the studio

This my "working wall" - currently covered in wax pieces.

These little ditties are a new series I'm creating for Compound Gallery's Art In a Box.

I'm still interested in boxes and crates. I've got quite a collection and am getting closer to actually finishing something. The black pieces on the bottom are soap/bath trays from Ikea and the top natural box is a flatware organizer (with the organizer part removed). The artwork inside are pieces from the inkjet-gouache series.

The "wall" and the wax table (the chopping block). The long plastic container is the "catch-all" for my latest process - scraping off the wax and starting over, which is precisely what I did. More 'bout that to come.

back tracking

A lot of things have been happening since Open Studios last fall and for the purpose of my own need to document this stuff, I will spend a few posts on covering those events...

In July of '09 I was contacted by SF Perinatal Associates about showing a large series of work for a 6 month period of time. Ironically, I had all of my prenatal testing for Desmond done at this amazingly beautiful and contemporary space in 2006. The clinic itself is located on the 2nd floor of a high rise condo building on the corner of Van Ness and Daniel Burnham Court, and the clinic sprawls throughout 3 space, 2 of which are the exam/medical rooms. The lobby has beautiful light and is surrounded by windows. anyway, the needed a lot of work so I decided to show my encaustics, which were before, ink drawings that I showed at Lotus (aka: Sproos) in 2007. While ink drawings they were very colorful and vibrant and one of the Perinatal physicians found me there while getting her hair done. The transformation into encaustic took the drawings from vibrant into a more organic and visceral place - one that in hindsight, I think wasn't really a good fit. Whatever, hindsight is the past and going forward I will approach an opportunity like this in a different way. The only other thing to note is the beeswax in the encaustic caused a bit of a disturbance in that it was too fragrant for pregnant women. Duh. Personally I would have been the crazy lady licking the paintings, however, that was not an elicited response from the other and more current prego ladies. Going forward, and note to self - no beeswax for pregnant audiences

...some shots of the pieces in the Perinatal clinic can be seen in a much more previous post.

So what I am doing now is showing a few before and after shots of these pieces. They've really changed a lot:

heads up

Wow, how embarrassing that it's been 6 months since I've visited my own blog. I'm trying to recall what exactly I've been doing this whole....oh, yah: WORKING!! Okay, so things are good, actually great and my New Year's resolutions are just kicking in as the beginning of the year has been a s*&tstorm. I've got a lot of pieces and their progress to write about so heads up! For now, here's a shot of one of the series I've been working on...

These pieces came back from the SF Perinatal Show from last year. The white drawings are new - I think it may be important to note that I've been layering these pieces for nearly 10 years. One of the next posts will be about their "finished state".

back to the basics

Because it has been so long since I've kept up with this little project, I feel I need to reflect on all that has gotten me to now. I feel like I've participated in a lot of events and show, relatively speaking and each one has offered me an opportunity to mutate a bit and grow. My work has changed substantially in the past couple of years and each time I present my work or sell a piece, something in my overall interest in what I make, changes. I also get bored quickly, so maybe that's what's really going on.

At Open Studios last fall, I focused primarily on the thumbnails Fingerprints, collaging a bunch of different drawings together. Now, I'm taking it back a step and instead of chopping them all up, I'm leaving the drawing once it's been sewn as is, and adding resin. I'm using the 10x10 finished as the thumbnail though I haven't quite collaged them together yet. It's still just an idea because it seems like when I finish enough to do so, I sell a few and then I have to start over. What a conundrum, eh.

BTW, the glossy stuff is resin. These have all been sewn and are now framed and the property of the BaySide Oral Surgery Group.

the aftermath

i feel as though i've been hit by a train over and over again. i think this may be the worst hangover - hung from too many late nights and early mornings and sick kids. not that other kind of hangover - who has time for such things?!

i can feel the winds about to change and i'm going to get my groove back. i finally put everything away in my studio - what a mess. like a hurricane of paper and nails and adhesive experiments.

i know i'll find my way again soon.....

ahhhh, open studios

it's been a long while since i've posted but life's been absurdly crazy. however, getting to the topic at hand, OS was awesome. we had a gazillion more people come through our space than if we would have done it alone and hallelujah for that. oh, the "our" is the 4x4 collective - a drawing group that has inspired me and gotten me working like mad to make new work, only 4" square work, so not too much pressure. we rented a nice big room at fort mason and spent 3 months figuring out how to install our work, as we weren't able to hang on the walls. we had a brilliant solution and damn! if it didn't look cool too! (clockwise from top left: me and me, ellen burgin, kathryn clark, jennifer kelley, victoria veedell and neile royston).

....

woo hoo!

juices are a flowin'

i feel like i'm sort of on a roll. i've not written anything here in so long and with each one i add pics to, i realize how much i still have to do. i am intending to publish them in chronological order, however i may skip one or two. bear with me. there's a lot of ground to cover.....next.


inkjet transfers have been a fascination of mine for years. i've never really mastered it to a point where i'm comfortable using it in my work until this earlier this year. for a long while i was drawing all the time, like everyday and accumulations of these drawings that are just doodle-y swirls starting creeping into every crevice of clutter in my house and studio. and with the move, i sort of decided that something's got to give. i need to use these "spider webs" as zander refers to them, and incorporate them somehow in something. usually i scan and they are the foundation for my digital collages. great, i've got like 4,317 of these things - digitally i can't keep up. so i cut back on drawing and never really resolved a way to de-clutter our space of these little artworks, however, i have begun to use digitally rendered drawings in other ways. they are the foundation of my new favorite mixed media pieces. i've been using a 4 different drawings, all cut up into thumbnails as a transfer onto canvas boards. the thumbnail is the departure point for a sort of painting collage. these pieces give me a great sense of release when making them as they fulfill my interest in transfer techniques, they indulge my new love for gouache and finally satisfy my obsession with shiny, gooey surfaces which i seem to stumble upon in many local and contemporary artist's work.



what is most interesting to me is how one little drawing which is replicated 5 or 6 times can inspire a vast array of outcomes within a series. it's one of those things that i just don't see myself becoming bored with for a while.






i love the scale too. they're small yet in a series of 3 or 4, they have the potential to be a respectable size. i'm playing around with how to present them and i've sort of fallen for mounting them on a board and framing them in with small 1/2" wood. i think it gives a finished looked, but more importantly gives each the space they need on their own without cramping them with their siblings. oooh la la.


the best discovery yet, Zander and Desi LOVE to paint with me, even better! here's a shot of the older concentrating on his own process of mixing colors