After the flood II

It's a small, dark picture taken by my phone that is not an iphone. But proof that I've made it through this year, and that I'm still working.  That when I sit down and put paint to canvas something essential starts to feel right with the world again.

Another in the series of paintings about land/water, nature/man, and the spaces where these things meet. Inspired by the once in a lifetime flooding of my hometown last year & the complete undoing of the relationship I had spent the last 4+ years building.  I'm glad I have produced something to put on this blog again.

Dwelling

dwell

   [dwel]  Show IPA verb,dwelt or dwelled, dwell·ing, noun

verb (used without object)

1.

to live or stay as a permanent resident; reside.

2.

to live or continue in a given condition or state: to dwell in happiness.

3.

to linger over, emphasize, or ponder in thought, speech, or writing (often followed by on  or upon ): to dwell on a particular point in an argument.

I'll be showing Dwelling an installation of 400+ paintchips at fotoeffect gallery next week. Fotoeffect, one of the Everett Station Lofts located at NW 6th and Everett, will be hosting the opening next Thursday April 5 from 6-10p.  

About Dwelling:

Dwelling is comprised of 432 hand-sewn paintchips arranged in a grid. This work explores my interest in the relationship of the individual within the group, as well as the aesthetic relationship of multiples. Dwelling explores the idea that each home is both unique and similar. It draws on the emotional memory of home. It also explores what it means to be a homeowner during the ‘great recession’, the culture of home improvement, the idea of setting down roots, suburbia and the idealization of home ownership.

I look forward to seeing you there.

after the flood

after the flood, 2011

oil on canvas

40"x30"

I've been meaning to post an actual completed image of the newest painting for awhile now.

experiments

playing around with a new idea

mixed media collage with vellum, string and ink, found image

new painting

I finished a new painting after spending a few hours in the poorly insulated/not heated garage studio. I love that I have the space even if I can't feel my toes that well when I come in for the night.

I'm really liking this painting and am excited with ideas for the next one and looking ahead to 2012.

after the flood, 2011

oil on canvas

40"x30"

after the flood (detail), 2011
oil on canvas
40"x30"

Its been far too long since I posted here.....

Usually that means I've been working and I have.

Completed the garage into art studio renovation.

Since my last post, I've finished a new small painting, re-worked a larger painting and started another largish one.

Gotten my completed paintchip total over 400! Here's some pictures of 384 paintchips installed in the new studio in two different grids.

winter makes me want to stay inside

and drink tea and watch movies and listen to the rain and make things. I've been sewing paintchips and thinking about what I want this project to become. My process has always been to try trust the making. Its a process that fills me with both wonder and self doubt. I've been ruminating and sewing and starting to figure it out. I want it to be ambitious. I've been thinking about a stopping number. I'm over 300, 317 I think.
I want to make a chart out of them, or an infographic, or a long line that goes to unexpected places.

new art

made for the love show

Title: the land of no words

Media: silverpoint and thread on paper

Size: 14 3/4" x 11 3/4"

Year: 2011

I should probably have something more articulate to say about it, but I'm up past my bedtime downloading audiobooks to listen to while i do the most boring work ever tomorrow (aka my day job).

Love show details can be found here: http://portlandloveshow.com/

paintchip update

I've been steadily adding to the paintchip pile. So far I've got 288 completed, and I'm starting to think about the ways I want to expand the project. About all the houses/apartments I've ever lived in & about what the place we live says about us.

So here are some spare bedroom installed pictures.

another place to see my work

So I put a bunch of work Saatchi online tonight, and in the midst of trying to describe the kinds of paintings I've been making lately this spewed out. It seems right, this body of work is about the things I like to spend time looking at, and in a very roundabout way a comment on the struggle to find that balance between urban/rural/wild. I'm drawn to the kinds of places where that exist on those edges. I've long admired the beauty found in abadoned buildings and at the waters edge.

i make paintings. this series is a reflection of my fascination with the spaces where land/sea, nature/built environment overlap and try to co-exist. i'm smitten with the coast, the columbia river gorge, rivers of all sizes, mountains in the distance, broken down buildings, bridges, rain drops, trees, rock and earthen layers, pictorial logic & waves.

