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.
It's been a bit since I posted. I was away for 4 days at the Southern Humanities Conference in Greenville, SC. The conference was WONDERFUL! Such a great group of humanities scholars. The theme this year was "Real, Artificial, and Superficial". I presented a paper about the nature of hallucinations and how using the term "hallucination" for a factual mistake that AI makes is a complete misnomer. I also heard two papers that alluded to the term "aura" (coined by Walter Benjamin), as it relates to authenticity in artwork. VERY interesting. Anyway since I have been back, I have been mostly experimenting and exploring in my studio, rather than getting any pieces completed. I think it is a natural cycle that I go through. I am starting to get to the point where I will complete several projects soon. I continue to work on the composition which will include covering up the skull transfer that "went bad". I will be using a "punched-out" circle element in this piece and wanted to share a fortuitous and beautiful serendipitous event that happened. I had made several punched-out circle elements from this page of The Art Journal (circa 1878) to cover-up the female sculpture taken from the same page (to match the gray patina). I didn't realize until last night, that the subtle variegation in the element matched perfectly (and beautifully) with the pelvis curve of the sculptural element. This serendipitous and unintentional event will absolutely enhance this overall composition... and I couldn't be happier.
Well, well... once again, I'm starting some new projects before I finish already-in-progress projects. That is not particularly surprising, given my short attention span and my penchant for exploartion and experimentation. This past Friday, I ended-up coming across this small box (meant for microscope slides). I think I came-up with a cool idea for putting this object to use. I am contemplating creating a collage that would be 3" x 25". I will then cut it into 25 1-inch sections, to be placed into this box like microscope slides. I could do 25 individual (independent) 1" x 3" collages; but I thought it would be cool to be able to reconstruct a 3" x 25" collage by placing the 25 individual "slides" together. This is absolutely a work-in-progress. I'll see how it goes (and, of course, post with progress and/or final piece). I'm also adding an image here of a composition that "came together" quickly as another possible project. Man, do I love my time in my creative space!
Well... I've never experienced this before with one of my transfers. Usually, the transfer either works well -- all the paper comes off the back; and it is positioned correctly -- or it doesn't. When it works well, I then re-coat the transferred element with acrylic medium and it's good to go, and I can continue with the overall composition. As I wrote previously, the fetal skull transfer looked great... so I re-coated it. When I went into my studio last night, it seems that the transfer had "ghosted" on me. The black lines weren't so black anymore, and you could see a little ghostly residue of the backing paper. DAMN! I was so excited about that particular transfer. A couple folks said, "It looks okay". But I am pretty picky about what comes out of my studio; and just "okay" doesn't cut it (pun intended). So I have decided to cover it up -- changing a significant element in the composition I had been working on. I'm not showing an image of the ghosting here. What I will show is what I think is an interesting excision of elements from an integrated image. My plan right now (which, of course, can always change), is to try to use the sculptural element of the woman. The thing is, I wanted to isolate that element. I wish that I had thought to take a photo of the entire page before I started cutting it; but I think you still get the idea. SO... I am seriously disappointed about the fetal skull transfer. But I am trying to making lemonade from a lemon. Oftentimes, it works out for the best. And it gives me a chance to post photos of an interesting excision of elements.
VERY pleased with how this transfer turned out (clarity, alignment)! I've also included a couple of sketching ideas. This one is going to be a bit of a departure from my usual "voice".
Oh man... last night's session in the studio was exhilarating. I knew the various graph papers would be fun to work with. I decided to do what I love to do... experiment and explore (even though I have a bit of "problematic" piece that I should tackle and finish). These photos only show a subset of the combinations I tried. The man and woman shown here, will be transferred onto the graph paper at some point (I think); as will the infant skull (so weird). And I LOVE the geometric abstract sketch.
Whilst experimenting/exploring this evening, I considered these two versions of a combination of elements. Hat under; hat over. Interesting difference...
Well, I didn't do an "end-of-the-year" reflection post, but I will briefly say that 2024 was a great year for me, artistically-speaking. Although I was very disappointed not to be accepted to the National Collage Society annual juried show, I had a wildly successful solo exhibit at The Other Side (Utica, NY) and our collab exhibit at the Kirkland Arts Center (Clinton, NY), as well as the Art Expo at 4 Elements Studio (as I had posted). Sold a bunch of work; so now am excited to work on getting my "inventory" replenished. For this post, I thought I would re-cap my art week. I just returned last night, from a trip to see the Egon Schiele exhibit at the Neue Gallery in New York City. Schiele is one of my all-time favorite artists! The exhibit did not disappoint. Wow... beautiful paintings, drawings and sketches! Photography was not allowed (but I would encourage anyone to look-up his work on the web). This is a photo of me in front of a beautiful Klimt painting at the gallery...
