Friday, February 24, 2012

Report from Los Angeles

This week I am away from the studio and attending the College Art Association Conference in Los Angeles. Activities include catching up with old friends, enjoying overpriced but tasty Mexican food, and attending interesting panels on a variety of art related subjects. And I'm also getting more involved with the ever excellent group, Queer Caucus for Art (more on this later...)

As with all conferences though, I have managed a bit of time to sneak away and take in the local scenery. This included a wandering ramble through the skyscrapers of downtown LA, where I happened upon the Central Public Library. An imposing Art Deco facade conceals many wonders including a series of murals jumbling together important moments from California history and a giant globe-light chandelier. It also has a gift shop where I bought this little treasure, "Weird and Wonderful: Discoveries from the Mysterious World of Forgotten Children's Books." How have I lived for so long without this lovely volume at my side. Hours of enjoyment await...

Monday, February 13, 2012

Kay and Yves

This weekend I was in Charlotte, NC and had a chance to see the show "Double Solitaire: The Surreal Worlds of Kay Sage and Yves Tanguy", and what a lovely experience it was. I have always been drawn to the Surrealists, and these were two majors characters in the movement that I knew little about until I saw the show. Most of their canvases are devoted to invented space. It seemed to me the longer and deeper I looked, that the main subject of this work is not architectural features popping up in the foreground, but the non-landscapes (a quiet sense of absence) that stretches to the horizon.

for more info. go to the Mint Museum website:
http://www.mintmuseum.org/current-exhibition.html

Saturday, February 4, 2012

More work in progress...

Here's another new piece in progress I was working on in the studio this past week. This is along the same vein of the "Cherub" piece from previous blog posts, but a little farther along. At this point I am starting to layer in colored pencil and other dry drawing media over thin acrylic washes. As I work and record my progress on this new series, I'm trying to be much more intentional about "over-polishing"; I want to let some of the roughness and noise of the work process show through in the final piece.