Erica Svec

 

 

I am positively blessed to know some really amazing painters.  The above paintings are Erica Svec's--a wonderful painter who lives and works in Brooklyn, and who will be my host this week.  I've known Erica since 1995, when we both traveled to Italy to attend the Temple Rome program.  Erica was a roommate in Rome and my travel mate to Eastern Europe, where we wandered for a good long month with just about $800 between us. 

All images courtesy of Larissa Goldston Gallery.

Mother/mother

My posts will be sporadic in the next week due to travel.  Tomorrow my son and I leave on a six day trip that will take him to State College, Pennsylvania (where very excited grandparents await) and then Philadelphia to meet me before we return to North Carolina.  I will travel to State College with him, and then embark solo to New York to visit good friends from college, see some shows and attend the opening of a group exhibition of mine, Mother/mother--at A.I.R. Gallery in Brooklyn.  (Do you recall the photo of those who established A.I.R. in the 1970's from your college art history/criticism/womens studies/gender studies class?  I haven't been able to dig it up online but I see the image vividly in mind--a bunch of women together in a beautiful B&W photo...Nancy Spero, Ana Mendieta, Harmony Hammond maybe.)  

The above image is my collage in the show--an older collage from 2006, made one year after Alexander was born.  I'm excited to be in this show because the curator, Jennifer Wroblewski, is interested in how one's work has changed/evolved/been conditioned by becoming a parent.  Nothing has affected my work more in the past five years, but the result has not produced a bunch of images about babies, or diapers or domesticity (which is not to say those things can't produce amazing work).  The changes I've experienced in the studio have more to do with world view, with looking and with vision.  When Alexander arrived, I found it nearly impossible to conceive of a WHOLE from the outset.  Instead a whole had to be built, literally constucted--piece by piece by piece. 

Richard Schur

Richard Schur, "Islands (Study)," 2009, acrylic on masonite, 12 x 16 inches

Grid in progress (purple underlayer)

New paintings (with stripes)

Thanksgiving! (2)

Thanksgiving!

Corinne Wasmuht/Painting and Architecture

Corinne Wasmuht

Wandbild Rosenthaler Str.11, 2004
acrylic and gouache
ca. 312 x 1247 cm

Courtesy Meyer Riegger Gallery

Structure (ceiling of studio)

Structure (back of collage)

Look at this

image of Leonora Carrington's. 

Emily Noelle Lambert

Emily Noelle Lambert, Printemps, 2009, Mannequin heads, bottle, branch, wood, hat, netting, collage, paper, styrofoam, speaker, stool, acrylic paint, plaster, 68 in x 16 in x 11 in (173 cm x 41 cm x 28 cm). Courtesy of Priska C. Juschka Fine Art.

Oh I Love!

(not the painitngs so much actually, but these cobbled together sculptures are just about right.)

Studio, Wednesday Afternoon

Just as the first few days at Hambidge were somewhat clumsy until I grabbed my studio pace, I must regain my home studio legs--slowly, surely.  I've had some good days and some not-so-good days.  Today seemed to be most assuredly a not-so-good day, but in the end I kept the momentum going, and now there are new problems to solve tomorrow.

Here are some rather vague pics--taken with the photo booth application on my computer so everything is backwards.

Timberline

(Emmylou Harris / Paul Kennerley)

Oh the stars they did shine
The night you swore that you'd be mine
And you promised always to be true
And to be kind
On that Shenandoah Hill
Where our love bloomed until
I went away and left those
Promises behind

But when I rise from the timberline
And call your name will you remember mine
And the sweetest kiss will be the tie that binds
Like the wild, wild rose and the columbine

To that place I will go
Where the wildwood flowers grow
With a ribbon in my hair
And a grown of calico
To those Shenandoah Hills
I'll go back I swear I will
To the sweetest kiss my lips will ever know

Every once in awhile, a song becomes a studio song--played over and over until somehow the words and music weave in and amidst the work being made; the reasons are not always transparent.  I'm stuck on this Emmylou Harris song this season--struck by the evocative, liminal place she sings of so hauntingly.  

