Cecilia Ramon’s drawings

Her lines smolder. The line seems to be reaching, not drawn from the hand but marks from an emerging landscape with octaves of light and absence. The line traces the cracks in stone and branches like a twig. The pressure is uneven, faint, heavy, coarse or fine. Angles, trapezoids, a zigzag. Near the edge, a web of lines, a weaving, not as if it was meant for the whole, but to join two opposing directions.

The paper is scored, fractured, scarred, perforated. Stitched in short lines, not a repair but a language of needle and thread.

A transparent wash of orange, yellow, or clay glides through the image and over scars and fractures and beyond, off the page.

In one drawing, the white canyon of the page opens into a glimpse of sheer blue/green, vestige of a civilization or a map, with an archipelago. Or perhaps it’s a shard, suspended upon a thread, raw edged and in the pale wash of clay, pierced back to front with broken threads, floating. She has given us another plane, a third dimension that floats in front of us.

heart or cloud

sound & still-motion response using original artwork by molly tillotson

silence / 1

sound & still-motion response using original artwork by cecilia ramon

silence / 1

not

silence
ghosts breathe
blankness
snow
an emptyness or forest
trace of birds or cloud
wind ...

silence

graphite line
drawn / stillness

blank paper
frayed lines
shadow and light

poema en tres actos / poem in three acts

escena uno / scene one

una mujer mira con calma—sentada—ventana / a woman looks calmly—seated—window
decide ser y dejar que sea lo que supo siempre / she decides to be and to let be what she always knew
un anhelo hoy, un saber de siempre-desposeer-desposeerse / today a longing, a knowing that has always been-to desposess- to let go of oneself

sabemos que habla de lo que ha comprendido siempre y no pudo vivirlo / we know that she is talking of what she has known forever and could not live (it)

que no quede nada / may nothing be left
que devenga una transparencia total / may a total transparency arrive (become)

escena dos / scene two

el poema deviene cuenco, luz, instante / the poem becomes vessel, light, instant
la voz---murmullo / the voice---a whisper


escena tres / scene three

una niña---una palma al sol---una mirada sola / a girl---a palm to the sun---a gaze alone

dejar todo / to let everything be

si fuera un dibujo / if it would be a drawing

dos espirales que se entrecruzan / two spirals intersecting
no hay centro / no center
no hay bordes / no edges
no hay fin / no end
amarillo profundo a blanco a perforacion / from deep yellow-white-perforation
dos puntos de vista / two points of view

correspondences / I

reflections around love root / silk thread, poem by Sheila Packa
january, 2011 / language-spanish / place-north America-USA- latitude 49 and beyond

poema vertical / vertical poem
ascenso-descenso / ascending-descending
despojamiento y al despojarse, el vuelo / relinquishing and through it, flight
una fuerza ascendente que toca y se va / an ascending force that touches and falls
una fuerza que crece raices-tierrra-gravedad / a force that grows roots-earth-gravity
espirales sin oposicion-simultaneos-persistentes / spirals without opposition-simultaneous-persistents
las palabras indican-apuntan y dejan caer / words point-aim and let fall
testigp-la confianza sobria de ver lo que es / witness-the sober trust of seeing what is
desposesion que no es desamparo, es circuito total-retorno-encuentro / despossesion that is not forloness, total cycle-returning-encounter

Brokenness

Kathy McTavish's video work is original. This is a recomposition of image into music.

The camera is the saxophone of John Coltraine, and she is blowing endless notes. Improvs with stills. A sequencing of the light.

She finds beauty in made objects. Brokenness. Decoding the industrial genome. Ladders. Metalwork. Radiators. Pipes. Faucets. Drains. Mesh. Grids, spans. Spider webs. Window panes. Sidewalks. Oblique angles on the linear. Bricks, doors, overhead beams. An urban decay. Rust. Lime deposits. Silt, dust, grit.

Images return again and again and are made abstract. Images are layered and masked. There is an obsessiveness. A sky. Ghost images. Blurring. The movement is a change in angle. The focal point is shifting as are the lines of perspective. The eye of the camera takes in both near and far simultaneously.

Here is a deconstruction of the subject into color and light, and a deconstruction of the notion of film and movie. Time is slowed down and the frame becomes a magnifying glass. The object becomes a character and the light becomes ecstatic.

review of river icarus

River Icarus dawns more than begins as a strong warm tone grows and resonates in my chest. It pulses and fades as confused high sounds reach up, in, through and toward something. A faraway scream circles larger and larger as it dissolves into scratches. Now and then the high piercing tones stop and the result is a moment of calm, even joy – almost. The piercing tones come and go like thoughts disturbing a dream and I m not sure which to reach for.

