July 29, 2011

What the flock?




Purple Martins!
Frighteningly Hitchcockian, yet quite beautiful.
I want to draw constellations for them.

July 28, 2011

dirty dirty


Hey, New York friends and readers who haven't already heard the word, go check out The Telephone Project at The Dirty Dirty this Saturday! The Dirty Dirty is a basement gallery in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn conceived and created by the tireless Martha Clippinger.  The lovely poster was designed by the amazing Sarah Granett (my art soulmate), as was The Dirty's website (love the spiral staircase!) AND she has a piece in the show.  So, while I party down at a high-numbered high school class reunion, you should be making plans to party downstairs.

July 27, 2011

Love Forever



Thirteen summers ago Mason and I went on our version of the epic American road trip.  Early June through early October, jumping off in Texas, out West, back East, Midwest, not least.  It didn’t even seem like a crazy idea to us, although it did to most of our friends and family.  We just felt it was something we had to do.  Damn, to be in your twenties!

I count it as a very important part of my art education, as we visited all the museums and galleries across the country that I had only read about or seen in magazines.  One of the shows we saw that summer that changed my life as an artist was Yayoi Kusama’s retrospective, Love Forever, at MOMA.  First time there.  Never heard of her.  I was forever hooked. 

Do you remember a show that changed your life?

July 19, 2011

New for Chain Letter!




Threeway

A new work I'm shipping off to LA today!  I was invited by my friend, Paul Gillis, to participate in a group exhibition at Shoshana Wayne Gallery entitled Chain Letter.  Sounds like it will be a very inclusive show (like nearly every artist in LA kind of inclusive) and steeped in admiration.  Wish I could be there to see it!

July 17, 2011

Answer July


Constellation Overlap (July)




  Answer July—
       Where is the Bee—
         Where is the Blush—
       Where is the Hay?

    Ah, said July—
        Where is the Seed—
       Where is the Bud—
       Where is the May—
     Answer Thee—Me—

       Nay—said the May—
       Show me the Snow—
        Show me the Bells—
      Show me the Jay!

       Quibbled the Jay—
         Where be the Maize—
        Where be the Haze—
       Where be the Bur?
         Here—said the Year—

                 Emily Dickinson

July 15, 2011

Susan Collis @ Lora Reynolds Gallery


I miss you and I missed you


Staying Power

Three works by Susan Collis in her current exhibition entitled So it goes at Lora Reynolds Gallery that I found particularly poetic, if not a little dry.  Like a lovely bottle of wine. 

When I first looked at I miss you and I missed you, I just glanced and walked by, not yet knowing their titles.  I thought they were both stacks of printed paper, one with an open square, the other a square filled in.  I thought maybe I could grab one of each on my way out and take them home to tack up on the wall for a home-viewing experience.  Or, perhaps tuck them in a book, only to wonder years later, while thumbing through, where they came from. 

On going back to the title list, I became instantly more drawn to these works for their intimate titles.  I miss you, a dense square of shimmering lines, quietly vibrates with the static of presence.  And, just a few inches away, the empty square of I missed you rests with the past tense of loss.  Two related states of being separated by time, just a few moments apart, or maybe years.

When I noticed the price of each of these pieces, I realized they were not for the taking, and to confirm this, asked the gallery attendants.  One of them noted that that they are not like a Felix Gonzalez-Torres, who is of course exactly who I was thinking of, and one of my true art loves.  I’m embarrassed to admit that at that moment the attendants pointed out the stacks of paper were not prints, but stacks of blank paper with thin pencil leads carefully arranged to create the squares on top of each stack.  Ahha!  Drawing becomes sculpture.  Paper becomes pedestal.  Two tricks I’m especially fond of.  And precariousness!  Perhaps my favorite trick of all.

Staying Power, a similar piece, but not quite as tricky, is the only other work in the show that is a stack of paper with material perched on top.  In this case, that material is a crumpled piece of silvery paper, existing somewhere between a rock and a mistake.  The paper has been lovingly coated in palladium leaf, a precious metal akin to platinum.  And with the deeper knowledge of this unusual material, a contradiction arises between the notion of a throw-away and forever.   

