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My month of August is almost entirely focused on trade shows. Last week, it was ENK Accessorie Circuit in New York.
Happily, I was able to sneak away from set up for a few hours to visit the Guggenheim. I’m a little ashamed to admit it was my first time in this iconic museum. (I seem to always end up at one of New York’s other amazing museums – there are just so many good ones!)
Not surprisingly, I liked the black and white painting!
When these two images (a recent Instagram pic and a painting I’m working on for my class) appeared next to each other in my phone’s photo stream, I was struck by the similarities. It seems I’m very drawn to contrast these days.
In fact, it’s a pretty major theme in my jewelry as well, as evidenced by both the shift collection and my new droplets collection:
PS. If you’re waiting for new work to make it’s way into my shop, it’s coming! Just sort of slowly. I’ve got three trade shows this month, and as usual, my focus is getting work into my stores. But I promise, the work is coming to the online shop!
And if there’s something you’re just dying to get your hands on, you can always email me at megan(at)meganauman.com and I’ll be happy to get it to you!
I can’t think of a better way to spend my summers than working in the studio. Even when I’ve got lots of distractions, I like to carve out some serious time for my own private art summer camp.
And that’s what I’ve been up to lately. Lots and lots of studio time.
Cranking out new work for my three (yes, three) upcoming trade shows.
And doing a little painting too.
A painting of a poppy I made in high school.
One of the biggest challenges to starting to paint again is reconciling the painter I was fifteen years ago with the artist and designer I am now.
Technique, I’m learning, is a lot like riding a bike. I was a little shaky at first, but I’m starting to reclaim the balance, the movement, the momentum.
The challenge is not how to paint, but what to paint.
I don’t remember this being such a struggle when I used to paint. As a high school student, I felt confident in my subject choices. I rarely worked from other people’s photographs or images in books (that would have been cheating, and wrong) but often worked from photos I took – people, scenes from my family’s travels, flowers – these formed the main subject matter for my work. As I sought out new art classes, I began painting more of the human figure from life. (Always a favorite drawing subject.)
But in the subsequent years since I stopped painting, two things happened: I received two degrees in art. And I built a strong visual brand around my voice as a designer.
So now, my painting is burdened by what I know about the history of modern (and post-modern) art, who I am (and who I try to project myself to be) as a designer, and, to further complicate things, thoughts of honoring my mom (and the artist she was) through painting.
Fortunately, I’ve been around the block long enough in terms of the creative process to understand that the only way to work through these issues is to go to my studio and make something.
The only real way to find my voice when it comes to painting is to paint.
Of course, this is easier said than done.
Because, what should I be painting is still a nagging question. Do try to pick up with the style and subject matter where I left off? Should I be painting abstracts and not things? What kind of painter do I want to be? And how does this fit with the designer I am?
When I first picked up my paintbrush again, I simply started with abstracts. With putting paint on canvas. And while this was cathartic, the results didn’t all feel like me.
At the suggestion of my friend Brigitte, I signed up for an online painting class.
The first week of the class, our homework was simply to gather inspiration. Since Joe and I were traveling in Oregon that week, I spent the week taking lots of photos of the landscape (and, as usual, pinning things on Pinterest). For my three paintings for the class, I decided to work from photos that I took.
This feels like more of a return to the painter I once was, but a good place to start. (After all, why pretend the painter I was didn’t exist in the quest to figure out what kind of painter I will be?)
There’s also something to be said for working on something for a class. It removes the pressure of working on something that has to go out into the world as part of my brand.
With the freedom to play, I’m hoping to begin finding my voice again.
The first layer of one of my paintings for the course I’m taking. Based on an image of snow (in July!) on Mt. Hood
Joe and I spent last week in Oregon. After a few glorious days in Hood River (I think I may be in love) we tore ourselves away to the coast.
While walking on the beach, we came upon these beautiful wind screens made out of driftwood. There were several as part of a larger beach camp (for lack of a better way to explain it) but I fell in love with this one a little ways farther down the beach by itself.
