Bunny with an Artblog

nyah nyah...you're a cerebrifomis!

2008-08-05T08:19:00.001-07:00

I have always been a big fan of word games. (Hence my sadness last week when Scrabulous was yanked from Facebook) But I'm playing the granddaddy of all word games right now-it's called "Pin the Fictional Latin Name on the Bonsai Sculpture."

I have been making a list of words I like in my Botanical Latin book, and am madly collecting more, going through the dictionary page by page, writing the good ones on post-it notes, and then later I will pair the right words with the right sculpture. With around 100 sculptures to name, it's a big organizational challenge, but I'm up for it. I like to mix my days up with a multitude of tasks, and I appreciate when I have one that doesn't require my work clothes and can be done in a variety of locations! (Especially since it's supposed to be in the 90 degree range today!)

It's been really interesting to see what words the authors of this book deemed important to put in the dictionary section. Sure, you have to have words to describe color or leaf shape. I love the various illustrations and charts they have included for those themes. Half of this 545 page tome is taken up with a Latin-to-English-to-Latin dictionary and that's what I'm going through with a fine toothed comb.

This might not want to make you hang around with me much these days, but I am finding many ways to increase my witty party banter with this project. For example, did you know that "cerevisia" is Latin for "beer?" Why this word made it into this publication, I'll never know...

Another curious discovery is the term "cerebriformis" which translates as "having an irregular brain-like appearance." I have seen succulents that fit that description, but this word could definitely come in handy in certain social situations. It's akin to the old "your epidermis is showing" insult. For my pre-teen Bunny with an Artblog readers, consider this a gift.

arpfest

2008-08-02T18:23:00.000-07:00

mapping the selection

2008-08-01T18:00:00.001-07:00

It is August 1. Yikes! As previously mentioned, I did come to a close on the construction of pieces for Natural Selection. Now it's time to paint these babies and I'm really glad I have a month to do it because it's a huge task. To help me along the way, I photographed all 89 pieces and printed them out so I could keep them all in a binder. This will be my bible for the next month. It will help me take notes not only for color decisions, but also for the all-important Latin naming process. A third and equally important reason to be so organized is that I wanted to record the dimensions of each piece for construction of the shelving units. With 30+ days left until the installation starts, I don't have any time to waste.

pix pix pix and no talk

2008-07-30T22:24:00.001-07:00

talk talk talk and no pix

2008-07-30T20:32:00.000-07:00

I have reached my goal just in time for the deadline. The goal I speak of is the goal to complete the construction of all pieces in July so that I can focus on painting said pieces for the last 30+ days of time before Natural Selection is completed.

Or maybe this has just begun.

I haven't experienced this same gut feeling since my thesis project Kharshouf. It's a feeling that I am only stopping now because of the artificial time constrains of the exhibition schedule. If I had my way, I would keep going.

I also feel that constraints are a good thing. My career would be nothing without constraints--I am forever reworking pieces in my studio. Selling them is the only thing that stops me from reworking something.

But the bottom line is: I will continue this work for a while. My "Natural Selection" show will be complete, intact, satisfactory....but it has opened some doors for me.

more soon.

image of the day

2008-07-26T20:40:00.000-07:00

contrapunctus

2008-07-25T03:35:00.000-07:00

At long last I can finally tell you about this exciting project called Contrapunctus that Christian worked on for Portland's Third Angle New Music Ensemble. The local experimental group asked Second Story to create an interactive instrument for them, which has recently been nominated for a people's choice award at the FlashForward film festival at their upcoming conference in San Francisco. (vote for them here in the "sound" category!)

Visitors to the site can play one of four instruments with the movement of the computer mouse. Your composition can be recorded and saved, and others can add to it, creating a constantly evolving composition. As they say it, it's an "exquisite corpse for the new age." Rumor has it that Third Angle wants to play one of the compositions generated from the site--I'll let you know when that's scheduled. Click here to try it out for yourself, maestro.

