a book format sometime this year!

The dark curtain like form is lace with written stitching of pieces of the poem. I hope I captured the essence of the poem for it is one of my favorite!

I Like Gentle Things

I like gentle, steadfast things,

Stars that twinkle in the night,

Happy, balmy days of spring,

Moon that sheds a mellow light,

Gentle eyes of heaven’s blue,

The quiet of a calm brow,

A kind heart that’s ever true,

Promises that need no vow,

And love that lingers on

Till life itself is gone.

 by Arthur Carlos Sweet, father to Carla Sweet Chlouber and grandfather to Belinda Chlouber

“Wild & Gaudy”, 15“x14”, Mixed media monoprint, © 2012 Belinda Chlouber

I wanted a bit of inspiration so I took a workshop with Kala press in Berkeley a couple of weeks ago. I wanted to work with Inez Storer as she’s one of my favorite artists. She’s spunky and can be a bit prickly sometimes, but I like that, it adds “zest” to the experience! I have a etching press so look forward to seeing more prints in the future!

I did this piece after the workshop by taking a print I didn’t feel quite worked but liked parts of and re-worked it into a new mixed media piece. The piece is in a show at The Main Gallery in Redwood City right now in a show “New Year, New Work”. My grandfather Sweet’s poem inspired the work and the title! There was no title for the poem, but here it is;

You are like the beauty

of a quiet day in spring,

Like the clear sweet tunes

That nature’s songsters sing.

Not the wild and gaudy brilliance

of the tossing prairie flowers,

But beauty of the violet

Hidden in the shady bower.

by Arthur Sweet 1934

“Read my Lips”

“Signing”

These two paintings, “Read my Lips” and “Signing” examine the world of sight and sound. They are part of a series I did several years ago.

Sound.  It’s largely something we take for granted on a day to day bases–it just is–it just is there for us. Over the last several years I have come to a different understanding of sound and it’s place in our world. Thirteen years ago I begin to notice the sounds were leaving. You don’t know when you don’t hear, because you can’t hear it. It’s only when it gets bad enough that someone’s talking right to you and you can’t hear them that it becomes apparent that there’s a issue with sound.

Fast forward to today. I’ve learned a lot because of this problem I have with sound. Sound is what connects us to other human beings and the world. It’s also one of those things that they know a lot but it’s a very complex problem. I feel the brain has much more to do with it than they currently realize. The reason I think this is because sometimes I “hear” better than others—that is with hearing aids—maybe someday I’ll figure it our without them. Considerably better. Currently, I’m working with diet to see if it will help. And it has. This is far to complicated to cover here but you can email me if you have an interest. Believe it or not it’s seeming to work for me!

I’ve learned lip reading a bit (only a bit!) and am learning sign language (which I really like as it adds gesture to everything). I would suggest everyone learn it! It adds another dimension to existence that is really wonderful.…and with noise pollution who knows who has “glass” ears.

So, you might ask “What the hell does this have to do with art?” I would say “A whole hell’ve a lot!” I’ve become very aware that when I’m doing art I’m existing is this “other” space inside my head and it’s very visual. Then when I’m listening to someone and I can’t understand what they are saying I “push” myself to what feels like the back of my head and focus there. Then I can “a great deal of the time” understand their speech, I think I’m then in Broca’s area? Needless to say I feel I make much better art work when I exist in this “visual” space inside my head.

I’ve come to think it is an uneasy marriage between sight and sound for the visual artist–at least for me it is.

My parents bought this Navaho weaving doll in Arizona when I was a child. My dad let me keep if for awhile.

When I was a little girl, six months old, my parents moved to Arizona where we lived on the Hopi and Navaho reservation until I was in the 3rd grade. We moved about what seemed to me every couple of years so my memory for time and place is blurred. What I was left with is a feeling for how things can be so different—and be okay. The Navahos and Hopis by no means would I have thought of as “poor”, to me they had a very rich life. I remember seeing the ladies in the Trading Post with their beautiful red and blue velvet cloths and turquoise jewelry and thinking how exotic they were. The Pow Wow’s with the fantastic dancing and mutton stew with fry bread left a other worldly imprint on my mind. The mud hogans kept them warm (and it gets very cold there) and their sheep provided food and warmth. I’m sure there were things that were hard, things I didn’t know as a young child. But a slow ethereal feel was imprinted on me. Culture is societies soul. I haven’t been back but I hope they haven’t lost everything because then they would be truly poor.

What I deeply feel is that we are not rich or poor measured by money but by our culture. It is the thing that holds us together and makes us strong. What I see is a cultural crises identity. So many different cultures came together in America and in the end we can’t just have “money” driving our culture. Perhaps it is a “world” cultural crises. From the food we eat and how we eat it to the way we organize and think of this one beautiful thing given to us—life.

Here is a poem my mom wrote;

Code Talkers

Years ago our Navajo friend Hosteen Tsiniginni

Told us of how he confounded the enemy

Using a language unwritten,

Unknow beyond the deserts of his home—

Words familiar only to the wind

That twists around the branches of the pinons

On the plateaus, sweeps into the canyons,

And rushes to the sacred mountaintops,

Leaving nothing on the air

But whoosh and ssss

And soft gutteral word

Followed by short puffs of warm sound.

It was the one code that

Could not be broken.

It appears now that we are code talkers, too,

With ourselves as the enemy,

Using words to confuse and distract,

To mask the meaning of what we say

So that syllables sit on our tongues

Like polite dinner guests

Who are on the verge of vomiting

But tell the hostess again and again

How much they enjoyed

The veal parmesan.

It has taken us years to learn the words

But we have become the world’s

best code talkers,

our success matched only

by that of Hosteen Tsinniginni

and his kin.

We speak a language having nothing to do

With what we feel, becoming more and more

Adept at the one code

That cannot be broken.

by Carla Chlouber © Chlouber Estate

Along with a painting I did inspired by the poem;

Codetalkers, inspired by Carla Chlouber’s poem, 8.5“x36”, mixed media embroidery © 2011 Belinda Chlouber