“Calendar Notations”

Good Friday/ April, Calendar Notations, 2005 kiln-fired paint on slumped glass with wood support 30” x 19” x 4”. [click on photo to enlarge and see more detail]

One thing I love about art is it's ability to make me see things differently. That certainly happened Saturday at the Ojai Studio Artists Tour, where one artist has created beautiful glass wall pieces incorporating blow ups of portions of her desk calendar. Not that I realized that was the inspiration until she juxtaposed her old desk calendar with some of the pieces on display in her studio. Susan Stinsmuehlen-Amend uses one of those big, blotter sized paper calendars, which, with use, becomes filled with her doodling. Unlike most of us, however, she was able to see the potential for beauty in the mundane.

Artist's Statement:
Subject matter for recent work, “Calendar Notations”, has been culled from a collection of desk calendars. These large format calendars reveal information from my personal and business life. The attempt is to capture some form of the unconscious markings I make while organizing my life and talking on the telephone. Selected details, which show notes of things to do, appointments, doodles, etc., are blown-up and painted and fired on transparent glass. On the reverse side of each pane is painted some form of nature that I notice at that time of year. This series also talks about time and how we spend it. The glass is also slumped, bent in the kiln, causing the imagery to become somewhat difficult to see, suggesting the equivocal nature of remembering the past.

By the way, when I contacted Susan abut including her work in this blog, she replied:

"Just heard you speak on your website about paying attention to the unexpected....sure is what I am doing with my artwork. Nice to see the connection you talked about." [ view 3 minute video Susan mentions].

For more information on the art, contact the artist, Susan Stinsmuehlen-Amend susanamend@pobox.com