Oregon Art Beat; #105; Mary Catherine Lamb

about some of the details of this, but this is a really unusual sounding room, it's kind of definitely... Oh really? And we were working here, so maybe we'll still be able to talk about this one up there, I mean... Yeah. Yeah. No, I totally can't. I know every little scrap that's in there. Think before I would be ready to make... First, what am I doing? Okay. And am I talking about that facing you and being on camera? This is... Am I in the background, Paul? He films the... Would you really have that? When I completed the Archangel Michael Bidjiwaloha and realized how much pleasure I was getting from finding these images that were so nostalgic and had this kind of magical quality for me, being a collector, there was no stopping me. Several of these are from my own family, my grandmother, my mother, but most of them I've... They've been gifts or I've found around. Some of them I'm really

wild about. I mean there's something about this whole display that is... So it's so serene. I mean I suppose it's because it reminds me of being in church. It's almost like having my own little church except I don't have to believe in anything really or follow any rules, but there's a kind of solace that, again, is almost entirely nostalgia -based, but it works. This one just as a lover of folk art, I really love, because the maker, partly because the maker is so clearly, so proud of her accomplishment that her name is absolutely gigantic. And I love the pose of Jesus lying there on the future instrument of his torture kind of saluting. Hi everybody, guess what's going to happen to me later? And it's a little beautifully done, little petty point facial

features, gorgeous. And this is from the 1920s, a little hand -painted and gilded tourist item from Florence, with this hand -scoring and the gilding. Just beautiful. What's the story of this little guy in the corner? Well, this little guy in the corner is something of a counterpoint to the mood of solace and celestial. He's a paper mache devil figure from a village in Mexico that specializes in these paper mache figures. And I thought this is where he should hang out. Okay, you know when I think you're absolutely best. Oh, it's a matter of sweetheart.

Look at your long leg. I wonder if I should go upstairs and unplug that space heater if we're not going to get up to the studio. Or are we? Okay, because we still have the second floor. Okay. Okay.

Okay. Hi, honey.

Oh, God, or like those amusing sight when we're wearing a long flannel nightgown. And you just turn into this giant toothpaste tube. Oh, divine. What time is it going to be? This is second I'll check. Oh, God, is it that light? We have the time to stay and do more, but I'm wondering if we should wait to come back and shoot it in the daylight. It's entirely up to you. Um,

that would work. Well. I know it does make things difficult. I just got a call from my friend Carolyn in California with whom I've stayed in numerous times. Absolutely the most great. And we had talked about it months ago in the vagus of terms and in her mind it was definite. So of course it's in the middle of the film festival. Do you want to start earlier? Do you want to start at 10? I don't know. I'm just totally besotted with her. I can't believe I got a cat so fast after Nipper

died. I mean I really... I can't believe it. I can't believe it. I can't believe it. I can't believe it. I can't believe it. I can't believe it.

I can't believe it. I can't believe it.

I can't believe it. I can't believe it. I can't believe it. I can't believe it. I can't

believe it. I can't believe it. I can't believe it. I

can't believe it. I can't believe it. I can't believe it. I can't believe it. I can't believe it. I can't believe it. We're going to be talking about what we get up to that studio is why she fragments stuff like this. You might get, be sure you have a couple of just this screen square

so you can show how each square has a composition sort of unto itself. This is all just idiot here. You know, it's a technology that addresses and you want a great potential search just to symbolize it. These dishes belong to him and to him. So then they put it, and he overseer organic, healthy, and nothing has that he doesn't have a lot to do with the last year. He's a senior at the time. So that does go along with the rest of the day.

And then he has to be quiet. Although he had a best good luck, he can't break through He's a great guy. He's a great guy. He's a great guy. He's a great guy. He's a great guy. He's a great guy. He's a great guy. He's a great guy. He's a great guy. He's a great guy. He's a great guy.

He's a great guy. He's a great guy. He's a great guy. He's a great guy. He's a great guy. He's a great guy. He's a great guy. how would you just I guess you know obviously you're a collector of sorts and there's a lot to be said about collectors but how would you describe this thing that you've done here in your house with found objects and organizing them and configuration don't start yet

because I'm not sure I'm going to answer that I mean it's like and this isn't for the tape but this we roll now yeah let's just talk and you can bag the whole five minutes okay when people ask me if I mentioned I'm gonna go out to Expo or I'm gonna go to a state sales to find things for my collections and people say what you collect I often don't know exactly how to answer because I can easily come home with a half a dozen bargains any one of which is not one of the same kind of thing of anything I have here it has to do more with a feeling that it gives me like the earnestness or the kind of sweet clumsiness that I talked about about the shoe forms with the rocks glued on it I guess you could say