Report from the Trenches of Natural Selection

2008-07-20T17:56:00.000-07:00

Hey Beautiful People! I have some lovely photos and stories for you today (if I do say so myself.) I have been having some really incredible studio sessions these past few weeks and my body of work is rapidly increasing. (Perhaps the word I should use is procreating.) It's due in part to a big decision I made recently to simply construct pieces for the rest of July. Come August, all new production will stop and I will spend the remainder of the time before the show opens getting the paint surfaces and palette just right. (Not to mention other details like the greenhouse, directory, plant markers, etc.)

I have been working from all my lists and drawings from the past few years to help me amass a rather large group of little sculptures. I love working this way, as you faithful readers already know, as the spontaneous rhythm of assembling forms just works better for me than more methodical means of art making. Here is a shot of my main shelf that's filled with sculptures, and there are two more areas that are also building up a crowd.

This image of Jean Arp has been in my life for several years--I believe came from a past issue of the Smithsonian Magazine. Most of the images on my studio wall are plant forms, but a few pictures are like this one--images with more to say than just showing a piece of art I like. This picture inspires me because it's such an amazing portrait of an artist and his work. I need to get serious some day about having a great image taken of me to use for professional purposes and this is certainly one to aspire to. (I'm curious about how much staging it may have entailed.) Either way, it's a pleasure to be able to see his sculptures so tightly packed because I also feel like I can get a glimpse of his mind and how it thinks about form.

I had an idea for a few Natural Selection pieces I wanted to make that involved multiples of small unique forms, so I decided to use that portrait of Arp for inspiration. I became obsessed with shaping these tiny little pieces all morning--so much so that after being hunched over for more than an hour straight, it took more than a bit of massage, stretching, and movement to recover. My body ain't what it used to be. Sigh.

This piece is based on Hieronymous Bosch's masterpiece The Garden of Earthly Delights. I know I haven't been talking much about the reading I've been doing to inform this installation, so I hope I can catch up a little in that respect. This is one painting I felt was necessary to pay tribute to in this project, and here's a sneak peek at the form. I really should do an entire blog entry about the things I learned and love about this painting , but that will have to happen later.

The second sculpture that clusters the small Arp-inspired forms is based on an episode of Dan Savage's Lovecast that I faithfully listen to each week. (You know...for research purposes.....) Someone called in and asked Dan about the etiquette or rules of conduct at a party and I started thinking about how it could manifest itself in a nice sculpture with multiple characters interacting in various ways. After it has been properly glued and painted, I will adjust the stems into their final interactive resting places.

I made an exciting discovery recently when reading about Charles Darwin. Apparently, Darwin's grandfather Erasmus was very interested in the sciences as well and published an encylopaedic poem called The Botanic Garden that was based on Linnaeus' system of taxonomy. This book is in the public domain, and I was excited to find an original scanned text in Google Books.

In the second section of this book, titled "The Loves of the Plants," Erasmus Darwin told "the story of the sex-life of plants, disguising truths of nature in even more revealing metaphor." His fictional account was based on actual plants that bore two stamens and one pistil, and elaborated on tales of ladies with two male suitors. or as Linnaeus called it, "Mariti duio in eodem conjugio" - two husbands in the same marriage. Another passage is about a plant called Genista, where "ten fond brothers woo the haughty maid," these being ten stamens arising from two bases, as if from two mothers, and united by their filaments. This description perfectly fits a piece I made last weekend. I will have to figure out how to give a special shout out to Erasmus in the title of this piece. This picture of him cracks me up--you can see a twinkle of bawdiness in his eye, can't you? These tales caused quite a stir in their day, as you can imagine.

Speaking of which, I wanted to tell one last Natural Selection story before I tumble off to bed and that is about how I named my first piece last week, which had to be done for the postcard. I have been anticipating this part of the show, and when I have fleeting moments of idle focus, familiarizing myself with the Botanical Latin book I bought two years ago at the Chicago Botanic Garden. As I make each piece, I take notes to remind myself of the general theme, and then compile all the words that could be used.

