Until Next Year

I’m on hiatus until January 2010, at which time posting may will begin again. Then again, I may surprise you and post sooner. Until then, check out the new Flickr group Conceptual Art Jewelry. Happy Holidays!

Call for Entries – 16th Annual YWCA Rags Guild Benefit

16th Annual Benefit: Juried Show and Sale of Wearable Art

The YWCA RAGS Guild announces a call for entries for its 16th annual juried wearable art show and sale. The show will take place March 11–14, 2010, at Mercedes-Benz of Tacoma, WA. Open to all artists working in all media of wearable art—garments, fashion accessories, and jewelry. Two entry types with nonrefundable fees:

• Gallery - competition of one-of-a-kind artist made pieces ($15 per entry, up to three entries)
• Marketplace – boutique-style sale ($35 entry fee)

All initial entries are juried by digital images. Accepted gallery entries are judged for award from actual works in late February 2010. Cash prizes to gallery winners in garments, accessories/jewelry, and best of show. As a benefit for domestic violence programs of the YWCA Pierce County, RAGS retains 33% of sales in Marketplace; 40% of sales in Gallery.

Deadline for submitting digital images is December 10, 2009. For prospectus and entry information, visit www.YWCApiercecounty.org (click on RAGS), or send an SASE to Artist Coordinator, YWCA RAGS Guild, 405 Broadway, Tacoma, WA 98402. For more information, call the RAGS hotline at 253-272-4181, ext. 352.

Contemporary Craft in Northwest Museums

Four Curators Discuss Contemporary Craft in Northwest Museums

Sunday, August 23, 2009, 1 pm

Several museums in the Northwest have made a commitment to collecting and exhibiting works in ceramic, fiber, clay, metal, and wood. Curators from those institutions, Stefano Catalani from Bellevue Arts Museum, Rock Hushka from Tacoma Art Museum, Kathleen Moles from the Museum of Northwest Art in La Conner, and Namita Wiggers from the Museum of Contemporary Craft in Portland, will each talk about the significance of craft in their collections and exhibition programming. They will then come together for a discussion of their varying approaches. This program is co-sponsored by the Seattle Metals Guild. The cost is $15; $10 for Tacoma Art Museum and Seattle Metals Guild Members and includes museum admission. For advance tickets, email Education@TacomaArtMuseum.org or call 253.722.2455.

New beads from lint

lint beads

Most people clean out the dryer’s lint trap without giving it another thought, but lately I kept cleaning out the trap and finding myself fascinated with the color and texture of the lint. Why is it that no matter what color clothes you dry (with the exception of white clothes) you get grey lint? Why is the lint so soft? Could I use this lint somehow in jewelry making? These were the questions that kept coming to me as I would clean out the lint trap. This went on for about a month until one day I decided to do a little experiment and see if I could make a bead out of the lint.

I gathered together my bead making materials and set about hand forming the bead. Slowly the bead formed and I set it aside to dry then drilled holes once the beads were dried. I think the result looks like a cross between charcoal wool and industrial felt. Of the eight beads I hand formed, only two came out perfectly, which is all I need. I have plans to make earrings from these beads, hopefully with raw diamonds and sterling silver. It should be interesting.

Right now my art practice is limited to bead making until I’m able to gather more resources, but in the meantime I’m experimenting with the bead form as widely as I can. My approach to experimentation in the studio and my way of viewing my art studio as a creative laboratory was largely shaped by the artist Jaq Chartier in the book about her work called Testing: Jaq Chartier by Marquand Books, a Seattle-based publisher. I feel that my experiments have largely been successful, and even those that have not been successful, have served in helping me to refine my production standards.

Ever since I started reading about Takeshi Murakami’s exacting standards, I’ve found that the quality of my work has improved. I am striving for perfection while knowing that not only is perfection impossible but according to the standards of wabi-sabi philosophy (which shapes my own aesthetics), it’s not even desirable. But I love the tension of desiring and rejecting perfection. I feel that somewhere in the interstices of that desire and rejection is the potential for really good work.

rEvolution: 105 Years of Jewelry and Metalsmithing

(rEvolution): 105 Years of Jewelry & Metalsmithing at the University of the Arts
First Floor Galleries

An exhibition of work by the many artists who have helped guide the Jewelry/Metals Program at the University of the Arts and its predecessor institutions, the Philadelphia College of Art and the Pennsylvania Museum School of Industrial Arts.

