The Artma benefit Auction returns to Denver, Feb 11, 2012

slough (Grande 1) 2006

If you happen to be in Denver this coming weekend.  And if you happen to dig art auctions, love children and hate cancer, you should attend the latest installment of the Artma Art Auction.  The biennial fundraiser to benefit pediatric cancer research.

This year's event is taking place on Saturday, Feb 11 from 6-10pm at the Denver Studio Complex.  More information is at artmaonline.org

I've participated by donating a work for each of the .....six installments of the event dating back to 2000.  This year I've donated a work from 2006; slough (Grande 1), it's oil on canvas, measuring 30"x24".  It's one of two larger works on canvas that grew out of the group of small paintings on wood I was making in 2005 and 2006. 
I considered this group of paintings as my "Morandi" works.  It's a ridiculous thing to say and perhaps an insult to the man who spent a lifetime exploring the vast universe embodied within a very narrowly focused subject matter in his remarkable paintings. I merely spent a year working on this group before my attentions were led in other by the possibilities presented by the very subject matter I was examining.   The invocation of the man's name is intended as a tribute.  For me, the tie to Morandi in these works was that they were a return a form of direct representation - something I had avoided for several years.  Even though they may look abstract and random, they are devoted renditions of real forms; forms that were intimate for me, linked as they were to my livelihood of several years.  For the decorative painting I would do for clients in their homes, I would mix a variety of colors in yogurt containers.  After I was done with them, I would let the remnants of the paint dry inside the yogurt cups which allowed me to easily peel the paint out of the container and then reuse the container for a new color.  For some reason, I started pinning these colored disks of dried latex to my studio wall.  I had quite an array of them. After sometime of not paying attention, I discovered that these disks became misshapen and distorted as gravity worked them over while they were pinned to the wall.  These weird forms became the subjects of the slough paintings, then later, the subject and core material in the blesse sculptures that were to follow.   

In the Spirit of the Text exhibition images

Here are some images from the exhibit, I'll be posting other views and other pieces soon.

View from the outside: we placed quotes from Calvino's Six Memos on some of the gallery windows.

My Spamwerk paintings line the entryway, well above eye level.

Looking from the South gallery into the North gallery. My piece untitled(backmount) is in foreground, Marc Willhite's "Diagram for a Gesture" and "A Grand Fragment" can be seen through the doorways.

Marc's "Two Widths Seamed" on the left, and my "History Painting 2" on the right.

Marc's "Diagram for a Gesture" on the right, and my "History Painting 1" on the left.

Marc's "A Grand Fragment."

Looking from the North gallery into the South gallery.

My "Ground Cover."

Blesse 1 & 2 set in the wall in the background.

A small drawing, and a plaster piece, both called "Ground Cover."

Marc's "A wall of differing shades of grey."

"History Painting 1" butted up against the plaster "Ground Cover."

Please rewind tape before returning

Blue painter's tape has become an almost ubiquitous medium for artists. It's a pretty, cobalt kind of blue. Light filters through it nicely...

Well, I use a lot of the stuff when I'm doing my decorative painting gigs. Regular masking tape too. As I wrap up a job, I roll the tape into a glob, sticky side in, as much as possible, for easy depositing in a trash bag.

The activity has sometimes taken on aspect of a short term challenge (similar, I'm sure, to the spirit that spawned the world's largest ball of twine) to see how large a ball I can create given the amount of tape use on a job.

Recently, though, I've taken to seeing this as an opportunity to create some small impromptu sculptures. Without getting too fussy about the shape, I try to be aware of the form as it develops. The added color of paint on the edge of the tape informs the process, adding variety. It's an activity that's a sort of meditation on the end of a project, and the refuse produced by the process.

These images represent a few of the pieces I've done in the tape. A friend came to visit my studio last week, and I told her that at the moment, I find the possibility of these small things more exciting than the thought of painting. As with the skins of dried paint that I've used both as subject in my slough paintings, and as sculpture itself, as with the Blesse wall pieces, I think there's room to play with these things.

The wall is dead. Long live the wall

Blesse III
latex paint, joint compound

I had wanted to create a new wall piece in this new series of work "Blesse", but before that I had to remove two pieces and prep the wall. I was finally able to take the other two pieces down, and begin work on the third when I was in the studio two weeks ago. Below are images from the removal of the two pieces. The excercise with this work has been to create a form that seamlessly emerges as some abnormality from the wall. I found that I enjoyed the deconstructed elements that were added to the pieces as I carved into the wall to remove them. This may be another direction to take with this work. The images below trace the removal of Blesse I and II.

Blesse I deconstruct

Blesse I shadow

Blesse II deconstruct

Blesse II shadow