Tuesday, April 5, 2011

June Einhorn's Voice

ARTIST WALK AND TALK with Barbara Rothenberg
The Exhibit "JUNE EINHORN: A Retrospective"
March 24- April 27


Sunday, March 27
Last March after the devastating N'oreaster of 2010 that took the life of June Einhorn, the Flinn Gallery's Selection Committee approached June's husband, Eric about having an exhibit of her artwork as a tribute to her accomplishments but also for her being involved with the gallery in past years. Fortunately, Eric agreed and June's prolific integrative works grace the walls of the Flinn Gallery for the next five weeks to April 27th.

The curators, Linda Butler and Barbara Richards also asked Barbara Rothenberg, June's instructor at Silvermine Art Guild in New Canaan, CT, if she would give a talk about June and her collages. For 16 years, Barbara Rothenberg has taught her course called " Fragments Into Wholes" that teaches everything about mixed media/collage  From that collage class and through her paintings, June interpreted her life experiences with expressive and intellectual creativity.

Rothenberg started the talk by saying "Art is a way to find your yourself by using yourself, your experiences, environment and ideas…You need to find your voice."

"Sometimes in order to find your voice, you have to be specific and offbeat and may not be as pretty," she commented when analyzing Cupboard  and pointing out the image of the cracked cement.


Barbara felt that June's work showed real craftsmanship with watercolors, pastels and collages. In her early works from 1991-99, she critiqued that everything was well done but her voice was not there yet. But "There was poetry and good composition in all her works."



In the collages Fall Leaves 1 & 2, the June Einhorn style truly has evolved. The integration of the watercolors, cutout pieces is very smooth and pulled together.

For 18 months the Einhorn family lived in Singapore. While there June traveled to Cambodia and Thailand. An Asian inspiration is wonderfully woven into many of the collages that she did while living in Singapore. "Things relate to each other and are blended together exquisitely...June's use of pieces is done in a magical way in a manipulative manner to bring the East and the West together."

And Barbara pointed out that it looks like she used the tea staining method to "antique" some of her works, as seen in  Seascape. 

Eric offered a vignette of June's meticulousness and how she acquired her tea for such staining.  She demanded that all the used tea bags had to be removed from the brewed tea cup before anything was added to the tea. Then, the tea bag had to be put in a special container for her usage later.

Further, Eric stated that when June took photos of things, she looked for the details that made up the subject matter of her photo. Barbara quipped that is the artists' vocabulary  - "detail of details". 
When you can look at a collage and not know how it is done, then that is magical.

Barbara concluded her talk with an apropos quote from the late Italo Calvino, Italian journalist and writer ( 1923-1985) from Six Memos for the Next Millennium

"Who are we if not a combination of experiences, information, books we have read, things imagined? Each life is an encyclopedia, a library, an inventory of objects, a series of styles and everything can be constantly stuffed and removed in very way conceivable."

The talk took only a  couple of hours but the experience of learning about June's imagination and past life through her prolific paintings and collages will last much longer.