See Saw

TRAVEL

 It's probably a good omen when a car trip starts out with seeing a truck with your name on it.

Cowan truck. Vermont Rt. 89.

I took some time off last weekend with my parenting partner, Laurie Essig, and our two kids to visit our old house in Greenport, NY. We sold the house about five years ago and none of us had been back since then.

Naturally, we visited the carousel.

Allen Herschell horse, Greenport Carousel. Liza Cowan photo.

I hadn't remembered that there are several Charles Dare horses on the Greenport Carousel, which was a wonderful surprise for me.

Charles Dare horse, Greenport Carousel. Liza Cowan photo.

I got to spend a little time at the Greenport Shipyards, site of my Shipyard Archeology photo series. I only had my point and shoot camera with me, and I just can't get the same quality I got from my trusty Nikon F100 and a roll of film, but still it was nostalgic just walking around.

Siding and Rudder. Greenport Shipyard. 2008. Liza Cowan photo.

On our way home we stopped for a few hours in New York City so Laurie could tape a TV Show about Gay Marriage. (No, we're not. Families have all kinds of shapes and configurations.) The show was the Laura Flanders show on GRITtv, and although the kids wanted to go shopping during the taping, we did manage to catch the last few minutes and hang out in the control room to see the backstage operations. You can watch the segment here

Control Room - taping the Laura Flanders Show.

And then a quick hello to the panel and Laura.

Laura Flanders, left.  Laurie and kids, right. Not in this picture is panelist Kenyon Farrow, whose excellent blog is worth taking a look at.

So if you watch the show and Laurie briefly mentions her kids and parenting partner, that's us. I'm in the Vermont media fairly often, usually about art, so it was fun to be on the sidelines and out of the spotlight.

The best part about travel, when you know things are going really right, is when you are happy to get home. We were all glad to cross Lake Champlain and be back in Vermont again.

Charlotte, VT and Lake Champlain from the Lake Champlain Essex/Charlotte Ferry.

SO LONG MS. Z

Yay! School's out, and that's always a good thing. But today was also an emotional last day at Champlain Elementary School in Burlington, VT, where my kids have gone for the last five years. Today was the last day for the visionary school leader, principal Nancy Zahniser, who will be retiring after many years as a teacher and administrator.

Parents and students at Champlain Elementary wait for the final bell to ring to say goodbye to Ms. Z.

Local celebrity musician/radio host/librarian and alumni dad Robert Resnick came to seranade the crowd and Ms. Z with his accordian in a rousing version of a school favorite, The Chicken Dance . And trust me, you are very sorry that you never got to do this dance with Tammy Charbenau and Ms. Z leading it.

Champlain Elementary is always a joyous place. The wonderful, inspired teachers stay year after year, the halls ring with laughter and the kids enjoy learning. What makes a great school? Great leadership. And that we had.

Nancy Zahniser on the right,  greeting the crowd  with a typically enthusiastic gesture. On the left, beloved teachers Tammy Charbeneau and Coleen Cowell.

Ms. Z is the principal who knows every kid's name, who is out on the steps to greet each child and parent every morning with inspired music mix cds which she makes and then and plays on the steps of the school so the kids can dance - and you should see some of the inspired line dances the kids do on that makeshift step/stage.  Even the kids who play 4 Square or chat while waiting for the school bell  are enfolded into a  rhythm for the day.

Ms. Z  lead her faculty and administration into creating an environment where education flourishes. I don't usually wax enthusiastic about our educational system. (Don't even get me started talking about Edmunds Middle school.)  So it is with great and rare pleasure that I can say these wonderful things about Ms. Z and Champlain Elementary.

Click here to see a news clip from local channel WCAX TV about a Burlington history project that the fourth / fifth grades did this year.

Everyone gathers around at the top of the steps for a final hug.

So thank you Ms. Z. We love you.

