My work for final critique, December 4, 2013

Blue Memory, 2013
Acrylic, oil stick on panel
24"x 24"

Pink Memory, 2013
Acrylic, oil stick on panel
24"x 24"

Red Memory, 2013
Acrylic, paper on panel
18"x 24"






Blue Stripes, 2013

Acrylic, paper on panel

24"x 24"




Artist Statement

My work is about memory and the recurrence of events, large and small, in my life.  I repeat images, rhythms and color to evoke the idea of memory.  Repetition implies memory in the sense that an object seen for a second, third or fourth time is an echo of the thought of the first time it was seen.  I use repetition to represent events that happen over and over again.  It is also a way of outwardly expressing a déjà vu type feeling of having experienced a situation before. 

The investigation of my awareness of how seemingly different sights and situations can share an often startling sameness informs the imagery of my work.  To depict this idea, I may start a rhythm of shapes and then obscure them.  A repeated shape may start to disintegrate or look like it is disappearing.  These are tactics which I use in my work to seek meaning of my memories and my observations of events. 

Summary of my experiences this term;

During this term, I was introduced to several artists whose work will resonate with my students.  I will definitely include them in my teaching, and have begun already doing so.  Among these artists are Eleanor Aldrich, for the way she builds up surfaces; Mitchel Gaudet, for the way he uses art to describe a social event; and Lalla Esaydi for her rhythmic patterns. 

Steve Griffin, Robert Stuart, and Josephine Halvorson, among others, are artists that I have discovered this term who will, and have, influenced my work.

I had no idea that I would enjoy InLight as much as I did.  I thought it would be interesting, but it ended up being mesmerizing for me.  I also enjoyed the show at the Visual Arts Center, and was delighted to find a ceramicist whose work would inspire my own work.  I found inspiration there in the work of Blair Clemo.

I discovered a blog by Erin McNellis where she writes about her poetry and her research for her dissertation.  There were very interesting comments on Gertrude Stein and repetition which mirrored my own ideas, and helped me nail down how I could relate Stein's writings to my work.

I had many great aesthetic experiences this term.  It is hard to pinpoint the best.  I thoroughly enjoyed the work and the artists talk at Reynolds Gallery when Jessica Mann was there.  InLight put me on cloud 9.  I had an epiphany discovering the work of Josephine Halverson in Vitamin P2.  And, oh my gosh, the night at Try Me gallery was a long-held wish come true.  It was phenomenal, and it was fun to sit in the courtyard at Linden Row Inn at night and talk it over with everyone in class.

My most frustrating experience was sanding.  After carefully planning and adding layers with a purpose in mind, I would then lose all control when I sanded.  I never knew how it was going to turn out.  I had little control over the sanding because some areas would not uncover themselves no matter how long I sanded.  Other areas popped out from the sanding that totally surprised me.  I would have given up the whole idea of sanding except for the feedback that I got in class.  Because of this class, I will continue using the sanding process.

Final Crit, Decmber 4, 2013

It was a wonderful time at 1708 Gallery last night with my Mixed Media class taught by Amie Oliver. I was amazed at all the great work by my classmates.

Michelle McGrath - Beautiful work that I love. It reminds me of tearing something up and piecing it back together, stretched and tense and pulled tight, but back together.  Michelle painted the raised surfaces in such a way that tension was heightened.  Color really enhanced the strained, to the nth degree, feeling.  I can't believe how much painting Michelle did is a short time to complete her 2 ensembles.

Merenda  - The house of images was even more powerful to see after hearing Merenda's artist statement where I found out that her mother built houses. I love the light houses and all the textures that Merenda uses.  I think the suggestion that she expand the house so that there are negative spaces and irregular contours is great.  Merenda is a great community artist whose work I really enjoy.

