Baren Digest Saturday, 13 July 2002 Volume 20 : Number 1895 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: G Wohlken Date: Fri, 12 Jul 2002 10:04:12 +0000 Subject: [Baren 18703] Re: Baren Digest V20 #1894 At a library art show nearby one of the paintings entered was a nude male. In fact, it had been painted by my friend at my house. The young man, a friend and well known townsman, offered to pose nude for us and both the friend and I did oil paintings of him. Mine was too realistic to consider entering in the show (though for a long time the model had it hanging in plain view on his living room wall.) Hers was expressionistic and a lovely work of art. The judges for the entries to the show said hers was worthwile to put in the show, but added that it was up to the library art show committee whether to put the piece in the show. The committee vetoed it, so the angry model phoned them and in no uncertain terms claimed censorship at a library which does not condone censorship. His outrage caused some hard feelings and I remember even some tears. However, the painting was eventually put in the show. Once in a while a "tasteful" (meaning not explicit) nude gets into the show now. I guess there has to be a first time. Also, if we have an exchange with "nudes" as subject, I'd be interested in joining that one. But probably only private galleries will let us show them. Let's go for it. Gayle ------------------------------ From: "Gillyin Gatto" Date: Fri, 12 Jul 2002 12:35:32 -0700 Subject: [Baren 18704] nudity etc. Hi Bareners- interesting discussion re=nudity i also have just had a print "not hung" at a show in a public library because it is of nudes ,actually MERMAIDS. i did it for a Mermaid theme show in bar harbor last summer and sold quite a few. the trustees of the library have a no nude policy--the librarians had no problem with it. i would love to join a nude theme exchange and have done many over the years. my kids- now late twenties- were exposed (pun intended) to nudity in their reading and in my art and in life -saunas and skinny dipping with friends-but americans are pretty uptight in general. i have always disliked and actually flaunted the custom of working shirtless, that is- men can/women cant, i always have taken my shirt off if its hot out, on my own property , and also elsewhere -on occasion ! Maine has actually upheld the right of women to work shirtless on their own land and even acquitted two UMAINE women who"streaked " down Main St to protest something this spring. i would love to see outdated attitudes and laws change over time, both about nude art and nudity in general . what's the big deal ? we are all mammals!! Gillyin in Machias Maine ------------------------------ From: Mike Lyon Date: Fri, 12 Jul 2002 12:47:20 -0500 Subject: [Baren 18705] COLLEEN CORRADI'S #12 PRINTS Colleen Corradi never received her prints from exchange #12. I visited the post office with my receipt in hand in an effort to trace it and was referred to US Customs (because I had sent it "letter express", the only number was the Export Declaration number). After a long run-around on the phone, I finally reached someone who seemed to know her stuff. At least she knew enough to break into laughter when I asked about tracing the parcel using the export declaration number. When she calmed down, she told me that the US doesn't do anything with those numbers (like key them into a huge database or something) and suggested I try contacting Italian Customs. Colleen had already tried without success from her end, so I am asking all BAREN #12 participants to send me one of the extra prints from that exchange so that I can forward a replacement set to Colleen -- here's my address: Mike Lyon 1227 W 63rd Terr Kansas City, MO 64113 As of yesterday (July 11) I have received prints from: [ * ] Barbara Mason (thank you for including the replacement case!) [ * ] Barbara Patera [ * ] Maria Arango [ * ] Mike Lyon I am hoping to soon receive prints from: [ ] Akemi Ohira [ ] Bea Gold [ ] Bobbie Mandel [ ] Brad Schwartz [ ] Cyndy Wilson [ ] Darrell Madis [ ] David Mohallatee [ ] Eli Griggs [ * ] Frank Trueba [ * ] Horacio Soares Neto [ ] Jan Telfer [ * ] Julio Rodriguez [ * ] Kate Courchaine [ ] Marilynn Smith [ ] Mary Kuster [ ] Monica Bright [ ] Patsy Giclas [ ] Sharri LaPierre [ ] Sylvia Taylor [ ] Tyrus Clutter [ * ] Wanda Robertson the * means the person has confirmed they will send a replacement. Thank you all for all the support! Mike Mike Lyon mailto:mikelyon@mlyon.com http://www.mlyon.com=20 ------------------------------ From: "george jarvis" Date: Sat, 13 Jul 2002 03:12:45 +0900 Subject: [Baren 18706] Re: Baren Digest V20 #1894 Censorship, like a lie, seems to refute honest communication. As if refusing to look at what exists will cause it not to exist. > There's all kinds of censorship. --------- >Our childrens minds need to be open and heavy censorship of art is close minded. >Just because you are young doesn't mean you are not able to >judge what is ok and what is not ok, either to read or see. Since my first 'serious' attempts at art as a teenager, the majority of my work has been depicting human beings. Still humans are the most subtle, interesting