The Questionnaire: Pam Farrell

The Questionnaire is meant to be a lighter version of a bio, a little more revealing in some respects and personal without all the facts bogging it down. I supply the questions and the respondents supply the answers. Either one or both of us supply the images. (Note: Click on images to enlarge.)

                P a m  F a r r e l l               

What is your favorite color?

Currently, earthy greens/golds/browns/greys that have no name 

Hypnotist Collector (ochre 2), 2009, encaustic on panel, 18"x18"

Monoprint 1, 2010, oil on mulberry paper, 16"x20"

Monoprint 2, 2010, oil on mulberry paper, 16"x20"

Chamber 2, 2010, digital image

What is your favorite word?

Every day a different one... today's favorite word is excellent! 

Pam behind the camera on her Mac

What turns you on creatively, spiritually or emotionally?

Creatively: challenging, new information; things I don't know 

What turns you off?

Creatively: over-thinking, self-doubt 

What profession other than artist would you most like to be?

Rock star or neuroscientist 

What is your favorite book or movie?

Changes all the time... currently the book I cherish is The Cloud Atlas; I love dictionaries, reference books, specialty glossaries 

(Not the novel The Cloud Atlas, but the actual cloud atlas)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Cloud_Atlas

Who is your favorite musician, musical group or style of music?

Blues, jazz, three-chord rock n roll, early r & b

Howlin' Wolf, Robert Johnson, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Mingus, Chuck Berry, early Stones...I could go on

Charles Mingus

What do you most value in your friends?

Connection, authenticity 



Name three artists whose work has influenced your own or whose work you most relate to.

Cy Twombly, Gerhard Richter, Brice Marden

Cy Twombly at the Cy Twombly Gallery in Houston with the gallery's largest painting, Say Goodbye, Catullus, to the Shores of Asia Minor

Gerhard Richter, Abstract Painting, 1995, oil on canvas, 41x36cm (about 16"x14")

Brice Marden, Adriatic, 1972-73

Brice Marden, Orange Rocks, Red Ground, 2000-02

Name an artist whose work you admire but which may be unlike yours.

Bruce Nauman, Richard Tuttle, Eva Hesse 

Bruce Nauman, Life/Death, Love/Hate, Pleasure/Pain

Richard Tuttle, For Ron, 2009, acrylic/colored cardboard/mahogany shelf, 14 3/4"x40"x2"

Eva Hesse, Ennead, 1966, acrylic, paper-mache, plastic, plywood, string

What is your idea of earthly happiness?

Being in the paint

More Work From  P a m  F a r r e l l

All Things Flow (grey), 2010, oil on copper, 5"x5"

Canal 1121, 2008, digital image

Canal 1122, 2009, digital image

False Walls (lacuna), 2009, encaustic on panel, 36"x36"

Hypnotist Collector (grey), 2009, encaustic on panel, 36"x36"

Monoprint 3, 2010, oil on mulberry paper, 16"x20"

For still more work by Pam, see pamelafarrell.com and pfarrellartblog.blogspot.com

Pam is represented by Morpeth Contemporary in New Jersey

Work in the Studio

Bulletin: Sometimes I actually do make work in the studio. This summer has not been particularly productive because it's been so hot. Lounging around on the couch with a good book, a fan and a cold drink has been much more appealing, but my brain has been actively thinking about making things so that I was able to plug away when I finally got going. I have several large pieces that are the beginnings of series. Now they just need some sister works to round things out. Meanwhile, here's a peek:

This is Running Stitch, 24"H x 66"W x 1.75"D on three panels. This is patinated copper, rubber, cut up books, found metal and other objects with encaustic on birch panels. I named it Running Stitch because I was thinking about the horizontality of it all, and then when I was fusing with a hot tool, it dawned on me that the tool was called a shoe. Wow! Serendipity.

Once a piece gets to be this big, it's very hard to photograph with a little point-and-shoot camera. I always get the warping of the horizontal and it's hard to see detail. So I had to crop it to be straight and it looks like the horizontal pieces at top and bottom are strangely cut off. They are not in reality. You can click on this and see it larger on a separate page.

Here's a closeup of one of the panels. You can see the tacks and black encaustic between the horizontal rows.

I like this piece for its blackness and texture, and because of the bare copper in spots, I also like it when the light hits it at an angle and the copper reflects.

