Art Advice, Blogs, et al...

2007 - Vermilion View - 60x48 *

It took a good long while for artists to get on the personal website wagon, and many still depend on their galleries to be their showcase... that's okay, I'm just observing. Goodness knows there are plenty of us now taking full advantage of that option.

So now I see another blogger, Kristy Hall, is advising all artists to blog, the latest advocate of many 'art advisers' singing the same song. Well, don't waste your breath on most of my dear friends. Wouldn't I love to follow their careers, their fun and games, their ups and downs... even if they reserved their blogs for professional updates or dealt mostly with their devoted dogs... I'd read every post. I miss my real-time art buddies, scattered as they are all around the country. Okay, maybe that's not what Kristy (and Alyson and all the others except Charlie Finch) are promoting blogs for... but whatever their reasons, I agree.

KH sez: Many artists work in isolation and blogging can help reduce that all pervading sense of invisibility. I gotta tell you, isolation tends to grow with age... I don't consider that a totally bad thing, it's usually due to personal choices but it's still a stark reality. My social life (aahahaha!) is more online than off... a LOT more.

KJ sez: When you’re blogging about your own work, you have to think about your work. This is my strongest point when explaining why I blog. In my case, I'm reviewing my entire career and trying to put it into perspective, some kind of order. I love the idea of having readers but I'd like to think that I'd blog even if there were none. This is such a valuable tool at this point in my career... I want to get it down before I forget or get disoriented. Oh, hey... maybe I'll get it better than it really was? Who would know?

Stats say this blog has a respectable number of readers... I can call only a dozen or so by name, all artists, so who are the others? Would there be any "collectors" out there? Some blogs are aimed at collectors... on the pretense that a potential buyer would want to know more about the artist... I'm not convinced. I suspect I've done more harm than good to my career via this blog... pretty evident I'm not a flashy, upscale loft type... just your regular, older than the boomers type hermit... not very flashy at all.

And there are soooo many blogs out there... do we really want to encourage more? Other than artists reading about other artists, comparing notes, maybe even a little one-ups-man-ship (nah, we wouldn't do that!) what good do we serve? Well, actually, some are so well written (and illustrated) that they could qualify as books in serial format. I like that!

Art email lists offer conversation and a kind of companionship, but blogs offer self preservation... a way to leave our mark... a mark that tells more about us than the painted canvas ever could... should anyone want to know.

* The above painting shows the difficulty in producing a well defined red in digital format. Looked fine in the editing program but smears when uploaded.

Decor...

'Odyssey' In The Contemplation Spot

Confession... I subscribe to several home decor blogs, maybe because of ongoing renovation at the lake house, maybe because I think it's relevant to keep up with what's "in style" since I'm in the business of catering to that 'style'. Not one to be out and about in social mode in recent years I don't see much of what's being bought and sold these days so I take my cues online.

Decor has nothing to do with art, right? Wrong! Well, maybe on a certain level... when art is more commodity than interaction but for the rest of us, we are basically in the business of pleasing varying and morphing tastes, our own included. So it's good to know what "taste" currently looks like... and there's a lot of that going around out there. Apartment Therapy is a biggie and very prolific... a fun browse not limited to small apartments. I discovered and took up with Silk Felt Soil after a Google Alert showed that several of my Bokusho paintings were being featured... I like her taste! Dear Ada picks up on art she likes from around the web, no preference to hierarchy, just a wide range of personal choices as accessories, often prefaced by "I love this!" There are bunches of other blogs focusing on the finer accessories of which art is just one, check out their sidebars.

Lest you think this is cheapening our artistic influences, hence our artistic creations... no less that Lari Pittman, that California mover and shaker of contemporary painting, admits to... well, here's the story:

In the LA Times, Dean Kuipers spends 60 seconds with Lari Pittman. "I always take the time to look at the women's clothes and shoes. It's not that I'm interested at all in wearing them, but I am interested to see how they're made and what ornamentation is taking place. It's not that it's a correct view of American culture, but it is a view."

So there ya go... I won't say I'm at all influenced by what they're showing about how we should be decorating, but like the man said... it is a view.

Forgetfulness... Not Always A Bad Thing...

