word.

Back in the early days of this blog, (2 years this month!) I had a fun little routine of beginning my entries with some sort of text-based image. Those days are gone, but maybe this picture will be a nice two year anniversary present for those of you who have been following my little blog all the way along its hippity hoppity path. It's from an interesting little article I just read in the NYT about artist Steve Powers who just completed a 20+ mural project in Dublin recently as part of a Fullbright Scholarship. Click here to read the article and don't miss their link to the online image gallery.

T'ai Chi for 1,000

Whether you are practiced at t'ai chi or this would be your first opportunity to try it - your attendance is requested at what is sure to be a very special event.

T'ai Chi for 1,000
This Saturday - May 31 - from 10 - 11:30am
South Waterfront Park - SW Moody at Curry
Rain or Shine
Dress for the weather and wear clothing that allows comfortable movement

This is the culminating event of Horatio Hung-Yan Law's project China-on-Willamette for the South Waterfront Artist-in-Residence Program (AiR).

PLEASE FEEL WELCOME TO BRING GUESTS AND SHARE THE EVENT DETAILS WITH YOUR COMMUNITY.

click here for more information about getting there by foot, bike, pedicab, automobile, street car and tram

Click here for more information about Horatio's project, or the AiR Program - directed and curated by Linda K Johnson - that continues through September 2008

weekend in the studio making small parts

verbal hiatus

Hey Beautiful People! Life is really good, but there are some things I need that need my attention right now and it's getting in the way of being a good blogger. I decided it to handle it by letting my shutter finger do the talking for a little while.

P.S. The image I am using here is not something I made, but rather, something from an amazing web site I came across recently called SpaceCollective. Click here and prepare to spend a few good hours lost (and found.)

still recovering....

Here's my favorite images from Art Hop 2008:

Back atcha when I'm up to full speed again.

at the HOP!

Hey Beautiful People!

Come join Art on Alberta this Saturday, May 17 for our biggest party of the year--Art Hop! This year we are featuring three artists in our quest to find Synergy on the street. The artists are Adrienne Cruz, Tripper Dungan, and Analee Fuentes. There will be over 150 art vendors, three music stages, sponsored by Siren Nation andGreat Magnet Recording Concerns , and a gospel stage down at the Terrell Brandon Barbershop at 12th Ave and Alberta. At 2:30 our beloved parade ensues, including March Fourth Marching Band, Tears of Joy Theater, a drum corps, a Pretty Dress Bike Entourage organized by Carye Bye, school bands from the Alberta neighborhood and more surprises. Art Hop runs all day from 11am to 6pm, and there's a free after hours shadow puppet show by Tripper Dungan at the Alleyway Cafe (2415 Alberta) at 9:30pm. Click here for more information about the 2008 Art Hop!!!(Programs with the most up-to-date information will be available at the event.)

A big shout out to Combustible Media, without whom this year's Art Hop would not have been possible. (or half as cool!) Thanks also to collage and the Oregon Arts Commission for their generous sponsorship.

I'm even going to have some of my work available for sale from the Bunny with a Toolbelt line--I'm sharing a booth with friends which will be somewhere in the 27th Ave and Alberta block near Bink's. I made a posse of Love Monsters and will sell them for only $20 apiece! (Special Art Hop Price for this weekend only!) Get 'em while they last and you are guaranteed to bring love and happiness into your life.

Kicking off the event is a special fundraiser for Art on Alberta--Cork, the wine shop at 29th and Alberta (who also sells beer and amazing bulk olive oil) is having a 2nd anniversary wine tasting on Friday the 16th. The cost is $10 per person and all proceeds go directly to Art on Alberta and all the hard work we do to preserve this street as the only arts-identified neighborhood in Portland! The wine tasting is from 5-8pm. Please come and help support my favorite nonprofit organization!!!

So long, it's been good to know you.

One of my long-time favorite artists, Robert Rauschenberg, has passed away. Since I am nursing a shoulder injury today, it was a good opportunity for me to pull out the two big books I have about this prolific and highly influential artist and take a little trip down memory lane. In later years, I appreciated the special connection Rauschenberg had with Portland, which was very nicely documented in this article by the Oregonian's arts writer D.K. Row.

I also enjoyed this article from the New York Times about his lifelong collaborations with the dance world.

