Donation to the Bentley Historical Library

My Aunt Constance Davies Abernathy was a big inspiration and irritation to me. She was very artistic and lived a bigger than life existence as far as I could tell while growing up in suburban Detroit in the swingin '60's.
She was my only aunt, my mother's younger sister and was off in Europe designing buildings and hanging in the Swingin' Paris of the 50's and 60's smoking Galoise cigarettes and sending fussy French dolls to my sister and I twice a year at birthday and Christmas. I had a whole shelf full of them.
We couldn't consider them ours until we wrote the thank you notes and even after that, they weren't really to be played with.
She married JT Abernathy, the potter while at college at the Unviersity of Michigan in Ann Arbor and worked with Buckminster Fuller on a geodesic Unistrut building that lived outside the old Architecture and Design Building at U of M. It was still there when I started art school in the mid 70's.
Her birthday was last week, she would have been 79. She died 16 years ago
and I have had some books she made inthe mid 50's sitting in a box on my
shelf for years.
I thought to show them to Zoltan Pali, a fabulous local architect at Studio Pali Fekete in Culver City. He thought that the U of M might be interested in them. So last week I took them to the Bentley Historical Library on North Campus in Ann Arbor next to the Gerald Ford Library and across the street from the Art School where I finished my degree in the 70's. They were very interested in the books and willing to freshen them up with new plastic and scan the images for me to have some of. The Bentley Historical Library has a great workshop where they treat items with the utmost archival respect. Constance Davies Abernathy gets her own file there. I sent more scans of pictures of her at various stages of her life as they requested. My sister said that it was nice birthday present for her. She always remembered ours.

Got some fan mail and she had a great interview question

Rose found one of my prints at a Salvation Army in Henderson, Nevada,
copied my name down and wrote to me that I am now her favorite living artist. They must be the prints from that hung at Treasure Island on the strip in Vegas selected by Steve Wynn when he owned the hotel.
They remodel and the work just gets liquidated. Rose asked some good interview questions. My answer is first and her questions are below.

Rose,
What great interview questions, those are so to the point.
I became interested in art in a serious way in the 7th grade.
I loved Vincent Van Gogh and was caught up in the romance
of being able to not conform. I painted murals and had a very good friend that discussed art and painted with me, she was influenced by Picasso.
I really didn't know that was where she was getting her info from.
She makes mosaics now. www.eraybeemosaics.com
I did study art in grade school and graduated high school as the art Student of my Class with an award.
I went to Art School within the big University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and then to Graduate Art School within the big University of Texas in Austin.
I pursued all sorts of avenues in Public Art, Teaching, Exhibiting and Curating Exhibitions.
I moved to Los Angeles in 1983 with the hopes of making my work more salable so I could earn a living from just creating it.
I met art consultants who showed me I could sell my work without exhibiting it and that most sales were outside the show situation.
I made a gazillion works on paper.
In 1990 I began to show at Pacific Gallery in Laguna Beach.
That year I started the basic black vase series and the collage series which became the "UNstill Life Series" and the "Personal Archaeology Series".
I became repped by Studio 84 West and they placed my collages and then later the "Fiesta Series" based on the "Unstill Life Series" in galleries all over the country.
Everyone thought of Matisse when they looked at them.
I started with observation of a set up still life for the first few Still Lifes and every now and again go back to that, but the true excitement of my work grew from self referencing and doing a lot of pieces, each one taking off from an earlier one.
I like to pick an earlier work to look at as I begin but I am looking for great color and movement and texture and sort of a mood more than an observation of a setup. It became like a personality that grew over time.
I love de Kooning's abstractions and Milton Avery and Matisse's use of narrative space. I love Dufy's drawing with shifting color patches underneath.
Thanks so much for asking Rose.
Joyce

Joyce,

A couple of questions for you. Who are your favorite artists and how in the world did you learn to paint such beautiful art peices? Did you go to a art school of some kind or self taught?

Rose

"Genie's Garden"

Just photographed "Genie's Garden" this morning. It's a new canvas from my ever unfolding "Unstill Life Series". It is 5x4', acrylic on canvas by Joyce Lieberman.
A huge wind blew through Los Angeles on Wednesday.
It felt like the opening to the Wizard of OZ. My neighbor, John blew by and I showed him the new piece. It struck him that the flowers appeared to come streaming out and all around like out of A Jini's bottle. We discussed how to spell Jini, Genie, Jeannie(I dream of).
I try to keep a central focal theme, like a vase and a tabletop, but the spirit of abstraction takes over me as I approach the rest of the space.
I love de Kooning and the automatic writing of the abstract epressionists.
I love Dufy and Matisse. I love layers of marks and paint.