Branching Points, Ah-ha Moments, and a Springtime Jubilee
- Sara Tucker
- 60 minutes ago
- 4 min read
Memoirists often talk about those moments in life when something decisive occurs—experiences that cause an internal shift, forever altering our worldview. Those life-changing events go by various names, including branching points and “ah-ha!” moments. Identifying them is an essential step in turning lived experience into art.
A few days ago, I received a message that made me smile. Joan Feierabend is a prolific artist who has been drawing, painting, and sculpting for decades. Now in her eighties, she is experimenting with novel ways of disseminating her work. The year she turned 80, she created one painting per day—365 paintings in all—for a show at the AVA Gallery in Lebanon, New Hampshire, then invited viewers who wished to take a painting home with them to set their own price knowing the full amount would be donated to the gallery. Now Joan is doing something similar to raise money for community arts programs. Her new project will launch on May 17, as part of the Jubiliee in East Randolph, Vermont.
The message that accompanied the poster for the May 17 Jubilee, began “Hello, friends and family:
“I am sending this poster about an event our Randolph community is hosting on the 17th of May. I am offering my paintings to anyone wishing to own an original piece of work for any amount as a donation to promote people making art or community supporting events. My interest is getting my work out into the world and supporting activities that will help bring balance to a troubled world. The art will remain hanging all summer in the barn next to my house in East Randolph. If you are busy on the 17th but would like to see what you can have for what you want to pay (all money received will go to promoting the arts or community building events). Please let me know if and when you can come to see the work. It would be lovely to see you.”
"Ah-ha" Moments in the Life of an Artist
I met Joan several years ago when she came to an opening at the Korongo Art Gallery. Soon after, she joined one of my writing workshops. She has written a lot about the creative process and the role of art in her life. The following passage about her own "ah-ha" moments is excerpted from the talk she gave at AVA when her show "Multitudes" opened there in 2023:
“In preschool I discovered the beauty of symmetry and pattern when my sisters and I decorated our driveway with stones, twigs, flower petals, and leaves because we felt a dead wasp should have a proper funeral. . . .
“When art became a daily practice, I learned I needed to get out of my own way with a painting or drawing. It is like listening well instead of talking. The paintings were coming from some other intelligence that was using the work to teach me something about being alive that I needed to know in order to live well.
“One time an experience with a painting taught me that to be an artist I needed to be seeking what I didn’t know rather than to demonstrate what I had already learned.
"Philip Guston helped me understand with this quote:
When you're in the studio painting, there are a lot of people in there with you—your teachers, friends, painters from history, critics . . . and one by one if you're really painting, they walk out. And if you're really painting YOU walk out.
"I learned to dowse and found a way to silence my ego and was taught to paint from a different center. I used guidance from the pendulum for my paintings for about 21 years. During that era of artistic development my practice also included drawing and painting from life to grow my seeing skills and daily sketchbook drawing to trigger my imagination for unconscious insight. The pendulum taught me an entirely new set of symbols, a unique way to find a drawing, and an unusual way to apply paint. These instructions were completely unlike the methods instilled in art school.
“While teaching, I discovered that drawing is a skill that can be learned and would only develop if the student was interested and enjoyed practicing. Drawing is not some elusive talent one is born with. Furthermore, skill is a tool, but by itself, skill is not art. Art comes from the creative spirit within all of us. Creativity is a function of our brain that needs and deserves attention, focus, and practice to nurture and develop as part of being a healthy living organism.
"Lewis Hyde’s book The Gift offered what felt like a true meaning of art. Creativity is part of a life force that has been endowed to all of us as living beings. It is our gift, what we do with it is up to us.
"Did my efforts during this year of daily practice offer any unique revelations? Yes, it did!
"I realized, once again, the creative brain is like the body, it is best challenged daily to keep it strong and vital. I also found a new interest and respect for individual taste in art. How many of us have heard, “I don’t know much about art, but I know what I like”? I believe you can say this with pride. Art is a language that speaks differently to each of us. My desire is to open myself to that language and pay attention. Not so I can paint what you want, but so I can hear what you hear from a piece of work."
Photograph (above) by Jack Rowell: Joan at AVA Gallery in 2012. If I remember correctly, Joan fell on the ice and broke her wrist, hence the air cast, which she painted to resemble the bark of a tree and then adorned with a little woodpecker. The event was a writing workshop to accompany The Hale Street Gang: Portraits in Writing, an exhibit featuring larger-than-life portraits by Vermont photographer Jack Rowell.