Art Event 2
Pam Cardwell
Pam Cardwell was a visiting artist, who gave a lecture on both her travels of Turkey, the Republic of Georgia, and Armenia and her related artwork. She spoke about her interests in abstracted art, repetition correlated to the ancient artwork she studied while abroad. She also takes a lot of inspiration from nature, based off her childhood home that was surrounded by wooded area.
She mainly works in watercolor, acrylic, and oil paints, and she also does drawings but many of the sketches she showed were a part of her painting process. And actually what I found most interesting was her working process. She would go out into spaces, typically nature spots, and collect data for her next possible project. She would sketch out some forms of twigs, leaves, etc while outside and also take some back with her for a wider visual vocabulary to draw from. Then she would go back into her studio and work. She would work from memory, sketches, and whatever source material she brought back to start the process of reworking. While in studio, Cardwell would sketch out, almost obsessively, over and over to figure out the forms she wanted. The sketches turn out very abstracted, far from an easily recognizable shape of a leave or something of that matter. She would typically spend month on one drawing. She would then proceed to paint over top of the drawing. The paintings she did were large scale, normally around 40 by 35 feet.
On one project in particular, she showed images of, the space she was going to exhibit on was a rounded wall. She shared that it was somewhat difficult because it forced her process of work to function differently. Cardwell had to use parachute cloth, which she treated like rice paper, and essentially do the paintings panel by panel of the cloth. She was drawn to the challenging space because of the connection the space had with the ancient manuscript work on the walls of Turkey and Armenia she had studied. The abstraction of form and repetition found within her work of these nature source material correlated to the quillwork, and the religious paintings she saw while in the Republic of Georgia.
I thought overall it was an interesting lecture. I was surprised at how well the topics of interest including her art travels abroad, and her love of reworking and abstracting natural forms worked together. The two created an enjoyable visual dialogue in her work, and peak my thoughts onto how I can mix personal topics of interest into my art and how I can view my art.