Friday, July 31, 2015

Apparition

I've got another new piece up: Apparition. You can see it larger here, and there are details that show most of the text online too...



The frog in the orange coat is a self portrait, and my husband is on the far left. Try not to make a fuss if you recognize us in the street.



The floating spaceman-creature in the clouds is from Das Triadische Ballet, a dance that was originally choreographed by Oscar Schlemmer in 1922. He also designed the costumes, which are amazing.



I had never come across it before, although many people I know had already seen it. There was a great reconstruction of the dance that was done in 1970 on youtube. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend that you get comfortable, maximize the little video below and have a look. I love it.





Tuesday, July 28, 2015

Pattern Pieces and Pond Book

I just posted a new image to the blog: it's called Pattern Pieces, and you can see it on the website here.


I've been thinking about patterns: how they comfort and mislead us. This piece is about that idea. The blue pattern of feathers behind the swan has sewing marks.


There are two main things happening in the piece: there is the swan overlooking the frogs and flowers in a menacing fashion, and there are the frogs, who are performing a play.


The actor frogs are dressed as flowers and swans. The frogs on the bottom right of this detail are playing out the action: there is a frog who is playing a swan (fake beak, feathers) being attacked by a frog who is behind him, dressed as a flower.

The real flowers in the piece function as a chorus. They comment on the action. The flower on the right below says, "I'm not sure..." and the one on the left says, "I have been ready my whole life!"




It's been a busy summer. I made a book! It just arrived in the mail the other day, and it looks great.


The book is based on a series of paintings that I've been calling my Pond pieces. The paintings in that series play out a complex narrative about art and beauty. The structure of the book is loosely similar to that of a graphic novel: each piece is shown in such a way that the text can be read in order, so that characters and themes that repeat from piece to piece can be clearly seen in a progression. 




I'm in the proofing stage now- I made one copy of the book and so far I'm thrilled .

I'd love to send one to all the wonderful people who have supported my work, but it turns out that it's disgustingly expensive to make a nice quality art book. The next step, once I finish the final adjustments, will be to see if I can get some funding and send it around to commercial publishers. Suggestions about potential publishers or curators or gallerists who might like to see this work are more than welcome: I'm excited about what I'm making and can use any ideas about finding an audience for this work.




Wednesday, May 06, 2015

Spring update and news

Two of my pieces are up right now in Gallery Joe's Bye Bye Old City show in Philadelphia...It's a short exhibition, but it's beautiful, and it shows many of the incredible artists that Gallery Joe has supported over the years. The show closes on May 16th, and the gallery will be sorely missed in Old City. They've been wonderful to work with, and I especially love being in this show because they hung two of my favorite pieces.



A Promise is a Promise.
(This is an etching I made with the wonderful help of James Stroud at Center Street Studio.)


You can also check out several of my newer pieces in the flat files at Pierogi Gallery in Brooklyn. I'm delighted to be included, and you can see a few pieces online at Pierogi as well.

I've also seen a ton of great art lately. Some of the best of it was done by my friends Anda Dubinskis and Dino Pellicia, who have a show up at the Philadelphia Episcopal Cathedral. It's the most unlikely space for contemporary art ever, and also a very difficult space for work: it's got beautiful stained glass windows and serious architecture and looks, frankly, like it would eat most contemporary art for lunch. But not theirs. Dino's underwater whirlpools in the baptismal font are incredible, and Anda's drawings are amazing. I'm waiting for someone to find and promote Anda's drawings into the stratosphere: they're gorgeous, but they need to be seen in person: they're huge, and the scale doesn't translate online. 



I wish I had more time to blog, because I saw some fantastic exhibitions in Philadelphia recently. Drawn with Spirit, the Fraktur show at the Philadelphia Museum's Perleman building was a revelation, and equally amazing, although different, is Judith Tannenbaum's exhibition Framing Fraktur at the Philadelphia Central Library. That show is a knockout, and again, it's in a space that can be tricky for art. 

I also can't get over the Peter Blume show at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. I saw it the day before it closed because I happened to catch a really great talk about the precursors to the Chicago Imagists given by the curator, Robert Cozzolino. I didn't think I was terribly interested, but I was sooo wrong. Holy crow! Peter Blum, people! 



I'm also so pleased to be included in this amazing project: Artists In the World

Saturday, January 24, 2015

Birds of Rome, and also Eggs

I'm back from Rome and have just posted two huge new pieces on the website. If you'd like to check them out click the titles below. Rome was beautiful, amazing and wonderful of course, but I love Philadelphia, too, it turns out. I forgot.

This one is Birds of Rome.


This one is Eggs and Worries.


I'm pleased to report that Gallery Joe showed two of my tiny drawings in their recent group exhibition, Joy. It was a lovely show full of some really great artists, and I was thrilled to be a part of it. You can also see lots of the small work I made last year in the flat files at Pierogi gallery in Brooklyn. They have Given All This and Still, Still, from my last post, as well as these new ones I didn't have time to post before I left the states. Stop by and see them if you are in Brooklyn!


















Enjoy!