page 1
back to ILLUSIONS Magazine main page
|
| FROZEN
ZEN by John Haynes [note: Remember, the images you're about to see are NOT photos, but are very large drawings rendered in...well, read on. Then see if you can believe it.] R.H. Blyth said, "Art is frozen Zen." Perhaps true Zen comes from true Art...art unhurried, carefully ministered to, brought to life in stages and not let out into the world until its creator is satisfied that he has done everything that can be done to leave a part of himself laid down forever in the work. We may disagree about what moves us, emotionally or intellectually. We may disagree about what we like, or about what is "best." Quality and passion and life, however…toward these things, most of us are magnetically drawn. Quality, passion, and life. Rare to find all three in any one thing, even works of art. Impossible, to not find these in the art of Dennis Martin. On the day Photorealism struck, Lance and I were on our way to Richard’s office. MoonShadow’s accountant, Richard, is a wonderful man, very friendly and helpful to us…all the while struggling with the enormous task of trying to transform two writers into businessmen. In meetings, he patiently explains everything he thinks we need to know; but I get a feeling he’s like the high school teacher who, halfway through a lecture on the Monroe Doctrine, comes to a sudden crushing realization: His students are never going to catch on, never going to give a damn, and will probably wind up in Federal prison on one charge or another—in our case, income tax ignorance, most likely. When we visit Richard, I always feel a little sorry for the man, having to deal with us. During his talks, just about the time Lance and I are starting to slip into our usual drooling coma, I take a last glance at Richard and know that he knows we’re about to nod off… It was a beautiful, warm late summer afternoon. I was sitting in my car in the parking lot of the post office, waiting for Lance to finish some quick business he was conducting inside. Thinking of our upcoming visit to the accountant, my mind roamed. I wondered: are there really such things as "depreciating assets," or are they some kind of imaginary construct, like "earned income" and "accounts receivable" have proven to be? Lance suddenly jumped into the passenger seat of my decrepit Nissan, startling me out of my meditation by tossing his usual over-stuffed briefcase on the floor in front of him. "Listen," I asked him, "have you figured out how to convince Richard we’re paying attention this afternoon?" Lance would have a plan…he always has a plan. "Never mind that." He handed me something. "I got this in today’s mail. You think we should consider running this picture in Illusions?"
It was a postcard. On it, the black and white image of a woman, lying curled up on her bed in a semi-fetal position, the covers beneath her in disarray, her head resting on her right forearm. She was—what?—exhausted? Asleep? Or perhaps haunted by some overwhelming emotion? It struck me as an extraordinary, powerful image…I felt as if I were peeking into the woman’s bedroom window at the very moment she had discovered some powerful, all-encompassing Truth. For a few seconds I was speechless. Then the words came, quickly, excitedly. "Jesus, yes, I think we should run this! Just look at it—the soft lighting, the unusually artful pose. The whole—" I searched for the word— "ambiance, the atmosphere, the mood this photo evokes is rather other-worldly; as if we’re peering into another dimension." I was drawn to the photo in a way I can’t really explain; absorbed by it, actually, and awestruck by the mastery of the photographer. "This is the kind of photography we’re looking for, Lance. Let’s run this!" I pulled out of the parking lot and maneuvered the car through downtown, toward the highway. Lance was unusually quiet. An editorial conflict, perhaps? Was he as enthusiastic about the photo as I was…or did he think it unusable? "Well? What about the photo? Do you like it?" I finally blurted out. He looked at me for a long moment just as I was blasting up the on-ramp, heading west on I-40 toward Richard’s office. "Sure," he said quietly, "But it’s not a photograph, John. It’s a hand drawing done in gold." The postcard came from Dennis James Martin, the artist responsible for this fascinating work. He knew we were looking for artists and thought we might want to take a look at his work. To my mind, this is like walking into a bank hoping to get a loan and then hearing the banker say: "Would ten million dollars be enough? At zero percent interest? Pay us back when you can." I couldn’t believe our good luck. That afternoon, Richard talked but again, Lance and I weren’t listening. Our minds were focused on an image of a soft nude created of gold…and I had that unusual combination of wonder and eagerness I get whenever I’m about to embark on another fascinating adventure. TWO WEEKS LATER... I looked at the postcard again, carefully slipped it into my travel bag, then strapped the bag to the rear seat of my Harley. I backed the machine into the driveway, hit the starter, and waited a few moments while