Super-belated ART NEWS!!

Somehow, I neglected to announce a few bits of news from this past year. I must have been distracted by... Oh yes.  Everyone's 'that's why' excuse for the past eighteen months, for better or worse. Lord knows I took my lumps too, but thankfully, I think these two art brags fall squarely in the "better" category? OR at the very least, new.

"Because of the pandemic" #1.

 

Like many, I found weird pockets of time to indulge weird ideas, with no particular reason to stop myself. Like obsessively taking photos on a hike last January after a windstorm, when all the dead, broken tree limbs looked so much like twisted bodies and human physiology, I just kept seeing the same theme over and over:

I couldn't help it. Apparently, nor could I help submitting said photos to the very next call-for-submissions I found. And lo and behold, two photos from the series were selected for publication! "Arboreal Arms" and "Bronchial Branches" (left to right, above) were selected by the The Tatterhood Review (a really cool literary scifi/fantasy 'zine, y'all!) for publication, and they even paid me a few shekels, too. Eeek!    

 

"Because of the pandemic" #2. 

In another twist of temporary insanity, at the same time I submitted an old painting I did back in 2015 to a gallery seeking work on the topic of "Paradoxical Paradigms." I called the painting Rembrandt's Bathsheba: The Hellscape Abloom and... it made it in! To an actual, honest-to-goodness ART SHOW!! Entirely, in my opinion, by mistake.

Nonetheless, the painting hung at the The Huntington Arts Council for a number of weeks, they threw all us artists a virtual reception (you can still view the body of work here), and the whole thing was both a total hoot and a real, true honor.

WHO EVEN AM I RIGHT NOW, YOU GUYS?! 

I know, I know, I usually fancy myself a writer. But that little surge of inspiration last year was a much-needed boost during a particularly demoralizing pandemic. So it just goes to show ya—submit submit submit! You never know who's crazy enough to call you an artist! 

 

  Rembrandt's Bathsheba: The Hellscape Abloom (2015)

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Rembrandt's Bathsheba: The Hellscape Abloom

Artist Statement: In painting Rembrandt’s Bathsheba: The Hellscape Abloom, I purged a demon in a single sitting with the materials I had on hand: some old tubes of acrylic and oil paint, some torn pages of a 1950’s Rembrandt art book my toddler had destroyed, spiritual enhancements of mood and music—and a subconscious laden with timely insecurities: body, motherhood, femininity, sex. 

 

In the Biblical story of Bathsheba, King David spies a bathing beauty on a rooftop and desires her, summoning her with a demand letter informing her he’s just sent her husband off to war so they can be together. 

In Rembrandt’s Baroque masterpiece, Bathsheba at her Bath (1654), it’s widely agreed that Bathsheba is lovingly depicted as despondent, deeply disturbed, saddened, and/or resigned by Kind David’s letter. 

 

When I first saw Rembrandt’s masterpiece hanging in the Louvre many years ago, and again in our vintage art book, I was not familiar with it, nor the biblical story it was based on. In blissful ignorance, I read this alluring, sensual woman as contemplative. Torn. Conflicted. Excited, but terrified. Perhaps even horrified. But also... Alight with possibility. Abloom, in a Hellscape. Conflicts in emotion make sense to me. Paradox’s make sense to me. Even when faced with such a profound paradigm shift as Bathsheba’s: you can hold two feelings in your heart at once.

 

 

 

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"Arboreal Arms" (2021) & (Above, Top Left)

"Bronchial Branches" (2021) (Above, Top Right)

Artist Statement: On one of my solitary hikes through the trails of eastern Long Island, I found the haunting, textured, and gnarled mess of the woods too striking not to capture — if only with a newcomer's eye and a smartphone camera. Yet with these rudimentary tools, art still finds a way. In this series, I aim to reveal how the arboreal can look downright aboral as the broken limbs, fallen trees, and knotted vines of the bare winter forest map unto our bodies' own tangled physiology — hair, veins, arteries, posture, caress — manifested in simple plays of light, color, and texture.

Dear Copywriter: Are These Culture-Shaping Visual Trends On Your Radar?

So proud to unveil my latest article for MarketSmiths! Of all the obscure topics I've written about over the years, nothing gives me as much pleasure as those that deal with culture, media, and art—and the loaded, explosive worlds in which they collide. 

By nature of working with some of the most influential image-makers and brands in the universe, Adobe puts out an annual hit list of what's resonating in advertising, media, galleries, etc—and frankly, I'm a little obsessed with it. 

Hence my latest article—a summation of Adobe's list, and commentary on how shifts in politics and culture have likely shaped what consumers seem to be craving, admiring, and yearning for in the visual realm. 

So, for a taste of what you've seen pop up in 2018—and will most certainly see a lot more of it in 2019—here's a list of the visual trends making big waves in marketing and media this year. 

