loads to talk about

So, after last week’s lack-lustre post, this last week (and up-coming week) has been all sorts of full with craziness:  there was Kara Cournard‘s 101 Women Project opening at the Art Garage, there’s Gallery Night coming up on Thursday (have I mentioned that I’m demoing insta-books at the shindig?), there were Seattle Edition in-law visits, there’s an Art Garage fundraiser at Barnes and Noble Saturday as well as the Faerie Festival at Thistledown Greenhouse and the first day of the Shawano Farmer’s Market.

 

Wow, can I have a few more links in there?  *considers*  I could, but I’ll save y’all’s eyes.  Just this once.

 

The 101 Women Project was fantastic and rowdy and loud and all-and-all nifty.  I met a whole bunch of people from the Green Bay Art Scene (I still think that we need to have some sort of monthly get-together in order to be drunken and talk about art), and they are a nice bunch of people.  There’s even a lovely Green Bay Council Person who attended the shindig and is endeavoring to preserve and help to grow the Green Bay Art Scene.

 

I had a really good time even though I was technically doing that faux-work thing and was having the “I’m so painfully shy that I think I’ll just hide beneath the counter for the evening.  Thanks.” day.  Towards the end, I managed to chat and network a bit and be a charming squid.

 

Also, as y’all might or might not know, I now have a studio at the Art Garage, but I’m the Art Garage’s Featured Studio Artist for June (so I had a third wall to fill in addition to my gallery wall and my studio wall–there were a lot of inventory sheets to fill out).

 

 

 

*POINTS*  See!  That’s me!  In the front gallery and everything!  It’s very exciting.  Additionally, I have a section of wall in the main gallery that I currently have my most recent color field diptych up on.

 

 

 
I’ve been having a color field thing since moving to Wisconsin; I think it has something to do with color saturation here. It’s really phenomenal.

 

This particular color field piece is on display at the Art Garage in Green Bay at the moment. The idea for it came from a tv series I used to watch in the 90s called Beyond Reality. In this episode, an artist keeps painting bits and pieces of a monster that lives in his mind and that is attempting to come into being. In this diptych, I have portrayed a calmer, less demonic creature in an abstracted form with only an “eye” really recognizable as anything, possibly.

 

And my tAG studio is wonderfully cracktastic.  Full-to-bursting, quixotic, and whimsical–just like me.

 

 

 

So, yeah, that’s what’s been going on in my crazy artist life, and an explanation as to why I haven’t gotten the Project Sheets up to share.  *hands*

 

Remember, if y’all are in the Green Bay area on Thursday, come on down to the Art Garage for Gallery Night, and watch me confuse people with insta-books!

 

Courage.

*languishes*/ETA *squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee*

***Wordpress is still not spacing correctly.  *FLAILS*  Mad squid is mad.***

     I’m waiting to hear about The Art Garage competition I entered.  I haven’t heard anything yet.

     *is jittery and crazy to know*

ETA:  I just got the call that my both of my pieces were accepted! *EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE*

     Totally compounded by the fact that I now volunteer there.  Talk about a conflict of interests.  <–I was told it wasn’t, but y’all know me, I can’t help but be a worry-wart.

     So, I had promised that I was going to post pictures of the sculptures that I entered.  I was waiting until today because–I don’t know–it seemed appropriate to wait until the competition is over?  Does that even make sense?

     So, my (not-so) little friends.

     The prompt for the show was–

Seeking works of art in all media that focus on personal memories and the essence of our past. Artwork will need to be created with some recycled materials in order to promote the importance of being environmentally responsible.

     And the application asked for–

A brief artist statement must be submitted with the images explaining what inspired this piece of artwork and what recycled materials were used.

     So, my first piece is unnamed friends:  from the 100 acre wood, and it is, basically, a tree stump (yes, there is a joke in here about my nickname being ‘Trie [tree]).

     This thing was crazy to make and is freaking huge.  It’s about 4 feet tall, hand built (and sewn) from brown paper grocery bags (building a tree from dead trees makes sense to me), has a felt face with buttons, and has crocheted accents and a cardboard interior frame.

     It took a really long time to build.

     The other piece is also quite large.

     Okay, it’s huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge too.  Nearly 4 feet again.

     I keep making things that are nearly the size of me. o.O

     The second piece is unnamed friends:  narwhal, and it is built from old coats that were purchased from the local Goodwill.

     Again with the “it took forever to build.”  Considering I hand-sew everything, that makes sense, but then again, I wouldn’t get the same fluidity and–yes, I’ll admit it–awkwardness if I didn’t hand-sew.

