GOOD BONFIRE: Writing on creativity and contemplative practice by artist Hannah Burr

REPRIEVE!

10/27/2021

0 Comments

 
Picture
Good news!!  The calendars are still available through November 4th.
I was so proud to be organized about getting calendar reservations squared away early this year, but then I got feedback that it was slightly bleeding edge early for some people, and so: Reprieve! I have extended the deadline for reservations until November 4th.
​
You can reserve your copies at hannahburr.bigcartel.com and the details are still as follows:
Go to https://hannahburr.bigcartel.com/product/especially-now-limited-edition-2022-wall-calendar for the immediate product page, and to hannahburr.bigcartel.com for all your other HBS products.
I will send these out in the first week of December (I said Dec 1 originally, but now it's going to be the end of the first week to accommodate this change). Please do contact me if you have questions or constraints, but want a calendar - I am happy to work with you.

0 Comments

BUBBLEs [Part two]

10/26/2021

0 Comments

 
Picture
I wrote previously about the magicky bubble miracle that lasted forty minutes. I would like to share now about some interesting thought patterns I noticed at the time.

Initially, I was engaged in social patter, drinking of tea, trading thoughts and words, slapping at mosquitos, with Guy. The bubbles were a footnote, a silly kid's toy that I find fun to engage at times.

When these bubbles stuck around for an uncharacteristically long time, enthusiasm and curiosity, and a deeper level of attention and engagement kicked in. When Guy went away and it was just me witnessing this, there was excitement, amazement, and a deep desire to show others what was happening. I noticed thoughts about writing about the phenomena, and several attempts through shouts and whistles, to get Guy to come back. As the strange phenomena continued, and more developments in color, visibility and duration occurred, I felt a stronger urge to enlist others, to share and show.

When the bubbles didn't immediately pop as I've seen thousands upon thousands of bubbles do (yes), I noticed some impatience, boredom, and a desire to get on with the day. Thoughts came in like 'I'd love a piece of toast', and 'How long is this going to take? I have plans and things to do.' I find this interesting because I was literally witnessing something I'd never seen before and that didn't seem possible, and toward the end, the closest experience of invisibility - the phenomena of something being present that is also invisible, like a ghost or an apparition, that I've ever seen. Bubbles are already like that, right? That's why they are such a fascination for kids and delightful for everyone. But here I was, wanting to engage my story, wanting to just get on with being Hannah in her day, doing what she does.

It felt like a test of endurance to keep witnessing, to hold that tiny, rainbow style vigil for the time it took to see the bubbles through. I was also aware that those around me were in their stories, their days of jobs to be done and things to do, and had someone come by, their likely response would have been even more distractable than mine.

By the time the last bubble, and the second to last one, popped, they were essentially invisible, except for the swirling silvery base of each. It was 100x wider than a dew drop, but would have been near impossible to see. Which makes me aware of just how limited our perception must be:

If we can overlook something like a bubble, something I had made myself, what else are we not ever seeing, that's immediately and truly right around us?

I am sure there is a simple explanation for what happened with these bubbles. Likely the very humid, windless morning and all of the fog, as well as the tensile strength of the material in the bubble wand, would explain it. The changing colors and the thinning surface was likely some kind of evaporation or reaction with the salty air. There can be many ways to explain things. But in my immediate experience, this was something never seen before, a 'normal' and simple object doing something very out of the ordinary, revealing itself over time in the way that never has happened because they are so predictably fleeting. A bit like a solar eclipse.

I then galloped around telling various family members about what happened, hollered down to my husband on the dock IT JUST POPPED, with a very large popping gesture in case he couldn't hear me, frantically writing down all of the details. There is a great desire to hold on to this miracle, to found some kind of new religion around it. Or to found the Bubble Blowers Association with the founding date being today. So there's the other way that humans do, to try and hold something, so fleeting as a bubble, and to make it into something solid.

Thoughts also flashed in about 'Records' world records, not to try and have one, but how funny it is that there is always a biggest pumpkin, a fattest blueberry, an oldest living human, and how these things must have started with an act of recording, of trying to make permanent, and then become this way of trying for fame, or of besting and winning. Oh, we people are crazeballs. So yes, I suppose I am too, but it's not because I stared at a hovering bubble for forty minutes, it's that it feels crazy to get so excited about it. ​
0 Comments

PRESENCE

10/20/2021

0 Comments

 
Picture
This is a detail from one of Abbie Wanamaker's paintings. 'Untitled' 2020 24 x 24" from her Color Paintings.
I recently was asked to say a few words on ‘art as meditation’ and meditation as art by my friend in the Pioneer Valley Abbie Wanamaker. Abbie was having a two person show and there was a forum that she asked me to speak at. I’ll share a few of the thoughts that came to mind as I considered her work and process, and the idea of art as meditation and meditation as art.