The piece I used in the postcard is a detail of the image that preceded the last blog entry. I wanted to convey that this piece was about being well-endowed. You know, kinda like Dirk Diggler. The first word that popped out at me was nimio or nimis, which means "very excessively." Perfect. I then found the term stema which translates as "penis or stamen." There needed to be a clincher, so I decided to browse through my beloved Sunset Western Garden Book, and came upon one of my favorite garden friends, the Passionflower. The Latin name for this plant is Passiflora. I worked these three words until I came up with something that sounded right - Passistema nimis. I am curious to see if some plant afficionado will take delight in puzzling out my titles in the directory.

Okay...that's my update. I gotta catch some shut eye. I have been so stimulated by this project that it's keeping me up at all hours. I can't really complain because I love being this immersed in a show and I don't know when I'll do another one of this magnitude again. I can catch up on all that sleep in September, can't I?

Promenade

2008-07-18T14:25:00.000-07:00

Hey Beautiful People! I am riding high today because I got my advance copy of the impending American Craft Magazine and not only does my ad look great, but they surprised me with an article in their preview section. While I'm thrilled to get some great national media attention, it definitely turns up the heat for this project. (Click here to read the article online or look for it on newsstands in August.)

I do, however, plan to sneak away from the studio this weekend to see the latest event in the South Waterfront Neighborhood's Artist in Residence Series. The piece is titled PROMENADE, and features Linda K. Johnson, Bill Will, Bill Boese, Seth Nehil and more than 30 artistic collaborators.

Saturday, July 19
SW Moody @ Curry - in the future site of South Waterfront Neighborhood Park
Gathering begins an hour before sunset and continues until moonrise

FREE * all ages * Bring a picnic!

GO GREEN and venture to the South Waterfront neighborhood by bike, foot, streetcar, tram or carpool

click here to read the Portland Mercury article by Alison Hallett

or click here for the Oregonian piece by DK Row

See you there!

ready to promote!

2008-07-15T16:55:00.001-07:00

Yee Haw! My postcards are ready! I am not doing the general mailing for another month yet, but if you would like to receive one, please email me with your snailmail address. Or if you prefer reminders of the email variety, click here to sign up for the eco-friendly update. I use ConstantContact which guarantees safe addresses (no spam) and I will never share your name with others. Pinkie promise!

woodturning news

2008-07-08T16:20:00.000-07:00

Here's an interesting project that Christian just passed on to me--a collective called the Owl Project has a new piece called a "Sound Lathe," exploring the sonic properties of woodwork.

"Combining a traditional pole lathe with custom built software, sensors and switches., Sound Lathe produces audio data, saw dust, noise and wood chippings. With this machine, turned spindles are shaped into complex sounds such as tones, glitches and beats. Unlike many electronic instruments, the Sound Lathe produces a unique wooden object at the end of each performance. This object serves as a memory of the performance, slightly faulty and incomplete as it represents the conclusion rather than an accurate recording of the process.

"Log to Leg performance - This is based on a traditional 'race' in which turners compete to produe the perfect legs from logs.

"The performance starts with the splitting of a log with an axe and then the shaping of the resulting quarters of wood, amplified via contact microphones and processed via custom software the ripping and rendering noise signifies the start of the raw wood's journey to a shaped object, ready for the lathe. where it will be carved into a leg.

"The Sound Lathe uses a video input and a muio interface (muio.org) to convert the shape carved into the wood into digital signals that generate audio within custom software written in MAX/MSP. The shape of the audio waves produced is directly related to the shape turned on the Lathe. The pulse of Lathe being used is sensed as the wood-turner pumps the drive pedal, this is converted to a midi clock pulse which is passed to custom written sequencing software written in SuperCollider."
Click here to see more images from this interesting project.

In other woodturning news, the International Turning Exchange at the Wood Turning Center that begat this very blog is having their open studio with this year's artists-in-residence. Vince Romaniello, the photojournalist during my year, is back this year and produced a nice little video to preview the event. He's also working on a longer video similar to the one he did during my residency--look for it in August.

