I can't believe that the last time I wrote was in November- but then again, yes I can. I've been on two continents and in three states since then, and although I've got two more big drawings and one small one that are almost finished, there's no way I'm going to be able to work on them until February 16th. On that blessed day I will have finished moving my apartment and my studio in to a new, totally beautiful, enormous live-work space that I'm renting at a ridiculously low price from my fabulously generous landlord friend, who is also a terrific artist. (Who I'd name if I felt like having my home address on the internet...) I'm super lucky, and very grateful.
We arrived in Philadelphia in December and then spent most of the next month visiting relatives in Virginia and Austin. My mother, Margaret Simpson, and her partner Thom Drucker, run Slugfest Printmaking Workshop and Gallery, which is a fantastic place. They helped me finish up a print that I've been working on down there, and when I got back I signed off on another print that I made with Jim Stroud from Center Street Studios. That print, A Promise is a Promise, was sold to the Cornell University Museum of Art, and is included in Gallery Joe's next exhibition, which opens this Friday from 6-9. The show is up until February 27th. There are a lot of fabulous artists in the show- check it out: Astrid Bowlby, Emily Brown, Lynne Clibanoff, Christine Hiebert, Marilyn Holsing, Jeanne Jaffe, Mary Judge, Sharon Louden, Winifred Lutz, Rob Matthews, Linn Meyers, Kate Moran, Charles Ritchie, Stephen Robin, Mark Sheinkman, and Martin Wilner. I feel like lots of those names should have exclamation marks next to them.
When we got back to Philadelphia I started teaching again and began fixing up our new space. It's the classic artist's loft, which means that it has taken a fair amount of fixing up. Suffice it to say that no amount of lifting weights has ever managed to bring any semblance of a muscle to the surface of my sausagey arms, but painting my studio did it. The place is huge and wonderful, and once we are finally moved in, on February 16th, I'll get back to work.
Everyone's been asking me how it feels to be back in Philadelphia after being in Rome, and I have to admit that I was worried about the transition. I loved every day in Rome. I would move there in a second, if I could only learn to make Euros in some beautiful, efficient way. Say, out of spit, flour and food coloring. Since I can't, I had to come back- and when I was there, surrounded by fountains, Berninis and gelato, I thought Philadelphia would be a huge letdown- but it's not. I've always liked it here, and I still do. Philly's its own thing. It's a great, real, weird place. It's not pretty in February, but it's the perfect place to bunk in and make art.
And as for the transition, well, there's a lot to be said for being able to really speak a language. I did okay in Italian. I speak well enough that, with forethought, I can start a conversation or ask a question, and I have a pretty good accent. I can usually understand what people are saying, so it's not terrible, but for an Italian person talking to me is like making a cellphone call to the moon- communication can happen, but there's a ten minute pause before they get my reply. I LOVE that on this side of the ocean I can talk to strangers about whatever I want. On my second day in Philly I got in a forty-minute conversation with a crazy lady at the post office about her kids, her pets, her grandson's art, her grandson's feelings about his mom's slutty clothes, her daughter's dogs...It was fantastic.
And also? Philagraphika. Which more than enough of a reason to love being in Philadelphia right now. More on that later, you betcha, but in the meantime, in case it seems like I'm gratuitously promoting my mother's printmaking studio because she's, you know, my mommy, you could compare their gallery page to the Philagraphika artists page. Slugfest has shown half the people in Philagraphika. Which is another reason that Philagraphika rules. As does Slugfest. As does my mom.
Wednesday, February 03, 2010
Sunday, November 08, 2009
True Story
I just finished this piece tonight. I'm still not sure how I feel about this one, but I'm excited because I think that the next piece I do will be really nice- I'm figuring out lots of technical things about how to work with these new materials. I'm using magic markers in addition to my usual ballpoint pens, and I love them to death.
This one is called True Story.
The little text on the left says "All our nonsense aside, one never quite expects to feel this way." Then below that there's a cockroach saying, "Much less talk about it." Below that there's another bug saying "Much less make art about it."
Right above the dove heads there is a pair of ants: one is saying, "To preserve appearances" and the other is saying "We keep mum about feelings. (Dumb.)"
The rest you can read for yourself.
Or maybe not. The tiny text says, in pink, "Must we stick to" and then in black, "deep words about superficial things and superficial words about deep things."
One of my teachers in grad school was the incredibly charismatic poet and art critic Bill Berkson. I remember distinctly that he once said that there were two kinds of people- those who were interested in people and those who were interested in things. The latter was preferable- the distinction was framed in terms of being interested in art or being interested in gossip. I tried hard to give the impression that I was interested in things because I was totally fascinated by Bill Berkson. (As had been, it was rumored, Bianca Jagger, so I was in good company.) In any case, his offhand remark has not aged nearly as well as he had, and this piece is, among other things, my rebuttal, twenty years later. (Although I won't love him forever- that part is about the baby bird.)
You can see bigger images here.
This one is called True Story.
The little text on the left says "All our nonsense aside, one never quite expects to feel this way." Then below that there's a cockroach saying, "Much less talk about it." Below that there's another bug saying "Much less make art about it."
Right above the dove heads there is a pair of ants: one is saying, "To preserve appearances" and the other is saying "We keep mum about feelings. (Dumb.)"
The rest you can read for yourself.
Or maybe not. The tiny text says, in pink, "Must we stick to" and then in black, "deep words about superficial things and superficial words about deep things."