The studio tends to accumulate unfinished works which gather precariously in doorways, traffic paths and even propped in front of works on the wall easel... following through is not my strongest attribute. Consequently, a recent head count shows I have over a dozen works in progress or on standby... unfinished great ideas. Yesterday I grew tired of reaching behind three large WIP's in order to turn the lights on in my studio. There's a long hallway handy that easily accommodates these transitional pieces so I took the time to move them around... and realized that I need to get my act together.

Flip side, I do prefer to sit on the development of an idea for awhile (define that period of time, please) but seems contemplation can quickly morph into forgetfulness along with complete loss of direction as to where I planned to go with a piece. I figure if I forget, it wasn't a good, solid direction anyway... so I look for new inspiration within the piece. It's all about layering for me regardless, so what's a few more applications?

Just for fun, a few months ago I took some scrap strips of canvas and wove them on four 12x12 stretchers, purposefully leaving a small squarish hole near the center. They were then shelved to wait for the great inspiration to hit.



Well... something hit one day for sure and now there are scraps of corrugated cardboard pieced all over them, along with numerous applications of varying paints and mediums. They certainly are textural... wonder what happens next? Graffiti, perhaps? This is certainly NOT evidence of my original thought! Stay tuned...


And then there's the mistake I made when ordering some sale canvases (I can't resist a good sale,) 12" squares which I like to keep on hand for grouping small series. The mistake was that these are way thicker than I prefer (numbers, inches, lengths, etc always get in my way) so they required some dedicated thought. Currently they are in the process of becoming supports for an earlier tree idea I've been playing with in one form or another. I have some very thin paper (which I've forgotten the name of) that I tape to typing paper and send through the printer to get the black and white images I need... that process is working pretty well at the moment. And so far it glues down with medium and nearly disappears just leaving the print... great! This is kind of fun. Once the prints are in place, I'll continue to layer with ink or graphite lines, glazes... I'll probably need to think on it more. Should make an interesting series.

On the pegboard I have four abstracts in progress... one's been around for six months or so. I like it but still don't understand it. It's conclusion is yet to be written... same goes for most of those stacked in the hallway...

Art Show Nostalgia...

2001 Exhibition - Waxlander Gallery, Santa Fe

Reading Rebecca Cromwell's recent blog entries have me tripping down memory lane once again. She has been visiting her gallery in Santa Fe where they presented an introductory show of her work and promised a full fledged show next October... signs that she is gathering no moss since signing on. That market is like no other... if you've got the product and a good gallery, you are in business!

Interesting to note is that Darnell Gallery is owned by the former director of Waxlander Gallery where I had a three year stint. My show was October, 2001... a great weather month. Sales, all during my association, were constant and the requests for more work came like a drum beat... long story short, I couldn't keep up. I was rushing my work and not liking what was happening to it or to me. I began slowing down with shipments to the gallery and wasn't surprised when a conversation ended with... it's been nice, but...

I'm sad about that... I think it says something about my inability to be as proficient as is expected of a professional artist. The competition is very keen in Santa Fe... so many galleries along one long street, plus many other really good ones all around the city. To keep their name up front there's a lot of expense involved which is shared by the artist... not unusual except that the numbers are much higher in this market than most. The process and expense of building and shipping crates is mind boggling and it didn't help when we moved to another state and gave up my freight guy who would come by the house to pick up when I called. Was never able to find the same fit in our new location which meant considerably more effort on our part.

Meanwhile, I was still trying to keep new inventory in my other galleries and finally had to make a choice... cut out all the SE gallery relationships I worked so hard to establish or quit Santa Fe. Looking to the future, I could see myself within driving distance of all my major galleries... no shipping necessary. I began letting the Santa Fe inventory slide and like I said, wasn't surprised when the call came.

All that said... I miss the drum beat, the excitement, the high rolling ride! Sales from all five of my SE galleries don't equal the one in Santa Fe. But the pace suits me... I can take my time... I can have a life outside the studio. The experience was like no other and am so glad I was part of the scene for at least a while. Good luck Rebecca... enjoy!

Daylilies...

Archives - 1980 - Daylily Series 2 - 30x40

Artists and gardens... a long standing tradition, it seems. I'm sure there are plenty of excellent painters who don't dig dirt and have little use for sculpting the land, but betcha they are a small minority. In another life I plan to be a landscape designer... or maybe I've already filled that square... several times over.

