BWAC's "Lineage" Opening

Thanks to all who came out to the Lineage opening this afternoon! It was a lot of fun. For those who didn't make it today, the show will be up until October 31st but only on Saturdays and Sundays. Here are some images from the show.

me in front of my work

Scott and I in front of his work

Scott and I in front of my work

me in front of my work

Quick note about Lineage

Hey all, sorry for the long absence. I totally flaked out and missed the "Red Hooked" show, mostly because it was too expensive to print the photographs and I didn't have time to comparison shop. However, I am definitely doing the "Lineage" show at BWAC along with my friend Scott, whose blog http://scotty106.blogspot.com/ looks eerily similar to mine.

For "Lineage" I'm exhibiting my Preservation of Heritage series, and am now rooting through some of my mother's family photos. Here are some gems I found, ones that I might use in future work.

Tank

"Russell paid us a surprise visit"


Yes, that's a flamethrower.

"Judy watching T.V."

Yes, that's my Pop Pop smoking a cigarette and shaking hands with Darth Vader

BWAC success and Euro Adventure

The BWAC show nailed comes to a close this weekend. I had a lot of and I think it was a huge success. I didn't sell any work but my one piece in the auction was bid on, so I'm happy. I'm really looking forward to to the summer and fall shows, "Red Hooked" and "Lineage" respectively. For "Red Hooked" I think I'm going to print out a couple of didital images I've taken in Red Hook and frame them. And for the "Lineage" I will definitely exhibit my Family series.

Here are a couple of images I'm thinking of printing for "Red Hooked"

I just got back from an awesome Euro adventure but I haven't developed any film yet or sorted through the various digital images I took. I did sketch a bit too and I'll scan some of the sketches in the near future. I went to a ton of museums while I was there, in Brussels I went to the Musées Royaux des Beaux, which includes the Historical Art Museum, The Modern Art Museum and The Magritte Museum. The Magritte Museum was amazing but I really liked the Historical Art Museum which housed an amazing collection from Northern Renaissance painters like Steen, Bosch, Hals, Rubens and many more. The Modern Art Museum was severly disappointing, it was in the basement and was laid out strangely. The colloection wasn't all that impressive except for the works by Ensor.

In Paris I went back to the Musee d'Orsay. A lot of the museum is under construction and some key pieces are not on display. However it made up for it with the insanly awesome exhibit "Crime and Punishment." the exhibit had paintings depicting various crimes (ie. the Death of Marat), an actual guillitine, paintings by prisoners in jail, drawings and plans of the Panopticon jail preposed by Breton. Crime scene photographs, death masks of criminals, penny dreadfuls and posters and newspapers including woodcuts of horrible headlines. It was morbid and awesome, extremely powerful and kind of gross all at once. I definitely reccomment paying the extra euro or two to go see it if you're in Paris.

Amsterdam had the most museums I wanted to go to, The Van Gogh Museum, the Rembrandt House and Museum and the Rijksmuseum. All were amazing I mean the Rijksmuseum had a ton of Rembrandts including the Night Watch, Vermeer, Hals and other Dutch masters. The Van Gogh museum was great, as expected but the Rembranthouse was a lot of fun. It was pretty cool to see his studio and his bed and everything, they also have galleries. They had a great show on early Dutch photography and they had a room with a selection of Rembrant's prints.

Bruges was really beautiful and ridiculously picturesque. I feel like nobody actually lives in Bruges except fairies and unicorns. Bruges had the Groeninge Museum, interesting colloction of local medieval artists and even Belgian modern artists. The Memling Museum in the Hospital of Saint John completely blew me away. The paintinfs and various artefacts from its days as a hospital were fascinating, the Memling museum was amazing, and they had on loan from the Groeninge Museum one of Bosh's famous altarpieces. all of this in a church-like setting, for kids they had medieval coloring books set up on drawing horses with colored pencils. The were scenes from the bible and scenes from the hospital, it was kind of great coloring in Nuns taking care of maimed people. In the upstairs there was this very powerful exhibition by an artist in residence on the "foundlings" since St. Johns was also a foundling hospital.