Here's a studio snapshot showing how it picks up the light and how the hard surface of the metal contrasts with the soft, textured wax (and other weird stuff).


I made one other piece like this - so far - but I treated it a little differently.

This is Thinking of You, same materials but smaller at 16"H x 56"W x 2"D. I gave it this name because the stripes and drips reminded me of thought balloons.

Here's a side view of this one on my messy studio wall showing the texture and reflective metal.

Now I just have to get out my trusty hammer, knife, brush and shoe (tool) and continue the series.

When Does Art Become Product?

Here's an early peek at the card for the Pick Up the Pieces/Red Dot event that Conrad Wilde Gallery is hosting beginning May 1st. In case you can't read the names of the artists whose work is shown, they are, beginning at the top left and continuing in a clockwise rotation: Emilia Arana, Mo Godbeer, Nancy Natale and Eileen P. Goldenberg. I was pleased and surprised to be included on the card, and I like the blue/orange combo that is one of my favorites.

I hope that Conrad Wilde Gallery is able to make enough from this special sale to reimburse the artists whose work was stolen. The donated works will also be available for purchase online from the gallery. (Click here for a link to Conrad Wilde Gallery with more info on the show.)

How Does It Feel?
Last night I spoke to reporter Yael Schusterman who is doing a story on the Gallery and the show for the Arizona Daily Star. She asked me what I felt when I found out that my work was stolen. I told her that I didn't have much of an emotional reaction about the theft of my own work; I felt much worse for the gallery and for the other artists. I don't know why that is exactly except that I think once my work leaves the studio, I really disconnect from it. It's different when the work is still in the studio.  I remember when I first began making art and the strong connection that I felt to my work. When I first sold a piece, it felt like parting with my firstborn, but that's no longer the case.

I was in the home of my "biggest collectors" last week.  They are friends who have been very supportive of my work and have purchased a large number of pieces over the years. Looking at my work on their walls was a little surprising to me because I had forgotten some of it, and I was pleased that I thought most of the work was successful. There were a couple of pieces that I would rework a bit, but all in all, it was OK. Did I feel a big connection? Not really, although I could envision myself putting down the strokes and making the works. However, I no longer felt that the work was a part of me.

Dumpster Diving
After I got off the phone with Yael, I was (as usual after I talk to a reporter) filled with regret about my runaway mouth. I have yet to learn the lesson that many times less is more and the less you say, the less can be taken the wrong way and come around to bite you in the ass and/or make you look like the fool you (sometimes) are. I guess what got me going was the reporter's revelation that the three recovered works (my two plus one by Deanna Wood) were found not just in an alley, but in a dumpster!

I had visualized them lying picturesquely against a mossy wall somewhere, but the reality of their being tossed in a dumpster along with the tailends of someone's supper, painted a different picture for me.

Marketing Art
Well, discovering that the dumpster was the place where my work wound up, of course made me say that I wouldn't be surprised if all the work ended up in a dumpster somewhere. What I meant by this is that the paintings could not be readily exchanged for the fast buck the way that electronic equipment could be, that they would have to be marketed. How would crooks market art? Especially art by artists whose names are not among those totally recognizable by any household? (The question of which names those would be will be put aside for the moment.) For the most part, this art requires an intermediary to attest to its value. This is the important role that the gallery plays in marketing art. If you are a crook and are trying to sell art on a street corner (or out of a dumpster), chances are you will not hold the same position of critical authority in the art market.

When I first heard about the theft and saw all the stolen pieces together on the reward poster, I thought that someone had stolen a nice collection for their walls. All that work would look great hanging in someone's house! But that's a delusional view based on the belief that someone who makes their living (apparently) by breaking and entering will want to surround themselves with original art. I think that unless the stolen pieces can be exchanged for cash, drugs or some other "valuable" commodity, they are worthless and will end up in a dumpster or out in the desert where they will melt. (That sounds even worse than going to the dumpster.)

Note to Tucson police and/or other interested Tucson resident: map out all the dumpster locations in town and make regularly-scheduled investigatory visits. 

What's It All About, Alfie?
(Unless you are Of A Certain Age, that heading, the movie and the song of the same name will mean little or nothing to you.) So there I was after the conversation with the reporter, thinking how little connection I felt to the art I made and how the art on its own became just so much dumpster filler. Is there a spark that originates in the artist and infuses art with meaning like the finger of God bringing Adam to life on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel?