Curated by Sharon Church and Rod McCormick, the exhibition is part of the The Art & Design @ 50 celebration at the University of the Arts. For more information visit Philadelphia Art Alliance.

Johnny Swing’s Nickel Couch

Johnny Swing's Nickel Couch, 2008

I recently renewed my membership to the Society of North American Goldsmiths, and I was patiently waiting for my subscription to SNAG’s Metalsmith magazine to kick in when it hit me: why wait for the magazine when I can stroll down to the bookstore and score a magazine? Instant gratification is the American way after all. I scored my magazine, and I can honestly say that this was one time when impatience paid off.

First let me thank the folks at Barnes and Noble for placing Metalsmith in the art section rather than the crafts section. Because I feel that while metalsmithing and it’s related arts (particularly jewelry making) are situated firmly between the realm of fine art and fine craft, if you read Metalsmith, it reads like an art magazine and many of the artists featured approach the craft of metalsmithing with the same conceptual process as artists. Maybe it’s me, but one of the things I love about metal work is its ambiguity: is it art, craft, or design?

That’s exactly what I thought when I saw Johnny Swing’s Nickle Couch. My first reaction when I saw the couch was swift and visceral. I thought, damn, that is one sexy couch. It undulates and curves sinuously like a sleek tongue darting flirtatiously. Solidly constructed of nearly 7,000 nickles held together with 35,000 welds on a steel truss, it weighs in at a hefty 125 pounds but it ups the cool factor of your domicile immeasurably. But I think the true genius of the Nickel Couch is its elevation of the simple nickel coin to an art form. Who else but an artist would look at a jar of nickels and think, I can make art from that?

Sunshine, Martinis, and Korean Jewelry at the Fuller Craft Museum

Erotica, copyright Kiwon Wang

Happy Friday, I’m enjoying a pitcher of Vesper martinis on the rooftop on this gloriously bright, sunny day. Not only is today the end of a good week, but my subscription to Art Jewelry magazine kicked in and I’m enjoying the article about Kiwon Wang (one of my favorite jewelry artists) who is curating an exhibit on contemporary Korean jewelry artists at the Fuller Craft Museum. I thought this day couldn’t get any better but right on my doorstep was my supply order from Rio Grande. Now (after these martinis wear off) I can get to work on my twig neckpiece. I’m so excited!

Torches and Gilded Coffee Beads

gilded coffee beads

I am working on a new neckpiece. I have conceptualized the design and sketched it. I have made a cost estimate of the materials and equipment needed to produce the neckpiece. One of the pieces of equipment I will need is a torch, which will be new equipment for me because I do not normally work in metals. But my art practice is evolving, and I’ve decided that I will use recycled metal, found metal, precious metal clay (PMC), and responsibly sourced metal. This new ethic gives me more options in jewelry making.

But I’ve learned that deciding on a torch is no simple task. Apparently different metals have different soldering and annealing temperatures and so while a propane/oxygen torch might be right for working in silver and gold, an acetylene torch might be better for working in platinum. Then there are the safety considerations, I mean you’re working with fire and gases. I woke up at 3 AM this morning sweating over safety issues. Luckily, there are studio spaces where I can safely use my torch (once I make a decision on one).

Since I was up early I decided to make a pot of coffee and get to work. I took a second look at the beads I’d made from recycled coffee grounds. I decided to gild one. I liked the gilded/rough texture, so I decided to gild two more.  I washed my hands and sat down to drink a cup of coffee. Afterwards, I picked up the three gilded beads and placed them on my wrist like they were part of a bracelet. One thing came to mind: ironic. These beads look ironic. Like their trying to be fancy, but they know they’re not, and so they have a little attitude. Ironic beads. What do you know?

I’ll give it a few days and decided if I actually want to make a bracelet or if this was just a stress-relieving exercise.

