"Cazenovia Counterpoint" quickie

I'll have more to say about my nice day in Cazenovia tomorrow (I hope). Just thought I would share a photo of the interior of the social hall of St. Peter's Episcopal Church at which part of the "Cazenovia Counterpoint" exhibit will be housed. Opening is July 17th. Come out and see some great artwork and meet some great folks! Enjoy!

Jackson details

I thought I should elaborate on my recent post of the three new pieces. I am showing here some detail of the Jackson piece. Each of the pieces shown on the previous post were done on small masonite panels (6" x 6" x 3/8"). This allows me to do some "wrap-around" of the elements from the front surface of the pieces to create additional areas of interest (I hope). I hope these photos will give you a better idea of what the pieces look like. In this particular piece, I really like the way the cut-out portion of the dark green element creates what looks like a little golden cube (BTW, the Golden's iridescent gold paint was purchased for very cheaply at a garage sale!). The dark green element was a serendipitous addition to this piece. I had been doing some "punching out" of that paper to get those oblong little pieces. When I saw what the "negative space" looked like, I envisioned it working with the rest of this piece. Serendipity is one of my favorite parts of collage work. Enjoy!

productive day

I finished two of these yesterday (the one with "But Doctor" had been done previously). I also made progress on two others that I had been working on and hope to finish those this evening or tomorrow (so come back to this blog again!). I have more to write about these pieces and some other photos of them in various conformations. Unfortunately, I have some other pressing chores today. But visit this blog again soon. Enjoy!

a couple of sites

Just thought I'd pass along a couple of sites for folks interested in looking at more collage sites. I particularly like "www.notpaper.net" which features many images from multiple artists as well as short interviews with some. Through that site I found a couple of sites of individual artists whose work I particularly really like. Marty Gordon's page is sub-titled "What would Jesus glue" and is at "martworks.blogspot.com". I also really like Brandon Mclean's work, which can be found at "www.elus1v.com". Enjoy!

Agoo #1

I will certainly have images to post later this week of pieces I am working on now. BUT for now... I thought I would take the opportunity this evening to do a little musing on a topic which first appeared on this blog on March 27th (see older posts). I had procured at auction, Volume 8 of a series of books from the late 1800s documenting the names and numbers of registered Holstein cows (and bulls) across the country. I had never really thought about the signs that I had seen posted by farms for many years growing up that said "Registered Holsteins" with the big black and white cows shown on the sign.I have learned that EACH of these animals is named and assigned a registration number and meticulously recorded (in terms of parents, owners and short descriptions of markings in these books). The book that I have begins with the #2688 registered Holstein and continues for hundreds more. Anyway, I was more excited than I probably should have been when this afternoon I discovered that the #1 (yes, the VERY FIRST) registered Holstein in this country was raised in Peterboro, NY (some 20 miles from Utica). Her name... "Agoo". I absolutely love trivia like this. And it would have very likely never happened without my interest in collage and my purchase of that strange volume with beautiful engraved images of cows which I will no doubt use in up-coming collages. BTW, Peterboro was a MAJOR "depot" along the underground railroad in the mid-1800s. Enjoy!

"Intriguing"

Wow! The 60/60 Event at the Everson Museum in Syracuse was awesome! It turned out to be a beautiful evening in Central New York -- sunny skies and warm. When we arrived at the event the excitement was palpable. We set-up quickly under the tent and had time to amble about looking at other artists' areas and watch the artists prep and begin working. There were so many good artists there and the variety of media was impressive as well (although I was the only collagist). I met some really nice people including artist Jeff Allen (he did the lacrosse player piece shown here). It was so nice having family and friends there for support too, including my wife Mary Carol, Tom's wife Debbie and daughter Leah; my sister Michele and her husband Steve and friends and colleagues Arlene, Linnea and Wayne. Thanks to all of you for your support!!! So the time that Tom and I had spent working out compositional aspects of the piece REALLY paid off (although we were still "sticking" a little bit on the final touches of the bottom left quadrant). It took us just about the full 60 minutes to get things in-place and put-down. It seems like lots of people were "intrigued" by someone doing collage (and the major element of the old photograph I think was powerful and drew people to the piece). We spent some time talking with passers-by and the finished product was especially well-received by many folks. I was VERY pleased when they announced the "People's Choice" awards to find out the Tom and I had won the prize for "Most Intriguing". Cool! Another good bit of news is that my sister Michele won the finished piece in the raffle drawing. I'm happy that I'll get to see the piece once in a while! Then we were invited to Linnea and Wayne's house for a VERY lovely evening of good wine and GREAT food! The evening was a GREAT success! I hope to take part next year as well. Enjoy!

60/60 Event at the Everson Museum of Art

T minus 7 hours until the festivities begin tonight at the Everson Museum. Lots of prep went into getting ready for the creation of the collage tonight. In fact, it's been quite an experience and definitely something worth sharing here. But perhaps I shall wait for the full post when I can share the finished product with you all. As a prelude I will say that even after two half-days of wonderful collaborative work on the project with my friend Tom Nettle, we were still working out the details for the left quadrant of the piece. We had several ideas, but nothing seemed quite "right". Last night, I finally found something that seems to work in that area. And whereas many folks unfamiliar with collage think that pieces are simply "thrown together", the more-informed understand that collages have a high potential for looking like ass unless there is deliberative decision-making on the part of the artist(s)... at least for my style of collage ;-) In many ways, I feel as though prepping to do a collage for this event may have required more time than prepping for a painting or drawing. Anyway, I'm excited for the event this evening and look forward to seeing if we can pull together a good piece. I'm also very interested in seeing so many other artists doing the work in this time-frame. Enjoy!

NCS postcard show

Okay folks... hopefully I'm back on track a little with my blogging. Anyone who is doing collage should join the National Collage Society. It's cheap ($35 per year) and one of the opportunities you have to submit your work involves participation in the annual "Wish You Were Here" postcard exhibit. It is a non-juried (i.e., everyone gets "accepted") exhibit. The interesting thing about this exhibit is that ALL pieces are limited to a 4" x 6" format (with depth limitation too). Unlike most artists perhaps, I like themes and limitations and so forth. Anyway, this is my third year submitting to the postcard show. To my surprise, last year not only did someone buy my piece, but I also was one of 16 (out of 144 submissions) who won a cash award (see NCS site under "current exhibits" to see the award-winning pieces). I have been SO busy the last several weeks that I thought I might NOT submit this year. But I had a good idea a while ago and persevered this week to "get 'r done" and was able to submit something (sent it out this afternoon!). I'm pleased with it and perhaps it'll be "competitive" again this year. I've entitled it "I Will Send You a Wire". Enjoy!

More piquing

So while I'm working on a few projects (postcard due at the end of the week... yikes!!!), I thought I'd try to pique your interest some more. Here is the genesis of my idea for my "furniture piece" for the Sculpture Space auction in the fall... the Scrabble pedestal! The red is NOT blood; it's red spray paint on the cellar floor from another project from a while ago. To orient the viewer... the pedestal is lying down on the floor for this photo.

Prep work

My good friend and creative associate from Syracuse, Tom, came to my house yesterday to continue preparation for our collage construction which will take place at the 60/60 event at the Everson Museum in Syracuse on June 18th. We had a very successful day of collage collaboration. Here are a few photos (I don't want to share too much about what are overall design will be... you'll need to see it all come together on June 18th!).