Know Your Rights

In addition to finishing my apparently aesthetically-pleasing "fish piece" yesterday, I finished a VERY provocative artwork. The piece is meant to represent a couple of the extremely polarizing moral issues in society today. The piece is not "pretty" and I fear that it may be misinterpreted (or that folks will think negatively about me). I think artwork should sometimes be provocative, in that it serves as a stimulus for thinking. FYI: I am pro-life, but support a woman's right to choose. I am anti-violence and anti-gun (except for normal hunting), BUT DO NOT want to take your guns away from you (although no one should own a gun that can fire dozens of rounds per minute. Count the bullets in this artwork). The title of this piece is actually multi-layered: "Know Your Rights (or Pro-Life/Pro-Gun) (or Maybe He Will Make it Through School Safely).

one fish, two fish...

I probably should have waited to post all three of the fish pieces together; but I wasn't exactly sure if I would get the third piece done in time for the show. I had a great Christmas Day in the studio and got it done (also got another one done and will post it tomorrow). The show to which I am referring will be up at The Tech Garden (Syracuse, NY) next month (Jan.) and has a fish theme (Steve Nyland is the curator). Interestingly, some animal rights folks have contacted him, complaining about animal abuse!? I guess they misunderstood what an art exhibit is all about. Anyway, I'm looking forward to the exhibit. I had a bit of an epiphany about my artwork while working on my fish pieces. My work is typically small format (usually no larger than 11" x 14"), partially because of my style and the fact that I do analog collage and thus do no photocopying or enlarging. Of course, galleries and collectors like and pay for larger pieces. Sometimes I have felt badly about that, and have contemplated doing larger works. But I'm comfortable with my voice and my use of smaller format artwork. My epiphany? Well, jewelers typically make "small format" pieces that sometimes sell for lots of money. So, I guess I'll just conceptualize my work as akin to pieces of jewelry. I certainly spend LOTS of time on my art, working out minute details. So anyway, here's my third fish piece for the exhibit at The Tech Garden...

light, shadow and photography

I finally mounted this miniature piece on a lunar background (I love the palette). I placed the piece on the edge of my night stand and took this photograph. I absolutely LOVE how the shadows and the colors of the nightstand and the frame and composition are all integral! Perhaps it is something special about this piece (I wrote about shadows and photography in my Dec. 1st entry with this same miniature). The photograph then, is the only thing that documents the "entire" composition. Right? The photograph represents the "finished piece", of which, the actual collage is only a part.

Fishy

Here are two pieces for the up-coming fish-themed exhibit at The Tech Garden. I am hoping to get one more done this week, as these are small and will get "lost" on the gallery wall. I would like to have a threesome so that they can act as "one" bigger piece. Now that I see these pieces together, it would make sense for me to have a third piece with the fish facing to the right.

"More Images from a Monkeybrain" by Steven Specht!

They arrived this week! My second coffee table book of collages -- celebrating my 10th year anniversary of doing collage using the "Talbot method" -- is now available. Hard cover with dust jacket. 42 full-color collage images with a blurb about each one. If you're interested, contact me via my e-mail at Utica College.

actual shadows as elements

I decided to give away all but one of the collage lapel pins for Thoughtsgiving. I kept the one with George Washington's eye in it. I really liked the simple two-element composition and the color palette. After searching for a frame for the piece, I placed this frame over the small collage (less than 2" x 2"). What "emerged" was an interplay between the collage, the frame, and the multiple shadows created by the various lights in my studio. I really LOVE the shadows, when considered as additional enhancing "elements" of the collage. But those shadows are, after all, transient, unless I was able to duplicate the positions of the lights in a gallery. Even in my studio, I would either have to have the collage and frame in exactly the same spot to re-create this image; or adjust the lighting. So I suppose that this posted photo IS the artwork (akin to Andy Goldsworthy's transient natural artworks, for which he relies on photography of the work to represent the work).

a tradition like no other... Thoughtsgiving!

Here are the collage lapel pins I made for this year's Thoughtsgiving Day festivities at The Green Onion (Utica, NY). Featured here also is Molly; who is the only person to have all 8 lapel pins (from eight years of Thoughtsgiving). The holiday has actually been in existence for 9 years,; but their were no pins for the first year.

while weekend working

Last night and this morning, while prepping some of the eyes for the collage lapel pins I'm creating for "Thoughtsgiving", I was playing around with some collage sketching. I'm happy to say that I finished this piece this afternoon. It's entitled "On Dreams' Edge".

weekend work

This Wednesday is the 10th anniversary of a holiday I created (with the help of Brad Emmons and Jason Denman) called "Thoughtsgiving". I have written about it for this blog previously. One of the traditions that this holiday involves is my creating a bunch of lapel pin collages for people. I enjoy doing it... once it's done! It does create a bit of a stressor for me as I want to create good collages and they have been thematic in the past (i.e., I try to do duplications of related collages). This year, I think I am going to do something like this. I can find a variety of eyes and a variety of words or numbers to place in the eye. I'm kind of liking it!

comparison

The next-to-last post featured a "sketch" for a possible composition. Last night, I finished the piece. I thought it would be interesting to put the sketch next to the finished piece for comparison.

