Femme et Fleur: A Visit to Chelsea with Maryann

Nature, Science and Poetry
I am so fortunate to have a lovely friend called Maryann Van Dongen. I met Maryann through Ari Seth Cohen's blog, Advanced Style. Maryann, Richard and I have been featured on the blog, and we are all in Ari's book, Advanced Style.

Maryann dresses with precision in outfits that reference both classic and punk. She wears her hair closely cropped with a meticulous fringe of black bangs across her forehead. She favors clothes and accessories in black and white, satin ribbons, lace, leather and pearls. Maryann also makes jewelry. Here she is wearing a necklace of her own design with pearl stones embellished with various found charms. A skull, a heart and a cross speak to her punkish undercurrent.

This week Maryann asked me to join her at the James Cohan Gallery in Chelsea to see the work of the artist, Spencer Finch. An out-of-town friend of Maryann's is thinking about purchasing one of the artist's pieces and had asked Maryann to take a look at the work.

Spencer Finch is a 51-year-old-artist from New Haven Connecticut.

He now lives and works in Brooklyn.

"To fathom is to comprehend the essence of something colossal or ineffable by translating it into terms we can grasp....Finch's practice addresses such a need to capture and frame experience...Finch has combined scientific calibration and calculation with a romantic's engagement with nature and faith in the limitless rewards of observation."James Cohan Gallery Press Release

This piece, installed on the floor of the gallery, is an actual fathom, a 120-foot rope with a weight on the end which was used to measure the depth of Walden Pond by Finch. Henry David Thoreau once used a similar fathom to measure Walden Pond. Finch repeated the task, and in the process, notated the color of the pond at each of the 700 sounding points along the fathom. He made paper tags and painted the pond color in watercolor on each tag.

If you like paper and string, and labels written in pencil,

you will love these pond-color hang tags.

A picture of the real Walden Pond

This painting represents different forecasts for the

direction of the jet stream.

The lines look like ribbons fluttering in the breeze.

Is Mr. Finch a fan of notions?

Finch has written color names next to certain lines in this

painting which looks like plaid fabric.

Some of these color names are: Monticello Green, Majolica, Salvia,

Gladiolas, Indiana, Jockey, Folly, Sultan, Runnymede and Mephisto.

There is poetry in color names.

Richard and I have this book of color names in our personal library. I don't remember where or when we got it. Richard used it in his Color Class at Tyler School of Art. He divided the class into small groups and gave each group a name. I remember one group was called "Debutante Pink."