Artist turns hard knocks into soft silksBy David Verzi
12:00AM / Wednesday, January 07, 2004
GREAT BARRINGTON Her art is like butterflies airy, delicate, diaphanous, lofty dynamic and vivid yet ethereal. Her resumι, however, is more grit than gossamer.
Jasmine Gage, now the sensitive "country girl" and ever so meticulous painter of soft silks for framing and apparel, was once a spontaneous, street-wise Manhattan producer of aggressive corporate promotions and pulsating light shows for classical artists and hard rock bands.
"I grew up in the Bach-to-Billie-Holiday cultural stew of New York. I thrived on it as a youth and went on to do a lot of brash 'big city' stuff," said Gage, 55, who was also a Big Apple actress, film director, photographer and model.
Gage reflected last week on her previous life and a career built as much upon impulse and impudence as talent.
"Back then, I'd tell clients, 'Yeah, I can do that' and then come up with an often seat-of-my-pants way of actually doing it," said Gage, who successfully produced throbbing illuminations at Carnegie Hall and corporate image-building productions for Pepsi, IB, and Lincoln-Mercury.
"However, art and everything in New York seemed to be about outsized egos, professional sabotage, masochistic madness, living dangerously and dealing with the crafty and evil," Gage said.
As an adult, she said, she rebelled against the aggression of her Spin City life-style.
"Sure, there was lots of money, but the price paid was scary, tense, just ridiculous, she said. So she began to seek country calm and an art form that called for focus, thoughtfulness and discipline, she said.
Introduced to Great Barrington by a friend, Gage soon put down roots, but the road to her true artistic calling was longer going through painting ceramics, furniture and on canvas.
"But, when I found silk," she said, "the angels sang."
She noted that silk "settled" her provided her with a warm, comfortable, creative confine that has firm, precise, unforgiving boundaries that demand integrity.
"Silk will accept only just so much color, and you can't cover over mistakes as you can with canvas," said Gage, who does both abstract designs and those nature related, which often begin with the artist extracting details from her own countryside photography.
"I may take trees from one photo, flowers from a second and hills from a third," said Gage.
She then contributes elements from her brimming-over imagination. Dipping fine brushes in dyes, she carefully guides colors upon white, crepe de Chine, habatoi, charmeuse, or raw silk fabrics which are suspended within stretcher frames.
Gage favors radiant jewel tones purples, reds and blues to blend with nature's rich greens and earthy browns, and she sometimes embellishes her work with iridescent paints before completion by dipping them in a fixative solution.
In addition to framed art, the fruits of Gage's studio include wall hangings, room screens, shawls, scarves and poncho-like jackets. Clearly celebrating silk-painting's Japanese heritage, the artist's figurative designs often feature blossoms, fish and mythic and real reptiles, as well as butterflies.
Her abstracts, frequently painted to simulate the look of woven cloth, include a worldwide menu of geometric figures native to the primitive cultures of Asia and elsewhere. Concerned about the appreciation of silk painting in America, Gage noted that in the West, the painstaking art form is often dismissed while Japan's best artists are hailed as national treasures.
"But, just a minute, this is not tie-dye or batik. Americans need an education in the exacting effort needed to paint silk," Gage said, who is pleased to have become accomplished in the uncommon art, and, while respecting the ability of her Asian contemporaries, not the least bit intimidated by even their most magnificent designs.
"I have a unseen advantage. I've been Japanese. I'm not sure if I was a harlot or a princess, but there was lots of silk," Gage said, expressing in big-city flip a sincere belief in reincarnation.
"I'm working to execute this art form to its fullest effect, and the Berkshires have been very supportive," she said.
Her painted silks may be seen at Claymania and the Tokonoma Gallery, both in Housatonic, Stonewood Artisans in North Adams and Creative Hands in Salisbury, Conn.
"Here in my small studio by the Green River, I have found peace in my life and my work," said Gage, who relishes the serenity born of her reverse metamorphosis an artist who found freedom and has taken flight by breaking into her cocoon. |
.JPG&width=225&height=300)
