I had the very good fortune to attend a poetry reading by my friend William Welch to celebrate the publication of his poetry book "Adding Saffron" last night (Thursday) at The Other Side in Utica, NY. It was an incredible event. To hear a poet read their work is typically joyful, and Will did a fantastic job. His poetry is heart-felt and intensely moving. I've been to quite a few poetry readings, and this was one of the very best. Bravo, Will! I will be ordering a number of the books to give as gifts to my friends.
Friday, April 4, 2025
Showcases of creativity
Monday, March 31, 2025
Been a while
It's been a while since I posted anything. I have been a little bit busy with life outside of my studio. I was in New York City and presented my swan song talk at the annual meeting of the Eastern Psychological Association entitled "From Isaiah to AI: The complex History of Hallucinations". Also saw "The Lion King" on Broadway. That was great!
I went to Pennsylvania the following weekend for the funeral of an old friend of mine -- Steve Kreamer. We had been very close friends for a decade; but when I moved back to central New York, we had lost touch a bit, until recently. I was looking forward to playing golf with Steve this summer. But alas.
Tuesday, March 4, 2025
Evocation
Sunday, February 23, 2025
How long?
In addition to copyright and creativity questions, I often get asked "how long does it take you to create a piece"?, when I give a presentation or have an exhibit. Without meaning to be evasive, I respond by saying that it is really difficult to answer that question. I have rarely created a composition in a single setting (as in, almost never). In addition, as I have written about in the past, my creative process relies on emergence of ideas after much exploration and experimentation with various elements. That is, it is highly unusual for me to have an idea in my head, that I then try to express in a composition. I have hundreds (thousands?) of pages of interesting images kind of "floating around" my studio space that I "play around" with somewhat chaotically -- waiting for interesting compositions to emerge. Sometimes compositions take weeks, or months, to come together fully. So it was interesting this weekend, when this composition emerged so quickly. I had come close to finishing the "microscope slide" piece (I still have to figure out how to mount it; and I still need to apply the UV varnish on the individual pieces); so I started cleaning up my workspace a bit and was looking around at some elements that I had previously coated that were strewn about the studio. As I was experimenting with pieces and placements, a composition started to emerge. Of course, the emergence of these compositions don't just happen haphazardly. Once I "see" something interesting starting to emerge, my role as an artist is to pay attention to some basic design issues, like balance and contrast. Anyway, to make a short story not much longer, here is a piece that came together in about 24 hours (from Friday night until last night). I think the title will be "Seeking a Brain #7" -- the seventh in a series which includes former actor Ray Bolger (who played the scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz).
Tuesday, February 18, 2025
"microscope slide" project, almost complete
The snow in central NY (Utica) has been a bit overwhelming this past week. Utica University rarely cancels classes for "snow days", but did so last Friday, yesterday (Monday) and today. So I have been enjoying alternating between shoveling snow (great exercise) and spending time in my studio. Yesterday, I made some great progress on an interesting project I wrote about a few weeks ago on this blog. I'm not quite finished with it; but I thought I would share some intermediate photos of the work. I think it's an interesting project for a number of reasons. I created a long (24 inches) composition; which I then cut into 1" x 3" segments to mimic the dimensions of a microscope slide. These smaller segments will then be housed in a wooden microscope slide box. An interesting question arises, I suppose... should this be considered one collage, that is now cut-up; or is it 24 "mini collages" (or both perhaps)? When eventually placed in the wooden slide box, the collage images will be mostly obscured (out of sight), until they are removed from the box. In order to see the entirety of the initial long collage, the slides will need to be re-configured. Weird... but I like the "complexity" of the work. Here are some photos of the almost-finished work...
Saturday, February 15, 2025
Finally finished
I finally finished these two pieces today. They were a bit long in the making, as I had many decisions to make and went through some "need to fix it" moments for both. If you have followed this blog at all recently, you are aware that the one with the flower started-off with a beautiful transfer of a fetal skull... which quickly got "ghosty" enough that I didn't feel comfortable leaving it as an element. So I covered it and worked on a conceptually different piece. I like the way it turned out; although it seems a little bit busy to me. The other piece is, of course, a nod to Warhol.
"Love is Blind" (7" x 7"; 11" x 11" framed)"Elvis, Abe, and Andy" (14" x 6.5"; 18" x 10.5" framed).
Tuesday, February 11, 2025
Tom Nettle shout out
I went to the opening reception of the Winter Solstice exhibit at The Paul Nigra Center for the Arts (Gloversville, NY) last night. I have two collages in the exhibit; and my good friend Tom Nettle had two of his paintings in the exhibit as well. I am SO happy that Tom received "Best in Show: Second Place" honors for his "Self-Portrait 2020" painting! And I must say, the exhibit consists of a very strong collection of artworks. Bravo Tom! Well-deserved.