Melting

Constellation Overlap (August)

August was hard.

Fear and Making

Adrienne Callander

Back

Adrienne posted a recent conversation about our fears and dreams of making art 

on her blog, Weathered Heights.

HEIR today, gone tomorrow

William Hundley

Big Mask/Landlord

Kristy Perez

Somewhere Along the Way

Paco Castro

Secuela de Coincidencias Prismáticas

Piecing together and falling apart are common threads that run through the works in HEIR today, gone tomorrow, currently on view at the Mexican American Cultural Center.  Curated by the collaborative team, Los Outsiders, it brings together a group of artists who explore ideas of inheritance and the intricacies of human relationships.  

Many of the figures, or implied figures, in the show, inhabit masks in ways that are both foreboding and surprisingly gentle.  More than a few of the masks are constructed from fractured planes and opportunely quote both ancient civilizations and contemporary Mexican pop culture.  Since the early days of Modern art, masks and fractured space have often played leading roles.  The artists in this show offer fresh interpretations of the desire to play hide and seek with identity while holding tight on shifting ground.

Abstract Painting Covers a Rural Landscape

Iowa Star

Taking back country roads from the Omaha airport to my hometown this past week, I was charmed by the presence of large geometric abstract paintings peppering the landscape.  Brightly announcing their respective farms among the rolling hills of corn and soybeans, these big blocks of hard edge color are not easy to miss.  Several can be found in town as well, hung on garages.  My mom tells me it is a recent project of local 4-H clubs, and that it is part of a greater movement of painted barn quilt squares across the Midwest.  Apparently, the early painters of this style were a couple hundred years ahead of Mondrian, Malevich and Taeuber-Arp!

Double Aster

Card Trick

Pinwheel Star

Mounds of Robert Smithsonesque gravel in the foreground.

Double Wedding Ring

another Double Wedding Ring

Ohio Star or Scrap Star

Spinning Color Wheel or Twisted Star

This painting hangs on the hog barn of my godparents' farm on Highway 44 west of Harlan a few miles.  Their son and his family now live there and work the farm.  The quilt square was painted by Megan Fahn.  The pigs sure had a lot to say while I was documenting!

Carpenter's Wheel

Whirling Star

Crossed Canoes

A painting that didn't survive the winter leans against a shed, warped, yet still striking.  

Minor Mishap Marching Band @ Barton Springs!

Crash, boom, bam!

Cooling fans soaking it up.

The Minor Mishap Marching Band performed their raucous tunes at Barton Springs free swim last night, with lots of boogie down in bathing suits going on.  Songs jumped back and forth between sexy, swaying rhythms and something that may only be described as crazy fast.  Punk, polka, brass, jazz, circus, and classic marching band sounds all came crashing down together on a joyous and wet crowd.  One hour of free music and swimming in the chilly waters of the springs on a night when the temperature stubbornly resisted falling below 100 still at 9 o’clock in the evening?  Can’t beat it.  It was the only thing that got me outside for more than three minutes yesterday.

What the flock?

Purple Martins!

Frighteningly Hitchcockian, yet quite beautiful.

I want to draw constellations for them.

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.

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?

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!

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