Hope Harding - Each work is a special natural jewel.  As Hope mentioned in her artist statement, her work is like the memory of a quiet, thoughtful walk where rocks and leaves were found and treasured.  Her colors always enhance the quiet nature of the special object chosen.  I love the way she organised her work by size for the critique like Amie demonstrated in class.  Beautiful presentation.

Liz Hale - I really liked the neutral color of the river in the blue vertical work.  I think it was lovely with the blue-gray textured ground, and the photo collage.  I love the diagonal direction of the photographs that were collaged on all 3 works from the bottom or from an edge.  Liz's idea to evoke a memory or sense of a location that is not a strip mall with box stores is great.  Photo-transferred text added interest.  I agree with Amie and others that text could be expanded in ways that break form being a quote to spreading in more areas, running off the edge, becoming legible and illegible.

Cheryl Regan - I enjoyed so much how Cheryl changed the size and position of her subject, her son, and added birds to her paintings.  The two diptychs worked very well.  One was vertical and one was horizontal.  The footprint paintings were wonderful.  I liked quite a bit how Cheryl changed the sky in one of her landscapes.  She really brought everything that she was working on earlier to a new beautiful level. Loved the color.

Happy Krickovic - As if all the fabulous work from last class was not enough, Happy added four stunning new pieces that knocked my socks off.  They related so well to her earlier work and were so beautifully carried out.  I loved everything Happy created including the scanned work on paper.  Her great painting skills allowed her to fool the eye and play off textures on one another. I never wanted to stop looking.

Wow, just came across Josephine Halvorson in Vitamin P2.
                                                                                         

  Pink Stripe, 2010
  Oil on Linen
  23"x18"  

   Woodshed, 2013
    Oil on linen
   70"x35"









This gives me great ideas for new paintings.  Instead of recreating a distressed surface, I can paint one that already exists.  These paintings made me remember a painting I did almost 20 years ago in Don Crow's class.  I painted an old wooden screen door with a latch.  I'm very excited about exploring this idea.

I went to Reynolds Gallery to see Sally Bowring's show on Saturday.  Wow, it was spectacular.  Really loved it. The way she used color was masterful.  She used combinations of color that, for me, would be difficult like yellow and purple, and yellow and gray. Her results were wonderful, just wonderful.

        Summer Garden, 2012

           Acrylic on panel

            721/2"x 86"

                                                                  Winter Walk, 2013
                                                                     Acrylic on Panel
                                                                          48"x48"

Fall. 2013

Acrylic on Panel

72"x86"

Springs II, 2013

Acrylic on panel

42"x42"

I don't often see glass work that really thrills me so I thought I was going to have a hard time finding something in the work of a glass artist that I could apply to my own work.  Then I looked at the art of Mitchell Gaudet.  Wow, I love it.  I love the color.  I love the repetition.  I love the meaning behind the pieces.  I just love his work
.
   This piece is so beautiful.  I want to make a stencil quoting this design.







 Cobalt blue tile cast glass wall hanging, 14”x14”

Internal Workings
Glass and metal screen
80"x27"

I love the grid arrangement.  This gives me a good idea about how to make small pieces that work together as a whole.  This is something I have been trying to do for several years now and have never been happy with the results,  I always have trouble where the edges meet.  This work makes me want to try to create an ensemble of small pieces where the positive space does not wander to the edge of each piece.

Messages of Remembrances, 2010
Glass bottles, steel, wood   

Beautiful!

Messages of Remembrances, different view

I've been frustrated lately.  Nothing seems to be working out, but I keep plugging away. Here are stages in what I have been working on.

Step 1. Striped painting with pink oil stick stenciling over acrylic, 24"x24"

Step 2. Two layers of gesso over painting.

Step 3. After sanding.  I'm very disappointed and will try painting and sanding again.










Here's another piece I'm working on.

Step 1.  Mixed media as it looked at the last critique, 18"x24".

Step 2.  I decided that the rick rack was not working, so I ripped it off.