All in all the museums in Belguim, Amsterdam and Paris were a ton of fun, I prpbably spent 70 euros in postcards and another 40 in Museum entrance fees but it was well worth it!

New Work! Continuing on the Labors

I'm finally finished with The Labors of Hercules Series! YAY!!! Now here comes the important part YOU ALL have to come join me for the "Nailed" opening at BWAC this Saturday (May 8th) at 1pm. 499 Van Brunt Street (right near Fairway by the Water Taxi in Redhook Bklyn)

You'll get to see the Labors Series, some black and white photographs as well as some other works on wood that were hand picked by the BWAC curators. I was initially only supposed to get one panel but they liked my work so much they asked me to bring in a variety of other work and now I definitely have 3 panels and possibly one more.

I'm really excited, and I worked my butt of the past couple of weeks preparing for it, so without delay here's a preview of the new works that'll be up in BWAC's "Nailed" show:

This is titled "The Return of Persephone: The Advent of Spring" This is not a Labor of Hercules but is in the same vein as the Labors series as well as the "Fall of Icarus," being that this too is a Greco-Roman myth. Oil an Shellac on Wood, 4x4.

"The Girdle of Hippolyta" The ninth Labor. Gesso and Oil on Wood, 4x6.

"The Nemean Lion II" The first Labor. Oil and Shellac on Wood, 8x10.

"The Cattle of Geryon" The tenth Labor. Oil and Shellac on Panel, 5x5

The whole wall, 2nd floor on the right hand side.

Finishing up the Labors Series for BWAC

I have off work tomorrow, and I’ve promised myself to work on a couple of things. As some may know, my dad and I are in the process of building an art studio space in the basement (where the darkroom used to be) so I can finally have a place to work. It’s almost done, I still need to transfer a lot of stuff from my room and give the new space a quick clean but I’m going to try to accomplish this in the morning.

There is another reason I’m anxious to start working again. I’ve joined BWAC (finally) and am going to be featured in their show in May. I’ve decided I’d like to display my Hercules series, which as of yet is still incomplete. So I have to get my arse in gear to finish off the series. I have an idea or two for the remaining 2 paintings. I’d also like to make a Nemian Lion II because I am no longer in possession of the first one. So that brings up the total to 3 paintings I have to finish before the second week of May. I think I can do it; I tend to work better under a deadline anyway.

I also plan on making a book for a special lady I know who gave me an awesome gift the other day. I think it’s going to be classic cinema themed basic sketchbook/notebook. The cool idea I had was that it would have random interwoven images of such classy folks as Lauren Bacall, Bela Lugosi and Gregory Peck. I’m not exactly sure how I’ll go about making this, but I’ll figure it out. Is it too much to put in a few Cinema quotes as well? Is that lame and dorky?

So looks like I’ll be a busy lady. My family’s also plans on taking a vacation in Barcelona for two weeks in the middle/end of May. I’m super psyched about that. I’m second guessing purchasing a scanner and might opt for giving my self a camera for my birthday. I can’t do much with a new scanner in Barcelona and all my film cameras are either busted or too archaic to use for tourist-ing. So hopefully I’ll have lots of new work to show everyone in the next month or so, painting, photo and book stuff!

Here are some random images, figure drawings and sketches from MICA years past and of course my Lauren Bacall woodblock print from LaG.

A review of "Red" a new play on Broadway about Rothko

Last night I saw "Red," a brand new play on Broadway. Alfred Molina plays a middle-aged Rothko, at the point where Pop Art is starting to "stomp" abstract expressionism. Rothko is commissioned to paint a series of murals for the swanky Four Seasons restaurant, and he hires a young assistant, played by Eddie Redmayne.