I come from a long line of dirt diggers... one grandmother provided local florists huge spider mums once popular for dates at football games, the other once tended strawberry fields, then moved on to ranching... growing most of what they ate all the while. I had little use for learning from them as a youth, but as soon as I married I felt the urge to grow flowers, learning on a need to know basis. Experienced neighbors were free with their advice as well as cuttings and rootings. I still have daylilies from those long ago gifts. In spite of our many moves, favorite plants were dug up and carried with us... the poor old ski boat serving as carrier, blowing tires in protest.

The last few days at the lake were partially dedicated to enjoying house guests visiting from Baton Rouge so we were able to kick back and not think about the big projects yet to be tackled. It was classic early fall weather, brilliant after a much needed cleansing rain, and begging to be dug in. The remnants of my early gardens at this property are most evident in the remaining daylilies scattered along paths and mingling with the ivy. Too much shade for them to bloom or multiply, they seem to be waiting in limbo for someone to rescue them. So I began that process, gathering and moving them to a sunny patch of good dirt in the front. I'm anxious to see "who" they are. All my daylilies had proper names if purchased from a grower, or I gave them a suitable name. I'm hoping they might be my long time favorite, "Cheddar Cheese," which was given to me in Maryland in the early '70's. I still have a pot of them... possibly the earliest daylily to bloom... and would rebloom in late summer when we were in NOLA.

That's 'Cheddar Cheese' up top... only the second in a very long series devoted to one of my favorites. Later I would begin leaving out the flowers as I began focusing on the interaction of old and new leaves... conveying a generational mingling... something that was happening in my own life as parents aged and kids and g-kids surged forth. Life became intense and my work reflected this with the tightness of detail and overlapping forms of elongated leaves and grasses. I think that was not an accident, it was a retreat much the way knitting is for some. Tiny little stitches that add up to something much larger. A few hours of digging in the dirt in hopes of a larger reward later. A place to go and quietly produce when the world is weighing way too much.

Between Friends

Heading to the lake for a few days, wanted to leave you with yet another fav comic strip, Between Friends by Sandra Bell-Lundy. That link is to her blog, which is fun to read as another artist tells all re her struggles and successes.

I read the strip via the online Seattle Times, other sources seem to delay it a couple of weeks. The above was created for a line of greeting cards she is/was doing. Each of her characters has a personal storyline to follow... just the way I like my 'toons ;-)

Jennifer Bartlett

Jennifer Bartlett Detail from Rhapsody 1975-76
enamel on steel, 987 plates, each plate 12 x 12 inches,
overall approximately 7' 6" x 153 feet
© 2006 Jennifer Bartlett

Cause to reflect on an early influence... just came across pics of the spectacular home artist Jennifer Bartlett recently bought . Of course the house pics are fun to browse but my wandering mind quickly moved back in time to when I discovered and fell for her work. It had to be the grids that she manipulated... I've certainly never felt particularly drawn to her painting style(s) or subjects (which have varied widely over the years.) Best quick view of her work is via Google Image Search. Interesting to note that she is just two years younger than I... always though of her as being perpetually young. Oh well, aren't we all? Judging from the recent house purchase, she's doing quite well.

It was 1989 and my New Orleans artist buddy and I were stalking our artistic futures. NOMA put on a magnificent show of outstanding women artists called "Making Their Mark" which introduced us to Bartlett as well as a number of other new favorite women artists (we soaked up that show... talked of nothing else for weeks!) My book/catalog became a file of sorts for tear sheets from art mags re any of the artists we felt attracted to and wanted to learn more about. I must dust off that book... take a walk back to a time when I was working hard to discover who I was and where I fit in, in regard to these women artists. Still wondering, but not working nearly so hard these days...

Seeds Sown...

Archives - 2004 - Contained - 36x36

I knew it was time to get back to the blog but after a long weekend at the lake there really wasn't much art to talk about and I didn't want to weigh heavy on the joys of manual labor again lest you begin to wonder about my mental relationship with senility, dementia or the like.