Step 3.  I added more of the design that was at the bottom because the piece was not unified at all.  I figured this would help it be seen as a whole.

Step 4. I covered the newly painted designs with white gesso tinged with cadmium yellow.  I debated whether to squeegee over the paint or let it dry and sand it.  I chose to sand it, but after what happened above, I fear I may have made the wrong decision.  It still feels a bit damp, so I am going to sand it tonight or tomorrow.






I've also been experimenting in how to successfully finish another painting shown at the last critique.  Here is the painting.

Feedback in the critique suggested that the dark blue short lines of torn paper jumped out too much. I liked this painting because the darker blue lines of paper strips were supposed to be long and vertical running along and inside of the  painted lines, but no matter where I put them the painting looked like pajamas.  In desperation, I tore the blue paper into pieces and threw it on the painting.  Presto, problem was solved.

This is a small study I made to see if heavy gel medium would work on the painting above.  This study has 2 layers of heavy gel medium over acrylic with torn painted paper, 6"x6".









Here is a painting from the last critique that I have not posted before.  I posted the steps but not the finished work. Media is oil stick over acrylic, sanded. Size is 24"x24".

                                       

Artist Statement

            My work is about memory, and my awareness of the repetition of large and small events in my life.  In my paintings, drawings, and mixed media I create rhythmic patterns by repeating images and colors to imply a sense of recurrence.  I often repeat imagery such as paper dolls or geometric and organic shapes in my work. I choose and repeat shapes and colors that remind me of events in my childhood and in my life as an adult. I see these multiple images as symbolic self-portraits which prompt memories of recurring events, such as waking up each morning or making the same mistake again or running into an old friend.

            By incorporating personally familiar and repeated imagery, I want to trigger a déjà vu experience in the viewer.  I want the presentation of my memories to evoke a memory in the viewer that brings about the recognition that we share a commonality.

            

InLight was beautiful and a lot of fun, and in such a great location. One of my favorite exhibits was A Breath of Fresh Air by Ross Fish, Lilli Fayaz, and Sean Ludwig. I could hear it everywhere I went. It was so crowded with people making cool sounds, it did not have a lot of visual appeal for me but the sounds were unique, pervasive, and wonderful.

I loved Amie Oliver's Ascension.  It was beautiful and could be experienced from several different locations.

Sunrise Cube by Jones, Jones, Shackelford and Shackelford was mesmerizing.

All of the exhibits were fascinating, thought provoking and fun to see. I particularly enjoyed MothLight by Plantbot, Water Nymphs Circus by Kelley McClung and Repeating Decimal by Miriam Eqbal.

Pictures are from the Facebook page of 1708 and from the Richmond Times Dispatch.

Eleanor Aldrich  

Artist Statement

I think of my work as a series of encounters between tactile materiality and illusion. My interest is in resolving this conflict through representation. What this means in the studio is using materials in such a way that they contribute to the internal logic of the representation but retain an external existence. I find there is frankness in tactility that becomes unreliable when it is activated as a thing in the painting. The painterly marks similarly alternate between creating illusionistic space and revealing the flatness of the picture plane. My subject matter is a result of finding places where this phenomenon may exist.

Passage, 2011
Oil and enamel on canvas
48"x60"

                                                            

Just got to a stopping point on a painting that I am very excited about.  It's been a while since I've really been excited about working on something.  I'm trying a new thing with distressed surfaces, and it has been hard to make something interesting, or that is really more meaningful because it is distressed.  The idea of memory is important to my work, so I thought that distressed surfaces could enhance content, but it somehow seems to be obscuring it..  The new work is more like older work that I have done than like the new distressed surfaces.  I'll post a picture after the critique on Wednesday.   I want to experience initial response to it. An image of it in its formative stages is pictured in an earlier post.  After the critique, I'll post a new image of it.

