The Library Had Art?

Either I'm unobservant or the library at UNF has put art up recently. While working on my resume there while waiting for my love to finish his night class, I noticed these up on the fourth floor. The frames on the first two were kind of bobo, but I was happy to see art there... also love the yellow of that chair!

Provence in A Nutshell

A Bit of the Louvre

Whew

Summer has been a whirlwind.. I ended up getting sick in Seattle, coming home and being pricked with needles until it was determined that the equilibrium in my ears was off, due to allergies and airplane pressure on my ears.. Then I promptly got on another plane to Paris, which, magically, cured my original pressure-induced problem. It's funny how things work out. Except, in the south of France (where we had a show, and yours truly sold a piece!) there was a wind called the Mistral that once again stirred my delicate, ornery nose! So I wandered the streets of Barcelona feeling as though I were on a boat, but you know what? I was so enchanted with everything and in amazement at my luck that it really couldn't bother me, in fact, I hardly noticed it.

Yesterday I turned twenty three.

I finally got my laptop back and uploaded all of my photos, so I shall have them here in a jiffy. Off to grill veggie kebabs for my birthday fete today :}

Fancy Seeing You Here!

I'm back from the great beyond. It was bananas. Photos soon, stories after.

Long Time No See

Portland

Thursday Art Walk, awesome awesome awesome. Sketching and painting in the park, lovely (so many shades of green!) I can't wait to hit up the museums next, especially the craft museum we walked past last night. No pics as I'm on the hostel computer, but I get back to the steamy south in about two weeks. Check back in a bit, though.

Tooting One's Own Horn

Yeah, maybe a bit butttt I just got a rejection email from a show at the Kinsey Institute I sent work in to, and just sent a packet in today to a show there is not a chance I shall get accepted in to, so it evens out? For today? Yeah? Yeah. Also (while I'm on the 'sweet brag Laura, you sound like a tool' train), thanks to Beca and Jess at the Spinnaker for this story on my art and impending trip to France. Pretty neat!

Thursday's the New Friday

Time flies when you're having fun! And by fun, I mean, are an itty bit away from moving and graduating from college on the same day, rushing frantically to prepare for both (!%?) But I digress - for real fun, there are things happening tomorrow on what I'm sure will be a balmy Jacksonville Thursday:

* UNF Print Show at the Adele Grage Cultural Center:
(Look at my boo Shell Bell with her name all front and center! And holler at Amber Richards, Kingsley Spencer & Kei)

*Also over at the beaches, Devin Balara's solo show at Artistree Gallery. Devin is a crazy talented and I'm excited to see how her show looks. Props for a solo show too, woo woo!

* Beaches ArtWalk, to add to the marvelousness already happening there

* UNF has an artist lecture, and since there's no post about it on their website, all I can say is that her name is slipping my mind, butttt, she does installation work as well as painting, and it looks like interesting stuff from the posters at school!

The Beginning of Something

I etched my first plate today. And then played with a lino block and some mono printy-ish stuff at home. Attempted a pronto plate (far right), need to read up more on that/have correct ink. I feel better. Like when you heave a big sigh and it just settles you? You know?

Arthur kitty was very intrigued by the brayer, and also (I think ) a little flattered that I drew him. What a goosey! Christine was moving a bunch of stuff to Orlando today (awful, that's got me in the pits, I can't even think about that now) but she gave me all of her art supplies - an abundance of BKF, already torn (as I am awfully bad at that, anyone can clearly see in photo number two!), a cutting mat, drawing board and her box of printmaking tools. So generous!

AND, also, I forgot to mention:

* I have two pieces that got accepted into the juried UNF student show that are on display down at the MOCA Jacksonville

* I have three pieces up in the 2010 Senior Show at the University Gallery on campus at UNF

Ich Bin Mude, Aber..

Zing Zang

Christine shot some new-ish work today in exchange for modelling. Neat-o Pete-o!

In other news, a month and two days until I graduate.

I haven't done any work in two weeks and I feel testy, or something strange. I've fallen out of my routine, in my diet (haven't cooked/eaten healthy since Spring Break/taken vitamins) and art making. This wonkiness is getting to me though, I need to do something about it other than typing/whining ( not very productive).

Ohhh, Gaaawwwgiaaa

I went to the High Museum in Atlanta. It was pretty fabulous (that being an understatement). I'm a smitten kitten - hello huge Anselm Kiefer, you make me die inside in a good way, like I am just a star in that big ol' nebulus painting of yours, a part of the ebb and flow of life and death, why thank you for connecting me to all of humanity and nature and the universe at large! That is nice indeed.