the rumbling engine warmed up. In twenty minutes I would be at his front door. Thoughts and questions ran through my mind as I pulled out into the street, pointing the bike west toward Martin’s side of town. In an era when an artist like Keith Haring (who, let’s face it, drew like a junior high school kid) can achieve fame and renown out of all proportion to his apparent talent, what kind of an artist is it who will labor over a single drawing for months on end, applying pure gold, platinum or silver to his paper in soft strokes millimeters long, literally laying down the metal in layers molecules thick…and do this year after year with only moderate acclaim or financial success? This is how Dennis described his method to me during our phone conversation. Was he exaggerating? It seems evident to me that extraordinary art can only spring from the heart and soul of extraordinary artists. When this magazine was in its pre-embryonic state, I tried to imagine the kind of art we’d run. Visionary art, perhaps…Maxfield Parrish kind of stuff. Or perhaps digitally-manipulated photo images; something illusory, something other-worldly. But in the kind of "reality flip-flop" I so often experience, I was about to meet a man whose work is so real-looking that it crosses the border into something illusory. I considered all this while blasting down the highway, exiting after ten minutes to chug the remainder of the way slowly through various residential areas to Dennis’ house. Soon I found myself dropping the kickstand in front of a quaint brick home facing a pleasant park in one of Oklahoma City’s older neighborhoods. Dennis was sitting on his front porch, concluding a visit with a friend who said goodbye and drove off before I even finished unstrapping my bag from the back seat. Dennis greeted me warmly and invited me in. He’s a man of medium build, with short dark hair and a clean-shaven face that might cause you to believe he’s younger than he actually is. While he was hanging my jacket in the closet I glanced around the living room, where he does his drawing. There was a couch, a small television, and a large table used as a work surface. Atop this makeshift easel was a work in progress, mostly covered with protective plastic sheeting. Reference photos were laying near the work. Next to this was a small cabinet, a couple of the drawers opened to reveal pencils, measures, straight rules, and other drawing paraphernalia. The house was quiet - Dennis lives alone - and the television and radio were silent. I spent a few moments staring wide-eyed at a collection of antique Mickey Mouse figurines displayed in a Lucite case, then found myself distracted by a collection of actual dinosaur eggs. (They look like long, crusty loafs of bread, in case you wonder.) The dining room contained, among other things, a 3-foot tall sculpture of a Tyrannosaurus Rex made of sheet metal from junk cars. Dennis walked in just then. "Dinosaurs are kind of cool," he told me. "I have a certain fascination with them." And the Mickey Mouse figurines? He grinned. "Pretty surrealistic, don’t you think?" Indeed. The Mickey Mouse of the 20’s and 30’s looked a little more sinister than the present day version, in my opinion.
ART AS LIFE It’s extraordinarily difficult to make a living as an artist, and Dennis has chosen an even more difficult path than most: he’s a Photorealist who renders his works in metalpoint. Metalpoint is simply drawing with metal. The lead in pencils isn’t really lead, of course; it’s graphite. But once upon a time artists did use lead to draw. It’s a relatively soft metal and renders a pleasing tone. Artists also used other metals, primarily silver, but metalpoint is a tedious and unforgiving medium. While it is possible to a degree to erase marks made with lead, marks made with silver, gold and platinum are permanent: once the mark is made, it remains. This permanence is not an inconvenience to Martin; in fact, he strives for it. On this first of many visits to Dennis’ home, he happened to be working on a large drawing which covered at least half of his work surface…the paper was probably six or eight square feet in area. Reference photos were laid out around the table—Martin works from photos as do all the Photorealists—and most of the paper was covered with clear plastic to protect it while he worked on one tiny, exposed portion of the drawing. As we talked he drew, gently moving a mechanical pencil filled with pure gold wire across the surface of his paper, paying attention to a postage-stamp-sized area. Dennis starts a piece by taking numerous photos of the subject. Photorealists—indeed, most artists who work on a large scale, no matter their discipline—work this way. It’s simply impractical to drag a huge canvas around with you, or to hire a model to return to your studio every day for three months. Working from the photos, he draws very slowly, conscious of the fact that he cannot erase the marks once they’ve been made. Drawing with metal is very time consuming and tricky: If you don’t press hard enough, you can’t get a mark. If you press too hard, you’ll scratch or tear the paper. Watching Dennis