Burgundy and Art / July 27, 2015 by Jeannine Cook

It is hard to believe that the days can flash past so quickly, but I have spent four full days already here at Noyers sur Serein at La Porte Peinte for the first part of my artist residency. I flew to Paris and drove across a world of wondrously wide and luminously golden harvested cereal fields. La belle France! The home front finally has calmed a little, with health stable and so I was able to slip away to come here. The exciting events since I arrived – I hung my artwork as part of the overarching exhibit, Quotidiaen, here at the La Porte Peinte gallery. It is metalpoint work that I did as a result of my residency last year which I framed for exhibiting and brought with me. My part is entitled Les Pierres qui Chantent: Dessins en Pointe de Metal.

Les Pierres qui Chantent exhibit, July 2015 - La Porte Peinte, Noyers. Artist Jeannine Cook

The other exciting news is that indeed I will be able to exhibit work that I am currently producing in the Noyers Museum in September. I am also preparing an informal talk about it all and about metalpoint in general for the Journées de la Patrimoine in September, when France’s wonderful patrimony is celebrated.

So thanks to all my generous friends who helped me reach the Hatchfund funding goal for this residency atLa Porte Peinte, I am organized!

Now, of course, has come the other aspect of this venture – producing artwork. I have been working hard, perched in my magical eerie above the cobbled main square in Noyers, with the sounds of French, mingled with laughter, that drift up to the open window. The delicious swallows are still flying ceaselessly, calling and swirling as they dart in to feed their babies in their beautiful mud nests attached to the medieval oak beams of the porches and roofs. As I am high up, I see the flash of their white rumps and black wings in their aerial ballet beneath me – the perfect accompaniment to metalpoint’s black and white.

I have just finished the third in the initial series of the project drawings – Burgundia – as Burgundy was named from Roman times onwards. I have tried to marry the main themes of the project together – fossilized shells, metalpoint, wine and the “horror vacui” of medieval manuscripts with their lettering in brilliant colour and details of nature covering each page. I managed to photograph one drawing – with complications – as normal scanners will not reproduce all the “whispered” lines in silver. The others will have to await my return home!

Burgundia II. silverpoint-watercolour. Artist Jeannine Cook

Step by step, line by line – what fun!

Thoughts on Crowdfunding for Art Projects / June 19, 2015 by Jeannine Cook

You certainly learn by doing! I decided to do a crowd-funding project on Hatchfund as an experiment, to push out frontiers as an artist and hopefully to give good publicity to a very worthy cause, the artist residences at La Porte Peinte, in Noyers, France.

The first frontier I had to extend was getting into video-making, an area I had not yet visited. I met charming video-makers and although the first video was not what I hoped for, simply because I was utterly inarticulate with 'flu at the time, the second was better because I was more coherent and able to talk.

I am fascinated with the idea I developed - namely to try to marry together the metalpoint monastic heritage that flowered in Burgundy and elsewhere, the wine-producing heritage there and the extraordinary fossilised oyster shells found in stones lying in some Chablis vineyards. It will be a really interesting challenge to weave these strands together into viable art. I suppose that is what art residencies are for - peace and time for experiments!

La diète de salut. France, Burgundy, c. 1490 (Image courtesy of the Morgani Library, New York)

Chablis Stones 1 small — Chablis Stones containing Fossilised Oyster Shells

However, the other, and perhaps most time-consuming, aspect of my crowd-funding venture has been the actual fund-raising. I clearly had not thought through all the implications of such a project. Nonetheless, I soon found myself sitting down and writing to friends and supporters who have been wonderful enough to collect my art over the years.

I have to say the results have mostly been heart-warming and gratifying. There have of course been days of nothing at all happening, no one even acknowledging my e-mails, but then, out of the blue, comes a short e-mail from Hatchfund saying that such and such a person has supported the project.

Slowly the figures have crept up, until two days ago, I realised with a shock that I had passed the magic threshold mark of the minimum amount needed to fund the project and thus release the funds to me. What a relief!