I'm headed down to the basement studio to clean and organize and make it more work friendly and hopefully work on a new little painting.

i should really be updating this more...

I keep meaning to update this blog more, and I really don't have a good reason why I haven't. I think my dislike of the quality of images my little point and shoot digital camera produces, along with my general ability to distract myself have something to do with it. Nonetheless I keep plugging along. Making things and taking pictures of them.

A few weeks ago I finished another large-ish painting. Another in my ongoing series about land and water and nature and manmade and the intersections between all of these things. Inspired first by a wonderfully decrepid building I saw on the side of the road somewhere between Alsea and Waldport.

until the rain comes pouring down, 2010
oil on canvas
40"x30"

until the rain comes pouring down (detail), 2010
oil on canvas
40"x30"

And finally, I'm pretty close to finished with a new (yet to be titled) smaller painting.

Paint chip installation - Nested

I probably should have posted this while the show was still up. But I had the opportunity this summer to be in an excellently curated group show called "I want to feel at home here" this summer at Milepost5.

Meg did a bang up job curating her first show. And I feel lucky to have been included with so many great artists from around the country. Here are a couple of images from the show itself. I ended up showing 180 of my ever growing paintchip collection, arranged in a grid 18 long by 10 high. It turned out great, even if it took a ridiculously long time to hang in a straight line (5+ hours) and only slightly less to take down (3 hours).

On to the images.

4X6

I've spent the last week furiously sewing circles onto slightly larger paintchips for a show in hong kong. It was one of those things I signed up for, then put on the back burner. It happened as we moved into the house and got engaged.

Least you think I've been a total slacker, I've been making art for another show, planning a wedding, settling into a house, setting up an art studio, along with a few other things.

where land meets water

I learned a new word last week, Riparian. A riparian zone is the space where land meets water, that special ecosystem found for example at a riverbank. Ecotones and Riparian zones.

Application for a new gallery finished. Two upcoming exhibitions (more info soon). The creative juices are starting to flow, I woke up this morning thinking about combining papercuts with larger paintchip samples, but for now I'm gonna post my new painting, "where land meets water." Appropriately today I read a quote today:

"A painting is never finished - it simply stops in interesting places." ~ Paul Gardner

I feel likes its in a pretty interesting place at the moment, perhaps not quite finished but at a pretty interesting place nonetheless.

where land meets water
oil on canvas, 2010
40"x48"

neglected but not forgotten - 192 paintchips

There's been a lot of change in the last two months. A new job, a loss of a new job. A new house with room for a studio, an end to the Sellwood studio. An engagement!
I haven't been making art like I want to be, but i've been making some. And painting rooms and unpacking and planting strawberries, and planning a garden, and today I finally set the easel up in the new house. I feel the itch, and know I'll have more to post soon.

Through it all, i've still been sewing paintchips, a project that's travelled with me now to my 3rd house in 18 months and grown much larger than I ever thought possible. I spent the better part of the afternoon hanging them up today in the house - seeing what I've got done, trying to incorporate some none striped paintchips into the mix, and I think they work. Much better than anticipated, and counting. 192 paintchips so far. I'll break 200 for sure. Sometime soon I think and planning for their public debut.

gettin my love on

At the 5th Annual Portland Loveshow.

This year I submitted the painting I did for my Nana after she passed away in 2008.

I posted a blog about it when I finished it last year, which can be read here.

It took me a long time to be ready to paint it, when my granpa died the year before the painting came fast, this one was slower, needing more time to sit and be nurtured - which seems so very fitting for a person who was always there with a hug or a kind word or a batch of cookies.

Elegy: for Nana, with Love
Oil on Canvas
36"x48"
2009

Show details:
For the 3rd year, I'm participating in the love show. I haven't been quite on top of getting the word out, but there's something like 350 artists participating, so I'm guessing it will be a crazy fun filled opening and you should come.