CARA BARER AT CONVERSATIONAL READING.COM

Cara Barer was interviewed in Conversational Reading (an online literary quarterly)  Issue 12, summer 2008. The article is about book art featuring Robert The, Cara and Jacqueline Rush Lee. Essay by Elizabeth Waddell.

"Behind their playful solemnity, these books that flaunt their pages and pose as insects have an oddly wistful, fleeting quality. The ephemerality of books, not just individual volumes but the future of books, is one thing that led Barer to embark on the project. "I'm afraid the printed word will become a rarity, and the next generation will rely on the ephemeral word—the digital kind that only exists through a computer monitor, or a sort of virtual book that can hold thousands of titles. I'm not saying that's a bad idea—I only hope that the paper version continues to be exist for the people that want the real tactile sensation of turning a page and holding the real thing."


Cara Barer, Shitake

Jacqueline Rush Lee's work is something like Cara's but she presents it in it's sculptural form.

"Confronted with Unfurled, a sculpture by Jacqueline Rush Lee, it is difficult to know exactly what we are looking at. Delicate yet durable, its white striations blossom forth like the remains of some heretofore unknown sea creature or perhaps a fossilized fungi. It is neither of these. It is a book, fired in a potter's kiln at high temperatures until, instead of disintegrating, it reached a brittle, "petrified" state."


Endoskeleton by Jacqueline Rush Lees


Also featured - Robert The:

"Robert The never intended to be an artist. As an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, he double majored in Philosophy and Math and was interested in language and logic, pursuing what he calls the "foundations of truth and meaning." You might say his artwork continues that same search—but in a skewed way. Books are guns, a dictionary is a noose, and bugs crawl out of covers. They seem to mean something, but what? At the very moment that these works create new significations, the meanings float ever-elusively away."


Robert The: Book gun

OUR NEW PUG

My older daughter has wanted a pug for years. I finally gave in, after she kept her promise of taking care of the daily needs of #1 dog for six months.


This is #1 dog, Stella. She's a mini long haired doxie.


Backup auxilliery dog (kidding) Saki. She's just eight weeks old.

Her full name is Sakura, which the kids picked, but I'd wanted to name her Saki after the only pug I ever knew, who was the pet of my childhood friend Susu. The kids are doing a great job with her, but guess who is getting up at 4:30 in the morning to take her out in the yard? Right. I have a vested interest in not washing piles of soiled sheets every day.

Anybody out there have a pug? Do you worry about them playing with other dogs? Advise? The eye issue. Those adorable bulgy eyes are very prone to injury.

RALPH PUCCI MANNEQUINS, A FACTORY TOUR

I had the great pleasure of visiting the Ralph Pucci headquarters in New York City the other day. Pucci makes mannequins - and sells limited edition home furnishings - and I have five of their creations. Those of you who know my work know that I love to photograph my mannequins, and I've always kept the Pucci people aware of what I'm doing. Wade Willams at Pucci has always been gracious and fun to talk to, and when I had a trip planned to the city, I made an appointment with Wade to get a tour.

Photo by Liza Cowan. This is Wade, reflected in a fabulous mirror by Philippe Hiquily in the Pucci foyer.

A shelf of heads in the sculpting room. On the upper right is the head of my beloved Maira Kalman girl.

Photo by Liza Cowan. Three finished mannequins in front of a shelf of  casting forms.

Photo by Liza Cowan. Ralph Pucci mannequin head molds. These things look to me like ancient treasures recovered from a sunken ship. Maybe Greek amphora. But they're not. They are workaday artifacts, which, in my opinion, only makes them more valuable.

Photo by LIza Cowan. An assortment of Ralph Pucci mannequin hands.

Photo by Liza Cowan. Sanding down the cast fiberglass mannequins at the Ralph Pucci factory.

One of my Maira Kalman mannequins in my show window.

PSAW AND PAINT BY NUMBER ON PBS

Paint By Number, After The Rain. Anon. Sold.