Plan(s) B

Example 1: Christian took a stab at my American Craft ad yesterday. He has much more extensive training and practice with this kind of thing, let alone convincing opinions, and I was more than happy to let him work his magic on my self-taught graphic design skills. I wasn't that unhappy with my early ad, but can see what a difference a little TLC makes when it comes to organization and fonts. I also found out Friday that the previously scheduled small show, also in September, at the nearby Museum of Contemporary Craft was moved to October. This is huge load of my work schedule in the next 3.5 months, but also off my ad, which needed a little "less is more" action. Not to mention the fact that Velvet da Vinci is the only gallery who represents the same kind of work that I will be showing in Natural Selection, so I am happy to direct any and all retail traffic their way.


Example 2: I had a little epiphany last night about my Exhibitionist piece. It had to be bigger. Bigger than my original design and bigger than the sort of similar piece I made a few months ago. So today I started making the little elements and the basic structure. My new piece will be over 20" tall, which will be great in the overall body of work.

My studio is sooooo packed with tools and inspirational images and sculptures and my big window taking up all of the wall space that it's really hard to see my work sometimes. I do have one blank wall that I reserve for "installations-in-progress," but it's geared towards wall work, and I'm learning that I have to be inventive to get a little breathing room for the sculptural work. My photography area works pretty well, but at the moment it's kinda full of sculptures. It's funny--my last studio was literally 24 square feet and when I upgraded to 400 square feet, I thought I was set. I've almost outgrown this studio, but also feel the need to work with what I've got because if I don't, it could lead to a never-consummated, ever-voracious appetite for studio space. My solution today was to prop up a large white backdrop behind the sculpture I was working on so I cold see it. Please keep in mind that this is still a work in progress. I know some of the pieces are sagging, but they will eventually be glued in to make the satisfying horizontal and vertical planes that make me giddy. I have an additional dozen small elements to add onto this sculpture once this much has been glued into place.

I want to also toss in a scan of one of my vinyl pieces from Costa Rica because those cutout "sketches" were so unexpectedly influential for this body of work. So much so that I'm actually thinking of having a small grouping of framed pieces in another part of the gallery at Ogle. Kind of like when a museum shows the preliminary sketches. I go back and forth on that decision, and it will also depend on how much time I have and funds to have things framed properly.

So many things to consider when mounting a big show like this.

more studio shots

I'm having a great week and feeling really good about my progress with the Natural Selection show. I thought this would be an interesting process picture for the ol' bloggeroo--remember those pictures from a few entries ago of my drawings and the pieces in progress? Sometimes I work quite intuitively, and a piece falls together without me putting pencil to paper at all. Sometimes I draw and then execute, which is sort of what I am doing here, except this particular piece has so many shapes and sizes in the small elements that need to fit together in the end. I thought I should employ a combination of all my artmaking tricks.

Using a large piece of paper, I laid everything out flat on the table and then drew in the lines where the wire armature will go. Some of these pieces are still too plain and will need some spiky or nubby elements, so this process also allowed me to draw those in where it seemed imperative, and this weekend I will make them, as well as creating and attaching the wire armatures.

Another trick I used here was to squint at the piece to make sure the overall shape is right. I have simulated that experience here using my Photochops. I want this piece to have a giant open leaf shape. The jury is still out about color, but as I mentioned before, that's a decision I will make late in the game.

It's almost time to submit my ad for American Craft Magazine as well. As you may remember, I recieved a generous Career Opportunity Grant from the Oregon Arts Commission that supports a color ad in this excellent national publication. I got a bee in my bonnet to start thinking about the design yesterday, since I want to be able to sit with it before committing on this expensive endeavor. I would love it if my ad were placed next to that of Velvet da Vinci, since they are the ones who sell this work and take out their own regular ad that always looks great. A trick I like to use when creating a print ad is to see how it will look on the pages of the magazine. I printed my latest version of the ad out full size and laid it on the page I'd most like to be. There's a few more details to work out before I can commit, but I think I'm pretty close to what I will end up with.

things that have inspired me lately

this.

and this.

and also this.

ps. almost forgot to mention this.

