Dennis Hollingsworth

Into the Mix

It's a feat to balance the diversions of Tossa against the needs to pressurize the studio. Life's too short, and you've got to try to do it all without making yourself crazy. But I'm not complaining! I love this problem.

Stephanie has gone to Playa D'Aro with my mom and my aunt (Tita Beng). Picture of familly to come soon! Meanwhile, I stay in the studio and shut the doors, make a pot of coffee, take the stereo to the studio and turn it up a little. I really like the shutters on the windows, an inside and outside system: many modes of light are available to shape a room... a revelation considering we've been shaped by California Modernism, the legacy of the Case Study program... a house was opened to the garden and the inside /outside has many places. Here, houses are thick and openings select and few. All openings have shutters on the inside, sometimes bars on the outside (banditry was a fact of life not so long ago) and a weatherable roll down shade on the outside, and curtains where privacy is needed. As a result, rooms or cuadros are cameras, with light managed to conserve the coolness against the Mediterranean summer.

Later, I begin to feel like the guy in Well's Time Machine, to the rest of the world, I must be a frozen statue, the sun and moon spinning round as the plants grow over the studio, hours seem like minutes as I consider several ways to proceed. The trouble is, I like many of them and I know that the risk of a scrape off is high.

I stretch this linen that I'm getting from my mother. Many months ago, I started to want to be free of the Belgian Linen I used to buy at the art store (no offense, guys!), I thought of using canvas again. But I didn't like the generic quality of canvas. Then this old linen came along and it fit the bill. It was linen, the weave is interesting. And it was of a color closer to canvas. At first, the monograms and the seams were osmething to work around. I accepted them and let them show, not wanting to conform this unique material to a non-unique standard. Then I associated the letter forms with my old work, the first paintings I did coming out of grad school. I appreciated the reminder of the first paintings that led to this current body of work. Then, after having read Hughes "Barcelona", I was struck by the significance of the monograms, the link to the history of Catalonia. Slathering paint on the intimate furnishings of the once landed gentry. Very private property, the fruit of the first Industrial Revolution in Spain. Machine made and hand stiched. Lost symbols of family, lost families. Slowing the slide towards the landfill of some of these artifacts. Like the refernce to my earlier work, I didn't mind all these overtones.

What does it mean? All this and nothing.

And still the canvas is there, blank. Blank, there before me whilst my mind is too crowded.

The trio of Stephanie, my mom and my aunt call. They are inbound, curious if I want to eat lunch with them. Why not? They pick me up at the bus sation and off we go to Blanes, a town not far south, below Lloret. The restaurant was a place known better to locals than the tourists. I choose the atypical, offseason stew, the rest order fish. Salads, deserts, appetizers, cafe con leches. We talk of family, a big topic.