Jerry Fenter

Last week I talked to an artist who has just returned to painting after a long period of time.  The conversation finally got to a familiar place, “Where do your ideas come from?” I tried to think fast on how to give him an easy answer, when out came, “I have so many ideas I could work another lifetime on just the ones already in my head.”  Not very helpful to him, I know, but wow…expressing that thought lit a bulb inside my head. Conceptios, inspirations, ideas, and creative thoughts seem to be easier to come by for some more than others. Some artists agonize over getting them, and are afraid to follow through with them.  Others can’t seem to stop their minds from grinding  them out and expressing them in paint, ink, crayon, music, mud,  gardening, photography or what ever might be their way of making themselves understood.

Having ideas and then making great art is a skill that comes from  many different places. When we are children we have endless imagination that creates uncountable ideas each hour and each minute. We may or may not choose to fully express those ideas because they may be scary, dangerous or way above our capabilities. Most of us artist types do follow them. We let our imaginations run wild, we experiment, we scribble, we cut, we paste,  we sing at the top of our voices and we sometimes see things that aren’t really there (or are they?).  When an idea is inconvenient or impractical to develop at a particular time true artists  file them away in their creative brains and keep them fresh and at their fingertips.

Having an idea is defined as the act or power of forming a mental image of something not present to the senses or not previously known or experienced.  This gives us as artists the freedom to go anywhere. We don’t need to travel the earth or the skies to paint what passes through our minds day or night (dreams).  If we feel stuck with no ideas it may be our own fault.

Self censorship. “I can’t put that on paper. It’s too embarrassing. My mother, father, teacher, children, the public will not be able to relate to what I’m imagining. It makes me too upset to write it.” So we stop ourselves and try to make only exact imitations of what we have seen or heard before. We try to make things so close to the real that we might as well take a picture.  But, artists, real life is just as interesting and weird as anything we can come up with. We must be brave, look hard at the world and express what is on our minds, in our heads and needs to get out.

Fear of rejection. Every artist I know fears rejection. The successful ones fear rejection less than the unsuccessful ones. That is why we’ve seen the weakest artists quit working during this awful recession. Some will never come back.  Financial ups and downs and rejection are both part of making a living from the creative process. Don’t paint for anyone but yourself.  My most successful paintings have been of ideas and subjects that I’m obsessed with. When I put them into a show, I find they sell better than any “pretty pictures” I might paint.  And they’re sure a lot more fun to finish.  They are real and I can be proud of them.

 How can I get and use ideas?  The answer is close enough to touch. You need to work to get ideas. You need to tap into that good memory of yours. Look at the world around you. Look at the real places and things that are happening each day. Pull from your childhood, teenaged years and from that crazy group of relations we all have.  Watch TV, look at websites, know what’s going on around you.  Find your place in it. “La vida te a sopresas.” (Life is full of surprises). Lucky for us. Be aware of them. Have no fear.  Use them. If you overhear an interesting conversation somewhere, LISTEN, and write down what you hear or draw what you see in a sketchbook.  I think at this moment in time artist’s sketchbooks have become way too precious.  There are even what I’ve heard are “very good” classes on how to keep one.  You don’t need a class!  A sketchbook should be down and dirty, messy and full of writing, quotes from books, new words, scribbles, songs, poetry, notes, sketches, bad drawings, bad language, jokes  and of course touches of genius. It doesn’t have to be perfect and organized and done in color or available for all to see. It’s YOUR private space to be uncensored and real and recollect all of the ideas you’ve had since you’ve been born.

 For the last few weeks my ideas are flowing like waterfalls. I’ve been doing what I call “En ese momento” (At that moment). These are small collages that I finish and send by mail to artist friends. I don’t censor myself. I just create.  Some make sense.  Some don’t.  But it’s fun.  It flows.  I have more ideas than I can handle. Work comes from work. Ideas come from ideas. I have countless great reasons to get up each morning and go into my studio. If you love something… happiness will follow.  Trust me.

“A painter can turn pennies into gold, for all subjects are capable of being transformed into poems.” –Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres 1780-1867

I’ll be having a weekend workshop on Saturday and Sunday, August 28th and 29th at The Dalles Art Center. I’ll be teaching “Making Monotypes with Pastels and Metallic Crayons”.  We had so much fun doing it last time that we’ll be doing it again.  The class will be from 11:00 AM to 4:00PM each day. Watch my website for more information. Sign up early by calling the center at 541-296-4759. I’ll be limiting attendance.