I experience much of Kathy McTavish’s cello work as overlapping memory and thought references. Compared to earlier pieces, River Icarus is more clearly a journey. The pattern of references moves from a feeling of awakening through discord, discontent, scattered and confused thoughts into periods of almost clarity, almost comfort. The almost continually pulls me forward. It is the almost contained in every wave that lifts and lowers. And like those waves there is a signature pulsing, thrumming, relentless life that is sometimes disturbing and sometimes comforting. So it is the context that matters and it is the context that is hard to grasp and put into words. Each chord, each tone that grows toward clarity refers to a memory; I have heard that tone before – and every time I hear it the reference is stronger. It builds the way experience builds, life builds, so that each event holds the memory of the past until the background is thick, dense, complicated and the moment is fleeting like the echo of a harmonic.

As intellectual as McTavish’s work is it is not meant to be experienced intellectually; it is meant to move. That said I want to answer the question “What is creating the context here?”. And so with apology to Kathy and all listeners, I dissect: the harmonics come and go like thoughts, disturbed thoughts, enlightened thoughts, hopeful thoughts, back of my mind vague just out of reach thoughts. The lower, warm, almost organ-like chords enter like feelings of good will, like a mother’s smell, like deep sleep and fade like something almost grasped. What remains is a particular tonal memory that makes the presence of that chord or note stronger the next time. The context is created by repetition but it is not the stanza-chorus-stanza of more common music. Instead it is like traditional artwork that depends for power on the repetition of collected objects, the more feathers, shells, references to memory, the stronger its presence.

Now and again there is a hint at melody which implies something familiar and taps into the human desire to make sense of it. Sometimes a tone enters and leaves resonating like the striking of a bell. This acts to clear my ear and prepares me for the next body of sounds. I find myself hanging on a clear mid-tone that inevitably fades into something less comfortable. It leaves me yearning for the next clear tone as sounds fold into each other like the outgoing tide feeds the next wave.

River Icarus seems to resolve but as I remove my headphones I have the feeling that I am pulling out and the river continues. I didn’t travel this river, it flowed through me.

3 works by molly tillotson - notes

elemental - that is what finally emerged from my experience living with molly's work. three objects - water & color & glass, pale stone, and rough cloth. frayed brown fibers, worn carving / frozen honey, and stained paper. i moved the two sculptural objects around my room - placed them next to different colors & light. window light, lamp light, fire light, red, brown, blue, & green. their brown / pale / canvas & burlap textures were like a gravitational force. their textures intensified and blurred with the color. i used the threads / filaments from the cloth to create a color film "heart or cloud". i took many photos of the honey stone to see how it blurred into color & light - a smooth glacier melting & spinning stained by the sea around it. elemental ...

glacier dream

i had a dream
there was a door or a heart
a cloud or white cloth
& wind
past mountains
& sea
a relentless flowing

or it was an ancient glacier
stripped of ice
barren rock
worn smooth & pale

ghost stone
ghost cloth
ice dreams
infused with light
once soaked in color
now sand or
balding sun
cool moon

a nest of dreams
lost language
brief vision
lonely hands
a memory

& extinction
ancient seagull's landing
ancient ship

thread & ink

the window the dream the color
flood of color
waning light

pale stone pale cloth
far away long ago
there was a glacier
now stone
there was a cloud
now frayed ...

molly tillotson: 3 works

3 -
watercolor &
stone &
cloth

pond green water & pale translucent stone
burlap woven & frayed
thread unfurled & drifting
hands

shadows
dimly lit & winter night
luminous morning
pale ice & summer green
cave cloth

red table & 3
window & 3

not snow but rough grass
or glacial ice

not blue but smooth, pale surface
opaque & bending
surface slowly turning

textured - rough & smooth
2 small sculptures
& watercolor
infinite lily pads
lily pads spilling across canvas
infinite pond
sky

water with color - pigment fluid
elemental forms ... water, stone, fabric

not lake but color
not iron but bone
stone like bone
ancient human
cloth or hair
or glacier

cloth dream & stone

search for iron

a wanderer
a stone
a cloth

the forge the fire
the blacksmith
welding elements
fusing metals

now a pond
silent &
pensive
still water or
glass

not iron
brown jade
the color of sand
a simple sack of feathers

a frayed sack of feathers
threads woven into branches

& flight
wax wings
pale stone

or cloud

elemental / 1

homestead & bees
in a forest ...
near the great sea ...
or lake ...
near iron ...
bent compass.

Elemental work - a close, working relationship to material
- a worker's relationship to materials.

Sensual & pragmatic - hammer, fire & brush.
Glacier memories from Antarctic summers
And heat from welder's torch. Her work has a fluid strength.
A miner or spider or water bearer.
Fragile iron.