DAW N A R ROW S M I T HSculpture and painting: a brief Survey

D a w n a r r o w s m i t h

sculpture and Painting:a Brief survey

University art GalleryDepartment of art

College of the artsCalifornia state University, stanislaus

500 copies printed

Dawn arrowsmith - sculpture and Painting: a Bief survey

University art GalleryDepartment of artCollege of the artsCalifornia state University, stanislaus

september 9 - october 23, 2009

this exhibition and catalog have been funded by:associated students instructionally related activities, California state University, stanislaus

Copyright © 2009 California state University, stanislausall rights reserved. no part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the written permission of the publisher.

University art GalleryCollege of the artsCalifornia state University, stanislausone University Circleturlock, Ca 95382

Catalog Design: Kristina stamper, College of the arts, California state University, stanislausCatalog Printing: Claremont Print and Copy, Claremont, CaCatalog Photography: Courtesy of the artist

isBn: 978-0-9802410-6-8

Cover image: Bridgedance, 1983, 98” x 48” x 48”, wood, cement, cord, screen, and SONG BLUE/golden light, 60” x 60”, acrylic on canvas

Contents

Director’s Foreword .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .4

Visual Sensations

Essay by suvan Geer . .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .5

images.. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .9

List of works .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ..28

Curriculum Vitae .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ..30

acknowledgments .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ..32

4

Director’s Foreword

this exhibition, Dawn arrowsmith - Painting and sculpture: a Brief survey, represents an overview of a quarter century of Dawn arrowsmith’s work. arrowsmith’s work has mainly been created in the Los angeles area of southern California. From the natural quality of willow branches to investigations into circles that have lead to a meditative state, arrowsmith has constantly created outstanding work that totally captures the viewer. i am very pleased to be able to exhibit her work for others to enjoy.

many colleagues have been instrumental in presenting this exhibition. i would like to thank Dawn arrowsmith for the honor of exhibiting her astonishing work, suvan Geer for her amazing essay, College of the arts, California state University, stanislaus for the wonderful catalog design and Claremont Print and Copy for their expertise in printing this catalog.

a great thanks is extended to the instructionally related activates Program of California state University, stanislaus as well as anonymous donors for the funding of the exhibition and catalogue. their support is greatly appreciated.

Dean De Cocker, DirectorUniversity art GalleryCalifornia state University, stanislaus

5

By suvan Geer

Before me hangs a large painting of three tightly nesting circles on a square of natural canvas. the circles are blue, the same flawlessly brilliant blue as a cloudless morning sky over the Pacific. in fact the color is so clear and seamless the circle’s roundness feels almost solid. it seems to hover before my eyes like a flattened orb filled with radiant atmosphere. as i pause before that image my breathing slows, my mind relaxes and a kind of absorbing, concentrated focus pulls at my eyes. the longer i look the more active the color becomes until i realize i’m snared; caught up in an animated act of looking.

the pleasure of gazing at Dawn arrowsmith’s recent paintings of big, boldly colored circles that send after-image haloes of complementary color flashing from around the square canvas’ edges never wavers. they look so simple. Yet in their unexpected visual punch is a lingering sense that something unnamed but powerful is being summoned by the works’ open, distilled clarity.

art, as a purely visual language leaves plenty of room for an invocation of things that elude being named. Because it is a realm of constructed experience artists can use it to reach for almost inexpressible things whose traces we find imbedded within the visible. arrowsmith’s art reveals itself to have always been interested in what is hidden within what can be seen and felt in a tangible world. the benefit of any survey, but particularly of work as distilled as hers, is the opportunity it offers to see the work as a whole, plucking at the edges of individual threads to see what holds them together. what this 27 year survey of her work makes evident is just how the artist is using her art to investigate and question the meaning of a world of tangible matter and ephemeral making.

Beginning with her early willow and wood linear sculptures arrowsmith called up nature as a real, but very fragile, material substance. a substance, however, that is also a dynamic, animating force. Because she literally built those linear sculptures around her own body, and we engage them with our own when we walk close, the differences between their mass and weight and ours is a tangible experience of contrasting physical presence. arrowsmith has remarked that she “grew up looking at mt. rainer” and her work from the early 80’s presents us with her finely attuned body-awareness to scale and mass as well as the importance of a direct physical experience. what fragile looking pieces like “twin” and “metanoia” lack in solid bulk they more than compensate for in an organic, exuberant, space-spanning suggestion of growth. next to the uplift and sprawling animation of their quiet presence the viewer is encouraged to feel the weight, density and compaction of their own body. it’s a sensation so clearly enunciated by walking that it carries with it unspoken questions about what it means that such solid bodies really do live and move.

