Group therapy

I'm showing paintings in two group shows opening this week, so I'm going to strap on my snowshoes and head out to the hinterlands for the openings.

The first....

 

The alumni show, which includes Swain alumnus as well, is being held at UMass Dartmouth from February 3rd to March 4, with an opening this Thursday, Feb. 3 from 4:30 to 7. There should be lots of fine paintings in the show judging from the list of participants.
(Here are directions to campus - you can use parking lots 7-8, see campus map)

• • • 

The other show is the Newport Art Museum Annual Members' Juried Exhibition and runs from February 5 to May 22 ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ sigh ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ oh sorry, I was just thinking about May. A glance out my window with new snow falling on 5 foot piles of dirty ice brought me back to reality—anyway, the reception is on Friday, Feb. 4 from 5-7.

I might be late for both openings, unless I can get out of work early. Such is the life of the working artist....

Drawn to stone and stuffing

Click to enlarge

Click to enlarge

Click to enlarge

I was breezing through the RISD museum recently when this sculpture (sadly, I did not write down the label info) raised his stony hand and demanded I STOP.

So I did, and stood mesmerized by the power of that hand.

Today, I went back at lunch to photograph it and then grabbed one of the little folding stools RISD has in the museum and sat down in the peaceful medieval gallery to sketch.

The medieval gallery had been closed for a long time while they expanded the museum and just recently reopened, New and Improved. They even added subtle medieval-style music, which is nice to listen to while drawing. Though the sculptures and paintings only fill two small rooms, I am very glad to have them back on display, since each piece has the potential to suddenly reveal itself, as this one did.

I think I'll spend a more of my lunch breaks drawing in the museum. I don't know why I never thought of it before that sculpture ordered me to STOP.


I also spent an hour earlier in the week in the RISD nature lab drawing a little brown bat. He was pretty cool but a bit (a lot) worse for wear, as are many of the smaller specimens. (I was hoping for some spiders, but most were just little boxes of legs). Of the bats though, my guy was one of the handsomest, a few of the others looked more like roadkill. Who needs taxidermy when you have a speeding Jetta?

But there's lots of cool stuff in the Nature Lab, so that will be a good lunchtime sketching destination too. Maybe if I sit quietly drawing I'll spot the little newt that made a break for it and I can nab it and return it to its nice moist tank.

Hanging out with dead animals is giving me the urge to take some more classes at the Natural History Museum. The specimens there are in better shape since they haven't been checked out like library books by decades of college students.

And if I get sick of dead animals I might just head out to Woonsocket where I hear they have a fine flock of Turkey Vultures.

Sainted

Mass MOCA had a strange effect on me. But I think hiking in the Berkshires will stick with me longer.

Caution - Opening!

I just dropped of my painting of the Goodyear Welt machine (see previous post), titled "Caution" to be part of the Bristol Art Museum Member's Exhibition. The show is up from March 13 to March 27 and the museum is at the corner of Hope and Wardwell Streets in Bristol (map), right behind the Linden Place mansion. The opening is Friday, March 12 from 7 to 9. Unfortunately, I won't be able to go, but they put on a very nice opening so if you can make it, enjoy!

Great Sand Dunes Journal, Second Installment

I took a l little trip to NYC Sunday to walk around and see the Kandinsky show at the Guggenheim. It was fun watching the landscape speed by from the train window again. It made me think maybe I hadn't quite finished painting the northeast corridor landscape. The streets of NYC were freezing when we got there, this time of year the sun doesn't get high enough in the sky to be able to penetrate the valleys between the buildings.  The wind, however, manages to race through and chill us to the bone. Once we got to Central Park though, the sun shone on the snow dusted landscape and the wind dispersed, so we decided it was nice enough to continue our walk of the 54 blocks to 88th street.

Kandinsky was great, the Guggenheim is a perfect place to see it. It looked like a big Kandinsky wedding cake, turned inside out.

Anyway, here's the second installment of my Sand Dunes Journal. Hopefully I'll post it all before the holidays, but they do have a way of barreling over everything...