 Well it was and exciting evening around the TV on Wednesday. That's when Art Express from Mountain Lake PBS broadcast the episode about Pine Street Art Works exhbit of Paint By Number.

Harry Bliss, on camera.

Paul Larson, producer, and Jared Stanley, DP, came over last August to tape the exhibit. Also on hand to speak and demonstrate were Harry Bliss, Mark Waskow and Christy Mitchell. Harry is an illustrator and New Yorker cover artist. He spoke elequently about how PBN paintings break down colors for shadows and volume, and other wonderfully erudite stuff.


Christy Mitchell on camera. Paul Larson directing.

Paul wanted someone painting a PBN on camera, so Christy Mitchell agreed to do one, using an unpainted kit we had. Paul is in the foreground directing.


Mark Waskow and his Mona Lisa

Mark Waskow, collector (or end user, as he likes to say) talked about collecting PBN. He bought the Mona Lisa, and talked about how charmingly not good the painting is.


Jared Stanley, Paul Larson and Liza

My commentary runs throughout the episode. Here's a picture we took on my iMac photobooth. The version that aired was a rough cut, and when they have the final edit, they will rebroadcast and I will have it available on quicktime here and on my website.

Meanwhile, if you get Mountain Lake PBS in your area (northern Vermont, Montreal, or the Plattsburgh NY region) you can catch it on rebroadcast Saturday March 29^th at 6:30 pm.

FICTIONALIZA- IN WHICH I PLAY A CAMEO ROLE IN MAGGIE JOCHILD'S NEW NOVEL

Ok, this is too cool. I've become a cameo.

For any of you interested in reading about Pine Street Art Works, Art Hop, Liza Cowan, Alison Bechdel and Phranc in an amazing novel-in-progress, I urge you to check out Maggie's Meta Watershed.

Maggie Jochild writes a blog that not only has some of the most astute political commentary available in the blogosphere, but she also regularly posts chapters of her two novels-in-progress: Ginny Bates, and Skene. This is a blog to bookmark! And read seriously, because we all have a lot to learn from Maggie.

In the novel, Ginny Bates, the main characters visit Pine Street Art Works during Art Hop in 2006. That was the year Alison Bechdel and Phranc teamed up for a show called Paper Play. And what a show it was! Ginny and Myra travel from Seattle to see it, and then go on to visit Emily Dickinson's home in Amherst. Oh, and in the novel they actually buy some art, and I agree to ship it the next week, which is how you can know it's fiction. In real life it takes weeks for me to pack and ship big pieces like that. And nobody has ever bought more than one piece from a show. But, hey, I'm not complaining. Bring on the art buyers, the more the merrier.

Fictional characters can pay with fictional money. Everyone else, I take checks, plastic or cash.

BUTTONS

Many lifetimes ago, in the 1970's, I used to design, publish and distribute buttons. Not sewing buttons, but the kind you pin onto your coat, or shirt, or backpack. Badges, they call them in England. I'd collected political buttons as a teenager and had quite an impressive bunch of them. I loved the smooth roundness of them, the graphics, and how they had to deliver their message in an instant. Like little billboards for your clothing.

White Mare Buttons. Image made on Mita 500D copier circa 1978. Liza Cowan

I liked to use symbols from Greek and Celtic antiquity, probably because they were accessible in books, and because the education we got in the nineteen fifties and sixties presented Mesopotamia and Greece and Egypt as the only places that existed in ancient times. Africa didn't exist- except for Egypt - in our racially biased educational system, even in the private progressive school I went to. Robert Graves' highly annotated book The Greek Myths led me to his book The White Goddess, A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth, and those were my two most insprational sources.

The first button I made was "A You're An Amazon" based on the song by Alix Dobkin (which was, in turn, a riff on "A You're Adorable" by Buddy Kaye and Sid Lippman) The moon and stars connected it to imaginary Amazon space. At the time, Amazons occupied a huge portion of Lesbian imaginary space until the other Amazon (.com) colonized the name and the pretty much corrupted the powerful symbolic association to an all woman civilization.

