July ends with lamps...Drawing a Day 2011

July 29, 2011

July 30, 2011

July 31, 2011

Godzilla loves Christmas?

Godzilla comes to stay at our house every Christmas-time. He eats all the guests who come to sing songs and then gets indigestion because the songs were too saccharine.

He will not leave until he is shooed or corralled out of the house as if he were a herd of chickens being transferred to one pen to another by inner city lawyers. The lawyers desperately try to pen the chickens (avoid being eaten by Godzilla) in their very expensive Italian leather loafers on a floor that is slick with shit. There will be no happy ending to this scenario and it is the shoes that ultimately suffer.

Godzilla revels in breaking all the silver glass balls on the Christmas tree. As gingerly as he is able he plucks the shiny orbs from my tree, waiting for me to pay attention to him and then drops them, smiling as they shatter on the floor. Oddly he cringes when I yell at him, covering his skyscraper claws over his head. I want him gone I yell scream at him. I tell him I am tired of the blood and glass and bones and guts on the floor. I tell him there is no room for his size, his weight in my house. When the snow thaws I tell him he must leave. Angry and dejected, Godzilla swipes at the tree and crashes the whole shimmering thing over. Now pine needles are mixed in the gore on the floor as well.

When the snow thaws, Godzilla walks out. The happy carolers who were once Godzilla’s favorite prey no longer come to my house.  I suppose their logic falls that if I got Godzilla to cry what will I do to them. Or perhaps they just like Godzilla better than me (eventhough Godzilla might gobble them up, I was sure to bite off their heads)

My husband places a large fainting couch and a plasma TV in the room that Godzilla once took over. We eat popcorn and drink Gin Slings while watching old Harryhausen movies.

Now I miss Godzilla.

Lamps are the latest obsession in the Drawing A Day 2011 very late July edition....

July 28, 2011

July 27, 2011

Drawings created while on an adventure are not as different as those done close to home

July 21, 2011

July 22, 2011

July 23, 2011

July 24, 2011

July 25, 2011

July 26, 2011

somethings have nothing to do with other things other than media: Drawing a Day 2011 July

July 20, 2011

July 19, 2011

July 18, 2011

Three little paintings of Babydolls: Drawing a Day 2011 in July

July 15, 2011

July 16, 2011

July 17, 2011

Shrinky Dink Puppets (or my issues laid bare)

Red Boots are easy to have fun in. 

This is the Madame...She has an eyepatch and a wooden leg.  However, if you make any pirate jokes, you will no longer be welcome in her house AND she may gut you.  (The last bit all depends on her mood.)

The school girl likes going to school to see her friends and to have a chance to walk around in her green boots.  She does not like all of the writing assignments Sister Editoria gives her.  Grammar and punctuation are over rated.

Sister Editoria.  She has sensible shoes.  Thank you.

Babydoll loves living  and making art.  The end.

Pictures of stories from "Tell me a Story"...Group 2

Beginnings of dolls or perhaps indigestion...Drawing a Day 2011 in Mid-July

July 14, 2011
paper collage on paper

July 13, 2011
graphite on paper (nothing to see here folks)

Pictures of the stories from "Tell me a Story"...group 1

What happens when you leave a typewriter in a room...



"Tell me a Story" installation view
Late May 2011
Sylvia Kania Gallery

   A month or so ago, I put up an installation at the Sylvia Kania Gallery in Portland entitled, "Tell me a story." This installation was part of a show there called "Textual Healing."  The show title was originally meant as a pun on the song "Sexual Healing" by Marvin Gaye.  When the show was conceived, the gallery had slightly different sensibilities.  The idea of word taint punch in Batman type lettering painted in the windows was to be the highlight of the show.  Things change as they quite frequently do.  Instead of the light hearted, tongue in cheek show that was envisioned in the winter months, this show was slightly tormented.  In addition to "Tell me a Story," I also showed a piece called "Teaching Mortality to Fish," which involved goldfish, tubs of water and the threat of electrocution.  But more on that perhaps another time.
 
Moving on to storytelling and criticism and the creation of art despite and in the absence of praise...

