Playing with your food

So this week I was working on a proposal for the Site92 show at Smack Mellon. Kept me in my brain for the first part of the week, and then busy mocking up miniatures and working on the computer for the last half. And I went right down to the wire...
The premise is pretty simple. As you may know I am a big fan of flora that re-takes architecture (think of the old roller coaster at coney island covered in vines), and with this project I wanted to create very small and intimate pieces to sort of counteract the hugeness of the space.
I did a little research on the area and found out about all these different companies that were creating down in the Dumbo area, coffee, corrugated cardboard (invented in Dumbo), pasta, spices, bottlecaps, licorice, etc. I wanted to use these materials for the project, so here's what I came up with (don't know how well it will translate in small images, the big ones looked awesome to me!)

These are the coffee beans, growing like little mushrooms on the window sill.

My tree fungus made of cardboard. Shown installed on one of their beautiful rusted metal columns.

Bottlecap reeds (I only had three in the house to work with, thank goodness for photoshop eh?)

Fungus of different spices (incl. curry, cumin, turmeric, ginger, cinnamon and nutmeg) won't that smell great in the dank space!

Pasta weeds.

I had also planned to do licorice stalactites, but ran out of time, will try and get those included if and when...

So theres more art that I have made that doesn't exist. I think I have done about a dozen or so proposals that have not come to fruition. Maybe I will figure out a way to post those. Anyone have any thoughts on whether or not to include images from proposals in slide submissions?

Tangible and sublime

I attended the opening for Phillip Perkis' photographs at the Alan Klotz gallery on Tuesday evening. The photos were beautiful, eliciting a sense of timelessness. Many of the works explored textures and moments that evoked the presence of human affect on the land. Some of the works were ethereal and haunting in their lack of human intervention. They were all the work of a highly studied and experienced eye capturing scenes of the world around him. And I don't think I was overly influenced by the charming and disarming character that is Phil Perkis.


I also enjoyed talking to Phil's partner, Cyrilla Mozenter and am planning a trip up to the Aldrich Museum of Art to see her ongoing show there.

Finally up...

After cramming an awful lot of work in to finish and package (what a chore!) the works for "Transitory Environments" I woke up around 6am with a cold brought on by exhaustion. Got on the plane anyway and got the work all installed! It was a crazy weekend, but the show went off with only a couple little hiccups (including a request for more work, and 2 viewers pulling the work off the wall! I can fill in more details if requested). Will have images of the show on my site soon. Sorry the images are so bad, lighting was tough to work with (and yes the one wall is chocolate! I chose colors to work with that).









images are (top to bottom):
installation view (beautiful winery, a friend of my friend Hadley designed it)
figment (on chocolate wall)
figment detail
figment detail
figment detail
eccentricities
eccentricities detail
myth
myth detail
estranged #3 (below)

Some comments about the work. The original pieces for the show, figment and myth are both abstractions and accumulations of organic forms in the area (the wine country) and elsewhere (Filoli). Figment is made up of plexi and beeswax bases with copper wires wrapped (twice) with my favorite nylon thread (upholstery bonded #69) with the little felted balls attached. The piece myth has a different plexi and beeswax base with the nylon threads embedded and the felted balls attached. This piece is unfortunately installed near the door and will be a tangled mess by the time I de-install in January (like others). I am in love with the shape of the felted balls and plan on using them for a number of other projects, but the process (very wet felting) is arduous. The circle theme and wrapping theme, seem to be pretty big ones for me. Will try to investigate that in the coming months, definitely something 'ritualistic.'

Can you also tell that I LOVE shadows? Some other shadow intensive works include: fragile, matter of time, rain, night and day, and watch for more!

The drawings were fun, the are layers of essentially three pages, utilizing black, white and silver ink. The detail above shows my favorite, but the lines drawing was successful as well. It was all about breaking the boundaries of the work on paper. Sort of like my breaking beyond the photograph.

Kept really busy while out there and spent time with friends, including the EcoArts folks in Lake County, and visiting RPS Collective, which is where I picked up the last minute included pieces estranged (pictured below) for the show. I also found some great great stuff at the collective, including a Baby Binky from Tokkisom, tees from culture consumer, and a great necklace from an artist whose name I have forgotten - ack!

Just glad to be home and working on the big drawings. And I am starting work as a tv/film extra next week. I am hoping that it is a lot of sitting around so that I can spend the time knitting and stuff. That might become part of the blog too...