En route to that point, I have learned a few aspects of this crowd-funding world. The first is distinctly cultural: I realise that a British background of not blowing one's own trumpet and not putting oneself forward does not prepare one well for the necessary soliciting of funds. Americans seem to have no such problems. The second is that the American way seems to require a considerable amount of outright hucksterism, two-for-the-price-of-one department. I think one has to be selective in approaches, depending on the type of project one is trying to promote.

The third and last consideration I have found to be interesting. In an era that supposedly has everyone fully converted to and comfortable with on-line financial transactions, there is still a high proportion of people very reticent indeed about putting a credit card on-line. Cheques still retain a high degree of reliability and safety to many people and on-line fraud is a very real threat.

However, towards the end of the Hatchfund fund-raising period on my Art Residency at La Porte Peinte, I am beginning to feel that it has been a good thing to have done. Mostly because it has given me reason to touch base with friends and supporters with whom I might not have exchanged news and greetings until later in the years. Also too, such a project, willy-nilly, forces one to measure oneself out there in the big, wild world -- and it is always nice to find that it is possible to bob along and keep afloat in the choppy waters of competition.

Thank you all, my generous supporters. And to my other friends from whom I have not heard, I hope to hear from you, especially to hear that your summer is going along happily.

Crowd-Funding with Hatchfund for a Metalpoint-Drawing Residency in Burgundy / May 24, 2015 by Jeannine Cook

I firmly believe that every artist should be open to new ventures, both in creating art and then in finding ways to reach other people who might share a passion for that type of art. There are always new and potentially fascinating horizons to explore. In that spirit, I have just embarked on a crowd-funding venture with AIM Hatchfund to fund an artist residency at La Porte Peinte, in Noyers sur Serein, Burgundy. All the details are at the Hatchfund website - both in video form and in text form.

La-Porte-Peinte, Noyers sur Serein, Burgundy, France

Basically I have until 4th July to raise a minimum of $3000 to help defray the costs of going to Noyers to create a body of metalpoint drawings that weave together some fascinating but seemingly disparate aspects of life in Burgundy. Not only was the region a famed centre of monastic production of illuminated manuscripts.

Book of Hours, Paris 1430-35 - March (Image courtesy of the Morgan Library, New York)

Detail of Book of Hours, March. Paris 1430-35 (Image courtesy of the Morgan Library)

Its renown too as a wine-producing region, thanks to those same industrious monks (and the Romans before them!), is sometimes enhanced by vines planted in soils rich in 150 million year old fossilised minute oyster shells that confer a unique “terroir” hallmark, particularly in the Chablis area.

Burgundy -Chablis-Le-Clos (Image courtesy of Mick Rock, photographer)

Chablis, Kimmeridgian stone containing fossilised oyster shells (J. Cook photographer)

The link for me in these two facts? Metalpoint drawing. Metalpoint is a medium born in medieval monasteries where monks used lead styli to delineate illuminations and draw the lines for their beautiful manuscripts. After a chequered history, metalpoint is currently undergoing a third renaissance. My passion for this subtle, shimmering medium dates from the early 1980s. I use mainly gold, silver and copper to make marks on prepared paper; the lines cannot be erased, and silver and copper will evolve in colour as they tarnish, making the medium even more alive.

Huitres de Chablis I , silverpoint-Prismacolor, Jeannine Cook artist

Wine-making, illuminating manuscripts and drawing in silver and other metals are all activities where time has a very different rhythm compared to much of today’s world. We often need reminders that at times, a slower pace of life can bring joy, fascination and quiet rewards. A body of metalpoint drawings can serve as such a reminder.

With those thoughts in mind, I have just uploaded all the required information, video and text to Hatchfund, had the staff approve the contents and make it live. And now I have to hope that other kind people share my optic that travelling though time and different worlds is always fascinating. By making a tax-free donation to this metalpoint drawing project, I would have the pleasure of sending a thank you gift to contributors and then taking them along with me on the path of creating the art, thanks to technology.

Dear reader, share the fun of creation with me!