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).