I kind of want to live there forever.
Very early, on the morning of my mother’s funeral, my husband found me standing in the garage, looking for my paint brushes. I had found my box of oil paints in the storage cabinet in my studio, amidst other art and craft supplies that had made it home with me after graduate school. But I couldn’t find my brushes.
And on the morning of my mom’s funeral, I really wanted to find my brushes, even though it had been nearly ten years since I’d last painted.
You see, I quit painting right after my grandfather died.
This is an oversimplification, but it’s basically true.
My mom’s dad died during the spring semester of my junior year of college, and it was the first time I experienced the death of a close family member. At the time, I was a metalsmithing major taking Painting 1 with Jerome Witkin as one of my studio electives. In taking the class, I was trying to recapture a skill I once held so dearly.
I don’t remember exactly when I started painting (unless you count one of my earliest memories of painting with water on the concrete steps of the pre-school I attended) but I started taking drawing classes around the age of six, and considered myself an artist from that point on.
By high school, I was painting a lot.
This was all thanks to my mom.
My mom started decorative painting around the time that I was born, and as I got older, she started painting oil and watercolor, mostly landscapes and animals, but also people and the occasional still life.
Growing up, my identity as an artist was directly linked to my mother’s identity as an artist. My mom never sold any of her paintings (she never wanted to) but she helped foster my love for art.
As a teenager, my walls were covered with images of Impressionist paintings I had seen at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, Russia, and the Barnes Foundation. (In one of those amazing, mysterious ways that things connect in the world, you can now buy my jewelry in the Barnes Foundation shop.) Before I discovered metals and jewelry my senior year of high school, I planned on studying painting in college.
In college, I focused on studios that gave me a chance to expand on techniques I wasn’t exposed to in high school, particularly my metals classes, fibers, and photography. But with room in my schedule junior year, I decided to come back to painting.
My grandfather died in April of that year, right at the point where the semester starts to get overwhelming. Missing a week of classes doesn’t help. Something had to give, and since I didn’t need the painting class to graduate, I dropped it.
My paints and brushes traveled with me to graduate school, where I occasionally pulled them out to experiment with some color on metal techniques. But I hadn’t really painted since my grandfather died.
But on the morning of my mother’s funeral, the urge to drag out my paints was too strong to ignore. (Especially since I had just come back from my first trip to Paris, where I saw so many of the paintings I’d grown up learning about.) I found my brushes hiding in the basement, and proceeded to throw my painting supplies in the back of my car, along with a few blank canvases from my mother’s house.
But I didn’t paint.
For over two months, I thought about painting. I went to the art supply store to stock up on a few essentials that had expired over the years. I wanted to paint. But I didn’t.
I kept coming up with excuses. I had too much other work to do. I didn’t really know what I wanted to paint. Would I even remember how? Mostly, it seemed crazy to devote time to painting when I was so far behind on my other work.
Then, one morning in June, almost three months after my mother died, the urge to paint was too strong to resist. I was working in my studio, listening to Adele, and every fiber of my body told me to put down the necklace I was working on and paint.
And so I did.
And these are some of the paintings that came out of that first week:
I didn’t start with an agenda or an idea in mind. (Though I had been compiling some inspiration images on Pinterest.) I just let myself paint.
And while I’m not sure where this is going, it feels good to be back.
I would be lying if I said I wasn’t a huge fan of the Harry Potter series. I was hooked from the moment I read the first book. A large part of my love for Harry Potter comes from its pull on two of my biggest child fantasies – to attend boarding school and to be magic.
Boarding school dreams aside, what child (or adult) hasn’t fantasized about having some sort of magical power from time to time?
So imagine my surprise while reading Ernst Fischer’s The Necessity of Art to learn that I have been making magic for most of my life. Fischer writes:
“In all the forms of its development, in dignity and fun, persuasion and exaggeration, sense and nonsense, fantasy and reality, art always has a little to do with magic.” (Emphasis mine.)
