I am SO fortunate to live in an area where so many talented artists reside, and which is rife with folks who appreciate and support the arts. I went to another opening reception for an art exhibit last night, featuring Charlie Fisher's work. Charlie is a founding member of Sculpture Space, an international sculpture residency space in Utica. These works are composed of cardboard (with some bound in wire). Beautiful group of works.
I had a nice time at the opening for the exhibit "Urban Landscapes" at RACC last night. It's a good show and I got to see some of my art world friends as well. It's interesting... I don't usually do what I would consider "urban landscape" style pieces. But if you follow this blog at all, you know that I created a piece specifically in response to the theme for this exhibit. I liked the way the piece turned out; and folks seem to be responding to the piece. I've gotten a number aof positive comments about it. Here are some photos from the event...
I have not been very active in creating collage over the past week or so. This is partly due to the fact that I am a little bit "stuck" with three on-going compositions -- not sure where I am going with the works. This sometimes serves as a disincentive to get into the studio. But this has happened before, and I know I'll get back into it soon -- I'm not going to make things worse by fretting over it. In the meantime, I have had some fun getting some weird images together to send to my good friend and fellow artist Tom Nettle. I do this perhaps 3 or 4 times a year. I have a box in the studio in which I put pages of weird images as I find them -- images that I find interesting, but that I don't have plans to use in my compositions. In a way though, perhaps these mailed collections of pages of images are "collage-like", without being integrated and glued down on a substrate. Here are some of the images that I included in this latest installment I sent to Tom...
I cut this baby head from a page of a vintage etching for a composition which is in-progress. I hadn't planned on using it for anything specifically (although it was too "nice" to simply discard). At one point, I placed it on another "scrap" piece...
I placed this combination on top of a thin piece of wood that I had coated. The wood was the backing of some vintage, framed art that I had gotten previously. That's when I decided to do some more experimenting. The piece finally came together in full. I still have to use a clean mat, but I will do that after I get the glass for the piece (unfortunately, the frame was an inch short of a standard size).
I've had a good week in the studio this week. I've been working on this piece, for which I included some interesting borders. The problem was, I didn't have enough of the border to surround the entire composition. I was okay with that (might be interesting to do it "incompletely"). BUT I also wanted to see what it would look like if I had the "correct" corners of the borders and had it around the entire composition. I seemed to recall from where the borders came (something I don't always remember). I searched my early 20th century "Hapers's Weekly" books. There were none of these borders in the 1902 and 1903 issues of the magazine. I was still fairly confident that that is where I originally found them. I then checked the 1913 issues of "Harper's Weekly" that I had in my bookcase. Viola! Mother lode. The borders were used on the table of contents page for "Harper's Weekly" that year. I was actually a little surprised that I remembered from where I got them in the first place. So now I have more than I think I will ever need of these particular borders! I also extracted the covers of each issue of the magazine from the collected bound volume. The covers are a variety of vintage colors, that I will, no doubt, use in future compositions.
As with the recent "still life" piece I created, this collage was made in response to a specific call for an exhibition with the theme "Urban Landscapes". If you are familiar with my artwork, you know that neither "urban", or "landscapes" are not the typical foci of my work -- although I don't mind using related elements. When I saw the call for submissions (from Rome Art and Community Center), I was intrigued and wanted to explore some possibilities. I had already had some interesting elements in my "piles" related to urban architecture (I had done some experimenting in the past). So I began places elements together to see what would emerge. I am pretty pleased with the final composition. I have entitled it, "Office Windows" (9" x 21"):
Every January, I attend the Southern Humanities Conference, which is held in a different city in the "south" each year. This year, the conference was in Annapolis, Maryland. Since I was able to drive (usually I fly), I was able to bring my newly acquired display rack with me, and exhibit my work as part of our open mic night (and it was up all weekend). Folks have seen images of my work as part of various presentations I have done over the years. I was happy that they were finally able to see the pieces in-person to get the full impact. I even sold a piece (thanks for your interest and support, Sarah!).
In addition to finishing "Orbit Boy" yesterday, last night I did some experimentation with this piece. It's a bit of a departure from my typical composition style. The piece is certainly not finished. It needs better balance, and it's difficult to see the smallest dark green circle (at the 11:30 position), so I may have to change the color a little bit; but I am happy with the progress thus far.
Finished another piece last night. It includes a vintage Christmas light, so it's a "shadow box" piece. It's difficult to photograph the box with the glass, so I took a photo out of the box. It's 8" x 10", and the title is "Orbit Boy Always had a Good Idea for Another Planet".
Inspired partly by a piece I had done years ago (2012), which was entitled, "The Question"; and partly inspired by some elements I had "laying around", which had the appropriate patina -- I present the first finished piece of 2026, entitled "Another Question"...
I have great anticipatory excitement for a two-person exhibit I will be part of in November at The Other Side (Utica, NY), involving David "RC" Oster and yours truly. David is a phenomenal artist who specializes in highly detailed pen-and-ink drawings of barns and buildings and trains and roller-coasters. His work is exquisite. For our exhibit, he plans to show some of his "fantasy" city-scapes. Interestingly, he uses drawings of real buildings, from real cities, but combines them into his own created city. For example, he might take a sky-scraper from New York, and add another building from Chicago, and one from Philadelphia, to create a fantasy city (with the inclusion of a roller-coaster or a set of train tracks and trains). It's really amazing! For our two-person exhibit, I thought that I might make a "collaborative" piece, by which I would integrate my collage elements into a print of one of his fantasy city-scapes. Here are the prints I obtained from David on which I will experiment with placement of collage elements. I'm excited to explore the possibilities!
Here are some photos of the most recent work of my friend and fellow artist, Tom Nettle. I absolutely LOVE the piece. It's entitled, "Seldom is Herd a Discouraging Word".
Just in case folks are wondering where I'm at with the "problem child" piece I've been writing about (which I kind of doubt); here's a possible small remedy idea for it...
Well... here's another incrementally small installment of what's going on with this work-in-progress. I realize that this may be a less-than-exciting post; but it is an interesting twist and a reflection of my creative process. I added another transfer to this composition. I had thought that it "needed" something more than what I had already put down -- maybe for balance. I was tempted to simply leave it the way it was, and consider it finished. But instead, I "messed" with it (I wish I hadn't). I don't think it helped with "balance". In fact, I think it had the opposite effect, in a way. The transfer also left a bit of a ghost outline, which detracts from the transfer effect. I'm not sure now, what I will do to "remedy" the situation. I certainly am not satisfied with it the way it is. I have some ideas -- so "stay tuned". This isn't exactly the way I wanted to kick off the new year... but I am still excited and hopeful for what I think will be a great year of creating art (and music).