Opening Reception

February 12th, 2010

Olympic Mills Commerce Center

7pm-12am

Free! All-Ages!

Olympic Mills
107 SE Washington Street,
Portland, OR 97214

sometimes I love my job

Its winter in Portland, which means lots of gray, rainy days where there's no real light. Its hard to get motivated to leave the apartment, and get to the studio. So I'm a bit behind in posting here. Today there was blue skies and I loaded the dog in the car and drove to the coast to get inspired. I walked the beach at Gearhart and found the boatyard in Astoria and took lots of reference pictures. I'm in that creative place that is hard to document. It involves a lot of thinking. Work has started on another large painting, re-invigorated with salty air and a little bit of sunshine I plan to have more finished images to post soon.

140 sewn paintchips

As I've been working on both the sewn paintchip project and the silverpoint drawings, I've slowly realized that they're part of the same body of work. I've got the first draft of an artist statement started (see bottom of post). 140 seems like the right number of paintchips for now. I've got about 20 more finished (some repeats), and for as much as I'd like to have all 350. The paintchips I've been using are no longer available at Lowe's. So, for now at least the paintchip project is at a pause. I've still got some for sale at etsy.

nested: paintchips

variable dimensions aprox. 40"x45" as shown
2008-2009
thread, paper

nested: paintchips (detail)

variable dimensions aprox. 40"x45" as shown
2008-2009
thread, paper

Artist Statement:

I am inspired by the tension found in the convergence of new technologies and traditional art making techniques.

I've long been interested in how information is visualized - data mapping, cartography and infographics have been sources of inspiration. This body of work is an exploration into the ways in which identity is formed and changed by the convergence of new technologies (such as social networking), the natural environment, and relationships. I am fascinated by the ways Internet and social networking have transformed the ways which people communicate both on & offline. This transformation leaves me nostalgic and drawn to making art that is labor intensive in mediums such as hand sewing and silverpoint.

With the silverpoint, I am drawn both to the quality of the mark and the history of this method of drawing. These large scale silverpoint drawings, through their use of intersecting fingerprint-like shapes, explore the relationship between the unique and the group. The clustered nature of these drawings also evoke the networks, or clusters found both online and in nature. The individual shapes in these works are reminiscent of repetitive ovular shapes frequently found in "natural" organic forms such as fingerprints, tree rings, and mussel shells.

This idea is also explored through a series of hand sewn paintchips. Each paintchip features sewn concentric circles that call to mind nests and serve as a metaphor for the idea of home; exploring the nature of home and identity and how this is formed and informed by relationships and environment. I am particularly interested in the ways in which identity can vary between mediums such as the difference between one's online persona and identity in person or at work for example.

Both the silverpoint drawings and sewn paintchips also explore the relationship between the individual and group through the use of unique multiples. The groupings suggest the ways in which people are both part of many different yet intersecting groups, and the ways in which we seem to naturally form attachments and groups with people or things that can be both alike and yet different from ourselves. This phenomena can be observed in the natural environment but is now also evident when viewing online groups and has become more apparent as sites like Twitter and Facebook have expanded the ways in which we form connections. There seems to be both an enlarging and narrowing aspect to this way of communicating, and this body of work grew out of my interest in this subject.

new silverpoint

Here's the hopefully finished new silverpoint drawing. The 3rd I've completed so far this size.

untitled V (silverpoint)
30"x26"
2009
silverpoint on paper

untitled V (silverpoint) (detail)

30"x26"
2009
silverpoint on paper

a new painting

I've been neglecting this blog a bit in the past month for time in the art studio. I'm working on a proposal for a show that will include the silverpoint and paintchip images, and I've finished a new painting. I'm going to do a few different posts, but here it goes.

new painting:

by land & by sea

11"x17"
2009
oil on canvas

detail views:

by land & by sea (detail 1)
11"x17"
2009
oil on canvas

by land & by sea (detail 2)
11"x17"
2009
oil on canvas