and expressive visual subject-topic that I can imagine, so my work is figurative and the nude figure not rare among this work. Clothing and adornment of neccessity bring along with them a large baggage of specific cultural and class information-assumptions that can extremely compromise the 'universality' of an expression. About 25 years ago a tennis club in Skokie Illinois was soliciting work for exhibition. The coodinator of the exhibition came to my studio and examined the work prior to the exhibition and expressed what seemed like real enthusiasm. Interestingly enough, there wasn't much 'nudity' in the work, the figures being clothed in either 'culturally neutral' plain white simple clothing or in bulky machine-armor. Neither was there anything overtly sexual in the behavior of the figures. The topic dealt with the inability of humans to communicate. The show was put together under extreme duress as it coincided with my moving to Japan. It opened the day before I left. It was supposed to run a month. From Nagoya I asked how it was going, but no one would tell me anything. About six months later I found the show had been taken down the second day. Someone had managed to take offence at something. (I'm still in the dark as to what.) The organizer of the show defended the censorship in a published letter describing the work as 'pornographic', and untruthfully as different from the work he had accepted. A couple of months later this same work became the portfolio that got me a teaching job in a Catholic girls' school. The drawing that had been most attacked in print developed into a large acrylic painting that took a prize at an exhibition in the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum. Evil is in the eye of the beholder. > We could go with a straight 'Nude' theme >as we have brought in the idea of a "nude" exchange I will say I am all for it. I am also interested. >you can order the exact box as >14 as our prints are the same size. Is there anyone who can tell me the outside dimensions of the folio boxes for 14 and 14a. I would like to send my prints in a container that would protect the whole package on its return. G.Jarvis ------------------------------ From: "Tyrus Clutter" Date: Fri, 12 Jul 2002 13:39:18 -0600 Subject: [Baren 18707] Re: COLLEEN CORRADI'S #12 PRINTS Mike, I just sent my print and it should get to you sometime next week by which time I will be in Florida, hoping that it is cooler than our expected 115 degrees in Idaho for today. TyRuS ------------------------------ From: "carol wagner" Date: Fri, 12 Jul 2002 14:25:22 -0700 Subject: [Baren 18708] Books and stuff Someone mentioned one of my favorite books a few exchanges ago "The Art Of The Print", by Fritz Eichenberg, and I also recommend it as worth while .I would also like to note a small volume I found in a friends bookstore a few days ago: "Japanese Woodblock Prints", by Shizuya Fujikake. Published originally in 1938, it was reprinted in 1949 in a second and revised edition. My copy is a seventh edition, (1962) published by Japan Travel Bureau, Tokyo. Chock full of examples, of both color and sumi-e prints it also contains a most interesting chapter on Japanese followers of the Traditional style, working in Tokyo ,in the first half of the 20th century. There is also, in another chapter, the first mention I have ever run across of two women working in woodcut in Japan. The short Bibliography is a little goldmine. On another note, and as a new recruit, having taken a good look at the print exchanges (looking at past exchanges and observing current preparations for #14,#14a, and the upcoming # 15, I confess to feeling like it might be best to do the 'shallow end of the pool first by doing the smaller Swap Shop exchange, with no deadline...at least until I learn to use these very expensive knives I've purchased. And yes, David Bull, I should have read your article on tools before I acquired them!. Carol G-W Sacramento,Calif ------------------------------ From: "PHARE-CAMP,PATTI (HP-USA,ex1)" Date: Fri, 12 Jul 2002 15:07:19 -0700 Subject: [Baren 18709] RE: Baren Digest V20 #1894 nudity discussion All this fuss about folks in their birthday suits reminds me of a story... One hot day when my son (now 24) was in kindergarten the teacher pulled me aside when I went to pick him up. Apparently he decided to do what he does at home when overheated. He disrobed on the spot and went back to his play. The shocked teacher "benched" him (made him sit on a bench and watch everyone else having all the fun) for punishment. As she watched tears stream down his confused face she realized he didn't know what he'd done wrong. She felt really bad about but insisted I was to blame for not teaching him properly. That afternoon I sat Chris down to educate him a little about the world and opened with, "Some people find the human body offensive..." I'll never forget his facial expression at those words, he looked at me like he'd just heard the craziest thing anyone could ever say. I could only continue with " I know it's insane but when we are at home we can where or not where whatever we want, but most everywhere else is public and we stay clothed in public..." It dawned on him that I was talking about why he got punished at school. From that day forward he closed his bedroom door whenever undressing. It was a sad little loss of innocence that day... ------------------------------ From: =?iso-8859-1?Q?Hor=E1cio_Soares?