Another Advent Calendar Project: ChristmasK

After a hiatus of a couple of years, I'm back with another Advent Calendar. This one I'm calling ChrismasK. 

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Dusting off this shoulder amidst the gathering of dust upon that very shoulder. And the other one too. High and Dry at the Jen Tough Gallery through Dec. 18, 2023

 An opening tonight at the Jen Tough Gallery in Santa Fe features a bevy of NM artists, and I'm in that mix. 

H6 (vein) - or Harbor 6 from 2014 is my contribution to this group show. 

There have been many recent signals pointing to - or eliciting from inside me - a kind of urgency to reignite a dormant engine of production but even more so, of exploration. 

Even typing this post is another tickle on a comatose toe as I reflect on the source of these Harbor Paintings and ecosystem of thought and impulse in which I was immersed.

Don't get me wrong, I've continued my tinkerpassion, but my mind space has often been bent more toward problemsolving at the job - imagining possiblities at the job than on those activities back on the home/making machine front. Somehow I only this week, but a couple of pieces together upon waking from a dream. The blueprint exists.  It's now up to me to but on my big boy tool belt and get to hacking away.

Reflecting back on this body of work, I just had occasion to watch the trailer I created for the original exhibit for the first time in many years.  It's probably one of my 2 masterpieces. 

Celestial Sensing Device

Fig Tree branch and metal tripod

 

Arrhythmic Accretion

 

Arrhythmic Accretion, paper, graphite, wood

 

I'm participating in FourteenFifteen Gallery's Fun-a-Day 2023 exhibit this month (Feb 10- Mar 3).

This annual exhibit invites folks to commit to a daily practice throughout the month of January - whatever that practice might be.

After ruminating on it for several weeks I decided that I would commit to playing the set of bongos that Angelika bought for me as a birthday gift 20-21ish years ago.  I've only very occasionally tapped on them over these ensuing years. 

To format this exercise as an exhibit-able physical form, I covered the head of each drum with a square of heavy paper. On top of this I attached a piece of carbon paper.  The idea being that the spanking strikes on the bongos would be transmitted through the carbon paper onto the layer beneath.  

After a quick test, it was clear that the record of a single day's playing would render very little visible interaction so instead of a collection of 31 separate pieces for each drum head, I would use just the two pieces of paper to collect the accumulated wear over the course of the month.  

A side view showing the support structure.

Ideas coming. Some good.

I knew I would regret letting a December pass without creating some kind of countdown project/advent calendar to see this year to the door.  

Enter, FarweliTo-wenty20, the first iteration of a broader endeavor I'm calling Homonurse, under which, various exhibition/collaborative projects will be huddled.

31 artists have created 31 farolitos/luminarias that I'm sharing online, and installing out front of our new home.

No Good Ideas

That's how I've been feeling in recent days. 

I've been tooling along on little things while I've been working around the house, refining - by bits and pieces - our living situation and my working situation too. I have been trying to work by impulse and push things forward in this 'meanwhile' space of adjusting to my work environment.

I pinned up a largish piece of absorbent paper I recycled from work (seen in the last In the Studio post) and was instantly confronted by by an immediate lack of ideas.  In fact that's how I started in on this piece; scrawling NO IDEAS in illegible script in charcoal. And then proceeded with the next non-thing in my head. One blind step at a time.

The intensity of this feeling was punctuated on Friday when the Garrison Art Center, back in Garrison, NY posted on its website a look back at the Salon des REfUSE from 2014 as part of their Virtual Exhibition Series.  Viewing these images of that show renders such a good feeling.  The embodiment of a light space and sunny days installing with some good and great friends.  There was, at the time, a fair bit of trepidation on my part as I worried about the adhesive bonding my column of paint roller covers withstanding the stress of the accumulated weight. The adhesive did hold and  the those two days were a great moment of realizing a long thought on project. That work appears now as a full and complete embodiment of idea, place and execution, resulting in a very successful end.

That column is one of my favorite and best works ever.  Distance is an amazing clarifier.  Those small Latex Essays that were additional contributions I made to the show also still hold up well.  They had already aged nicely and come into their own (by my eye) by the time of the show.

But the eternal fact - for the most part - is that any intention behind those works grew from the circumstance - namely, I need to pull something together for this show - and aside from that, those works too came - generally - from a place of no idea.

It's a constant place of discomfort.  Faith that these things will work themselves out may exist, but being in the moment of uncertainty is a key ingredient of the process. Live it, Observe it. Respond to it. Move on. It's a model for the righteous atheistic life. It can be a challenge, and I try to live up to it as consistently as possible.

Here are some works created in the 2015-2016 time period which I had forgotten about until recently uncovering them.  These too, I know, came out of a place of uncertainty, and today, they feel quite resolved to me, and part of a cohesive whole.  So that's how it goes....at least some of the time.

all of these are mixed media on oil on canvas, and are generally in the 9"x 12" range.

In the Studio Today

Lfe Goals

In the Studio Today

In a New Home

Evergreen, 2019, hanging in the guest room.

The past 13 months have been full and swift moving.  Back in the daily grind of work since last June, experiencing a New York scaled commute here in NM, and settling into a home and a mortgage. 

Looking forward to evolving back into a proper studio life - the ultimate goal and the reason we have found ourselves at this point.

