Paintings & collages by Claire Burch
I met and became friends with James Baldwin at age eighteen. I took the photograph of him, on which some of these variations are based, when he had begun his novel Go Tell it on the Mountain, which was at that time titled Crying Holy. We remained friends through his long exile in Europe, corresponding when he was in France and Corsica where he wrote Giovanni's Room.
After his death I began to work with his image. Then I went to a group of large watercolors. I dreamt that he told me to do them, and to always start them with an accident. In my dream he was Skyboss, as he had been before in a series of dreams that began in 1976.
After the large watercolors I went back to the small images I had made by cutting up a print of my photograph of him, and placing other images in the parts cut out. His face, with its large expressive eyes, continued to haunt me.
I then took snapshots of the large watercolors and made many copies of the picture taken of him just after he graduated from DeWitt Clinton high school in the Bronx where he contributed a bunch of writing to The Magpie.
One day later I dreamt again that he was Skyboss. In the dream he said, "Put your paintings in the middle of my forehead." The watercolors were large and the photographs were small so I explained that it would be impossible. "You'll figure out a way," he said, and smiled.
That's why I took the snapshots and placed them where they are.
The smaller pieces are called IMAGES OF JAMES BALDWIN and the accompanying large watercolors are called "I'LL FLY AWAY BLUES". It is the small snapshots I took of the large watercolors that were done for him, that appear on Jimmy's forehead in the smaller work.
Two of the pages of Jimmy's last letter to me (the first page was lost but a Xerox copy remains) are included in this exhibit which commemorates his visit to Berkeley in 1981.
Also included in this exhibit are a few of my
many sarcastic variations of pharmaceutical advertisements.
They are called "The Valium Variation Series", and
a few of them are superimposed here on others of the
"I'll Fly Away Blues" watercolors that were done for Jimmy.
Also included in this exhibit are blowups of
"Variations on the Gettysburg Address", a group of poems
about racism in America. Some of them appeared
previously in my book, Homeless in the 90s (Regent Press,
Oakland). They can be found in the section titled ARRIVAL
OF JAMES BALDWIN: MYSTERIOUS
CIRCUMSTANCES.
My documentary film titled James Baldwin in Berkeley is available free to nonprofit social service organizations for screenings from:
ART AND EDUCATION MEDIA INC.
"Finally I liked the funky poem drawing collage works of Claire Burch. Burch is something else.... The main interest in Burch's show is a series of drawings incorporating fragments of family snapshots and matched to pages of a manuscript of poems. Gallant and garrulous the poems confront the trauma of the artist's loss with lines as likeable as these: "... my mother rages/ get out and look for a new father for your children/ my children don't want a new father they want pizza." The graceful economical drawings meanwhile depict men and women sitting or lying around in a state of sensuous alertness. The intimacy is unforced and infectious..."
- Peter Schjeldahl
THE NEW YORK TIMES
"Small figurative drawings are washed with a light deft touch in a fluid play of light and color. Larger abstract watercolors, more complex in drips and tangles, contrast activity with open spaces."
- Art News
"Her small watercolor and pencil sketches of figures are delightful... Beautiful economy of line and color characterize them. She works mostly in tonalities of soft grays and tans. Passage from one hue to another is very subtle. There is a feeling of depth and intimacy in these little paintings. They are as broad in concept as they are small in size."
- Arts Magazine
"Her painting, as is her poetry, is personal and unpretentious. The paintings usually catch both landscape and figure as they are related to each other in a particular emotional context. At the same time she bonds abstract background and shape with sober and careful observations of the world around her. The surfaces of her paintings are calm and pleasing but they evidence the deeper direction that her work takes. Oscar Cargill states, 'I wish to join those who speak up for Claire Burch for whom I dare predict a shout may go up a generation hence. Ms. Burch needs recognition now however for her very genuine gifts in paint and poetry."
- Carol McNeary, Community
"Pale expertly done semi-abstract watercolors in which figures and landscapes glide like ghosts. Ms. Burch paints in a lilting fashion and has a special feeling for pale color harmonies. Her work may be unpretentious, but on its own ground its genuinely pleasing and succeeds in translating fashionable clichés into something her own."
- Stuart Preston
THE NEW YORK TIMES
"From a distance these look like delicate tissue collages, but up close they become stains of blue and green, with almost imperceptible threads of red and green 'woven in'. The stains are complex, darkening where they cross each other as they trickle down the canvas. Some of the works suggest oil slicks, while others are leaves with light coming through them. There are also watercolors. Miss Burch's paintings are memorable and her line drawings of the figure are quite good."
- Vivian Raynor, Arts Magazine
"The energy is there. She has pulled it all together like a family living harmoniously. Everything that enters her life becomes her art."
- Barton Lidice Benes
"Claire Burch exhibits oil paintings, but her work has the quality of water color. Glazes come out flat and have the appearance of sediment washes in Meek Adjustments. Often she paints on paper. Here again, the clever intermingling of colors and the filmy effect of glaze laid over glaze make for richness of surface."
- Gordon Brown, PICTURES ON EXHIBIT
"A poet as well as a painter, Claire Burch conveys the fleeting lines and gestures of figures with sparing lines and color washes. Her abstract watercolors suggest lyric responses to nature in many moods."
- N.Y. Herald Tribune
"Ms. Burch dips her pen into a well laden palette and comes up with lonely and colorful images - capturing thoughts, episodes and incidents with a skill and excitement that is rare."
- Eli Wallach
"Claire Burch is a wry humorist as well as a serious moralist. She has much to say that will delight, edify, amuse, instruct and amaze. I would like to see that number indefinitely extended."
- Warren Bower
"Paintings by Claire Burch have previously been shown at the Brooklyn Museum, Butler Institute, Berkshire Museum, Parrish Museum, Guild Hall - East Hampton, Silvermine Guild of Artists, Galerie L'Antipoete - Paris, Provincetown Art Association, Hecksher Museum, Columbus Museum, Birmingham Museum, etc. Many works are permanently in museum and private collections.
One man exhibitions have been held at the Ruth White Gallery in New York, Kessler Gallery in Provincetown, Southampton College, Roko Gallery, and Westbeth Gallery.
Claire Burch is also a writer whose work includes the books Winter Bargains (poetry), Notes of a Survivor (poetry), Careers in Psychiatry (Macmillian), Stranger in the Family ( Bobbs-Merrill), Homeless in the 90s, Stranger on the Planet, Rago and Friends (Regent Press, Oakland). Her writing has appeared in LIFE (Special report cover story), Saturday Review, The New Republic, Mademoiselle, Good Housekeeping, McCalls, Redbook, Southwest Review, Poetry (Chicago), Arts an Sciences, and numerous literary quarterlies and anthologies.
Since 1989 she has been director of Art and Education Media, a nonprofit organization in Berkeley that works with street survivors and makes documentary films.