Linda Montano and Tehching Hsieh interview link

My influences have been—my grandmother, who took out her false teeth at most family gatherings and sang, "If I Had the Wings of an Angel"; my mother, who is a painter; Lily Tomlin; Marcel Duchamp; Eva Hesse, and St. Theresa of Avila.

Linda Montano

Quoted from this interview about her year long endurance project with Tehching Hsieh and a rope.

The Gallery and some earlier work

L.A. Mirage 01

L.A. Mirage 04

Above are a couple of images from a series I did in 2003. I just updated this page on my gallery blog with the series of 7 mirages and thought I'd copy a couple over to here because I like this series so much... and sometimes it's fun to visit older work (sometimes less so).

I printed these photos on different media from waxed paper to vellum to photo paper, but none to satisfactory results. I intend to print them on photo fabric and stitch them together where they join, but have yet to do that. Until then, here they are digitally, which is how they continue to exist... and maybe all they ever need to be.

I explain the work more on the gallery page.

April First Friday and Random Aerials

I showed 10 Aerials at this month's First Friday, including some newer paintings with the ones I've been working on over the past several months.

Random Aerial #1: Water, desert and ocean with no city
mixed-media on panel
48" x 56"

Above is one of the older pieces and below one of the newer (and possibly still in-progress) pieces. Both are part of the Random Aerial series. On the painting below, I didn't use any topographical media (fabric or paper) to sculpt and give dimension to the surface as I did with the top piece.

Random Aerial View #3: Pastoral Kaleidoscope
mixed-media on panel
24' x 24'

The Pastoral Kaleidoscope is an abstracted agrarian landscape that suggests dynamic motion though the patterning is flattened and the viewer's orientation to the picture plane is static / perpendicular.

Here's a side view of the gallery box construction:



I constructed all the boxes myself from oak... hand mitered the corners, secured the plywood panel and finished the wood with a natural stain and buffed wax. The panels themselves are finished with 6 coats of sanded and damp burnished gesso.

Decay Under a Bright Blue Sky

I had several pieces professionally photographed yesterday. Below is one of my favorites. It's a humble and poetic little piece (17" x 35") of which I'm very fond. It was part of the Perfect Fall series, and though it's a bit out of season I'm showing it now because I have the image. Will show more of the professionally photographed images later. But for now:

Decay under a bright blue sky / Homage to Fall, 2006

This piece is made with a process similar to some of the aerials. I've draped paper over wood panel and used pencil to make rubbings over the textured surface creating tree-like forms. The sky is painted with acrylic paint and offers a sinking, sliding contrast to the spiked and drying wood forms below.

Photography by David Habercom

I've added a link to this reference, Vincent Van Gough's Olive Grove: Bright Blue Sky