cutlery
Isn’t this gorgeous? The fork threw me at first, but someone in the comments to the article had an explanation which further reading supported (there are a couple beautiful Roman forks here). Whatever its age, it is very cool tool.
I realize I haven’t posted any of my work recently, I do mean to do that soon!
camino
This fall I’ll follow a path trod by pilgrim feet for a thousand years or so and among other preparations I need to improve my Spanish. I prefer to work on languages through regular books rather than language texts, and figuring I should begin at the beginning, I grabbed something basic. So, as of this afternoon, I can explain that I do not like to eat green eggs and ham with a zorro, in a rincón, or in a barco, while navigating a charco. I question the text though, translating Sam-I-Am as Juan Ramón doesn’t seem to reflect the flippant energy of that sign carrying GEaH promoter.
Wandering around the Internet reading what other people have written about the pilgrimage I came across a blog by a Canadian girl (a cousin of mine, twice-removed, lives in her hometown). Her last post, mentioning another kind of adventure, was a link to the blog she started when she later moved to Paris. How can you not adore someone who wanders into these kind of situations:
Things that don’t happen in Kingston
And writes posts like this:
LXD
Hmm, and I thought I’d be happy if I could do a decent tornado kick.
Best to click and see it big screen, but it’s a poor quality video, so even better see it on a really big screen if you know someone who has ‘So You Think You Can Dance’ TiVoed. These guys are so innovative, it will be fantastic if their online adventure is as good:
oops
An experiment gone awry.
I love a bit of decay incorporated into things, which is why I love old buildings, Michael Eastman’s photos, and the furniture I inherited (although a small fund to keep the chairs glued and un-wobbly would have been a good thing to inherit along with). I’ve been working on a way to include that in some of my pieces, but how best to partially destroy my work?
Here is a piece I’ve been wreaking minor destruction on, pre-destruction:
It definitely needs some decay, so I go to work on it, trying to balance giving it some integrity while still leaving it vulnerable:
Then I become Kali, speeding up the destructive force of time, and the result is:
Far too much decay!
Tomorrow, back to the easel, so to speak. I will repair it to wreak (less) havoc on it another day.
At least it won’t need this treatment:
Done to erase the result of another experiment. One not to be repeated.
tulip
A day of frustration – my materials were not in the mood to do what I wanted today. I knew exactly what I was trying to achieve, but couldn’t get the spark I was going for with the ink, pencil, encaustic and other pigments at hand. I’m sure that, along with the intimidation of a blank page, this is not a rare experience.
Part of my frustration is I’d like to do a couple larger pieces to go along with this series (so far they are 5″x8″, 6″x7″, and smaller – tiny!), but on the bigger pieces things keep warping and going astray. New materials are only 20 minutes away at Dick Blick, but this is not a good time for me to go because I tend to get distracted and find myself with a basket full of gold leaf, sheets of nickel, and a better riveting hammer when that is not what I am supposed to be working on right now.
moth letter
I am working on some butterfly/moth + flower images this week, this is the one closest to being finished.
I’ve been experimenting with encaustic and layers of vellum and paper, I love how the vellum resists ink, gathering it up, making the image even more translucent. The ones that turned out best had pale colours and a limited palette.
Time is limited because I’m getting a lot of small pieces ready for a show, so back to the bugs…
urn
These are from this summer, all in my mom’s neighbourhood.
I’m working with photos for a few days to distract myself from some technical difficulties with the other series I’ve been working on. I’ve looked around to see if anyone else is doing a similar process with inks, pencil and encaustic, but haven’t seen any, so I’ll go back to experimenting with the propane torches tomorrow. So far nothing big has caught fire or blown up, that’s good anyway.
Earlier this evening I was showing a friend the website of one of my favourite photographers, Michael Eastman – his Cuban and Italian photos are incredible. Then I learned of the death of Roy DeCarava, another amazing photographer. I was trying to pick a few of his photos that I liked best, but it is so hard to choose. This is one of many, and this, and this. They are so evocative.
Now that I have loaded my photos onto this post I’ve decided I don’t like the way they look small. I love how art has such a different effect at different sizes (except when it doesn’t work small on my blog). I spent the day at an art museum with some friends recently, and was loving the difference between various pieces close up and at a distance. And the texture, that fantastic delicate texture of drawings and miniatures, it’s all completely lost in reproduction.
injured
These are details of one of the paintings in the stash that inspired Barbara Levine (former director of exhibitions, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art) to write ‘Finding Frida Kahlo‘. The trunks of materials (diaries, letters, recipes, paintings, stuffed hummingbirds, and so on) have been called forgeries by some interested parties in Mexico (ArtSlant article, NY Times article, Christopher Knight’s take), and I am curious to see how this all plays out.
Detecting forgeries is a difficult art, because the science can be faked (although sometimes people are so sure of their ‘eye’ that they refuse to believe scientific evidence to the contrary, e.g. de Groot insisting that ‘Merry Cavalier‘ was by Frans Hals despite the fact that some of the paints used were not developed until long after Hals had died), and of course mistakes are made both ways (a collector of Rembrandt burned one of his paintings thinking it was a forgery, later it turned out it probably wasn’t).
Both those claiming these were Frida Kahlo’s belongings and those crying fraud have a stake in the outcome, influencing the way they see these pretties.
I do love Frida as a deer, a friend almost bought this version years ago, but didn’t, because it would have been a quite a stretch financially – of course looking back he thinks it would have been worth the sacrifice. So often in life it would be nice to have the benefit of hindsight ahead of time, eh?
Click the link below to see more:
“Finding Frida Kahlo” by Barbara Levine from Princeton Architectural Press on Vimeo.
texture
The warm colour of this piece doesn’t appear when I put it on the blog, nor the texture, of course. I love it when I get to visit art I’ve only seen in reproduction and can finally see the surface and the real colours. Size also has such an impact, whether because a piece dominates the space or because it is small and draws the viewer in, and none of that comes across in a book or on-line.
At this time of night my wish is for more hours in every day, there never seem to be enough daylight hours for anything I do with colour. Plus more hours in the night for composing. And calorie-free chocolates.
dawn
I started this piece with a chalk sketch of a lovely 10-year-old I know. She has a beautiful wavy blond mane and a lovely singing voice, neither of which shows up here. I love her eyebrows, their angle gives her a vulnerable look.
Sometimes when I sit down to compose a new picture I can’t figure out how to start, the visual equivalent of writer’s block, I suppose. Suddenly I can’t remember how, as if I’d never done it before, and I swear it happens every third time I sit down to sketch out something new – absolutely ridiculous.
After struggling for a couple hours somehow I finally tap into it, then spend the rest of the night sketching out new pieces. Until when I should be getting up the next morning.
Luckily, there’s the work of creating the final versions before I do it all again.