Below are stages of another work that I will have for the critique;

Stage 1

Stage 1, close up

Stage 2

Stage 3

Stage 4

Stage 5 (white)

After this stage, I sanded with a rotary sander.  I will show the sanded piece at the critique on Wednesday and post the image of the sanded piece after the critique on Wednesday.

I mounted one of my media studies and added rick rack to a mixed media piece that is totally out of my comfort zone.  Will show at the critique and post images after the critique.

Jo Smail, Squashed Bug

Jo Smail's work is amazing. It's witty and wonderful.  She inspires me by the way she uses geometric and organic shapes together.  I want to incorporate that into my work.  As soon as I get a chance, I want to do some drawings with loose organic wanderings to see if they spark ideas for future paintings. I love the way she eliminates everything that is not necessary. Her work looks so easy, but for me it's so hard to get get that look. It never looks as beautiful and interesting as Jo Smail's work.

Pam Anderson, Bad Boob, detail 

I love Pam Anderson's work.  She uses text in her work so gracefully. Her small boxes contain so much information.  When I work that size, I always feel that I don't have enough room for anything except a field of color. I want to study her compositions for ideas on how to make my smaller work more interesting. I know my work is very different from hers, but I think I can learn a lot from looking at her work.

Mark Bradford is one of my favorite painters.Here he is is talking about one of his paintings. Its surface is similar to what I am trying to achieve in two of my striped painting and in 2 of my 36x48" paintings. It's the main reason why I have been adding so many layers.

I was able to get a good amount of work done this weekend.  I wanted to work more but ran out of time.  Here are some examples of progress;

White Stripes #1

White Stripes # 2, after a layer of pink on the white stripes and a layer of white on the blue strips.  More layers coming.

New striped work that is in progress

Work with 3 layers so far

I got extremely excited perusing through Reynolds Gallery's Face Book page.  I found  an artist named Robert Stuart who  had a show at Reynolds.  Below are examples of his work;

Blue Lines

Blue Bands

Red and Gold Bars

So I feel that I am on the right track with these stripe paintings.  I LOVE Robert Stuart's work.

I also built a 3x4' panel. I splurged and got the lumber from Siewer's instead of Lowe's.  It sure made building it easier.  Everything was cut correctly so it all lined up.  I didn't have to spend an hour sanding it to get the panel to fit the stretchers.

Last night at Reynolds Gallery was an amazing experience.  I saw the show Metempsychosis with work by Sally Mann, Jessie Mann and Liz Liguori.  The prints began as photographs of a bonfire discarded by Sally Mann.  Her daughter and Liz Liguori took them to Mountain Lake Workshop where they painted on them, left them outside to dry where leaves and pine tags fell on them, shot laser light at them and turned them into gorgeous, expressive, organic abstractions. Soooo beautiful.  The artist talk was very interesting.  Sally Mann, Jessie Mann, Liz Liguori, and Ray Kass talked about the creation of the work and  took questions from the audience. One question prompted a dialogue about appropriation, quoting other artists, and working on top of other artists work.  Metempsychosis means "transmigration of souls" (Joyce). At the Mountain Lake Workshop people collaborate in creative undertakings "nurtured by the belief that a genuine art and culture can develop from any situation in which there are shared experiences". (This is quoted from the Mountain Lake website). What I got from the discussion about appropriation as it relates to the work in this show is that new, different, and very valid and significant work can be based on the work of others. Below is just some of the beautiful work at the show.

Metempsycosis, Diptych II, 2011
Phot developer, laser imagery, oil paint , linseed oil, and debris on rag photographic paper
40x100 inches

Metempsycosis, Diptych I, 2011
Phot developer, laser imagery, oil paint , linseed oil, and debris on rag photographic paper
40x100 inches

This work by Raine Bedsole in New American Paintings influenced me greatly when I was painting the paper doll series

Raine Bedsole, 2001, mixed media,
Dimensions unknown

Below is one of my paper doll paintings

Untitled, 2010
Acrylic on canvas
36"x24"