Exhibition

at Cath Tate Card Shop

37 Hills Lane, Shrewsbury_opening hours are 10-5 Monday to Saturday

Lay on the ground & Eco Vistas

photographs by Nathalie Liège

exhibition between the 20th and 27th June 2009 at shop opening times

A small article for Deutsche Kichengemeinde in Nord-England

After my day in Manchester and the talk about St Stephen Marc Chagall’s windows in Martin-Luther Kiche, I agreed to write a small article for their Gemeindebrief ( newsletter). It will be translated in German:

Manchester talk on 7th March  about Marc Chagall’s windows of St Stephen Church in Mainz in Germany was of great interest for me as a professional artist and architectural glass designer/maker. Marc Chagall had said ” For me a church window represents the transparent partition between my heart and the heart of the world” (p243 Marc Chagall by Jacob Baal-Teshuva, Taschen,2003). The light was also in his heart as a painter and he worked with ease with the light and colour to create paintings with glass and on glass. He had been taught the glass painting technique in his 60 s and worked for over 35 years at various stained glass commissions until his death in 1985.

Photos of the artworks for those windows are rarely presented in books about his work ( the Taschen book written by his friend Jacob Baal-Teshuva do not present those windows ). It was an other motivation to view a slide show of this artwork in the Martin-Luther-Kirche in Manchester and a pleasant surprise to see that Pastor Strobel also had the books about those windows written in German by Klaus Mayer. The windows were taller than any other stained glass windows Marc Chagall had done.

It was very interesting to view how he aesthetically dealt with it. His artwork as a painter has all the potentials for technically making stained glass windows. Colours are plain, one next to the other like two panes of two coloured glass red and blue bonded by lead lines ( one character dressed with one colour, an other one next to it dressed  with an other  colour).The colour scheme of primary or secondary colours or the vibration for each colour can be achieved with glass and by the use of etching flashed red or blue or green glass gain variations in tones and hues. His use of gold yellow is rendered by the use of silver stain on clear parts of the glass. All outer lines of his characters’ bodies or faces needed no alterations for painting on glass with traditional brown glass paintings. Not only the colours, but also the lead lines were not like breaking into patches his design, as his artwork as a painter has its own rhythm of lines and structure of divisions of the space behind and within the body of all characters.

Those windows are the achievement of his understanding of the bond between his artwork and light, stained glass techniques and aesthetic openness of that craft, more than any other of his stained glass artwork. His use of lead-line has an amazing visual lightness and as viewers, it is entirely taken as lines of the art piece as one.

won’t try a summary

Clearly lots happened since I last typed news. Most of it for St Luke. But also the completion of my new website http://www.nl-art-s.co.uk  took most of my time on the computer.

Am planning some workshops for my own artistic development some time in April and May for illustration and icon painting. Before then, I  start this week with a visit of the Byzantium exhibition in London, followed by a short introduction to Russian Icon painting technique and the following day some contemporary art exhibition.

The Byzantium exhibition will be seen in company of people who has great knowledge of that subject of history. The catalogue is already a great pleasure to read and view.

The Goethe Institut information letters I receive regularly was presenting an other exhibition Medium Relgion  in Karlsruhe. I wish I could visit it. It won’t be over when I will be in Germany to complete the glass artwork for St Luke. It would be worth the effort of the journey, after seeing the exhibition in Paris last summer.

I may also travel to Manchester for a presentation of Chagall stained glass windows in German beginning of March.

An other exhibition I dreamt I ll see: Hans ARP in Strasbourg.

So you may read my feedbacks on those events or exhibitions.

I also had a present from my friend for Christmas: Omega et l’ours signed by Beatrice Alemagna. Great way to finish the year.

Back to St Luke full time

The move to my new workshop is over since Wednesday, and I am finishing the drawings of the windows for The Virgin Mary ( St Luke Church, Yorkshire). I’ll use them as references for the low-relief clay works.

I finally found the Web designer office that will revamp my website! I am very pleased with the aesthetic of their works done for other clients. 

And some of my photos are sold as postcards on the following website since the beginning of this week: www.cathtatedirect.com . With the same business, I also displayed some of my photos presented as Eco Vistas in their shop.

Paris / Munich

A great exhibition not to miss in Paris and Munich: Traces du sacré.

Look at www.centrepompidou.fr or in German http://www.hausderkunst.de/hdk.de/index.php?StoryID=2162

Am reading the catalogue…and will try some translations of what I found the most meaningful to my artwork…

Before then,

Why do I take time to write about that exhibition? It was very inspiring to find out in February this year that such a project was on the go in the Pompidou Centre where I worked years before my move to Great-Britain in 1998.

The design of the windows for St Luke’s church, is like the sacred touch of my artwork in action, after 10 years of my life with many spiritual moves or steps.

That exhibition raises the following questions:

-         “What was the relationship of Western art to the spiritual in the 20^th Century” or “the continuing importance of the question of the sacred in the art of the present day”?

-         Is there any left over of a touch of sacred in 20^th Century art?

 

It also presents Art and the questions of Destiny, Existence, Cycle of Life (Birth and Death), or why evil? It “offers a historical survey that demonstrates how with or without God, with or without religion, a considerable part of 20^th Century art has continued to be informed by these questions”.

 

For me, Art is reading the book of Life. Art takes different means to make itself perceived or shared, and today I take the mean of writing in this post to share how this exhibition plays its game of inspiration in my mind.

It triggers some kindles of light from my memory of passions I had for artists whose works are exhibited there and whose work lead me to where I now stand.

In the introduction to that exhibition in the website of the Pompidou Centre, it is written that “in today’s post-industrial world the idea of self-transformation through art has lost its purchase”.

I would ask the writer of that introduction: how could the idea of self-transformation through art could lose its purchase if Art presents to the public such questions as: Destiny, Existence, Cycle of Life (Birth and Death), or why evil?

 

Maybe we struggle to transform oneself through Art because we live in a bath of information in a consumer society and Art may be taken as an other piece to consume fast. It is harder and harder for the touch of sacred in Art to be shared without being diluted or harder to emerge “in the excess of light of our consumer society.”

 

Share that exhibition! It is a time to emerge!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Open Studios 2008

Studios are opening their doors to the public on the 5th and 6th July 2008. I am working at what I will display in my workshop. First, I work at the photographs exhibited.