First Friday: August 2023
Inspiration & Updates
“The universe buries strange jewels deep within us all, and then stands back to see if we can ever find them.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear
Greetings from Swansea, Tasmania! We’ve just begun our last month in Australia, so it was high time I followed my curiosity down to the apple isle to seek more wintery inspiration, maybe even explore my convict roots.
Our time abroad has been all about letting curiosity take the reins toward inspiration and new experiences, but it’s also been a time of quietude and introspection, reflecting on past, present, and future.
These words by Elizabeth Gilbert had me reflecting on a surprising reunion in my artistic practice this month. I experienced a magnetic pull to develop a pietra dura marble relief inspired by a drawing I made six years ago, reimagined for our natural surroundings in Sydney.
This month I’m highlighting this natural focus as the year of three winters continues. I’ll share:
What I’m Making: Sacred Ibises in Pietra Dura
What I’m Seeing: Train Trip to Bundanon
What I’m Reading: Big Magic & Garlic Bread
What I’m hearing: Hi / Lo Combo
I started First Friday to deliver the inspiration and energy of my open studio, right to your inbox each month.
Thanks for joining the party.
What I’m Making: Sacred Ibises in Pietra Dura
Early in my time as a designer at Nike, I created a large drawing of a clamorous gaggle of Canada geese, inspired by the aggressively nesting geese who had made a lengthy pit stop on campus during their migratory flight path through Oregon. The gaggle felt like a great metaphor for my first six months at Nike, with all the voices, perspectives, and chatter I was learning to navigate. I sought to synthesize that feeling through the drawing, and the single goose staring directly at the viewer was meant to be me. I named the piece, So this is how it feels.
Six years later in Sydney, I was reminded of this drawing as I watched Australian White Ibises rule the roost, picking through wheelie bins and padding around the parks. A protected species native to marshes of inland New South Wales, these wading birds have increasingly settled in urban areas due to a variety of factors like the establishment of free-flying zoo flocks and inland drought. They are colloquially known as “Bin Chickens” and I’ve been mesmerized by them ever since we arrived.
Sitting on a flight to Melbourne this past May, I was moved to return to my earlier visual sketching style with a movie poster montage-like arrangement of Ibis heads in my Moleskine. Something felt familiar about this drawing, and it became clear that I was feeling a similar way in this new chapter in my art career as I had at Nike. Exploring life as an artist and learning to navigate the often conflicting inputs, directions, and influences that affect and guide my practice.
Like the geese, the Ibis drawing was meant to capture a singular moment within the chaos, conveying the feelings of energy, tension, and noise, and total stillness at the same time. The drawing also awakened a desire to blend my signature medium of marble inlay with my natural drawing style, using it as the basis of a pietra dura marble relief celebrating these magical birds.
This study for a large wall piece brings a rich textural quality to the concept with carrara marble, nero marquina, black glass, on a profile-cut sheet steel backing structure. I’ll be combining more pietra dura with my loose hand drawing style as we go.
WHAT I’M SEEING: A Train Trip to Bundanon
One of my great pleasures in life is to make creative pilgrimages to art museums & sculpture parks in beautiful natural settings. Destinations like the Louisiana Museum near Copenhagen, Glenstone near Washington, DC, and the Clark in Williamstown, Massachusetts have expanded my artistic horizons and shown me the impact of art within aspirational architecture and natural landscapes.
So when my Australian illustrator friend Anthony recommended visiting Bundanon, I knew I had to make the trip. One sunny Wednesday morning in July, I caught a train to Nowra, where my friends picked me up for the drive through the Shoalhaven to Bundanon. I was excited for the chance to see the place through the eyes of Renae Coles, Anthony’s partner and a multidisciplinary artist in charge of guest marketing at Bundanon.
Bundanon is a national arts organization and museum situated on 1000 hectares (2471 acres) of wildlife sanctuary near Nowra, about 3 hours south of Sydney. It was the home of Australian artists Arthur and Yvonne Boyd, who donated the property to the Australian people in 1993. One of Australia’s preeminent fine artists, Arthur Boyd wanted to use his success to expand opportunities for other artists and craftspeople, resulting in Australia’s most extensive artist residency program.
The organization has recently added a spectacular new trestle structure by Kerstin Thompson Architects to accommodate visiting students and museum guests, designed to withstand natural disasters in the river basin as well as exhibition galleries built into the adjacent valley ridge, with a regular stream of kangaroos grazing above.
We also had a chance to visit the Boyds’ farmhouse and Arthur’s painting studio around sunset.
I couldn’t get enough of the tall, narrow window on the studio wall. As the story goes, Arthur was wrapping up a large commission for the New Parliament House in Australia’s capital city of Canberra, and couldn’t fit it out the door for the photoshoot! The solution: grab a chainsaw, cut a slot in the wall. They got the shots, shipped the piece, and later added a functioning window in its space. I love that get-it-done mentality, and the last second push. Artists… am I right?
WHAT I’M READING: Big Magic & Garlic Bread
Continuing our journey through creative and professional development, last week Jen introduced me to Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert. I listened to Gilbert’s narrated version of the book on walks and runs around Sydney, and found her empathetic tone highly motivating and deeply moving.
Gilbert levels with the reader, writing that creativity takes courage as we work with our fear to bring forth the treasures inside us (and we all have treasures inside us). She also argues that the ideas that make up these treasures are beyond us, flowing in and out of our lives as we learn and grow. It’s up to us to embrace them, or not, as they present themselves.
Another key message that felt appropriate as I reflect on my career is to not place too much pressure on our artwork and our creativity to be the so-called sole provider. She argues that it’s important to tap into our many facets to help ourselves live more freely (aka make money) and make space for creating art from the heart.
It drew a parallel in a recent studio visit with the inspiring Sydney & Shoalhaven-based ceramicist, curator, and author Glenn Barkley. He shared a humbling story about a Michelin-star chef friend of his who proudly revealed that he’d made his real money on ‘garlic bread.’ A delicious treat people order again and again, but is straightforward for a maker who has other more aspirational priorities.
As I reflected on it, I realized that for now, my own flavor of garlic bread is design. As a fine artist, running a design studio in parallel that focuses on experiential & environmental design helps me create the structure and the space to explore my art with a deeper sense of abundance and creative freedom.
WHAT I’M HEARING: Hi / Lo Combo
Like life itself, this month’s First Friday playlist is a chronological combination of highs and lows. Songs came to me during time spent in Sydney, Melbourne, the Blue Mountains, the Shoalhaven, Berry, and Blueys Beach.
The First Friday Playlist can only come from songs I’ve heard, received, discovered, (or rediscovered) out in the world. Songs overheard at coffee shops, bars, galleries, received from friends IRL and online. And I’d count this newsletter as public too. We do welcome requests.
I’m excited to be building this community with you, and I invite you to share with whoever you think would find inspiration in this series.
Thank you,
Brian
brian@brianbmadden.com
