bassline

So, I did actually get some work done after doing the self portrait yesterday. Before my open studio event earlier this month, I went through a bunch of my works on paper, sorted some out and displayed a lot of them that I haven't exhibited previously. That part was great. The not-so-great part was having to wrangle with the poor storage options I had for these works. There are good archival storage box options out there, but most of them are more expensive than I'm ready to deal with for studio storage.

I was in one of the art supply stores I frequent a couple of months ago looking for archival boxes good for long-term storage. They didn't have any in stock at the time, but the clerk I spoke with suggested using acid-free foam board and archival linen tape to make my own boxes. I thought about it and finally got around to making one this week. My first box (see photos above) measures 24" x 32" x 3" to accommodate the 22" x 30" sized works, like 'Blue Pool' in the second shot. I spent about $32-$34 in materials (acid-free foam board, archival linen tape and white velcro for fasteners) and spent almost three and-a-half hours to assemble it. I expect to improve on that time as I do more of these. The cost of good archival storage boxes in a similar size hovers around the $90-$100+ range. Of course, mine aren't made to last 100 years, but they will still go a long way towards protecting my drawings and other works on paper while in the studio for a long time.

I still need to make about one or two more in the same size as well as a couple of smaller boxes for immediate use. The one above is filled already with works I did this past spring and summer. Making these boxes is a little time-consuming but worth it for me. Now that I have the first one done, I have a better idea of what to expect and hopefully, the next few will be easier to construct.

"The process by which an artist’s work finds its way into a commercial gallery is often long and circumvented. Stein was gracious, politely tenacious, and smart. Professional relationships can often be analogous to marriage, and after three years of “dating,” I was certain that I liked Stein as a person. This was someone with whom I would enjoy working on a day-to-day basis; someone whom I could trust; and someone who clearly has a bright future, so that after one successful show I will not be left in the lurch with no further compelling work to promote."-Brian Paul Clamp, director,ClampArt (New York City)

The above quote is from this article on the F Stop photography website.

Articles like this should be required reading for anyone looking for gallery representation, from the newly minted BFA or MFA to even older, more experienced artists. Even though this article comes from the viewpoint of a commercial gallery that specializes in photography, the lessons are general enough to cover any kind of artist seeking professional representation.

I can relate to this because it parallels the way I wound up being represented by the gallery I work with, the Bridgette Mayer Gallery here in Philadelphia. When she opened her gallery here around 2001, I was already looking at a couple of other galleries in the city for representation. I made it a point to go to the openings of shows she had as well as checking out the work at other times, as I was genuinely interested in some of the artists she was showing. I introduced myself and got myself onto her mailing list. At the same time, my work was gaining some attention after it was included in a prestigious regional exhibition grant competition and other local exhibitions.

The 'dance' began in earnest when Bridgette asked me to bring some slides and other materials to the gallery for review. About three or four months went by and then she scheduled a studio visit for another three months down the line. In the meantime, we stayed in touch and I kept working as usual.

In the spring of 2002, she came to my studio. She was really interested in my work as I was her gallery, and I remembered that we had a long conversation that afternoon. I was in a transitional period with my work, changing how I painted and was moving towards a more hard-edged, geometric abstraction from work that was more based on biological forms. She had a lot of questions about what I was doing and how I saw the work developing, etc...

At the end of that conversation, she offered to represent me. I took some time to look think about it, asked her some questions and after a couple of weeks, I signed on with her. The relationship we've built over the intervening 7 years has grown to one where there is friendship, mutual respect and benefits on both sides. As with any other relationship, it's constantly evolving and, so far, things are going along well, even with the economic crap storm that's been happening. It's good to know that there's someone standing behind my work in the good and bad times.

Chlorophyll Skin from Lucy McRae on Vimeo.

Chlorophyll Skin is an experimentation into color, movement, absorption and the body by Lucy McRae and Mandy Smith. The music is “When I Grow Up” by Fever Ray. (source)

When I Grow Up from Fever Ray on Vimeo.

This is the video of "When I Grow Up", by Fever Ray, whose music was used above.

Condensed Fields, 2009
each piece: acrylic on paper, 30 x 22 inches





Condensed Fields (detail)

Staying busy in the studio. These are some new works on paper that I did in the last week. These are a continuation of some of what I began with the 'Glitch' series.

The Anthropologie store at 18th and Walnut Streets here in Philly has this great, bright orange art installation that flows around the lower part of the building and seemingly into its facade. It really brings a nice punch of color and movement to a usually restrained corner in center city. If this were my piece, I would have titled it, Orange Flow, or something like that. I might still use that title for one of my own works one of these days...

Studio View (6.12.09)

New works in progress.

Studio view (6.10.09)

Recent paintings on the left wall, new works on paper on the right. The new series of works on paper is called Glitch and is focused on accumulation, movement, and chance happenings. Those 'chance happenings' being random drips and other interesting marks developing due to overlapping brushstrokes and the interaction of wet and dry layers of ink.