So here I am again, brought back to my funk and pondering Life's Deeper Meaning with no result in sight. It's a good thing that I am picking up a doggie house guest this afternoon to cheer me up. But more about that later.

Back from the Breather

Sometimes I just have to take a break from making art. It starts to feel too much like working for The Man (or The Woman, except not This Woman). There are many theories about making art and the connection to the spiritual, as in what makes art special or what makes art be art? I don't go in for a lot of that high concept stuff, but I do think that if I make art without the right emotional (or, call it spiritual if you have to) connection to the work, it will suck.

Thus, I'm just back from a breather in the interest of not making art that sucks. (Can you tell that I've been watching a lot of Anthony Bourdain?)

Reworked encaustic painting - still not renamed and still needing to be rephotographed to get it square.

Painting detail - this is not supposed to be square and it succeeds at that.


I like this painting. The colors and rhythm feel right and it looks very good in person.

I'll be back with more in a few days.

In the meantime, as Buster says, I hope you are well.

Powering Up

I'm working on my Power Point presentation about encaustic for the Smith College class in Historic Methods and Materials. The 8-10 students are coming to my studio next Tuesday for a demonstration of encaustic painting and then we'll go over to Smith so I can show my PP. On Thursday they will come back and experiment with the medium themselves.

Artists painting a sculpture of Herakles, Red Figure Apulian Column Krater.
GREEK Anonymous , 4th BCE Greek Classic Ceramics
Earthenware | Italy. | New York. Metropolitan Museum of Art. 

I was finally able to get this picture from a classical Greek vase dug up in Italy . The image appears on the cover of the 13th edition of Gardner's Art Through the Ages, as I saw on Amazon, but I couldn't get it from there. Neither did it turn up on the searches I made of the Metropolitan Museum which now owns the vase.  Google eventually found it at  gallery.sjsu.edu/arth198/painting/encaustic.html. Where would we be without Google?

Here is the painter's nude assistant manning the charcoal brazier containing cylinders of molten encaustic and heated tools.

And on the other side of the statue, the bearded artist applies the paint to Herakles's lion skin cloak.

I also found an image of these tools, called cauteria in the plural (cauterium, singular), that were used to apply and smooth the wax.


I wish I knew who the figure was that is shown above the assistant. I guess it must be the god Herakles (also known as Hercules) watching his statue get painted. I didn't think that Hercules was a god, but I just read up on him and found that he was the son of Zeus and a mortal woman and so was a god. (Note: one of our dogs is named Hercules and we treat him like a god.)


Addendum: Joanne Mattera sent me some images she took of this vase at the Metropolitan Museum. These are just great for getting a sense of the size of the piece and clarity of the images.

When you look at these images, you can see that it is Daddy Zeus above the assistant on the left and then Herakles (Hercules) in the flesh looking on at the painting from the right.

You can tell it's him because of the lionskin cloak and the club.

A very big thank you to Joanne for sending me these irreplaceable images of what is believed to be the only depiction of an encaustic painter plying his trade on a statue.

_________________________________________________________________________

On another note...

So encaustic is much on my mind, and looky here, what I got via email:

I am so happy to be included in this show and to have an image (cropped) of my work appear on the card and in the press release. I wish I could go to Tucson for the opening but it's not in the cards right now. Maybe next time. The wonder of it all is that I know just about every one of the artists included in the show thanks to the encaustic conference. And of course I know Miles Conrad from the conference, too. That is such a nice feeling to be among friends even in absentia.

Attacking the Studio

Perhaps "attack" is the wrong word when beginning a project like this. I guess it's more like "avoid" and then begrudgingly begin.

Part of the avoidance was a back issue of Art in America that I received yesterday from Linda Cordner at the New England Wax meeting. She was kind enough to think of me when going through some old issues and seeing an article on El Anatsui.

This was a great issue of the magazine and I was very glad to page through it while eating my lunch. (Always eat as a means of avoidance is my motto.)

May 2006 issue of Art in America

There were a couple of El Anatsui pieces that I had not seen before, and I liked the way they were photographed because you could really see the texture of the aluminum bottle caps and wrappings that the pieces are made of.

