Open studio: Instances of resistance

This photo montage is another piece in the Instances of Resistance series where I search out and photograph feral plant life growing among human construction / ruins.

I've used some of the same digital photos as the smaller pieces on paper below. The difference is that the photos in the large piece are printed on fabric, montaged onto a raw canvas and over-stitched using the sewing machine.

Instance of Resistance #10: Feral greenery in the underground city
digital photos on fabric over-stitched onto canvas
3' x 4'

Here's a detail of some of the stitching:



Below are a couple of the ones I printed onto Bristol Board then drew over with a soft-lead pencil.

I chose drawing as the medium because I wanted to put my own hand into the photos and make a connection between the role of subjectivity in my art practice and the un-tameable, rogue plant-life. I also thought that drawing would be the best way to animate the plants with playful and caricature-like personas.

I enjoy how these pieces invoke nostalgia (a theme in my work) with their simultaneously shadowy presence and candy-like preciousness.

Instance graffiti #4: 11 feral plants, 8 twigs and 1 cross-beam in brick ruin
digital print and pencil
2008
8" x 10"

Instance graffiti #1: 12 feral plants among others in brick ruin
digital print and pencil
2008
8" x 10"

Sale! studio materials and equipment

I haven't posted in a while because I've been both out of town and working on clearing out home and studio for our upcoming move. I do have some new work as well, but don't have the photos back from the photo shoot yet. Hope to post those soon.

For the last couple of weeks, I've been selling some of the sorted items and studio furniture and plan to sort out more items for First Friday, which is next week. So far, I have for sale:

Consew industrial sewing machine with table
vintage and other fabrics
miter box, saw and other framing tools
35 mm cameras, Pentax and Cannon
Bell and Howell 16mm film camera
slide projector
opaque projector
art tackle boxes
storage boxes and containers
small frames
vintage tables

... and lots more that I can't remember right now. Will update if I think of anything significant.

March First Friday: Meditations on patchwork, collage and the grid

First Friday has come and gone without much event, which is not to say that the evening wasn't busy or that we didn't have lots of visitors.

In the midst of other projects, I've been working on some hand-made paper collages that I call Meditations (one was hanging for First Friday). I don't have any photos to post yet because the work is being professionally mounted for re-framing (and as prep for a decent photo). The Meditations are grids of inch squares of handmade paper layered on a painted ground. They're a bit like paper quilts but with a mixture of wax and other paint media.

The process and ideas are extensions from the aerials made from paper / cloth covered panels and the stitched aerials. The difference is a more structured and limited format (the grid). But all of these modes are still about the construction of a surface built from a body of coalesced materials that are molded together (almost sculpturally). There's lots of polishing and finishing that draws from ideas in painting though the processes are very different than most painting or drawing in that mark-making, the hand and image are less relevant than the surface and the object itself.

Working with similar ideas, though polishing the surface through photography, Gwenn Thomas arranges fabrics into patchwork patterns and then uses photography as her finishing tool. Here is an untitled piece where the depth of the fabrics and the shadows they cast contrast in relief to the flattening medium of photography. As such, the arrangements become representations of an object that never was constructed.

February First Friday and attachments to place

This weekend was First Friday and though we didn't have much in the way of new exhibits, I did get a chance to talk to Amanda Sparks, one of the artists in the Crave exhibit, which opened last month at UT's Downtown Gallery. I wrote about Amanda's exquisite pop-up book in the January First Friday post in which I lamented not being able to meet and talk to her about the work. But as the calendar fell, we were fortunate enough to have the show run through two First Fridays and I spoke with her about the piece, which is unlike anything I've ever seen. Here's an image from one of the pages.

Amanda told me that she learned "on the job" how to build each page by studying children's pop-up books and adapting those construction methods to her more complex and multi-faceted designs. Many of her pages included composites of (I'm guessing here) 50 or more images montaged together. It was quite the thing of beauty and delight and eloquently articulated a version of childhood in which place and possessive attachment took precedent.

And by intuitive association I'd like to add (for personal reasons which have to do with detachment from place) a link to Roni Horn's Library of Water in which the artist thoughtfully considers the geography, climate and culture of Iceland.

First Friday of 2008

First Friday was a bit too close to New Year’s Eve, I think. People were probably too partied out to show up in frigid weather for yet another event. Though what we didn’t have in quantity, was certainly made up for in quality.

