What are YOU looking at?

Nothing says "What the hell are all these people doing?" better than this guy's expression. But all he could do was glower at us since he was tethered to his perch. Even if he wasn't, he can't fly. He was one of a group of birds who had been rescued after having been shot or hit by cars. Their lives were saved, but the vet had to break the news as gently as he could "You will never fly again".  They don't understand English though, so the Red Hawk made a break for it, getting loose from his tether and leading the Audubon handlers on a chase through the bushes.

I had a chance to photograph these birds relatively closely as part of "Raptor Weekend" at the Powder Mill Ledges Wildlife Refuge.
I went to get reference photos for my next series of paintings since I'm interested in owls, especially screech owls, which hang around my house. Screech owls always look to me like they just rolled out of bed, and the one they brought out was molting, so was even more disheveled looking than usual.

I somehow knew I'd be out-cameraed by the "real photographers", and I certainly was with my little G9 point and shoot and no tripod. But I got some great photos anyway.

Oil spill, what oil spill?

oil/canvas  24"x30"  copyright 2010 Kathy Hodge

This painting, I swear, was well along BEFORE the BP oil spill, but now that it's done, the associations are inevitable. A premonition? I hope not, or I'm going to have to be careful what I paint. This is actually taken from the beach in Riverside during a blustery bronze sunset, the fish was found on the beach on the cape. It's part of a new series I'm working on placing creatures in uncomfortable environments.

But it raises an interesting question. If an "Artists Respond to the Gulf Oil Spill" exhibit takes place (and they have - here & here) could I enter it? I've already had people assume it's about the oil spill, so they could be right. Time for me to bow out on this one.

BP says the oil's all gone anyway, so nevermind.

Heading West

Here's a better picture of the painting I just sent out to the Great Sand Dunes. I did make the one year deadline, but not by much.  It's "in the mail" though, and should arrive at the park in a week.

The painting is of my favorite place in the park, the summit of the immense dunes on the east side of the dunefield, where they nestle against the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in a more streamlined version of its peaks and valleys. It takes about an hour of exhausting climbing in the soft sand to get to the top but once up there, if you plan your route carefully, you can walk for a long distance across the broad summits and never see another person. Up there I found this little corpse of a Camel Cricket, an ironic sign of life half buried in the sand.

Shepard Fairey, unedited!

It was fun playing reporter for the Providence Journal, but it stinks getting edited, even if it was (hopefully) just for length. Here's my self-edited and just a tiny bit longer version, which of course, I thought was perfect as submitted.  I'm glad my paintings don't get copy-edited . . . at least not out loud.

Johan Bjurman opens his email to find a digital file, a drawing by artist Shepard Fairey for a 40’x80’ mural in three colors. His mission—translate it to the wall of the Pell-Chafee Performance Center, on budget on and on time. The budget being small, time being 4 weeks.

Which is why AS220 turned to Johan, an artist in his own right and a professional billboard painter. A “walldog” to those in the trade. And it’s why Johan hired E.F. O’Donnell & Sons to make short work of the square footage. And it’s why he looked slightly amused when I pitched the idea of “helping” him. He was gracious enough, though, to let me hang around and watch how it’s done.

I meet Johan at the worn parking lot behind AS220. Two white clad painters, high on a cherry picker, dip rollers into 5 gallon buckets covering the side of the building with a white canvas of paint. Johan goes into a shed and pulls out the plan he has mounted on a 3ft board, the graphic on one side and a map of broad areas of color on the other. He has time now, while he waits for his canvas, to explain how he’s grided the drawing in sections to fit to together “like a swiss watch”.  

When I stop by the next day I see rolls of brown paper, tied with twine and chalked with numbers and arrows, leaning against the shed. Forty 4’x20’  pounces have been prepared in his studio by tracing a projected enlargement using an electrically charged “pencil” that burns tiny holes in the sturdy brown paper.

High above, Johan is silhouetted against the white expanse. Unfurling a roll, he hits it with a cloth bag of powdered charcoal, leaving a wide smudge of black dust which escapes though the holes and imprints on the wall.

By day 5 the painters, following Johan’s charcoal lines, are finishing up huge areas of black, red and cream, creating a lively abstraction. The outline of the Bank of America, better known as the “Superman Building” anchors the center.

Day 7. More pouncing is done, this time for detail. Now it’s up to Johan, alone on the lift, to pull the mural from the abstraction. 30 feet up he is both removed and on display. The mural is starting to attract attention and the occasional Shepard Fairey groupie wondering if it’s Fairey himself up on the lift. Johan keeps his concentration on the wall. Each section has been assigned a fixed numbers of days to complete, with only a few days grace for bad weather.  The unveiling is scheduled for AS200’s Foo Fest on August 14 and he’s right on schedule.

When people speak of this, and they will, they’ll refer to it as the mural artist Shepard Fairey painted. Although Johan often wields his brush as both the artist and the painter, for this project being just the painter is fine with him. It’s good work when you can get it, being a walldog.

 Thanks to Johan Bjurman for being such a good sport and letting me take up his time when he needed to be painting, check out his website when you get a chance.

Here's the version of the video and story that projo ran, maybe it's better and I'm just a jerk!

Like sand through the hourglass...

Finally, the Great Dunes painting is signed. Now it just needs to be sealed and delivered out to Colorado and Great Sand Dunes National Park. 

A little varnish, a simple frame, a custom built box and a trip to UPS should do it! I'll post a better pic when I get one.

Off the wall

It looks projo.com is going to run my story on Johan Bjurman painting the Shepard Fairey mural, and probably the video I shot, which ended up being more fun. Look for it around Aug. 8th if all goes well.  I was scooped though, by the Providence Pheonix's story this week, but that's ok, it's a good story and Johan deserves all the publicity he gets.

I'll post links soon and also a pic of my Great Sand Dunes painting, when I get a good photo of it.

In the meantime, here's a link to a beautifully written post on a blog I just discovered. Her work's not too shabby either.