Purse Show Opening

Tonight is the opening for the Purse and Handbag show at Hanson Gallery... from 4 to 7 pm, I believe.

Also, Kevin Cowan of the Knoxville News Sentinel wrote an article about the show, the work and the artists. Here's an abbreviated version of the article online.

Embedded in Kevin's article is a video of Judi Gaston, friend and fellow fiber artist from the Emporium Building Studios on Gay St. in Knoxville. She's talking about her Recyclable series of clothing to which the purses belong. I especially like the bit where she's describing the rustling that the skirt of plastic bags makes as you walk about "leaving a trail of fun behind you."

The stomping grounds / Knoxville in the NY Times

A fellow artist friend who also recently left the area just emailed this link:

music, art, food, green

The article definitely focuses on some of the better aspects of Knoxville.

December First Friday (and Saturday)

Luckily, I recovered from the flu in time to attend First Friday. December is not the month where the Emporium Building events are so much about art as they are about the holiday celebrations and shopping. Nonetheless, we still had quite a few visitors in our studios interested in seeing and talking about art on both Friday and today.

At one point in the evening on Friday, we had no fewer than a half-dozen elves (from the parade on Gay Street, I’m assuming) gathered in our studio. Was quite the surreal moment for us and our other visitors.

And today, I had some interesting conversations with new visitors. Of particular note was Sandra Van Winkle whom I so enjoyed talking to. That’s the great thing about a public space like this, you never know who you might meet or the amazing conversations that might be sparked.

Quilt Coincidences

I went to my first meeting of the Smoky Mountain Quilters this weekend. ...lots of talented quilters... and a few odd coincidences.

The first coincidence was that I was invited to the meeting by one of the quiltwriters for this beautiful book on Gee's Bend Quilts right after I'd been studying it for a client who wanted me to create a similar (though still very different) string quilt from family clothing.

The second bit of coincidence was that the studio space beside me was almost rented a few days later by another artist who won an award for this piece in the last SMQ's show. This sheer quilt was a part of a recent exhibit at Ewing Gallery on the UT, Knoxville campus.

And third coincidence is that the Smoky Mountain Quilters were the group that sponsored the fiber award I received a few weeks ago at the Oak Ridge Open Show. The award was decided by the juror (and not SMQ) and was for this piece:

Los Angeles Aerial #3: Psychogeography of the crazy quilt (in the fashion of Jackson Pollock)

Not the best pic. As soon as the work comes down in early November, I'll have the piece professionally photographed.

October First Friday

I spent a lot of time this First Friday going around to other galleries and watching a show at the new Black Box for Carpetbag Theater, which just opened across from our studio space. Sorry to those visitors I missed this month. Hope to see you next First Friday.

August First Friday: Shoebox Sculpture, Aaron McIntosh and the new studio orientation

We had another excellent First Friday last week with the chance to talk to several people we hadn’t seen in a while and the opportunity to meet more cool new folks. I only looked into a couple of other galleries by recommendation from some of my visitors who referred me next door to the Shoebox Sculpture exhibit at UT’s Downtown Gallery and across the way to see the excellent work of Aaron McIntosh at 1010.

I didn’t have much time or room (the gallery was pretty crowded) to spend with the Shoebox Sculptures at the Downtown Gallery, so I’ll have to go back over the next few days. One of the sculptures really leapt out at me though: Brooklyn artist John Drury’s Shoe Nut… a lovely little piece constructed from the tips of two wingtip shoes.

Continuing with the men’s wear theme...

Across the way at 1010, fiber artist Aaron McIntosh was exhibiting some stitched target / breast-like imagery similar to this work where he’s mentioned in this issue of Fiberarts Magazine as a young talent to watch. Click on his name to see the work. He is definitely a rare and exceptional talent.

I was most taken with an image on one of Aaron’s cards from a previous show. The quilted piece is titled Family Tree 1 and is constructed from men’s pants fabrics, romance novel pages, cotton batting and thread stitching. I couldn’t find a link to the completed piece, but here’s a picture of the artist working on it. You can get a good sense of how the whole thing looks with these paired and singular egg-like textual parts peeking through (with what looks like reverse appliqué) from the somber grey, taupe, black, etc. of men’s woolens.

For more of Aaron McIntosh’s work scroll down to his name and click on images.

