Public sensationalism has sure received a lot of play in the last few years from reality shows on TV to artists tossing dead steers from cranes. One gets the idea that if you are not nailing dog corpses to gallery walls, you are not making Art. What should we make of the work of Ruth Ann Howden? Howden’s work is not loud, although it is chaotic. Her work brings up feelings, though with few images. Howden seems more intent on capturing intangibles - feelings, sounds, and moods with matted delicate papers over gold leaf and pencil tracings. One suspects the artist is avoiding something. What exactly IS she hiding?

Howden graduated with her BA from UCLA in the mid-60’s and then “proceeded to unlearn everything her teachers had taught her.” Rebelling from the abstraction orientation and LA gloss so predominant at the time, for the next ten years Howden became a craft-person - “work which would have horrified her teachers”. Daring - considering that crafts were held “the lowest of the low” - Howden explored tie-die, fiber, puppets with faces drawn in India ink, and woodworking

Howden then returned to drawing. To make matters worse, Howden made images of women. These 2-D works ranged from plate size to four foot square, and portrayed circles, cycles, pregnancy, and women’s lives in a variety of media, including a pink and green garish oil . Howden added circles to flatten everything, and conflict with the pregnant nudes which demanded to exist in space, thus setting the stage for contrast and conflict. Using art “as an act of bravery”, Howden’s work incorporated reoccurring “mirror images” that helped the artist and viewer negotiate unknown terrain. Art became, “The act of not knowing what you’re getting into, but willing to take it on anyway”.

Howden’s work helped the artist transform perceived threats into gratitude. She has said that “demons pushed the creation of the work, but in time those demons became appreciated as a worthy opponent.”

In the mid-eighties Howden developed a Bird Woman Series, airbrushed, moderate sized works inspired by a short poem,

Only the Bird Breaks
Free
Leaving Its Shadow
Behind.

Then again the circle of Howden’s art returned into a spiral, feathers transitioning, the white bird in the women’s hands, with closed eyes.

Howden’s art returned to pure abstract in 1992, with her materials’ properties transporting the viewer into alternative spaces. Ironically the formal elements of painting - color, flatness that Howden so strongly excised from her work after school, returned with a vengeance. Many of the works at this time were small-scale metallic and colored inks spread on gelatin and acetate, then photocopied looking like a cross between a photograph and a lens for a psychedelic light show.

The nineties also saw the development of what Howden calls her “journal pages”, so called because of their size, personal quality, and sense of private investigation and study. Here, patterning, drawing, and overlay met with energy and movement, often in B/W and gray. Howden was interested in process (“starting with a fortunate accident, tearing paper, becoming interested in how the ink got squished into the printing plate, seeking a balance between the hard and soft edge”) textures like fringe, to challenge the audience to determine what was real and what wasn’t.

Journal Page #7	Journal Page #8

Her goal is to create "Art which wakes us from the dream we forget we are dreaming." as suggested by

(Ling Spirit 21" x 30", 1999)

Layered and involved, Howden’s current work (September 2001) is shown at The Gallery Above, (Florence OR), the 5th Anniversary Invitational, GK Gallery, (Cooperstown ND), and a One Woman Show, Community Center for the Performing Arts, (Eugene OR). Howden finds in it “an expression of simple joy in rhythmic patterns created with color and textures, interested in translating light and illusion into two dimensions.”

Sound of Light Series #7, 7" x 11", 2000	Falling Out 30" x 20"

“I start with an idea”, Howden relates, “layering in meaning. Then I lay in the design, and then return to dimensionally, adding color, and creating different points of view. I begin most work as a monotype because printer’s inks are such lush and intense colors. Then I work it into a mixed media painting with pen/ink, pencils, pastels, chalk, handmade papers and gold or mixed-metal leaf. A painting is complete when your eyes can dance through it and with it.”

Thus the cycle is complete, on Howden’s own terms: the return to abstraction only after working through the personal, making “pure art” in the sense of the priority of materials and form, the interest in design elements, texture, repetition, and layering.

However far these works are removed in time from Howden’s earlier abstraction background and textile creations, they set the stage for a contrast between the illusionistic and the materialistic, challenging the audience to determine what is real, and what is not. She is not hiding anything, all the passion and personal relationship with her art are laid out for all to view