Last but not least, I'm excited for the impending residency of a friend I made a few years ago--Jack Larimore is going to be a senior resident at Oregon College of Art and Craft. He was one of the people on the selection committee that allowed me to be a fellow with the Wood Turning Center, and I'm looking forward to seeing him again on my turf. There will be a panel discussion with all of the summer residents at The Lab @ The Museum of Contemporary Craft on Thursday, July 24 at 6pm. (Moderated by Kristin Shiga!) Larimore will be lecturing on his own work at Oregon College of Art and Craft on Wednesday, July 23 at 6:30 PM. Don't miss the chance to see one of the most thoughtful furniture artists in the country!

more studio shots

2008-07-08T09:44:00.000-07:00

As promised, here are some peeks at the Natural Selection pieces. The colors are still somewhat in progress, but getting close to what I envision. I was very very prolific, with that three day weekend and all. This makes me a happy girl. Enjoy.

new ecology

2008-07-08T08:39:00.000-07:00

My dear mum sent me a clipping from the New York Times, reviewing a show by artist Tetsumi Kudo, who has been working since the 1950's, (until his death in 1990) expressing himself in all media (objects, sculpture, installation, drawing, and painting.) Most interesting to me, is his "human bonsai" piece, with small phalluses covering the sculpture. Unfortunately I can't find an image of that piece, but I do love the one here (above) that accompanied the NYT review of his show at the Andrea Rosen Gallery, titled "Pollution - Cultivation - New-Ecology Underground" from 1972-73. The first North American retrospective of Kudo's work will be at the Walker Art Museum this coming winter--maybe I will sneak over there for a peek.

how to look at modern art in america

2008-07-06T10:31:00.000-07:00

My art experiences as of late have been strictly limited, the reasons why were elaborated upon in last weekend's blog posting. (Speaking of which, I hope to have some more studio shots for you later today!) When I say "art experiences," I guess I mean the work of others that I am exposed to...it's usually a very important part of my life, but I really feel the need to restrict most of my visual activity to my own project at hand. I do miss the input and dialogue, but Christian has recently acquired a stack of books by the fascinating theorist Edward Tufte that have been satisfying that learning urge.

Edward Tufte is known as the "Leonardo da Vinci of data," which is why Christian is interested in how he discusses the way design can convey information. One of the books is called "Beautiful Evidence" and is filled with many compelling and sometimes haunting diagrams such as how wings propel a bird into flight or the way slaves were packed into a sailing vessel in 1823.

One that we spent a lot of time looking at was a cartoon by Ad Reinhardt in 1946. Reinhardt is largely known for his abstract expressionist paintings, but he also published a series of satirical cartoons around that time period. The Reinhardt cartoon, titled "How to look at Modern Art in America," was a response to a diagram that was circulated a decade earlier, attempting to explain cubism and abstract art. Here's the original diagram, created by Alfred H. Barr.

Reinhardt's satirical response was apparently very popular among artists and hung in studios all over America for many years. I love coming across these little known bits of art history--it would be fun to see a version about the current state of affairs--especially in the post-Pop art era. I expect Thomas Kinkaide and Ann Geddes would be fertilizing that corn fields down below, but it would depend on the creator where artists like William Wegman and Keith Haring would fall.

Click on the image to see it larger.

happy holidays!

2008-07-04T03:33:00.000-07:00

Human Statue of Liberty
July 1918
18,000 officers and men
taken at Camp Dodge, Des Moines, Iowa
Click on the image to see it better and click here to read more about how this amazing picture was made.

a selection of bits

2008-07-02T07:36:00.000-07:00

Some nights I just don't have the energy to work late in the studio, so I decide to "rest" by sketching out some images while watching a dvd with my sweetie. Last night was one of those nights. I used my trusty titanium Fiskars shears to some lovely leaf and petal forms for the Natural Selection show. I found some old sheets of polystyrene that you can cut like paper, and then heat to achieve various curved rigid forms that please me immensely. I love the little translucent white pile of them and it makes me want to make at least one piece that retains that luminous quality of the materials.

