I have been spending a lot of time recently working on putting together grant proposals. They aren’t easy. I am not one to second guess myself but when you are asking a foundation or organization for a grant of 25 thousand dollars it is hard not to question every thing you write. I well know that the most important thing for an artist and their grant proposal are the images they present, that said I am struggling so much with my cover letter it is unreal. I have rewritten it so many times and almost sent it out a couple times. It is ridiculous because I am typically not like this. I usually dive in and make it work. But writing a proposal is not like making artwork I can’t continually work on it. I can’t erase everything and start from a veiled shell on a new piece. Once I drop the proposal in the mail I am at the mercy of a group of jurors deciding if they should give me a huge chunk of money to make art with: it is purely daunting.
OK now to finish it.
It is a great story. My friend John Petzinger emailed me to say he saw an ad on craigslist looking for artists. I replied to the ad and heard back, almost immediately, from Sense Nail Spa in the Washington State Convention Center in downtown Seattle. The salon had looked at images of work from Sweetie Boutique and B of A and asked if I would like to show some work in their space and of course I said yes. This happened so fast from the time John sent me the ad to the time I was showing them my work was only about 24 hours. I took in a couple Swarm Containers. When I got there Robert, the manager asked me if I could do an installation on their main wall behind the front desk. He told me there was a neurological conference arriving the next day and that over the next week about 10,000 neurological professionals from around the world would be coming through and hoped I could install it the next day: Friday.
Zanne was in China. I frantically inquired with Izzy’s main play date friends and all of them came back and said “sorry…..” It was too short notice. I called John. “Hey remember that ad you sent me…” It turned out John came to help me on Friday and Izzy went to run errands with his wife. Thank you so much you two. John took great shots of The Swarm going up and was a great help in prepping pieces for me. I ran out of steam just about the time the salon was closing and all parties involved decided I should finish on Saturday. Izzy would spend the afternoon with John and I would finish.
The Swarm wrapped its way through a corner and another and then around to the other side of the wall. It is not decorative, it does not blend in, it does command the space and grab attention both inside The Salon and through the glass windows. If you live in Seattle you should try to see one of the four installs that are currently up. They are all listed in this post.
Art can change your world.
My work space/dining table is now covered with Sporozoan Swarm Containers as I put about 10 of them together. As I am doing this I am once again reminded of how I thought my 175 square foot studio in the DUMBO section of Brooklyn was so small. I made great use of that space and was able to make about 10 or 15 drawings that were about 4 feet by six feet in size.
Here I am working off my table to make the building blocks of huge pieces and using the walls of banks and boutiques to create my larger work. It is an exciting and terrifying process as I watch the primary focus of my art shift from the making of large solitary objects to the creation of thousands of tiny pieces that ebb and flow finding temporary locales in which to exist.
It is in this excitement and fear that I am finding a passion I cannot ever remember having: one of almost giddy elation. This work has rejuvenated me, my work and the excitement of people with regards to my work. Making work to exist in public spaces for only a short period of time feeds into my idea of serendipitous experience producing memories with grand meaning.
Art can change your world just allow yourself to see it.
I love drawing with charcoal, pastels and pencil. The dusty quality of the two former mediums provide a perfect landscape for the finish of the pencil. They enhance and reject one another all at the same time.
Drawing is the beginning of everything for me. It allows me to work out, very quickly, ideas that would be far harder to realize in print or paint formats. It is also my medium of choice for drawing from models. And considering that models and the human form is where 90 percent of my ideas come from, me and the paper and drawing utensil standing before the twisted body of a nude is a match made in the Utopian place in my head.
Draw, draw, draw…
My first studio in the DUMBO section of Brooklyn was tiny, about 150 sq feet, but I made good use of it and miss it. I was in it for about a year and a half and I made a lot of work in that space. Sometimes the best work comes from the least likely spaces.
The dining room table is easily transformed into a packing station for The Swarm. I thought the map would change a lot after sending these five out but… Map.
I am going to look at a press today in the hopes of being able to print soon. It will feel good to get back on a press and smell the scent of ink.
Make art.
This print from the Sporozoan Cavities suite is done with an A la poupee technique. The plate was made through a series of etches that were reworked by hand. I am hoping to finish the suite some time this summer so that they are ready for my show at Twilight Art in October. It will be a great show and I want to have the suite done early enough so that I can make a suite container for everyone who is going to want to own one.
The belt sander with 50 grit paper was my first step after the wet saw. I worked my way down to 120 grit.
After the belt sander I used the router to round over the edge on both the top and bottom.
I used a random orbital sander with 180 and then 240 grit as the final step with power tools.
Terrence helped me a lot with prep work and moving of these heavy stones. In this shot Terrence is working on some surface detailing of the race way piece before we started on the hand sanding.
Hand sanding was the final step. I worked my way down to 600 grit. When all the sanding and polishing was done Terrence and I set the race way into an epoxy adhesive. The final step will be to seal the stone.
I do a lot of different things to make money. This is one of them. I am fabricating soapstone counter tops for a couple in western Mass. Soapstone is relatively soft as stone goes but cutting a round edge with a straight blade is never easy. And water and cold never mix too well unless you want to go ice skating. I think it got to about 30 today, I had to go inside four or five times to warm up my hands. Some soapstone you can cut with wood cutting tools in fact I used a jig saw to cut a small notch in this large slab. But for the curve I used my hand held wet saw. This slab has some veins in it that are very hard and made using my jig for this part virtually impossible. This slab is almost 29 inches wide, 10 feet wide and an inch and a quarter thick. It weighs somewhere in neighborhood of 800 pounds. After I finished with the wet saw I used a belt sander to smooth down the edges and then a router to ease the edges. Once that was done Terrence and I decided we would move it into the house and put it into place. 800 pounds is heavy!! We set up a series of joint compound buckets about every ten feet so that we could maneuver the stone into place. After picking it up and putting it down five times it was finally in it final destination. Tomorrow I finish off polishing it and bond it the cabinet it is resting on.
On very few occasions I feel like I am making art at my job.