Amy Cliser

The First Three

Amy Cliser — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 01:55:21 +0000

I began working in the collage medium in March 2009, in miniature (mostly 5″ x 6″) dimensions, and on canvases (a new commitment). Tired after work every day and finally ready to emerge after several years of rest, I fell into the tiny world of those canvases, bite-sized fantasies of shape, color, and texture. Complete possibility. I drew, pasted, and finger-painted so I could feel the medium. (Touch is why I became a sculptor).

I had no idea what I was doing. I did it anyway.

Today I framed the first three images that came out of my practice that year. Now they hang on my bedroom wall as a group in a single frame, the way some people display family documents. I framed them so I could look at them together, chronologically correct, as a root of this larger thing I’m doing now. And hung them by my bed, so I could see them in the morning.

Jonathan Cox, my sculpture professor at Marshall, would say to his class (a bad paraphrase from me):

Creating art is like pushing little wads of paper through a long pipe. You have to keep putting wads of paper in that pipe, and, finally, something is going to emerge from the other end. You have to just keep making the art — good or bad, putting it all in the pipeline — in order to eventually make good art. It takes making the bad to make the good.

And, when I was stuck, all of my graduate committee at UNM would say:

MAKE THE ART.
JUST MAKE SOMETHING!!!

These are the beginning of my collage art pipeline.

The first three:

Bath, 2009

Contact, 2009

Motionless, 2009

My Next Show

Amy Cliser — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 21:59:53 +0000

You’re invited to the opening for my next show, a group show, on March 8 from 6-8 pm at the South Broadway Cultural Center. (Short post today – I’m working on the show!)

Open

Amy Cliser — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 16:31:11 +0000

If an atom is overwhelmingly empty space,
And there is a little cavern at the base of my throat,
And my belly does become a void,
That’s good news.
I am gliding through my apartment
To answer the door
The atoms inside my shoulders softly humming in unending fermatas
And the spaces in my bones exhaling into whole note rests.
My heart pumping into
Empty spaces like waves fill rock crevices.
My day has started late, my hair a bird’s nest,
I haven’t scheduled it out,
So it feels like the empty coffee cup in my sink.
And only now I realize
That most of me is floating, with and without definition,
In the form of small pockets of nothingness,
Which means that I can welcome my visitor -
Also mostly a void -
And I can feel secure in the idea that
We are not much more than possibility
As I open the door.

Art in the Morning

Amy Cliser — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 15:36:00 +0000

It’s 7:25 am. Cold. Heading to work soon, to a job I love. In my tiny car, which is already warmed up. And then off to the tax accountant’s to sign papers in the afternoon. And then home to make art, by the 3 pm light that comes into my living room.

It’s a good life.

A few years ago, a loose-lipped doctor told me I might have leukemia. I don’t. I have something that could become leukemia or something else at some point – or not. So it’s a little like Russian roulette, though, not knowing what my body is going to do.

So, I choose to trust it anyway.

When I was coming back from Greece four months ago, my seat on the plane was next to a woman who is internationally known for energy work in Polarity Therapy. (I think that modality is amazing. I always feel like I’ve been reborn when I get a Polarity Therapy treatment. It’s as though my cells have all regenerated.) The conversation couldn’t help but get personal. She told me about her love life (we had a nine-hour flight, so we talked about everything!), and when it got to my health, she looked at me as if to assess, and then told me, “That blood disorder isn’t going to bother you at all in your life.”

I believe that.

Here’s another new piece from January. To me, it’s about mystery, the future, and things we just have to trust:

Opening, 2012. Mixed media. 24" x 20". (sold)

New Pieces

Amy Cliser — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 03:34:21 +0000

My work is featured at The Octopus and The Fox in East Downtown Albuquerque this month. Here are a few images if you missed the opening last Friday.

If you’d like to buy one, the store ships. Thanks for looking!

Reach Me Here, 2012. Mixed media. 12" x 12". $120.

So Far 1, 2012. Mixed media. 36" x 24". $400.

Saturday

Amy Cliser — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 23:51:01 +0000

Saturday

Why is it? I am awake at 3 am
Until 5:30 am.
Many mornings. Thinking of
One responsibility
After another
After another.
They might not be mine, but I think of them anyway.

So, why is it? That
It is 3:30 pm
Now
On a Saturday
And my mind is so asleep
And dreaming,
Snoring, slippery,
And not one thought can grasp on.
Let alone repeat itself.
It sees the sun coming through
My living room window
Facing the street
And feels the warmth,
Without a single thought.
Seeing, but sleeping.
I don’t dare awaken it
But neither do
I encourage
This irresponsible behavior.