The triangle with a little groove etched in it that I found in pictures of carved rocks in Greece became the basis of my second design, "I like older women". I was twenty four  at the time, but the message seemed really important, surrounded as we were, even then, by media images of the perpetual child/woman.

The Labyris, double headed ax, was the ubiquitous symbol of matriarchy, which feminist Lesbians worldwide had chosen as their symbol,  I chose to pair it with the Star Of David, to connect my two identities. If you look closely, the Star of David is in the circle which tops the Labyris, turning the whole affair into a women's symbol. I thought it was quite clever. When jewelers started making pendants with the same design, I took it as a compliment. Several jewelers, when I told them I'd actually made up the design, said they thought it was ancient.

I asked a friend to design "Mother Nature Is a Lesbian" for my company. It was a huge seller, but truth be told, I never liked the design. The trees were nice but too much of a couple. The colors, light green, dark green and light blue, were pleasing, so that was good. But the typeface drove me nuts. There, I've said it.

Medusa, the Gorgon who could turn men to stone if they looked at her, was another ubiquitous symbol of women's rage and power. Greek Goddess Athena featured the head of Medusa on her shield. Greek bakers put Medusa on the oven door to keep people from stealing the bread. I thought it would be nifty if we in the modern world could also wear Medusa as our aegis. I hired cartoonist Roberta Gregory to design this one.

And last is the White Mare, Celtic symbol of The Great Goddess. She was etched large on cliffs in England, I named my company after her. White Mare, Inc. If only I'd started an internet bookselling company we'd be ordering from WhiteMare.com and I'd be rich.

And I'd share it with you.

CONNIE IMBODEN

A lot of people here in Burlington, VT got to see Connie Imboden's photographs when she showed at Pine Street Art Works during Art Hop '07. Actually, about a thousand people came through the gallery during the weekend, and many more during the following month of the show.

Connie is now featured in the Special Collector's Edition of Focus Magazine, Feb. '08. And she has a new blog.

Yay for Connie. Now aren't you sorry you didn't buy a print while she was here!!

Photo by Connie Imboden.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY WILLA GRACE

Happy 12th Birthday - February 3rd - to my beautiful, smart, creative, funny, kind, inspiring, generous, thoughtful, ethical, and totally wonderful daughter, Willa Grace Cowan.

This is a painting Willa made last year.

CHARLES EAMES

Charles and Ray Eames are so famous - so iconic - that an entire era has been named after them, at least on eBay. And now there's a new postage stamp collection honoring them.

Eames US Postage Stamp- due to be issued next summer

I had the pleasure of meeting Charles, but not Ray, Eames in the late sixties at a  conference at the Aspen Institute in Aspen, Colorado.  My parents dragged me along that summer, hoping, I suppose, to enjoy some time with their still somewhat rebellious teenager.  One evening Charles screened a film he and Ray had made  -The Powers Of Ten. This was the first version. Nine years later they released a second version.

You can see the second version on youTube.

That evening, Eames took questions from the audience. I had sat spellbound throughout the film. It probably wasn't too easy to capture my imagination that summer, but this film took my breath away. Apparently I managed to ask an intelligent question, because he sought me out after the film. I was with my parents - it was all on the up and up.

After Aspen, my parents and I traveled to Los Angeles where we met up once again with Charles -but not Ray - Eames, to discuss schools, and the design of schools, with someone else who had been at the Aspen Conference. I apologize for my hazy memory here, I don't remember who this other guy was or anything that was said.

Ray and Charles Eames, photo by George Platt Lynes

Later that year I  started working full time at the Pacifica Radio station WBAI-FM in New York City, and was producing their live performance series, The Free Music Store. I scheduled a screening of The Powers of Ten to coincide with an Eames visit to NYC. He was designing a huge exhibit at the time, I think at IBM.