bring this drawing to life, I got the impression that I was thrown backwards in time, somehow…back to a time when artists labored over their creations, and actually took pains to make everything perfect. The whole process put me in mind of a 13th Century Japanese swordsmith—shaping steel in the fire, hammering it, folding it, and repeating this process over and over again for weeks on end, knowing he was creating nothing less than the soul of the samurai. To rush this process was unthinkable. To deliver less than a perfect blade was inconceivable. The master swordsmith was not a mere craftsman; he had elevated his craft to the level of Art. It’s a similarly painstaking process, taking pure gold, platinum, or silver wire and slowly rubbing the surface of a piece of paper until a magnificent drawing appears. Dennis spends months on a single drawing. "There are people who do metalpoint drawings and some of them do it with some realism but no one does it on a large scale—that is, on large surfaces—and no one does it as tightly as I do it. They may spend a month on a picture and think they worked their butts off, but a month on a picture is not much for me, because of the scale and the tightness." When he speaks of "tightness" Dennis means, "There’s not a lot of strokes showing in the drawing…it’s just shaded, without cross-hatching or pointillism or any of the other techniques that are so common." And when you’re working on a surface as large as those Dennis typically works, the amount of effort required can be mind boggling. It takes extraordinary patience and focus…imagine filling every square millimeter of a very large piece of paper with tiny pencil marks. Wouldn’t it be easier to use graphite pencils? Probably, but precious metals have certain qualities graphite does not, and they’re not what you may think. I figured Dennis liked gold, silver and platinum because, in their pure state, they are soft metals—presumably easier to draw with, then—and because their value added a certain cachet to his work. Wrong. "These metals are noble metals, meaning they won’t oxidize and will remain exactly as you put them down. I would use other metals if they wouldn’t oxidize or change over time. I didn’t pick the precious metals for preciousness or their softness, I picked them for their longevity." Longevity. It’s important to Martin that his work be of the highest quality, and part of that effort requires that his work be durable enough to last for generations. Toward that end, he’s done extensive research, striving to find not only the proper papers for his drawings but also the proper drawing media. Given the amount of time he spends bringing a work to life, it’s not surprising Dennis wants the drawings to last. "You can produce good quality work that’s very ephemeral, but I don’t think that’s something you want. There are a lot of people who do quality work whose work will be forgotten in ten or twenty years, and that’s kind of sad; but I also don’t want to be like a Jackson Pollock whose work in ten or twenty years falls off the canvas because it was improperly primed when it was painted. I don’t think anybody wants to buy something that’s going fall off their wall after they’ve paid money for it! Even if you bought a $10 print you don’t expect it to go bad as soon as you get it home." Dennis has been accused of being more craftsman or technician than artist…someone so focused on perfection of technique and detail that he forgets to forge his work so that it inspires an emotional response in the viewer. But this is unfair. The typical Photorealist painting or drawing depicts objects—junk cars, salt and pepper shakers, buildings, etc. While these works may be every bit as amazing in their realism as Dennis’ work is, there’s a major difference: "I intentionally try to use things [in his drawings] that are more classical and do evoke some kind of empathy or relevance with the viewer. I don’t do salt and pepper shakers and a lot of things that other Photorealists do. I try to be a craftsman but I also try to do things that are emotionally appealing to the viewer, which is not typical Photorealism. And that’s one of the reasons I’m not sure I’m a Photorealist…because the beautiful women or the flowers or other subjects I draw are, in and of themselves, beautiful to start with. "I do make an attempt to see that there’s some kind of an emotional appeal to my work. Typical Photorealism revolves around things like buildings and cars, and I don’t think most people walk up to a building or a car and have the kind of empathy they have when they see a human being." When Dennis speaks, it is with a calm sense of focus, a certain matter-of-fact attitude that I find refreshing. He never brags about himself—in fact, he often seems to legitimately wonder if his work is all that spectacular(!), but at the same time he won’t mince words. He knows he is the only man on the planet doing what he does: depicting subjects in a Photorealistic way, on a large scale, via metalpoint. While some do metalpoint, and some do Photorealism, and some work on a large scale, nobody but Dennis Martin does all three. go to page 2 |