Notes on Line

line
 1. mark, stroke; border
Synonyms: band, bar, borderline, boundary, channel, configuration, contour, crease, dash, delineation, demarcation, edge, figuration, figure, frontier, furrow, groove, limit, lineament, lineation, outline, profile, rule, score, scratch, silhouette, streak, stripe, tracing, underline, wrinkle
2. row, succession; course
Synonyms: arrangement, array, axis, band, block, border, catalogue, channel, column, concatenation, crack, direction, division, drain, echelon, file, fissure, formation, furrow, groove, group, lane, length, list, magazine, mark, order, path, progression, queue, rank, ridge, road, route, row, scar, seam, sequence, series, street, string, thread, tier, track, train, trajectory, trench, way
3. cord, rope
Synonyms: cable, filament, strand, string, thread, wire
4. belief, policy
Synonyms: approach, avenue, course, course of action, ideology, method, polity, position, practice, principle, procedure, program, route, scheme, system
5. border, mark
Synonyms: abut, adjoin, align, allineate, array, bound, butt against, communicate, crease, cut, delineate, draw, edge, fix, follow, fringe, furrow, group, inscribe, join, line up, march, marshal, neighbor, order, ordinate, outline, place, queue, range, rank, rim, rule, score, skirt, touch, trace, underline, verge
6. put covering inside object
Synonyms: bush, ceil, cover, encrust, face, fill, incrust, interline, overlay, panel, quilt, reinforce, sheath, stuff, wad, wainscot
7. channel
Synonyms: avenue, boulevard, canal, conduit, corridor, course, duct, highway, line, passage, pathway, road, route, sewer, thoroughfare, track, tube, way
Notes: arteries carry clean oxygenated blood from the heart, veins return impure blood back to the heart, and capillaries connect the ends of arteries to the beginnings of veins
8. something which encircles
Synonyms: bandage, bandeau, belt, binding, bond, braid, cable, chain, circle, circuit, copula, cord, fillet, harness, hoop, ligature, line, link, manacle, ribbon, ring, rope, sash, scarf, shackle, snood, stay, strap, string, strip, tape, tie, truss
9. row or tier of objects
Synonyms: array, dashboard, group, line, rank, row, sequence, series, succession
10. outermost edge, margin
Synonyms: bound, boundary, bounds, brim, brink, circumference, confine, end, extremity, fringe, hem, limit, line, lip, outskirt, perimeter, periphery, rim, selvage, skirt, trim, trimming, verge
11. boundary; frontier
Synonyms: beginning, borderline, door, edge, entrance, line, march, marchland, outpost, pale, perimeter, sideline, threshold

Jered Sprecher

My husband went to graduate school with Jered Sprecher--yet another really great abstract painter who lives in Tennessee.  Jered's got a show opening soon in New York at Jeff Bailey Gallery.  I'm excited because I'm actually going to be able to see this show in early December.

The above painting is called Natural Occurance; it's a 48"x36" oil on linen.

Today I Saw

I came across this blog today--and find the artist's (a woman named Jill Wignall) manner of combining drawing with everyday life and human connection utterly delightful and inspiring.   What a treasure it would be to receive one of these drawings in the mail!!!

Fragment

1. Definition: break into pieces
2. Synonyms: burst, come apart, crumble, disintegrate, disunite, divide, rend, rive, shatter, shiver, smash, splinter, split, split up
3. Notes: a part is any of the components of a whole; a portion is a part allotted to or regarded as belonging to someone; a piece is a part separated from the whole; a division is a part formed by classifying, cutting, partitioning - and so is a section, though it is generally smaller; a segment is a part separated along natural lines of division; a fragment is a small part, usually broken off

Purple and pecans

The one draw back in spending time at a residency is that one is temporarily ruined when it comes to returning to the more mundane aspects of being an artist.  I've got an exhibition statement that must get written, should have been written yesterday (it's only 2 paragraphs!!!) but I cannot settle myself enough to write it.  Or perhaps the problem is I am having great difficulty pulling my head around to the kind of explication necessary in such a statement--wholly different from making the work.

Today I determined it would be a good idea to work in the studio first for awhile and then move on to the writing--but now I just want to read my favorite food blogs.  That task being accomplished with sufficient slowness, I better get back to it...

(I took this picture over the weekend.  The pecans are falling all around us with gusto--I am determined to have enough for a pecan pie come Thanksgiving.)

Palaz of Hoon, 2009 (Sharon Horvath)

I missed this one the first time I looked....

"The Goodbye Door (2)" by Sharon Horvath

These paintings excite me moments before I head out to the studio.

I've worn the dog out with a seven-mile walk (I am a wee bit obsessed with walking these days it seems.)  I've eaten an early lunch, and now nothing is between me and a good couple hours of painting.

The day is lovely here--so full of fall. 

Red and Round Things

I've enjoyed the days settling back in to home.  My son is older--amazingly so.  What conversations we've had!!!  Fall has come and nearly gone.  The arugula and lettuce in the garden are shooting up.  And I've spent some good hours cooking and baking--always an intensely aesthetic and grounding experience.