Negative Space

Negative Space

Gates appeal to me because of the negative space they allow. They can be closed but at the same time they allow the seasons and breezes to enter and flow. They can shut you out or shut you in. And in some ways there is no difference. Bob Dylan, 2013

Negative space gives the observer some breathing room, a place to relax before moving on. The negative space in a composition may also help to shift the eye of the observer from a void to a place of focus. East Asian art effectively made use of the concept of emptiness.

mbfitzmahan. Eri Watanabe. Tokyo, Japan. April 2022.

Negative space is the empty space around the positive image of a painting, a photo, even within a garden. Negative space is far from empty. Negative space can form an artistically interesting shape, and may be the real subject of an image.

Toda Hokuyo, Painting of Squirrels Playing in a Persimmon Tree, ~1924

Negative space in Japanese is yohaku no bi,  余白の美, i.e. the beauty of a white space. Negative space is used in sumi-e paintings as well as in other art of Japan and China. It is this aesthetic that influenced the simple tatamis and shoji in a Japanese home. I am especially a fan of the white walls, aromatic grass tatami, and shoji that divide the rooms and allow a diffused light to come in from the outside. The Japanese admire a space between, also calling it ma, 間, or aida, a kanji used in everyday Japanese to mean in between.

Right panel of the Pine Trees screen Shōrin-zu byōbu 松林図 屏風 by Hasegawa Tōhaku (1539–1610).

19th and 20th century modern European painters used yohaku no bi in their paintings. After 1854 when the Japanese were forced to open their borders after 250 years of strict isolation, Japanese prints, paintings, and fine pottery were sent to Europe and North America. Europeans were ecstatic to see these ‘exotic’ new pieces of art and bought all they could find. Van Gogh, Paul Gaugin, Monet, Mary Cassatt, and Edgar Degas copied the styles from Japan. Later Dalí incorporated these ideas into his work.

It is this admiration of negative space, that has led to an appreciation in the West of the minimalism seen in Asian art and perceived life style. Yohaku no bi is the aesthetic that influenced Japanese author, Marie Kondo’s book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up (2011).

Sumiyoshi - The Tale of Genji (Genji Monogatari), 1600s

FIRST ART WORK: Katsushika Hokusai. Moon Persimmon and Grasshopper. 1807.

WORDS: Maureen Fitzmahan

Paris, Street Photography

Maureen Fitzmahan

We'll always have Paris, Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein, and Howard Koch, Casablanca, 1942

Ahhh… Paris. First among cities for a street photographer and documentarian. There are other great places to take street photos. The teeming streets in Manhattan present men and women of all kinds. Well dressed, poorly dressed, and undressed.

mbfitzmahan. Paris.

Street photography started in Paris. Refreshingly freed from the heavy cameras of their predecessors, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Édouard Boubat and Robert Doisneau documented Paris in pre and post World War Europe. They were joined by other photographers, many of them Jewish refugees, who escaped Hungary and Germany to work in photography in Paris. Their work captured an instant in the lives of ordinary people of the Paris of the 30s, the 40s, and the 50s.

mbfitzmahan. Cafe, Paris, France.

Cartier-Bresson was a pioneer in this genre. He carried two Leicas around his neck and would wait for what he called the ‘decisive moment.’ He would choose a crumbling wall, a waiting puddle or a staircase as a backdrop and then wait for people to fill in the story. He wrote, “In photography, the smallest thing can be a great subject. The little, human detail can become a Leitmotiv.”

mbfitzmahan. Paris.

The motivation of the street photographer is to catch ordinary people doing what they do every day. Unlike portraiture or fashion photography, the subjects do not have time to pose and most photos capture them unaware. I like it when I capture some emotions such as anger, laughter, wonder, frustration, boredom, or surprise.

mbfitzmahan. Paris.

I live by an unbreakable code: I never make a photo that would embarrass. I feel a duty to the people in my photos and I remember their faces long after I make the photo. The people on the street may not look like movie stars, but they are beautiful in their natural surroundings.

mbfitzmahan. Paris.

mbfitzmahan. Paris.

Photos and Words: Maureen Fitzmahan

Mural for a Community

The Alta Visa School Mural, San Francisco. Designer and muralist: Kaitlin Fitzmahan Strange. Art Junket Volunteers: Yun Suh, Annelise Dohrer, Zoey Olbum.

