Polkadots Amid The Dross
This artwork suits my mood today. It is a rainy Fall day, overcast and cold. We had been in a false Summer season but last night the winds changed and now Fall is here. My head is pounding – unclear if that is due to some wine last night (possible) or the change in weather. Or just typical aches and pains as I recover from a week of being a busy grandmother to a newborn and 3-year-old. Running around with a 3-year-old is such a joy, but yikes, my stamina is not what it used to be. I have a lot to do today, and starting with a headache is making me grumpy. That said, I do like to wear bright colors, armor of cheerfulness when my interior might not be so upbeat. Much like this collaged woman facing down a black cloud.
The artwork was picked up in 2020 (pre Covid) at my local thrift shop, though poorly framed. I spent a bit of money to have a new mat cut for the work and picked up a standard frame to display it. There was a note on the back, indicating the work came from the “Ragdale Foundation December 2007” and was titled “Polka Dot Figures VI” done by Hedwig Brouckaert.
The Ragdale Foundation is a nonprofit artist community in Lake Forest on the former estate of Howard Van Doren Shaw (architect) and Frances Wells Shaw (playwright). The foundation was started by their granddaughter, Alice Judson Hayes, in 1976. The property, originally the “summer home” for the Shaws, was built in 1897. The family added the Ragdale Ring in 1912; an outdoor theatre for the production of Frances Shaw’s plays. Alice inherited the house in 1976 and began the foundation, initially managing the entire enterprise. She wrote:
“I am grateful to my mother, Sylvia Shaw Judson, who gave me the house, to the ancestors, relatives and ghosts with whom I communed when I came back to live there in 1976, to all the artists and writers who by their creativity have validated the idea of the Ragdale Foundation, and to the many people who have helped make the Foundation work. Finally, I am grateful to the house itself for its smell and taste and texture and for the views out of its windows and for its nurturing spirit.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ragdal.
The organization runs nearly 150 residencies and fellowships annually to creative professionals of all types, with the artists staying on the property to enjoy creative work space and uninterrupted time. The artist of my piece, Hedwig Brouckaert, was a resident of the Foundation in 2007, and her piece was one of a series she created at that time. The work was contributed to a holiday fundraiser, purchased by someone in the community, and eventually made its way to the thrift shop.
Brouckaert is from Belgium, and moved to New York in 2010, where she is active in the art world, and is currently the Bronx Museum’s 2024 Aim Fellow. Her main interest is with “mass media imagery to create introspective and tactile works, which range from drawings and sculptures to site-specific installations.” (https://caferoyalculturalfoundation.org/hedwig-brouckaert) I was actually able to reach Ms. Brouckaert by email, and she described the work as a “mixed media” work – part of a series she did while at Ragdale. She explained the process:
“The ground was East Indian black ink, with drawing using black carbon paper on top and then archival felt tip pens for the dot patterns. I transferred images from magazines, in this case only figures and I would put the heads always on the same spot. That’s why there is the black enter where there were a lot of layers of lines. I was, and still am, interested to work with mass media imagery as s source material because it is so omnipresent and such an important part of our landscape.”
To be honest, I really cannot translate that process! Suffice it to say it is a layered work, spun from a magazine image of a woman. The how of it still escapes me. But that is the beauty of creativity – sometimes the “how” doesn’t matter as much as the impact the piece has. This woman always makes me think of Fall, storms – both internal and external – and the use of bright colors to fend off the onslaught. Dross is a term used to describe things that are worthless or rubbish – much like our overabundance of mass media imagery. And yet beauty can be found among the dross, both in our personal demons and the demons that play out around us in our ever-present media.