So while checking email this early morn, I was gifted with this jewel via Google Alert (where I have entered a number of names including my own.) Seems there's this blog called "What To Wear During An Orange Alert" which is obviously aimed at a much younger age group than the one I hang with... which makes this even more interesting. So they are interviewing a young (recent MFA) artist/cartoonist/illustrator about his new abstracts and this is the clip the email alert sent to me:

I found an artist named Karen Jacobs who does these large fantastic abstracts. I began working similarly in very small sizes, and eventually my works grew in scale. After a night of crappy critiques, I painted, was venting some ...

His name is Nick Volkert and I'm happy to say that his paintings don't look anything like mine. I like a lot of them and have trouble spotting much of a contribution I might have made to his evolution... and that's the part I like best. I recently sadly related the old saw that everything had been done, I could come up with no 'original' idea that someone else had't done better. Well, what I'm going to take from Nick is a point that I've let slide... you take that idea (yours or whoever's) and you run with it. You keep messing with it until it's your own and although you love it and know it's value, it now bears little relationship to the original thought. If I'd discovered Nick's paintings were crappy derivatives of my own (as I've found in a number of other instances) this post would carry a much different tone. But not. I'm pleased to be used as a point of departure. If you're reading... good luck Nick, nice to meet you, loved finding and reading the interview! (I enjoyed the cartoons, too!)

Where Was I?

Archives - 1991 - Pink Sky Landscape - sml w/c

One thing and another has me totally sidetracked this week, never did find anything resembling routine mode. Spent a couple of hours in the studio yesterday and I think I'm close to wrapping up three or four landscapes. The intent is to take these experiments/ studies/ investigations and have them relate to each other, as well as fit into my norm without striking an odd note of discord. I'll show pics when I'm closer to being satisfied with the effort.

The exercise has done two things... both turned me off of landscapes and turned me on to them all over again. I've been flipping through lots of images: online and off, photos and paintings, eyes wide open to all things between me and the horizon. The imagined paintings are far better than the real efforts. My imagination is fickle and hard to pin down... in other words, I ain't there yet. The genre is so... umm... overpainted (?) I get close to what I think is a terrific direction and stumble across a half dozen images that remind me that it's all been done, even my way. Trouble is, the sheer joy of loving the tree, the rock, the horizon and wanting to depict it in realistic form adds confusion to my abstract intent. There's no need for me to go there... it's not what I do best and my efforts leave me cold. So why does it keep showing up? Trying to take me where I don't want to go? Do I really know what I want or where I'm going? No.

So... once I get these out of the studio I think I'll start a new project, return to pure abstraction and see what happens. Hopefully, by changing my mental mode the subconscious might surprise me... (please!)

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But first, back to the lake for a couple of days. We're designing a boardwalk with steps to make our treks from the house to the water's edge a bit easier plus more boardwalk/decking along the water's edge. Looking ahead to the time when we will appreciate having a flat, stable waking surface on which to take our exercise. Just the process of getting it built will provide plenty of 'exercise' for some time! With cooler fall weather beckoning, motivation isn't a problem...

Arkansas Trip

Back from a quick but mileage filled weekend in Arkansas... a very beautiful state though we were too early to catch the fall color. A few years ago our oldest son turned his accumulated retail experience into a marketing position with the Arkansas State Parks and snatched his dream job. He's a kid who has always preferred the outdoors and now it's his to promote. The day's tour of several intensely beautiful parks was one photo op after another. It's a state that doesn't get the rave scenic reviews of some of our western states but maybe it's best that way... let the mobs go elsewhere!

We also spent a day with our two oldest g-kids... one is at the University of Arkansas studying Technical Theater (she's aiming at Stage Manager right now) and the other in his last year of high school assessing a different kind of future every time we see him. Both have had extensive acting experience in the community and school theaters. They will continue to be fun to watch.

Made my delivery to the Memphis gallery, received some strokes about how my work gets continued good response, making lots of try-out treks... backed up with a nice check and promise of another soon. It's a relatively small gallery with not much space beyond the dedicated show area, but an easy to browse storage area in the back room. So many variables come to play when assessing a quality gallery... definately not a 'set in stone' formula.

Much to do today... did nothing yesterday, still trying to settle back into routine...

Funky And Friends...