Green Porno

2008-07-01T21:29:00.000-07:00

A few comrades knew I'd love this video series on the sexual reproductive habits of common creepy crawlies that Isabella Rossellini made for the Sundance Channel....I'm especially fond of the one about my all-time favorite critter, the earthworm. Click here to see the whole series of "Green Porno" videos, which also includes other bugs and an interesting "how the worm was made" section.

faith based mission #2

2008-07-01T16:50:00.000-07:00

I mentioned briefly that TJ Norris and I have a collaboration in the works, didn't I? We were invited to be part of Greg Wilbur's Collaborations show at the annual Labor Day Weekend Art in the Pearl festival. This is a show that TJ and I have both participated in past years, (me with Peggy Cochran and Tom Hill, he with Scott Wayne Indiana) but this year, TJ suggested that we put our creative minds together. I agreed even though I'm feeling a bit booked for the year, but the opportunity for such a big challenge was just too good to resist. Our regular work is miles away from each other and I can't wait to see what this project will foster. So....today was our second outing to ponder ideas and hunt and gather for workable specifics. The Dollar Store is such a fascinating social experiment in and of itself, but we fell in love with these little green butterfly nets.

the sweet smell of production

2008-06-29T19:13:00.001-07:00

Hey Beautiful People! I have just completed a very satisfying weekend in the studio--with two months to go before Natural Selection opens, I am learning the gentle art of saying "no" and this weekend was a definite challenge. The temperatures squeaked into the upper 90's, but I was determined to maximize my studio time. Even repeated invitations from friends with a swimming pool didn't sway me--I am officially on a mission to make this my best show yet.

I have almost forty pieces either completed or in the works at this point. I think I will need twice that amount, so it's definitely showtime. Here's a few studio shots of some of my favorites.

Fear not, dear reader, because I did manage to sneak out late last night and caught a fantastic film called Son of Rambow. A great little movie about creativity and loyalty, two of my favorite subjects. I feel like I'm surrounding myself with creative inspiration lately, because at home we're also watching Before Night Falls, one of artist/director Julian Schnabel's masterpieces. After seeing The Diving Bell and the Butterfly earlier this year, I was reminded that I had somehow missed this earlier movie, and was happy to find a copy at the library. Schnabel's movies are so incredibly shot and edited--heard a great interview with him recently as well....

Back to Natural Selection for a minute--I have also been working hard to finalize my design for the greenhouse. A big realization last week was that the work needs to be displayed more vertically because the structure itself needs to be smaller. I've returned to my best installation canvas, the back patio, to sketch out some possible floorplans. No time to explain, but it has a lot to do with this next image. Stay tuned for more details, dear reader!

pinch

2008-06-27T10:57:00.000-07:00

Here's a little vignette of some of the drawings I did last week to do a little problem solving. I have a few favorite images from art history that I want to represent in my Natural Selection show. One is this painting titled Gabrielle d'Estrees and one of her sisters in the Bath. It is from the Fontainbleau School of France from the mid 16th century.

I have seen this image used out of context so many times--most people think "oooh, lesbians!" when they see it--and I wanted to reinterpret it partly for that reason. The real story behind the image is that it's a portrait of the mistress of King Henry IV. In her hand Gabrielle d'Estrees, said mistress, holds a ring given to her by the king as a sign of their bond. Her sister is pinching her nipple indicating she is pregnant with the king's child and in the background a lady is sewing baby clothes.

Here are a few images I drew trying to work out the composition of the piece I will make:

I don't prefer to work directly from drawings, but this is probably the general direction I will choose.

There's that old life imitating art thing again....

2008-06-27T02:33:00.000-07:00

Hey Beautiful People!

Wanted to share a more personal moment that's got an artistic twist--last week my mother married her longtime sweetheart. After the ceremony, our group took the pink and white paper parasols that were suspended in the trees and paraded over the hilltop (with musical instruments, of course) to the reception brunch. All guests (except the bride) were requested to wear white, and the result was a beautiful, Fellini-esque performance.