Bead making and the jewelry design process

Raku & Twig beads

I’ve had several days of quiet time to conceptualize new work. During this time I have done a lot of problem solving around how to produce neckpieces from existing beads. I have three sets of beads that I am working with, so my production efforts are centered around how to create neckpieces from these beads. I feel very fortunate that I am able to visualize the design in my head where I can arrange, and re-arrange the jewelry components at will. I know that it is a gift to be able to rotate objects in my mind so that I can work out the design in my head rather than wasting a lot of paper sketching, and re-sketching.

These first set of beads were constructed from a rather labor intensive process involving organic and man-made materials plus fire to produced the scorched appearance. I produced the beads last year then struggled with how to include them in a neckpiece for a year. Then a few days ago I took a walk in Denny Park and saw some interesting twigs on the ground, which I brought home and accidentally laid them next to the beads. All of the sudden I was inspired with an idea, which I worked out in my head then sketched once I had figured the design out in my head.

Mossy Galliano beads

Once I understood that my design inspiration was fired by laying out the beads in a necklace pattern, I laid out these green “Mossy Galliano” beads, and sure enough I figured out the design for the neckpiece, which I promptly sketched. Moving forward from that success I worked on my “Amber Nut” beads, which were also made last year after a labor intensive process. I love making jewelry beads. The process of making jewelry beads is very meditative. I sit in my studio for hours making beads, and it amazes me how my hands are able to scoop up the right amount of material to make similarly sized beads. After a while, my mind begins to go into a meditative state; making beads is a very satisfying and centering ritual.

Amber Nut beads

The process of making these “Amber Nut” beads was greatly experimental. They are constructed of paper and polymer clay. They are finished with hand-rubbed oil paint, which I let thicken in the sun. The beads are still drying in the sun, and I am still working out the design for the neckpiece in my head. But for now, the creative process will have to wait because it’s a beautiful, sunny day with a perfect, gentle, cool breeze. I am to get outside and have some fun. Who knows, I may be inspired by nature or by something I see, and that may be the inspiration I need to work out this final design.

Elizabeth Olver art jewelry book

I am re-reading Elizabeth Olver’s The Art of Jewelry Design from Idea to Reality for the hundredth time. It’s a great book in terms of the number of color pages and practical advice from how to set up your studio, to how to generate ideas, to how to execute those ideas. It’s one of my favorite jewelry books, and I think if I ever teach a class it will be required reading. I guess because I’m feeling a little stuck right now, I’m devouring all of my Metalsmith, Ornament, and Art Jewelry magazines. I’m constantly looking at jewelry and sketching.

Last night as I passed C Art Gallery, I thought about approaching the gallery director with a proposal to curate a show on art jewelry and perhaps small sculpture. I’m still fleshing out my ideas and thinking about whether to invite particular artists or have an open juried show. I’m confident that as I mull the thought over, the challenges will resolve themselves.

In the meantime, I am checking out the art jewelry over at Klimt02 and Charon Kransen.

Felted Paper Beads & Twigs that shout

Felted paper beads, copyright © 2008 Alexis Pierre-Louis, all rights reserved

Lately I’ve been finding cool twigs in the park. I plan to use them in jewelry. It’s funny the way I find the twigs. I’m just walking along, minding my own business, and I notice them because they almost seem to shout, “notice me, I’m special”. The second time that happened to me I started paying attention to all the twigs in the park, and sure enough only the special ones seemed to shout. The other, regular twigs just laid on the ground like, well, twigs.

I’m starting the process of moving to a new artists community, and I’m excited about that, but not thrilled about having to actually pack my things into boxes and schlep them across town. But there are worse things, like not living around other artists.

Since I may be moving soon, I feel that it’s not time to start any new jewelry projects, which makes me a little sad because I finally figured out the secret to my felted paper beads: it’s the yellow pages paper. I’ve tried making paper beads from different types of paper and only the yellow pages paper resultes in a felty finish. So as soon as I move into my new digs (assuming they accept me), I’m going to go around to all my new neighbors and ask them for their unwanted Yellow Pages directories. Ah, the beauty of recycling.