Pursuing that question the artist has over the years, literally hiked and walked all over California and the world; climbing the himalayas to the Everest base camp, living in tents, sleeping under the stars. abstractions of those places and elements frequently made their way into images like her 1988 bas relief, “Quiet steps”. Literally seeming to embody what might have been only a brief glimpse of a majestic male deer outlined against the sky the thickly carved wood of this piece seems to meditate on what that ephemeral glance could signify. the buck’s antlers show up as a shallow, negative shape of clear wood outlined against the more deeply carved, whirling force of the heavens. on one side of the carved and stained relief delicate footprints silently echo as abstract shapes impressed into a black and timelessness

Visual sensations

6

night of whirling of stars and other constellations. Like a quick look that burns itself into memory the relief’s massive physicality weights the impact of a glance into something as cosmic as it is corporeal.

the body turns out to be a constant touchstone and storehouse for arrowsmith’s art. we literally see human limbs floating in sensuous color in paintings on birch panel from the early 90’s like “rational mystery”. in this painting glazes of vivid red form both a pigmented veil and blood enriched ground for a visual juggling act of cascading plant forms, glowing yellow circles, and numbers on the verge of disappearing. the wood’s surface is lightly carved, subtly asserting a very tactile suggestion of the painting’s surface as a skin from a once living plant. that’s a reminder of reality’s fundamental physicality that arrowsmith maintained even as her representations of the human body abstracted into suggestions of micro cell structure and her painted surfaces moved from wood to more permeable stained canvas. Perhaps because the artist was so intensely focused on the body over the years her use of color, tactile mark and surface became increasingly sensitive, refined and important. as her paintings transitioned from deeply carved blocks of thick wood to lightly gouged and painted panels, and then onto canvas their imagery was also simplified and distilled. in the mid 90’s she began counting the amassed years in the life of the world’s oldest woman as 120 liquid dots of thick pink paint delicately touched to the surface of a canvas. it’s a tender but haunting act of reduction for an artist to make. touch is, after all, such an inquisitive and sensory act. still, by condensing a life simply to its years the artist seems to ponder not only longevity but artistic production. as if, in the repeated act of marking or counting might be found a simple truth about what makes life worth living. an artist’s touch typically produces, it marks, it creates, it expresses. arrowsmith’s paintings from this time distill touch down to a simple dot (or as in the installation, “Cerulean time”, to a vaguely figurative shape in white wax formed by squeezing and the warmth of a hand). Both ‘touches’ are lingering, visible signs of presence and artistic production that in their repetition ultimately probe the very silent question about what it is that makes all actions meaningful.

Dorothea rockburne once said of the feelings generated by her spare folded, transparent linear drawings that “a feeling is not an inner disposition, but an objective transcending relation which has as its object to learn what it is.” 1 arrowsmith’s interrogation of the feelings and meanings generated by a repeated, painterly touch to a canvas were ongoing. it was an exploration she admits was deeply influenced by her trips to morocco and China as well as her mediation and studies of Buddhism as taught by Lama surya Das. soon she was using a toothpick dipped in thin paint to visibly mark small flecks and flaws in the weave of the natural canvas she loved to paint on. in the way the tiny dots proliferated and spread we sense the artist’s desire to unify and integrate all the experiences she was enjoying in her life and travels but also, and perhaps more profoundly, her abiding affection for matter’s surface imperfections and the creative importance of the artist’s touch. in the dot paintings arrowsmith’s use of color became even more body oriented, reflecting the sensual, intense colors of the moroccan and indian foods and spices she was feasting on with mouth and eyes. her grounds in paintings like “Empyreal saffron” and “Eight treasures tea” are intense, and pleasantly warm to the eyes. their patterns and shapes fade in and out, sending the eye skimming over the deeply stained ground as if in search of some order sensed but perhaps not fully materialized in the forms presented in the paintings. in a nod to her own cooking as well as Kandinsky and his investigation of synchronicity’s powerful sensory cross over, she calls the warm acrylic colors she stained into these dot covered canvases ‘fragrances’.