I did manage to get a lot of drawing and planning done for Natural Selection while I was gone last week, and will report back in the next few days about that....in the meantime, here's one of my favorite recent drawings to tide you over.

moving cities

2008-06-20T14:05:00.000-07:00

Hey Beautiful People! It's the last few days of TJ Norris' multimedia show "Infinitus" at the New American Art Union, so get yourself down there! It's exciting to see TJ work his magic here, thanks in part to a generous artists' stipend from the New American Art Union which allowed him to have all the details of this show made just right.

Enter the room and you immediately hear the urban soundscape written by Christian Renou. All visuals associated with this show are placed either at floor or ceiling level, so the viewer is really forced to use their body to experience the work (something I've always been a champion of with installation art.) A lightbox at the entrance instructs us in its invitational font: "reserve the right to remain silent," and I do, because I want to hear the soundscape. But as I spent more time here, I slowly start to see that remaining silent has its larger implications as well--"don't become complacent", it tells me.

Across the room and also at floor level is a cartoonish skyline, backlit to also bring a subtle light element into this gallery. Normally there is one large 12 foot window to the east that casts beautiful natural light into the artwork here, but in the center of the room is a video projection, so any hint of the natural world outside has been hidden. To properly watch this video, you are invited to lie down on one of five coffin-like platforms, which directs your eyes to the ceiling and the three video projections there.

Here's where it's all about TJ letting his creative talents shine. A collage of moving images, abstract and recognizable, brought me into that meditative space that usually comes when I listen to live music. I can see why he chose to work with Renou because the sound and image meld seamlessly.

This show ends on June 22 (this Sunday.) For gallery location and hours, click here.

To hear TJ's recent interview on KBOO's Art Focus, click here.

Interestingly, this was not my only recent experience with urban life on the screen--last weekend Christian and I celebrated his birthday at Cinema Project's final screening of their season, titled "In the Street."
They had a lovely presentation on an outdoor screen of five short films that reflected different views of the city. My favorite was Under the Brooklyn Bridge by Rudy Burckhardt. Shot in 1953, this film showed a glimpse of life in New York city over half a century ago. The passage of boys swimming in their skivvies was quite poetic, and a welcome kick off to the first real weekend of nice Oregon summer weather. It was a long and wet winter, and I'm ver happy to be moving into something else for a change.

soft launch

2008-06-18T09:56:00.000-07:00

Hey beautiful people! I am coming down the homestretch on my new website for my sculptural work--thanks to Wordpress, I found a really clean simple template I could work with, and Christian is helping me personalize it just a bit. He also has a fancy concept for the home page, but that will have to come later. The guts still need a little attention and I have a few more pages to add for past shows and press, but it's much better than what I had before so I decided to go live. Click here to get your sneak preview--I imagine I'll do a formal announcement to my email list around the end of the month when it's all done. (I thought I'd let you Bunny with an Artblog readers get a sneak peek since you're soooooo special!)

an image I'm loving from the NYT

2008-06-18T04:14:00.000-07:00

As a master of ikebana, Yukio Nakagawa, who was born in 1918, has a long experience with the tension between natural and artificial and backed into photography while using it to document his work. His arrangements are Surreal temporary sculpture: a long, curved iris leaf filled with rose petals lies like a curved knife blade dipped in blood. A glazed ceramic stiletto houses a “fingered citron,” a fruit that looks more like a squid than a lemon.

This image is one of the works in Heavy Light: Recent Photography and Video From Japan at the International Center of Photography in New York. Click here to read the review in today's New York Times or here to see more images in the show.

Photo: Yukio Nakagawa and Miyagi Museum of Art, Sendai

double the pleasure, double the fun!

2008-06-13T13:33:00.000-07:00

This just in--my Natural Selection show at Ogle Gallery has been extended through the month of October. Yay! I was just having a conversation with TJ Norris about four weeks just not seeming long enough. Now it feels like all this hard work will have ample time on display. Lots of new work in the studio lately....pix soon. For now, gaze upon this pretty pretty picture of the evil HPV virus. Look, but don't touch! Picture good. Virus bad.