First, the word meditation in US culture has felt loaded with a sense of personal shortcoming and obligation for many, to the point that it may not be a useful word to use anymore. In a similar way, the idea of art practice has with it for many a sense of should, haven’t yet….maybe someday, soon.

Instead of meditation let’s talk about presence. That thing you were when you were born and still are, without any effort, prior to any self idea. That thing that sparks between you and a small woodland creature when you stumble upon one another and hold the other’s gaze. Presence is what we make room for in a process of deep play, prior to the part of our minds that narrate or decide the merit of what we are doing or what we might be making.

I enjoyed looking at Abbie’s paintings, their unapologetic, straightforward and vivid qualities. I think too about resonance, and I know that Abbie has resonated with my work and ideas for a while. I can see why: in the directness of her process, her statement and how she figures out what’s happening after the fact, letting the doing, the activity itself and the textures and qualities of the materials lead. This practice is presence too and similar to what happens in my studio when things roll naturally. I see in her work that Abbie values the doing over the thing that’s made, turning art practice into a form of attention.

Consider the difference between the governed idea of creative action and cultivating presence, and the direct experience of these things: what you already are: the situation, what’s happening inside and outside of this skin envelope we call a body: the temperature, the textures, sounds, tastes, motion, exchanges with people, animals, elements like sunlight and wind and sounds, intersection of elements that will never intersect quite the same way again. To me that’s deep play, creativity at its best, and contemplation all rolled up into one. It’s a sense of belonging, or inherent value, or naturalness, the way a dry leaf becomes the forest floor or a child is held in arms.


0 Comments

BEFORE SATURDAY

10/13/2021

0 Comments

 
Picture

Two things!!
​1. Reserve by Saturday the 'Especially Now' 2022 Calendar!

If you want the 2022 wall calendar 'Especially Now' with 12 never before reproduced works from my studio, you have until Saturday evening to reserve your copies, October 16. I would show you pics of it, but it hasn't been printed yet! This Saturday! After that, the window of opportunity narrows considerably because I put in the print order and will only have one or two copies left available at a higher price. To ensure your reservation go to the shop

hannahburr.bigcartel.com 

and reserve by making a purchase of the new calendar.  They will arrive to you by Dec 1 and you can arrange for them to be sent as gifts as well. Write me a note here or via the shop if you have questions!
There is a discount code for you also!! It is CALFAN2022 and only will work until end of Saturday at checkout at the aforementioned shop  (link above).
There's more context and information on the calendar in this earlier post.

Let me know if you have any questions  - comment, email or reply!

2. Join me on Friday Oct 15 in Detroit (opening 5-8) , or Wednesday, Oct 20 (artist talk) at the Scarab Club for 'Incomplete' a group show.

Picture
I just hung new work in a show called 'Incomplete' curated by Sajeev Visweswaran, which is about the way that Covid Times have interrupted and effected our lives and art making. The gallery is in a beautiful Detroit building called the Scarab Club. The work I am sharing in this show, nine individual pieces, are unusual in that they are complete, and yet many of them are very spare, spacious and normally would not be the works I would select for exhibition. Here is my statement for the work in the show:

The works I've selected here are complete, though relative to much of my finished work, are quite spare. This selection of works mirrors a practice I began in 2020 of letting there be more space between events, in dialogue, in the day and in my world in general. This includes when a project is partially done, when an artwork feels complete in its spareness, and in the experience of a shared silence as nourishing.
The work called 'Ways of Knowing', is part of a series made from my grandmother Betty's papers, after she died of dementia over a decade ago. It captures a lot of the post pandemic world: how we don't always get to choose or to maintain even an illusion of control. 

My work generally spans many types of media and forms, and alludes to a sparkly underlayer to things as they are already. Sometimes its interactive, conceptual, and public, and sometimes its quieter abstraction, or some manner of scape. 

Hannah Burr October 2021



Picture
0 Comments

Bubbles [part 1]

10/9/2021

0 Comments

 
Picture
A bubble is commonplace and ordinary. It's part of washing your hands, your hair, your car, and certain baths. Blowing bubbles is something many children do all the time, so it becomes very ordinary to some children too. So ordinary, that it's easy to overlook the tiny miracle that a bubble is.