Works in Progress

Hey Beautiful People! I changed my mind. I decided to let you see some of these pieces I've been working on for the Natural Selection show in the fall. I have been concentrating on just designing and making the sculptures recently, leaving the whole big decisions about color until later in the game. I have been struggling, believe it or not, with what I want color to do in this project. Part of me wants to see these pieces very colorful so they emit a glow of their own when you stand outside the neutral greenhouse structure looking in, and part of me wants the pieces to be neutral themselves with smaller bright color spots to enhance the active parts of the pieces more subtly. Decisions, decisions. This conflict led me to an idea that if I just keep making pieces, that maybe seeing the forms en masse will help me come to the right choice in this matter.

As you faithful readers know, I was on the road a lot in April, which meant less studio time. One of those weekends presented me with an opportunity to do some drawing. Christian played along with me and suggested themes that I would try to illustrate with my bonsai forms, like "voyeurism" or "sex changes" or "rejection." That was not only a fun game, but proved to be really helpful in the studio later. I typically don't work from drawings, but in this case, I found it really helpful with the enormous task of creating fifty one of a kind and sculptures that conceptually can stand alone and also work as a whole installation. Every time I do one of these big installations, I learn a new trick or two about how to tackle these challenges and keep me on track without feeling overwhelmed.

So here's my drawing of an exhibitionist plant form. The style was definitely inspired by some of the collages I did during the residency in Costa Rica last winter. And here on the right are the elements I am working on which will make up the leaves or flower parts. I still want to work on some of them to give them more curves and detail, but you get the idea...

Two drawings I did of flasher bonsai. And here's my piece. It's hard to see here, but in between every leaf pair is a tiny little phallic projection.

Here I was thinking about peep shows and having one perforated element in the middle, a flashy piece on one side, and little peeping ones on the other. This piece is extremely hard to photograph, but here's most of those elements, still in pieces because it will make painting easier.

We were talking about infertility here, and here's a drawing I made where the balls can't quite reach those tempting cups....followed by the pieces which will eventually combine for the sculpture. I have tons of boxes around the studio right now with elements of finshed pieces waiting for their color assignment.

I'll leave you with a few parting images now. My apologies for the poor photo quality, but they're studio shots, right? Click on anything in this blog entry to see it bigger.

Hello world, it's a song that I'm singing....come on get happy!

I know I'm going to have that song stuck in my head now. Dang!

Hello Beautiful Person! I was thinking earlier today about how hard it's been for me to post entries to this blog lately. You see, I decided to take on the leadership role at Art on Alberta, which has been really rewarding in many ways, but takes up a lot of my time that was otherwise spent dreaming up and writing fancy blog entries! We have been really busy interviewing a lot of really interesting and energetic people for our board, plus getting ready for Art Hop, our big event of the year that will happen on May 17th. More about that later, but I just wanted to mention I have been thinking fondly of you, dear reader! Don't be jealous now!

I have been working in the studio, but nothing is really in a state to show you. The only art show I've seen in the past week was a really cool show at Powell's Basil Hayward Gallery by a local museum I have been meaning to check out for years called the Velveteria. Apparently, they have the largest collection of velvet paintings in the world! They took some of their favorites from their collection of over 1000 black velvet paintings and hung them salon style at Powells--and it's a really amazing walk through the history of the medium. This show is in conjunction with their new book called Black Velvet Masterpieces, which is more than just a book with campy images, but there's some step-by-step images of how these paintings are made, as well as a historical text that covers everything from content to context.

On the other end of the art spectrum, I'm looking forward to one show that opens this weekend-- my buddy TJ Norris' solo show at the New American Art Union called Infinitus. TJ is the second in the NAAU's couture series of really talented artists doing thought provocative work and TJ's debut solo show there as well. Won't you join me at the opening Saturday night? TJ's show sounds like it's going to be worth seeing--here's an idea of what to expect:

Infinitus is the third and final component of the installation series "Tribryd," conceived by TJ Norris. For his exhibit, Norris will create a video lounge enveloping the visitor in an endless, seamless city that questions the templates for our civilization is using to generate future landscapes. Imagine the entire globe manifesting itself by its interconnected man-made mini malls and the like. It is a viral sign, a shift towards the abandonment of the fragility of nature altogether. A world minus the underbelly of the faded industrial age. Skyscrapers reach higher, taking the place of mountain peaks.

Click here for more details on the New American Art Union and the opening this weekend.