Ry and I also drove by the Frist in Nashville, but didn't have enough time to visit it (however, I like that admission was reasonable and that on their website they encouraged casual attire, citing the Frist as "an informal place" - friendly art is good art!). More on the High later, I'm about to hop on the road again, this time south, just a quick jaunt to the Seeback household. But I wanted to say, many things have been a'brewing and a'making and a'thinking, and that computer negligance is not life negligance, if anything probably the opposite!

This Week

Lindsay Lohan's arm manifests itself in a dream? Jokes, but WHAT is that wretched orange color, Holy Velveeta that's got to go soon.

Fare thee well and thank you in advance present in the works for my roommate, Nordic Princess Extraordinaire, who is to watch my cat son while I am putzing around the Pacific Northwest and France, that sweetheart. Modeled after a collage I did of Daisy and Duke years ago as dapper little creatures from the Roaring '20s.. Yeah. Cat lady status. So it goes!

Random chaotic entropy. Holler at Gorky and Miro!

Don't mind my hot mess of a room, but here's the big piece I'm working on that I've started to nitpick over already, hm. I mean, I'm loose with it, but the weensy parts I've already started with the nagging and killing the organic feeling of it. I think I'm going to go in with ink and then perhaps some spray praint and stencils once the paint dries. Maybe, baby. Maybe not!

Stick to Your Guns

(Image from his website, check it)

Saw Jonathon Lux's show down at the Crisp Ellert Art Museum at Flagler College last week (which was a nice space, bee tee dubs). His narratives, they make me curious. And frisky. Curiousky. Very much so painted in 'the Grand manner'.. made me think of 'The Death of General Wolfe', a la Benjamin West:

Heroicized? Romanticized? Sexualized?

He had multiple canvasses framed together presented as a single piece. I enjoyed this, the implied mobility, interchangeable plotline, possible inconsistencies with perspective, yet feel some worked far better aesthetically than others. It was jarring at times. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for juxtaposition, but some felt haphazard. The strongest pieces had a flow, a marriage of content and composition.

Also, his use of children - very interesting. They weren't merely children, I felt, but rather symbols - of the impish nature that is innate to us all? Of the potential for malevolence as well as lighthearted play?

His brushwork was gooorrrrgeous. Heavy and violent, but then nice and washy. Hm. I picked up the little pamphlet but didn't read it, I was too overpowered by the work itself. So, no insight onto what he has to say about his own work, just my thoughts on the work itself.

Angryface slash I'm an idiot dot com

Life lesson - back errything up (!)

My jump drive is MIA.

My jump drive that has the first dream imagery I ever worked with, way back in a Digital Imaging class with Alex Diaz.

My jump drive with all the copywork Logan did for our class last semester.

My jump drive with some self portraits I shot in the empty room of my first apartment with all that nice forest filtered light that can't be recreated.

COOL LAURA... I'm awfully mad at myself for being careless, and sad that those digital files are gone forever. Maybe it will turn up, but I've ransacked my room looking for it to no avail. Oh my.

"Etched Ostrich Eggs Illustrate Human Sophistication"

An interesting story on BBC's home page today about recent discoveries concerning ostrich egg fragments and the importance of art and symbolism in human culture. "Symbolic thought - the ability to let one thing represent another - was a giant leap in human evolution, and sets our species apart from the rest of the animal world"; the article goes on to say that the egg fragments, which are 60,000 years old and were found in South Africa, are significant because of the large amount discovered there ("close to 300 pieces") and that they are trying to decipher what seems to be a "system of symbolic representation" (all quotations from Jonathon Amos' article published today on BBC!)

The Mondayiest Tueday Ever/("The Unexplained Automatically Becomes Holy")

I feel whiny today, apologies if everything is written in the tone of a petulant child... I have pictures of a few paintings that I've been working on slash am (concerned by? involved with? interested in?) that I convinced myself to skip school today to work on. The convincing wasn't really that hard though, I'm knee deep in a case of senioritus. Slothy slothy. Anyhow, I have something else to talk about since Plan A didn't work, thanks Blogger, and that is Dan Estabrook's lecture at MOCA that I attended last Thursday.