GREAT SAND DUNES NATIONAL PARK
Tuesday, Sept 22

We are lucky that our internal clocks are still on Eastern Standard Time, since we're awake by 5:30 to look out and see the dunes glowing pure white like bone china, the mountains dark behind them. Realizing that this phenomenon will not survive the rising sun we grab our cameras and head down to the road to get an unobstructed view. The sun is already peeking over the Sangre de Cristos and lighting the valley, and as it creeps toward the western end of the dunes the cold white turns to frosty ochre. The mountain's shadow contracts and the highest dunes reflect the pale morning sun with rosy glow.

It's chilly so we keep moving while we watch and I turn to the east to scan the plains. A few hundred yards off I see a pair of elk, shy of us despite their distance.

We stay until the dunes are almost fully lit then return to the apartment for breakfast before heading down to the Visitor's Center to check the forecast. It predicts a chilly, windy day, so a hike to Revelation Point seems like a good way to take advantage of cool climbing temperatures without the danger of sandblasting.
CONTINUE READING....

The elemental things - Sue McNally at the Newport Art Museum

After reading a review of the Sue McNally show in the local paper, I decided it was time to weigh in with my impressions of the show now up at the Newport Art Museum.

The first painting I saw on entering the gallery was Paradise at Night. Across the room the white spotlight effect of the moon on the dark canvas was definitely a Strange Attractor. I took quick glance around the gallery and was at first sorry that there were only 3 of these large paintings, along with 3 smaller ones. But, although the gallery is huge, it could hardly contain the energy of any more.

As I approached I discovered that, not only are the large paintings composed of 3 panels each, but within those panels are many other paintings to explore. This is not a quick show to see.

In the center of Paradise at Night, a speck of a buoy in the column of moonshine seems very tiny and far away, floating as it does below the luminous and translucent clouds that rise above it. Although diaphanous, they are clearly part of the immense atmosphere. A tiny line of breaking surf brings me back to earth and stylized waves pulse into the concave coast with a pattern like the ridges on a clamshell.


Unfortunately this is not a very good representation of the painting, but will give an idea of how it's laid out

In another painting, The Last Valley, Paradise Rocks, she succeeds in her stated goal to "place the viewer within the scene". The feeling seems more authentic because once there you encounter a barrier of brambles and thickets. It's passable, but not without planning a careful path, even then it's still a scramble, except maybe for a path over the rocks on the right side that leads, not down to the ocean, but to a side overlook which will give a different perspective on the valley.


Within this painting there are many more. In one, slabs of rock rise from the reeds and I get the impression that there is a frenetic activity going on there, perhaps small animals moving over its surface and burrowing about in the brush.


The brambles are also wonderful paintings in their own right.

I really enjoyed spending time with all the energy and color of this show. Somehow much more rewarding than the sterile, one-ironic-idea installations that are being served up to a "world ...sick to its thin blood for lack of elemental things".

The show will be up till August 12 at the Newport Art Museum.

Must see - Sue McNally at the Newport Art Museum

I just came from a tremendous show of large and beautiful oil paintings by Sue McNally at the Newport Art Museum. It's up until August 12 and well worth a trip over the bridge. More later...

Still employed, thank goodness for lunch...

It looks like I've survived the latest round of layoffs at my job, but 100 of my co-workers didn't, about 20% of the company. I don't know how it's going to go once the dust settles, but I wish everyone who was let go a more interesting future than they would have gotten if they had stayed.

I guess I'm relieved. Money is good to have. Time is better. Money plus time would be the best, but hard to arrange.

So I'm still coming into Providence every day, and still get a lunch hour. I took advantage of it today to mail off a couple of applications for national park residencies and take in RISD's faculty biennial.

I enjoyed the biennial more than previous ones I've been to. The work seemed more interesting, not as sterile or contrived. The extra space is really luxurious too, now that the Chihuly show is down and the full extent of it is visible.

I was immediately taken with a painting by Todd Moore "I Rest on the Way to Church Point". It's a large painting and loses something in the photo, but when you see it in person the space is kind of skewed, the big rock at the top seems to move forward, giving the boulders weight and presence. It has a gritty feel that reminds me of the feel of stones crunching under my feet as I walk the shoreline.