Also I have the dates for next year’s Mexico class. It will be held April 13th through 19th, 2011, in Melaque, Mexico. In 2011 we’ll be arriving and leaving in the middle of the week. This will save on airfare. More information will be available later. If you’re interested in being kept up to date just e-mail me at fenter@gorge.net.

I’m back and I’m feeling great. The class in Mexico was amazing. I had a class of strong, independent and creative women who worked hard, played hard and experienced the magical realism of Latin America first hand. We experienced

“an irrational geography where you can be born with a star on your forehead, a sign of the marvelous;”  Isabel Allende’s Of Love and Shadows

Magical realism has it’s origin in the remembrance of childhood. Wonder and imagination runs wild. Mexico is a place where time can seem bent.

 “Why shouldn’t time slow down and stop occasionally, or even go into reverse?”  Isabel Allende’s Eva Luna

 Melaque was a beautiful setting for a wonderful class. I had an exceptional group of students who weren’t afraid to dive into the Mexican culture with everything they had. We each will remember it differently. One of the high points of the class was sharing our work and passing on the communal crown after a wild week of work and play.

We played and worked without boundaries like the children we are inside. We realized the need for stories in our lives. Each experience was a story. We created our own personal myths and shared some common myths that developed during the week. All around us was magic. It surprised some of us and others accepted it without question.

“ The things you’d least expect speak. There they are: speaking.  Bones, thorns. Pebbles, lianas. Little bushes and budding leaves. The scorpion….the butterfly with rainbow wings. The hummingbird….One and all have something to tell….I learned the story of some of the animals from them.”  Vargas Llosa The Storyteller

 The classroom became a sacred space.

“Books, quiet during the day, opened by night so their characters could come out and wander through the rooms and live their adventures.” Isabel Allende Eva Luna

We saw things we wouldn’t have seen without being aware of the sweet culture of Mexico.

“He knocked on every door up and down the coast, sweltering in the hot breath of the siesta, feverish in the humidity, stopping from time to time to give assistance to the iguanas whose feet were stuck in the melted asphalt.”   Isabel Allende Eva Luna

 We painted and wrote stories about the experiences we had.

 “All day they hauled mangoes, until there were none left on the trees and the house was filled to the roof-top….In the days that followed, the sun beat down on the house, converting it into an enormous saucepan in which the mangoes slowly simmered; the building…grew soggy and weak, and burst open and rotted, impregnating the town for years with the odor of marmalade.”  Isabel Allende Eva Luna

 The class seemed too short. It was over in a blink of an eye. I was lucky enough to stay for an extra week, traveling into the mountains with Nancy and Richard Lennie. Thanks to them for a wonderful time. And a special thanks to my students, Mary, Vonda, Judy, Cherie and Signe. I’ll soon have the dates for next year’s class. Again, I can’t wait.

 “Oh, Mexico, it sounds so sweet with the sun sinking low.”  James Taylor Mexico

Adios.

I’m back from beautiful Mexico.  I have so much to tell.  I need a few days to let my thoughts, mix, combine,  rise and make sense.  I spent the first week with a most powerful and beautiful group of talented and creative women.   The second week was spent in the Heaven that is San Sebastian Del Oeste. 

I haven’t the words yet to describe my feelings.  During my stay I read even more magical realism.  I’d like to quote part of Barbara Kingsolver’s book The Lacuna here.  In just these few words she captures the essence of Mexico in a way that truly involves all of the senses.

“Most of all, Enrique cared for pan dulces made with wheat- flour dough.  Puffy and soft with a grit of coarse sugar on top, filled with pineapple, sweet and tart from the oven’s wood smoke.  Pan dulce is no easy trick.  The vanilla has to be from Papantla.  The flour is ground in a stone metate.  The flour must be ground so fine it comes up into the air in clouds.  The hard part was mixing in the water, going too fast. 

Let me show you how to do this.  Begin with two kilos of the flour.  Make a mountain on the counter.  Into this mound, with your fingers, crumble the flakes of butter, the salt and soda.  Then pull it out like a ring of volcanic mountains around a crater.  Pour a lake of cold water in the center.  Little by little, pull the mountains into the lake, water and shore together, into a marsh.  Gradually.  No islands.  The paste swells until there are no mountains left, and no lake, only a great blob of lava.  The dough should be smooth, fluid and solid at the same time.  It will sleep overnight in a covered bowl.  In the morning roll it flat, cut it with a machete into squares, spoon a dot of pineapple filling on each one and fold it into a triangle, sprinkled with sugar grains soaked in vanilla.”

