These are most of the completed panels in my Moby Dick series. They’re not exactly illustration — at least, I don’t think of them that way — but the people who’ve seen them always ask about the text that prompted the image, so I’ve included the relevant excerpts from the text.
The Pequod (Chapter 16)
All round, her unpanelled, open bulwarks were garnished like one continuous jaw, with the long sharp teeth of the sperm whale, inserted there for pins. To fasten her old hempen thews and tendons to.
Ahab (Chapter 28)
Threading its way out from among his grey hairs, and continuing right down one side of his tawny scorched face and neck, till it disappeared in his clothing, you saw a slender rod-like mark, lividly whitish. It resembled that perpendicular seam sometimes made in the straight, lofty trunk of a great tree, when the upper lightning tearingly darts down it, and without wrenching a single twig, peels and grooves out the bark from top to bottom, ere running off into the soil, leaving the tree still greenly alive, but branded.
The panels are made from commercially printed fabric and use the same palette, primarily black, white, and grey with touches of gold and red. The red and gold are overtly symbolic: The red represents the blood of the dead (both the whales and the whalers), and the gold stands for the thirst for profit that drove, and still drives, the energy industry. I don’t do anything to alter the fabric — I just try to pick something interesting and then machine- and/or hand-stitch it down.
Duodecimo (chapter 32)
First: According to magnitude I divide the whales into three primary BOOKS (subdivisible into CHAPTERS), and these shall comprehend them all, both large and small.
One of the most challenging aspects of the series is the format. The pieces are fairly small – 12 inches square. With the square format, it’s easy to fall into the trap of centering the focal point and, as the series is growing, I’m always looking for ways to keep the images from becoming a set of bull’s-eye targets. The woodblock prints in Hiroshige’s One Hundred Famous Views of Edo also share a format (a rectangle approximately 8 ½ inches wide x 12 ½ inches tall) and I’m finding that work an extremely helpful resource for thinking about how to frame the subjects and divide the space.
Sharks (Chapter 67)
You would have thought we were offering up ten thousand red oxen to the sea gods.
Baleen (chapter 75)
In old times, there seem to have prevailed the most curious fancies concerning these blinds. One voyager in Purchas calls them the wondrous “whiskers” inside of the whale’s mouth; another, “hog’s bristles;” a third old gentleman in Hackluyt uses the following elegant language: “There are about two hundred and fifty fins growing on each side of his upper chop, which arch over his tongue on each side of his mouth.”
Is there a particular resource or set of works that you find useful or inspiring for problem solving? Do you think about the format, its shape and scale, as a design element in your work? If so, to what extent does it influence the work?
melanie,
To answer your question first: I can’t remember the source, but when first learning about composition, especially in landscape pictures, I was pointed to Kawase Hasui as a prolific print artist to study. However, as a photographer, I was less able to control the composition of my subject, and couldn’t refer to examples when I was in the field. But now that I’ve accumulated a body of work myself, I think it will be very instructive to look through carefully with a comparative eye. Glancing over some of the series just now, I see patterns that I recognize.
I’m very intrigued by your panels, both in terms of general design of the symbolic/abstract representations, and the details like the wavy quilting on The Pequod and the yellowish spears on Baleen. The latter look like wooden needles; are they actually cloth?
How long do you think the series will be? What led you to this subject?
Melanie,
Gorgeous panels! I am particularly drawn to the first two. The wicked green, the wavy quilting above and the isolation of the wooden symbols. In the next one, I love the juxtaposition of straight and curved lines.
A practical question that comes to my mind: How does an artist think about a series? Must a series stay complete or can individual panels or groups of panels wander off into someone’s possession?
Your post reminds me of my first and only piece of textile. Many of shapes within the piece already had symbolic meaning for me. When posted, I was pleased to be asked to explain about the symbolism because it helped me to uncover additional meanings that were hidden in my subconscious mind.
And then, there was the comment by June that she liked the piece better before I explained what it meant to me. I had a similar reaction when I read what the gold and red colors in your panels symbolize for you because I had my own association and did not care to think about greed and blood.
