Lip of the Volcano, 8" x 10", 20.4cm x 55cm, coloured India inks, watercolour pencils (all Faber-Castelli), 2010.

This image first appeared last year, in a version with a Photoshop filter, with a poem (that I still like): Autumn, and 'Shortest Route Between Two Dots Is A Circle.'

It's an Autumn image. The flaming edge. Balanced on fire. While waiting for my ailing iMac to open webpages I began dipping pencils from my new set of Faber-Castelli watercolour pencils into a small jar of water.

I had been thinking of Malcolm Lowry; I had been browsing German Expressionist painting, but looking for Italian Neo-Expressionists since I'm on a Michaelangelo Antonioni kick and was convinced there had to be connections, especially in the explosion scene in Zabriskie Point.



                                          

They look like small twigs branching off from sticks, not witch's fingers. Nor do they resemble black lace or a tangle of neuronal nerves. They are not like veins of capillaries though obviously part of the same evolutionary design. They teach us cadence, grace and survival.

✠

Who could ever tire of the wind in the trees?
The wind blows leaves off the trees that are not already bare.

✠

A day of snapping of inner winds, turbulences, furies,
but all subtly, hidden.

✠

Glum takes hold, and I shake it off like dead leaves falling from trees.
Seedpods, broken leaf veins, dried stalks.



                                          

I prefer the upper one (it's faded out with the opacity option but on a black background which is why it's not shining in this still as it might), and that's the one I'll be using in the relevant section in my video talk. With photos arrayed around me, and drawings, and paintings, as well as digitally drawn images (like the one above), I realize the possibilities for adding art to the video are endless and that it's going to take me a lot longer than originally thought. This image alone of took hours - and I haven't figured out how I'll use it in the video yet. Motion key frame to expand and vaporize it? The image needs to be luminous - is it luminous enough?

                                          

direct link to video at Vimeo: How Can We Be Different and the Same?

A talk on the maternal body and sexual difference that I recorded in 2004 in Vancouver, and gave at an ARM conference at York University in Toronto in 2006. Recently I found the footage, and began playing with it in Final Cut, adding a number of filters. I am still working on the video, and will add scrolling images over the next week or so.

While I received a true 'dissing' when I presented this paper - a high level feminist maternal theorist arrived about half way through with her husband and spared no words in dismissing my work - and I never finished the degree I had intended to get for this work, I still stand behind every word. This was my last academic paper.

I was criticized for being 'essentialist' - such a, to my mind, pointless North American label whenever anyone tries to openly discuss the difficult and complex issues around the maternal body and motherhood and sexual difference. All I could respond with was that I had chosen to speak of 'an Adam and Eve' because you have to say something, offer an opinion on the reality, its difficulties.

Although I received apologies from the later-comer to my talk, I felt my position really too radical for even an organization focusing on research on motherhood.

So I will embed this on my 'birthdance' page at my website, where my work on the maternal body is.

Many thanks for reading this, and perhaps even watching.



                                          

"...nest, crysalis and garment only constitute one moment of a dwelling place..." Gaston Bachelard, 'the poetics of space,' (Beacon, 1966), p.66.

"Ink of Mask," 6" x 6.5", 15.2cm x 16.5cm, India ink, graphite, pen ink, Faber-Castelli watercolour pencils on archival paper, 2010. Photoshop 'flourescent filter' added to photo of a simple doodle sketch to pass the time.

Just a scribble, though it is based on a beautiful photograph somewhere on Facebook (FB's numbering of photos, removing all references to an individual's site does not help one to re-find an image), the original far superior to this ditty, done while my video was rendering.

Later: I purchased some new watercolour pencils today, having misplaced ours when we moved into our apartment 3 1/2 years ago. The image below is the original.


      

Working on a video of a talk (that I videotaped in 2004 for a conference), and need to add some visual interest to it. Found some old exposed film, scratched on some of it, scanned, and then laboriously added images of my paintings, drawings, photos, feathering the edges, one at a time as I found them scattered amidst my computer files. It's on a transparent background, which I hope Final Cut Express picks up on even if Blogspot didn't. And I do hope scrolling these interesting framing of images slowly in the video will hold the viewer's attention through the 18 minutes of the talk. This little bit has taken hours to do. The rest of the images will take at least a week to prepare. Click for a larger version.



A few hours later: the .jpg had a white background, so I opened the .psd file. All the layers were there! I saved them all as a 'freeze frame' and added that as a track in my video. It is unbelievable, but the background is, indeed, transparent.

Here's a QT still, not as good as Apple's Grab application, but I seem to have inadvertently deleted the latter.

You can see I am treating the video frame like a canvas - the coloration, the different layers. When I've finished the video, I will show 'before' and 'after' photos, promise.


                                          

Tea Ceremony, 2010, 9"x9.5", 23cm x 24cm, india ink, pencils, oils, beeswax.

I came back to this little drawing -a year later turning it into a little painting. Rubbed out some of the green pencil, brushed melted beeswax over it, a little sepia oil colour, wrote into it. I should have left it at this point.

Tea Ceremony

The grace in living,
teapot, tea leaves, steeping.
She bends to pour.

When the waters
washed away the homes.
Clotted blood
of his wounds.
Petals floating on dirges.

Yet laughter of lovers,
her heart of memory.
Landscapes of green
move through us.

Comfort of the gentle
and exact tea ceremony.
Love is everything
the great artist sings.

(c)Brenda Clews, 2009.



Tea Ceremony, 2010, 9"x9.5", 23cm x 24cm, india ink, pencils, oils, beeswax.

This is where I left it after many hours of working. It's glued (with a natural, non-toxic glue) onto another sheet and the writing is scratched through. It spent the night being flattened under many books before this scan.

(Click on images for larger size.)



Slideshow of process from sketch to finished.


                                          

direct link to video: Theo's 'Art of Form' at SPAZ I O dell'arte

Theo Willemse's sculpture show, 'The Art of Form,' at SPAZ I O dell'arte in Toronto, September, 2010.

Theo Willemse: theowillemse.com

Videoed and edited by Brenda Clews: brendaclews.com

Music by Buz Hendricks: somewhereoffjazzstreet.com
The track is from his song, 'Night Voices,' on "Stories from Midnight Streets": jamendo.com/en/album/25297
_
For this video I culled images from nearly 60 clips taken over 2 days - the reception, and the much quieter next day. The show was magnificent and I hope this short video gives a sense of Theo's work in the wonderful gallery at SPAZ I O dell'arte. Besides the basic editing of multiple clips, I added quite a few filters, the latter to better accompany Buz's fabulous music. Enjoy this memento!



                                          

Never have I felt such intense inner pressure.

It overwhelms me with increasing presence.


                                          

Vivid orange
rind tears softly
my piercing fingernail,
lying stripped, so
fleshly, sinful to eat.
Like swallowing a thick,
ripe womb for fertilized
ova, section by section.
My tangelo and I tango
sweet juice on the tongue.
Eating the unborn progeny
of plants, I think
of raw food aficionados,
their lust.