Catching Up

I didn't realize it had been three weeks since my last entry...so here's what's been going on...

Studio Space

Over the last several months I've been doing a lot of ruminating over what to do about my studio space. I've been working in my little 75sf space for five months now (after losing my glorious 600sf studio in Somerville last January), and it can be very frustrating at times not to have more room. I'm ready for expansion and something more permanent. BUT I have found that having the studio at home really fits my lifestyle better.

So I had been thinking about selling and moving in order to gain more space and reducing expenses at the same time. A conversation with my mortgage adviser proved beneficial. These bloody student loans reduces my buying power considerably. So much so that I made the decision not to move and to sit tight. So maybe I should put finding a studio outside the home back on the table. I looked at a few things but nothing seems to fit - wrong space, bad location, etc. This brought me back to my basement. What makes the most sense is to take the money I'd spend in studio rent and renovate my basement to make a larger studio down there. This will take considerable effort as the basement is filled with a life time worth of "stuff."

All this processing and ruminating and final decision making came out in a flood of work on my house (which is tiny - only four SMALL rooms, plus the basement). I've been doing a lot of work on the upstairs to clean everything out and to provide an environment I can be happy in and the next step is to empty out the basement and build out my studio. The trick to all of this is on the timing, and how long it will take to complete. Since I'm working down there now, I'm not sure yet how to build something out and still be able to work. I'm trying to see if I can get this done in the three week period around the next residency so my impact on working in the program is at a minimal.

Trip to NYC

I took a last minute trip to NYC on May 10th. It was an inspiring, humbling and deflating trip. I was inspired by all the work I saw and it opened me up further to painting techniques and ideas. Humbling because I realize how far I have to go.

Neuberger Museum of Art

And the deflating came when I went to the opening of FUTURE TENSE: RESHAPING THE LANDSCAPE at the Neuberger Museum of Art at SUNY in Purchase, NY, where almost all of the artists were about 12-15 years younger than me. I got frustrated at how late I'm entering into this game. Ah, but it is what it is. Hopefully my years of life experience will count for something! It was a great show, and my first mentor Sarah Walker had a large (amazing) piece there. Although I admit, by the time I got to this show at the end of the day I was physically spent and visually overstimulated by all the gallery visits (noted below).

Guerra Paint

I spent a few hours at Guerra Paint in the East Village. I've been using their pigments for about eight months now and I had a lot of questions on how to use them to achieve certain effects. They have this huge wall with pigment samples using different binders, so I was able to really see what the right choices for me are. Art, one of the owners (it's a family business), took me into the back and gave me a demo on a bunch of different binder materials. The time I spent there was worth the entire trip to the city.

Galleries...

I went to a lot of shows, here's a list:

Steve DiBenedetto at David Nolan Gallery. This show was amazing. Seeing his work opened me up considerably. He's doing some cool new stuff with gouache and watercolor on polypropylene paper.

Rebecca Horn at Sean Kelly.

Din Q. Le at PPOW. Really cool stuff, he literally cuts and weaves two photographs together creating very evocative "layered" images.

Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe at Alexander Gray Associates.

Josh Dorman at Mary Ryan Gallery. (Hey Melissa, you might want to check his work if you aren't familiar with him already - exquisite collage work!)

James Lecce at McKenzie Fine Art.

Will Duty at Jeff Bailey Gallery. Wow. What unbelievable graphite drawings.

Holli Schorno at Pavel Zoubok Gallery.

Tom Burkhardt at Caren Golden Fine Art.

Show "Sotto Voce" at Yvon Lambert.

Ann Pibal at Max Protetch.

Hector Leonardi at Dillon Gallery. AMAZING color. Interesting technique. I found that he was a premier pupil of Josef Albers. Yeah, that makes sense.

Melinda Hackett at Vanina Holasek Gallery.

Studio Work

And here's what I've been up to the past few weeks in the studio...

I finished this one a few weeks ago. (There was an earlier draft of this in my April 20th post)

I think this one is finished (this week). It uses the photo as the base (referenced below)...



This is three photographs that I have layered together in the printing process and am using as a base for a series of paintings (the first finished one above) and two more that are in process (below this one)...