I ran into this earlier with Karl when I was trying to invent explicit titles for his paintings. He cautioned me that people prefer to engage in their own association.
Thus, your intuition that the pieces do not need any explanation may be right. Giving the text from Moby Dick does not disturb because it is less explicit than your other explanations.
To answer your question what prompted my first and only piece of textile, it was my secret poem. Perhaps, I never made another attempt at a textile because I have not been as strongly gripped by another poem.
Melanie:
Thanks for showing these pieces. Intelligent work.
Sharks and baleen, especially, touch on the subject without leaning.
I would be among those who might suggest these published as prints together with the book.
Yikes, a tome in reply. Thanks, everyone, for your kind and thoughtful responses.
Jay,
Thanks so much for the sensitive reading of Sharks and Baleen. One thing I’m always concerned about is “How much is too much? How much is enough?”
I want to keep the conversation with the book going, so I’m not thinking too far ahead about What To Do With Them when there are more.
Birgit,
There is much in the book that is shocking — not just Ahab’s lethal monomania, but also the matter-of-fact descriptions of the day-to-day work of the ship. In one of her critical writings about the book, Elizabeth Hardwick said something like — it is, after all, a floating abbatoir — and that nails it. I was so profoundly affected by that, and so disturbed by how little has changed in the energy industry except for the object of the hunt that I want to keep it in mind.
I’m very new to this whole enterprise of art-making, so I’m probably not the best person to ask how an artist works on a series. I made some decisions for this that seem to be working and that help keep each piece focused and manageable — the format, palette, and subject source are overtly unifying qualities, and most of the panels are edge-bound with the same fabric. My friend Jane (who spoke here about her synaesthesia) often works in series. http://www.janedavila.com/ She says that sometimes she has a series in mind at the outset and sometimes a series evolves or a group of works is discovered to have some qualities or components in common that can be read as a series. But what distinguishes an actual series from “a subject I’m interested in” seems to be up to the originator to declare.
Series are often broken up among collectors, partly because it’s more lucrative to charge for individual parts than for an aggregate where the “group discount” mentality kicks in.
How, when, where, or whether to discuss symbolism or what the work means to the originator is another of those endless inquiries. I like to know more about a work than its date of completion, medium, title, and provenance, but anything after those bare facts runs into the dangerous territory of precisely what and how much to say. It’s impossible to read MD without being overcome by the grandeur and grossness of the risks run in the name of profit and “the betterment of mankind.”
Perhaps you haven’t made another textile piece because its not a medium that speaks to you with frequency or fluency. It’s not required ;-)
Steve,
To answer your questions first, the spears in Baleen are bamboo barbecue skewers (the kind that come in bags of 100 at the grocery store). Also, I’ve started using bits of paper in some of the pieces.
I had been trying, out of a sense of literary obligation and pretension, to read Moby Dick since I was in college in the 1970s. But I would get to roughly the same point about 50 pages in and give up. A couple of years ago, one of my favorite students said it was her favorite book and rekindled my embarrassment at not having read it. So I set to, and got to a point about 50 pages from the end, almost gave up again, pushed through, and understand now why so many people say it’s the greatest book ever written in the English language. I started the series in response to a contest in one of the fiber magazines (which established the square format), and quickly realized that I wasn’t at all interested in the contest, but I was greatly interested in staying engaged with the book in this way.
I have no idea what the scope of the series will be. One question that comes up frequently is “Are you going to do one for every chapter?” There are 136 chapters — which is not necessarily “‘no’ for an answer,” but some sections are more evocative than others, so I’m not sure.
On a somewhat unrelated note, I’ve begun to wonder whether Japan’s opening to the West has had as profound an influence on the evolution of art as did the innovations and flourishings of the European Renaissance. There’s a dissertation in there somewhere.
melanie,
Do you have a different understanding of Melville or Ahab or sharks or the sea for having worked on these? Are they discovery as well as expression?
When I finished the book, I did spend a couple of weeks looking into pursuing a degree in marine biology… and was reminded that if the sciences weren’t so intimately entwined with mathematics (a system of understanding that I just can’t compass) my life would have been very different.