Back across the street at my open studio... here’s a pic of the new set-up since I’ve rotated into my new space:
Barely got this pulled together before First Friday. I’m still not completely moved in. The flowers to the right were a gift from fiber artist Judi Gaston in celebration of the new space. Judi wasn’t able to be at First Friday because she was opening another exhibit at Aerial Gallery in Asheville.

July First Friday

First Friday was a couple of days ago and was one of the most enjoyable. I always have fun, but this one in particular was exceptional. Met a lot of cool people and had some great conversations. Thanks to everyone who stopped by.

Unfortunately, I was so busy socializing that I didn’t get time to move around the galleries, look at all the art and talk to the artists. Hopefully, I’ll be able to see some of that work later in the week.

June First Friday and meandering with neckties

This weekend was the First Friday art walk and the group show for the Arts and Culture Alliance. I finally finished the large fiber aerial and included it in the show. Here’s a photo:


Los Angeles Aerial #3: Psychogeography of the Crazy Quilt
mixed fibers and fabric on canvas, 3' x 4'

The photo isn’t the best quality because I haven’t had the final piece professionally photographed yet, but you can still see how it has changed from earlier. I’ve sharpened the edges and drawn lines with machine-couched dark yarns… and I’m very pleased with the results.

This piece is made up mostly of men's neckties that I wove into a thick fabric, hand-stitched together with other hand-dyed fabrics, cut into squares, reconstructed into a grid, stitched to canvas and drew over with machine stitching. I invested months of meandering, free-associative stitching into this painting / crazy quilt. Both the long process and the final form reflect my personal response to the flows and restrictions of everyday life (which involves so much driving) in Los Angeles.

In another associate gesture, I pulled out the Necktie Ballgown (because it’s made of men’s ties as well) to do some repairs and exhibit it on the dressform in my studio. I’ve been replacing the few silk ties (which have begun to fray and rot as silk does) with more sturdy, thick polyester ties from the 1970s. I love these ties for all their patterns and brilliant colors, which give them a particularly peacock-y quality... and since I've taken this masculine trope and given it this feminized form, I find the 70s era ties even more appropriate to the project.

First Friday visitors loved seeing this fun piece, and one brave person even wanted to try it on and feel its weight as she strolled through the galleries both upstairs and down. Here’s a picture that Frank took on his cellphone of the beautiful Victoria Lenne wearing the Necktie Ballgown. Several people said that the piece came to life with her wearing it... apparently Freida the dressform just doesn’t do the dress justice. Thank you, Victoria, for your boldness and your delight in wearing the Necktie Ballgown.

Victoria Lenne is a painter. Here’s a website (she says is a bit out of date) where you can see some of her work.

March First Friday

The Emporium Building has been undergoing renovations for the past week and a half, which has made it difficult to work in my studio. So I’ve been working at home on some smaller (2’ x 2’) aerials – preparing and putting gesso on the panels and experimenting with water-soluble oil paints, which are low odor and can be mixed with water / acrylic medium.

I didn’t have any new finished work to show for First Friday, but did have lots of visitors who hadn’t seen the works in progress: painted aerials, fiber aerials, Fig Leaf Loincloth and my process notebook for the Wardrobe for Paradise series.

We had a huge turnout, despite the renovations, and as usual I met people I’d never seen before. It always amazes me how the different exhibits pull in different crowds. Who would have thought that there were so many people in and around Knoxville interested in art?

Work of notable mention in our vicinity was fiber artist Judi Gaston’s wearable art series, Recyclables, where she weaves discarded materials such as plastic bags, gift wrap, bubble wrap, old dress patterns, etc into garments and bags. As always, the quality of her work is exquisite. An image of one of the pieces will be on this page through the month of March.

Next door, the UT Downtown Gallery had a provocative installation, Shelter, by the Turkish born artist Tulu Bayar in collaboration with Chinese artist Xiaoze Xie. Bayer also had a video installation on exhibit entitled Confluence. Click on the links to see the images and read about the work.

Across the bridge, The Art Gallery of Knoxville has a show of Jered Sprecher's paintings and drawings. Here are some images of his work in 2005, via the Wendy Cooper Gallery website.

Downtown Fire

I was startled out of bed with an early morning phone call from a family member, "I don't mean to alarm you, but some historic buildings are on fire in downtown Knoxville and it looks like the building your studio is in could be one of them... and if not your building, then one very close by."

