Beyond Books Art Gallery: Jo Margolis

What inspired my art has changed and expanded during all the years I’ve been making art but I always was fascinated by the way forms interact and entangle. My sculptures were often interreacting shapes and I continued this with my works on paper.

Two very seminal experiences propelled the direction of my work. One was a visit to a library in Paris that had an exhibit of old sacred manuscripts: Qu’rans, Torahs and Bibles. And the ink and the calligraphy on old papers and parchment impressed me in a way that’s inexplicable.

The second transformative experience was a visit to the Alhambra in Granada, Spain. My love of Islamic-inspired art and architecture began there. And I’ve since been lucky to travel to countries where I could experience very old historic mosques and monuments in Iran, Turkey, and Lebanon.

I eventually created what has been called ‘asemic writing’: an alphabet  that is  not ‘real’ and not communicating literal thoughts but hopefully conveys the beauty of writing itself:  that is, the vehicle of  language as the subject of art.

More recently I began using the patterns of textiles, of weaving and the freedom to do things with my ‘threads’ on paper that real fibers wouldn’t do. Threads and calligraphy are imposing their own energy on each other.

The act of creation is problem solving, not unlike how any discipline works. How will I use what I’ve created so far to make something new that’s worthy of my time making it and and your time seeing it? What will it add to our shared experience as my work steps into the stream of art history?

The act of creation to me is also  a little like taking the chance that when you finally take off your water wings and try to float or swim you will not sink. You actually have to assume sometimes you will sink! But although nothing comes without effort and nothing is guaranteed, all creation involves some risk taking.

But those times when something new happens and you have that ‘ah-ha moment’, you are rewarded for those risks you took and for all the work that you already discarded or just keep only for reference. The ‘failures’, the ones that didn’t succeed, that you wouldn’t ever show anyone are rarely complete failures because you nearly always learn something from them. If you don’t, that IS a true failure!

You don’t know till you take off the float aides that you won’t sink but you surely will never learn to swim if you leave them on forever!

What I have done suggests what I will do next. I see things I might try differently and might improve. I have a metaphor for this: if you are trying to cross a creek on stepping stones you are placing, you have to put them in a line in front of you heading toward the far side. If you line them up instead, on the side of the creek where you are standing, on too familiar, already explored territory, you will walk up and down the bank of the river but never cross it. One thing should lead to another. One piece should inform you, teach you how to move ahead, how to stay on a path that takes you to new places, not repeating old habits. This is the risk part but its’ the most rewarding.

Are there road blocks? Yes, definitely. Everyone hits a wall sometimes. It’s always good to take more time to look: in museums, or in the world. Seeing is research: places you’ve been and experiencing them anew, or going to new places, new museums, seeing new artists with whose work you aren’t familiar. Letting things ‘percolate’ and doing more studies and sketches before taking on a new project. Each of us Is building on our own history and experiences and our own visual vocabulary.

No musician ever performs without doing their scales, exercises, etc. and no one should be expected to just make a grand new piece of art without having done the requisite prep either. No one bats a home run without having practiced their swing and exercising to keep their muscles in shape. Art is no different. Sometimes things feel like they came out of the blue and offer pure joy but the prep work did the set up.

No muse is whispering in your ear so that you’ll just make something amazing without discipline, struggle and practice. Some work may look easy but the ideas didn’t fall out of the sky. They grew from what came before. But there is magic and you may not always understand it. At that point, you just feel gratitude that you got to be the one to give it form.

Likewise, when you look at something someone is presenting to you on a wall, perhaps in a frame or on a stand, you may just feel perplexed by it and that’s fair. But when you consider a human being made this hoping it would mean something to another human being, you might start to feel some connection to their outreach to you. And you might surrender to receiving it.  After a while you might feel it didn’t work for you, it tried, they tried, you tried, and move on. Or it gives you an ‘ah hah moment’ which is pure joy.

I love the materials I am using. It took me a long time to find how I wanted to put my amorphous ideas into form. I carved wood and stone for many years  and I love the process. And in loving the process I make something I would never have made in clay or any soft material that doesn’t resist me. Likewise , I am not using a paintbrush; I like my fine steel nib in my technical pen with India ink. The nib moves over different kinds of paper in different ways and that interaction of me, the pen and the paper influences the outcome as well. Making art has it’s own athleticism!

I limit my color palette to the variations of whites offered by the papers and grays and blacks of ink and occasionally graphite. I think of my drawings as just flat sculpture.

I don’t describe my work as actually ‘pretty’ in the sense that you can see finely executed mountains or flowers or other recognizable parts of nature or people and animals. I do hope it reflects things that we all experience like books, manuscripts, buildings or nature that you may not experience in the same way I do but find visually interesting and hopefully meaningful.

In a perfect world, I would love to make a mural drawing. Something that goes on a very long wall. I have the wall picked out. It’ s in the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, DC and has been used for direct drawings before, but not by me! The building is essentially shaped like a donut and I would love to take one of the interior gallery walls and go around in a complete circle. I doubt that even if they let me, I’d live long enough to finish but I would love to try!

Jo Margolis    www.jomargolis.com

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