     The artist statement for these pieces was–

The inspiration for unnamed friends:  from the 100 acre wood and unnamed friends:  narwhal comes from a combination of kawaii culture, children’s storybook narratives like Winnie the Pooh, and memories of my own most beloved toys.  The scale of the sculptures, in relationship to an adult, evokes the feeling of childhood where everything feels large and strange—even one’s toys.  The materials, even though they are primarily recycled, gesture to those parts of childhood that are recycled from others:  clothes that have been handed down, toys that have been inherited or made from old clothes, and books that belonged to older siblings.

The recycled materials in unnamed friends:  from the 100 acre wood include brown paper grocery bags, cardboard from a shipping container (ironically from Dick Blick), and felt inherited from another artist.  The recycled materials in unnamed friends:  narwhal include a leather coat and a suede-and-faux-fur coat from Goodwill.

     So, those are my friends.  They took weeks and are taking up huge amounts of real estate in my current studio, but they are so freaking cool.

     I shall sleep the sleep of the accomplished tonight. \o/

An ode to the perfect studio–

It’s bigger than a bread box–wait, that’s most things.

It can jump over tall buildings in a single bound.  <–That’s Superman.  *voice over* No copyright infringement is intended.  Al rights remain with the creators of Superman.

It stays minty fresh all day long.  Or was that gum?  Or toothpaste?

Oh, as they say, well.  It’s the perfect studio.

The Husband and I have been searching for a more permanent place to take up residence in the wilds of Wisconsin, and we are all lease sign-y and move in on May 1st.

*dancing blue elephants and confetti and cabbages*

The best part is not the new place to live, but what the new place has that I have never had before:  a garage.  “What’s so great about a garage, squid?”  I hear you asking yourselves.

*points*  Yeah, you in the back;  I heard you.

What’s so great about this garage is  that it is heated, finished, huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge, and *pause for dramatic effect* it has a drain.  In the floor.  That means that I can make paper all.  Year.  Long!

Did I mention it was huge?

Now, let me tell y’all.  I have never had a studio that wasn’t tiny and/or unheated.  Which sucks.  Out loud.

Let me show you pictures of my previous (and current) studios.

To the right, there, is the studio I had in DeKalb.  It was an enclosed front porch.  Had no heat.  No air.  No storage.  No space to change my tiny squid mind.

And cluttered.  Very cluttered.

So not a good thing.

It did have really good light though.

Now, my current studio is in one of the extra bedrooms.  It is tiny, tiny, tiny–like a sneeze tiny.  It has magically craptastic light.  Even less storage, if that’s possible.  (The low drawers behind my stool are holding, mostly, clothes.)

It’s saving grace?  There is heat in it.  I am never a cold squid–sometimes, I’m a bit too warm because I get over-zealous with the space heater, but that’s not the room’s fault.

But, y’all can see how small it is.  This picture was taken from the door to the studio.  It is also where my Mac laptop is housed and my printer because it was really the only place that would work.

There’s also a big old chunk of the room I can’t use because it’s being used as storage for stuff that the Husband moved in when he first moved up here.

Other pictures of the studio–

All of the boat stuff is so not my idea of a good time, but it’s a furnished/decorated place by a lake.  What can I really expect?

So, yeah, that’s what my current studio looks like.  Soon–oh so soon!–there will be my magnificent, beautiful studio!

*looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooongs for it*

Also, WordPress is stupid and not spacing this post remotely in the way that it has been told to.  *is really mad*

Nothing to see here. Move along.

The last couple of days have been kind of an odd.

 

I stayed up extremely late (like 5 AM) last night because I had more of my unnamed friends decided that they had to escape from my head at that particular moment.

 

Pushy buggers.

 

(They haven’t been photographed yet.  My little revenge.  *cue mad scientist laughter*)

 

Therefore, productive =/=me today.

 

So sue me.

 

Also, yesterday, I did some updating of the images section of the blog.  It’s not remotely done yet, but there are a few things with connected concept.  Always a bonus.

