by Marja-Leena

Jutai Toonoo’s silent stones

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New and Improved, 2000
serpentinite 12.5″ high x 8″ wide x 6″ deep
Inscription: New and Improved Fertility God

Jutai Toonoo of Cape Dorset currently has a solo exhibition “Life Forms” at the Marion Scott Gallery at 308 Water Street, Vancouver, until September 25.

The gallery website states: Toonoo is best known for his unconventional images of human heads and figures, many of which are portrayed in restless sleep- or dream-like states. Carved mostly from locally quarried green and black serpentinite, Toonoo’s sculptures range in stature from a few inches to several feet and are rendered in a style that is both minimal and eerily expressionistic.

The gallery has posted 32 images of Tootoo’s work on their site – have a look. I think it is this expressionism together with the human figure and face that makes his work so compelling.

Then read this review by Robin Laurence, called Inuit artist makes silent stones speak :

His work is quite distinct from our cultural preconceptions of what Inuit art should look like. The sculptures are executed in serpentinite, local to the Cape Dorset area, yet there are no images of Arctic animals here… Instead, the gallery is filled with bare human faces and figures.

Many of the faces are carved in multiple configurations, conjoined in surreal ways, curved around, above, and beside each other, or facing in opposite directions, Janus-like. Instead of depicting the traditional Inuit way of life, or even that life in transition, Toonoo has taken on a universal theme: the human condition. At the same time, his art is extremely personal. “I try to give power to my work,” he says. “Lots of times, my tongue gets tied and I can’t really say what I’m thinking.” The silent stone gives him eloquence.

August 25, 2005 in Art Exhibitions, Modern Rock Art, Other artists 4 Comments »

by Marja-Leena

Maori Art in America

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Kaitaka 1999 (detail)
Artist: Te Aue Davis; assisted by Bill Solomon
Photo credit: Norman Heke
Image copyright: Toi Maori Aotearoa

I came across this headline in Google News: “Millions in US tune in to Maori art”  
(25.08.05 in New Zealand Herald)
 
More than 9 million people have been exposed to New Zealand Maori culture and tourism at the recent Maori Art Meets America event in San Francisco. Tourism New Zealand spent $1.5 million preparing the exhibition, which ran for 10 days in the Yerba Buena Centre in central San Francisco this month and will now move on to other sites in the United States. The exhibition, organised in association with Toi Maori Aotearoa, was one of the largest New Zealand-focused events to take place in the United States.

I hadn’t heard anything about this in my blog roams and do wish I’d been there to see it. This exhibition appears fascinating, beginning with a dramatic dawn ceremony of Maori canoes coming in to meet the Ohlone in San Francisco (view slideshow).

I believe the Maori are presently the most organized, recognized and culturally revitalized of all the world’s indigenous people. Art is a tremendously important part of their culture. The site dedicated to this exhibition, Toi Maori, has a lot of interesting articles, photos and additional links. I enjoyed reading about their contemporary art and its evolution:

At the same time as ideas are moving forward, they are also returning. The interest in Maori contemporary art is helping to rekindle the creative energy of past traditions. Fuelled by new technology, the mind-broadening effects of world travel and the freedom to express their opinions, contemporary Maori artists are looking at their tribal histories for inspiration.

Have any readers seen this show? I wonder to which other locations in the USA and perhaps Canada it will be traveling?

August 24, 2005 in Art Exhibitions, Culture 1 Comment »

by Marja-Leena

Marlene Dumas in Helsinki

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Marlene Dumas
Female, 1992-93
from the series Female
211 tusche and charcoal drawings
Sammlung Garnatz, Städtische Galerie Karlsruhe

“Kunsthalle Helsinki will offer a unique opportunity to see works by one of the hottest names in contemporary art, Marlene Dumas. The show presents an exceptionally broad retrospective of the artist’s production from the 1970s up to the present. Born in South Africa in 1953, Dumas lives and works in the Netherlands. She is known for her masterful watercolours and subtle portraits. Her work enjoys an established status in major art museums and galleries and fetch unprecedented prices at auctions. Dumas’ work is currently on exhibit at the main venue of the Venice Biennial. Exhibitions of her work have been relatively rare in the Nordic countries, and the present show is the largest of its kind here.

