THE CLUB SANDWICH RANT in Postcards 4

Photo: Michael Ruhlman

This afternoon in Michael Ruhlman’s blog, “The Turkey Club Sandwich,” he wrote, “I worry when we become this careless about standard preparations. If we are thoughtless with what is known to be excellent, what is already a given, how will we be thoughtful and innovative with the unknown? All great craftsmanship begins with a clear understanding of standard preparations.”

I burst into laughter. My friend Bobbie and I have been discussing just this for another artistic media for years. If you cannot draw, if you cannot put an educated and trained line on paper, how can you push your work into new dimensions. How can you learn to see?

Most art schools no longer teach traditional drawing and painting techniques. Bobbie and I are believers that you cannot be a good artist in any media unless you can actually draw. Drawing teaches you to see. From schools like Art Center School in LA, Brooks, and The Rhode Island School of Design came expansive new art based on the standard techniques for photography, painting, and drawing

These schools taught their students new ways for artists to think in color and passion in any dimension. As an example, in the 1960’s Lorser Feitelson, one of the Art Center instructors, and four others, started the Hard Edge movement. After working in classical techniques, Feitelson first adapted his work to the WPA norms of the 1930’s. Widkipedia says, later his work changed to “the ‘Magical Space Forms’ series of the 1950s and 1960s and culminated in the elegant figurative minimalism of the ‘Ribbon’ paintings in the 1970s; “pure gesture that engages the viewer with the intimacy of an embrace” said a reviewer.

I went to one of the first shows of his Ribbon series. It was magical. It was electric. Feitelson continued to draw and teach traditional techniques until his retirement. He too believed you had to crawl before you could walk.
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• Himself: Gym, work hard, Costco hard.


• Herself: Pool early. Dishes, few books on book day…I don’t think people are buying books right now, home to write and go to Costco. Tomorrow training at work til 5.


• Reading: A book on Restaurant Reviews.


• Captain Poolie: Very daring today. Work to meet with her board. She needs clothes. Tidying her house. Movie out tonight.


• Gratitude’s: That I discovered that my days go better if I take two Tylenol at bed time.