Is there anything more beautiful or poetic than that sentiment? Perhaps what Fischer writes in the next paragraph:
“Art is necessary in order that man should be able to recognize and change the world. But art is also necessary by the virtue of the magic inherent in it.” (Emphasis mine.)
This idea leaves me a little breathless. I have been making art my entire life. But I never before stopped to think that I was also making magic.
But how could it not be true?
To make art is to transfigure something into something else. I have turned paint into people and balloons into flowers. (And not in the street performer, balloon animal sense.) I take coils of steel and turn them into necklaces that attract the eye and beg to be touched. I see something in my mind and make that into reality.
Every time that I make something, I do so by way of a process that, to most people, seems as logical and probable and doable as magic itself.
And then, even more miraculously, I get to share that magic with the world.
Because the magic is not solely in the process. The magic is inherent in the thing itself.
Every piece of art, regardless of whether it’s a painting, sculpture, photograph, necklace, mug, or anything else, contains magic. It contains something that enchants, or beguiles, or transports. It contains a spark of something that carries us from our current reality and makes us see something differently.
And that’s pretty powerful.
Now about that boarding school fantasy…
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This morning, I awoke to the type of email that always ruins my day. Someone replying to an email I wrote to correct my grammar.
When I write a blog post or send an email to my list, it’s because I have something that I want to say. I’m an incredibly passionate person, and when I’ve got something on my mind, I can barely keep the words in. I write because I believe my words can make a difference.
And when I write, I write as a person. Because that’s what I am. One person.
And when I write, I write as though I’m writing to a friend. Because that’s how I think of my readers. Even if I can’t connect with each of you directly, I try to write in a way that feels like I can. I like to write as if I’m talking directly to you, because I hope that I can.
That said, because I am one person who gets excited about her ideas and wants to get them to you as quickly as possible, occasionally, you might find a typo.
I’m human. It happens. I do my best to go through, re-read, and double check what I’ve written. But as one very excited person, sometimes I miss things.
I’m one person, and it’s not possible for me to hire a copy editor for every email and blog post. I’m not the Huffington Post, and I’m not trying to be. (Though I’m sure they, even with lots of editors, make the occasional mistake too.)
I think most of you reading this are willing to forgive me a little. I hope you’ll understand that when I have a little grammatical error, it’s not because I don’t understand grammar. (I was an A student in English, thank you very much.) It’s because in my enthusiasm to share with you, sometimes my fingers can’t keep up with my brain. Sometimes, despite all my best efforts, things fall through the cracks.
I hope that most of you reading this know that what I’m trying to share, what I’m trying to do, is more important than a little typo or grammatical slip here or there.
But if you can’t overlook that, then perhaps I’m not the right fit for you. If the only way that you’ll ever take me seriously or want to work with me is if I am 100% perfect all the time, then maybe it’s time we part ways.
I am not perfect 100% of the time (because no one is), and frankly, I’m not bothered by that. But if that’s important to you, it’s time to move on.
But if you’re willing to forgive an occasional (and believe me, unintentional) slip of grammar, I’d love to keep sharing with you.
And I just want you to know how much your support means to me. Thanks for understanding that the message is the most important thing.
On Friday night, I got sucked into watching the National History Bee on , wait for it… the History Channel. Despite Al Roker’s terrible job as an Alex Trebek wannabe, my love of obscure trivia kept me watching as middle school students answered question after question.
But the entire time I watched, something nagged at me.
You see, the sixteen finalists were all boys. Not a girl in the bunch.
Part of me was infuriated. Are no girls interested in history?!? What is going on here? Where were the smart, sassy girls? (Where was my twelve-year-old self?)
I immediately wondered if I should call up Sarah Vowell to start a campaign to get more girls interested in history.