Coming out of a Coma

I have no idea what that must be like, but I'm fancying that what I was a kind of equivalent.  In any case I was experiencing the sensation of coming back.  Coming back to myself.

I had been asked by Simon Draper to participate in weekend Habitat for Artists event being held in California by sending on some small 5"x 5" artworks, and oh, could I provide a statement and a short bio.  I've had to provide these little texts before, many times, and they have never gotten any easier or more pleasant to conjure.  But I've done it enough, I could simply cut and paste from a previous version.  But I could not find any old statements or bios - well there were a couple but they were useless for this situation.  I had to cook up something fresh.  We're only talking about a couple of paragraphs, but they were some of the more painful paragraphs to come up with. So I did it.  I engaged in this exercise that I hadn't had to do in....three years or so.  And that's when it occurred to me that my situation, my head space for these last three years was so different from what it had been before, and different from where, I was now realizing, I would like to be.

Where had I been?

Florida.
In Florida with a full time job.  A situation that was temporary by design.  It's funny to the unconscious affects of a conscious decision or mindset can ripple out and alter the environment you experience.  Florida was essentially fine, but I was biding my time, waiting to leave and that attitude influenced all things large and small.

But that time was served and I'm in a place I'm not already ready to leave.  I have the intention that whatever I want to do, I'll do it here.

Where am I?

New Mexico.  Albuquerque.

So after I rolled into town and got myself nominally moved in, I settled in to alter some older pieces into something new that would suit the purpose at hand.  I had continued to tinker and push some things toward a kind of completion in Florida, but that pretty much stopped by late Summer when I had packed up most everything.  I didn't really dig in all that much down there, but not being able to dig in at all is pretty difficult to navigate, so this little reintroduction to making something is welcome.  Even the chance to be aggravated and annoyed by putting down on paper what I intend for this stuff I make is welcome.

So coming out of a coma is certainly an overstatement, but being in a new place, alone - at least for a couple of months and having nothing to do - having nothing that I need to do is at, the least, a new state of being.  I'm just enjoying every breath.

Every non working moment in Florida was weighed down with the decision to be made: to nap or not.  Although the choice was not entirely up to me - the conscious me, anyway.  The decision had already been made by some superior force whose bidding I simply did.  I relied on loud energetic music to forestall the naps, but they always came.  I have a memory of a not long past Saturday in which I fit three separate, robust naps.

Present here in Albuquerque for nearly two weeks and I maybe taken one nap - and that was definitely move induced exhaustion that brought that on.  I'm not knocking naps.  I adore naps.  Naps became an opiate.  And here I thought emotional binge eating was my one uncontrollable weakness.

In any case, I'm here and entering a new phase.  the fact that I am unemployed is only now sinking in, and the rush of unloading and unpacking is fading onto a new state of discovering how I'll spend my time.  How will I define myself in this new space.  Ok.  That can't be "done."  That will emerge, and I can shape how it will emerge. 

PAMM Staff Art Exhibit opens July 9, 2016 at UM Gallery

I've been fortunate to have been kept rather busy - and employed - at at art institutions in the time since we arrived in South Florida last year, including PAMM. One of the perks of freelancing in the museum world is interacting with a wide range of dynamically creative folk.

One upcoming expression of this perk that I'm happy to be part of is the PAMM Staff Art Exhibit opening next Saturday, July 9 at the University of Miami Art Gallery in Wynwood.  The gallery is located at 2750 NW 3rd Ave in Miami.

The reception is taking place from 4-10pm and the exhibit will run through August 21. 

Day Off

LIVE & IN PERSON FROM HOLLYWOOD, FLORIDA!

 

f and f(mlb), 2008 oil on canvas

LIVE & IN PERSON FROM HOLLYWOOD, FLORIDA!*

The lively exhibition "Whimsy & Gesture" has been extended through May 8 

with the addition of two show-related events at the Upstairs Galleries:

A closing reception on Saturday, April 30, 4-7:30PM - a chance to informally meet exhibiting artists.  

A special *ArtistTalk Sunday, May 1, 2-4PM, featuring painter Christopher Albert, who is traveling from 

his studio in Hollywood, Florida, for this presentation. Regional artists Dick Crenson and Travis Jeffrey 

(among others) will also be on hand to discuss their work. We recommend RSVP-ing for the ArtistTalk.

In SUMMARY:

Extended through May 8: "Whimsy and Gesture: Recent Work by Christopher Albert, Dick Crenson & Travis Jeffrey."  

Sculpture by Madeleine Segall-Marx, Richard Marx, Judy Sigunick & Tim Rowan.

Saturday, April 30, 4-7:30PM: 

Closing Reception, 

"Whimsy and Gesture

".

Sunday, May 1, 2-4PM: 

ArtistTalk featuring painter Christopher Albert. 

Formal program begins at 2:30, with "meet & greet" reception before and after talk.

Free & open to the public (

RSVP suggested

due to space constraints). 

Albert Shahinian Fine Art, 

22 East Market St., Rhinebeck.  845-876-7578 or info@shahinianfineart.com.

Thursday, 

Friday, 

Saturday, 11a.m.-6p.m.; 

Sunday, 12noon-5p.m., 

& by appointment and chance

Best wishes and See You at the Upstairs Galleries!

Visit our web site at:  http://www.ShahinianFineArt.com

TAO, 1998, oil on canvas

It's Easter

oil on whiteboard, 2015