At first his assistant is eager, and naive about art and the art world, despite going to art school and being a painter himself. He really has no deeper knowledge about art, than perhaps the casual viewer, but he does have a passion for it, and he looks for truth, meaning and soul in the art he encounters. When Rothko asks, “Who is your favorite artist?” he replies, fervently “Jackson Pollock!” Everyone in the audience gave a knowing laugh, (it appears that us art dorks are in very good company) as Rothko rolls his eyes, “Wait, ask me again!” and Rothko does, “Picasso!” was expressed with equal exuberance, tempered with a little hesitancy. This is the sort of exchange that I think really hit home for me, going to an art school, talking with professors and other students about art, artists and various movements. Had the eager assistant said Rembrandt, Rothko might have been impressed but to choose his contemporary, even a rival of sorts with such gusto and in a way such ignorance at that point did not put him in Rothko’s good graces.

Alfred Molina as Mark Rothko

Rothko talks about the way he and his fellow Abstract Expressionists “stomped” Cubism to death, his usage of colors, lighting and the way he wants his paintings to pulsate. The Title “Red” of course comes from Rothko’s intensive use of various hues and shades of red, there are discussions about the meaning of “Red” and the connotations associated with it. Blood, passion, heat, life… Rothko says that his greatest fear is that if “the ‘Red’ were to be overcome by the ‘Black.’” The “Black” signifying death, the unknown, the absence of red, “Black” is the opposite of “Red”

One of the most visceral moments is when his assistant (who I believe remains unnamed) helps him prime a canvas. In the center of the stage (set to look like Rothko’s studio) there is an easel of sorts, just a panel and attached is some sort of pulley system, so they attach the blank canvas to hooks on the back and pull it up so it stands upright a foot or so above the floor. On the floor, they first put a drop cloth down, clean side up, it almost looks like some sort of ritual, as they do all these steps in unison, the assistant gets the buckets of paints and brushes. One bucket on the left and one on the right, they each take a brush and the music swells. They each start on either side, Rothko on the upper left, the assistant on the lower bottom. The first brushstroke on the canvas is magical and somehow painful, it’s sloppy and dripping, but you become more and more involved and excited as more of the canvas becomes covered. They duck and dive around each other in a sort of strange un-choreographed dance, that presumably they have done many times before. The audience sees the white canvas becoming saturated by this intense “Red” right before their eyes. When finished, both actors are covered completely in splotches of red paint, their heads and hands; faces and arms are totally red, even visible from my nosebleed seat. As they take the canvas off the hooks and move it to lean against the wall, you can see the gory remains of their paint on the white wall/easel and on the floor and drop cloth. It brought to mind the hanging beef in a butcher store, hung on a hook, like the one painted by Rembrandt.

This play really was fantastic for any art enthusiast, it was great to hear Rothko rant about Pop Art, Warhol and the soup cans and Liechtenstein and those “comic books.” Do you really think that Warhol will be hung in museums a hundred years from now?” – “Well he’s hung in galleries now next to Rothko,” one of my favorite discussions is when they are talking about the blatant commercialism of Pop Art and Rothko’s own latent commercial leanings (with the murals,) and how “at least Warhol’s in on the joke!”

Bottom line, this play made me think, it made me view Rothko I a new way (as I came into it being rather indifferent to his work,) it made me think about color, light atmosphere and the life of a painting. It spoke about being an artist and being and aspiring artist, the rapid changing of tastes and the art world itself. It was brilliantly written, and surprisingly fast paced for a play where just two guys talk about things I really care about for an hour and a half. Alfred Molina was great as the intense and often cynical Rothko. Eddie Redmayne as the assistant was so very similar to people I’ve known in real life it was incredible. The only problem is that it kind of does fall into that stereotypical “volatile” artist, grappling with his own obsoleteness in the face of the new generation and the “eager, naïve” art student grows and learns about art in the process of watching the death of the old form. But hey, it was fun, and entertaining but it was also much more than that. It made me think. More so than other plays, that when you come out you think about the characters, the writer, costumes, the acting, the sets, etc. etc. This play made me think about these larger concepts of art and meaning, issues impacting my own life and with relevance to the world we live in and the art world some of us aspire to live in.