 

Yamato Sakura

 

But!  I would like to share with y’all today one of my favorite artists of all time:  Aya Kato.  <–Why, yes, that is a Facebook page. \o/

 

Little Red Riding Hood: Encounter

Aya is a Japanese artist–arguably a superflat artist, but not because of the critical looking at consumerism or at sexual fetishism (although, some of her pieces definitely seem to have a fetishistic element to them).  I would consider Aya a superflat artist due to the way that she literally flattens surfaces to create depth and shallowness at the same time while combining traditional Japanese art (remember, manga has been around in Japan since the Edo period, and all Japanese superflat art inherently will connect back to that historical moment whether it wants to or not) with modern technology.  Darling (2001) writes in “Plumbing the depths of superflatness” that

 

“Yet in spite of its almost self-deprecating etymology, “Superflat” is far from unnuanced or superficial and has cracked open the discourse about contemporary Japanese culture and society. Its reverberations are now starting to be felt in Western cultural circles. Like a Japanese transformer toy, it has the capacity to move and bend to engage a wide range of issues: from proposing formal historical connections between classic Japanese art and the anime cartoons of today to a Pop Art-like cross-contamination of high and low to a social critique of contemporary mores and motivations. As such, “Superflat” requires exami nation from a number of different angles in order to be fully appreciated and understood, and the best place to start is with Murakami himself.”

 

New Japan: Learn a Lesson from the Past

Cinderella: Metamorphosis

 

If we look at Aya’s art, cultural contamination is everywhere from the meta-narrative ofher fairytale pieces to the highly conceptual constructions of her cityscapes.  The longing for childhood combats with sexual knowledge.  The traditional (and not-so-traditional) East confronts the West.

 

And, it’s all wrapped up in a candy colored awesomeness.

 

Puss in Boots

I think the only complaint I have is that, because she is so prolific, Aya culls some of the work from her online portfolio, and my favorite piece–Uma:  Puss in Boots–was taked down.  But!  I am a bad and stalkery internet denizen, and I have a copy of it from when it was still up.  <–I am very, very bad.

Birthday Update.

So, sad squid is sad.  I wasn’t able to go to The Art Garage‘s Gallery Night due to Winter Storm Francesca and the 19+ inches of snow she dumped on our heads.

 

As y’all can see.  Snow.  Lots.  Of.  SNOW!  /o\

 

It’s mostly gone now.  o.O

 

I also didn’t get to retrieve my prizes for placing in the College of Menominee Nation‘s World Water Day art competition sponsored by the Sustainability Institute.

 

*this is me annoyed*

 

But!  I did get to go to The Art Garage yesterday with the lovely Sara and Spawn #2.  It looks like I may be doing some volunteering for the nice peoples.  I encourage everyone else in the Green Bay area to volunteer also.  They are completely dependent upon volunteer help, and they are a totally worthy institution to volunteer for–bring art to the community!

 

Also, if anyone is a local Green Bay artist and would like to be shown at The Art Garage, they have space for rent that’s really reasonable.

 

And The Husband got me the best teacup for my birthday.  If y’all hadn’t guessed, I like all things tentacled, and Anthropologie has the perfect teacup for those who are cephalopod obsessed.

 

It’s really fantastic.  The handle is textured like a tentacle, and there’s a picture of a little sailing vessel on the inside so that the implication is the tentacle is coming to drag the ship down into the briny depths.

 

*happy sighs*

 

Definitely a present that some who knows you really well would get you.

 

I’m also doing some revamping to the artwork section of the blog.  It’s going kinda slowly.  As always, the “instant gratification” part of viewing my art is to go check it out on my Flickr.  One day, everything will be consolidated!  (raise you hand if you think this is a complete and utter lie *raises hand*)

 

So, just ’cause I can and because it’s fun to watch Mr. Morph be all flumexed and silly, a video.  Morpheus the Kitty-Dog trying to make friends with The Little Black Cat and failing miserably.

 

I shouldn’t think it’s funny, but it really is.

 

 

Poor Morph!  It’s just lucky he’s pretty.

World Water Day=snowpacalypse

It’s kinda ironic, if you think about it.  Not that the now isn’t beautiful (and I have totally been taking night photos of the snow storm–they are forth-coming).

 

So, last week, I told y’all about the two pieces that I submitted for “The Voice of Water” competition at College of Menominee Nation‘s Sustainability Institute.

 

Both of my pieces placed!  The photograph placed third, and the painting placed second.  Honestly, the third place means more to me because there was more competition for it, but both of the pieces placing is very exciting since neither medium is my preferred medium.  <–Although, the painting is kinda sculptural due to the use of modeling paste medium.

 

What I didn’t remember to tell y’all is that “The Voice of Water” prompt was for World Water Day (I’m not sure I actually knew it at the time I entered).  I went to the little showing at CMN because I totally wanted to see the Best of Show (it was an art quilt; it was awesome).  I also wanted to see the little kids interpretations of water.  They were looking really good.  Loads of potential.