Looking Back/Looking Forward: Meditating on my Direction

ABCD by Raoul Hausmann, 1923*

I started painting in the mid 90s when I got out of the Air Force. Military life was all I knew. My father was in the Army so I grew up around military families and the military way of life. Transitioning from military to civilian life was difficult. One day, on instinct, I started painting. The act of painting was very calming for me. I could focus all of my attention on the painting in front of me instead of the problems in my mind. I couldn’t afford to take classes, so I went to the library and educated myself. I studied art history. I studied specific painters like Mark Rothko, Richard Diebenkorn, and Alice Neel. I studied movements in art like Impressionism, Constructivism, and Dada.

I went back to school and earned my college degree in 2004. At first I refused to take art classes because by that time I had been a self-taught artist for nearly a decade, and I didn’t want some professor telling me I was doing it all wrong. But then I took a life drawing class and it wasn’t so bad, so I took a metalsmithing class and fell in love with the idea of making jewelry. I stopped making art for several years while working as an Office Manager in corporations and government agencies. I was miserable but couldn’t figure out why.

It took several years of trying to fill the void with everything but art for me to realize my unhappiness stemmed from the fact that I didn’t have a creative outlet. I tried crafts but that wasn’t it. I remembered how I felt when I was painting, and in 2008 I started painting again. I also reluctantly accepted the fact that I was an artist. (I was reluctant because, like most artists, I had a tendency to underestimate my own worth especially when compared to the masters of art.) But slowly I began to see that I was born to make art.

In 2009, I decided that I wanted to have a career as an artist. I had shunned the gallery system for so long, but now I wanted to be a part of it. My challenge is that I work in several artistic disciplines (painting, jewelry, collage, sound art) so my work is not exactly cohesive, which is just the thing that galleries are looking for. So I’ve decided to focus on one of my disciplines, which I narrowed down to

The impossibility of beauty

La Bourgeoise, copyright ©2004 Alexis Pierre-Louis, all rights reserved

I am actually glad that I’m not painting right now because it gives me the opportunity to think about what I want to say. I’m looking at my painting of La Bourgeoise and thinking about the ideas behind that painting.  I got the idea for the painting from a magazine. I had been a long time reader of Vogue before I went to Evergreen and began to see the ways that consumerism affected people, particularly in communities of color where folks who can barely afford to meet their basic needs find the money to spend hundreds of dollars on corporate branded (logo) goods. The magazine ad was for Prada, and it featured a white model. I thought about how white beauty standards pervade the media, and how women of color around the world try to lighten their skin and straighten their hair to conform to those standards of beauty. I reimagined the woman in the ad as a black woman and began to think about the increased incidents of bulimia and anorexia in women of color as they become upwardly mobile and face the same issues with weight and appearance as their white sisters.

I want to spend a little more time

Kara Walker, Adrian Piper, Thelma Golden, and Me

Sodom and Gomorrah by Henry O. Tanner

As I am waiting for the answer about whether to take my painting practice in the direction of figurative work or abstract work, I thought it would be a good idea to consider the work of three art world figures who have had a lasting impact on my development as an artist. When I say that I want to do figurative work, what I mean is that I’m interested in painting portraits of upper class women of color, especially black and Latina women. I’m interested in the impact of consumerism and upper class, white, Anglo-Saxon ethos on women of color, how it shapes their identities and aesthetic choices.

Black women as subject matter, is a topic that I find endlessly fascinating. But before I decide to devote my painting practice to them, I have to consider Adrian Piper’s argument, Critical Hegemony and Aesthetic Acculturation in Nous. In the article, Piper says that the art world rewards white artists and artists whose subject matter reflects European aesthetic values. Piper is not the first artist to make this claim. We have only to look to our art history to see that most of our celebrated artists were/are white males. So I have to consider what the implications of creating black identity art will mean for my career–where it situates my work in the ongoing, contemporary discourse on art, where it limits and liberates my artistic voice and my opportunities.