I'm attracted to things that are handmade but certainly nothing that follows any kind of kit or instructions just some spontaneous heartfelt effort really appeals to me whether it's some something done with swizzlesticks and somebody's basement or it's some traditional craft from a country in Africa a basket a hand colored photo or an embroidered doll face do you think there's art in collecting or is there art and what you do with something I don't know I don't I don't know how to define art there's a certain there's a certain celebratory spirit that I respond to that I try to communicate in the way I arrange things well I mean I this what you do is different from somebody just

collecting plates and arranging the wall or collecting old pennies I mean you collect things but then you do something with them in a way that may have never been intended that seems like a creative act to me and I just yeah I see what you're saying and I might not be able to describe that in any depth without referring to what I'm doing in the quilt so if that comes out it comes out what I love about collecting is the thrill of the hunt which any bargain hunter hunter or anti collector gatherer can relate to finding something that speaks to you out of the

heap of rubbish is always a thrill but for me it's more than just finding that one object that I love it's the subsequent placement of it with things that relate to it whether they're the same type of object or whether they seem to reverberate with the same kind of feeling or whether they have visual aspects in common so that these little vignettes spring up throughout the house that you know and it might take a year to reach the point where it's the arrangement seems complete I think oh why didn't I think of putting this object with these other things and all of a sudden everything will come together and they do have all these little vignettes do have a similar quality of of plightfulness and beauty in the original objects whimsy well where we're headed with this

is you are now a card carrying professional quilt artist fine artist but if you had never taken that last step and never start quilting would you still be an artist oh I see what you're saying is this I think that finding myself in the position ten years ago to buy a large old house and really spread out with these amusing old things that I like to find and arrange them together has been a culmination of a lifelong interest in keeping things and arranging them on shelves and long before I ever knew I was going to be making quilts out of old clothes that I found and cut up and put pieces of this jumper with that bed jacket that impulse was always there to

somehow I mean decorate would have been the word I would have used as a teenager but there was always this impulse to create this visual world in in my bedroom when I was a kid in a teenager I can remember those little plastic swizzlesticks from the maraschino cherries from my mother's old fashions and I started collecting all of those and I wanted to arrange them on the woodwork and a pattern because I love pattern I love the sight of things in multiples and it seems even more visually stimulating to me if they have variations rather than all just being repeats of the same thing so that sensibility that love of pattern and that love of things in multiples reflects itself in things like the arrangement of all those hand colored landscape photographs just messed on the wall or the long row of sock monkeys

it amuses me to see that it's hard for me to part with objects and other collectors I know will be able to relate to that I really pity the person who was going to have to deal with whatever is left in this house down the road there are piles and piles and boxes of just stuff left behind closed doors that's not really very important well it's one thing in common to all these things you collect is that they seem to have a history they seem to have been used or enjoyed by somebody else and you part of what you're getting is an experience and I see these little toys and they're more than just something that came out of a factory that somebody had them and interact that's right that's right that seems to be the case with just everything I see I would never be

tempted to buy new out of the box a perfect reproduction of any of these old toys that I have on display because they were never played with by anyone before I mean there's something about the patina that comes with handling by these anonymous people who I'll never know but these things were used and lived with and they're also from a time when things were made better when things that were made well weren't prohibitively expensive for the average person and so the careful making and the beauty and the design of the simplest everyday objects really appeals to me too and so I buy things like that when I can actually use them you know old bowls or old aprons or ledger books whatever it might be you were saying earlier that it's it's a way that people always find something they relate to that they have a story about it

always gives me a lot of pleasure when when people come and visit especially first -time visitors it's almost unfailing that someone who comes here for the first time if they have the time to walk around and look at a lot of things at some point they're going to exclaim oh I played with that with that when I was a kid or my grandmother had these glasses or oh I remember that high school party and so -and -so's rec room and it sparks this you know this warmth and these I mean not that the memories are always necessarily pleasant but it evokes this personal response that that I really enjoy well I want to introduce the quilt here at least okay that seems to carry over we'll get in a minute how you got started but that seems to carry over into your quilts also like you go back here look at this one and instead of being a formal work of art on the wall you look at that and go

crying out loud that's just a mole Hawaiian shirt cup in here look at this it's that stuff I had 3d hologram stuff I put on my windows when I was a kid I mean I think it that may well do you find that people that same kind of completely whatever it is is attracts people to your art and causes them to interact with it in a different way that's one of the more rewarding aspects of having a show and having the quilts on public display and being present when people are looking at it because there are these exclamations of oh my grandmother's curtains and it's not I mean it's not the main focus of the work is to have people recognize our grandmother's curtains but it does prompt this a little bit more intense interaction with the piece is they they they see that this

is something that came from a previous life it makes it more personal but then they step away and then they see the image as a whole and they see that this bit of their grandmother's curtains plays an important visual part with all the rest of it and they see I hope the visual relationship between this bit of curtains and all the other elements visual elements in the piece but it excites people to to realize that by recognizing certain patterns to recognize that these are actually garments and table linens and curtains that are cut up and and that have that there have been relationships made visual relationships between these things found in all these disparate sources and that is one thing that I think gives these quilts a kind of a shimmer or a resonance or

almost a spiritual aspect rather than I mean people have asked me about the spiritual content of these quilts that are based in religious imagery and for me the spiritual aspect doesn't spring from the narrative the narrative content of the origins of the stories it comes from the kind of reverberations of these lives previously that these fabrics previously lived I mean a poultry fabric that was actually cut off a cushion that you know people had conversations sitting on that fabric I mean these fabrics have soaked up human experience that we'll never know about but it's almost like they sort of whisper so do you have to know the story behind each fabric source and quilt to fully get it you think I

don't think you can ever know the stories behind the fabrics I mean they come from completely anonymous sources but because they might suggest your own experience you realize that on some level that they're suggesting the experience of faceless others is it like folk art these quilts that you make I don't really think so because I have an art education and I approach it also from an academic background and I try to take seriously formal considerations and art history considerations and you know someone who's had the good fortune to take advantage of an art education can't really I would never think of calling myself a folk artist but in some sense you're doing the same thing of making art with what what is around found objects making it toy from a life to a

you know we're just figure from I guess okay I could say something about that there is