“Color”, Donald Kuspit has written, “is nature at its most conspicuous and forceful.”2 and it is color that arrowsmith has apparently singled out as one of the most essential elements of a sensuous visual

7

experience. she terms “ecstatic” the influential colors in a matisse print she sees daily, and it is helpful to recall that ‘ecstasy’ refers to an experience of elation and bliss so extreme it moves one beyond rational thought. Because arrowsmith regards color as a transcendent physical experience it seems logical that, as an inquisitive, artist who continually probes and distills things to their essence, she would attempt to break down and analyze the slim number of elements used in dot paintings like “Buddha within”. in the deep, translucent red of that painting, with its large, centralized oval form held open by pale edges we can see the beginnings of her brightly colored circle paintings with their vibrant central orb.

the circle has a long history of meaning and use in art, myth and culture. arrowsmith herself describes it as a “profound” shape of “exquisite” physical balance that reflects everything from the curvature of the earth to complete satiety. in its pure geometric perfection the circle suggests everything rational - from the null emptiness of zero, to a mobius strip’s ongoing infinity of change. By coupling such a basic form with the intensity of pure color the artist converts a symbol of thought and mind into a body based feeling. By turning art’s direct experience into a contemplative, stimulating act for the viewer she joins her work to others like rothko, anish Kapoor, Bridget riley, James turrell and robert irwin.

in her poetic essay on art “the Untroubled mind”, agnes martin, a painter sensitive to the active engagement possible in viewing art’s highly refined elements, wrote: “when you have inspiration and represent inspiration the observer makes the painting.”3 arrowsmith’s simplified language of large geometric shapes made with slightly translucent pigmented paint, laid down by hand, one on top of the other on a raw canvas ground are the essence of representative inspiration. what they offer is a compelling, mindful engagement with the embodied experience of sight.

1 “Dorothea rockburne: working with the Golden section 1974-76”, exh. cat. (new York: John weber Gallery, 1976), p. 7.

2 Donald Kuspit, “Concerning the spiritual in Contemporary art”, in the spiritual in art: abstract Painting 1980-198, ex. cat. (Los angeles County museum of art, 1986), p 323.

3 agnes martin, “the Untroubled mind (1972)” in theories and Documents of Contemporary art, edited by Kristine stiles and Peter selz, (Los angeles, University of California Press, 1996) p 130.

8

9

i m a G E s

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

List of works

page 10 Triptech: Twin, 1982 3 parts, 120” x 24” x 72”, 120” x 24” x 24”, 120” x 24” x 30” willow wood, cement, twine (artist with work)

page 11 Paradigm Partner, 1982 144” x 288” x 120” (2 parts) willow wood, twine, cement

page 12 Metanoia, 1982 108”x 60”x 36” willow wood, lath, cord, cement, acrylic

page 13 Quiet steps, 1988 30”x 90”x 2 ½” (3 panels) carved wood relief, oil

page 14 Orbitary, 1989 66”x 66”x 4 ½” carved wood relief, oil stain, wax Private Collection

page 15 Mountain Aura, 1987 24”x 24”x 3” carved wood bas relief, oil

page 16 Rational Mystery, 1991 36”x 36” carved wood panel, oil Collection of security national Bank

page 17 Birthplace of Poets, 1993 64 ½” x 48” carved panel, oil Collection of sun america/Eli Broad

page 18 Longevity: Beauty, 1995, 60” x 48” oil on canvas

29

page 19 Field Flight, 1996 72” x 60” oil, acrylic, tape on canvas

page 20 Cerulean Time (an installation), 1996 144” x 144” x 144” paper, string, wax Collection of Ducal Palace, Gubbio, italy

page 21 Cerulean Time (detail) reshaped votive candles

page 22 Empyreal Saffron (Vata 21), 1997 48” x 60” acrylic on canvas

page 23 Eight Treasures Tea, 2001 60” x 48” acrylic on canvas Collection of Cori B. steinberg

page 24 Buddha Within, 2001 60” x 48” acrylic on canvas Collection of Jay and Judith Friedman

page 25 Being Blue-Violet, 2008 36” x 36” acrylic on canvas Collection of Beryl Cowley

page 26 AMBER/turquoise glow, 2003 48” x 48” acrylic on canvas

page 27 installation of Circle Paintings at huntington Beach Center for art, 2003

30

Dawn arrowsmith

Born in san Francisco, California, arrowsmith graduated from Claremont Graduate University, Claremont,California, where she received an m.F.a. in 1982. in 1976, she received a B.F.a. cum laude from California state University in Fullerton, California. her solo exhibitions include irvine Fine arts Center, irvine, California (2008); Upfront Gallery, Ventura, California (2006); huntington Beach art Center, huntington Beach, California (2003); toomey-tourell Gallery, san Francisco (2002); East China University art Gallery, shanghai, China (2000); rio hondo College art Gallery, whittier, California (1998); Daniel saxon Gallery, Los angeles (1991, 1992); and the East Gallery, Claremont Graduate University, Claremont (1982).

