On exhibit

Supermoon, 20x24, oil/canvas, 2011

I'm dropping off this painting tonight for its first foray out into the big, big world as part of the exhibition
VICINITY: RISD Rhode Island Alumni Group exhibition
November 10 to December 15, 2011
The opening reception is Thursday, Nov. 10^th, 7pm at 42 Rice Street Providence (directions)

I'm looking forward to seeing the venue,  Keeseh Studios, when I drop the painting off. From what I can gather on their website it seems to be like a Steelyard for the woodworking set. Here's their mission statement:

Keeseh Studio is a woodworking facility that serves as a resource for Rhode Island’s creative community. The communal woodshop provides machinery, tools and workspace for local artists and designers to rent using a membership system. As such, they have access to a wealth of capabilities and resources as well as the company of artists with whom to share ideas and gain critique. Keeseh also offers woodworking classes and services. The Studio welcomes a wide range of people — from those who have no experience and are looking to learn, to professionals wishing to engage with like-minded individuals.

Our mission is to:
-encourage the growth of woodworking as a design and craft.
-make woodworking accessible to everyone.
-educate and develop skills that will allow creative individuals to express themselves and their ideas through woodworking.
-connect local artists and designers in order to promote the exchange of information and knowledge.
-support the growth of Providence’s creative community.

Alas, I won't be able to attend the opening, since I'll be in my glass casting class at the aforementioned Steelyard (a Keeseh Studios for metal heads). Rats.

Posterized

 

This is the poster I designed for this month's Gallery Night Providence. I've got nothing to show in that fair city right now but I am showing 3 paintings in Warren at Imago Gallery, and one in Newport at the Newport Art Museum.

Snow day

 

The gift of a snow day yesterday gave me a chance to explore another gift, the set of pastels I "inherited" from the studio of painter Louise Marianetti. It was a well-used and well-loved set, the hinge broken but the softly worn pastel sticks carefully arranged. Heavy on reds, pinks and light orange it was obviously used for portraits. Not being a portrait painter I needed to rebalance the colors for landscape so sorted through them, adding my own earth colors. It was strange picking up the velvety ovals of color, knowing that the last hands to touch them were Marianetti's adding a stroke to an unknown drawing, and that the next stroke of the pastel would be on mine.

With snow still  falling outside I decided to work on a snow scene using a sheet of Canson paper also from Marianetti's studio.

 

I haven't worked in pastel for awhile but found it freeing to work quickly and without detail, even though it will take me awhile to get back in stride with it. It's a good winter medium, I just wish they weren't so hard to frame! But that's a problem for another day.

Louise Marianetti's show is now up at the Bert Gallery in Providence until March 19 and I highly recommend it. The work shows the obsessive focus of a real artist. The more you look at her work the stranger and more interesting it becomes, a quality that seems rare today. Don't neglect to look through the rack of unframed paintings by the door, some of the best work is in there. And the exhibit includes some artifacts from her studio, including art supplies and props, beautifully arranged by Cathy Bert.

Prize surprise

Since I wasn't able to make the opening of the members show at the Bristol Art Museum last night I took a break today from planning my Art Window — figuring out how to transport yards of canvas curtains without wrinkling, and brittle thorn branches without pain. I headed over to the Bristol to check out the show and how I was hung. Turns out I was hung with a label that said "First Prize"!

Now I am not usually a prize winner, a few honorable mentions were the only ones in my trophy case, so First Prize is kind of a kick. It even comes with a small check.  But me and Obama, we like to donate our prize money to charity. (Although if I had gotten his Nobel Peace Prize one million plus, I confess I'd keep it in order to ditch the day job. But I'm glad he likes his job enough to hang in.) I'll send mine to Haiti, the rainy season is fast approaching and they need all the help they can get.

—Written as the rain beats against the windows and the wind gusts, and I sit warm and dry in my house.

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!

The Goodyear Welt

 Here's another memento from the shoemaker's shop, a 1945 manual of the Goodyear Welt Sewing Machine.

I love the elegant engraving of the machine, a nice contrast to my own interpretation.

• • • 

The weather is getting warm enough to wander outside on my lunch breaks, and last week I stumbled on a couple of good exhibits on College Hill. Both have a good representation of paint on canvas, rather shocking in this day and age.

The first, "Extreme Scale",  is at the Providence Art Club. Among the large pieces is Sue McNally's  "Paradise at Night" which I first bowled me over when I saw it at the Newport Art Museum last June. On the other end of the scale one of my favorites is a beautiful sculptural rendering of a tree trunk in frosted glass and wood by Kat Ely.

Just a few blocks away, The List Gallery at Brown has their Student Exhibtion. Despite the obligatory pile of stuff in the corner and annoying flat-screen TV spewing static, it also has some pretty nice paintings.

