Art at the library.

I am showing work at the Meekins Library here in western Mass. Some of it is new work some of it people have seen. It looks different in the library. This is a cool library, this past weekend they had three people checking out books and there was still a line. This is the same library where Izzy and I did the poetry reading for Arbour day and the same library that Zanne will be showing some of her Eco-quilts made in one of her sewing classes.

This show was unplanned. We were there for our Saturday morning of library fun and one the librarians asked Zanne if she could push her Eco-quilt show up a month. She said that she couldn’t but introduced me and suggested I show my work. We took a look at sikwenshel and made the arrangements. The library has a beautiful gallery space with lots of natural light. For the closing reception I am going to install a revised edition of “The sporozoan’s shrine to the mapping of the parasite.” and do a series of performances.

Art is my world.

Folded paper.

Folded and Beautiful.

How in the Hell do I get anything done????????

It is like deciphering babel. I walk into this madness and am some how able to make work. Of course this isn’t how I would like it to be. No I do not want it perfectly organized with everything labeled and in it’s place. That is not me. My creativity seems to feed on on a little chaos but…this is outrageous. None the less I spent three hours yesterday making and am very happy with the result. Well let me restate that as happy as I can be with an end result.

It is not so much that I am disorganized as that I am always rushing and because I can make art in the madness I feel less pressure to organize it than I do to make work. It just compounds it self. I move things around so I can work in one spot and then I make more insanity in the flurry on making. I find more things that I could use to make things with and they sit there waiting.

In order to accommodate everything I just keep piling half finished work in this back bit of the studio. I have a hard time finishing work. This has always been an issue for me but with limited time it becomes more so. I don’t really sketch or use a note book I just start making the things that are in my head. This leads to mounds of unfinished pieces waiting to see completion. I work very quickly and were I to have a few days of studio time the space would change drastically and some of this work would complete it self. For me art cannot finish in short chunks of time it can only begin that way. To finish I need hours of contemplation time. I am not sure which writer said it but I think it was Hemingway, “Write drunk edit sober”. I think this is my approach to my work in general. That is not to say I am always drunk when I am creating but I am certainly always inside a state of passion that reminds me of drunkenness because I tend not to think about the out come and just let the moment drive me. It is all fixable some day down the road. Polishing is slow tedious work requiring patience and serenity and I can only find that place when time is on my side.

These pieces have been hanging on my work wall 90 % done for almost two years. It is a sad state of affairs to go to the studio over and over again not able to finish something that burst from my head with such force that it made me crazy. The beginning is always so pleasurable and then the finish comes so slow that the pleasure is forgotten.

Impromptu

Saturday morning is Izzy’s morning. We go for breakfast and then to ballet and then to the library. This past weekend the library was having an Arbour day poetry reading. Books with poetry related to trees and the forest were laid out for anyone who wanted to read. Well an open stage is hard for me to resist so I read first. It was a pleasure to read stories about the forest and the trees. It seems we never talk about them anymore unless we are discussing global warming, rampant deforestation to make room for McDonald’s cows and the like. Reading a poem about a quiet walk through the woods is a beautiful thing and I hope it is something Izzy will be able to do when she is my age.

Art lasts longer than your Hummer.

Art is everywhere.

Art is everywhere, it is true, but art in the way we normally think about it is not everywhere. That is because we have been trained to believe that art is only to be seen in formal locals. Bullshit! Art should be all around us and not just the art that is in advertising or in the beautiful design of a door handle or an article of clothing. In this shot one of the parasite prints has taken the place of an ad on the Berlin subway. When I was teaching at Pratt a student who had lived in East Berlin decided that she wanted to take art work and place it in the Berlin subway. She asked people for work and came back with pictures of where the work had ended up. It was a real interesting project that encouraged a lot of other students to think about how the boundaries, that are set for art, can be viewed.

Make art and make it be seen. Art is changing our world!!

sporozoan cavities - Intaglio prints

sporozoan cavities is a suite of Intaglio 15 prints, which are 18×24 and printed on 22×30 Rives BFK Tan. All of these prints revolve around the origin and evolution of the sporozoan image as the primary object in all my work. The sporozoan is derived from the chest cavity of the human form, which is my favorite thing to draw in figure classes. I visualized the form underneath and slowly modified it until I discovered the sporozoan. sporozoan cavities shows the sporozoan in many states of being and is drawn in a way to show its anatomy and its exterior features. The suite has been printed in black and white and in a la poupee, editions of 25 of each print are to be printed. I have yet to finish the suite due primarily to its size, when all prints are made there will be 800 of them. My obsession with the sporozoan is growing exponentially as it has quickly been taking over all of my imagery.

Art is not truly art until it is viewed.