Alta Vista School, San Francisco, California

In April, Kaitlin Strange went looking for a wall. A wall?! I might look for a canvas or a new lens. Searching for a wall… is that something like Winnie the Pooh a-hunting for a Woozle?

Having painted murals with Susan Cervantes at Precita Eyes in the Mission District of San Francisco, Kaitlin thinks taking a wall and turning it into public art is a good thing.

In the 1960s, Latinos in the Mission District in San Francisco, borrowed the Mexican mural tradition from Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros, and painted murals as part of the Chicano Mural Movement. Kaitlin wrote her Masters thesis on those murals.

In May of 2019, Kaitlin found her newest wall. Alta Vista School in South Bay, San Francisco welcomed Katie to design and lead a mural painting project. After approximately 30 hours of painting, 20 gallons of paint, and with the help of about 25 volunteers, Katie's mural was completed in 3 days.

Zoey Olbum, Art Junketeer volunteering.

“The Alta Vista lower school had been talking about painting a mural at the school for years, but it has never happened (though there is a small one in the garden). It was the community at the Art Junket that has made this possible -- from Maureen's Level Up theme and her encouragement to go BIG, to Katie's vision and execution, to Annelise and Zoey helping to paint and to Manya and Brian's volunteer efforts for fire survivors. It was a real team effort, which I value most and find most satisfying in the art of creation. We weathered through a little bit of drizzle, lots of strong winds, and many hours of repetitive movements. I'm exhausted but feel so grateful and satisfied to create meaningful work that will brighten so many children's days. Many parents who volunteered commented on how the mural really cheered them up upon seeing it. “ (Yun Suh, documentarian and member of the Art Junket West)

Words: Yun Suh and Maureen Fitzmahan

Designer of mural: Kaitlin Fitzmahan Strange

Photos: Kaitlin Strange and Yun Suh

Yun Suh is a member of Art Junket West and Katie is a co-founder of the Art Junket.

SKF - I Am Steady

The Murder Ballad

You put me in a shallow grave / You left me here while you walked away. (skf, I am Steady, 2019 )

skf is a member of Art Junket East.

SKF

“I wanted to write a murder ballad. I know it’s a bit dark, but I like dark.”

At first shocked, I did a bit of research and now I find myself completely addicted. A sub genre of the ballad, songs about murders have been around for a long time. Crime and murder in a song. What’s not to like? Usually passed down orally, these ballads are a murder mystery encapsulated in a short song.

Bob Dylan and Neil Young revived an interest in the murder ballad during 1960s and 70s.

For more murder ballads, you are welcome to listen to my playlist via iTunes or Spotify.

Original composition: skf

Photo and Words: Maureen Fitzmahan

Frankie Lee: Platonic Solids

Geometric figures - Art with Franky Lee

The solids combine with themselves and with each other to give rise to endless complexities, which anyone who is to give a likely account of reality must survey. Plato, The Timaeus dialogues, ~360 B.C.E.

“I haven’t created anything with my hands for a very long time. When I was a kid, my mom and dad got me origami books. There were two large volumes. At the end, the most difficult origami were the modular origami.Taking one root piece, you replicated it many times and created giant three dimensional shapes. Taking the ‘Roots’ theme from the Art Junket, I took the idea that there would be one ‘root’ that shared and created many things from it.There are five Platonic solids. They are geometric figures. The faces are all equilateral. They are all equilateral triangles, squares, or pentagons.” (Frankie Lee, Member of Art Junket East, 2019)

Franky Lee

Plato wrote about these solids in the dialogue Timaeus c.360 B.C.E. in which he associated each of the four classical elements (earth, air, water, and fire) with a regular solid.

Earth was associated with the cube, air with the octahedron, water with the icosahedron, and fire with the tetrahedron. There was intuitive justification for these associations: the heat of fire feels sharp and stabbing (like little tetrahedra). Air is made of the octahedron; its minuscule components are so smooth that one can barely feel it.

Water, the icosahedron, flows out of one's hand when picked up, as if it is made of tiny little balls. By contrast, a highly non-spherical solid, the hexahedron (cube) represents “earth". This clumsy little solid cause dirt to crumble and break when picked up.

