((Left) Headwinds. Mixed media drawing, 20”x16” and (Right) Desert Window. Collagraph, 30”x22” Mixed media drawing, 30”x22”)
When considering the prints, drawings and mixed media works of Pat Clark, words like thoughtful, intuitive, researched, tonal and nuanced may come to mind. Indeed, the art of this master printmaker has an air of the intellectual or academic, which, at least in part, comes through via the series she produces where she takes an object / concept and pursues it fully until its generative potential is nearly exhausted. However, when asked about influences upon her work, Clark cites a myriad of artists and movements that span the greater part of the 20th century. From Modernist titans Matisse and Picasso and the highly influential Japanese prints that inspired many of their and their immediate predecessors’ compositions to the bold, gestural American Abstract Expressionists and the nearly antithetical investigations of Minimalism and Pop Art, few have escaped the purview of such an astute observer and incredibly well-informed educator as Clark. With such a broad scope of influences in mind, it was most illuminating to share some moments with the artist to hear her rendition of how these movements and particular artists within them shaped her work.
Before entering Clark’s pantheon of influential masters, let’s start at the beginning where a simple childhood moment continues to resonate with the artist to this day. Pat recalls that “one Christmas I got a wood burning tool,” compelling her to consider “marks on wood and the whole idea of how you can print.” Although never having received formal lessons during that formative time in her life, this memory speaks to the importance of a hands-on learning process that drives Clark’s art to this very day, one that she laments is becoming lost as digital technologies take precedence over physical making, or craftsmanship.
For Clark, reflecting upon this transition brings to mind a central influence on her art, that of Richard Tuttle who, she informs me, remembers a similar childhood moment. In his words, “As a little kid I saw my grandfather draw from across the room, and I saw harmony among his eyes, brain, hand, heart and spirit. I was astonished.” Many years later, Tuttle brought this recollection forward in an essay arguing for the importance of hands-on learning opportunities, specifically through more industrial arts high schools. Clark states that she couldn’t agree more “about the importance of getting back to that concept in education, one that honors the passion for making as well as the interpretation of original ideas.”
Tuttle’s post-minimalist, abstract sculptures, which he often refers to as drawings, take everyday objects, often small and quite fragile, and recontextualizes them in ways that are meant to both engage and perplex the viewer, initiating an investigation that questions commonplace meanings and assumptions. A quote from the artist aptly summarizes his philosophical approach to the creative process from conception to reception: “Both in the making and the critiquing [of art], there’s all of life. And there has to be all of life because if you don’t have all of life then how can you make anything that has some importance?” This sense of “all of life” is exactly what Clark saw in her grandfather as he made his drawing, and it is what imbues her art with its indelible presence, one that celebrates the discrete object as well as the grand cycle of life in which the object, maker and viewer participate both historically and in the present tense.
(art21.org/watch extended-play/richard-tuttle-art-life-short/.)
One particular method Clark employs to set the creative process in motion is the generation of a problem. This she did with respect to another key influence on her art: the Japanese woodcut or woodblock print. In such prints one is witness to the “all of life” principle, whether in the ephemeral moment of a woman combing her hair or in the depiction of the smallness of humanity set within the vastness of nature. Describing her process, Pat explains, “I would look up some of the woodcuts of Japanese artists and take the ideas the woodcuts embody with respect to space and texture, and I tried to interpret their ideas of scale and composition. Some interpretations are really simple, like five lines or three lines. I developed the spaces within the images I made so each segment differs in its interpretation of these ideas. I call it mapping where I create a different look for each image even though they come from the same matrix. The goal I set for myself is to blur the boundaries so one cannot tell where the woodcut ends and the drawing begins.” The use of the matrix in developing a unique solution for each image represents a hallmark of Clark’s problem-solving process.
Dedication to the process through innovative, often experimental, techniques is manifest not only in Pat’s art but also in her teaching. While a professor at the University of Wisconsin, River Falls, Clark recalls an assignment provided by conceptual and minimalist artist Sol LeWitt (1928-2007), famous for his Wall Drawings, in which she and her students collectively participated. Per her account: “One time, Sol LeWitt was going to visit our class as a guest artist. He didn’t come because it was when the Kent State shootings happened, but he did send the problem to the drawing class. So, in the library we had his mapping of this mural that he wanted the students to create. And, boy, it was a slog because it took us months. Somebody for four hours working with a 4B pencil and then somebody else would come in with a different density of pencil and go over it. Although beautiful once complete, everybody thought, ‘Why are we doing this?’ Without the direct contact of the artist explaining the density or openness of space just by using line and shape, the assignment was certainly a difficult one, but they got it when it was done. It just took us forever!”
Attention to subtlety and nuance inherent in the problem LeWitt posed to the drawing class resonates with Clark herself on multiple levels. Fine shifts in color or line are a common method the artist employs to deeply engage with her own creative process as well as with the attentive viewer willing to examine the work closely in order to appreciate such discrete changes. As Pat explains, “You have to feel the intention of the process and the desire to engage it.” This motivation is evidenced in the work of two other key influences on Clark’s art, that of Agnes Martin (1912-2004) and Vija Celmins.
Both drawers and printmakers, Martin’s large-scale, restrained, geometric abstractions utilized the grid as a compositional device in order to create paintings “about merging, about formlessness… A world without objects, without interruption,” as the artist described them (theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/may/22/agnes-martin-the-artist-mystic-who-disappeared-into-the-desert). Celmins, “best known for her meticulous paintings and drawings of natural phenomena such as the ocean, spider webs, night skies, and deserts,” often employs the all-over technique of Abstract Expressionist painting to exclude particular reference points such as a horizon line, thus immersing the viewer into a unified, total space (tate.org.uk/art/artists/vija-celmins-2731/explore-art-vija-celmins).
Of Martin’s work, Clark describes her admiration of “the whole surface, which is very subtle and very hard to photograph.” “But if you see them in person,” she continues, “and you really like one pencil line – it’s just glorious the way it shimmers across the surface, disappears and then reappears. Martin would spend hours working on medium grays to light grays with just cross-hatching, things that take a great deal of vigor to do.” With respect to Celmins process, Pat expresses her astonishment in how “she would spend hours doing the ocean, just the waves, or how she would take a whole wall and pencil-draw spider webs. She’s intense that way!”
Reverent in its welcoming of influences both past and present, expressive in its nuance, intellectual in the rigor of its research, and experimental in its variations, such is the art of Pat Clark, an art completely vested in process where a singular problem posed by the artist herself presents a point of departure. The solutions Clark devises to solve the problem are many, all testimonials to a refined craftsmanship and artistic mastery cultivated through years of dedicated study and hard, consistent work.
To view the art of Pat Clark, please visit her website at watermarkprintmaking.com. To view the art of the artists cited in this article, please follow the links within the paragraphs themselves.