The art less made
Two roads diverge in the art wood: one is all sadness and melodrama, the other is shades of happiness made from sunshine and silver linings. I prefer to take the one less traveled by.
Gwenn Seemel
Charlotte
1998
spit bite, hard ground etching, drypoint
5.5 x 5.25 inches
When I was in high school, I took an intaglio printmaking class with Michael Southern at the PNCA. At the same time, I was volunteering at a retirement home, helping with activities for the residents—everything from bingo to watercolor. Both the class and the volunteering were eye-opening experiences: the former because it taught me how to make a mark and the latter because I was losing friends as quickly as I made them.
Charlotte’s memory and health deteriorated in a matter of months and I found it hard to watch her sink more and more into herself—both mentally and physically. Towards the end, she often hid behind her own arm, her chin resting on the table in front of her.
Gwenn Seemel
Ida, Lily
1998
soft ground etching, drypoint
4 x 4 inches
I was always especially touched by Ida’s willingness to help residents who were less fortunate than her. She walked only with difficulty and she wasn’t completely clear on where she was, but she would still hold a fellow resident’s hand if they were upset. A simple gesture.
The sadness of the retirement home fed into my teenage angst and I produced a lot of fraught and even melodramatic images around that time. While I don’t regret my adolescent output, I do see it differently now. The works are gloomy, a little miserable, and definitely negative: they take the easy way. It’s not much of a challenge to make images that touch people out of such overwrought material.
Gwenn Seemel
Papy
2001
acrylic on canvas
33 x 28 inches
(detail below)
A few years later, in college by this time, I was still doing some printmaking but I had mainly settled on acrylics as my medium, and, as this painting of my grandfather reveals, I’d changed my focus. At this point, I was looking for subtlety and for good feelings. My Papy may have been losing much of his memory as well as his understanding of the world, but there was still someone there, behind those eyes. In this portrait—and in others from the same time—I concentrated on the person who remained instead of everything about my Papy that I’d lost as his illnesses worsened.
It’s relatively simple to make “shock art,” to wallow in despair: it’s much more difficult to make art about happy things and to do so with enough subtlety to avoid being trite. I don’t know that I always succeed in the nuancing, but I’d rather at least try to make the art less made than simply follow a well-worn path. For me, it has made all the difference.
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CATEGORIES: - Philosophy -
Allie...
Oooh, I so agree. It’s one thing that turned me off from MFA programs - you link to the Master’s show gallery and it’s all disassembled mannequin-whores and broken bits on the floor. I’m sorry if I want to bring joy into this world and celebrate the little things in life, I guess I can do that without your fancy degree.
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