Of the fifth Platonic solid, the dodecahedron, Plato said, "...the god used it for arranging the constellations in the heavens.”  (Wikipedia )

1. The tetrahedron - 4 triangular sides.

2. The cube/hexahedron - 6 square sides.

3. The octahedron - 8 triangular sides.

4. The dodecahedron - 12 triangular sides.

5. The icosahedron - 20 triangular sides.

Leonardo da Vinci was the first to draw Platonic solids as see-through figures. He drew the figures for his math tutor, Pacioli’s for Divina Proportione. Those sixty drawings are the only drawings da Vinci published in his lifetime. Da Vinci’s studies with Pacioli led to lifetime interest in mathematics and geometric shapes.

Leonardo da Vinci. Platonic Solids. 1492.

Art and words: Frankie Lee

Frankie Lee is a member of the Art Junket East.

Photos and words: Maureen Fitzmahan

Ana Perches: Assemblage - Theater

Assemblage - Theater

I rummaged through the basement and found a wooden wine box, and began to plan which of the objects I had at home could be arranged, pasted or attached to the inside of the box, as in a theater stage. (Ana Perches, 2018 )

I consider myself a self-taught artist. Only since 2014 have I engaged in art in a systematic manner after joining the Art Junket collective. For my first piece in 2014, I rummaged through the basement and found a wooden wine box, and began to plan which of the objects I had at home could be arranged, pasted or attached to the inside of the box, as in a theater stage. A theme emerged: Cielito Lindo, the Mexican folk song addressing a loved one, usually translated My Beautiful Sky or Heaven, the idea being “My Dear One.” At the center of the box is a small skeleton doll which I dressed as La Muerte with a piñata stick, hitting a smaller female doll hoisted by a wire, and who has blood on her clothes. This was my first assemblage, and is currently at home in my private collection.

mbftizmahan. Ana Perches. Photo. Berkeley, California. 2019.

I had not yet discovered the work of Joseph Cornell, the master of Assemblage and of the shadow box, until an art historian friend from Mills College pointed him out to me. I read about him, about his poetic theater-boxes and unexpected juxtaposition of objects. He was self-taught, a collector, a fan of second-hand stores. His story-boxes emerge from his psyche and dreams to invite the viewer into his own private world.

For subsequent projects I explored painting on canvas with acrylic paints and soon found myself wanting to cut and paste on canvas or wood, incorporating collage, fabric and three-dimensional objects. I am drawn to performance, to costumes, to movement and story-telling, as for many years I taught Mexican theater at the University of Arizona, and wrote plays which I staged, produced and directed for my students. Prominent themes in my plays were the border, feminism and politics. I find myself carrying these themes onto a smaller stage now, dramatizing not with words or actors but with objects, colors and textures.

I’ve always been a lover of the fine arts, but also of outsider art, and what the French call Art Brut (unpolished, unrefined, natural, “rough”). I found I had an affinity for this kind of art, well-suited to my limited drawing skills and technical immaturity. My kind of art is a bit “on the edge” but also physically and psychologically on the edge of the US-Mexican border. The Rio Grande separates the United States from Mexico and the Río Bravo separates Mexico from the United States. Same river, different name, same desert. A space overlapping two nations but a single space, joined and divided. This “both” and this “neither” is the basis of Border Art, a form inspired by graffiti, street art, outsider art and performance art. And by my own experience as a person from the border, a borderix.

Front page art: Ana Perches, Coyolxauhqui (Aztec Moon Goddess). 2015.

Artwork and words: Ana Perches

Ana Perches is a 2014 founding member of the Art Junket. She works out of Berkeley, California.

Photo of Ana: Maureen Fitzmahan

Ana Perches, Assemblage #3, 2014

Ana Perches, Cielito Lindo. Assemblage #1, 2014

Ana Perches, El Paso. Assemblage #3, 2018

Art Junket West

From garage to museum

All night my heart makes its way
however it can over the rough ground
of uncertainties, but only until night
meets and then is overwhelmed by
morning, the light deepening, the
wind easing and just waiting, as I
too wait (and when have I ever been
disappointed?) for redbird to sing.

Mary Oliver, A Thousand Mornings: Poems, 2012

This is the best— throwing off the light covers, feet on the cold floor, and buzzing around the house on espresso— (Billy Collins, “Morning,” 1998)

The Art Junket is a community based art group in the Bay Area in Northern California. Founded in 2014, two artists started an art movement on the east shore of San Francisco Bay.  Six artists were invited.  They weren’t professional artists, but they were eager  to make art and to meet other artists.   Each artist came to the salon with a newly created work of art reflecting a theme.  The artists were inspired and influenced by each other.

