Intimate Scale

"Brenda Observed"

Flashed glass, sandblasted

by Cynthia Oliver, 2006

I have more ideas than I have focus. I get a terrific concept going. I flesh it out so that image matches thought. Then once done, I shelve the whole thing. Not always, but frequently. This behavior leads me to believe that I am more connected to process than the end result. There is a great deal of thinking going on. Subconscious processing of how to bring a concept to fruition. It may look like I'm not working, but I am.

My artist friend Suzanne, has been a good resource for listening and sharing. We toss out ideas, share each others eye, thoughts and reactions. With her help, I have been able to revisit some of those projects and concepts that I've shelved. Most recently, we've discussed scale and how both of us use scale as a device to bring you in closer. We discussed what our intentions are, and mostly it's a device used to ask you to be an active participant in the experience.

When learning to paint and draw, I was taught to work big. It was not a requirement, just a suggestion that we work on large, oversized canvas in order to loosen up. After learning to work big, we could explore the scale, perhaps a different scale, that was a fit for our concept and imagery. At times, a large canvas can feel impersonal. More like something to fill a wall with, than something to tell a story with.

My desire is to draw you in. Show you on an intimate level what it is that I want to share. I want you to get close, to look closely. A small scale pulls you in and requires you to come closer, to put your face right up to the piece, to put it in your hands so that you can find the detail in the story. Like hearing a whisper, you have to hold still, and pay attention. You can feel the breath in your ear, and hear the soft words only if you pay attention. So part of my ideal is to experience and create moments of intimacy. So I am practicing my work on a smaller scale.

"Portrait of Brenda"
flashed glass, sandblasted.
by Cynthia Oliver, 2006
This desire to create work that is about an intimate connection is also informing my work with portraits. Beyond scale, I am thinking of the composition and how that influences the story being told, or the personality being exposed.

I started these drawings of Brenda several months ago. I had been working on portraits (my own and of other people), and had a few ideas for sculptural pieces that were like kaleidoscopes in that they begged the viewer to peer inside to see what was there. I thought I would put portraits in these pieces. Not of specific persons you would recognize, but images that would ask you to think about who you were looking at. These would require you to take the time to observe and hopefully entice you to want to take the time to consider what it is you are looking at.
The concept is still stewing in my head. I don't know for certain what I want to put inside of these pieces. Should they be representational images of people, individuals in specific situations. Should it be an abstracted image, but only abstracted to the degree that you know what you are seeing, but still must interpret the story it tells? I am not happy with the solutions I've gotten to so far, so will shelve the project for a while longer. But I am happy with these portraits of Brenda.

I wanted to post the flashed glass portraits of Brenda. In these portraits, I wanted to describe her thoughtfulness, her internal world of thinking before acting, and her great honesty which she shares easily, but carefully. I hope I succeeded.

Curiosity & Daphne Framed

"Daphne II"

"Daphne I"

"Curiosity and Her Keeper"

Impeccably and beautifully framed by my highly professional friends at the Wasatch Frame Shop.

http://www.wasatchframeshop.com

Thanks Bill and Brande.

These are ready for submission to the 13th Annual Hogle Zoo, "World of the Wild Art Show".

http://hoglezoo.org/

The color seen here is fairly close to true. No more crazy color. The etchings now framed, are fabulous. The framing completed the project wonderfully ~ and I am totally thrilled with the results.

Visual Memoir

"Age Observed"
by Cynthia Oliver
Pencil on Paper 2005

Thinking about the Glass Guild project piqued my interest with the concept of Self Portrait.

A cast glass sculpture of a face that is taken from life begins with a molded impression taken from the subject, and ends with a three dimensional replication of flesh and bone. Unless modified, it is simply a representation without interpretation. A cast taken from a face is a record of a visage, but not necessarily of who that face belongs to, who that person is. I wondered what it would look like if altered and molded as an interpretation. More specifically, how would I modify my own cast image to represent myself as I wanted to be seen.

I decided to explore the idea of Self Portrait, and how I would want to describe myself. What would I want to show, and how would I show it? How do I see myself, and what do I want to expose? In essence, a self portrait is a visual memoir, and as the author, I can choose whether to embellish, obscure, or lay clear before you my reality. What would I do? How would I write this brief memoir?

I started with sketches. I am aging, and it is interesting to watch my appearance evolve. I can see the years of abuse, exposure and experience displayed and expressed on my face and body. I wanted to illustrate that life rather than hide it. I wanted those lines to describe a life lived. For me, sketching is a fact finding process, and what I was seeing, and putting down on paper, was more than lines as an expression of age.

"Outside Looking In"

by Cynthia Oliver

Pencil on Paper. 2005

The "Outside Looking In" drawing went beyond a description of what I saw, and became more about who I am - about who I think I am. This drawing is unfinished, yet it well describes my sense of being on the outside of things, and of being an observer more than a participant. I pay attention to the small moments around me. I draw them, I paint them, I tell stories about them. This sketch is drawn from an angle and perspective that is a bit outside of the picture plane, a bit out of frame, it's me, standing on the outside, looking in.