For some reason, I decided to screen early Betty Boop cartoons with The Powers of Ten. For some reason, Charles thought this was a great idea. Remember, this was way before VCRs or DVD, and Betty Boop was not seen often on TV or anywhere else.

Amy Crehore loves Betty, too. Check out her blog

Charles and I spent part of the afternoon together while he showed me the exhibit he was putting together. Later in the evening, I picked him up at his hotel and we went over to the hall we'd rented. This was before WBAI started having concerts in the renovated church we later used for studios, offices and productions.

We screened the film to a packed audience. Charles spoke and answered questions. After the screening, we parted, and I never saw him again.

Almost forty years later, it still amazes me that this design genius was kind enough, interested enough, and open enough, to appreciate the ideas of a nineteen year old just beginning to make her way in the world as an adult. He never condescended to me. On the contrary, he took me and my ideas seriously. What better way could there be for a young person to enter into the grown up world of design and information.

My deepest thanks and yes, love, to Charles Eames.

Go buy some stamps! (when they're issued, that is.)

NEW YEARS EVE AT PSAW

    
setting up for party at PSAW. Photo by Deana O'Connor

New Years Eve- Allison Dincecco and Lisa Cadieux took over PSAW to throw a rockin' New Year's Eve Party. Allison was the first person in Burlington to show my art, at her wonderful, innovative  contemporary furniture store, Sohome, now defunct, on Flynn Avenue. Alison's mom is Lorna K. Peal, art consultant, past (and wonderful) director of SEABA - Burlington's South End Arts And Business Association.

Allison and Lisa  gathered their Salsa-loving community from Salsalina and the classes of David Larson and John Anthony. Friends, relatives, kids, parents, grandparents. Fabulous. I love how Dance, as a social art and activity,  always seems to create  community. It seems to be true, no matter what the dance tradition. And to have a fabulous party where everyone, no matter their age or dance level feels welcomed and comfortable - well that's the best.

The crew spent the afternoon transforming PSAW into a twinkly vision. DJ New York Raul spun the best music I've heard in ages. Everyone had a blast. Even me, and I'm not much of a party animal.

a brief moment of rest during the dance: Liza Cowan photo

I swear I was the only woman there not wearing high heels and a fabulous outfit. I always wear sensible shoes - I'm like that. Particularly on my unforgiving concrete floors. But how festive everyone looked.  And even in my sensible shoes I thoroughly enjoyed a spin on the floor with Lupe (above right) before I left to watch the fireworks with my children.

Dancing at PSAW. Photo by Liza Cowan

I love seeing PSAW transformed by someone else's vision. As I stood there under the twinking lights and red lanterns, my space filled with music, food, and the kindness of strangers, I wondered for a moment if I was hallucinating the whole thing.  I wasn't.

Allison and Lisa are venturing into Event Planning. Keep posted for more info on them and their business.

MARY LOUISE SPOOR & CHARLIE CHAPLIN

Mary Louise Spoor, Baby Bunting, chromolithograph 1917. PSAW Collections

Collecting is an adventure. The civilized version of big game hunting. You never know where the chase will  will lead, what roads you will follow. Here, we go from nursery illustrations to the early history of cinema.

A couple of years ago I was hunting at an antiques show. I was fast- walking the aisles, which is how I always do my first scan. I stopped abruptly at  a huge chromolithograph schoolroom poster published in 1917 by Congdon Publishers in Chicago. I immediately fell in love with the Japanese - or Japonism - inspired design. The dealer knew the name of the illustrator, Mary Louise Spoor, but not much about her. 

I immediately began searching for more of her work. I have subsequently found three of the school room posters. Hickory Dickory Dock, Little Bo Peep  and Baby Bunting Went A Hunting.

Mary Louise Spoor, Hickory Dickory Dock, 1917 Chromolithograph. PSAW collections

Internet searches revealed scant information on Spoor.  An interesting conversation among collectors and descendants reveals that Spoor (1887-1985) worked for a brief shining moment from Chicago, publishing illustrations for Rand McNally and Lyons & Carnihan.