Because of my eleventh hour viewing habits, the show is almost down.  Just one day left!     

July 11, 2011

A blog I love: Weathered Heights


from Weathered Heights

A post about her personal art collection on my friend Adrienne Callander's blog is what inspired me to write about Michal's painting. Living with art is good for your health!

July 8, 2011

Reflection


Reflection of Michal Grapel's painting in stacks of photographs.


The most popular work of art in our collection!

I can’t think of anything I’d rather live with than works of art made by friends.  This painting by my dear friend, Michal, is both one of the ugliest and most beautiful things I live with.  It is often the first thing people notice and comment on in our home.  I have always thought of it as a portrait; a melting, visceral, emotional glimpse into an interior life.  It is fabulously psychedelic. 

When I took the photograph of the stacks of photographs, I didn’t immediately notice the reflection.  It emerged in the following moments, and I realized just how ubiquitous this painting is.  It is always in view in this room, whether I am looking directly at it or not.  It is ever pervasive in the periphery.  Even now with my back turned to it, I can sense its presence behind my left shoulder.

It is extremely heavy, built up with countless layers of latex paint.  We have moved it three times since Michal gave it to us, each time with great care and comical concern.  The first time it moved, from Baltimore to New Jersey, it was laid out precariously on top of heavy items in the truck, with its tongue hanging out and over an edge.  We worried that the tongue would break off!  It slept flat on our mattress for the first several days in the new house while we painted walls and unpacked.  Giving the painting prime sleeping quarters, while we camped out on the floor.  It was the only place it could safely rest until we were ready to hang it.
 
We had a special crate built for it for our move back to Austin.  (A crate that still takes up a big corner of my studio in case we need to move it again.)  Our first apartment back in Austin was a three-story walk up, and thankfully(!) we hired movers.  On its way down out of that place, it was second in categories of cussing and pain only behind the washer and dryer.  In our current house, it was the very first thing to be hung on the wall, before even one box of necessary, daily items was unpacked. 

I love our green walls, but I think the painting is made uglier with these walls as its ground.  Somehow, I don’t necessarily think that is a bad thing.  I remember it to be the standout in a group show at MICA in Baltimore, owning the space and practically singing with twisted color as it hung on the white wall.
 
I remember the day of the great slide, its unexpected making.  Michal had been painting similar, but much smaller pieces, often on oval or round canvases.  She would pour the paint, and when it was dry, or almost dry, she would rip into them.  Sometimes stitching them back together, like wounds that had been tended to with care.  She decided to try it again on a much larger scale, pouring as many incongruous colors as she could come up with.  She propped the painting up in her studio (a large cubicle next to my cubicle), thinking it was dry, and went home to New York for the weekend.  Sometime during the weekend one of our studiomates noticed it had slid down and spilled out onto the floor, reminiscent of early Lynda Benglis’ works.  The paint underneath the seemingly dry top layer of skin, was anything but dry.  We were both excited and horrified!  We called her to let her know what had happened, and in her totally chill way, she just laughed.

I have a history with this painting that I relish.  Michal wasn’t sure if it would hold together even for a short period of time, let alone for years.  So, I’m happy to report that it is as healthy and vibrant as the day it came into being.  

July 7, 2011

Across and Down


My mother-in-law's much loved dictionary.


She's got the whole world in her hands.

Years and years of patient searching for just the right words to populate Tisha’s daily horizontal and vertical puzzle boxes have transformed this book from an ordinary reference tool into a physically manipulated sculptural object. The striations of paper become shifting plates of earth as if new mountains are being formed.  The curling pages become waves as if on the surface of the sea, with a world of known and unknown, defined and undefined, creatures swimming below.  Over time her curious touch altered this book of meanings in a way that, in terms of objectness, gives it more meaning.