 

Also, today–because World Water Day and a snow storm just wasn’t enough–I did my guest lecture thing for the Husband’s Humanities class.  There were a whole four people, but it seemed to go well.  Since an hour-and-ten-minutes really isn’t enough time to do more than a cursory drive by of the 20th (and 21st) century, I did a more “let’s talk about how we perceive and define art and how that has changed through the 20th century” thing.  The kiddos talked (*shock* *awe*), and there was even a bit of contention between students about what constituted art.  I did a drive-by of ontology and a reminder of semiotics, and I got the chance to show them some of my favorite artists.

 

It was shiny.  Probably in my top ten teaching experiences.  And!  There wasn’t all the normal pressure of teaching since I was just a guest!

 

Later this week, there will likely be another blog.  I wanna show y’all the night photography I’ve been doing (got a new tripod, thanks to the Husband), I can tell y’all about the fabulous coffee and cheese prizes I got for my art placing, and I can tell y’all about Gallery Night at The Art Garage.

 

*points*  If you’re going to be in Green Bay Thursday night, come to the Gallery Night!

Obviousness.

Okay, obviously, I didn’t get this posted yesterday.  After I turned in the competition pieces, I spiked a temp and was essentially useless the rest of the day.

 

I’m not really sure today has been better, but I’ve been productive:  made three pendants, a morgue-board, and cleaned the house (including changing the bedding).  <–I am a super-exciting person, aren’t I?

 

The competition that I entered into is hosted by College of Menominee Nation‘s Sustainability Institute; it’s called “The Voice of Water.”  I entered two pieces:  one photograph and one painting.  The photograph y’all might be familiar with since I’ve posted it over on my Flickr-stream and my Facebook photos.  I took this photograph on a super foggy day and then manipulated the contrast and color so that it came out in blues rather than greys.  For me, this photo typifies water:  not only does it gesture at fog and cold, but it also has the murkiness and reflectivity of a lake or a swamp.

 

I really think this is my favorite photograph of the ones that I have taken up here.  It makes me think of mangrove swamps and lurking crocodilians.  Two of my favorite images.

 

The other “Voice of Water” pieces is a painting that incorporated a polymer acrylic image transfer of the above photograph.  This piece is painted on a piece of random cardboard I had.  I was originally going to paint it on a piece of  book board and frame the piece in a vintage frame that I had spray painted pale blue (it has since become my morgue-board), but I didn’t have any book board that would fit the frame.  This piece was painted with spray paint, acrylic paint, modeling paste medium, illumination medium, and polymer acrylic medium with a polymer acrylic digital transfer.

 

The piece itself tries to encompass all the qualities of water from fog to ice to white caps.  It also expresses the patience of water, the destructive/regenerative nature of water, and the danger of water.

 

I like the concept behind it.

 

There’s something like 20 hours of work in that painting and a whole lot of drying time.  But, they’ve been submitted.  Hopefully, the judges don’t think they suck out loud.  <–Welcome to the insecure-artist section of the day.  *eyeroll heard ’round the world*

 

I’d feel more confident about this piece if it weren’t so completely Impressionistic to me, and I’m like the only person in the history of the universe who really dislikes Monet and the Impressionists.

 

Yes, I am that person.  *hangs head in not-shame*

two posts in one day

There’s something wrong here.

 

I was just thinking about all of the different paths that I have taken in life.  I’ve been a hard core Classics geek, a literature and theory wonk, an art educator, an English instructor, a Writing Center tutor, a writer, and an artist to name a few, and the only one that has never chafed was being an artist.  Now, I’ve moved to the wilds of Wisconsin to pursue that artist-y-ness, and I find myself a hairsbreadth away from a panic attack on a regular basis–in a good way, I think.

 

The question is:  Is this an indication that I’ve found the “right” path?

 

Well, not right path because there is no such think as “right,” but y’all know what I mean.

 

The Husband is completely supporting this craziness (which is awesome-upon-awesome), and for the first time in a really long time, I feel like I’m productive.  I mean, seriously, I keep finishing pieces.  I wake up in the morning, not because I’ve had enough sleep, but because the things in my head need to get out. <–This sounds crazy, but this is way better than it used to be.

 

So, path.  Here.  And me.  Now.  It seems to be working.

 

And, a photograph from the photography series I’m working on right now.

 

 

I am currently obsessed with this object. <3

…no more cutting little bits of paper for a while \o/

You have no idea how happy this makes me.  All that I have done for the last month is cut little bits of paper and glue them into/onto other things.