Mary Louise Spoor, Hickory Dickory Dock, 1917 Chromolithograph. PSAW collections

By 1917 she was married and pregnant with her first child. She moved to Massachussets to raise her family. And that, as far as I can tell, ended her professional career. She continued painting and drawing private works that would end up in family collections but those works have not yet entered into public circulation. Nor may they ever. What a shame to have access to so small a piece of a life's work

 

ML Spoor from schoolroom poster triptychs, 1917, Pine Street Art Works Collections. Each image is 15'" square.

Before she left Chicago, Mollie, as she was called, went to The Art Institute  and shared a studio with Gertrude Spaller, another young illustrator. Together they illustrated at least two children's readers. The Easy Road To Reading Primer editions one and two.

ML Spoor illustrations, The Easy Road To Reading- PSAW Collections

Here'€™s where the road forks:

Mollie's brother was George K Spoor. In 1907 George founded Essany Studios in Chicago. Essanay was one of the first movie production studios in the US during the blink of an eye when Chicago was the center of US movie production. A couple of years later Essanay built studios in Niles, CA, but kept offices in Chicago.  George Spoor's partner in Essanay (S&A) was Max Aronson, aka Gilbert Anderson, aka  Broncho Billy, the very first film cowboy star .

Broncho Billy And The Essanay Film Company by David Kiehn. Farwell Books 2003

That'€™s right. The first cowboy star was Jewish. Aronson/Anderson appeared in the first great narrative film ever, The Great Train Robbery, then went on to direct and star in hundreds of films for Essanay.

When it began, Essanay depended on, and discovered, local Chicago talent, many of whom went on to become some of the biggest stars and directors in the industry, including Ben Turpin, Alan Dwan, Louella Parsons, Francis X Bushman, Gloria Swanson.

They made 2,000 movies in their ten year span, out of which only about 200 survive.

Charlie Chaplin in drag in Essanay's The Woman  from 1915

Charlie Chaplin was an Essanay star too, one of the first to be hired from outside the neighborhood. He had a contentious relationship with the studio, and left after a few years. His first version of The Tramp was an Essanay production.

It seems not unlikely  that the George Spoor would have asked his illustrator sister to design movie posters for his studio. She did design the Indian Chief logo for them. So far, I haven't discovered any but the hunt is on.

references:

conversation amongst relatives and collectors at Antiques and The Arts

essay on essanay from Chicago Magazine May 2007

Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum, Niles CA

WHAT'S HOT AT PSAW? FLASHBAGS!

I cant keep these products in stock. They are my number one best seller this holiday season.

Two years ago Ali Marchildon and Laura Cheeney started making  Flashbags, handmade laminated handbags in Ali's dining room in Burlington, VT. At the same time I was getting ready to open Pine Street Art Works, right down the street. We started collaborating immediately.

Last year the bags sold steadily but slowly. But those gals have a lot of flash, as well as a fantastic product  and two years of hard work and a lot of great business sense are paying off. Their new atelier in Winooski, VT is a hive of sewing and packing activity. They have expanded their line to include checkbook covers, clutches, bins, wallets and placemats. Their new line of Red Sox items are a big thrill for many Vermonters, who consider the Sox their home town team.

This year the bags are flying off my shelves.

On the top is Liza Leger from my series, Fake! Paintings by Liza Leger, Liza Picasso and Liza Matisse.

Flashbags is also now working with Cara Barer, the fantastic photographer from Houston TX, whose series of photos of soaked and shaped books  is a staple at PSAW. Cara's work is  in the Houston Museum of Fine arts as well as in a couple of  other fine galleries in the US. 

You can come here to PSAW- 404 Pine Street, Burlington VT - to shop for your Flashbags bags and accessories or go directly to their site to buy their array of images and products, or, for even more fun, order a custom bag.

Make sure to tell them that Liza sent you. And stay tuned for my new line of bags based on my ephemera collections, coming sometime this winter.