Here's a link to learn more about "Red"
http://www.telecharge.com/behindTheCurtain.aspx

On the threshold and old Florence art

I feel like I'm on the threshold of something good. which is good - because I feel like I've been kind of in stasis for the past couple of months. I think December will bring good things, I've been stressing a lot lately about a great many things but this past week went from really, really low to a medium high in a relative short amount of time. Sometimes I think that things must happen for a reason, so I have a good feeling now about the future. I feel like now would be the time for a fresh start, I feel optimistic for a change, still not totally there yet in what I want to accomplish but at I'm on the right track.

I've been feeling the art itch again, but it's hard because I really have nowhere to work. I miss my studio in the Bank building sooo much! I made a handmade sketchbook for a present for one of my friends, so I think I'll make a few more if I can find a place that sells book-board and find a recipe for wheat paste. books don't really take all that much space to make, it's the painting and mixed media stuff that feels like a daunting task at the moment. And I would like to be sketching or drawing but I feel so uninspired at home to start on something. Ugh.

So for lack of any new work to post I'll post some of my stuff from my semester abroad in Florence. This was the Spring semester of 2008.

The first image is a painting I did in Piazza della Signoria of Cellini's Perseus in the Loggia dei Lanzi. I sat there for a couple of hours in the cold and dark with my paints, being harassed by Italian men but I think it was pretty worth it.

The second painting was done from the view up at Piazzale Michelangelo on the other side of the Arno. This was done in a few hours as well from about 1pm to about sunset at maybe 7. This was a whole other experience since Piazzale Michelangelo was pretty crowded on that lovely afternoon with tons of performers and tourists. I remember there was this awful music from this Native American troupe, it was like listening to Yani ALL DAY. That coupled with the Japanese tourists the would want pictures with me was pretty frustrating and hard to concentrate. Any way, this painting is unique in that I first primed the canvas with gold spray paint and then went on top of that with oils.

This mask was handmade by me, using what I believe to be the traditional Italian mask-making process. There was a lovely mask store that I always would pass and one day I stopped in and started talking to the owner. He invited me to come to one of the workshops that he taught but unfortunately a lot of were after I would have had to leave, so he invited me to come anytime I wanted and he would show me one on one how the process was done. It's kind of a paper mache process with molds and glue. It was a lot of fun and a total cultural Italian moment for me. In return I gave him one of my etching I did depicting the opera Madame Butterfly and he gave me one of his prints. I painted the masks in oil and gold and black spray paint, not the traditional water based paints because I wanted a full range of color.

While I was in Florence, I took printmaking. I had not had the chance to take it at MICA and I had taken some classes in high school and again at the Art Students League, but I can't get enough of it, so I found myself in a position to take it abroad. In this piece I was trying to depict my love for both New York and Florence. They are such different cities but I wanted to show how much both inspire me artistically.

This etching was kind of an experiment. I was trying out the photo transfer process on a spare plate and I liked the graphic and textural quality of the overlapping images. I played around with layering, removing and adding parts of images, using cheese cloth to texture the resin and dripping the resin to get different effects. I then went on top of the finished print and used a reddish, greenish ink and watercolor.

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving, cheers!

Halloween Sketches

So I've been feeling particularly Halloween-y as of late. I've been watching a lot of the old monster and horror movies while working at the video store and I've also started reading H.G. Wells' The Invisible Man. I've decided to dress up this year as a Drive-in roller waitress from American Graffiti, mostly as an excuse to wear those rockin' skates that Jonathan Trundle gave me. I was going to be Cesare, the somnambulist that strangles people from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, but I thought it might be a bit obscure.

Anyway, here are some recent sketchbook drawings, all done in pencil. And of course my pumpkin paintings, done in acryllic, Vincent Price and Frankenstein's monster. Creepy bugs, monsters and bodies are basically what's been on my mind the past couple of weeks. Happy Halloween!!

