Friday, July 30, 2010

Art of the Week: The Mourners 3



Here are some more drawings from The Mourners exhibition. A couple of fellow artists and I have been making a point of going every week, and we're starting to consider seeking a show venue for our works later on. I'll make sure to post something here if a show does get lined up - it''ll probably be next year at the earliest.

Saturday, July 24, 2010

New Blog

Today was the Art Is Everywhere sign project debut at the Fluxus St. Louis ArtFarm during the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis' Open Studios event. After the debut, I decided to create a new blog devoted to the project in order to post photos and track signs. Please feel free to check it out and don't hesitate to email me if you are interested in participating.

Art Is Everywhere

Monday, July 19, 2010

This Week & Art of the Week: Art Is Everywhere


This week I am participating in the city wide Open Studios event. For this event, I will further explore Art Is Everywhere by offering some of my Cafe Press merchandise for sale along with a kickoff of the sign project.

Open Studios
preview show: Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis
3750 Washington Ave.
St. Louis, MO
July 20 - 25
preview party: Tuesday, July 20, 6 - 8 PM

I will be a guest artist at the Fluxus Artfarm, archives of Fluxus St. Louis, on Saturday, July 24, 10 - 4. Maps are available at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis if you are interested in stopping by and checking it out.

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Art of the Week: More Jewelry


I am going to post some bonus Art of the Week posts because I've actually produced a lot lately while spending less time online and so have more works to share. So sit back and enjoy - here are some new necklaces I made.

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Art of the Week: The Mourners 1




I've been falling way behind on my Art of the Week posts, but I just haven't been blogging much lately. I do have a couple of things I want to post though, so hopefully I will try to make up for it some now.

I created these drawings of The Mourners from the sculptures currently on display at the St. Louis Art Museum. The show, featuring tomb sculptures from the Court of Burgundy presented with Bill Viola: Visitation is one of the most moving exhibitions I have seen in a long time. The classical sculptures are breathtakingly exquisite in their detail and emotion and the pairing with Bill Viola's contemporary video installation is tremendous.

The show will be up into September. It is my intention to create more drawings from the sculptures over the course of the exhibition, so there will likely be more postings on this subject over the next couple months.

Saturday, July 10, 2010

Items in the Interim

I know it's been awhile since I've written any reviews on my blog, so I thought I'd write a brief blurb about Items in the Interim, the recent show of Cara Peterson's work at Fort Gondo as part of beverlyear 2010, a yearlong dedication to women artists.

Items in the Interim, an installation by Cara Peterson, opened this evening at Fort Gondo Compound for the Arts. This installation incorporates various objects found in Fort Gondo's basement and from Peterson's own collection, arranged in suites alongside paintings, photographs and drawings of antique store displays and flea market shelves.

Upon viewing the show, I was immediately drawn to Peterson's attention to detail. She paints various objects and still life arrangements in realistic fashion, as if encouraging the viewer to look at the depicted items anew as more than just junk or antique store finds. However, despite their being immortalized in art, the objects themselves still remain rather anonymous. This anonymity can bespeak a sense of the familiar by not conveying too much: that necklace could just have easily have belonged to my mother, aunt or mother-in-law; that knick knack may have once adorned my friend's shelf... The objects are easy to identify with. At the same time the anonymity can also convey a sense of the uncertain: it's hard to determine whether that necklace could have once been my mother's or not because it looks like so many others for all that it bears a resemblance...

Throughout Peterson's work, from painting to photography to drawing to assemblage & installation, individual objects don't draw attention unto themselves but rather appear in groupings, sometimes even becoming individually lost among many similar things. So the artworks seemingly act as testaments to these groupings, exploring relationships to and between said objects. By conveying a sense of individual objects being lost in the crowd, the works further explore themes of abandonment and neglect, memory and forgetting, storage and display, trash and treasure. Among the paintings are The Pink Elephant, Saugett, IL and Treasure Aisles, St. Louis, MO. Both of these pieces explore similar themes but draw upon very different objects and spaces, reminding the viewer that antique, vintage, modern and contemporary objects can all meet similar fates over time.

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Anyone Can Do That!

This is a response to Jeane Vogel's recent post Oh, Sure! Anyone Can Do This! Please check it out if you haven't yet done so - it is very well spoken and raises a lot of good points.

A lot of people can have a hard time appreciating all of the learning, adapting and risk-taking needed to develop an artist's eye or a particular skill, even including other artists. (In all honesty, that can be said of a lot of things, though, not just art.) And true mastery can make things appear effortless when they really aren't.

That said, I still cannot believe some of the things said at art markets. So many things have been said to me or friends of mine that I needed an outlet for it, hence I created He Said, She Said. I personally find it most important not to let others' views, opinions, statements and comments, poorly articulated or not, feed into my own self-doubts. There are so many obstacles and hardships to developing as an artist and it helps to be able to brush things off like water off a duck's back as much as possible. It's crucial to have an outlet though, so if you find yourself troubled by it make art or write a blog or keep a journal...

I still strongly believe that anyone and everyone can be an artist, though not everyone is driven or passionate enough to actually undertake the rigorous discipline, focus and self-searching needed to truly blossom as such. And I am all for exploring new media, outlets and ideas. I must admit I even kind of like the idea of i-phone art, although I'm sure it's been done already. :)

This Week

I am in a couple of shows opening this week as follows.

Faces
St. Charles County Arts Council
7443 Village Center Dr.
O' Fallon, MO
July - Aug. 2010
reception: Thursday, July 8, 4 - 7 PM

Drawgasmic
organized by Cranky Yellow Publishing
show at ArtDimensions
2720 Cherokee St.
St. Louis, MO
July 2010
reception: Saturday, July 10, 7 PM - 1 AM