The shows will be up for about another week and a half, so if you're in the neighborhood, they're worth a look.

HELD OVER

...but not by much, so you'll have to hurry if you'd like to catch my show at the Bert Gallery.  The last  day will be this Saturday,  Feb. 13.  I'm sorry to see it come down—it's been a great few weeks and  I can't think of a better person to work with than Cathy Bert. I wish she had a bigger space to display her contemporary artists, but she does more with her beautiful little gallery than most do with huge white boxes. If you stop in, wish her a happy 25th anniversary, it's quite a feat to survive that long as a gallery here in Providence!

It's funny, when I exhibited some of this work over a year ago the silence from the press was deafening. This time around, the show was mentioned in 2 reviews - Providence Phoenix  and  The Providence Journal,  and had a full-page write up in The Warwick Beacon.  It was also mentioned as an editor's pick in a several publications and will be reviewed in the April/May edition of Art New England.  Working in the newspaper business I have come to realize that the merit of a show is only one factor in whether it gets press. Others factors are:

• The writer's schedule
• The news hole
• Whether you have a "hook" or local connection
• What else is exhibiting while yours is up
• Whether they've been sent good imagery
• Whether the reviewer takes your venue seriously
• Other miscellaneous factors

I'm just glad the planets aligned for this show. Thanks so much to all who came, purchased or wrote about my work, it is much appreciated!

Exhibit 2, submitted into evidence at Roger Williams University

It was great seeing all who showed up for my opening of the Shoemaker Series at the Bert Gallery. Thanks for coming and for all the nice comments, I'm just sorry I couldn't manage to talk to everyone I saw come through the door.  It's very strange to be the center of attention and way out of my comfort zone, but I do appreciate it, and all the hard work Cathy Bert and her staff did to make it happen.

I have to admit I am enjoying having a nice quiet week though— last week was busy with not only preparing for the Bert Gallery opening, but also in hanging paintings at Roger Williams University School of Law Library in Bristol. I was given the walls of nice big lounge space on the second floor of the library that's open to the public and was glad have help from Lydia from RWU and Suzanne from the Bristol Art Museum as well as two very accommodating men from RWUs building staff, who did the heavy lifting and hung the work expertly. Even before the work was fully unpacked I started overhearing feedback from the many law students and staff who walk through and didn't know the "artist" was overhearing. I couldn't help but contrast it to the sterile, silent atmosphere of most galleries.

Anyway, this show will be up for 6 months, until June, so if you're in the East Bay vicinity, stop in. Unlike many gallery spaces, they have nice comfy chairs and couches!

Opening today!

My show at the Bert Gallery opens today with a Hot Chocolate reception from 2-3. Stop in if you're feeling chilly. Here's a map


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Exhibitionism

Well, 2010 (just realized that number is fun to type, a good portent), is starting out very unusually busy on the exhibition front. Yesterday I packed the truck full of paintings and delivered them to the Bert Gallery before I had to report to my job. This is the first time breaking in the new truck for exactly what I bought it for, a painting transportation vehicle.  It did well and by the end of next week, when I deliver even more paintings to another exhibit I just finalized, it should settle in to saddle.

The Bert show opens on January 13, with a reception on January 16 (2-3).  I'll be showing 12 paintings from the Shoemaker series, and I have to say they look pretty good on Bert's freshly painted raw sienna walls.

Another show, which came up suddenly and out of the blue, is at Roger Williams University Law School Library in Bristol, RI.  I'll be showing a variety of work from the last 10 years in the second floor atrium lounge. More details to come.

Then in March, I'll be installing my church paintings as part of the Providence Art Windows project. My window is on Fulton street, just to the left of City Hall, and right next to the wonderful Big Nazo Puppet windows. You can see my space above the black pickup (currently exhibiting work by Amy DiPlacido).

As a result, most of my paintings will be out of studio storage for awhile. I'm looking forward to seeing the empty racks... even if it's only temporary.

How would you like your rejection?

I can't decide what kind of rejection I like the best; an email message or the kind that comes back in the S.A.S.E dutifully included in the application.

I suspect the email version will become the new standard, as everything moves online. I do like how much easier it is on the application side, but after waiting forever to get a response, it's somehow more satisfying to open an envelope, see the nice thick paper with the rejector's letterhead, throw it aside, then retrieve it to add to the file of rejection letters. So what do I do now — print my rejection emails to add to my file? 

That would be silly. I think I will.

Anyway, I've been thinking about this because I got two email rejections in two days. The first was...sniff...the Denali artist residency (I don't really cry on my emails—it's not good for the keyboard).  In previous postal rejections I've had little notes slipped inside telling me how close I came, and to try again. This email began with "Thank you for applying..." Always a very bad sign. Then came the standard Don't-Feel-Too-Bad tag line... "We had many strong applications from all over the U.S. and abroad, making this year’s selection especially difficult." So after thinking I was ALMOST heading north for the last few application cycles, I'm now feeling Denali is further away than ever.