The art salon is a meeting of talent and ideas, where the members of the Art Junket have developed friendships and trust. It is a place where artists can take risks and feel supported. 

Every year, the Art Junket celebrates works created during the Art Junket’s latest series. The Art Junket Exhibition, first held in a garage in Berkeley, has grown into an official gallery show at Oakland’s Art Murmur. 

Maureen Fitzmahan and Erin Mahollitz, co-founders and leaders of the Art Junket, moved to upstate New York in July 2018. Kaitlin Strange, co-founder, took over leadership of Art Junket West.

Without a heartbeat, the Art Junket members made the change. In the Fall, the group, led by Katie and Taska Sanford, organized the Art Junket’s exhibit for Oakland’s Art Murmur’s and Art Walk.

Maureen Fitzmahan continues to support the group with copious emails, blogposts, Slack chats, and themes for each meeting.

“I am sure Katie can attest that every Art Junket get together is somehow punctuated by the presence of both (Maureen) and Erin; what you might say, what you have said, how you might approach or have approached something. You both come up in conversation and are referenced regularly. Missed is not enough to describe your absence, but you are present, regardless, through email and such, too.” (Tao Graham, April 2019)

Another change is in the horizon, as Katie Strange also leaves the Bay. She recently received a grant to begin studies in a PhD program in Barcelona, Catalonia - Spain in Fall 2019. There are plans to open a third branch of the Art Junket in Barcelona.

Oh, woe… Change is at the heart of great art. Sometimes it hurts.

Photos and words: Maureen Fitzmahan

Zoey and Brian

Katie Fitzmahan Strange

Tao Graham

Tony Jones

Manya Nelson

Erin Mahollitz

Yun Suh, Manya Nelson, Ana Perches, Erin Mahollitz, Tony Jones

Taska Sanford

Yun Suh

Annelise Dohrer, Manya Nelson

Zoey Olbum

Maureen Barry Fitzmahan

Erin, Ana, Tony, Zoey

Art Junket - East

"Ansel Adams begins with the extraordinary in a place like Yosemite, and then makes it even more so. Edward Weston begins with the mundane and turns it into something worthy of obsessive focus." Amy Scott, chief curator at the Autry Museum, Los Angeles, California, 2016

In 1905, Picasso asked Gertrude Stein to sit for a portrait. Picasso said, "Everybody says that she does not look like it but that does not make any difference, she will.” (Gertrude Stein, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, 1933.)

In February, 2019, the Art Junket welcomed New York to the Art Junket. Art Junket East is a spin-off of Art Junket West in Northern California. The first salon on the East coast was held in upstate New York near Pawling, New York.

After years of showing my photos on social media and occasionally exhibiting my photos in a coffee shop or a gallery, I have found that a much more rewarding venue is to share my photography at the quarterly salons of the Art Junket.

The salon or cafe has a long and important history in the development of art. A salon has been an incubator for innovation in art.

CHINESE SCHOLARS - Bringing together a group of artists to a private home to share ideas is an ancient Chinese concept. The Chinese scholar was the Uomo Universale (Universal Man) two thousand years before Italy produced Michelangelo. These Chinese musicians, artist, writers, and thinkers monopolized the art of painting and calligraphy in China. They gathered over tea and shared their techniques, new tools, and ideas.

SALON OF PARIS - At 27 rue de Fleurus, they came to meet Gertrude Stein, an American expat. A prickly critic, but a devotee of new ideas, Stein invited the new, unformed future greats of the art and writing world. From 1903-1946, she supplied a unique place for thinkers to come. Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Paul Cézanne, Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald were among her guests. Stein said, "Matisse brought people, everybody brought somebody, and they came at any time and it began to be a nuisance, and it was in this way that Saturday evenings began." (James R. Mellow,  Charmed Circle: Gertrude Stein & Company, 1974)

Dressed in dark brown corduroy and seated in her overstuffed chair, Stein was a fearful sight. Terrified, the young artists shyly showed her their newest work. One of my favorite stories is that when the matron deigned to look at the paintings of Henri Cartier-Bresson, my favorite photographer, she advised him to give up painting, "Go back and work for your industrialist father."  Three years later, Cartier-Bresson, stopped painting and took up photography.

