Fay Wood By RAYMOND J.
STEINER A
FEW YEARS back — after viewing her solo show in Woodstock, New York
— I referred to Fay Wood as a “world-class Renaissance artist” —
she’s more than that. On a cool but bright sunny May morning, I visited
Fay at her Clove Church Studio in Saugerties, New York, and spent a couple
of hours browsing her studio, her home, her gardens, and — most
especially — her mind — and what a mind it is! Her studio,
a large, roomy space that was once a church — I remember it as attended
by congregants of the Assembly of God — is surrounded by gardens
and bluestone-lined paths that she and her husband Skip (a retired engineer)
have designed over the fifteen years they have occupied the grounds and
building. A stroll outside in the interconnected gardens largely amounts
to an extended view of her studio…but more of that later.
First,
let’s dispense with the statistical stuff, the measurable parts of her
life and career as a mother and an artist. The earliest entry in a scrapbook
lovingly assembled by her husband that covers her artistic endeavors and
accomplishments is from a newspaper article dated September 12, 1968.
She is singled out along with a few others from an exhibition of “Connecticut
Valley” artists for her “unusual figure study” of Ascent of Proserpine
—attesting to the fact that for at least forty years, Fay Woods
has been making her mark as an artist and, early on, standing somewhat
apart from her peers. Only six years after, an article reviewing the Springfield
Art League’s Fall Exhibits that included mention of her drawing, Girl
Watchers Revisited, has a marginal note put in by Fay: “This is the drawing
that got censored out of the show — I fought to get it in!!” Still,
if Ascent of Proserpine struck the reviewer as “unusual” and Girl Watchers
left some jurors uneasy, a rather lengthy resume suggests that her art
was not so outré to have been excluded from group, solo, and invitational
shows both here and abroad — garnering, along the way, a fair share
of accolades and awards — since the early ‘70s. On the other hand,
a visit to her Clove Church Studio unequivocally sets her apart from the
ordinary. This is an artist who decidedly marches to her own drum! For
someone such as I who has to view a lot of stuff that tries to pass as
“art” in today’s free-wheeling art market, it is enormously refreshing
to see something beyond mere “innovation”, mere “shock art” that purports
to be the “very latest” in “cutting edge” art. There is a depth of sensibility
and vision in Fay Wood’s work that one sorely misses in the usual gallery/museum
fare.
Unfortunately,
that 1968 article did not offer a reproduction of Wood’s Ascent of Proserpine
— Girl Watchers Revisited was in fact “revisited” in a later (undated)
article and was accompanied by a reproduction of the drawing — but
if I am allowed some extrapolation from what now fills her studio cum
church, I have little difficulty in imagining her sculpted figure of Proserpine.
I hesitate to describe Fay Wood, other than to make note of her strikingly,
piercing blue eyes. Otherwise, this white-haired, soft-spoken woman is
a deceptively unlikely source of such intense, spiritual, far-sighted,
inventive, startling, and often ingeniously whimsical body of work. Although
she paints and draws as a foil (her word) for her sculptural “readymades”
— and paints and draws extremely well, whether figure or landscape
— Fay Wood is a quintessential 3-dimensional artist, imagining tangible
form from inchoate matter. And, as the term “readymade” implies, the matter
she fashions into art doesn’t, at bottom, really “matter” (pun intentional).
Though in her early days a sculptor of wood, she has since allowed her
vision to see beyond what we mortals perceive in “things” and has allowed
her art to encompass a world of objects, each discrete bit or piece subtly
transformed into something “other”.
One
might expect a resultant jumble of disparate parts but, in her hands —
like clay made into man — new objects turn magically into ‘beings’
— and thus, what I see as the “spiritual” aspect of her art. As
a mother, she had already “created” life — but as most artist/mothers
quickly learn, soon discovered that parts of her “flesh and blood” could
— and for a time did — take her away from her life-long inclination
to create art. In addition to her children, 22 moves in 30 years, and
the perennial obstacles placed before any female artist, had taken a toll
on any chance of a settled, unified artistic vision to take firm root
in the depths of her creative soul — and Fate could not have dealt
her a more fortuitous hand, for who knows what rigid, formulistic viewpoint
might have been her fortune had she slipped into a cocoon of comforting
safety? Real art is almost always wrested from the chaos of our physical
world — especially when that world is filtered through our inner
spirit. When merely assembled — whether in brushstroke or material
— what we produce is simply — and aptly —called “assemblage”
— something any flood or hurricane can accomplish (and often does)
in the detritus they leave in their wakes. “Art”, however — and
with a capital “A” — is something different, something increasingly
rare in our no-holds-barred, anything-goes, ‘I’m all right — You’re
all right’, artworld. Since time immemorial, art implied mankind’s imprint
on what he/she sees, tastes, feels, smells and touches — not a mere
bringing together of what’s “out there”. To take some found metal objects,
a bunch of wire and a few dabs of paint and translate them into her prize-winning
Chanticleer at the National Sculpture Society’s 71st Annual Awards Exhibition
takes not only manual dexterity (which she unmistakably possesses and
credits to her father, a carpenter whose backsaw and miter box grace her
studio much like any other of her sculptures) but an aesthetic vision
(which she most definitely possesses) that transcends the mundane slapping
together of a few geometric forms painted in day-glo colors.
Attempting
to describe in words Fay Wood’s individual works — and there are
a literal church-full of them — is an impossible undertaking —
as fruitless as trying to capture her in words. Each — like her
— breathes an active life that belies the foursquare, solid image
that presents itself to the unwary eye. Even while sitting and chatting
in her studio for this profile, one could sense the kinetic energy impatiently
waiting to be released — like the incipient “cock-a-doodle-do” of
the silent Chanticleer waiting to be released while proudly standing atop
his roost. Indeed, Fay Wood’s energy bursts its bonds even outside her
studio. I
mentioned her gardens — and it is clear to this fellow gardener
that her creativity is carried far beyond the confining walls of her “Clove
Church Studio”. I made the mistake (and I should have known better, having
read and absorbed Martin Buber’s I and Thou) of asking her the name of
one or two blooming plants (as a high-schooler, I worked for a landscaper
and took some pride in learning the Latin names of the flora I worked
with and temporarily forgot myself as we strolled her paths). Some minutes
later, she confided that she resents being asked the names of her flowers
since “they ought to be appreciated simply for themselves”. A point well
taken and one I should have anticipated since, while still in her studio,
she had already indicated that she disliked titling her pieces. And, by
the same token, she abhors the oft-requested ‘artist’s statement’ and
for the same reasons that I have railed against them in so many of my
past editorials — does not the art itself make the artist’s “statement”?
And so with her flowers…they really don’t need “titles” either. Mother
Nature’s art, like ours, ought to stand on its own — sans “expert”
definers and pundit-like interpreters.
And,
while I’m at it, neither does Fay Wood require definition or explication.
As I said above, though I once referred to her as a “world-class Renaissance
artist”, she is really much more than that. (For
more on Fay Wood and her extraordinary body of work, E-mail her at clovechurchstudio@hvc.rr.com
or, better yet, call her at (845) 246-7504 and arrange a visit to her
Clove Church Studio in Saugerties, NY) |
