Awesome Old Giant Wallpaper Book Fun!

"The Orphan and the Alcoholic"

Here are  few close-up and detail shots of one of the larger, new mixed-media pieces that I recently completed, and installed for my latest opening last night at the McColl Center. This piece, like "The Important Woman" (described in an earlier blog entry), pushes the relationship between the heads depicted in my drawings and the actual found objects that are now projecting forward from the drawings on small integrated shelves.

With my latest pieces, the shelves are getting much wider and broader and can accommodate bulkier objects. I am experimenting with scale and composition in the drawings, to see how the heads play against these larger, more present three dimensional elements. 

Another opening, another show!

So last night was another great opening at the McColl Center. I met a lot of interesting new people and got a lot of interesting, supportive (and refreshingly honest!) feedback on my current work, and on the state of the arts in general. Seeing as how we are now rounding out the month of September, the fall school session is in full swing and students from area colleges filled out the crowd with a nice buzz of energy and enthusiasm. Several of my current students from CPCC showed up as well, so here's a shout-out to all my Drawing and Art Appreciation people at Central Piedmont.

Here are some images of my latest arrangement of the studio space for the event. I am displaying a variety of older work and quite a few pieces that were started and completed while here in Charlotte, as well as a new large work in progress.

"The Important Woman"

Good news from the studio: As we exit the month of August and the remains of summer 2013 fade away, I am finally finishing some new, large, mixed media drawings! This piece is one of several that I can finally move to the "completely done, never touching this again!" drawer in the studio flat file.

As with much of the new work happening in my studio these days, "The Important Woman" focuses on the relationship between a specific human head (based on one of the many marble and bronze portrait busts I have photographed over the years) and a specific found object (in this case, the wood chalice sitting on the small shelf at the bottom of the composition.)

My goal is to have five or six new large, mixed media pieces completed by the end of October. Ah well, that's what fall is about after all, setting rather unrealistic goals...

Final thoughts from Arrowmont

Just one final note from Arrowmont... Here is a picture of the class holding those great ceramic heads I was drawing. (Except, of course for Debbie, that's her real head...)

Also, I had intended to venture out into beautiful downtown Gatlinburg and make some sketches for the blog of this very unique mountain town, but it was quite a busy workshop and I never got the chance. So here is a photo of some awesome rhinestone cowboy boots on display in one of the shops along the main street. I think this image says all you really need to know about wonderful wacky Gatlinburg.

"Large Drawings: Image and Text", some final student work

Here are some photos taken on the last day of our Arrowmont workshop. Most of this work isn't completely finished, but is certainly well along the way, and was all done, start to finish, in just five days of studio time. I think all of the students on the class did an amazing job, testing the boundaries of what big, mixed media drawings can be, and how important it is as an artist to break out of your comfort zone and take creative risks. Each artists name is listed above their photo.

Natalie Strum

Debra Kern

Rowena MacLeod

Karin Huettemann

Debbie Rule

Ian Ballantyne