Music to My Eyes

initial sketch, pencil on birch gallery boxed panel 

For those of you who have been following my work for Exquisite Harmony, my solo exhibition at Maitland Art Center, this is the final piece that I am working on for the show. Delivery date is September 5. I have been adding hanging hardware  and labeling the pieces as I go along, so there will be no final rush to prepare works for the gallery the night before. I have also been creating the art cards and have typeset the Bruce Adolphe poems to go along with the 13 Carnival of the Animals collages.

I wanted to include dancers as representatives of music from the beginning, but I saved her for the end. I'll be listening to flamenco music on Pandora as I create this piece. I might even have to eat some Latin food to help me get into the rhythm of things!

Once again, I'll be looking for a title for her when she is complete, as I have nothing in mind at the moment. I just have always loved the color and intensity of these dancers and their costumes.

She is started in my typical process,  a pencil sketch on birch gallery boxed panel primed with Liquitex clear gesso. I prefer a Faber Castell 9000 series pencil, as it has some varnish mixed in with the graphite and tends to smear less when I apply the clear gesso over the top of the sketch. Experience has brought me to the point of sketching directly on unprimed wood, and then priming over both sketch and panel before creating my acrylic under-painting.

Typically I had been working on un-cradeled panel which I framed in barn wood hand-made by my frame maker in Kentucky. For this show, I decided to use the gallery boxed panel so as to keep the look clean and contemporary. I felt that this would lend itself to the variety of subject matter that makes up this  body of work.

So, be thinking of a title as we go through the process of this final installment to Exquisite Harmony, on display at the Maitland Art Center in Maitland, FL from September 10-October 24.

Music Collages

©St.Hilaire Nelson

Carnival of the Animals is musical suite of fourteen movements by the French Romantic composer Saint-Saëns. It was composed in 1886 while Saint-Saëns was vacationing in a small Austrian village. It was originally scored for a chamber group of flute/piccolo, clarinet, two pianos, glass harmonica, xylophone, two violins, viola, cello and double bass, but it is usually performed today with a full orchestra of strings.

Saint-Saëns, concerned that the piece was too frivolous and likely to harm his reputation as a serious composer, supressed performances of it and only allowed one movelent, Le cygne (The Swan) to be published in his lifetime. Only small private performances were given for close friends.

Saint-Saëns did include a provision which allowed the suite to be published after his death, and it has since become one of his most popular works. It is a favorite of music teachers and young children.

As the title suggests, the work follows a zoological program and progresses from the first movement, Intruduction et marche royale du lion, through portraits of elephants and donkeys to a finale reprising many of the earlier motifs. Several of the movements are of humorous intent.

I was sitting in orchestra rehearsal one night thinking about representing music through visual art when all of a sudden it came to me. Carnival of the Animals would make a great collage series! We had been rehearsing the music for months in preparation for our spring concert, but it took a while to hit me.

There are some wonderfully whimsical poems written by Bruce Adolphe which I will display with each piece of art from each movement of the suite. They will help to tie in the humorous music with the whimsical collage art.