I had this instant moment of panic and then a horrible sinking feeling. My first formed thought was of Freida, my dressform... funny the things you want to save from a burning building.

I told Frank what was up, and we turned on the TV news and watched another of Knoxville's beautiful historic buildings being gutted by fire. So many buildings on the historic register are burned out or crumbling vacant.

The best we could make out from the TV was that the buildings on fire were on Jackson Ave, catty corner to my studio, which is on the corner of Jackson and Gay.

I had to leave by 9:30 for a museum tour, but went down to the studio after that – around 11:30. I had the crazy idea that I was going to work this afternoon, but big signs in huge letters had been posted on all the doors: Artists please go home! We are concerned that asbestos toxins are in the air.

I didn’t go in the building, but stayed in the area for about 30 minutes to take the pictures below. The fire was already under control (just smoldering) and the streets had been reopened. I was able to confirm that the damage was limited to the group of abandoned buildings I'd seen on TV. Scary thing was that cinders had flown off the fire and landed on the rooftop of the building directly across the street from us, but fortunately they were able to put that fire out before it ever got started.

I also saw cinders lining our building on the Jackson Ave side.
here's a view of the damage looking out from in front of our building... the building in the left edge of the picture is the one that had fiery cinders land on its roof

here's some debris on Gay St just across the street from our building

looking down on what's left from the Gay St bridge

our building, safe and secure

the buildings across the street, safe as well

First Friday of the New Year

I’ve been feeling a bit low-energy lately, which kind of put a damper on my usual First Friday over-planning, over-prepping and over-working. And oddly, that turned out to be a good thing.

All I did to prep was buy the usual wine and snacks and show up 30 minutes before the event started. I didn't even hang any new work. The only piece that was on the wall was a 3’ x 4’ aerial grid that was pinned to my corkboards. I've been working on this fiber piece, in some form, for years. This thing has been constructed, deconstructed, reconstructed and recombined with other so many other pieces. It's kind of unbelievable the amount of history and labor in this piece, which shows... layers of neckties, dyed and painted fabrics, hand and machine-stitching, over-stitching, etc.

I was surprised to see how many people were blown-away by this piece. They wanted to know how it was done, where it was going, what it was, how I came up with the process...

One woman holding a toddler asked him, "Is this painted or sewn?"

"sewn"

"Did this take a little time or a lot of time?"

"laaadaaaa"

Here I was feeling a bit underachieving for not having any new work up, but exhausted enough not to be too bothered. So… I'm feeling really low-key, and everyone is coming in and getting really excited about this work, and they're leaving and collecting more people and dragging them into my studio because, "You just have to see this."

The conversations ranged from a geographer talking about mapping to a girl from Appalachia who moved to Los Angeles talking about her difficulties adjusting. She said things I'd said myself so many times about not being able to find her grounding through the concrete or solace without more than little glimpses of sky. Like us, she used to get away to Malibu so she could stand in the Santa Monica Mountains and look out over the ocean and experience expanse and the soothing vision of the horizon line.

So often, Frank and I tell ourselves that if we'd had more opportunities to get out of the city, we could have been content in L.A. But as it was, we just felt trapped and surrounded – which is what this particular aerial is about: complete immersion in a place the size of the entire country of Ireland and the density of... well, Los Angeles.

Woven Glass and my absence in December's First Friday

On Friday and Saturday, the Emporium Building, where my studio is located, hosted an event for local artists and artisans to sell their wares. I didn’t make it for Friday’s Events, which was reported to be lovely with members of the Symphony Orchestra playing in the wings.

However, I did make it on Saturday and saw some remarkable fused glass by Paula Mealka. Paula takes pieces of glass, heats them in a kiln and then manipulates the molten glass with long tools she specially designed for this process.

check out this vessel woven from tiny glass rods

and another of her more brilliantly colored and typically massive pieces

Utopian Projects

This busy week has just flown by. And before things get away from me, I should make some notes about how certain local ideas are developing.

I'm still in the planning stages of curating a show about the psychogeography of this place. It's important to me that the work included not just be some sort of illustration of Situationist theories, but nuanced in such a way to include personal or public memory, etc. The work also needs to have been mediated through some sort of representational artifice. I know that sounds vague and wordy, but that's the best language I have for it right now as I imagine the project at this stage. The work and the artists will give the ideas shape, and my critical language will form around that. I don't want to limit the progress of the show by solidifying the criticism before the work has a chance to come into being. This is more of a conversation between my ideas and those of the artists, and as a conversation these things will unfold as conversations do – intuitively.