Hello, Artist Mamma.

Are you—or do you know—a creative person who's also a parent to young children? Or someone who USED to write or make art, and misses it?

I've spent the last two years adjusting to life as a WFHM and have, at points, grieved the loss of what I thought was the time and space to cultivate my art—all for the sake of motherhood, or a paycheck, or some other Big Blocker that made excuse-making so easy. 

But then I met this tiny collective of women, with similar ambitions and gumption, and somehow—maybe even out of desperation—we carved a path forward. We eeked out time. We set goals and achieved them. And wow, what a revival it's been. My creative life has not—and will not—ever be the same. 

We called ourselves The MatriArtists. And now we're launching an Insta account with inspiration and ideas for fellow creative SAHPs and WFHP's—about functional playgroups, creative co-working, and parental support for all kinds of professional and personal work, from any kind of medium, for any sort of artistic goal under the sun. Join us! 

Follow @the_matriartists on Instagram to learn more... And thanks in advance for checking us out. We love comments, feedback, and lots of participation. 

The Exquisite Picto-Scriptography Machine

I wanted to make it by hand.

Over beers in a dark divey bar I insisted that my construction-savvy artist friend sketch it out for me on a napkin, and then made him promise to let me borrow his workshop to manifest it. When my father, a bit of an artist and furniture hack himself, happened to be in town on business, I coerced him into coming with me to said workshop to help cut and assemble the parts. And in a course of hours, with my friend popping in periodically to consult, we did indeed build it.

We assembled and then disassembled the apparatus in such a way as it could be packed, shipped and eventually put back together—this time on my own, halfway across the country—with nothing but grit and a few power tools. It'd be a dirty, scrappy task, in an environment that could only be described as hostile, and I'd probably hate doing it. 

But since I sometimes do things I hate, and often think of myself as scrappy, and certainly don't mind getting dirty: there it was. An ugly, silly thing that I kinda loved a lot. 

The project was based on a simple parlor game known as an "Exquisite Corpse" or "Telestrations," though I've heard it referred to by a number of oddball names including "Eat Poop Your Cat," (which is what my weirdo friends and I call it) and have seen variations that include a physical board game. The best description I can think of would be if you took the general skill set of "Pictionary" and crossed it with the simplicity of "Telephone," and sprinkled it with the unpredictable whimsy of a seance. In my opinion it's best played with a small circle of buddies gathered 'round a cozy fire using a pile of loose scratch paper. It's a whole lot of damn fun. 

This, on the other hand, was a wooden structure roughly five foot tall holding up a large bolt of drawing parchment in the middle of a dry salt flat in Nevada. The players were a group 65,000 costumed freaks, and fun wasn't really on the table: there were no winners, no losers, and barely a point. 

It was Burning Man 2005, the aforementioned build conditions were blinding heat and powerful whiteouts, and the project was none other than The Exquisite Picto-Scriptography Machine. 

This festival and why I was there are stories for another time, but the machine itself (loosely and inaccurately named, though it did have moving parts) was whole-heartedly and painstakingly made (and in the spirit of the event, also burned), board by board, entirely by hand. 

But also I wanted people—friends and strangers—to use their hands when they encountered it, to touch the thing and hold materials that left marks on their fingers, to put pen or charcoal to paper, to work the makeshift hand-crank forward and back and when finished, to step away and admire their handiwork. I wanted them to be as committed to this trivial activity as I was to planning it, pouring over the game's instructions and guessing at what others had left or where the ditty would go, because in reality, I had as little idea about that as they did. 

If you're still trying to picture it: in your wanderings, you'd happen upon this Exquisite Picto-Scriptography Machine (a bit unremarkable in appearance and small in stature compared to the geodesic domes and blinking art cars and buzzworthy artifacts around it—but hopefully nonetheless intriguing) where a large easel displayed either an illustration or bit of descriptive text. Instructions invited you to create, based on what came prior, a drawing or a sentence of what you see and to advance the canvas forward for the next person. You can see how this giant game of words and pictures could turn sentiments into nonsense, and nonsense into hilarity. Though, ironically, this version of Finish the Story didn't really let its participants in on the joke.  

So... what?  Who was it fun for, why the effort? 

I wanted to feel fulfilled in the company of other artists in a scene where it was expected to create art of your own. And in terms of a low risk social experiment, I also wanted to see what would happen.

But mostly I wanted to to birth something (mostly) myself, from start to finish, however clumsily, like shooting myself out of a cannon: bold, brave and fast, no skill required, closing my eyes and not caring where I landed and as long as I didn't fall flat on my face and die, I'd consider it a huge fucking success. 

Perhaps then, there's a bit of merit as to why this festival's lesser known slogan is "Bad art, good stories..."