Estabrook Lecture
I found him to be very wellspoken and easy to listen to. He studied under Christopher James (who paints and does alternative photographic processes.. his writings are interesting/comical, too, I read a bit of what he has up online, hah, and sections of his book he has on alt processes at Dave's once or twice, he's the go to guy and has a nice mustache to boot) and had a strong base in printmaking, painting and drawing. I think Estabrook's background is apparent in his work and I would even venture to say necessary.. everything is interwoven despite the broader category of photography that he falls under... that is one of the critiques I have of UNF's art departments, the separation between media, especially photo students and the tendency to disregard 'needing' basic drawing/painting/ceramics/print/what have you classes, a BFA is a beef-uh, no? I've never taken a sculpture class, which I think is kind of ridiculous and painty-elitist of me, and I feel a lot of the things I do, especially collage with found objects and images could work well as 3D, but I digress.. Estabrook showed some of his early work, baptism/death portraits that inspire him, different processes and recent work. His underlying theme of duality was present throughout the whole lecture and I appreciated his discussion of it, as I felt it when first viewing his work even in his manner of presentation - duality in the itsy bitsy little baby portraits, their white flowing dress equating life or death; the past and his referencing of history juxtaposed with the present, a creating of dialogue in the now; the relation of decay and change (in self, of an object, how these are viewed?). He said a few things that are still ringing in my ears that I'm going to plop down here to make sure they don't disappear in my notebook forever: "I had started to build a language, but I didn't know what I was saying... [the] imagery built over time.. worked intuitively"; circular logic, "what I do is fundamentally absurd"; art (photography) as "a fiction we're both agreeing to believe in.. the artist as a magician.. the fakery... mutual suspension of disbelief"; "a destructive act helps you understand". He also said he can't be "a purist about any of it", which makes me feel nice and less obligated to stay 'true' to one medium. So, that was pretty encouraging. Anyhow, he was great, it was a varied audience which was kind of surprising, actually. Anyhow, I feel that I learned a lot from what he had to say and that his work is, as I mentioned earlier when I saw his work with B. Grimm at Artwalk a bit ago, is quietly intriguing.

Listen

Let's talk about screenprinting and wheatpasting.

Dear Jamie Vasta

I love you. You work in glitter. Really? That is sort of crazy and amazing (cramazing?) "In the Rushes", by Jamie Vasta, click and look at her other work. Interesting.

Yes and Please

PS PS PS --

MOCA has a piece of Eric Fischl's on display! Similar subject matter to the piece at the Harn, similar palette, but smaller scale and paper. Doesn't resonate the same. Just a note for myself, with regards to um, you know, my favorite things ever - scale and presentation.

Parfois, le Dimanche...

Today I took my valentine to look at some art, since he'd never before been to MOCAFriday nights have become my norm for working on photos as it's usually empty-ish at the lab and I can totally space cadet out into my work undisturbed, with little to no socializing. Here's the photo bleach (potassium ferricyanide) that I use to achieve varied densities.

My set up. Working in batches, in multiples, allows for variation and for nuances to arise, as well as for progression. I feel, for me anyhow, the more I work an image, the more ingrained it becomes and the more intuitive and organic my markmaking is. Usually working in series allows for at least one or two strong pieces to emerge (which you analyze after, not in the midst of, hah, this I must always repeat to myself!). Anyhow, I'm doing work, so there will be at least some kind of outcome, yes? Be it a new idea, something that zings just so, some paper to sit and be glared at and then drawn over, or a technique discovered or perfected.
Speaking of progression, these butterflies were waiting to be unleashed from the torn out pages of magazines not too long ago, and now they are in flocks on a gallery wall. My, what our minds and hands can do.

Sarah has been kind enough to allow me to work with her and see the steps it takes to get a show ready and installed. In doing so, my mind repeatedly stumbles on to the same thought: context. How the context in which work is created differs so greatly from that in which it is viewed. How something generally private, the act of creating, transforms into something public, and in turn becomes strictly object/image-based. How most things tend to end up without context? I think is what I am trying to say? (Holy wow this Medieval Woman Author's class is messing with my view of perspective and context and the social lenses through which we view things). I know that art (any art) is a vehicle of expression. I know that the viewing of art will always be personal interpretation, regardless of what plaques on museum walls say about context and the supposed personal intent and meaning. But, I just love all of the baloney it takes to create something strong, something that resonates, all that unseen and unmentioned effort. I love the context, even though it disappears when it leaves your hands. Anyway, I guess this is encouragement for me, in my last semester of undergraduate work (and in life really? but especially now, so I can grind a rhythm of production into my soul while I still have some semblance of structure), to keep making crap in hopes of getting something glistening and alive to come from my two hands, because I can appreciate the work of others knowing that they probably have made as much crap as me.

I guess what I am trying to say is, the juxtaposition of these: the rawness of something physically coming into existance because of your mind and two hands! A cheese platter and wearing high heels! Point A to Point B. This I am pondering. Regardless of my (naivety? Nouveau view? what shall we call it?), Sarah's show looked beautiful and I am honored to have helped with it.