I can't let the day go by without a tip o' the hat to the Funky Winkerbean comic strip. If you follow this art form at all, you know that Lisa died of cancer today. It was handled beautifully and has drawn a small tear from me each morning for several weeks. We all know someone with cancer... or we did... or we will. Too much of that particular curse going around. Tom Batiuk (like attic with a b,) the artist, is top notch, turning a depressing weight into a love story.

I followed this strip when the main characters were in high school... then he jumped ahead to when they were adults. Now I understand the strip will jump ahead again and put their kids in high school... time does pass and I like it when my comics move along with it. I look forward to the new adventures.

More than you probably want to know about the strip can be read here.

Where Am I?

On waking, my first thought is to wonder where I am... not as an amnesic, but as one who travels between two places frequently. In both homes, our bed is arranged with a large double window to my right, a TV and digital clock in the corner beyond and the rest of the world off to the left. Easy to be confused in the early morning, still dark. And 'early' it usually is when I check to see if it's a proper hour to start the day. My mind can be racing just as fast at 2:30am as at 5:30am. Depending on how chaotic the mental whirl is, I try to go back to sleep till at least 5-ish but it's often much earlier when I'm up and about.

If at home, I go to the computer and start my day with email, headlines and comics. Very often, my waking thoughts will indicate the seed of an idea suitable for blogging, as it did this morning with the humor in wondering just where the hell I was, yet again!

If at the lake, it's still too dark to wander down to the water with coffee in hand (a long time favorite way to start the morning.) But there are plenty of indoor projects, currently the kid's downstairs bathroom (a big, dark horror... windowless and without any redeeming features.) I've primed and painted all the dark trim including slatted, double folding doors, prepped the horribly damaged walls with a stucco finish, mixed Oops paint from HD to a rich Tuscan ocher and it's beginning to show possibilities. J will add thin crown molding to hide more imperfections at the ceiling and the room will lose it's fright house characteristics. There's still a large bedroom, my old studio and the family room to paint downstairs... and I'd like to turn the laundry room into a happier place... eventually.

So... I discover I'm at the main house and the project of the day will be to print out inventory sheets , double check that about nine paintings are ready to roll and load them in the car. We're headed for Little Rock on Friday, dropping off new inventory in Memphis on the way. We'll visit with oldest son and family on Sat, then Sunday will drive to Fayetteville with g-son to visit his sister at the U of Arkansas. Yes... we've got a g-kid in college ;-) Imagine! Second year, too... would have been her third year but she spent a year in Belgium after HS graduation. Where does the time go? Looking at Annette's little Lucy skipping off ahead of her and her camera... and I remember the same picture with my little Lauren... and now she's in college...

Another project is to try to make the monthly artwalk in our 'other' town tonight... will depend on how my day goes... there's ironing involved... not a good thing... often gets in the way of a good time. Anyway,will talk again next week when we return...

Two Years And Counting...

2005 - Oil Sketch

Mulling over a few things... don't know what made me think to look back in my blog archives but it must have been serendipity... October marks two years of blogging - journaling - talking to and about myself. Was never able to keep a diary but my website was beginning to look more like a scrapbook than a professional brochure and I was an active participant on several art lists... most of which I've since either signed off or now read in digest form with little input. Blogging rules! Wonder what the next technical communication variation will be? I don't see myself in My Space type venues... this serves my purpose well... whatever that purpose might be.

And speaking of that serendipity... take a quick browse through my October, 2005, entries... mostly pics of my new exercise challenge but what is written there could have been typed this month. Still whining about the same ole thing. Those exercises, btw, relate to the title of this blog... I'd planned to get back into shape with oils by painting and documenting 100 realistic studies (spurred on by Duane Keiser and his painting a day thing... he being the primary motivator* of the venue.) I quickly copped out of the exercise but kept the blog. Funny... I'd sometimes wondered what purpose all those wordy posts would serve, would I ever bother to reread? Maybe even learn from? New project: each month I'll read from the same period two years prior and report if there's anything noteworthy. (Now... y'all don't go gettin' all excited!) Geeze... wish I had be one to keep a diary...

(* Wow! Look at Duane now! A sponsor and everything! And the size of that studio... and that donut!)