 

*is very tired of it*

 

But!  The piece for the Writing Center was completed and sent off to the conference it was going to (and was, evidently, a roaring success! *SQUEE*) and my piece for the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery’s Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition was submitted yesterday!

 

I dunno; I don’t think I’ll win (’cause that would be hubris and crazy-talk), but I’m really pleased with my piece. It’s somewhere between Duchamp, Joseph Cornell, and William Morris in terms of how it’s constructed and composed, but the idea behind it is connected to autobiographical theory, particularly Baudrillard, Judith Butler, and Sidonie Smith.

 

 

 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

 

 

Speaker for the Dead:  A Self-Portrait

2008

mixed-media/collage/assemblage

 

As an artist creating representative portraiture in a highly referential, (post) postmodern world that is heavily reliant upon referentiality and the interenet, I think of portraits as representational works meant to capture a person’s personality, their Self, yet, in attempting to capture this Self, the artist is also imposing their view upon the subject.

 

Self-portraits theoretically act the same way.

 

Yet, as we create ourselves, the only ways in which we can express these Selves is to use externalized elements:  words, images, colors, songs, etc.

 

When we create others, we do the same thing.

 

We Other them and, in doing so, we Other ourselves.

 

We can never see one another completely:  physically or mentally.  Even if you have a mirror to show the sides that you can’t see, these are just simulations.

 

A portrait is not different.

 

My piece works to straddle the lines between identity and portrait since a portrait is about an imposed identity.

 

So, that’s my entry.  Whatcha think?

…I am remiss; here is an art-related post in recompense about Sarah Moon, photographer

I adore Sarah Moon.  I ran across her in one of those tiny, general overview books you can buy at Barnes and Nobles or Border entitled The Photobook.  I bought it on a whim years ago when I was still in academia and hadn’t even really begun to consider a professional career (is it a career when you aren’t really making any money?) as an artist. The Moon photo which appeared in The Photobook was her Morgan from 1983. According to The Photobook‘s entry, the figure portrayed in the picture is Morgan le Fey.

 

 

 

To me, Morgan appears to be a remnant, a child-form, aging backwards like Merlin, from the depths of Arthurian legend. The photo itself shows the child-form Morgan standing before a backdrop-forest placed in the middle of an ancient alley-street, cobbled and decayed from time. This Morgan, displaced into a modern context, carries her myth with her, wrapped around her like the tartan clothes she wears.

 

As I continued to find more of Moon’s pieces, I found compositions filled with fairytales in miniture, grotesque images where beauty and decay meet in a seamless unity. Images where the purely beautiful and disenfranchised are juxtaposed with pieces that are reminiscent of Victorian death-books, memento mori. Places are more-than-inhabitable and the places Moon creates are inhabitated by that which will consume the viewer, given half-a-chance. These images, whether beautiful, grotesque, mythic, or touchable reality, echo with “choric” emotion. Chora is a philosophical term meaning “hollow” and is often used in regards to empty wombs. These choric places are filled, paradoxically, with violence and light, death and whimsy.

 

This is why Moon appeals to me. Her images are not just “pretty”, though one could interact with them in such a way. These encapsulated visual stories, because the story is all there if one looks closely enough, do not end in “happily ever after” or “the end”. The story is still going, still being told behind the picture, to the sides, in the liminality of a reconsidered moment and the ‘tween places that she captures. There is death, life, birth, and stagnation present in each photo. Like slinking crocodillians, Moon’s photographs are horrific and wonderous, capturing time and space in the split second before dissolution.

 

About the photographer: Sarah Moon was born in England in 1940. She studied drawing and was a model in both London and Paris during the early 1960s (specifically 1960-1966). In 1967, Moon became a fashion photographer and a publicity filmmaker. Moon, I think, still resides in Paris and works in illustration, fashion, and still-life, black and white, color, and utilizes sepia coloring on matte paper, a convention used in the 1920 that has all but disappeared.

 

Sarah Moon on the web:

Sarah Moon’s Phantasmagoria

A review about Sarah Moon on Coilhouse

A review of Sarah Moon on Coincidences: Discussions on the Art and Craft of Photography, and Other Digressions

 

Editor’s Note:  This was written in reply to a comment, but, on the off chance that other’s don’t necessarily read comments, my response has been placed here for your reading pleasure.

 

Honestly, I think the original photo might actually be a sepia print. That’s my memory of it. My copy was photocopied and, later, scanned from a can’t-take-it-from-the-library book.

But, I’m pretty sure that it was sepia.

 

That’s it.  Continue on about your day.