Thinking of the liberties and limitations of creating black identity art makes me think of  Holland Carter’s response to Thelma Golden’s discussions on post-black art–the notion of black artists creating art that is not particularly about their black identity. When I think of Golden’s post-black artists two things come to mind. First,

Still Pondering my Direction in Art

Seven Days in the Art World

I’ve just finished looking at all the art on the Allan Stone Gallery website. I feel refreshed, like I’ve just awakened from a good nap. I’ve been thinking lately about whether I should abandon my figurative work. Earlier, I was leaning towards abandoning it. Now, I’m not so sure. Part of my willingness to abandon my figurative work stems from the difficulty I had with the Rosario painting. But should I give up just because I’ve had a bad week in the studio?

I remember a few years ago when I was thinking about pursuing a PhD. I read somewhere that if you want a doctorate, you should be prepared to study something obsessively for the next 4-6 years. The same obsessive focus applies to success as an artist. I’m reading Seven Days in the Art World by Sarah Thornton. In the book, the artist Rebecca Warren alludes to experimentation in the early stages of your art career. Warren says

Standing Still Yet Moving Forward in my Art Practice

My inspiration has momentarily left me, so I am not working in the studio because I find it impossible to make art without inspiration. I am using the down time to think about whether I want to take my art practice in a new direction. Lately I’ve been thinking about abandoning my figurative work to focus solely on abstraction. And with this consideration, I must consider all the discourses on abstract art that currently exist. I must decide whether I want to continue the discourse or shift the discourse.

In my down time and in my thinking about what I have to say through my art, sometimes it seems that everything significant has already been said by the artists that have come before me. But then I realize that art is always reinventing itself by examining the opposing viewpoint on the current discourse of art. In this way post-Impressionism was birthed by Impressionism, postmodernism was birth by Modern Art, and lyrical abstraction was birthed by abstract expression, for example. So for as long as art continues to examine everything we perceive to be reality, there will always be something to say.

This encourages me as much as knowing that at the right time, my inspiration will return and I’ll be back in the studio producing art.

All in a Day’s Work

Today was a busy day in the studio. I came to some satisfying conclusions about the direction of my art practice. I’ve been thinking about the trouble I’ve been having with the Rosario painting. I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t want to do figurative painting anymore. While I am definitely interested in exploring female identity, especially among women of color, I feel that I’m not doing my best work in terms of figurative painting. I think I’m more successful in doing figurative sculpture, and there’s some experimentation that I want to do in clay and papier mache. In terms of painting, I want to explore abstraction and the symbolism of the line and circle.

I’ve also come to the conclusion that I prefer oil paints. I’ve been trying to work in acrylic all week, and I’ve found it tedious. The medium dries so quickly and spreads like glue. I find it impossible to get the texture or blending effects I’m used to getting with oils. There are alot of artists who work brilliantly in acrylic, but I’m not one of them. I’m happy to accept that. So until I can buy some oils, I’ll have to work on my papier mache sculpture, which right now is in a difficult state. But that’s the interesting thing about art making. So many challenges arise during the process, and you have to experiment and take risks and just figure out the problems. Today was a good day in the studio. Who knows what tomorrow will bring.

Random Thoughts on Soap Operas, the Lottery, and Being an Artist

Right now I’m holding my breath, waiting to see how my interview goes next week. If I land the job it means freedom to paint and figure out what direction I want to take my art practice. I’m in a bit of a funk, worried about money matters. Wishing I could win the lottery so I’d have the freedom to make art without worrying about marketing it or myself. But of course that can’t happen because I don’t play the lottery (any more). As I am fighting off my anxieties about my future prospects, I have the television on in the background to provide a little noise so I’m not alone with my gloomy thoughts. General Hospital is playing in the background.

Suddenly, I find myself thinking about my dirty, little secret addiction to soaps and how I won’t give them up because they are a link to my Grandmother, who introduced them to me and my siblings. I was half-listening to One Life To Live today. One character asked another “what do you do for a living”. The other character laughed and wanted to know why Americans have a preoccupation with how people make their money. Good question. Why is “what do you do” one of the first three questions you’re asked when ever you meet someone new.

And how do artists answer that question? I’m reading Art/Work, a new book by Heather Bhandari and Jonathan Melber. In it the duo assert that most artists don’t make a living from their art, that we are artists, and we shouldn’t define ourselves by our secondary occupations. It’s an interesting premise, and one I’ve lived by before having read Art/Work. I’ve always answered the question “what do you do” with “I’m a visual artist”. But then the question becomes “what kind of art do you do” and of course, how much does your work sell for, and how much are you selling.