I have always believed that painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture and all other forms of visual art were forms of communication. With that being true they all must have a viewer, hopefully multiple viewers, in order to be called art. Until they are viewed and digested by people they are just things without a purpose. Here is the interesting part of the equation I make art for me, to tell a story that I want to tell. I can only hope that when it is viewed it is savored and the viewer leaves feeling. Art can and should create feelings in viewers, it should make them excited in a way that makes them want to come back to see and feel more. This is one of the reasons why I started making objects that were interactive. By combining body and art I add a theatrical aspect to my work that demands attention. By making art that requires a viewer to interact with it in order to fully understand it I go out on a limb. Art is not suppose to be touched. It is suppose to be hanging on a wall or sitting in the middle of a room with red velvet rope around it. In “The sporozoan’s shrine to the mapping of the parasite.” I ask viewers to not only walk around and into the shrine but to open the box and remove its innards. It is not an easy thing for viewers to do, to get beyond what they have learned from years of art viewing - “DON’T TOUCH”. Because much of the work that I make is made with paper and delicate materials damage is inevitable and fixing these damages adds to the history of the objects. The objects change and evolve from one performance and showing to the next.

Art never ends.

What will you do for your art?

Making art should be the first thing that comes to our minds when we wake up. I know the baby is crying, gotta get to work, it is true we are all busy. But that is all the more reason to continually make art. It is the thing that makes us who we are and it requires a certain amount of sacrifice. And I am not suggesting neglecting the kids or forgetting to go to work. I am suggesting making the time required to make our art finding ways to make art a part of our daily lives. It doesn’t always work but I try to go to the studio for at least ten hours a week, I spend four to six hours a week in the ballet studio and then whatever it takes to maintain this blog and my other online outlets. Granted it is not easy and I do not know if all the work will pay off in a way other than just for my own edification. All I know is that I have no regrets about anything I have done in my life but if I do not follow this calling I will look back, in 30 years, and hate myself. I also know I can’t stop. I have to make art. I have to communicate.

Art is the purity that makes us who we are.

A little history.

I have been drawing for a long time. I was skipping class junior year in high school and Mr. Palmer, the junior high art teacher, told me that if I was going to be using his classroom to skip class I’d better be doing something. He gave me a drawing board with a sheet of good drawing paper and a pencil. He set me down in front of a still life that contained a wicker basket, wine glass and an antique hand mirror. He told me to make a drawing. 30 minutes later he came over and took the paper away from me gave me a new sheet and told me to come back tomorrow and try again. The next day he did the same thing to me but on my third piece of paper he came over and didn’t say anything or take the paper away. I skipped class a few more times until Mr. Palmer spoke to someone and then I was a regular in his art room.

I called the drawing “Life in a basket” Mr. Palmer loved the drawing and as soon as I was done he put me in front of another still life only this time with a rapidograph pen. This still life had an old lantern and some cruddy wood in it. I did a stippling technique on the lantern and cross hatching on the wood. Both of these drawings were super hot for still life pieces and made me realize that I wanted to make art forever. I thought then that art could change the world and I do now. Mr Palmer said it over and over again we can make the world a better place through art. He would be the first of a string of teachers who would influence me on my way to becoming the artist and person I am today.

Education can change the world.

I made a perimeter.

Red tape, red dots, red rope: the things the system are made of. Who’s system is it. When I lived in Seattle I was a member of a coop gallery called Oculus. There were six of us. We had a consensus system as to decisions and showing. We showed a limited schedule but were always open on the nights of art walks. Commercial galleries always get more traffic and respect than coop’s and other venues. I am not sure why. Who says that one person is more capable or qualified to decide what art should be shown and what shouldn’t? Is it that one person is more educated? more experienced? more…? The truth is that the people running the galleries are probably no more experienced, educated on art than most of the people who are sending work to them. What separates us is money and happenstance. One individual chooses to be an artist one chooses to be an art connoisseur/dealer. It takes a lot of money to run a gallery. And because of that the dealers and art galleries need to keep the power in their court.

We can, like many other artistic fields can break from the gallery strangle hold on how and what art is seen. Like musicians on myspace we can use the internet to our advantage to connect with former admirers of our work and to make new ones. Places like personal blogs, flickr and etsy allow us to show our work to a huge variety of individuals and to sell our work in a place designed for artists. All we have to do is take the initiative to work for ourselves. It isn’t easy, requiring a huge amount of time in writing and documenting work. At the end of the day one of the last things I want to do is write descriptions for photos, or load them to my etsy page or write a post. We are all tired but if we wish to stop working for someone else, in such a direct way, then we have to do it.

Art is a cruel bastard that will suck the life out of you while giving you inspiration to breath again.