National Collage Society Annual Juried Exhibit reception

Had a really nice time at the opening reception for the NCS exhibit Thursday evening at the Cummings Gallery at Mercyhurst University in Erie, Pennsylvania. It was nice to see Gretchen Bierbaum again, and to meet Will Ursprung.

tonight's sketch

This piece is not finished (as can easily be seen), but I thought I'd post it anyway. I've been trying to clean out some materials that have been laying around the studio for a while. The nautical map and the vintage image of the boy and man have both been around for over a year in my studio. I absolutely love the color of the boy and man; and I am really intrigued by the boy's expression (or lack thereof). The structure on the horizon is an ornate vase which I had prepared for the piece with the rose... but had mentioned that it was to intricate (it would have "competed" with the flowers). The women statues on the side and the borders are all from those 1870s publication The Art Journal. Such beautiful elements!
BTW, an update about my previous post... it was NOT accepted into a juried small works show at Main Street Gallery in Clifton Springs (NY). I was kind of bummed about it. I thought the piece was VERY strong; and I really wanted to show at that venue again. It's really a nice place! But I don't know... this is the second year in a row I was rejected; and I thought I had very strong pieces each year. Oh well.
Hmmm... not letting me upload the image right now. I'll post later.

currency

So excited about how this piece turned out. It's entitled "If you got the money honey,...". It's 7" x 7" and will go into an 11" x 11" frame. There is a total of 20 elements to this piece; 17 of which are pieces of American currency. I had to obtain older versions of the $10 bill, because the profile of Hamilton on contemporary versions is too large. Of the common bills, only Hamilton is facing left. The two dark squares on the upper and lower portions of the piece are the cut-out portions through which you see the presidential profiles. This piece is a bit of departure form my normal "surreal narrative" compositions, in that it is a bit more "design-y". I've also tried to create a bit of tension between symmetry and asymmetrical components.

Juried exhibition of the National Collage Society

I am very excited that this piece, entitled "The Great Escape"  (which I posted last year on this blog) has been accepted into this year's NCS juried exhibit! The acceptance rate is under 15% (of the 373 submissions). The exhibit will be on display at the Cummings Gallery at Mercyhurst College in Erie, Pennsylvania from November 4th through December 7th (the opening reception will be on Nov. 7th).

The Black Gryphon (Elizabethtown, PA)

Once again, thanks to friend and fellow collage artist Anthony Morgan, Tony Thompson and I have a number of pieces on exhibit at The Black Gryphon in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania. If you find yourself in the Harrisburg/Hershey area, stop by for some great farm-to-table food at this great restaurant and enjoy some of these collages:

Thompson-Specht collaboration

Here's another collaboration I completed with a friend and fellow artist from the Utica (NY) area. Tony Thompson does great artwork inspired by his days as a tagger (graffiti artist) and his interest in psychological responses to nervous system challenges. For this collaboration project, Tony presented me with a few options for "base" paintings that he had done (and which he felt were "incomplete"). Here's the one I chose...

He titled this one "Deal". I was very excited to see what I could add to this already-cool painting. One of the challenges with adding collage elements to Tony's work is that I did not want to compromise his style -- which includes many loose lines. That is, covering with opaque elements would obscure those lines. So, of course, I was leaning toward some use of transfers. Here are some intermediates and the final piece (which I re-titled "Android Deal"):

A birthday present for Mary Carol

The majority of my time in the early part of the summer of 2019 was spent on music. I finally got a band together that seemed to work and we had a show in Boston and one locally here in Utica, NY. The second half of the summer has been dedicated to collage and golf. I finished a collage project this past week, just in time to present it as a 60th birthday gift to my wife, Mary Carol. The germ of the idea arose from looking at some of the beautiful vases and decorative framing that I found in a late 19th century volume of The Art Journal.

You can see the basic layout here. I thought I could "fill in" with some flower elements made into something like a "collage bouquet". I knew I was going to have to spend some time doing some "micro-cutting" with the intricate vase... and with the top element. That's where I started...

 

I am more comfortable using a single-edged razor blade than an exact knife, because I feel that my fingers are closer to the cutting and it gives me more comfort and control. I call this "micro-cutting" because I tend to cut VERY small pieces at a time. The middle image above shows you a cut portion under the wings compared to the uncut portion. In the last two images, my finger is pointed to the tiny piece that was cut from the element. I spent approximately two hours straight (I was "in the zone"... FLOW!) micro cutting these elements on Tuesday. Unfortunately, I kind of wasted a bit of time cutting the decorative vase... because after I placed the flower elements into the composition, I realized that this vase was simply too "busy" to integrate with the "busy-ness" of the various flower petals. Fortunately, I had prepared a number of potential elements for this particular piece incase I needed alternatives. The vase I ultimately used, was simpler and was a better complement to the flowers...

Here's the completed composition, entitled "Nouveau Flora Luna". I have entered this piece for consideration for this year's annual juried show of the National Collage Society. I hope it gets accepted (my work has not been accepted for the last two years, unfortunately).