Outside, Looking In

I belong to the Glass Artists Guild of Utah. We were casting the faces of the entire guild for the purposes of having a likeness of each member. A cast glass likeness of each, that would be grouped together en masse as a sculptural representation of the whole. I like the concept. A series as a body of work, a collaboration of individuals that represents the group. But I didn't participate in the casting party. I didn't sign up, and I didn't show up. My lack of participation was as a result of an unwillingness to leave my house. It's a form of intertia, a mild but persistent depression. A depression that feels like I'm often on the outside, looking in.

I would like to do the project and add my face, cast in glass, to the others. In hindsight, I realize that my lack of focus, and my lack of motivation to get myself to the casting party has possibly let the membership of the Glass Guild down. Maybe I've left a hole where they would like to see a representation of me. Perhaps my lack of participation looks like an act of arrogance or indifference. It isn't either of those things, but more an act of isolationism. It's easier for me that way.

Bella

"Bella ~ Sleeping"

Pencil on Foamcore

by Cynthia Oliver 2005

I've had the flu. I was down with fever and chills and every other evil associated with flu. For a couple of days I slept and sweated, coughed and chilled, sneezed and had fever induced surrealist dreams. But for the exception of the few necessary trips to the out of doors, Bella was in bed with me, constantly by my side.

I'd love to believe that it was because she knew I was sick, and that she was devoted to me. I'd love to believe that she did it because she knew I needed her there with me as comfort and companion in my time of need. In reality, I believe it was because she could lie unmoved in a super soft, pillow-topped bed with multiple layers of comforters, day in and day out. I believe this because when I had to leave our comfy nest of cushion and covers to minister to and monitor my flu with teas, tissues and thermometers ~ she didn't leave her post. Not once. Undisturbed, she stolidly awaited my return.

"Nose ~ Dry and Warm"

Pencil on Foamcore

by Cynthia Oliver 2005

" Ear ~ Supple and Long"

Pencil on Foamcore

by Cynthia Oliver 2005

Life Drawing

"Rachel" from life drawing class 1996.

18" x 24" Nupastel on paper

by Cynthia Oliver

I am fascinated by people. I am drawn to watch their movements and their interactions. I observe and assess. I am as interested in the form as I am the action. Peoples hands, their faces, their poses, all tell a story that I want to know.

I will listen in on the most mundane of conversations. Not my own mind you, but the conversations of the those around me. I listen in on the conversations that are none of my business, the conversations that I am supposed to be politely disengaged from. I am unashamedly one of those people.

I have been known to be out with my husband at a restaurant, and instead of focusing my attention on him, I am watching our neighbors. I am fabricating a history for the couple that has been eating and drinking at the corner table in silence, barely making eye contact. Or for the man who appears to be a weekend father, trying to make up for lost time with his nearly adult aged kids by taking them out for a lavish meal. He's talking too big, and smiling too much. The kids are looking bored and slightly hostile. I can barely pay attention to my own evening for being distracted by the lives of others.

I watch people. I remember watching one young boy with his parents, and he was using his middle finger to scrape repeatedly at the thumbnail on the same hand. There was a world of tension in that movement, a world of anxiety. I could see it in his hands, and the way he watched his parents as if knowing, but hoping against hope, that no matter what he did or how he did it, it would be all wrong.

Today, I was at the neighborhood coffee spot, waiting for my friend to join me. I was listening to the couple at the table next to me. They were young. Twenty-something. Lean, healthy and hip looking. A woman entered the shop. She was wearing black mid thigh exercise pants and a lycra tank. There is a gym nearby, and this is a trendy, healthy, biking/hiking kind of neighborhood - so her attire wasn't unusual, but her weight was. This woman was middle aged, average height, and couldn't have weighed 100 lbs. The woman sitting at the table next to me commented to her boyfriend with a note of a contempt, "Look at the old anorexic who just blew in the door. It's great to be home, isn't it?"

I began to take the measure of the woman I was formerly only listening to. Now I was weighing her attributes, determining her age, education, social status and income bracket. She was taking this anorectic woman's inventory, and now I was going to take hers. I wondered what it was that made her disdain this thin and fragile woman. I wasn't interested in the woman who appeared to be in self imposed ill health, but with the young woman sitting next to me. I wished I could ask her, "What is it about the anorectic woman that is illustrative of your being back home?" and "Why the tone of disdain?" But if I asked her, my ill mannered eavesdropping would be exposed. Instead, I made up a history for her. I made up a story that would answer all of my questions and satisfy all of my curiosity.

Life drawing class was like that for me. A daily session where I got to be an overt observer of another human being, and to create and tell a story with Nupastel and impunity.