Night Collages

Amy Cliser — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 21:53:52 +0000

Here at my wooden kitchen desk, in silence, on a day off, I feel compelled to write my Wednesday afternoon confessional.

So, I hung a show last week at a boutique at 514 Central. The Octopus and The Fox. They’re making cupcakes for my opening, where, when you walk in on Feb. 3 (from 6-10 pm), you’ll see a store of vintage clothes, t-shirts printed with graphics of legends like Mothman (from Pt. Pleasant, WV, no less), handmade purses, vintage clip-on earrings like my mother’s mother used to wear. And on the back wall, large pieces from my Night Collage series. Sometimes, when no one is behind me, I slowly drive by the store on my way home from the office; the moon in one of the pieces can be seen from the street.

My first solo show since I graduated.

My work is around town (at the Main library and at the Printmaker’s Studio), and there will more to hang for a March show at the South Broadway Cultural Center. When did the post-graduate shyness leave me?

At SkopArt in September. I was running, and that flow of energy carried over to quick decision-making in the studio. The same mechanism that pumps the blood through my heart and brain and toes when I’m running, is the very tool that moves me past any hesitations, in almost any part of my life. When I am a runner, I tap into a well of trust, an invitation to live without fear. Life in balance.

: Night Collage I, 2011

Passion in Blue

Amy Cliser — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 14:10:50 +0000

My residency was nothing if it wasn’t filled with the sensations of the island, from the blues of the water, to the sun, the figs, the long horizons, the memory of easily piecing together my art. The nights downtown drinking white wine on the waterfront.

This piece is full like that experience, and not something that can be seen all at once, but in pieces because of its long format. Just like I could never see a complete horizon at once. And it speaks about the land, sky, water, the body’s forms, time, and their ethereal, metaphorical relationships with one another.

untitled, 2011, mixed media, 43" x 8"

Open Field at Delphi, Sept. 14

Amy Cliser — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 05:59:03 +0000

On September 14, we climbed. First to the twin cell towers opposite Skopelos Town. Then, goat paths to a twin peak. We had a lengthy conversation about friends back home; what the Persian War would have looked like from this vantage point; and Theseus and the Minotaur. (Labyrinth = some of the nutso trails we were taking.) We headed to some monasteries, and when I found a nearby fire watch tower, I climbed up. I scared the watchman and myself, but he let me up in the booth with him.

imagining the fleets in 480 BC

Then, off to the other side of the island, namely the ancient tombs of Sendoukia and then a climb up Mount Delphi. Delphi is an important place to me: the climb was a gentle constant switching back and forth through a cool forest of soft pines and white rocks. The top was easy to get to, and at the top, there was another watch tower. At the foot of the mountain, where our four wheeler waited, was a field, shorn, round, ancient. It probably was a holding pen, but before that, it was hard for us to guess. I ran in that wide open space, needing to get rid of some energy but moreso wanting to feel that ground beneath my feet. When I can run in a place, it’s indelibly in my memory, in my body, my senses. I can feel the temperature of that place and hear the soft shuffle of the straw beneath my feet. Also in that place were wells; we climbed on top of cement block structures to see if the water still ran, and it did. Satisfied by that, we headed out.

at the top of Delphi, in the fire tower

forest on Delphi, my favorite, enchanted hike, Sept. 14

Swimming at Panormos after sunset, then dinner. I already mentioned the birthday party, with the Greeks dancing, so seductive and fun. Had a fabulous moussaka, more white wine.

Running in the morning here in Albuquerque. Have a great night.

Putting the Art in Artist Residency

Amy Cliser — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 05:57:18 +0000

Here’s a piece I made – couldn’t wait to make – started as soon as I set foot in the studios. Began 7 pm, September 7. Finished the next day.

My use of 1950s Vogue magazines in this piece has to do with an era’s definition of appropriateness of dress and conduct, of what it means, or meant to me as a young girl, to “be a lady.” And about my grandmother, whose dresses, pearls, shoes, tiny waist, brooches, hair, lipstick, all live in the pages of these magazines. (It’s not as analytical as all of that, more like a lot of feeling. I still pause for a second each time I put on a dress without hose, even here in the 100 degree desert summers.)

During that first evening and throughout the residency, I was more focused in my art making than I had ever been. And the dimensions of my collages exploded, from the 5″ x 6″ collages of the past three years, to long, horizontal formats that mimicked the horizons of the island.

Appropriate, 2011, mixed media, 43" x 8"