Another piece which I found intriguing was John Supancic's photo of the Johnston Landfill. I recognized his name on the label because he's been a stringer at a few newspapers I've worked at and was also my (excellent) wedding photographer. So I was surprised to see what looked like a painting next to the label. On closer inspection I could see some photographic details, but thought for sure he had overpainted the image. I looked even closer at the "brushstrokes" and was surprised to see that they were actually bulldozer tracks. It's more obviously a photo when it's reduced to the size you see here, but at actual size (about 30"x34") it's beautifully brushy and expressive.

I also liked a video by Dennis Hlynsky that showed birds in on wires and in flight, with motion trails that looked like charcoal drawings.

It's up until March 13 and worth a look.

Not sure I really want to be a starving artist after all....

As much as my day job interferes with my studio work, it's a bit unnerving when the safety net it provides begins to sprout holes, which is what happened last week. A round of layoffs at the newspaper where I work has affected me, which may or may not result in my joining the growing ranks of those without a weekly paycheck. In theory, (and fantasy) it would give me more time to paint, but like most painters I can't make a living from my brush, and don't want to lose the health insurance my job provides. So I'd have to dust off my resume and hit the streets, which would be even more of a distraction than the 9-5 grind, so I'm hoping to keep the job in one form or another, unfortunately.

But once I leave the ergonomic office chair, close my studio door and sit for a bit in my old painting chair it becomes of little importance. My battles are in here.

I toured the RISD Museum's new wing on Sunday with some out of town guests. It sure is a change from the old wing—for one thing, it has a escalator! That kind of blew my mind. The Chihuly show was ok, but I thought it was rather thin, despite the dramatically lit and reflected installations. I'll have to go back and take another look when it's not so crowded. I'd like to take another look at the David Macaulay show too. I have to really respect the work that went on behind the pages of his books. Contrast his thoughtful sketches with the "art fair" type paintings that Chihuly whips out for his assistants as studies for his glass designs.

44 days till the hanging.

Museums and cemeteries

From the road in Big Bend National Park.

I've been going through my photos from western Texas this week so I think I will post a couple of my favorites for the next few blogs.




The bizarre beast called the Javelina near the Window Trail in Big Bend.


A interesting part of traveling is always visiting art museums in other cities. We had an afternoon in El Paso before we flew back with not quite enough time to cross the bridge into Mexico, but had planned it so we stayed in a hotel right across the street from the El Paso Art Museum.
It was a little disappointing that we seemed to be the only visitors, despite free admission, but the entire downtown area was also deserted. July is considered "off season" in El Paso because of the heat. The collections were very interesting though, and it's a large and modern museum. I especially liked the Spanish Viceroyal Collection. This is the museum's description...

The Spanish Viceroyal Collection reflects the period of the Spanish Empire in the New World. The collections of 17th through 19th centuries include paintings on panel, canvas, copper and tin. Many of these works were used as devotional images and were created by artists such as: Nicolás Enríquez, Antonío de Torres, Francisco Martínez, and Juan Sánchez Salmerón. Many works from this collection are permanently displayed in the Roderick Gallery.

Mostly iconic religious themes, the work had a dark richness of color and brushwork that was complimented by over-the-top carved and mirrored frames that suited the work perfectly. I also liked a portrait by Tom Lea, especially the bottom half where the figure is played against the landscape.

The Art Binational 2008 Binacional de Arte, a joint exhibition with the Museo de Arte Ciudad Juarez was still on exhibit. All of the artists were from western Texas and Mexico, so it was interesting to see contemporary work from a different part of the country.


Another place I like to visit when traveling is cemeteries. There was a great one in the ghost town of Terlingua. It occurs to me that I might be looking for some of the same things in cemeteries I look for in the local art museums, they both contain an attempt to express and symbolize uncomprehensible and sometimes scary life experiences.

It feels more like fall today than the first week of August and it's tempting to tackle my neglected and overgrown gardens in this coolness. But my neighbors apparently have the same idea and the lawnmower duet is at full volume either side of my house. And now it's just become an trio, as the neighbor across the street has just fired up his mower. I think after this post I'll escape to the relative quiet of my studio...especially since a weed whacker was just added to this chorus...western Texas sure was quiet.