Pressing on

30/366: Watching the World

Checking out the scene on the street below my studio window yesterday afternoon. I like to take breaks here and there to watch people walking by and observe the patterns and interactions of pedestrians, bicyclists, cars, trucks and buses.

I'm beginning to make some headway with new work and returning to a regular studio schedule. So far, It's been for what I call quick bursts of three-four hour sessions in the afternoons. It's good and has kept me from over-thinking what I'm doing too much. At this point, I just need to paint and not worry too much about the results. That's what works best for me when I come back from an extended break (late November through December). I try to not let that much time pass without doing much painting, but around the holidays it's really difficult to keep up my momentum. Unless I have something pressing coming up after the beginning of the new year, like a big show or I have to finish a piece for commission, then December is pretty much a wash-out, creatively.

The break was needed. With having had two big solo shows last year, it's been difficult to jump right back into things. I feel like I reached a point with the painitngs where a shift needed to occur, but how much of one and how to get there? I need to change things up, even if it's not necessarily a noticable one that others will pick up on right away. The thing is, the changes I make usually wind up being bigger than I imagine them to be as I move along with paintings and that's fine as long as I feel like I'm challenging myself and maintaining the integrity of the work I produce.

Anyway, yesterday went well. After getting a few works on panel going I came home, changed and headed out to see a small exhibition curated by a friend of mine, Rebecca Saylor Sack at the University of the Arts, called, Erratic, which features the work of Christopher Davison, Nick Lenker, and Caroline Santa. It's a concentrated show of works that all seem to deal with anxieties of identity and life at a point of intense change in the world and our country, in particular.

I'm trying to get out more often to see what's going on around the city. The art scene has changed a lot in Philly over the past few years and is moving on at full steam. The more challenging work is now being exhibited in spaces that are removed from the more established Old City galleries. It takes some planning these days if you really want to catch a show while it's up. New spaces are popping up in areas that are being gentrified, thus making it a little easier to open and maintain low-cost spaces. Of course, the issues associated with said gentrification (displacement of long-time residents, vastly increased housing costs, etc...) are ever present but an ongoing part of evolving urban life.

considerable

I'm pleased to announce that I'll have work included in a new group exhibition. Considerable is an exhibition of small works curated by Jeffrey Cortland Jones and will be at the University of Dayton from March 3-April 4th, 2008. The show then comes to Philadelphia in April.

Jones will also be in a two-person exhibition with Paige Williams at Green Line Projects| Powelton 3649 Lancaster Avenue, Philadelphia, PA from February 8-March 28, 2008,

A Kiss for Mayor Nutter

The city's budget is due soon and it seems that newly minted Mayer Michael Nutter has yet to make good on promises that includes that re-opening of the Office of Arts and Culture. As a way of sending Mayor Nutter a message of love Roberta and Libby on artblog in collaboration with Kevin Derrick of Design Philadelphia are hosting an on-going "Kiss for Mayor Nutter" event on their blog.

The idea is for artists in the Philadelphia area to send in a photo of themselves somewhere in the city to send a visual statement to Mr. Nutter about what the 'arts community' looks like in Philly.

From artblog:

Here's the deal. We will create a series of photo posts on the blog called A Kiss for Mayor Nutter that will include images of artists and art lovers throughout the city. These images make the face of the "arts" constituency somehow more real than it seems when people talk about artists and the arts.

So, send us jpeg images of yourselves in the city, one per artist -- at Love Park, at a gallery, at the museums, the zoo, on Broad St....somewhere in Philly--you know you have these photos and we want em! Send medium resolution images (281 height x 375 width is the artblog standard size) with your name and the location of the picture. We will run these images in a stream under the heading "A Kiss for Mayor Nutter" in a continuing series of posts starting today.

Act now and send us your images (one per person, please). Email: libbyandroberta@gmail.com

moving forward

22/366: new resident

Not art-related, but big news, anyway.

Yesterday, my wife, Eva, became a resident of the U.S.