Lumenhouse/Studio job

For those of you whose ears I have't talked off about this, I've been working at an art studio a couple of days a week. The artist I work for is Aurora Robson (her website is in the "people I like" list) and she mainly does large scale sculptures and installations made entirely of re-used plactic bottles, it's our job as her crewbies to help clean, cut rivet, melt or paint the various parts of these bottles together. We try to use every single part of these bottles- the screw top, the cap, the tube, the base and even scraps of plastic get used in a variety of ways to make many differnt forms. The plastic becomes entirely transformed and "trash" is the last thing you think of when you look at the final product.

So today at the studio we helped Aurora get the sculptures ready to be packed to be taken to the gallery at Salve Regina University in Rhode Island. For the past couple of weeks we've been preparing her show entitled "Landmines," I brought my camera so I could document part of the packing process. It was a really exciting and hectic day but it was a lot of fun. We wrapped and packed everything in a UHaul truck and it just barely fit. I can't wait to see pictures of how it looks set up in the gallery with the right lighting and the sculptures installed and lit up.

so here are some images

The Orb named "Fat Skeeter" who is maybe about 6 feet wide

One of the two "Landmines" which are floor peices

"Scrapple Strands" which will be layed on top of the landmines and the orb as a decorative and textural element.

The infamous "Cap Blanket" which is made entirely of white, black, gray, silver, clear and red bottle caps, strung together both horizontally and vertically. Its supposed to look like a vortex-y outer space nebula thing, it looks really cool in person.

The "Cap Blanket" close up

Oh, and P.S.

Aurora has a 6 page article in October's issue of "Art in America" so check it out! she talks about her work and her process as well as this new show that'll be in RI. I keep checking Barnes & Noble but it's not in yet, it'll most likely be out tomorrow or monday. So, yeah cool beans!

The Preservation

Hellooo, sorry about the long lapse between posts but this time I actually have been fairly busy. Recently I've been working at the video store around the corner, doing this freelance animation thing which I'm super glad is over because I've never done animation before and I felt incredibly out of my depth, and I started working for Aurora Robson again (the artist I interned for last summer.) So yeah, I've been a busy bee.

This post will be highlighting my final for my book class, it's titled "The Preservation" and I really tried to combine elements from the Family Series of my Thesis with what I learned in book class. It's a Coptic bound book and I used a variety of methods and materials to get it to look and feel right. In this book I was really interested in texture both physically and aesthetically, some of the pages have collaged or layered elements to them next to flat printed images. I wasn't as concerned with the placement of images on the page, I wanted it to seem somewhat random.

The printed images often look 3D, as I xeroxed leaves, flowers, photographs and other objects directly onto the page. I also played a lot with my printer, printing on top of already printed things, feeding different types of paper and making photograms with the xerox machine in it, sometimes altering the size and scale of what I was xeroxing. Another element that tied it very strongly to my Thesis is that I actually took digital photographs of quite a few of my little Family collages, these photographs were often purposely blurry, and extremely close up, to only see part of the collage, I used these images as pages in the book.

The book deals with memory, family and personal history. It also simultaneously explores the history of photography and image making. One part I particularly like is that I took and old family photo, scanned it, played around in photoshop and inverted the black and white, I then printed it out on regular computer paper and oiled it to make it transparent. I took that "negative" and made a Cyanotype with it. I then took a digital picture of that Cyanotype and printed it out on a piece of paper to use as a page in this book. It's the process that I'm very interested in, of course I want the end product to look interesting but in the process I've used one of the oldest forms of image making in conjunction with some of the newest forms of image making. I also find it interesting that Bookmaking itself, along with Printmaking, have such a rich and old history, that many do not even think about day to day.

I do realize that in using actual flowers and putting the oiled images in the book, it will eventually look, smell and feel different over time, things will get browned and washed out but in I actually really like it. It's called The Preservation because I feel like I'm preserving the past, preserving history and like photography itself preserving moments in time. I had a ton of fun assembling this book and I feel that it is really what I was trying to get at with my Thesis, a sort of conclusion that sums everything up succinctly.