I wonder if I could persuade people to ask a question I find infinitely more interesting:

Rosario – Day 5

copyright ⓒ2009 Alexis Pierre-Louis, all rights reserved

A few days ago I was painting shadows under Rosario’s chin and two long drips of ink spilled from her chin off the edge of the painting. I immediately wiped the drips but they left stains, and I was sure the painting was ruined. I thought about my options. I could trash the painting; not a desired option since I was really happy with the blue background and everything else I’d worked on. Another option was to let the acrylic dry and serve as an underpainting. I could use oil paint to paint over the acrylic and work in a medium that I’m more familiar with. I thought I was out of options but as I stood in front of the painting, my determination rose, and I decided to mix up some more flesh colored paint and paint over the black drips.

The challenge would be whether I could mix up enough paint–not too much that it would be wasted and not so little that I’d have to mix more paint and risk getting the color wrong on the second batch. I mixed enough paint to redo her entire face, neck, and shoulders but the color was much lighter than I wanted. But at least I’m on the right track. I’ll let this layer of paint dry then make adjustments to her skin tone.

Nick Cave’s Sound Suits Video

Hope and failure: making mistakes in art and life

For four days now I’ve been painting Rosario, and today I attempted to add shadows and completely messed up the painting. If I were painting in oil, I could just add turpentine and wash my mistakes away. But I’m painting in acrylic, and as I’ve said, acrylic is unforgiving. The only way to salvage my painting is to use the acrylic as an underpainting and paint over it in oils. That would allow me to fix some of the proportional issues and blending shadows would be easier. So now I have to decide, do I want to just heave the painting into the trash or do I want to wait a few days and let my tempers cool and try again?

I have set goals for myself. I have a vision of what kind of artist I want to be, and this painting is not up to my own standards of quality. I’m not a perfectionist, because I don’t believe perfection is achievable. But I do think I am able to tell the difference between what is good work and what is not. So today counts for a failure, and maybe tomorrow I’ll be able to learn the lessons I need to learn from my mistakes. For right now, I just want to curl up on the sofa and watch period dramas.

Rosario, Day 4 – hair

copyright ⓒ2009 Alexis Pierre-Louis, all rights reserved

Today I’ve finished the background and have started on the hair. I have highlights and low-lights now, I want to go back and create mid-tones. The eyes still need work, the mask needs work, and I’m still debating whether I want to keep the painterly brushstrokes on the face, lips, and neck. I’m leaning toward yes.

Painting, for me, is a way of expressing emotion. When the world outside gets to be too much, I like to retreat to my paints, brushes, and canvases and paint my cares away. The way the paint moves across the canvas, sometimes a scraping, dry brush stroke, sometimes a luscious, creamy slide, sometimes a slippery, watery glide–it’s all magical to me. No, it’s more than magical, it’s spiritual, it’s meditative practice, it’s almost like a silent prayer.

I can’t remember who, but someone once talked about the happy accidents that occur in painting, and it’s true. Sometimes things you didn’t plan just magically occur and your painting is the better for it.

Rosario, Day 3 – background

copyright ⓒ2009 Alexis Pierre-Louis, all rights reserved

I often begin work on a painting without an idea of what I will name the painting. As I am working the name comes to me, as it did with this painting. I’ve decided to call the painting Rosario because it makes me think of a friend I had in 6th grade. Today is grey and rainy. I’m fighting the gloom by painting the background a vivid blue. I miss working in oils, but I bought a batch of acrylics, so I am committed to using them. Between boughts of painting, I am drinking coffee and daydreaming about spring–will it ever arrive?

Day 2 – New Painting

copyright ⓒ2009 Alexis Pierre-Louis, all rights reserved

I’ve started work on the eyes, lips, and necklace. I still need to work on the skin tones, hair, and background–maybe I’ll start working on it tomorrow, but I have a lot of errands to run tomorrow, so I may not be able to get in any studio time.