Yesterday morning we went to our interview at the USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services) office. It had to be the most intense 40 minutes we've ever had together. Intense as in scary; our future in the near term was in the hands of this one person. If there was one thing he didn't like or thought was questionable about the validity of our relationship and marriage, she might have had to leave for a time. Luckily, our paperwork was in order and our answers to his questions consistent.

When the words, "As of today, you are a resident of the United States" came out of his mouth, referring to Eva, a weight the size of the Titanic was lifted from our shoulders. We walked away hysterically numb but elated.

back in it

18/366: back to work

Yesterday was something of a 'shaking off the cobwebs' kind of day. The distractions of the holidays and jury duty are over, so I'm in a much better position to get the ball rolling on a consistent basis again. I only spent about three and-a-half hours working, but it was enough to get the juices flowing.

......





I started re-working a panel piece I began a couple of months ago by sanding down the thick paint and mostly acrylic gel surface. As I went along, I noticed a bit of the white clayboarad surface had apppeared along one edge. I stopped sanding to inspect the surface and noticed that the paint was peeling away from the panel's surface. I picked at it for a moment and soon had most of the surface peeled from the panel (see photos above). Luckily, this wasn't a piece that I really liked and I'm glad that it hadn't left the studio yet.

Before using the panel, I think I sanded it a little bit and that seems to have loosened the clay surface to an extent that the acrylic gel and paint couldn't adhere. There was too much dust so the gel and paint dried without forming a bond with the surface. Not a good result for archival purposes. I have other clayboard panels that I've used which are fine, but those also didn't have the same amount of gel medium that i used on this one. I"m wondering if the heat from the sander also contributed to the peeling. If I hadn't disturbed it, the painting *might* have lasted a good while, but there's no way of really knowing.

Ryan Widger

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Ryan Widger talks about his process and works in his upcoming show at Kelly and Weber Fine Art (201 Gallery) this April in the Crane Arts Building.

Water in the city

Olafur Eliasson plans to erect giant waterfalls in New York this summer.

duty

8/366: my turn

I"ve been inside most of the week, but not in the studio. As you might guess from the photo above, I've been on jury duty this week and have to return on Monday. This is the first time that I've actually been chosen to be on a jury. So far, it's been an interesting experience. I can't say much about the case yet except that it's a criminal matter. I'm actually an alternate and not one of the twelve that will make the decision of guilt or innocence.

No time

5/365: no time

It's just about 2:30am and I didn't have much time for anything tonight. I'm on a deadline to complete a grant application for the Pew Fellowships. It's due late tomorrow afternoon. I've posted work samples and I have my statement written. I only have to go through it again later in the morning, once I've gotten some much-needed sleep.

This is the first year that they are doing completely online applications for painters. I don't know how it's going to work out, but I'm happy about doing everything digitally...no more slides to contend with. I also like the space limitations when it comes to the resumé and statement-it helps with keeping information concise.

If you're wondering about the title of the photo above, I'm participating in a '365 Project' over on Flickr. The idea is simple: a self portrait for 365 days. It's been interesting so far and I'm sure it will challenge my creativity and discipline.

Moleskine project online

For this past Christmas, E and I decided to go hand-made with our gifts. We bought a bunch of small Moleskine notebooks and decortated them. We each did about sevem and collaborated on two. We used various papers like Japanese origami, decorative stationary paper, and magazine cut-outs. We also wrote and painted some of the covers and did the insides, as well. The last step was to cover the books in a sticky, transparent plastic to protect them. E wrapped them all, as can be seen in the second shot: plain wrapping paper, thin hemp rope, and small bells that were originally from a bell wreath that we purchased at Target for about $2.99. We just cut them apart and had instant gift-wrap accesories.

We didn't finish them in time to give away at Christmas, but did so at a friend's New Year's party this week. They were very well-recieved and I'm sure we'll do it again this year. I'm hoping that we can get started on them earlier so we can have more to give out and possibly make them a little more elaborate inside. We did a few with collages on the inside covers and I spent some time decorating a couple with images on the edges of interior pages.

Last night, I encouraged E to post the photos above on the Moleskinerie group on Flickr. Almost as soon as she did, one of the groups administrators invited her to post about the project on Moleskinerie.com and it was up this morning. Check it out here.