F/64 GROUP OF OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA - In the 1930s, the f/64 group of photographers of California met in a friend's old barn in Oakland. The Oakland Bay Bridge wasn't built until 1933, so Ansel Adams, coming from San Francisco had to get there by ferry boat.  All the photographers showed up with photos in hand.

The males of the group were a hard drinking, hard womanizing bunch. They included Ansel Adams, Edward Weston and Brett Weston. Interestingly, though, the group was more liberal than other art groups of the era and encouraged women photographers to join them, including Imogene Cunningham and Dorothea Lange. F/64 included as many women as men. The photographers met, philosophized and they partied, drinking illegal alcohol.  Ansel Adams arranged to have their work exhibited in San Francisco on November 15, 1932, at the de Young Museum.

THE ART JUNKET OF BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA - Over an espresso and a hot apple pie, my daughter and I met in a café on Solano Avenue in North Berkeley. Erin and I discussed the idea of reviving the salon concept for artists - a salon for artists who are beset with 21st century demands, yet feel a need to make art.  Supported by my second daughter, Katie, the three of us recruited a few friends to come to our first salon in March 2015. Art Junket West thrives in the Bay Area meeting quarterly and exhibiting yearly to the public. Five years later, the Art Junket East met for the first time in New York in February 2019.

Franky Lee. Platonic Solids. 2019.

Erin Mahollitz. Mitakuye Oyasin. 2019.

James Michel. Ceci n’est pas une spatula. Wood carving, New York Maple from Harriman Forest. 2019.

Kathryn Clark-Hilliard. The Silent House, the Birdsong Wilderness. Poem. 2019.

SFK. skf - Cross on Birch Hill. Musical Composition, 5 String Banjo, Americana music. 2019.

Lisa Sikorski. Breastplate #1. Rust dyed and felted silk and wool, cotton and metallic embroidery thread, magnetic clasp. 27 in x 12 in. x ¼ in. 2019.

Dan. Sycamore Gap. Vine charcoal. 9 in x 12 in. 2019.

Photos and Words: Maureen Fitzmahan

Brian Nelson - Venice 2019

It is by living there from day to day that you feel the fullness of her charm; that you invite her exquisite influence to sink into your spirit. The creature varies like a nervous woman, whom you know only when you know all the aspects of her beauty. Henry James, Italian Hours, 1909

Brian Nelson. Photogravure. Venice, Italy. 2019.

Six months before I left on two trips to Venice in the Spring of 2019, I read a volume of essays and reminiscences of Venice by Henry James that featured several etchings by James MacNeil Whistler. One of the etches depicted an impressive structure built along a bend in a canal, and seeing it inspired me to return to Venice to see if I could find it. The etching was Whistler’s favorite of all his Venice works.

Because Henry James’ writings provided no clue as to the location of the building, I studied a map of Venice, looking for bends in canals where Whistler might have sketched the building. I targeted a spot not far from Marco Polo’s home. I thought I might be able to see the building from the opposite side of the canal. Whistler often sketched while seated in a gondola, in which case I might not find a vantage point. Further problematic was that my map had labels, orange lines, and folds that obscured details in the neighborhood I was going to explore.

Venice is so compact, having narrow passageways, odd turns, half-hidden courtyards, and dead ends. If one is completely lost, a reasonable way to navigate the streets is to take all right turns or all left turns to find your way. Indeed, this navigational method brought me to the vantage point I was looking for, giving me a clear view of the building located on a bend in the canal. Its architectural details were not identical, but very similar to Whistler’s. Since Whistler’s etchings generally bear resemblances to sites rather than precise depictions, I regard his rendition of the site I found as a prime example of Whistler’s imaginative prowess.

I was still wandering through the neighborhood with my full regalia of camera gear, when just after rounding another corner, a Venetian approached me and started a conversation with me about the dilapidated condition of American cities and that it was time something was done about it. After a few minutes of listening, I asked him about the brass squares I’d seen nearby that are embedded into the pavement. On the squares are inscribed the names of former Jewish residents who’d been dragged off to Auschwitz. It was a friendly exchange between political opposites, and he commented toward the end that wandering through the streets as I was doing was a fine way to see interesting features of Venice.

Brian Nelson is a member of the Art Junket (2017-2022)