Met some interesting and thoughtful people (mostly out-of-town visitors or the newly relocated) and had some engaging conversations. ‘Delight’ best describes what I felt that evening… both toward the people we met, but also upon discovery of a few remarkable pieces of art.

First, the exhibition at the UT Downtown Gallery is exceptional. The show, Crave, includes 6 artists (whose obsessive processes include some form of collage) and is curated by Matthew Garrison of PA. The curator and one of the artists, Joel Carreiro of NY, were present for the opening.

Joel, who teaches at Hunter College, constructs grid-like montages (many in concentric configurations) on large-scale wood panels. His process is quite remarkable in that he builds his pieces from medieval and baroque art imagery printed onto transfer paper and ironed directly onto the panels.

Of remarkable note is Amanda Sparks exquisite autobiographical pop-up book entitled Half a World Away, in which she reprinted and transformed childhood photos and other photographic images to create an idyllic and nostalgic fantasy world of what suburban life was or could have been. Hopefully, Amanda will be present at the February First Friday, as the show will continue through the first of next month.

And then upstairs from us at 3 Flights Up, are the delightful little snow globes of Robmat Butler in which he creates little suburban vignettes from train shop miniatures… things like dogs on diving boards under clear water with bits of snow or parked cars with rust-tinged water that looks like a the worst L.A. haze on the worst day.

My Necktie Ballgown got another try from one of our visitors. Forgive the blurry pictures; they were taken on my cellphone in dim light.

Here is the very lovely Jo-Jo. David is to her left.

And here are Daniel, David and Jo-Jo.

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.

November First Friday

Last Friday was First Friday. Busy. I spent much of it working on the string quilt commission that shipped out early this week. I also spent some time at A-1 LabArts where one of my videos was showing. I won't write more now as I have a busy weekend ahead and another deadline on Monday.

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.

September First Friday

Last night was First Friday. I didn’t have much work up this month because I spent a lot of time on a commissioned fiber piece last week and, before that, re-stitching and stretching a canvas for another exhibit.

Since the commissioned work-in-progress was hanging on the corkboards in my studio, it got a lot of attention. People were very curious about all the fabrics and the possible history behind them. The best way to describe this piece, which is so unlike most of my work, would probably be: part Mondrian abstract and part Gee’s Bend string quilt. Out of respect for the client, I won’t show an image of the work at this point in construction.

Below is a pic of another stitched drawing. This map-like drawing is a detail of the new back of this aerial, Los Angeles Aerial #3: Psychogeography of the Crazy Quilt. Because the aerial was so heavy (layers and layers of canvas, fabrics, threads and yarns) I wasn’t really happy with the rod pocket for hanging, so I attached it to yet another piece of canvas and stretched it onto a canvas frame.

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.

May First Friday and Shibori

May First Friday was a few days ago. The evening was pretty mellow with less of a turnout than usual, as we had expected it would be… partly due to rainy weather and other events in the city this weekend. I was exhausted from a long month of over-working and didn’t get around to see much of the art in the other galleries, but we had a great evening and talked to some interesting people nonetheless.

Since I set up my first studio in 1990, I’ve maintained a functional line to my practice where I make affordable, custom pieces (mostly clothing) available to a broader audience. I don’t do that much clothing anymore, unless it’s a custom piece, but I am beginning to make fabrics for the home. Right now, I’m using Shibori techniques to bleach dark fabrics – indigos, blacks, reds and greens.

On First Friday, I showed some of the new Shibori pieces (mostly floor-length curtain panel pairs that mirror one another) to a great response from our studio visitors. Unfortunately, I haven’t photographed any of that work yet. Once I get things photographed and a few other things completed, I plan to set up a small on-line shop where I’ll be selling functional items made of Shibori fabrics. I’m really proud of these beautiful pieces and am eager to get them out there. Pictures to follow soon.

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.

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.

February First Friday and fiber aerial in progress

Last night was the First Friday art walk. The weather was cold and lousy, but lots of people showed up nonetheless. Met some great new folks and visited with old friends.

I’m still working on the big fiber aerial from last month and an aerial painting I started back in L.A. I also showed a new piece that uses the free-weaving process I’m inventing and hopefully perfecting.

Here’s the fiber aerial:
Los Angeles Aerial #3: Psychogeography of the crazy quilt (in the fashion of Jackson Pollock)

The 3' x 4' piece is a collage of vintage fabrics, men's neckties and painted / dyed fabrics, machine and hand stitching.

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

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: