I Love School

I like my job.  I like filling out paperwork.  I like balancing bank accounts to the penny – every day.   I like paying bills, and chatting with my co-workers, and taking a walk after lunch.  I really like writing stock market analysis and company newsletters.  I even like long-term business strategery.

But I LOVE school.  I always have.  And that is no doubt why I continued to go to school long after everyone else stopped.  And why I still take online classes and study French with Rosetta Stone. 

And yet, it could be time for me to stop being a student.  Why?  Because I’m going to be a teacher!  Yay me!  The newest Adjunct Professor at Three Rivers Community College!  History of Women in the Arts, thank you very much.  And you still have time to enroll for the Spring Semester.

One of the reasons I’m excited to teach is that I had the amazing good fortune to work as Richard Mehl’s TA last year in his Visual Languages class for undergraduates.  Richard’s presentations and assignments were creative and difficult, and his students rose to every challenge.  The longer I attended the class, the more I wanted to do the homework.  I didn’t have time to do the homework, and I was supposed to be helping the actual students, but there is no doubt that my work changed due to the exposure I had to Richard’s graphic design/advertising/color theory approach.

I found myself doing more collage, more mixed media, using patterned papers and layering drawing on pattern on pattern.  And every week I thought about what I would have created for class if I had been a student and not the TA.

Richard makes a real difference in the lives of his students.  When we had class critiques, there was excitement in the air.  I hope someday I can be half as good a teacher.  If you want to see what I mean, now you can, because Richard has created an online presentation of his class, which is available through CreativeLive at

https://www.creativelive.com/courses/color-designers-exploration-theory-application-richard-mehl

I cannot recommend this course enough.  I have already told you about Richard’s book Playing With Color (Rockport Publishers, ISBN 978-1-59253-808-9) and I still think it belongs in your art library, but nothing can take the place of hearing him explain the concepts and show examples himself.

Happy New Year!  May you enjoy an inspired 2015!

Luscious Paintings

Yellow Wallpaper by Jennifer Wheeler

Yellow Wallpaper by Jennifer Wheeler

It will come as no surprise to regular readers of this blog that I love painting.  I also love drawing and sculpture and video and assemblage and collage and….  But I love painting in a visceral way that also makes me love to paint.  I love paintings that use vibrant colors and mixed textures.  I love abstractions that create space.  And I especially love how painters make decisions.  Thick or thin?  Big or small?  Square or rectangular or round or other?  Orange or pink?

I love how viewers can be convinced by a door handle that is only a swipe of paint, or a face that isn’t quite there, or edges that are lost in shadow.  I love how the best painters leave their pictures unfinished so that the viewer can complete the work for himself.

The subject of a painting might be a table with a vase, but the emotional content might be loneliness.  Or someone else could see it as freedom.  Is the paint standing in for something else?  If it hugs an object on the picture plane, do you feel warmer?

From Jennifer Wheeler's Circus series

From Jennifer Wheeler’s Circus series

Jennifer Wheeler is a talented painter (and friend) whose complex compositions reflect her subject matter of childhood, childish colors, and toys.  But her content is all about intimate chaos and childhood dangers, including early sexualization.  Her current solo show (through October 31) is at Three Rivers Community College Gallery in Norwich Connecticut. (http://www.threerivers.edu/Div_academics/Gallery/theGallery.shtml) You can see more of her delightful and frightening work at www.jenniferawheeler.com.

Another painter friend, Morgan Wilcox Beckwith has a solo show through September 30 at Studio M in Mystic, CT, which highlights her luscious paintings of food.  (www.studiomframing.com) Like Wheeler, Beckwith often dispenses with the horizon line in order to immerse the viewer in the world she creates.  Her use of paint combined with subject matter makes my mouth water.  She comments on the ubiquity of food in our society and how images of food create a demand for it.  In her paintings, what is making us hungry is toxic paint, not anything nutritious.  Are we learning that what we crave might be fatal to us? www.morganbeckwith.com.

Morgan Beckwith

Morgan Beckwith

We are all surrounded by artists, and it is worth listening to them as well as looking at their work.

In Connecticut

Isabella Brandt by Rubens

Isabella Brandt by Rubens

What I miss most about the city is the ability, even the necessity, of walking to everything. The movies!  The drugstore!  The bank!  Now when I take a walk I don’t get anywhere.  I miss my studio, and my studio apartment, both emblematic of my freedom to make art, day or night.  I miss my art-school classmates and teachers, although I don’t miss critiques or criticism.  One of the really great things about finishing my degree is knowing I can make my own art.  Not that I am, exactly.

What I don’t miss about the city are the dogs and the dirt, the subways, and feeling nervous walking at night.  In Connecticut I have a house which is enormous compared to my place in New York.  There are rooms with nothing in them.  I have a basement and my own washing machine and dryer.  There is grass.  There are trees.  Life is good.

It is my choice to be here, yet I am occasionally nostalgic for the crowds and the street noises and the lights that shone in my windows all night long.  Living in exurbia (beyond the suburbs, but not quite the country), I have learned to be wary of sounds again.  Two nights ago, I could have sworn there was a bear in my house about midnight, given the scuffling that I heard.  Sadly I could not blame it on neighbors or elevators.  It was just me and a random grizzly that had broken in somehow.  I slept with the lights on because otherwise it is DARK.  In the morning I tried to convince myself that it might have been the plumbing (no signs of bear).  But I’m still not sure….

Vincent van Gogh

Vincent van Gogh

For the past three months I’ve been decompressing about school, and spending a lot of time at work, but now I’m starting to get the itch to paint.  Bright colors and thick globs of oil paint – yes.  Or thin gouaches on pen and ink drawings.  Maybe I’ll make Barbie pictures again.  Some people in art school hated those!  I’m setting up my new studio, and I’ve started to dream about art. I’ve been looking at some favorites: Rubens’ portrait of Isabella Brandt, van Gogh landscapes, and Wayne Thiebaud, always.

Here are the first two drawings I’ve done since I graduated.  I should have been working, but instead I grabbed a brown sketch book.  I drew the plastic pig that sits on my desk (it poops jelly beans – never not funny), and my Diet Coke can.  Wite-Out, although not covered in my methods and materials classes, proved to be a delightful medium.

two brown drawings 14 07 2

two brown drawings 14 07 1

There is a lot of very good art here, some of it being made by friends.  And rather than being torn between two very different places, I’ve decided to “bloom where I’m planted”. The next time I go to New York, I’ll be a visitor, not a New Yorker.  That’s a little bit sad, but I am quite happy in the evenings in my quiet house on my quiet street, climbing the stairs to bed.

Not All Art Lives in New York City

Jasper Johns Flag on Orange, 1998

Jasper Johns with John Lund
Flag on Orange, 1998

We are city-centric in New York.  We think all the best restaurants are here, all the best museums, all the best art, etc.  This must irritate people from other places – of whom I am about to be one.

So as I prepare to move back to Connecticut, where I can go to my day job in person instead of by Skype, and where I will have loads of room for a studio, I decided to see what kind of art I can find outside of the city.

First stop (so far): the Katonah Museum of Art, in northern Westchester County.  I went to see their Jasper Johns/John Lund show of Johns’ intaglio prints.  Intaglio, as I learned, is an umbrella category that includes any printmaking technique based on incising the image into a plate.  Etching, aquatint, and drypoint are forms of intaglio.  (My own printmaking experience ends with silkscreen and woodcuts.)

Jasper Johns/John Lund Untitled, 1998

Jasper Johns/John Lund
Untitled, 1998

I liked the images, but the highlight of the exhibition for me was actually the video of John Lund discussing his lifelong collaboration with Johns.  Lund is the master printer who produced Johns’ wide variety of prints.  It was good to see the printmaker getting some credit for the art he made possible.

In another gallery, to my surprise, was an exhibition of Rosemary Wells’ art from the covers of her books.  I am a longtime Rosemary Wells fan and was delighted by this serendipitous discovery.  Wells’ books, ostensibly for children, are slyly witty, with perfect illustrations of animals with human expressions.  I still enjoy them and highly recommend them, especially Max’s Chocolate Chicken and the series of stories about MacDuff, the dog.

Rosemary Wells cover art from Yoko Learns to Read

Rosemary Wells
cover art from  Yoko Learns to Read

The Katonah Museum was also hosting a print sale.  I saw a Wolf Kahn (that I couldn’t afford), two by James Siena, and plenty by lesser-known artists, starting at $100.

Prints by various artists, including James Siena, top center and top right.

Prints by various artists, including James Siena, top center and top right.

So I learned a lesson in bucolic Katonah as I wandered through the pristine museum. Not all art lives in New York City.

 

Color Makes My Heart Sing

When I was at Lyme Academy, studying for my BFA, my wonderful teacher Susan Stephenson asked my class which colors didn’t go together.  I thought (briefly) and answered: pea green and orange.  Buzz.  Wrong answer.  Correct answer: ALL colors go together.  Damn, I thought, I should have seen that one coming.  It was an important lesson to me, and eye-opening, and plenty of times since then I have happily placed pea green and orange together and been quite pleased with the result.

Susan Stephenson, 2014

Susan Stephenson, 2014

Susan has a show coming up.  See it if you can! – details at http://online.inkct.com/ink_issues/may2014issue/html5/index.html?page=1&server=#

I recently asked a friend what was his favorite color.  He thought for a brief minute and said, “I don’t understand the question.”

“You know, ” I said, “the color that makes your heart sing.  The color that makes you smile and feel warm.  The color that makes you happy.”  He still didn’t get it.

“I don’t have a favorite number, either,” he said, as if the two equated.

Wolf Kahn Barn Atop a Ridge, 1987

Wolf Kahn
Barn Atop a Ridge, 1987

It’s hard for me to understand people who don’t understand the potent emotional content of colors.  Physiologically, our eyes crave color.  My brilliant classmate Julia Buntaine recently painted her whole studio red.  Every single thing in it, including the ceiling and the lights.  Then she put red objects in there.  It was amazing to see the objects turn green in my vision, because my eyes so needed the complement of red.

Wolf Kahn Distant Shower, 2002

Wolf Kahn
Distant Shower, 2002

I’ve been winding down my final semester at SVA for a week or more, and now I’m completely finished except for graduation and cleaning out my studio. In order to counteract the stress, I had been sneaking out to see movie matinees to avoid thinking about art non-stop.  I can highly recommend Fading Gigolo, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Draft Day, and Transcendence.

But now that I’m free, I’m free to go back to looking at art.  And since today is a beautiful day in the neighborhood, I took off this morning for the Chelsea art district specifically to see the Wolf Kahn retrospective at Ameringer|McEnery|Yohe (www.amy-nyc.com).  It wasn’t that long ago that I wrote about Kahn’s new work, but this was a great opportunity to see some of his older paintings.  Talk about color!  Eye candy (in the best way), artgasm (always good), and a big grin on my face as I wandered around the gallery.  Also there was a puppy, which didn’t hurt.

Wolf Kahn Trees Turning Yellow, 2011

Wolf Kahn
Trees Turning Yellow, 2011

There are some fabulous books of Wolf Kahn’s work in case you can’t make it to his show, and I recommend buying all you can afford and leaving them open in your home or studio so you can surprise yourself with a smile.  I only wish I could show you more here. Check out the gallery website for a wonderful display.

Stephen Maine – Halftone Paintings at 490 Atlantic

The misshapen dots are mesmerizing.  They create vibrating space, and optical illusions.

The colors are carefully chosen – off-kilter complements or dark pairings.  There is one large painting in which, if you stand close enough, you can see the purple that hides between the orange and green.  It is a sublime combination.

And Stephen, long a painter, has begun making wonderful books full of mono prints and drawings and colors and tape, carefully hand-sewn together.  At his opening on Saturday (crowded and successful) the changing group of viewers around the very large book that he showed was hypnotized as the pages turned, back and forth, revealing paintings and lines, and collages from which we could not turn away.

These are highly considered artworks which give you more the more you stand and look at them.  So go stand and look at them!

The show is up until May 10th at 490 Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn.  It’s just a couple of blocks west of the Barclay Center and every subway in the city will take you there.

http://www.stephenmaine.com

http://www.490atlantic.com 

Congratulations Stephen.

Classmates Rock

The sun is out, my black coat is put away, and New York is perfect again.

At the SVA Flatiron Gallery is a two-woman show that you should see if you can.  Lulu Zhang and Sarah Dineen are both first-year students in my MFA program, but are producing work of the maturity and complexity of established artists.  Damn them!

Sarah Dineen Certain Dark Things #28

Sarah Dineen
Certain Dark Things #28

Sarah’s abstract works are big and bold painted collages that are satisfying in size and create intriguing visual spaces.

Sarah Dineen Certain Dark Things #22

Sarah Dineen
Certain Dark Things #22

Lulu’s works on paper are dense explorations of obsessive mark-making in ink and paint. Each piece contains hundreds of magical moments which contribute to the dense jungle feeling of the whole painting.

Lulu Zhang Sunset

Lulu Zhang
Sunset

Lulu Zhang Fallen Red

Lulu Zhang
Fallen Red

If I were an art adviser, I would recommend you buy these young artists before they’re discovered.  But I’m not.  I’d like to keep them all to myself, but that would be selfish.

The show runs through April 11th, and the reception is April 3rd from 5 – 7.

Meanwhile, I’ve been painting ogres in an effort to exorcize them.  And in a funny way it worked.  Now the ogres are my children, not my enemies.

Elizabeth Cook Emperor Ogre

Elizabeth Cook
Emperor Ogre

If you’re not already here, come to New York.  Look at the art.  Look at the people.  Look at the little dogs in their funny coats.

 

Art Beats Winter

I long ago conceded that in order to survive this winter I was going to have to wear a coat (black, of course) that made me look like I was walking around in a sleeping bag.  Kind of like a Goth Michelin Man.  AND a scarf pulled up over my nose and ears.  AND earmuffs inside my hood.  It isn’t pretty, but I’m certainly not alone.

I recently conceded that winter is never going to end in New York, and I have started going back outside, by which I mean heading further afield than my studio building, which is only half a block from my apartment.

Even though I know that going to the Chelsea galleries is a walk that gets colder and colder as one makes it (Hudson River approaching!  Blowing wind is torture!) I was out on Thursday night for an important gallery opening: David Row’s There and Back at Loretta Howard at 525 West 26th Street (http://www.lorettahoward.com).

David (http://www.davidrow.com) is an amazing painter and a faculty member at SVA, and I took his workshop my first semester in the MFA program.  We discussed art criticism, took a field trip to look at galleries, and David visited our studios and gave us lots of important feedback.  He was certainly one of the first to tell me to change everything I was doing, and although that sounds harsh, it was critical for me to hear at the time.

His new show of shaped canvases is stunning.  In the best possible way, they are paintings about painting.  The surfaces are mesmerizing – scraped, overlaid, pieced together – the colors are intoxicating, and while clearly abstract, they have a richness and depth that draws in the viewer.

I also saw some exemplary student work this week, namely self-portraits from freshmen in Brooke Larsen’s drawing class.  Using the technique pioneered by Chuck Close (large portraits gridded and filled in with multiple colors), I found two especially compelling.

Kathryn Thiele

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kathryn Thiele detail

Kathryn Thiele detail

 

Naomi Hia

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kathryn Thiele’s is made entirely of tiny strips of colored paper, and Naomi Hia’s consists only of the repeated use of her first name.  And these are freshmen!

Stay warm during our endless ice age.  Go see the David Row show if you can.  And make art!

Hibernation

I don’t mean to hibernate in winter.  I’m not a bear, or even a groundhog.   But when it goes on and on with no hope of ending, I find myself staying pretty close to home, especially in the city which requires walking and walking and walking and not just running from one’s front door to the car.

Nonetheless, this being New York, even in hibernation mode I can’t avoid art.  My own, of course, since I’m in the studio every day (it’s half a block from my apartment), but other people’s as well.  So here’s what I’ve seen and liked lately.

Like Honey is the Sleep of the Just, by Julia Garcia

Like Honey is the Sleep of the Just, by Julia Garcia

The BFA Visual and Critical Studies Department at SVA (which teaches multiple art disciplines grounded in art criticism and philosophy) recently hung a show called “Points of Experience”, curated by Isabel Taube.  I walked past it several times before realizing that I was enjoying it and should pay more attention.

As in Childhood We Live Sweeping Close to the Sky, by Julia Garcia

As in Childhood We Live Sweeping Close to the Sky, by Julia Garcia

Julia Garcia’s paintings attracted me because of their color palettes and paint application.  I am a sucker for color.  I think it’s my favorite aspect of art.

Then around the corner I ran into Kyle Lefkowitz’s work: a huge sculptural open book full of crazy pages hanging on the wall.

 

Unrequited: Love Me Like an Open Book, Slam Me Like a Door, by Kyle Lefkowitz

Unrequited: Love Me Like an Open Book, Slam Me Like a Door, by Kyle Lefkowitz

I have done some printmaking and bookmaking while at SVA, and this work reminded me of Esther K. Smith’s “Combo of Crazy Papers” from her excellent book, How to Make Books from Potter Craft.

Esther K. Smith's example of a Crazy Papers Book

Esther K. Smith’s example of a Crazy Papers Book

I can’t believe it’s my last semester at SVA, and I haven’t even tried to make a Crazy Papers book!

As for my own work, the urge to paint flowers has not left me, although I am also working on a 25 foot mural (too soon to show).  These paintings are probably not finished, but they’re getting there.  And then I’ll paint some more.  It has been a joy to return to oil paint after a semester drawing and cutting paper.  Not surprisingly, I still have all the same painting faults I used to: not enough value contrast, painting too fast, getting discouraged.  But thanks to Gamblin Galkyd medium, at least I can paint on my flowers every day.

Flowers, left-handed

Flowers, painted left-handed, 12″ x 12″

Flowers, right-handed

Flowers, painted right-handed, 12″ x 12″

I hope the flowers make you feel just a hint of Spring coming.

 

 

Home Front

Our MFA Second-Year group show “Home Front” opened yesterday amid snow flurries.  It will remain up at SVA’s Chelsea Gallery until February 1st, and then we will take it down as frantically (one day) as we were casual about hanging it (five days!).  Many of you are not in New York to visit the show, so here’s a peek.

Julia Buntaine

Julia Buntaine

Donna Cleary

Donna Cleary

 

Elizabeth Cook

Elizabeth Cook

George Davis

George Davis

Nadia Haji Omar

Nadia Haji Omar

Katrin Hjordisardottir

Katrin Hjordisardottir

Rachel Jantzi

Rachel Jantzi

Jee Hee Kang

Jee Hee Kang

Shinyoung Kim

Shinyoung Kim

Yeonji Kim

Yeonji Kim

Andrea McGinty

Andrea McGinty

Jon Sedor

Jon Sedor

Art Vidrine

Art Vidrine

Drawing, painting, sculpture, installation, assemblage, video, photography, performance, and some work that defies description.  Do yourselves (and us) a favor and come visit!  The opening reception is on Thursday, January 23rd from 6 – 8 p.m. at 601 West 26th Street, 15th Floor.