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 have 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

Whimsy & Gesture @ Albert Shahinain Fine Art in Rhinebeck, NY. Through Apr 31.

I have a sampling of paintings spanning over 10 years on view now at Albert Shahinian Fine Art in Rhinebeck, NY.  The show has recently been extended through April 31. 

Whimsy & Gesture is a three person show which also includes wire sculptures by Dick Crenson and collages by Travis Jeffrey.

Shahinian Fine Art is a cozy little space perched on the third floor of a building just east of the Market St/Rt 9 intersection.  The gallery has a facebook page here, which will likely be the best place for information on upcoming events...like, for instance, if I'm able to make it up north to give a presentations in the gallery.....for instance.

My painting Christopher & Gay (fp) (from 2008 or 9?) is the image featured on the postcard above.

Artma 2016

Artma, the biennial art auction event held in Denver to benefit research areas of childhood cancer was held again this year on February 20th. 
I've participated in every iteration since its inception, including this year, although just barely.  What with the upheaval of our move and the condensing of studio and home into a smaller home with ad hoc studio and storage space, I nearly didn't make the deadline.  In fact I actually missed the deadline, but the organizers still welcomed my last minute contribution. 

Flattened Buoy, Red 2012

The work I donated is a 2012 drawing done while on residency on Norton Island in Maine.  The pastel drawing is one of several I made inspired by the colorful buoys arrayed in the waters around the island and washed up on the shore.  Buoys were even re-purposed to mark the trails cutting through the woods of the island.  The drawings were kind of schematic dissections of the buoys; a not so strict rendering of them as if they had been flayed and flattened.

A group of buoy, and other, drawings in process on Norton Island in 2012.

Oh Christmas Thing 2015

 Christmas Thing 2015, cement, newspaper, organic material.

The weather here in South Florida is decidedly not Christmasy, but as it has turned out, that's something the entire eastern half of the US is facing this year.

This year's Xmas Thing is a decidedly unfussy and low key affair, consisting of cast cement cones and a little flourish of color I found lying around in the yard.

Nari Ward pampers himself

On November 21, 2015 the Perez Art Museum hosted a performative talk by Nari Ward to accompany the opening of Ward's retrospective exhibit Sun Splashed, on view through February 21. 

Upon entering the auditorium, the audience was treated to a back lit screen conjuring the silhouette of a body - that of the artist receiving a massage.  This mise en scene was positioned to the left of the stage with two empty chairs and a podium to the right. 

During the time when the massage was the only action on stage (about ten to fifteen minutes from the point we sat down,) I was vigilantly watching for any moments that would illustrate a crude shadow play gag like those in the Austen Powers movies. 

Somewhere just before the moment when PAMM director Franklin Sirmans took to the podium to offer his introduction to the program and give a talk on Ward's work, a grumbling older couple (actually the wife was doing the grumbling) got up to leave out of impatient disgust.  I worked on the exhibition installation and I was aware, at least broadly, of what Nari wanted to do in the talk.  I'm always interested in how we all react to moments that thwart our expectations and try our patience or our gameness.  We all have our limits and we have all undoubtedly missed out on something we may never know about having succumbed to those internal voices of hurried agitation.  Being aware of those same mechanisms at work in our neighbors who might have relieved us of their presence and comments makes our reward - if there is one, and there is never a guarantee of one being there at the end - that much sweeter. 

Were we rewarded?  I think I was. 

Before working on the exhibit I was not aware of Nari's work....I was sure I had seen it before but had never been conscious of it.  As it turns out, I had installed a work of his at MoMA shortly after it had been aquired.  That piece is in the current show at PAMM, proof that consciousness is a slow, additive process, and only when enough of the stuff sticks to the wall of our minds are we able maintain an awareness.  The talk was a reward because through I learned what I perhaps should have known already.  Sirmans gave a rundown of Ward's career and oeuvre, followed by exhibition curator Diana Nawi who presented a eulogy to the body of Ward's works that no longer exist, complete with a short bio giving the context of each work's creation, existence and demise. 

With the eulogies presented and massage complete, Nari Ward sat down, wrapped thickly in a comfy looking robe, with Diana Nawi to take questions from the audience. 

The choice of massage was performative for sure, but functional too in a way I think most would understand.  First, having the obligation to present a talk of some sort to accompany one's retrospective (it's the least one might expect to have to do as a living artist being granted a retrospective by an institution, as annoying as it may be,) this bit of shadow theater freed Nari from having to do any of the heavy lifting (talking) during the program.  I firmly believe in cases like this, it's almost always better to have someone other than the artist discuss that artist's work. It is the job of the curator or scholar to frame the artist's work for the public and if they are at least modestly able to speak before a group can offer a more robust and transferrable insight into the artist's work.

Secondly, the massage was both a demonstration of, and a coping mechanism to address, the unnatural, nerve racking task of standing before a theater of people and lecture to them on what it is you do, when, not 200 feet away sits the very embodiment of what you do, first hand, on its own terms and in its primary tongue.
 

In the Studio Today

Well, this is how the studio looked just before we vacated it at the end of August.....And it's still how I feel a little.  I expected to put away the artmaking habit for a while until things got settled here in South Florida - Hollywood Fl. to be exact.   I figured I'd devote my excess time to writing, and I've maintained that effort fairly consistently until just recently when I started getting some jobs in the area. 

I've done just a little tinkering, my attention focused on objectness potential of the hollowed out coconut shells I've harvested from the tree in our back yard. 

I haven't yet mustered the focus or energy to get much useful activity rolling, be it written or visual but that hankering is starting to scratch at the door.  I'm just mustering up the gumption to get up and answer.

The studio I currently have rests largely in my head, but I have a corner or two I can commandeer when I need.