Related to the ideas, last Friday I attended a talk by Jack Neely at The Art Gallery of Knoxville – part of the CUP "Building Communities" exhibit. Neely’s talk, "The Knoxvilles that Never Were," was an interesting walk through the history of many of the failed utopian communities that were started in and around the area. Unfortunately, I didn't pick up a copy of Neely's article on the subject and don't have the factual info in front of me and can't find it on-line, so the details of what groups formed what communities and where they were located have escaped me. I do remember there was a German community that became what is now Wartburg and another area featuring a fountainhead with pure running water and clean living with no visible saloons that became Fountain City.

Alcohol has had an enormous impact on how the city of Knoxville has formed itself. So much of the shape of the city was and continues to be determined by alcohol driven commerce coming up against religiously fueled prohibition laws. If I understand correctly, Knox County is still a dry county as many counties are in this part of the Bible Belt.

The "Splatted Spider" shape of the city shown halfway down in Neely's Metro Pulse article shows that impact. I'm really drawn to this graphic cutout; as a representation, it says what needs to be said very eloquently, I think.

So Neely's slant on nostalgia was an interesting one and I enjoyed the talk. I am ever fascinated by the idea of failed utopias, and just basic over-reaching and falling short... something of a truth of the times and the place, I suppose.

November First Friday

This weekend was First Friday, and though we had fewer than the 1000 visitors of last month, the many who did turn out seemed more directly engaged with the art. In our building, we had a show downstairs of the remarkably prolific Ryan Blair. And a group show upstairs in the Three Flights Up Gallery.

Of particular notice from the group show, was Chase Adams, a young artist who's appropriating and modifying Thomas Kincaid puzzles to create "apocalyptic landscapes" with "phantom monuments and dead-end wormholes." I hope to have some images of his work that I can link to and talk about soon.

Also, of note, was the work of Liz Nixon, whom I know as the manager of Reruns, that great little shop on Market Square Mall (where I consign most of my clothing). Liz is another Knoxville by way of Los Angeles and back to Knoxville transplant. She was exhibiting mostly photos of some of the work she did while in the video production department of Shanghai University. Her brightly colored photos were evocative of film stills and were taken mostly of street scenes as she wandered through Shanghai.

Of course, there were other art openings downtown that evening that unfortunately I wasn't able to attend because of my own open studio. I do plan to take in the shows this week when the galleries reopen. Tomorrow, I look forward to seeing the new show from the Center for Urban Pedagogy exploring our local urban design and development at The Art Gallery of Knoxville.

I've been very fortunate to find that much of the work and many of the ideas buzzing around the city right now are resonating with my own interests and ideas about human interactions with place and environment. I look forward to my adventures through the city this week.

New Studio and October First Friday

On Monday October 2, I moved my studio to the beautiful Emporium Building downtown that houses the Arts and Culture Alliance and their galleries. It's an exquisite space in a refurbished old building with lots of brick and hardwood. I'm so happy to be in such a location with so many other artists and part of such a great community.

On the first Friday of every month, the Emporium Building is the central host to the city's First Friday art events, the big opening night for all the galleries that spills out into the streets. Hundreds of people come to these events, and on October 6th there were over 1000 guests – pretty amazing for a small university town like Knoxville, TN.

During the opening, I met lots of great people. Of particular note is one of my fellow artists with a studio in the same building, David Habercom. The work he had up for the event was from the series Under The Bridge – really important work in a place like Knoxville at this time. His work and our conversation about the ideas behind it resonated with my own work and thoughts I have about nostalgia and the difficulty of presence in any one place.

So, I moved in on Monday and by Friday was experiencing my first open studio in the new location. I showed a couple of works in progress from the series, Tourism and Tragedy or How I learned to love where I am, and a related video I made while I was still living in Los Angeles, titled L.A. Trees #1: Palm and Sunset (paradise/apocalypse) and an artist's statement about the series. For an open studio exhibit in a space I'd only had possession of for a few days... it was enough.

Here are a couple of poorly lit pictures of my space that I took today: