Wednesday, April 6, 2011
7:00 pm
Don’t Know We’ll See: The Work of Karen Karnes
A film by Lucy Massie Phenix
Director’s Statement
In a sense, I have been making this film, Don’t Know We’ll See, over the course of the 40 years I have been a filmmaker, since it was in the late 60’s that I lived in the same artists’ community in Stony Point, New York where Karen Karnes lived. I respected then what I saw as her timeless and profound work, and have had a rare chance to see her work evolve and surprise, year by year, from show to show.
Yet what compelled me to make the film, so different from the social change documentaries that have been my work, was seeing an artist live a life impeccably loyal to an inner rhythm, and her own internal creativity.
In these times when human beings are challenged with multi-tasking and exponentially faster ways of processing information, it is inspiring, and important, to witness the possibility of living a life in which work and living are of a piece, not contradictory, but informed by the same grace, grounded in the body and the earth and connected to the rivers and seasons of the natural world. The film was made to make this rhythm visible and experiential.
The comments of several audience members have expressed it this way:
“This film changes you as you’re watching it.”
“I thought I was going to see a film about a potter, and I found I was seeing a film about what it means to be human.”
On the evening of April 6th at 7:00PM, the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center will host a film screening of “Don’t Know, We’ll See: The Work of Karen Karnes,” by Lucy Phenix. The filmmaker will be in attendance, as will Karen Karnes and Mark Shapiro, editor of A Chosen Path: The Ceramic Art of Karen Karnes.
Karen Karnes and filmmaker Lucy Phenix will be present at the screening for Q&A.
$7.00 / $5.00 for BMCM+AC members + students w/ID.
DON’T KNOW WE’LL SEE
Reviews by Artists:
Ken Frazelle, composer
The film is absolutely beautiful. It has the space, warmth, and mystery that Karen’s work and spirit deserve, it is visually stunning, and as a composer, I was immediately struck by the wise use of music.
Paulus Berensohn, writer of Finding One’s Way with Clay and a primary proponent of Deep Ecology. His quote in the film:
I was thinking last night about Karen and the thing that I kept thinking was there is no separation between the work and the life. And it’s a beautiful life. It’s an inspiring life in this age of unchecked progress based on more . . . . more.
Judith Mortenson, painter, Northern California
The overall statement is about the “earth, “out of nothing, something.” As the clay becomes a pot the camera brings us to see what else has evolved slowly over time, the rocks, water, grass, trees, and a young girl into an older woman, the earthiness of her clay reflected in her face and skin… It was a joy to see and hear.
Nancy Baker, Academy Award-winning Editor
It is thought-provoking, inspiring, beautiful. A very good bio and so much more.
Extraordinary.
Mary Ann Taylor-Hall, Kentucky, writer and teacher of fiction & poetry
This film is lush and leisurely, drawing the whole natural world into Karen’s processes. It’s a ravishing, sensual film about ravishing, sensual art. It opens out, always… the apprehension of the art, and of its origins, comes at a female pace, loving and specific, with female connectedness.
Audience member at the Santa Fe film Festival:
“I thought I was going to see a film about a potter, and I found that I was seeing a film about what it means to be human.”
Reviews by Teachers and Exhibitors:
Barbara Abrash, Center for Media, Culture and History, New Your University
A resonant sensual film which makes palpable the materiality, groundedness, physicality of what we call art.
Alice Sebrell, Director, Black Mountain College Museum
This inspiring film gazes deeply into both the humble and the profound mysteries of an artist’s life. It gave me something I was hungry for, without knowing it.
Karen Cooper, Director, Film Forum, New York City
A lovely film…beautiful, even elegant cinematography.
Linda Sakora, Professor of Ceramic Art, School of Art and Design, Alfred University
In the film, my students saw Karen’s studio as a place of rigor and permission, of knowing and not knowing, of patience and determination. They carried away optimism and possibility.
Jane White, Manager of Adult Education and Teacher of Ceramics, Detroit, MI
I have thought of the film often in the past year since I saw it – so beautifully done and what a remarkable artist. I love that she says ” … we’ll see” . it is so true. … I often tell students when asked to predict , ” we will know more later”
Rick Winston, Green Mountain Film Festival Programmer, Montpelier,Vt.
“Don’t Know We’ll See” is among the best films dealing with the visual arts that I’ve seen. It takes us deep into an artist’s view of the world, and does so with style and humor.
Published Reviews:
Ken Hanke, Asheville Mountain Express, Ashevill, N.C.
An altogether beautiful documentary about the extraordinary potter Karen Karnes. The filmmaker, Lucy Phenix, presents an organic picture of a woman whose work and life are in themselves organic. Phenix captures the spirit of a lively, outspoken and delightfully quirky woman, who still revels in the tactile experience of her art, the end results and the basic therapeutic power of its creation… The result is a captivating and occasionally even mesmerizing film.”
The Log Book Review (International Journal of Wood-Fired Ceramics)
Don’t Know We’ll See is indeed an inspiring, touching and profoundly emotional biography, and like a compelling book, one is drawn back to it, time and time again.
American Craft online, Robert Silberman
What do people hope for in an art documentary? A window into the secrets of creation? A better sense of the artist’s personality? Some biography, a touch of history, maybe even an idea or two? Probably all of the above, plus good filmmaking. This beautifully crafted film…, is worthy of its subject, whose spirit shines through it from start to finish.
Jim Lowe, Montpelier Times Argus, Montpelier, Vt.
What makes this film so fascinating is that it parallels Karnes’ development as an artist with her growth as a person…. Karen Karnes..is the subject of a film that intimately explores the fusion between this woman and her work… She sees herself as a potter, but she has become a ceramic sculptor, one of the world’s most respected.”
