Revisiting Pattern and Decoration
“Carpet #2”, oil on canvas, 8’ x 18’, 2001.
November 9th, 2024:
Two days ago, I picked up my new puppy-- an 8 week old bundle of energy and sweetness I named Leo-- and this precious little animal has taken over my life! I’m not complaining, because I feel lucky to have the cutest, cuddliest puppy I’ve ever seen… but it does bring me back to the days when I had real newborn babies. After the first night of getting up every two hours to take Leo outside to go potty, I regressed into a sleep-deprived, barely coherent shadow of myself with little ability to concentrate on anything! In the meantime, Leo did better last night (only up once!) and I’m taking advantage of his nap-time to start writing. My writing/painting schedule has been temporarily disrupted, but I'm working whenever possible for now.
Little Leo
This reminds me of my graduate program experience, because I had two of my three babies while I was doing my MFA at Hunter College. None of my babies were good sleepers, and being in school and being a new mother was difficult to juggle. I remember taking my first baby to my art history classes and giving a presentation while he slept in his stroller. I also remember painting my thesis painting, an enormous 8 foot x 18 foot oil painting reminiscent of an Indian carpet, in sections in my kitchen, while my second baby nursed himself to sleep in my other arm.
Pattern has always been a great love of mine, and back in undergraduate school at the San Francisco Art Institute, this passion began to reveal itself little by little in my work. I’ll never forget the professor who, during a critique in front of the whole class, criticized my work for being “decorative” because of small elements of pattern judiciously placed in the paintings. I was incensed at the time, unwilling to accept the modernist notion that decoration was a pejorative term when it came to painting. The instructor told me being too decorative meant my work was superficial, associated with the low decorative arts, and wouldn’t be taken seriously. Soon after that, I decided to embrace decoration and make pattern and ornament the focus of my work.
At Hunter College in graduate school, I began working with Valerie Jaudon, who was loosely associated with the original Pattern and Decoration movement in the 1970’s. Other prominent members were Robert Kushner, Joyce Kozloff, Robert Zakanitch, Kim MacConnel, and Miriam Shapiro. Valerie was an excellent and demanding advisor who insisted I learn about P&D. Thus, I wrote my thesis paper about the movement and the contemporary forms it takes today. Says NY Times art critic Roberta Smith in an article reviewing a P&D survey at the Hessel Museum of Art, "it offered ravishing alternatives to mainstream art in both New York and Los Angeles (it was bicoastal) and to the general manliness of modernism. It disdained divisions between Western and Non-Western art; high and low and art and craft. It elevated women’s work and included many female artists. It was casual and unpretentious, too easy to like perhaps, but also proof that there was art after Conceptualism’s death-of-the-object stance". All of the above-mentioned artists are alive and still working today to my knowledge. Robert Zakanitch became a friend of mine as well, and I included his work in an exhibition I co-curated at Alfred University years later (where I taught) called Ornament Now.
It took me five years to get through the Hunter MFA because I was only going part-time, and simultaneously working and starting a family. Five years gave me more time to develop my voice than a traditional 2-year MFA program, and I definitely don’t regret it… I had a big studio in the middle of Manhattan the whole time, and being a NY resident, the tuition was very low. I met several professors who became mentors in addition to Valerie: Juan Sanchez from Hunter, and Glenn Goldberg from Queens College. These tenacious and talented artists had a profound impact on me.
Having access to the major museum shows was also really fortunate, and several had a big influence on my work. Not surprisingly, both exhibits were at the Metropolitan Museum, and both were of the decorative arts. One was called Flowers Underfoot, an exhibition of Indian carpets from the Mughal era; and the other was of exquisitely fine Indian Illuminated manuscripts. The contrast between the tiny, detailed manuscripts and the enormous silk woven rugs really struck me. At the time I was working pretty large (5' x 10' oil paintings), and also quite small (10" x 13" works on paper). I loved the idea of being enveloped by a field of pattern larger than the human body, but I also loved the intimacy of painting meticulously detailed, intricate patterns.
From Flowers Underfoot exhibition catalogue
These ideas inspired my large thesis painting I called Carpet #2. Originally, I wanted it to be 30 feet long, but settled on 18 feet so that the sections could be mostly painted at home. The border of Carpet #2 was made of six wooden panels and the “field” (the central patterned part) was two large, stretched canvases that I painted in a friend’s gallery in Carol Gardens in Brooklyn, which she opened to the public daily so people could check in on my progress and talk to the artist. For my thesis show, all the sections were bolted together, and the enormous and extremely cumbersome piece would get mounted on the wall (it took a crew of at 4 people to manage this).
I researched carefully the design of the traditional carpets, the number of patterns and stripes in the border, and the ratio of field to border; however, for the imagery I really veered off into my own world of baby blankets and baby pajamas, and created imagery inspired by those domestic fabrics. The result was that the painting held the “look” of an oriental rug at a distance, but as you approached it, different levels would reveal themselves. First you noticed that the flowers in the field were made up of little elephants, and the pattern in the border was made of hot air balloons and horses and carriages. Upon closer inspection, the viewer discovered these elements all had pattern within them: each elephant had his own patterned blanket, each balloon, horse and carriage, etc. So I included the tiny details of the illuminated manuscripts as well as the massive scale of the carpets in this one work.
Upon graduation, I exhibited Carpet #2 in NYC at a gallery on 41st street, and from there it was purchased by General Electric and permanently installed at the GE headquarters in CT. But recently, GE liquidated their corporate collection and the work all went on auction. It may not surprise you that not many collectors have room for an 8’ x 18’ painting on their walls, and it wasn’t easy to find it a home. But to my utter surprise, I recently received an email saying the painting has found it’s new location, and it’s literally in a neighboring town to me!
(Detail, “Carpet #2”)
nap-time!
Nov. 14: It's now been 5 days since Leo came to live with me, and he's doing great. My hands are covered with scratches and bites from his little razor-teeth, but he's adorable, smart and learning fast. He's even (sometimes) sleeping through the night! I got one of my sons to puppysit while I went to visit Carpet #2 for the first time in (I think) 17 years!
The painting is located at the Holyoke Community College Culinary Institute in a big, gorgeously renovated warehouse developed and owned by Denis Luzuriaga-- who also happens to own the collection of artwork my painting belongs to. I met Denis and Stacy, the facility coordinator, and they showed me to my painting, which adorns a huge wall. Seeing the bright, rich colors again and the optical vibration the patterns elicit was such a treat! They installed it perfectly, and it looks exactly the same as when I painted it in 2001!
Denis Luzuriana (artist, developer, collector and building owner) and Stacy Graves (CAI & PAFEC Facility Coordinator) in front of Carpet #2, at the Holyoke Culinary Center.
Denis astutely gathered that my intent was to elevate the decorative arts to a high art status by placing on the wall something that usually occupies the floor (a carpet).
Visual splendor and the abundance of beauty through pattern and decoration are still at the heart of my paintings, and they are still autobiographical. Painting patterns is so meditative to me, and I love the juxtaposition of different patterns, which is why I love Indian carpets so much. I also really enjoy choosing colors and values and watching the optical effect they have on the patterns, which often surprises me. Sometimes changing the colors can make it seem like the whole pattern has changed!
That's all I have time for at the moment, as Leo is stirring again. I hope my little trip through my past was interesting to you, and thank you for reading! Please share this with anyone you think might be interested.
With love, ❤️
Lise