I like the way the painting is developing. I can tell that the skin is going to be problematic. I’m not sure if I want to work wet-in-wet, which is going to be hard with quick-drying acrylics over a large area. I kind of like the dry brushed skin, but I’m not sure if it makes my lady look lizard-like. But these are the challenges I love in painting. Problems come up and you have to figure them out.

New painting – Step 2

copyright ⓒ2009 Alexis Pierre-Louis, all rights reserved

The great thing, and the challenging thing, about acrylics is they dry so fast. In just a few hours I was able to add the flesh tones to the skin, and the basic form for the hair. The tough thing about acrylics is you have to be diligent to wash your brushes immediately after use or the paint dries on the brush and its ruined. This was a good start for the first day.

New painting in progress – Step 1

copyright ⓒ 2009 Alexis Pierre-Louis, all rights reserved

I’m working on a new painting. I’ve started with a charcoal sketch on canvas. I’m using artist’s acrylics, which is a switch for me because I usually paint in oil. Here I’m working on the background, making the underpainting black to add depth to the overpainting. This is a work in progress.

Art Blurbs and Art Supplies

Decided against doing an art blurbs column–would rather put the energy towards making art. Will feature an RSS feed of my Twitter posts in my blog sidebar instead. Waiting for art supplies. Excited about new project.

And…I’m back!

I’ve taken some time off from blogging to consider my art practice–where it is, and where I want it to go. During my down time, I read a lot, made some sound collages, but not a lot of visual art. I began social networking on Facebook where I store my sound collages, updated my website, and also began social networking on Twitter.

It’s my experience on Twitter, with all the major museums, galleries, and artists that are tweeting, that helped me reconnect to my passion for making art and talking about it. So I’ll be doing an Art Blurb column, a collection of art news stories from around the world, written very concisely.

Moments Before Clarity (Crystalline)

It’s taken me several weeks to complete this new track. For the first time when I was composing, I was guided by an image: a story that arose through the sounds I heard. It was an interesting process for me. This is the story I told myself as I was editing,

A beautiful woman, wearing a tattered silk kimono, walks out of town into a vast and lonely expanse of arid land. The ground is cracked and without grass or trees. The horizon is far away. Slowly, shards of ice begin to fall from the sky and break on the parched land.

As the woman continues walking an old tree appears in the distance and begins to blossom. A gentle wind shakes the blossoms to the ground where they melt the sharp crystals and turn to green grass. By the time the woman reaches the old tree the landscape has become plush and verdant. She sits beneath the old tree and begins to meditate. Moments before clarity she thinks…(you fill in the blank).

Here is the new link to the audio file. You can listen to Moments Before Clarity (Crystalline).

Hiatus

I’m on vacation through Tuesday, August 5.

Notes from the Studio: Go big or go home, Felix Laband, and a Community Project

Yesterday P & I saw Sex and the City. The fashion was fabulous (but of course) and the jewelry was inspiring. I was a bit disturbed by some assumptions in Charlotte’s Mexico scene and Miranda’s apartment hunting scene. Those things aside, Sex and the City–the movie was campy, good fun.

Months ago, I wrote about feeling compelled to design oversized jewelry and how the theatre and performance aspect of couture fashion is a significant source of inspiration for me. In the field of fine art jewelry, we often talk about the relationship of jewelry to the body. I suppose my connection is more indirect. It’s a given that jewelry has a relationship with the body because it lies on the body. I’m more interested in how people in general and women in particular connect with their ideas of identity (individual and group) through their choices of adornment. For me, fashion and jewelry are elements of the same equation.

So right now, I’m:

• listening to Felix Laband’s “Sleeping Household” on his Dark Days Exit album
• thinking of a community project (to spruce up the traffic circle near my street)
• thinking of all the small beads that I did well, and would like to do over as very big beads.

Inspirations of the Moment: Touhami and Quantic

Right now I’m feeling Ramdane Touhami and listening to Quantic: I marvel at how something can be so complex yet minimal. Just when you think you’ve classified the genre, it moves on you. Beautiful, really. Also, I’m finished with the dining room (for now), and I’m working on a ring. Yay!