This spiral piece is really fabulous looking and seems very different from his other work. It has so much dimension and the spiral seems set into the background of vertical strips. All that gold reminds me of Egyptian jewelry. It is a great piece.

So I read the article and then continued to page through. There are many other interesting articles in this issue and I am keeping it next to my chair so I can read them during future avoidance sessions.

One of the things I found in the magazine was this very amusing list by Amy Sillman. On the left are remarks that people make to artists at their openings and on the right is what they are really thinking. If you click on the image, it will open larger so you can read it more easily.

Well, by this time a couple of hours had passed and I was starting to get anxious thinking about all the work I had to do. What's happening is that I am teaching a class of Smith College students about encaustic next week at my studio. On Tuesday I will demonstrate encaustic painting and present a Power Point about the history of encaustic (with a survey of contemporary work in encaustic). Then on Thursday, the students will come back and experiment with the medium themselves. This is a class called "Historic Methods and Materials," and I believe that this is the first time the class has included encaustic in addition to oil painting, fresco, etc.

So this is what I'm contending with - a studio packed with stuff in various piles.

Messy working habits with half-completed projects strewn all over.

And barely room for me to walk around in let alone let students into.

Paint and materials for the Smith class

But worse than anything is this corner of my storage area that is (was) piled with bags of old bubble wrap, cardboard boxes and scraps of painted papers from years ago.

I'm happy to say that once I put down the magazine and got going, I tackled the bad corner first and took two shopping carts full of cardboard and old wrappings down to the trash room. I already have the cart filled and ready again with the next load. It's a relief to get at this mess and dig it out. Why did I save it all? is what I kept asking myself as I unearthed yet another bag full of bubble wrap scraps. And the answer, I guess, is because "you never know when it might come in handy." How much crap has been stored under that rubric and how good it feels to say, "I don't care."

Bits and Pieces

No, I'm not still sulking over Martha's loss to the pickup-driving nude model. And neither am I over-bemoaning the opportunity for corporations to assume control over even more of our non-corporate world now that their purse strings can be totally untied to elect whoever or pass whatever serves their beastly interests. Nope. Not me. I'm keeping my mouth shut.

(These are not my lips. Matter of fact, they look kinda like Martha's lips.)

While not talking, I've been spending my time getting my computer cleaned of viruses that I picked up this morning when I was searching online for articles about the history of encaustic. I spent about four hours tonight chatting with the McAfee wiz in India who used Ice Sword software to cut out 9 pop-ups and 2 trojans that invaded my computer in less than two minutes this morning. BEWARE of these pop-ups that claim to be anti-virus software and scream at you that your computer is under attack. (Yes, it is under attack from you, you rotten bastard!) I knew it was fake because I already have McAfee installed and I went right there to stop the nonsense. The question is, why didn't McAfee see these things before I did?

Anyway, for a mere $89.95 and four hours of my time, I was able to watch while Unnikrishnan from McAfee took over my screen and cleaned out all the garbage those things put into my beautiful new computer in the mere two minutes before they were quarantined. If I hadn't caught them when I did and got McAfee to quarantine them, they would have proliferated throughout the whole hard drive. Scary and the first time it's happened to me. So be on the alert about this - but I guess it goes on all the time, just never before to me.

Today was a pretty good day in the studio although I have nothing to post here. I finished my 24"x24" piece for the New England Wax Exquisite Corpse project. This should be something to see when it all comes together. If nothing else, it will be really big.

Then I finished two painting that have been kicking around the studio for months. I worked on and abandoned them last summer, but I didn't strip everything down because there were things I liked about parts of them. They hung on my wall all these months until last week when I decided to give them a go again. I could not decide what to do with them last week no matter how I tried and I painted and scraped until I made myself crazy. Today I just picked up a brush and finished them both within half an hour. Crazy! I'll post pictures next week.

Just for something fun to look at - not mine, obviously, but Matisse's Red Studio.

After that success, I decided to tackle another project that I've had in mind for some time - to build a piece in a drawer taken from one of my mother's end tables. I had already worked on strengthening the drawer to get it ready, but what I had in mind turned into the worst kind of amateurish craft project when I tried to make it happen. Nope. Not gonna work. But not to worry, I have another idea to use the aged book covers that are inspiring this effort. There's always another way and maybe Plan B will work out better.