But another part of me felt conflicted. Even though I love certain History Channel shows (I’m lookin’ at you, American Pickers), I can’t help but notice how exceedingly male oriented the History Channel is. From the programming to the commercials, the History Channel seems to be screaming, “History is for the men.” (In a deep, booming voice, no less.)
Which is where my conflict comes in. I want girls and women to be interested in history. But do I really want them to be interested in history when most versions of history are told from a fairly male point of view?
As I listened to the questions in the History Bee, I tried to notice what proportion were related to or about women. While I don’t have any hard numbers, it was certainly less than half.
And then suddenly, I was conflicted again. By specifically looking for questions about women, wasn’t I being just as biased towards my own gender’s telling of history?
My head was spinning with questions.
Should we be trying to get girls more interested in history? Or should we be trying to get girls interested in telling our own versions of history? Or should we try for a happy medium? (Or perhaps, am I making too big a deal out of nothing?)
I don’t have any answers. But I do keep coming back to my recent trip to the Museum of London. This little gem of a museum told the history of the city in perhaps the most unbiased way I’ve ever seen. Presented chronologically, stories of conquest and war mixed with domestic objects and scenes from everyday life throughout the ages. I left feeling like I had a better understanding of the major milestones in London’s history while also getting a sense of what it might have been like to live through any of the time periods. In short, it felt complete.
I guess this is what I really want. A version of history that is meant to engage everyone, where stories of war and politics don’t overshadow the everyday realities of life. Where every day objects are held in as much reverence as royal artifacts and the stories that are told reflect everyone who lived them, not just the men. Where history is told as a series of engaging stories, not just a timeline of war and power.
Maybe I should give Sarah Vowell a call.
{Image taken by me of a women’s suffrage display at the Museum of London.}
Exactly two months ago, my mom passed away after a 2 1/2 year battle with ovarian cancer. Two months feels like an eternity and an instant at the same time. I haven’t spoken much about my mother’s death online for a million reasons, but with Mother’s Day this weekend, it seems only appropriate to share.
These are the words I spoke at her funeral:
Today I’m here not to say goodbye to an amazing and inspiring woman, but to say thank you.
The older I get, the more I realize what an amazing gift it is to have parents who believe you can be anything you want to be. And not only did my mom believe that, but she made sure that Melissa, Timmy, Jordan, and I had every opportunity we could to become whatever we wanted to be.
Growing up, my mom took us to everything. Swimming. Gymnastics and dance. (Even the boys.) Sports. Games, practices, meets. She even occasionally let me skip school to go to painting class with her. She always put our interests, hopes, and dreams before her own.
And it wasn’t just us. I can’t tell you how many other kids my mom drove to and from practices and events, because she believed that every kid needed love, support, and encouragement.
And it didn’t stop when we grew up. A few years ago when I had a stress fracture in my foot, my mom drove me to Ohio to help deliver my art to an exhibition. And she drove me to countless shows and sales too.
What amazes me most is how capable my mom was of still pursuing her own life and interests while supporting us kids in a growing list of endeavors.
My Mom’s passions were many, and she taught us to love and respect them, but didn’t force us into them. As a result, we all developed a diverse group of interests that are distinctly our own, but can all be traced back to our mother.
My mom was equally at home in a museum or a painting studio as she was watching a soccer or basketball game, as comfortable traveling in the city as she was bird watching at the beach.. As a result, she instilled in us the ability to not only adapt to our surroundings, but to fully immerse ourselves in whatever and wherever we were at the moment.
The most important gift my mom gave us was not a love for her many passions, but an glowing a example of the kind of person we should be. My mom was stubborn, direct, passionate, and never afraid to be herself. My mom was the ultimate model of how to be a strong, confident person, and for that I am truly grateful.
And so today, I’m not here to say goodbye to my mon, but thank you. Thank you, mom, for always supporting us, and for being the ultimate model of how to live life. I won’t say goodbye, because I know you live on in every person in this room, but especially in Melissa, Timmy, Jordan, and me.