Martin Puryear at MoMA

Caught the Martin Puryear show at MoMA the day after our opera night (see previous post). This show covers Puryear's development from the late 70's to the present and features around fourty-five pieces. The bulk of the work is on the sixth floor special exhibition spaces, but a few of his larger works are placed in the second floor atrium area, where my photos were taken. No photos were allowed in the sixth floor section, of course.

I first became aware of Martin Puryear in the mid-late 80's when I saw a great exhibition of his work at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Quite a few of the works I saw then were in this show and it was like seeing old friends again after a long separation. Right alongside the older works were newer ones, a non-chronological arrangement that was a great asset to the show since you could see Puryear's ideas going back and forth between works completed years apart. At the same time, there wasn't a sense that he was repeating himself. That's something that I think contributes to the sense of timelessness his sculpture has.

The allusive quality of his work is really strong but you can never quite put your finger on what it might be that he is refering to. I can look at one of his pieces and be on the brink of recognition, just about to have an 'a-ha!' moment, but then something happens-a shift in materials or surface treatment-that makes me re-evaluate my original assumption; is that a wooden facsimile of a sawblade or one side of an unfinished flight of stairs? Puryear takes fairly recognizable forms like ladders, wheels, tools, etc..., and places then in unusual formal relationships that creates things that are tantalizingly close to what we know in our world but just different enough to exist on another plane altogether.

Night at the Opera

Metropolitan Starbursts

Those are the chandeliers that hang in the atrium/lobby of the Metropolitan Opera House in Manhattan. E and I had just seen the amazing Placido Domingo sing and were still in a daze from the performance, which was amazing! I went into this whole thing not having ever been to an opera before and didn't really know what to expect. I mean, of course I knew about operas but only in the most cursory way; operas were basically plays whose stories were sung. I wasn't prepared for how good and interesting a well-produced opera could be. For the price of a movie and snacks ($15), we were able to see and hear a living legend perform.

I was fully open to the experience but I have to admit that beforehand, I thought that I'd wind up being bored at some point. That wasn't the case at all. It's impossible to be bored when you're sitting three or four stories up and back from the stage and these ntaural, unamplified voices come soaring up at you and you can hear them as clear as day. Something like that puts most contemporary pop singers to shame, honestly. I nearly forgot that the orchestra was actually there-that's how seamless things went.

It took me a while to get used to glancing at the subtitles on the small screen on the back of the seat in front of me (the opera, Iphigénie en Tauride, was sung in French) and keeping up with the action on the stage during the first half. After intermision I was able to keep up with everything fairly easily. Being at the Met reminded me how great live performances can be.

The source material for Iphigénie en Tauride was based on a tragedy by Euripides titled, Iphigenia at Tauris which reminded me of the source material for three large paintings I did in college as a final project in an independent study painting class in the mid '90's. I don't know why I was interested in it, but I wound up reading the Three Theban plays by Sophocles. I did the paintings in response to the intense emotional drama I found in the plays. The human drama depicted in ancient works like Antigone, and Oedipus at Colonus resonates through the years because human nature never changes, no matter how modern and civilized we think we are.

Placido and Puryear

Last Light IV

Goin' to get some high culture tonight!

A couple of months ago, my wife found an announcement somewhere online that Placido Domingo was appearing in an opera at the Metropolitan Opera House and promptly purchased tickets. The only seats we could afford were the family circle, a.k.a., 'the nosebleed seats', but we figure it's worth it since we're there more to hear him than see him. I've never been to the Met, so maybe the sightlines are better than I might think. I think they have screens now at some opera houses, but I'm not sure. Might have to rent some binoculars just for the hell of it.


The opera we're seeing is Iphigénie en Tauride. There's a synopsis of the story here. Domingo sings the part of 'Oreste', brother of Iphigénie.

We're staying overnight at a friend's house in Brooklyn and tomorrow we're planning on seeng the Martin Puryear retrospective at MoMa. I've long been a fan of Puryear's work, especially since seeing a show of his work at the Philadelphia Museum of Art back in the late '80's. I've always loved his craftsmanship and how he's been able to work near wonders with wood and other materials. Tyler Green had a lot of good things to say about the show as did Roberta Smith in the New York Times. I'm definitely looking forward to seeing this long-overdue exhibition.