Marlene Dumas’ paintings are a profound exploration of the human condition, of sexuality, birth and death, as well as psychological and philosophical themes. The show in Helsinki will include Female, a series of 211 female portraits that examines the representations of femininity, the gaze and the process of depiction and interpretation.”

“In addition to Female, the exhibition includes about thirty large oil paintings, gouaches and watercolours, as well as rare early drawings and sketches from the 1970s.” Read more…

View some of Dumas’ works at Art Daily’s Photo Gallery and Google Images.
images and words is Marlene Dumas’ own beautiful site.

I like her irreverent words, balancing her rather somber work, like these two excerpts from Marlene Dumas’ statement on women and painting:

“I paint because I am a woman.
(It’s a logical necessity.)”
“I paint because I am a religious woman.
(I believe in eternity.)”

ADDENDUM Sept.26.05: The Saatchi Gallery in London, UK has a fine page on Marlene Dumas.

August 23, 2005 in Art Exhibitions, Other artists 2 Comments »

by Marja-Leena

Janus Study II

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Janus Study II
reduction drypoint
56.5 x 38 cm.

August 21, 2005 in Older Works, Printworks Comments Off on Janus Study II

by Marja-Leena

language leak

I must still be thinking about accents and language and identity because this article caught my eye and really struck a chord. A study says that languages ‘leak’ into each other in subtle ways:

While linguistics experts are reluctant to talk of a ‘third language’ being formed in the brain of an immigrant, studies are now beginning to show that the brain does find it difficult to completely compartmentalize two distinct languages without merging them in subtle ways, says U of T linguistics professor Ana Teresa Pérez-Leroux.

What we are finding is that we don’t and can’t have complete separation between different languages in our heads. Yes, you can become very talented with your acquired language but there will always be a kind of window in our brains where one language will always ‘leak’ into another.

For example, a fluently bilingual speaker may say something in almost perfect English with the exception of one or two words or word structures from their mother tongue infiltrating the sentence. One instance is a person whose native language is German and who has mastered the English language saying something like, “I to the dining room go.

(via mirabilis)

My own experience is that this language merge isn’t always so subtle, especially amongst the less educated working class immigrants. As regular readers know, I’m an immigrant, but I learned my second language as a child going through school. I was always very aware of the struggles with English that my parents’ generation of Finns and other immigrants experienced. Something very interesting happened to many of the Finns (and I believe this happens in other languages too) – they developed amongst themselves what became called “finglish”, a mixture of English and Finnish. They would take an English word and add a Finnish ending to it, usually a vowel. For someone who was unfamiliar with it, it sounded hilarious and puzzling. Long ago, I bookmarked an actual article about finglish as practised in the US. Some of the examples given are unfamiliar to me so they must be locally variable.

One time we were visiting with some family in Finland, at the same time as some other older relatives from Canada happened to also be there. My young Finnish cousin, who knew English fluently, was listening to their speech with a puzzled look on his face. He commented to me later that he was amazed that they could not speak English correctly nor could they speak Finnish properly either! Funny yet sad.

August 20, 2005 in Finland, Estonia & Finno-Ugric, Linguistics 6 Comments »

by Marja-Leena

Happy 80th

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Big Happy 80th Birthday Wishes to Thoroughly Modern Millie Garfield!
Millie shows us how much fun she’s having in life, even blogging at My Mom’s Blog.
Congratulations and have a wonderful day of celebration, Millie, and many more happy days and years ahead.

August 18, 2005 in Neat stuff Comments Off on Happy 80th

by Marja-Leena

artist-blogger interviewed

Roberta of roberta fallon and libby rosof’s artblog recently visited artist-blogger Anna L. Conti in San Francisco, then wrote a long, warm and fascinating interview of Anna, with plenty of photos of her in her studio. I’ve been looking out for this after Anna had written about Roberta’s visit and that there was a post pendig at artblog – and what a great one it is!

Anna’s Working Artist’s Journal has always been my favourite and most admired artist’s blog as long as I’ve been blogging myself, and I’m so pleased for her that the venerable artblog has featured her and revealed so many interesting things about this amazing artist and blogger.