Press play to listen, and to hear more songs go to Quantic’s web site

“San Sebastian Strut”

“Interlude”

Resistance To Pretty Things

Postmodernists believe that fine art cannot be pretty. But Gaugin’s delicious color palette, Thiebaud’s creamy brush strokes, Barthé’s mastery of form, and Kiwon Wang’s gorgeous art jewelry–curious juxtapositions of paper and pearls–all lend credibility to the notion that beauty in art is still a relevant pursuit. While I’m deeply interested in aesthetic philosophy, at this particular moment, I am resisting:

• shiny things (gemstones, metals, people)
• symmetry (perfectly round beads, perfect anything)
• cute things (pretty, precocious, adorable, trendy things or people)

At this particular moment, I am attracted to:

assymetrical, burnt, ripped, torn, discarded, unwanted, unusual, un-finished, atypical, matte, shattered, unpretty, textured, weighty, light, curious, contradictory, compelling, things and people.

(The beads shown are my mixed media Raku beads. I’ve been working on the process for months. It’s an innovative, labor-intensive process that I’m happy with).

UTC Time test

It is 3:52 PM PDT. This is a test to see if the time on my blog posts have been fixed.

Random Thoughts On: Techno-feminist Identity, Coffee, The Transformers movie, and Nina Simone

I just got finished making some coffee and the leftover coffee grounds looked suspiciously liked the burnt organic matter I used to make my black beads. (I’m fascinated by detritus.) I poured the grounds onto my wax-paper covered worktable. I’m waiting for the grounds to cool. (They smell heavenly!) I’ll probably mix in a little ground myrrh and see what luscious scent it produces, then I’ll go a-bead making.

Speaking of scented beads, I just returned a book by the Metropolitan Museum of Art called (what else?) Metropolitan Jewelry. I returned the book because I was disappointed by the paltry offerings of African, Asian, Native American, and Latino jewelry but the book did have interesting information about pre-Industrial Age scented jewelry in Europe. Moving on.

I’m currently enraptured by Wired Magazine’s article on the new Steven Spielberg/Michael Bay TRANSFORMERS movie. Wired writers, in general, are a very talented bunch and they really stoke my enthusiasm for imaging a better future through technology. Speaking of the future, while traipsing around the internet, I discovered the work of Lynn Hershman Leeson. What resonated with me was Hershman Leeson’s own description of her influences in genetics, robotics, and nanotechnology that informed her own passion for what she calls “techno-human identity”. (I think Hershman Leeson and I may have been separated at birth. Oh, and on a totally unrelated note, I’m listening to Feeling Good by the late, great Nina Simone and playing around with making incense. It smells like myrrh-cinnamon-ginger around here. Mmm.)

(Image credit: Roberta, copyright Lynn Hershman Leeson).

New Art Beads – Princess Pinto Bean

I’m calling these beads Princess Pinto Bean (for now) because the brown/dark umber color variation reminds me of a pinto bean. (Also the name is a bit silly and it makes me laugh). On the serious side, these beads were inspired by my childhood memories of Hakata, Japan and my adult research into Tenmoku pottery.

I’ve included a sketch of an idea for the completed necklace, but there is no way of knowing how the finished piece will actually turn out. What I do know is creating these beads was pleasurably labor intensive. During breaks while moving the art studio yesterday, I would make these beads. The brown clay is actually three shades of brown ranging from terra cotta to chocolate. I folded in several leaves of gold leaf, but in the finished beads only a few flecks shine through (which turned out to be a very good thing). The mottled black finish, in the style of yohen glaze on Tenmoku pottery, is actually a very dark umber glaze that I purposefully made matte by mixing in black gesso. I can’t wait to see the finished necklace, but for now I’m unpacking boxes and making more beads.

Craft in America!

Craft in America is a 3-part series documenting the history & techniques of fine crafts. The series will air on Seattle’s local PBS station (KCTS) on May 30 from 8-10 pm. The program will feature jewelry artists Denise Wallace and Ken Loeber. For more info visit the Craft in America home page. I’m so excited!

twitter icon

apl icon

Critical Hegemony and Aesthetic Acculturation by Adrian Piper

Read the article here Critical Hegemony and Aesthetic Acculturation

LKM icon

mmicon