Here's what I find incredible about a bubble:

  • They come into being on your breath. What else does that?
  • They form a perfect, perfect sphere, and they float.
  • They reflect the world in incredibly high resolution, upside down, but a perfect reflection from one location, much perhaps, like we do, as individuals with a location in space.
  • They are rainbow: they have this whirling, spinning layer of iridescence, all the colors, swiftly moving all around their surface, even while the images of trees, people, and houses they reflect are fixed in relation to these objects in the world they appear to float through.
  • They bounce on fluid surfaces: try it in the bath, try it at a lake, try it next to the salt sea.
  • They can be carried distances and lifted up high by the wind.
  • And most notable of all, they are suddenly gone. Sometimes leaving a circle of soapy wet behind them but often just suddenly not there.


Next time you are in the presence of a bubble, see it as a whole life, see it as significant as your own life, the floaty path it takes, your path. It's remarkable existence, yours. It's sudden disappearance, just like yours will be, the moment when you are no longer in the world, reflecting its details, swirling with changing tints and hues, perfect, fleeting, a marvel.
0 Comments

ESPECIALLY NOW 2022 - RESERVE YOUR CALENDARS!

10/1/2021

0 Comments

 
Picture

The window has opened for Calendar Reservations!!!

A limited edition studio wall calendar has become a tradition since I moved to Michigan, as  a way to share with you what I'm looking at and loving as I sort through drawings in my studio, even though you may be far away. Sometimes what ends up in the calendar is a sweet fragment of something from long ago, sometimes its something brand new that I'm not sure what to do with yet, but it looks great in January! This calendar has become a way to feel connected to you and sharing visual ideas with you, in the spirit of my love of multiples and affordable are mediums.


I have been sorting, selecting, googling international holidays, and fussing with moon phase graphics, and the new calendar is both dialed in and nigh!!

Like last year, I will be only printing what I get preorders for. I am accepting preorders through Saturday October 18, which is in just over two weeks.

For preordering, you get a well deserved discount, and here’s how you do it. The calendars are $55 this year, and for preordering, you get them for $50. That’s %10 off. This applies to as many copies as you would like to order.

Preorder it at Big Cartel and use the discount code CALFAN2022 at check out as a proud early bird! Thats a discount of 10% off by October 18 on as many copies as you like. Each copy will be hand editioned.

Go to https://hannahburr.bigcartel.com/product/especially-now-limited-edition-2022-wall-calendar for the immediate product page, and to hannahburr.bigcartel.com for all your other HBS products.
I will send these out to you by Dec 1st this year, or before.

These images are the product in process, and so please forgive any low res oddness. I always proof with a hard copy to make sure it's all accurate, crisp color and nice sharp lines.

Please also tweet, pin and share from the shop, and send this email far and wide, so that no one is sad that they missed the window to order, which sometimes does happen. S please forward this email about, and thank you so much for your interest, patronage, time, attention and friendship.

To a new year of color and inspiration,
​

Hannah B
Picture
0 Comments
    Never miss a post!

    ALIVE 

    Solo Exhibition of new work by Hannah Burr
    Barickuda Gallery
    Ann Arbor MI
    ​ Sept 17-Oct 22 2022 
    Learn more here

    END PAPERS

    This is a service and will soon be a course - in person and online. Let me know if you'd like to be notified when it's ready!
    SIGN UP TO BE NOTIFIED

    FREE SESSION WITH HANNAH!

    If you feel overwhelmed, confused or just plain excited by what's afoot in your life, and would like some excellent clarifying space and tools, try a session with Hannah! She's been a coach for 15 years. First 30 minutes is just to see what it's like...
    SNAG A FREE SESSION

    ​

    + Get one of HB's books
    +  See Hannah's Artwork
    + Shop Hannah Burr Studio

    Author

    Hannah Burr is a contemporary artist and author. Originally from Boston, she lives in Ann Arbor MI.

    Archives

    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    June 2020
    January 2020
    November 2019
    October 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    October 2017
    August 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    October 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    April 2016
    January 2016
    August 2015
    March 2014
    August 2013

    Categories

    All
    Art + Books
    Art For Sale
    Art In Print
    Artists Books
    Coaching
    Contemplative Practice
    Contemporary Art
    Creative Process
    Creative Process And Practice
    Deals + Events
    Embodied
    Meditation
    Messes
    Messiness
    Objects
    Prayer
    Reflection And Writing
    Relationship
    Spirituality
    Studio Stories

    RSS Feed

hannahburr.com

SHOP
CONTACT

BLOG ROll

ABOUT HANNAH


© COPYRIGHT 2015. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.