Dinky Drawings (no Shrinky)

Want to know how to say a funny moustache in Italian? You know you do: i buffi baffi. Now, please, use that in a sentence. Or as a personal mission statement. I don't care.

I'm getting ready to go teach in Rome for a semester, so I'm trying to learn Italian. I've also been making some tiny drawings while I'm printing pages for the artists' book I'm making. My printer is slow and my computer is small, so when I print, my computer hangs up for what seems like at least six hours. I print a lot, so I started working on little drawings in the down time. These are at Gallery Joe, and the one called "Sensitive" is going to be in their summer group show.















Bigger versions of these pieces are on my website on the drawings page.

My book project is coming along very well, if I do say so myself, and I've finally managed to make an etching that I really love! Gallery Joe set me up with James Stroud from Center Street Studio and he made me a fabulous tool that's letting me make tiny tiny marks- it's a sewing needle stuck in to a piece of wood, and it's genius. I just got back the first proof of my etching and it looks really great- I can't wait to get it finished.

In other news, I was a finalist for the Pew Fellowships in the Arts this year. Pretty cool! The artists who won this year are super geniusy, so I was in good company. Big ups, as my friend Carolyn would say, to Rob Matthews, Daniel Heyman, Anthony Campuzano and Nami Yamomoto! (Carolyn is very street because she's a pHD candidate at Penn.)

I must not blog! (I blog.)

I'm still busy like a bee working on the big artists' book project and my etchings and I've also been doing a series of very small drawings that I'm excited about. I'm using colored magic markers in addition to the ballpoint pen and I'm loving it.

But I'm not going to post images of those yet. I'm bringing them to Gallery Joe first, and (first rule of bad blogging) I'm trying to avoid posting too much so that I can concentrate on getting more art made.

It should be easy to decide not to post to my blog, but being in the studio making a lot of work means, for me, listening to a lot of podcasts, which makes me want to blab about them. I've found some great ones.

The Philadelphia Free Library has a podcast of their author events, several of which are amazing, especially this one by Lynda Barry. I went to this event, and it was a hilarious, brilliant talk: I think everyone should listen to it. But I'm bossy that way.



Marilynne Robinson and Etgar Keret & Rivka Galchen were also good, but I would advise people to lay off the Salman Rushdie, Nanci Pelosi or Joyce Freaking Carol Oates. If you listen to hers don't say I didn't warn you.

Another great podcast that has taken me through hours of scratching at my etching plate with a tiny tiny needle is the New Yorker Fiction Podcast. I love this thing. It's great. I haven't heard a bad one of these yet.

I've also just found out that hulu.com has art21 episodes online Which means that even if you don't have the DVDs you can watch amazing artists talking about their work for free online. Go hulu!

Now it's back to the studio for me. Ciao!

I finished a new piece a while ago. It's called Issues, and I'm afraid I don't have details posted yet- I'm having camera issues. Speaking of issues.




I hate pretty much everything about the whole "issues" euphemism. But I do have a certain sick admiration for the more creative variants of this kind of avoidance language. I have a friend who says things "activate her schema." I like to think that the blandification factor of pseudopsychological false-revelatory noncommunication activates my schema. But then again, so does cat hair.

You can see a larger image here.

Okay, so it's been a hundred years since I last posted. I've been busy. I'm teaching, working on a book project, I finished a new piece and I've just agreed to work with Center Street Studio to make two new etchings, which is very exciting. And I just found out that I'm going to Rome in the fall, so I'm trying to learn Italian, find an apartment in Rome, etc, etc. It's all very exciting, but I am not sure that it's humanly possible to get everything done. I need super powers, and I know exactly what I want: I want the ability to make time speed up and slow down at will. I wouldn't use my power for the common good, either. I'd be Mundane Woman, and I'd just live a happy life full of long hours in the studio and very very short faculty meetings.

And I'd spend a lot of long slow hours in Grand Scale, the new print exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. I've posted about it already, but man, it's great. It hurts my eyes. Every single thing in that room makes me want to lie on the floor and moan with art awe agony. There's no bad work. There are lots of masterpieces by people I've never even heard of. It's just spectacular. The curators, Shelley Langdale and Larry Silver, must just giggle themselves to sleep every night. It's amazing. Go see it.



The Philadelphia Museum has cleverly set up their website so no one can repost their images, but here's a picture of the catalog, which is pretty intensely drool-worthy in itself.

Also, genius artist Rachel Perry Welty, with whom I showed at Gallery Joe, is doing a very hilarious performance piece on Facebook tomorrow- she's going to update her status every 60 seconds. If you're on Facebook you can friend her or just sign up to attend the event "Rachel is..." to see.