One of my teachers in grad school was the incredibly charismatic poet and art critic Bill Berkson. I remember distinctly that he once said that there were two kinds of people- those who were interested in people and those who were interested in things. The latter was preferable- the distinction was framed in terms of being interested in art or being interested in gossip. I tried hard to give the impression that I was interested in things because I was totally fascinated by Bill Berkson. (As had been, it was rumored, Bianca Jagger, so I was in good company.) In any case, his offhand remark has not aged nearly as well as he had, and this piece is, among other things, my rebuttal, twenty years later. (Although I won't love him forever- that part is about the baby bird.)
You can see bigger images here.
Friday, October 30, 2009
Reading the birds
Thom has been trying to get me to go to the Quirinale hill near our house to see the birds swarming at sunset, but so far he's failed because I'm always working in the studio too late, trying to grab the last of the good light. But tonight he dragged me outside to the river, and just looking down the Tiber towards the hill was incredible. The starlings here are skywriters, and they give new meaning to the old stuff about reading the flights of birds. If birds write like this in the sky every night, what kind of moron would NOT think it meant something?
Tomorrow's mission is to get to the Quirinale hill at the right time. Thom says the birds are so dense there that they block the view to St. Peters as if they're weather.
I'm also going to some more incredible churches tomorrow. I've pretty given up on posting about all the churches I visit because a) taking pictures in churches is problematic: it's usually forbidden and when you are allowed it's often way too dark to get anything good and b) there is already plenty of information about the churches of Rome online. Also c) half the time I go to a church I think I need to go back again. Sometimes I go when there's a mass, or it's the wrong time of day or I need to get better pictures or see some part of it that's closed or something. I've tried 4 times to get in to San Franceso di Sapienza, and by gum, I will. Because this is the outside!
No big whoop, you might think. But I protest: whoop. Look closely at the tower.
This (below) is another one of the churches I need to go back to, St. Carlo alle Quatro Fontane, by Boromini. Boromini was supposed to be buried there, but he killed himself and so the plan was cancelled: in the bottom of the church there's a wonderful staircase that he designed leading down to a very sad empty crypt.
It's beeee-utiful inside, too: here's the view looking up at the dome.
I have to go back there for sure because I need more pictures: there are the apartments of a saint upstairs; you pay a euro to a woman who is clearly auditioning for the part of Dracula's housekeeper and she leads you up some stairs to one of the oddest little apartment complexes you have ever seen. Or will see, when I go back there with my camera.
This is Santa Prassede, a gorgeous church with an incredible byzantine mosaic chapel that is totally impossible to photograph, I discovered. Even the internet cannot provide me with a good enough picture of it. I did manage to take video inside the chapel, which is probably better than nothing: it was dedicated to Theodora, the mother of the pope who built the church.
Have I mentioned how much I love Rome in the last five minutes? No? Well, I love it. This graffiti was in the metro station on my way to work.
Tomorrow's mission is to get to the Quirinale hill at the right time. Thom says the birds are so dense there that they block the view to St. Peters as if they're weather.
I'm also going to some more incredible churches tomorrow. I've pretty given up on posting about all the churches I visit because a) taking pictures in churches is problematic: it's usually forbidden and when you are allowed it's often way too dark to get anything good and b) there is already plenty of information about the churches of Rome online. Also c) half the time I go to a church I think I need to go back again. Sometimes I go when there's a mass, or it's the wrong time of day or I need to get better pictures or see some part of it that's closed or something. I've tried 4 times to get in to San Franceso di Sapienza, and by gum, I will. Because this is the outside!
No big whoop, you might think. But I protest: whoop. Look closely at the tower.
This (below) is another one of the churches I need to go back to, St. Carlo alle Quatro Fontane, by Boromini. Boromini was supposed to be buried there, but he killed himself and so the plan was cancelled: in the bottom of the church there's a wonderful staircase that he designed leading down to a very sad empty crypt.
It's beeee-utiful inside, too: here's the view looking up at the dome.
I have to go back there for sure because I need more pictures: there are the apartments of a saint upstairs; you pay a euro to a woman who is clearly auditioning for the part of Dracula's housekeeper and she leads you up some stairs to one of the oddest little apartment complexes you have ever seen. Or will see, when I go back there with my camera.
This is Santa Prassede, a gorgeous church with an incredible byzantine mosaic chapel that is totally impossible to photograph, I discovered. Even the internet cannot provide me with a good enough picture of it. I did manage to take video inside the chapel, which is probably better than nothing: it was dedicated to Theodora, the mother of the pope who built the church.
Have I mentioned how much I love Rome in the last five minutes? No? Well, I love it. This graffiti was in the metro station on my way to work.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Rumor
I finished a piece I've been working on for ages yesterday. It's called Rumor, and it's on my website here if you want to see bigger pictures.
I'm working with magic markers and ballpoint pens, and there are many, many layers of both on this piece. This is my first large drawing in color, with these pens, and I'm still not sure about it. Sometimes I think it's really great, and other times I just keep repeating the same joke in my head: this piece puts the mental in experimental.
I love working with the magic markers, though. I've got another magic marker piece started already, and someday soon I'll finish the other black and white ballpoint piece that I worked on in August. It's another swan, and it's looking pretty good, but I've been seduced by these new pens- I just can't go back to black and white right now.
This piece took me about two months, working in the studio nearly every day. Someday I'll make a little video out of all the phases it went through- I changed all these colors about a million times before I settled on anything- the green area outside the word innocence was pink, then purplish, then blue, then green.
The large text says, "There was a rumor of innocence and guilt."
Speaking of feeling guilty, I know that I said that I was going to post about a fabulous church in Rome every day until I leave, and I didn't do that today, but I am actually not feeling the least bit guilty about it. Visiting a church a day I can do. I visited two churches today. Posting every day? No.
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