arrowsmith has been included in group exhibitions at the Jancar Gallery, Los angeles, California (2008); museum of Design, arts and architecture, Culver City, Ca (2008); rubyGreen art Center, nashville, tennessee (2008); toomey-tourell Gallery, san Francisco (2008); dba256 Gallery, Pomona, California (2007); ruth Bachofner Gallery, santa monica, Ca (2007); museum of Contemporary art, minsk, Belarus (2006); Domestic setting, Venice, Ca (2005); Louisiana tech University art Gallery, ruston, La (2005); riverside art museum, riverside, Ca (2005); schneider museum of art, ashland, or (2004); (two person) acuna-hansen Gallery, Los angeles (2002); Los angeles County museum of art, Los angeles (2001); orange County Center for the arts, santa ana (2001); (two person) Double vision Gallery, Los angeles (2001); raid Projects, Los angeles (2001); santa Barbara Contemporary arts Forum, santa Barbara (1998); the Ducal Palace, Gubbio, italy (1996); UCLa/armand hammer museum of art, Los angeles (1996); Clark humanities museum Gallery Claremont, California (1996); Laguna Beach museum of art, Laguna Beach, California (1996); the Broad art Foundation, santa monica (1995); East Gallery Claremont Graduate University, Claremont (1991); riverside art museum, riverside, California (1990); Peggy Phelps Gallery, Claremont Graduate University, Claremont (1990); Lidovy Gallery, Prague, Czech rep. (1989); rex wignall museum, alta Loma, California (1986); Los angeles Contemporary Exhibitions Los angeles (1983); and the Los angeles municipal art Gallery, Los angeles (1983).

arrowsmith currently lives and works in Los angeles, California.

31

sELECtED rEaDinGs

reiss, roland, (essay) “Dawn arrowsmith, Path/collage”, color catalog, LEttra Printing, 2008Frank, Peter, “Eastern Promises”, L.a. weekly, Pick of the week (photo) nov. 2007.wiebe, stacey, “one-way ticket to the Void”, VCreporter, art & Culture, Ventura, Ca (photo) 2006Frank, Peter, (essay) “out of Line”, color catalog, 2005, traveling exhibition.Cullum, Jerry “abstract Los angeles”, atlanta Journal-Constitution, atlanta, Ga 2004 miles, Christopher, (essay) “Dawn arrowsmith, Paintings”, color catalog, Fine art Printing, Los angeles, 2002wells, Elenore, “Dawn arrowsmith and ron Griffin,” artscene, september 2001 (photo)Ledgerwood, Janice, “rising tide”. orange County Center for the arts, santa ana, California, color

catalog, 2001Baker, Kenneth, “two Painters at toomey tourell,” san Francisco Chronicle, Datebook, august 12, 2000Gleason, mat, “art world Portrait of Dawn arrowsmith,” Coagula art Journal, (photo by r. newton) #30, 1997sannipoli, secundo and John o’Brien, Dal Campo D’osservazione, the Ducal Palace, Gubbio, italy,

catalog, 1996Davis, randal, “Unexpected Conjunctions,” art View, sacramento, July, p. 9 (cover color photo) 1993Geer, suvan, art reviews, Los angeles times, april 18, p. E5,1991Frank, Peter, “to be Young, Gifted and Los angeleno,” Visions magazine, June p. 24 (color photo), 1989Gabalova, Zdenka, stephen Eisenman, and Peter Frank. Dialogue/Prague/Los angeles, Prague, Czech

rep., (color catalog) 1989muchnic, suzanne, “magical mystery tour.” Los angeles times, December 1983norklan, Kami, “6th Downtown artists’ show,” artweek, march 26,1983, “Pick of the week,” L.a. weekly,

3/1983.

32

acknowledgements

California state University, stanislaus

Dr. hamid shirvani, President Dr. william Covino, Provost/Vice President of academic affairs

mr. Daryl Joseph moore frsa, Founding Dean, College of the arts

ms. susana Gajic-Bruyea, Vice President for University advancement

Department of art

Gordon senior, Chair, Professor

Dean De Cocker, associate Professor

Jessica Gomula, assistant Professor

David olivant, Professor

Dr. roxanne robbin, Professor

richard savini, Professor

Dr. hope werness, Professor Emeritus

rowena d’mar shimun, administrative support assistant

Christian hali, instructional support technician ii

Jon Kithcart, Equipment technician ii

University art Gallery

Dean De Cocker, Director

the artist extends special thanks to Dean De Cocker, Kristina stamper, suvan Geer, roni Feldman, max Kitty and special-special thanks to roland reiss.