Electric Typewriter and Antique Oak Drop Leaf Side Table

I have an electric typewriter that I purchased as a teaching tool for my preschool in Seattle. As a tool/toy children would spend hours hunting and picking out the letters for their stories. The letters they pressed on the keys appeared on the sheet of paper above with a click.  This was a marvel to children raised with computers and printers and web enabled devices.  They had to press the keys and often the keys would misfire or get tangled or the ink on the ribbon would give out.  But the sensation of having their story appear on paper as they typed it dazzled my young students.  They would take the sheets out of the typewriter and then begin to draw pictures and images below and around the text.  When the children presented these wonders to their parental units kudos and praise would abound.  

Unfortunately, the world is not made up of highly engaged parents who see the kernels of genius in little bits of paper. 

Blank Paper

What has always struck me as odd is how when people go to an exhibit- any exhibit: the zoo, the aquarium, the library, the movies, or an art gallery for some examples- more than often they are looking for the big guns, the wow  factor, the in your face this is fucking amazing experience.  They want to see the lions ripping apart their leg of horse flesh or the big explosions in the latest block buster or the most recent book burning in a conservative neighborhood's library. 

Often the most wonderful parts of the exhibit is the most nuanced bit, the quiet stuff.  The stuff you only see if you pay attention and focus.

Watching patrons at the gallery during Art Walks forces me often to bit my tongue.  Unaware that they are being observed, gallery goers often will make comments that expose their ignorance.  Yes, perhaps this is unfair.  But it is a public space (kind of as it is a gallery but not really) so people should perhaps be on guard that someone is listening in on their conversations.  The most annoying comments are the ones in which patrons say they could do that at home. 

(Well, perhaps they could.  But they didn't put it in the gallery.  And it isn't here now.  Is it now?  So bugger off.)

Submissions

Yes, art is a very subjective thing.  What appeals to some might not appeal to others.  I get this.  And sometimes the art that is shown in a place could very well be crap.  And an artist needs to have thick skin if she is going to offer up work to the viewing public. Conversely, there is a measure of literacy that we the viewing public NEED to acquire when we go to an exhibit.
We need to ask ourselves why we are going to the exhibit?  What do we hope to accomplish by walking in?  From what perspective is the curator and the artist attempting to push our focus?  Why is this exhibit here? 

And who is watching us watching the exhibit (the art (the book burning (the animals in the zoo)))?

The stories that people typed on my typewriter ranged from stupid to sweet to self-absorbed to beautiful to modes of communication (my daughter visited the gallery with her class once and wrote "Hi MOM! It's Adele!")  Some people put their trash (wine and glasses wrappers) in the submission bin.  Regardless, the most of the stories were lovely.  Perhaps I will share them with you sometime.  And perhaps not.

The long and short of is...Thank you to those who played and participated and looked, really looked.

You will keep us all safe.

Random bits again for Drawing a Day 2011 in July

July 9, 2011

July 10, 2011
The White Kitten wounded a turkey poult on Sunday.  Of course, I rescued it from the cat.  We ried to nurse it back to health.

July 11, 2011
The poult made it through the night, barely.  It refused most water and food.  The shock of being alone and of being a cat toy are too heavy for the creature as well.

July 12, 2011
The poult died.  The combinations of heat, lack of water and stress did the poor thing in.  Time to get the White Kitten a bigger collar bell.

Quick Little Stills: Drawing a Day Early July 2011

July 7, 2011

July 8, 2011

The bits around the living room have been offering me some fodder of late.  My capacity to create invented creatures wanes sometimes especially in the summer when the light and the growth are so wonderful here in Maine.  As with the drawings all the recent watercolors have been completed with in the half hour time frame.  Some of the vignettes are very lovely however and I think I might explore them later (soon) in longer, more involved still lives. 
Who knows, though? Currently, I have a series of babydolls mutations etchings that need to be pulled as well as two painting series: Giant Insects and Cellular Images.  Please stay tuned!  There will be some more images as well as the documentation from a couple of installations done in May and June.