I emailed Roberta to thank her for this wonderful post. I hope she won’t mind if I reveal some of her response which struck a chord of agreement in me:

the internet is so remarkable in its ability to bring people together. I just love that. anna said to me she wondered if the internet was creating the links or just revealing links that were already there. I kind of think it’s forcing community — in a good way. it’s something humans need badly and nowadays even more!

(By the way, look for another post forthcoming at artblog about Roberta’s and Anna’s gallery tour in SF.)

August 17, 2005 in Being an Artist, Other artists 4 Comments »

by Marja-Leena

accents

Artist Karen D’Amico of fluid thinking** wrote about how her accent betrays her roots even after 15 years in her new country. It got her “thinking about the notion of accent as a marker for identity.”

This subject always fascinates me too. I’m always interested in learning where people are from when I hear a foreign accent. Because I emigrated to Canada as a child and was educated here, I sound Canadian, unlike those who emigrate when older. (In Finland I sound Finnish, but what gives me away is my somewhat limited vocabulary.) Sometimes I wish I had a little bit of an accent for it sounds charming to my ear and would match my foreign name, a bit of vanity perhaps. A few people have said they detect a slight difference in the way I speak. Once I had a weird experience – an appliance salesman, who did not know my name, asked me if I am Finnish. This totally astounded me and I asked how he knew. He said his mother is Finnish, and it was the way I moved my mouth that was like hers. Isn’t that amazing?

Anyway, Karen found a fascinating link for a speech accent archive that I intend to explore in my leisure (not much of it these days).

** Reedited March 15th, 2013: Karen has not been at this blog address for some years, so link has been removed. I have now at last and quite accidentally found her new eponymous website: Karen Ay

August 16, 2005 in Being an Artist, Finland, Estonia & Finno-Ugric, Linguistics 1 Comment »

by Marja-Leena

Drawing: Janus Study

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Drawing for Janus Study
graphite, conté, coloured pencil
42 x 39 cm.

This drawing was the inspiration for the print Janus Study I.

August 14, 2005 in Drawings 1 Comment »

by Marja-Leena

Borneo rock art

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Stone Gallery Photograph by Carsten Peter

I’m really enjoying this month’s issue of the National Geographic magazine, particularly the beautiful article ‘Hands Across Time, Exploring the Rock Art of Borneo’, also found on NG’s website.

Deep within the cliffside caves of eastern Borneo, 10,000-year-old paintings featuring the hands of the artists themselves may offer clues about ancient migrations. Thus begins an excerpt of the article, well worth reading. Then view the photo gallery.

The interactive image is magical and powerful. Ghostly hands–many decorated with dots, dashes, and other patterns–reach out from the wall of Gua Tewet in the rain forest of eastern Borneo. Dated back to more than 10,000 years ago, the stenciled hands may suggest initiation or shamanistic rituals, perhaps related to prehistoric Aboriginal art in Australia. The French-Indonesian expedition team called hands connected by long curving lines, at right, a “tree of life.” The design may symbolize ties that connect individuals, families, territories, or spirits to each other.

Luc-Henri Fage, the author of this story, wrote on the occasion of this, his ninth expedition:

I’d thought back to my first expedition here 17 years ago. A documentary filmmaker and magazine editor, I had set out on a 700-mile (1,100-kilometer) trek from one end of Kalimantan to the other with a few caving friends. Halfway across the island, taking shelter under a rock, we found ancient charcoal drawings on the ceiling. When I returned to France, I was surprised to learn that no such rock art had ever been reported in Kalimantan. I returned in 1992 with Jean-Michel Chazine, a French archaeologist and specialist in Oceanian prehistory. Two years later we discovered prehistoric paintings in East Kalimantan. In 1995 Pindi Setiawan, an Indonesian anthropologist, joined our team, and together, year after year, we found dozens of caves with paintings throughout the region, some with unique designs hinting at a mysterious forgotten people.

They have found about 1,500 hand prints in 30 caves.

And then there is their marvellous website Le Kalimanthrope, about past expeditions and amazing photos of exquisite prehistoric artwork. Most of it is in French, but the numerous pages of photos with almost 40 photos of Gua Tewet speak for themselves.

August 13, 2005 in Photography, Rock Art & Archaeology 3 Comments »