= Date: Fri, 12 Jul 2002 21:57:31 -0300 Subject: [Baren 18710] Re: censorship Dear Bareners About the problem with my print in the Ohio exhibition, I must add some comments: [1] - I repeat what I've already writed to my friend Gayle: "I DO perfectly understand and accept and respect everyone's culture. People have different values and think differently. Accepting the other's point of view is the basis for the world peace. Really, it is OK to me. There is NO problem at all in not hanging my print in the park. When I made it, my target was adult Baren audience. [2] - Some comments about my "Endangered Species" Goya-like (I am not modest) print, that you can find at http://www.barenforum.org/exchange/exchange_9/exchange_frame.html Even though it is not an elaborated print, it is a rough libel against the waste of millions of innocent human lives all around the world (dying due hunger, illness, poverty, bombing, explosive mines, selfish economical interests, terrorism etc). The naked man without stomach depicting hunger; the naked pregnant woman, life, both crying against injustice; graves all around and the spirit of dead persons flying in the sky. I entitled the print using a phrase of the American writer W. Faulkner when receiving his Nobel prize: "I decline to accept the end of men" Thank you Hor‡cio Rio Brazil ------------------------------ From: "Jean Womack" Date: Fri, 12 Jul 2002 18:38:48 -0700 Subject: [Baren 18711] Re: Baren Digest V20 #1894 I don't want a cover for the 14a exchange, Marilynn, thanks anyway. I'll just keep them around stark naked. Jean > From: "marilynn smih" > Date: Thu, 11 Jul 2002 11:19:20 -0700 > Subject: [Baren 18699] Re: Baren Digest V20 #1893 > > Jean congratulations on your teaching job. I have been reading the exchange > 14 mail, finally. It contained a lot about the boxes available for > exchanges. I am sure that 14a participants can aquire boxes throught the > baren by going into the exchange area. And you can order the exact box as > 14 as our prints are the same size. So if you want one get busy and get > one. > Marilynn ------------------------------ From: "Jean Womack" Date: Fri, 12 Jul 2002 18:52:09 -0700 Subject: [Baren 18712] Re: Baren Digest V20 #1891 Carol, It helped me to get a kind of stone that I rub on the waterstone that makes "mud." Then I sharpen the tools. I forgot the formal name of it now. It's a soft white colored rock. Someone will know what it is called. Also, according to one book I read, paper size is sometimes put in the pulp that is used to make the paper. The practice of painting it on sheet by sheet is only for yahoos like me, who used to be too stupid to order paper already sized. I mean, how many people in the US want sized Japanese paper for woodblock printmaking? Probably if you added McClain's mailing list to Graphic Chemical mailing list, it would be fewer people than that. You could probably make a list of them by name and there would be fewer than 2,000 names on the list.. Jean Jean Womack > From: ArtfulCarol@aol.com > Date: Mon, 8 Jul 2002 20:59:40 EDT > Subject: [Baren 18673] Re: Kansas City > > I would like to know why my waterbased ink dries on the wood almost > immmediately and I have to brush it over the same place so many times. It > has to be easier than I am making it! > > And will I ever learn to sharpen the tools? Don't answer that!! > Carol L ------------------------------ From: Sharri LaPierre Date: Fri, 12 Jul 2002 18:59:48 -0700 Subject: [Baren 18713] Re: Baren Digest V20 #1894 A nudity portfolio - what a great idea. Count me in in the altogether! Maybe it should be a Figurative portfolio and leave it to each person whether they clothe, cover or expose. As for allowing children to see nudity or war scenes, what better way to teach them about these things than through art? They are bound to find out about both someday, wouldn't you want to see them prepared? I lived for many years in a rather conservative community where every year when it was time for life drawing at the community college there would be an outrage from the Christian sector that all the young people were being contaminated by this course. One woman wrote a letter to the editor one year wondering why the teachers at the college couldn't have their students paint something beautiful - like the ocean. We lived in the middle of the desert. Good thoughts to all, Sharri [:-)] ------------------------------ From: "carol wagner" Date: Fri, 12 Jul 2002 23:30:57 -0700 Subject: [Baren 18714] barenV20- 1894 Julio, If you guys decide to do a "Nude" exchange, would I be allowed to use my 'doppelganger, Dr Atl? Dr Atl is a 13 inch high, articulated, skeleton who lives in my studio and has inspired a whole series of works: paintings, lithographs, drawings and magnesium prints for a book. He is, after all, the "Ultimate Nude. Serious stuff, folks! Carol C-W Sacramento, CA ------------------------------ End of Baren Digest V20 #1895 *****************************