my new website

My new website is up! Same address, www.ericahauser.com, new design and easier for me to maintain. It is the new home of my blog as well, so the blogspot will remain, for now, as an archive from May 2011 through now (mid-August 2015). Of course this span contains several long lapses, but there are still over 300 and I think some are quite nice, at least they track my practice and thoughts, among other things, over that time.
So if you have found your way to my blogspot page somehow, you are welcome to browse past blog posts, which I have never properly archived beyond dates- no word cloud or tags or anything so useful- and please visit my website for recent posts and current work. Thank you!

fresh cones

I first painted these ice cream cones outside the Beacon Creamery on the corner of Main St and 9D maybe 6 years ago, and repainted them 2 years ago, but they were looking shabby and due for a fresh coat this summer. I finally got to it this morning, and my friend caught me as I was close to finishing up. Only one driver called out the window, "Where's the chocolate?"

paintings in 'mostly maquettes' show

Opening this weekend at Theo Ganz Studio, 'Mostly Maquettes', a fundraiser to benefit Beacon 3D, a 5-month-long public art project comprising 20 outdoor sculptures situated around town. The show will have 2D and 3D works for sale, including these three small paintings, two of which are new this summer. I'm glad to support the project.  The gallery is at 149 Main Street, with an opening and preview this Fri Aug 7, 4-8 pm. It will be up through Aug 16.

Summer Traffic, acrylic on canvas, 12"x12", 2015. $375

Frostick, acrylic on canvas, 8"x10", 2015. $375

Four Pops, acrylic on masonite, 8"x9", 2012. $150

taking the heat

It's August 1 and a fine day to revive the blog, which went into another prolonged dormancy. Despite claiming earlier this year that I would not let such a lapse occur again, I did, and I'm sheepish once more. Recently I started an Instagram page (Follow me!) a nice quick way to put my images out there with (or without) a few words attached. Soon I will understand more about how to use it effectively. Or, maybe I won't, just as I never quite learned how to best use my blog. However, doesn't take a tech whiz to point out snidely that posting regularly is a good start.
I'm thinking of ways to make this easier, like possibly integrating the blog into the website. While we are at it, how about updating the content of the website too? Perhaps some paintings completed in the past year? Maybe refine that joke of an artist statement? No, I can't take it easy on myself any more. I was busy this spring, and it was great, but I've got to focus on this while I'm not yet too busy stacking wood and complaining about the weather. (I've actually begun stacking again, but just occasionally so far.) And how can I devote a post to my new wheelbarrow (!) if I'm not posting? I ask you.

Anyway, here are thirty delicious popsicles I painted in June, each 7" square, 1/4" thick, acrylic on wood. They are for sale in my online Etsy shop  or email/message me to purchase. Flavors subject to availability. With this nonstop aggressive marketing push, it's a wonder I have any left.

sure good

 Two more ice cream wrapper paintings, acrylic on wood, poorly photographed. Sure Good and Happy Days, a second version of an earlier one that had sold because, who wouldn't want happy days?
When I have enough of these, whatever enough is (so far just 10), I'll have them properly shot so I can make prints.

This small (5") one I made for my friend's birthday present, from a Deluxe Temptee Pop wrapper. Why do I love the popness of this pop, now that I liberated it from its defining text, I want to paint it huge.

coffee and tee

I'm mining the past few months for some of the pictures and bits of info that I didn't post during my blog hiatus (what else can I call it?). On Facebook, posts whiz by and are swiftly forgotten, and I'm not on Instagram (yet), and I can't update my own website (embarrassing admission!),  so this is still my main way of collecting the ephemera of my activities in one virtual place. There is the Catalyst blog as well, which is an extension of my projects when I'm the one co-organizing a group show, as was the case twice this winter. February was our Coffee and Donuts Show, for which I painted this one (14"x18" acrylic on canvas), based on a vintage photo I found of a Krispy Kreme. 

This is just me modeling the newest iteration of my Beacon dummy light shirt, in slate gray. I sold some at the holidays and thought I'd revive the marketing now that it's nearly short-sleeve weather. All sizes for men and women, some men's in black, kids sizes in white/black and baby onesies. $24 and available through my Etsy shop or by emailing me directly at erica@ericahauser.com. It's about time to don my orange vest and touch up the actual light itself, it's looking scuffed after a rough couple years.

fresh up

'Fresh Up' is a selection of my soda-related paintings to inaugurate the 3B Gallery at Beacon Bath & Bubble, opening tonight 6-9pm at 458 Main St. The soaps and suds have been in business there for a long time, and the owner recently added vintage soda pop for sale- well, the brands and label designs are vintage, but the drinks in their colorful glass bottles are fresh and fizzy. My work seemed thematically apt, as you can perch at a white metal cafe table and crack open a cold one while you contemplate it.

The 10 pieces are a mix of older and newer. Drink this and that. The only one not specifically soda is Creamsicle from the ice cream wrapper series, but the guy is apparently a 'soda jerk' behind a fountain, so it works, and perhaps will interest more people in dropping by to see more of them next month at Beacon Open Studios. As the past couple years, I'll be using the back space of Catalyst Gallery to show recent paintings and to sell some of those delightful Beacon dummy light t-shirts and mugs.

here to eternity

I posted this (22"x26" framed) recently but here it is with more context. This painting will be in an exhibition opening April 11 at Theo Ganz Studio in Beacon, called dispatches from eternity. Artists were to interpret the title. After I made this piece in January, the curator encouraged me to submit it, suggesting it suited this theme, and I saw this was completely true in its way. I started looking at some of my work more critically as I wrote my accompanying paragraph, and it became part of an ongoing revision of my artist statement. Which, since I haven't posted at all for so long, is almost a fresh piece of writing, even though it has similar content.

