marketing ploy

I've been selling my dummy light t-shirts for over 4 years, either at markets or pop-up shops or the gallery, through Etsy or on the fly. It's been fun, but this might be easier and was fun to set up- I just opened an online Spreadshirt shop, where people can order shirts (& now mugs) directly, choosing colors and sizes- so the inventory is always there. If it works out, I will offer more designs- if I can decide which paintings are ready to wear, or drink from, or spit up on.

resemblages

It's been a couple weeks since my last post and I have an odd but agreeable smattering of projects I did in that time:

I painted this box (which Jon made) as a wedding gift for two friends. I loved mixing these colors and alternating them with the natural wood. What if this was all I painted from now on- patterns and shapes? Between this and the Ellsworth Kelly lightbulb, I'm enjoying it. Paintings as an abstracted arrangement of forms to resemble reality, right? Thing is, I don't really believe it yet, for myself- there's got to be more to the story of a painting. I am thinking about those puzzle toys that look like random shapes until you sort them into a recognizable object of your design.

5"x5". This adorable and recognizable object was a commission. It looks a lot like an unbearably cute beagle. I started with the eyes and worked my way out, so I had only myself to blame for the feeling that the pup was waiting for me to finish painting it, as one might wait to be fed a treat.

Following up on the strawberries sign for the farm, blueberries was next. The large scale makes them resemble blue pomegranates, but the accompanying word should clear up any uncertainty.

A 5"x7" acrylic/collage on canvas, the collage part from a print of my ice machine watercolor.

A 7"x8.5" acrylic/collage on wood, also made from a print of a long-ago painting. This was an old pump I'd pass by for years, until one day, of course, it was gone.

ellsworth kelly lightbulb

I painted a 4-ft plywood lightbulb for the 2014 Newburgh Illuminated festival. The bulbs are being installed all over the city; mine will be at the Newburgh Urban Market on Sat June 14 & 21, and in front of Newburgh Art Supply the rest of the time.
From my post featuring last year's bulb, this was the organizer's vision for the project: 'Public art plays two roles in a community: It helps to create an authentic sense of place and serves as a tool for revitalization. The higher people rate the beauty of their community, the higher their overall level of community satisfaction. Human beings crave physical beauty. We look for it in so many of the things that surround us, and especially in the communities and places we live..'

As described on the website, the festival (with citywide events June 20-22) celebrates the 'rich history of the City as well as the great cultural diversity, to bring city residents together in celebration, to 'illuminate' and market the great assets of the City, to bring new people into the City thus resulting in increased tourism, new business and positive regional perception.
Newburgh holds a special place in American history as a city of innovation and invention. It was one of the earliest American cities to be electrified when Edison built its power plant and wired it up in 1884.'

My accompanying statement:
The artist Ellsworth Kelly was born in Newburgh in 1923.  His work, associated with Color Field and Minimalist painting throughout his long career, derives abstract form, contour, or color from observed reality. His use of shaped canvases translated flat brightly-colored forms into objects in themselves, creating an interaction between the pieces and the surrounding architecture. My lightbulb, with its irregular outline and hard-edged panels of color, and my effort to channel the process of composing a sequence of shapes, takes its inspiration from Kelly's work.

strawberries sign

This is the first of some signs I am painting for Fishkill Farms. 'Strawberries' was of utmost importance because the season is nearly upon us, the fruit is reddening by the day. Hooray, I'm a big fan of strawberries and it was fun to paint this big one (sign is 30" wide). I used 'One-Shot', the oil-based enamel paint, which, true to its name, went on opaque & smooth-edged, shiny as a candy apple or a vamp's nail polish.

visit to opus 40

I made it up to Opus 40 in Saugerties the other day after wanting to go for years, ever since I first heard about it- a sculpture park carved out of a bluestone quarry by a single man over most of his lifetime. In 1938, Harvey Fite, a sculptor of wood and stone, found the abandoned quarry on 12 acres in the middle of the woods. He bought it and built his house and studio on its edge.
From his first experimental impulse — to see how the Mayan building techniques could be adapted to Ulster County bluestone — he began to develop a plan for an outdoor sculpture gallery, carving ramps and walkways leading to his various sculptures. The landscape, originally conceived as a setting for sculpture, became a sculpture in its own right. Though Fite was not associated with the Land Art or Earthworks movement of the 1970s, he came to be known as a pioneer. (Some of this info is taken from their website.)
Opus 40 was named so because he expected that it would take 40 years to realize his vision and complete the work. 37 years after beginning the project, Fite died from an accidental fall onto the rocks. The sense is that he could've kept working as long as he could wield his tools. There is also a small museum on the site full of these mostly hand-forged tools, massive chains, winches, hammers and chisels. It was a very peaceful spring afternoon spent climbing over the rocks and walking the paths, the stones warm and rough beneath my feet. Then driving into town and walking the half-mile out to the historic Saugerties Lighthouse and back- a trail that appears and disappears with the tides.

spring loaded

So I was the only one who parked right under a cherry tree during a rainstorm. Came out to find spring all over my car. They stuck like wet pink cornflakes for a couple days, every time I drove they would fly from the hood, a party on wheels. 

Other things in the past 2 weeks: I installed a selection of work from the Open Studios kickoff group show (which was only up May 2-4) at the local Rhinebeck Bank (up through June 30). I spread 180 cubic ft of mulch in my mom's garden. I planted my herbs and lettuces in pots. I painted a dresser that ended up looking a bit like a landscape, at least to my eyes- what I would paint if I was an abstract artist, which I am, at times- colors rearranged into shapes and flattened. Or is it shapes rearranged into colors. I spend time thinking about the colors but then they just happen and it feels too easy, making me daydream about abandoning 'representative' (figurative I guess) painting for colored shapes in the Ellsworth Kelly vein, or flattened Calder mobiles- reducing images to oblongs, circles and stripes and then explaining it later, or not. I think I'll have to make a painting of a car and then splatter it with pink spots. Maybe it feels too much like play because someone else has already done the work and I've only internalized it. How would we know? Then I went to a store & saw a book that perkily suggested painting a dresser in graduating tints of a color like a paint-store chart. And I remember, all I'm ever really doing is moving paint with a bunch of hairs bound to a stick.

preserver in situ

Last summer, a local interior-decorating firm, Burlock, commissioned me to do a painting for a clubhouse by the Hudson River, designed with a nature/nautical theme. Here's a photo of the installation with my painting Life Preserver (oil on canvas, 16"x20"), in a portfolio featured on their recently launched website.