Hola, friend.
The next Hola Society packet is out in the world, and I want to tell you everything that went into it.
I'll be honest about one thing first. This packet shipped a day later than I announced. Not because anything dramatic happened, but because my printer started acting up right when I needed it most. I had to take some extraordinary measures to get it running again, including several hours on the line with tech support. I’m grateful that nobody seems to have noticed or minded, but I said a date out loud, and I want to be the kind of curator who owns it when the date moves. So there it is. A day late, for a very unglamorous reason.
Across all the formats, we featured 12 pieces of art in this packet. The packet included four full sheets, printed on sticker paper, four half sheets printed on cardstock, and four ATCs -- all with original art. The packet also included a zine showcasing some early women artists working in abstract art. And the packet also included a little something extra tucked in that I'll get to.
You already know how this theme found me. I was reviewing submissions the way I always do, asking myself the same question I ask every time -- does this make me want to create? A pile of pieces kept pulling themselves aside because they all had the same thing in common. Lines. Repetition. Structure that perhaps wasn’t on purpose.
My approach to choosing what makes it into a packet hasn't changed since the first one. I look for pieces that can bend to however you like to build a spread -- some for backgrounds, some to cut out as a feature, some to tear into and play with. But this time, within that approach, I was looking for patterns and structure and shapes and colors that repeated.
For the zine, I wanted to feature women who were early pioneers of abstract art. I started with Hilma af Klint, the Swedish painter who was producing pure abstraction years before Kandinsky, and who believed the work was coming to her from the spiritual world. That sent me looking for others working in structure and abstraction and whose art was also in the public domain. I landed on three more: Liubov Popova, a Russian avant-garde painter of the Constructivist movement who called herself an artist engineer; Alexandra Exter, a Russian and Ukrainian cubo-futurist known for fragmenting the world into geometric planes; and Sophie Taeuber-Arp, a Swiss artist and one of the founders of geometric abstraction, working in grids and hard edged forms. Four women, four different corners of the same idea: using structure as a way of seeing.
Packet production followed the same order as last time. I worked on the ATCs first, which were printed and cut down to size, two cards at a time. Then I made cuts to the half sheets, and then to the full sheets. The zine came together next, printed and hand bound. Then I wrote my letter to you, as I reflected on the process. Last, I wrote thank you cards, to new members and to the people who made this edition special.
I laid everything out onto my dining table for assembly, which is still one of my favorite parts.
As I was packing, I had a light bulb moment. Instead of just cutting the sticker print bloopers into shapes for surprise stickers, I used the leftover ATC card stock to make tiny handmade pockets to hold them in. How fun!
Seven artists were featured in this packet. A.W. Holmes brought her signature luscious and saturated color, this time playing with rectangles and letting the lines between them blur. Rouba Abou Chabke sent in two photographs, a staircase shot straight on until the depth flattens into line after line, and a tiled surface where every tile carries its own shape -- a circle, a heart, a square, a few actual letters. Mona Mona has more pieces in this packet than anyone, which makes sense, since layered patterns are exactly in her wheelhouse, circles stacked on circles, lines crossing squares.
Three new artists joined our artists collective for this one. Shemi Dixon, a multimedia artist and teacher, brought bright, bold layered line patterns. Jackie Lahiff, an up and coming Fine Arts student, contributed a bright, primary colored pattern built from circles, with a graphic pop energy I loved the second I saw it. And Shannon Ballard, who teaches craft workshops, painted a collection of mid century objects in a flat, geometric style.
And I'm in this one too. Two of my pieces are collages built from painted geometric patterns, where the collage itself carries its own pattern. The third is an experiment with neon acrylic squares that I'm still a little surprised by.
It's early yet, the packet only just shipped, so I don't have your reactions in hand the way I did last time. I'll tell you about that another day.
One more honest thing before I go. You'll find typos in our stuff sometimes. Everything we produce is written and/or edited by a human (me). I'd rather hand you something real with a rough edge here and there than something scrubbed smooth by someone’s software. That's the same reason I curate the way I do -- by hand, by feel, one piece at a time. Also, I’d like to state for the record that I love to use em dashes.
I still don't know what the next packet is going to be. I've got ideas circling, soft impressionist landscapes, bold modern faces, dark and moody gothic shapes, swirls and lines, and I genuinely don't know which of them will make the cut. If any of that sounds like your kind of thing, tell me. I'd love your input on what's interesting to you.
Hasta pronto!
Lola