But seriously, a question about understanding is extremely provocative (good-provocative) considering that a major theme of the book is the frailness of knowledge, the oscillation of knowing and not knowing, and how knowing shapes belief and influences action. What do we know, and what can we — or should we — do with our knowledge? The huge store of knowledge in various categories that accretes through the book, the relentless dissection of the wondrous, and the ultimate uselessness of all that knowing to prevent the massive tragedy at its heart, is staggering. It’s humbling in a way that reinforces the idea that humility ringed with awe is a virtue.
I have a different understanding of myself from having made these panels. I’ve been knocking around in the arts for lo! these 40 years and more but despite being pretty good at some things – actress, writer – these weren’t things I was comfortable “being” and I resisted calling myself that. But recently someone asked me if I was an artist and I just said yes. What a relief that is.
Melanie,
Your second panel, particularly, reminded me of Japanese art. I am glad that you have found your calling.
Perhaps, we all will take a closer look at Moby Dick now.
A practical question that I meant to ask a long time ago: How does one preserve textile art? Small pieces one can put behind glass but what about large pieces? What do people do when they get dusty? Dry-clean them?
Melanie,
Grand work!
The juxtaposition of the quotes and the visuals changes the visuals, or at least it does for me. But not so much that I couldn’t go back and look at them without the words. So I did so. Below is my without-text observations.
The pieces seem to range a bit in style, in spite of the similar hues. (I’m looking last to first, because of the scrolling). The last one (Baleen) gives me a spot of frisson — the bamboo spears seem to penetrate the glowing round, producing the red, bloody bits. It’s the contrast between the clarity and shapeliness of the round and the pointed threats of the bamboo that makes me shiver. Also the difference in color seems to emphasize two different realms clashing.
The next to the last one (sharks) doesn’t have that fearful cringe-making impact; if I hadn’t had the name, I would have admired the rhythms you’ve set up, the beauty of the stitching and the fabrics. The white top section reads more like lace than bones, if I disregard the title.
The third from the end (Duodecimo) catches me in the throat — it feels poignant as well as meaningful, although its meaning isn’t one I can explain in words. The lines of the complicated textiles embracing the lines of thread and the hint of tree bark or something organic at that 90 degree angle to the white slab, held together by the cording really works as design, but more, for me, as inchoate meaning.
The 4th from last (Ahab) is clearly Japonisme, with a fringe of boniness that isn’t. It looks like a haiku by Bashu and since I’ve worked on haiku and visual art, it doesn’t strike me as strongly as do the others. But I suspect that other people would have the opposite reaction. The “boniness” does keep it from settling into the banalness of “moon behind trees.”
And the first — I can’t tell if what I’m reading as starry bits are truly pins in the surface; seeing the piece in person and having that knowledge could change my view of it. Without it, though, I would say that this one feels like an exercise in floating pieces in space — very pleasant, well designed, nice. But it also doesn’t have the impact on me that the later ones do.
I’m wondering if you feel like your composition and sense of the work changed a bit as you went along (or if I’m all wet and the first is the last to be finished).
And as a general topic of discussion, I find that titles change art for me, and quotations change it drastically for me. And I don’t mind that. I love good literary quotes which resonate, and I like putting them up against visual art and seeing how each speaks to each. Usually I think of the visual art as being heavily influenced by the quotation, but it could easily work the opposite way — the quote could be changed somewhat by having it juxtaposed against the art.
I love the thought of going through Moby Dick like this and making the art from the quotes. Nothing I have said here denies the power of the two together. I even like the thought that sometimes the quotes deny what I read into the visual art and make me hold two ideas simultaneously, without denying either.
You have shown us some extremely successful pieces.
Oh, and by the way, Siegfried Wichmann has written “Japonisme: The Japanese Influence on Western Art in the 19th and 20th Centuries” (translated from the German) 1980, Harmony Books. It’s a gorgeous coffee table book that I bought some years ago and have never exhausted.
I am thinking hard about “the frailness of knowledge, the oscillation of knowing and not knowing, and how knowing shapes belief and influences action. What do we know, and what can we — or should we — do with our knowledge?” It attaches itself nicely to text and visual art and readings of the visual art, as well as readings of the text.