When the chickens come home to roost

Lots of shuffling around of artwork is going in the next few weeks, which, if nothing else, justifies my driving a pickup instead of a Mini Cooper which I would LOVE.

Today I dropped off the above painting which just barely fit in the bed of the truck for the Art League of RI show at the RISD Museum. The show is not going to be in the big new gallery after all, (I thought that was too good to be true) but instead it will be in the OLD new gallery (the Farago wing), which is still pretty cool and a nice big space.

So I headed up Benefit St., and you know how it is when you are trying to get down really narrow street and cars are parked on the other side so you can barely get by if a car is coming the other way as it is, and then someone makes it even worse by just PARKING on the wrong side so you have to wait till traffic clears and then squeak by them. Well that was me. Not the one squeaking by. The obnoxious jerk who parked. But my painting was big, and a gusty thunderstorm was threatening, so...tough!

And it's now official. I have a painting in the RISD Museum.

Most of my other paintings will be coming home to my studio though. Monday I'll be taking down 5 church paintings from my art window . It sure will be easier to take down than to put up.  A lot of the installation is made up of branches, shells and thorns and can go right into a composting bag, the canvas curtains can get wrinkled, and only the paintings need to be saved from demolition.

My show at RWU library comes down on the 22nd, which means I'm really going to run out of room in my storage racks. This will be a good time to reorganized and clean my entire studio, try to beat back the clutter sprawl and find space for all these damn paintings.

Luckily it's off to Colorado and the Great Sand Dunes for the painting I'm working on now. Now I just have to find good homes for the others...

Art New England Review

I've been reviewed! The writer, Martina Windels, visited my studio about a month and a half ago and we spent a long time talking. She looked at both of the shows I had up at the time at RWU and the Bert Gallery. I would have rather she reviewd the Bert show, since that contained my latest work, but understand why she chose the longer show at RWU. Art New England only publishes every two months, so most shows are already down by the time they're reviewed. But the RWU will be up until June, so there's plenty of time to see if you agree with her assesment.

I'm generally happy with the critique, even the "They fail, however..." part. I know the large Badlands triptych was more of a transitional piece, and if I failed to convey the desolation, it could be because I found the Badlands not desolate, but incredibly rich in color and texture.  See what you think...

Criticism is easier to take if it is well thought out and informed. I know Martina spent a long time looking at my work, my website and asking questions. I'd rather get a bit of negative feedback in a review with substance than a flattering reprint of my press release. And I have no complaints about the ending!

So, thank you Martina, for a "fair and balanced" review.

(Art New England doesn't link all of its reviews from its website, so I took the liberty of *sigh* retyping the whole thing here)

Art New England APRIL/MAY 2010

KATHY HODGE: PAINTINGS 1993-2009
Roger Williams University Law School Gallery - Bristol, RI - www.bristolartmuseum.org - Through June 2010

In this fifteen-year restrospective, the Bristol Art Museum assembles just a small sampling of this prolific painter's work.

Here one sees how Kathy Hodge intently examines a subject for a long period of time. This exhibit includes work from several series: Train, Russia, and National Park. While working on the latter, she was in an artist residency at the Badlands National Park. She captured this landscape by breaking down and patterning earth tones. They fail, however, to convey the desolate nature she tries to depict. Hodge's patchy and detailed application of small color fields work much better when she paints the hard surfaces of buildings, as in Wait. In this lively and semi-abstracted scene, half a train emerges from an old metal building. The objects in the paintings — trains, bits of building, school buses, row houses, chimneys, and power lines — are all rendered at odd and often conflicting perspectives, which make the scene both mesmerizing and perplexing.

The most compelling paintings in the exhibit are taken from the Shoemaker Series, recently exhibited at the Bert Gallery in Providence.

Intrigued by old cast-iron machinery that she discovered in a local custom shoemaker's shop, Hodge took photographs of the unusual objects. The photographs became the source of inspiration as she started with quick, unfussy, and lively watercolor sketches that captured the equipment's character. Then, using charcoal, she created more studied and realistic portraits of the machine. Workings simultaneously on several pieces and in different media, Hodge would create a third iteration of the object — a loosely composed illustration in acrylic paint, overlaid with pastels for additional color and highlights. The grand finale would be a large painting, always executed in oil, with nuanced color application and a more refined composition.

In the oil paintings, Hodge would often combine elements from different objects, splicing them at obscure angles. The more abstracted the image, the more compelling the painting, shifting the focus from content to color, shape and composition, areas in which Hodge shows her strength and confidence.

—Martina Windels

Back to basics

Hey, isn't this supposed to be a painter's blog? Where are the paintings? What's with the video and photos? Not to mention - Politics? What is this, a postmodern gallery space?

Here is a painting to redeem myself. From my show at RWU and my series "From Providence to NYC".

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!