The second rejection was from a local group show, no big deal really, but it's a place I always feel a bit surprised to be rejected from.

But I still have my show at Bert coming up next month, and yesterday I was contacted out of the blue about another exhibit opportunity. More on both of those later...

Bigger...better...

I'm continuing to update my website, here's a link to the bigger and better sideshow of the drawings and work on paper I did in preparation for the oil paintings of the Shoemaker series, coming soon to the Bert Gallery!

Kirsten Hassenfeld's paper whites at Bell Gallery

I saw a great exhibit last week by artist Kirsten Hassenfeld at the Bell Gallery at Brown University last week. These pristine and monumental constructions were made entirely of paper and foamboard, with surface textures like bleached white sheets, fresh set plaster, eggshells, or a piece of fine drawing paper. The curves and lighting were elegant and simple, but the pieces were full of surprises. The longer I looked, the more I saw. Intricate little paper figures, impossibly tiny paper chains, cameos beautifully drawn in layered paper and a little paper spider. And as I looked at them in the quiet gallery, they slowly turned on their suspended wires, which made the floor seem to shift under my feet. But so subtly that it was relaxing, rather than disorienting.

In a way, they reminded me of seeing Lee Bontecou's mobiles at her 2004 MOMA retrospective. Hassenfelds's work though, while capturing some of the weightless presence of Bontecou, is so meticulously crafted that the wonder of how it was created almost distracts from the overall work, while Bontecou's pieces have a quality of always having existed. But then I'm so biased towards Bontecou that a comparison is almost unfair.

I then distanced myself from the aesthetic quality of the work in order to see if it were true, as a reviewer stated, that she used

"many of the same materials you might find in a grade-school art class: heavy-duty construction paper, translucent vellum (also a kind of paper) and lightweight poster-board, along with a bit of tape and glue to hold it all together. Add up the cost of everything in the Bell show and you’d barely have enough to pay for a typical opening-night party at a New York gallery."

Reading this before I saw the show, I found it hard to believe that Hassenfeld would put the effort into these pieces using such impermanent materials. On inspecting the work, I could tell she used archival material throughout, not a trace of construction paper, poster board or tape. In reading the catalog, she stated that she was only able to fabricate the massive pieces of thick archival foamboard by using a computer-guided laser paid for by a grant from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation. In other words, this installation costs significantly more than an opening night party. Good to know that though she may be a bit obsessive to make those tiny little chains, she wasn't crazy enough to make them out of paper that was bound to fall apart. We want these lovely objects to stay around for awhile.

The exhibit is up until November 1.

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...

Opening this Saturday - Paintings by Don Primiano

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!
Click here to see a slideshow of the work, narrated by the artist
Opening this Saturday, April 25, 6 to 10 pm.
The Art of War - WWII Drawings and Paintings by Don Primiano
Works from 1943 to 2008
At the West Side Arts Gallery, 745 Westminster St., Providence
MAP

Open every Saturday, April 25 to May 25 11 am-2 pm. or by appointment: jyllethiermullen@gmail.com.
www.westsideartsgallery.blogspot.com

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.

Following leaders - Don Primiano and Barack Obama

The opening at Imago for Don Primiano was packed, and to talk to the master himself one had to get in line. There is still plenty of time to see the show, its up until Jan. 31, details can be found HERE.

"Don Primiano, now 84 years old, started Don's Art Shop in 1955. Despite opinions that his business would never get off the ground, his business had an incredible flow of local artists and those who wished to become artists. He taught numerous classes, offered a wonderful array of art supplies, and offered a comfortable setting for people to come, even if it was just to visit. Don Primiano is an icon in Warren. His outgoing personality and friendly approach has won him hundreds of friends. " READ MORE...

And don't forget to check out an audio slideshow of Don's war paintings, narrated by Don, HERE

• • •

I meant to post a detailed report on the inauguration, but after reading my fellow traveler Mary Grady's impressions I realized I couldn't say it any better, so will LINK to her's. I watched the acceptance speech last night again, and it gets even better the second time around. If only the country can live up to it. I wish I could be sure.
Above is my quickly edited video of the long cold journey from the Greenbelt metro stop, where the bus dropped us off, to the Mall. The exercise kept us warm though, and the high feelings kept us cheery. A good time was had by all...

Don Primiano at Imago tonight!

If you are anywhere near Warren, RI, stop in to the Imago Gallery for the opening reception of paintings by Don Primiano. Check out his work here. The gallery is at 16 Cutler St., Warren.