                                                           from The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver

I’ll have more to write later.  So much to tell about the class, the group of  beautiful exceptional women, my hosts Richard and Nancy and the magical new people I’ve met in Mexico this trip. 

I’m having surgery on May third.  I’ll continue my posts when I recover.  Much more on the class and the country.

After what seems like weeks of sad events, car crashes, colds, slushy snow and cold temperatures I thought that nothing could cheer me up.  Then I got a Google Alert from National Public Radio that changed everything!  When I realized I had been published on their site I did a little NPR dance (kinda like the Snoopy dance from the old Peanuts cartoons) and called my kids with the news! I’ll share here, what they shared with me.  I AM TOTALLY proud of myself!

Google News Alert for: jerry fenter

This is what I found and it deserved a wild celebratory NPR dance.  My friend and fellow artist and writer also commented about The Giveaway on her website at  www.nancycoffelt.com  Thanks, Nancy. Don’t forget to look for her new book, Listen.   My beloved daughter, a talented writer herself,  even published my story on her facebook page.  Thanks, Amy.  

I’d love to hear your comments.  Artists and writers need to celebrate once in awhile.  Next post will feature my talented art students from The Dalles Art Center and our wild weekend workshop making monotypes with heat and crayons!  Lots of pictures and new innovations.

Before I went to bed last night when I let Cody inside for the last time I noticed it was snowing hard outside!  I was sad.  I’d been in Portland yesterday and saw daffodils blooming, cherry blossoms out and robins on every fence post.  Spring doesn’t come to Timber Valley for at least another month.  I can’t wait.  Don’t get me wrong.  It’s a beautiful spring up here when it arrives with new growth on the pines and Douglas Firs, mountain bluebirds, baby cows and goats and deer galore.  But it’s the long wait that gives all of us in the area cabin fever. 

So after a restless sleep, I woke up to the tail end of a story on NPR that made me smile.  It was a story by Sandip Roy that talked about the Indian Festival of  Colors, The Celebration of Holi.  Holi is a Hindu spring festival that is celebrated the day after the first full moon in March.  It’s celebrated wherever Hindus get together, in India, Nepal and even Stanford University in the United States.  Celebrations begin the night before with a huge bonfire lit in memory of a famous historical escape from fire by a famous and unshakable devotee of Vishnu. On the day of Holi,  groups of young people run the streets wearing their oldest clothes and soak each other with colored water using water balloons, water pistols and buckets.  The colors are eye-popping, magenta, yellow and green,  and deep red.  Many wildly shower others with colored powder and even the stray dogs are pink.  The streets are filled with laughter, color and fun and after the event even the most environmental colors take some time and effort to scrub off.  Clothes must be washed, showers taken and colors rinsed off the streets.  It sounds like a festival that I’d like to start celebrating every year.  The mess is worth the fun.  Also the festivals in India and Nepal are followed by feasting with curry, saffron and mango.  A festival of colors, everything an artist could ever want.

This weekend I’ll be taking that idea of a festival of colors and bringing it to my crayon print workshop at The Dalles Art Center.  This is one of my messiest and most colorful lessons that I teach and also one of the most fun.  We start with a big copper plate, heat it with an iron (the heat will spread over the entire plate), mark a spot, draw an excellent work of art with metallic crayons or oil pastel, then slap a piece of beautiful print paper down on top of the drawing, press down with a flat spoon, pull up the paper and like magic you have a one -of- a- kind print!  We will all become covered in bright color just like our own mini celebration of Holi, The Dalles way.  We will be wearing masks for safety because that crayon smell can last for days inside the nose.  But it’s going to be fun.  I’ll take pictures and share them on the next post. 

“Gulal-red, green, yellow and countless.

A day’s canvas-a riot of colors.

Lively crowd running hither and thither,

Rainbow of colors, dashing from every nook and corner.

Disregarding their woe and despair fervent folks,

rejoicing at the marvel of colors.

A day filled with luster and gaiety,

A day to smear our dreams-

With a splash of vibrant frenzy colors.

Holi Hai! A spring of unbounded fun and frolic!!”

                                                               –From a Holi poem