I'm going to be in an art coma by the time we're home tomorrow night.

Arc

Arc

Art Alliance talk

Last Light V

A couple of months ago, a friend who teaches at University City High School in West Philadelphia, asked if I was interested in talking to a group of his students at the Art Alliance, while my show was on exhibit. I met with the class last Wednesday around 11:30am. I got there around five minutes before they arrived and had just taken off my coat as the group of 18 or 19 students and three teachers came in. They were all around the 15-17 year-old age range, just about the same age I was when I first started taking art seriously.

I introduced myself in the hallway before they got into the galleries and told them a little about what they were going to see and let them roam around looking at the paintings. About a couple of minutes in, one of the young women approached me, pulled out a small painting on board with an outlined, stylized figure of a woman in the midst of an abstracted background, and asked me what I thought about her work. I was a bit surprised but honored that she was so forthright with her request. It was good to see that she wasn't shy about presenting her work to an outsider and wanting their opinion. I talked with her about the painting and a photocopy of a still-life that seemed to be inspired by Matisse.

Both of the works were good for someone of her age and skill level. I thought she had a good eye for color and told her so. I also mentioned that she should keep working and to continue working from life to develop her skills. I wanted to say more about her work, but I didn't want to spend all of the time only with her while there was a bunch of other kids who either had questions or wanted to escape as soon as they could. Acutally, most of the students were really engaged with the work and had a lot of good questions and comments. One of them was eager to share his socialogical interpretation of Plume, which boiled down to "the colors underneath equaling people of color with the white (man) ruling over everything..."

Once they'd had their fill of looking at the paintings, I gave the group a short talk about my life growing up in Philly and my development as an artist. It felt good to have the chance to address a group of young kids, especially since most of them might not have come into the Art Alliance on their own or any other art-related place, for that matter. I don't know how the trip might have affected any of them, but I'm hoping that some of them got something from it.

'Black and White'

Light Veil, 2007, acrylic and ink on canvas, 36" x 48"

New painting, new show.

This is my comtribution to the next group show at Bridgette Mayer titled, Black and White. The show will be up from November 27-December 22, 2007. Opening Reception: Friday, December 7th, 6-8:30pm

b/w

Untitled (detail), ink on paper, 30" x 40"

I'm preparing for an upcoming winter group show at Bridgette Mayer. The theme is "Black and White". This afternoon, I had a short chat with an acquaintance about the show, and he expressed surprise that I might do something that might literally be a black and white painting. "Are you going to sneak in a bit of color somewhere?". Without missing a beat, I said, "Probably not." He continued, "You're like me, I see you as more of a colorist...".

Guilty as charged. I love working with color, but the idea of working with only 'black and white' is intriguing. I almost never use black alone. Black is often seen as the absence of light, but I've always like mixing a lot of other colors to make 'black'. It makes for a much more interesting dark color, even if someone looking might not see it as a color right away.

opening

A Hole In The Sky

An opening in the sky over West Philly.

Ernie Sandidge @ JOG

Stopped by the James Oliver Gallery last Friday to meet up with a friend checked out Wings and Tails, an exhibit of "fairy paintings and sculptures" of New York based artist, Ernie Sandidge. Wings and Tails features a series of strong figurative paintings and sculptures in various poses with mermaid costumes and fairy wings. Sandidge carries on the tradition of Cezanne-like paint handling without his work seeming quaint or clichéd. The works are juicy, vibrant and very contemporary in feeling.

There's only three days left to see the show and it's well worth the walk up to the fourth floor of 723 Chestnut Street, where James Oliver Gallery is located.

Wings and Tails
Fairy paintings and sculptures of Ernie Sandidge
through November 10th, 2007

James Oliver Gallery
723 Chestnut Street
4th floor
Philadelphia, Pa 19106
267.918.7432
215.923.1242
www.jamesolivergallery.com

Gallery hours
Wed.-Fri, 5-8pm
Sat. 1-8pm or by appointment

Ominous skies

The Cira Centre on a cloudy late afternoon.