My paintings often start with the idea of wanting to describe some moment in time by way of a detail or a memory. I find an object, a sign, a streetscape, and by photographing and later painting it, I am able to place my thoughts in that time for a while. I feel an emotional, appreciative response and also a detachment from an experience I never really had, and must be content to imagine.

When I am not coming across objects and scenes myself, I look for images in old found photographs, in ephemera like ice-cream wrappers and road maps, catalogs and clippings. I may paint them as I see them or I may add or remove elements to find my own perspective. It's not a sentimentality, though I like when my work evokes a viewer's own memories. Painting lets me bring my objects back into the conversation, from one everyday life into another.

This potential for fluidity between past and present, of memory and experience both real and imagined, is my approach to the idea of eternity. It is the sense of time stretching in both directions and back around with no clear meeting place, a continuum along which we map our own stories. This painting of Newburgh is based on a photograph from Newburgh Historical Society's archives, and depicts a bustling lively city in the 1940s or 50s, full of culture and commerce, pedestrians, cars and activity. The photo captures a moment in the city's rich and complicated history, and in making a painting of it now, I want to slow down our observation of it, even to stand at the same corner the long-ago photographer stood. The six panels comprising the piece are like six different perspectives of the scene, and also resemble a window in time through which we can see life happening.

winter keening, spring dreaming

I admit that it's somehow satisfying to hurl frozen-together chunks of wood at the ground to bust them apart, or to kick loose some iced-over pieces of wood that have welded themselves to the pavement. Plus it's easier to drive over muddy dirt roads that have re-frozen rather than sinking oozily into the deep ruts after last week's thaw. Yet after four more days of trudging back and forth with my laden wheelbarrow that has amazingly lasted one more winter, and carrying armloads of wood up steps onto porches and into sheds, I think I'm about ready to hang up my superalls for the season. Will winter relinquish its icy grip and let us uncurl our clenched white fingers, will the mounds of dirty slush finally melt and the frigid air not sting our faces as we hurry, bundled, to our cars.

No, it was not a good day to try on swimsuits.

In its final hours, winter had one more snowfall to release. As ready as I am to shake off the cold part, I didn't mind the snow, one more chance to appreciate the beauty of it. Living 36 winters you know that it will melt quicker than you think and that the spring bulbs are just beneath the earth, far more ready to face the sun than your pale and withered winter skin.

You also know that saying you'll go back to regularly posting to your blog is easier than actually doing so; as much as you enjoy it, there seems to be some resistance. Let spring, a time of renewal, also be a time of renewing such efforts.

copy center

 I have new prints of these nine paintings now available for sale. All are on 8 1/2" x 11" paper with an approx 1/2" white border; the square ones are different, and the small ptgs are actual size, for example the Mixer is 6"x6". Many others are on my Etsy shop, the rest will get there very soon. They are $25 each, or $20 for a limited time if you visit either Catalyst Gallery (137 Main St Beacon) this weekend or the Brewster reception (Studio Around The Corner, 67 Main St) where I'll be this Friday 7-9pm. 

show around the corner

Reporting on this week's news: I have a show opening on Friday at a gallery off Main Street in Brewster. At The Studio Around the Corner behind the Old Town Hall, just steps away from the long-shuttered Cameo movie theater and a couple blocks from the Metro-North train station, six miles from where I grew up on Old Milltown Road. 

I am showing 12 to 15 paintings and will have prints for sale as well. A local photographer will also be exhibiting his work. The reception is Friday evening, 7-9 pm; more info is below. Window Letters (here) is in it; not a new painting, but still one of my favorites.

VIEWFINDERS

Paintings by Erica Hauser

        

With Photographs by Pal Gyomai

Opening Reception – Meet the Artists

Friday, February 20, 7p – 9p

Additional Studio Hours: 12 – 2p

Saturday, February 21

Saturday, February 28

Sunday, March 1

Studio Around the Corner

67 Main Street, Suite 101

Brewster, NY 10509

(845 363-8330

Cover: ‘Window Letters’

Oil on canvas, Erica Hauser

begin again

City of Newburgh, 1940's, 20"x24" made up of 6 panels, acrylic/canvas

There's really no way for me to un-self-consciously start up my blog again without acknowledging the -ulp- four months that have gone by since I last posted. It wasn't intentional, as in, let me regroup or take time to clarify my intentions or make more work or any such excuse. No, just the same old, one week became two became a month became four. But I regret this lapse. It started (or stopped, I should say), I suspect, as a reluctance to repeat myself here after three years of "Look, I'm in another group show/ I stacked a lot of firewood/ I read books/ I made new prints/ I organized a show of 50 artists at my gallery/ I made calendars/ I'm in another group show/ I made a thing for an event/ I painted more stuff/ I drove and took pictures."
Which, far from a reason to shut up, could have nudged me to broaden my activities, except- surprise- these reports are actually why my blog exists, as a method of communication to others and a record for myself that's smoothed out and cinched in for general perusal. When I went too long between posts, I missed doing it. I didn't stop painting or exhibiting, but it's sobering how easily I could tell myself that blogging 'doesn't matter' because time went by and things were ok without me going on about it. I am remembering now that 'ok' isn't enough and shouldn't be. No one will ever make as big a fuss about me and my work as I, so- very needlessly to say-  it is up to me to create the content.
A couple months ago, someone did contact me to ask if I was ok, since I hadn't posted in so long. Embarrassed, I typed "yes.." and went back to posting a blink-and-you-miss-it update on the mixed bag that is Facebook. Then last week, a discussion at a BeaconArts board meeting about using our website to generate connections in and beyond our community by sharing content from local creative businesses and artists' blogs made my sheepish-artist ensemble complete. I had been ba-a-a-adly negligent for too long. Time to begin again. Or tomorrow, tomorrow is fine too.