Glitch

( Two more )

I took these photos on Wednesday, after spending most of the afternoon hanging out with Tyrus Townsend, an art friend and freelance writer I'd only known previously on the 'net.  He has an art blog called, I Heart Art. Tyrus was in Philly gathering information for an article for Essence Magazine about where to shop in Philadelphia. In addition, he did a short interview with me that may be published online, but I'm not sure yet.

I worked Wednesday morning, but I caught up with Tyrus at El Vez around 1:30, after he had lunch. We talked for a bit and from there, we walked over to the gallery and wound up hanging out in my studio for a couple of hours talking about various aspects of the art world and so forth.

When Tyrus left, I stayed and worked on a couple of the pieces that make up Glitch. I worked on two of them earlier in the week, then did a third during this session. Three of them together was good, but I thought five would make a good number for the beginning of this project and did a couple more. The ideas in Glitch from a painting that was included in my last show called, Gravity's Architecture, seen below:


Gravity's Architecture, 2009, acrylic on panel, 16 x 16 inches

There was something about the illusion of structures created from the thinly painted, overlapping bars of color, and the force of gravity on the dripping paint, that made me want to explore this direction a little more.

I'm envisioning Glitch as an ongoing series on paper and possibly translucent mylar and exhibiting them in groups of five or six or more, depending on how things develop. I don't know if I'll explore this idea on canvas yet, as I have a bunch of other works that I want to do as paintings, so this will be a works on paper project only, for now.

 

Lightstream, 2009, acrylic on panel, 16 x 20 inches

Tunnelvision, 2009, acrylic on panel, 16 x 20 inches

l: Tunnelvision

c: Gravity's Architecture II, 2009, acrylic on panel, 24 x 24 inches

r: Lightstream

 

Some recent goings-on from the studio

 

*Reposted from my art blog*

Today was one of those days where things flowed nicely. The sun was out and it was warm, two factors that heavily contributed to my good frame of mind for most of the day.

What Remains (studio wall)

Yes, folks, it's catch-up time once again :)

The biggest thing worth writing about was that a few weeks back, my hard drive died which led to a few computer-less days. Not too bad of a thing on the time-wasting side of things, but bad for keeping up with emails and so forth. I had to replace the old drive and was able to get one with bigger storage than the original (500 gigs versus 150 gigs) that didn't cost an arm and a leg.

The only problem I have to solve now is trying to have the information that wasn't backed up recovered from the old drive. Luckily, the husband of a friend has generously offered to see what he can do, since his work revolves around data recovery.

So, with having a new hard drive came the ordeal of re-building my on-line life a bit. It's a good thing that I followed E's advice to keep a hard copy of password info stashed or I would have been lost. I lost all sorts of bookmarks, but in the end, that wasn't too tragic since so many of them I no longer had a use for anyway. Bookmarks accumulated like emails for me and I rarely made much of an effort to clean up mine and get rid of dead weight.

With the change in hard drives came a sense of on-line displacement. I felt somewhat unmoored from my virtual life. It was the same feeling I had when we moved last September to our present apartment-its taken quite a while to feel like this is home. Re-establishing my online world hasn't been that traumatic by any stretch, but it brought home just how integrated into my life the computer has become.

Other than that, life goes on as the purse strings get tighter and tighter. Work is coming along well in the studio. Now I'm in the phase where I'm trying to finish up paintings and have them documented. My exhibition cards arrived in the mail last week. There's always something of a shock seeing an image of new work in print form.

I don't have much in the way of economic expectations with the show. I do hope some pieces sell, but I'm not banking on it by any stretch. No one knows what the next second will bring money-wise, so there's not much sense in trying to forecast a month or more into the future. I've stopped watching cable news altogether these days. Things are bad all over, we all know it. All we can do is try to keep it together and get through the next day.

A few things about the art world and the economy from the web that I found interesting this morning:

• A short, amusing video of art critic, Jerry Saltz, talking about and groping art at the Armory Show that took place this past weekend.

• Dealer Edward Winkleman talks about what artists can do to help their galleries and themselves during the slump we're in.

• The last line of Art Vent's take on where a lot of artists are finding themselves at the moment is dead on: "Now all we have to fall back on is ourselves. How refreshing!"

Here are a couple of amazing animated videos by Kirsten Lepore that I just found:

Sweet Dreams

"Sweet Dreams" from Kirsten Lepore on Vimeo.

Guess Who


(via BOOOOOOOM!)

Two recent works on paper from the Phenomena series I've been working on for the Philadelphia International Airport.

Three weeks to go before I have to deliver the new works to the gallery for the show. Last week, I had a good studio visit with Bridgette where we talked about some of the recent works that will be in the exhibition as well as the vault room project.

The scale of most of the works will be smaller than in the past, with the largest paintings on canvas and panels being 36" x 36". Thankfully, I always work in a variety of sizes and going with mostly small paintings right now seems like a good thing to do considering the economic crapstorm we're in. However, I have been working on some larger paintings on paper that measure 50" x 50". Having done the works on paper for the airport, I've gained a liking for using thinned-down acrylic paint on paper. The paper accepts the paint in a way that canvas and wood panels don't and I love the results.

We also talked a little about the vault room project. I'm going to be doing temporary drawings and whatever else I decide to do during the exhibition. This part of the show is going to be a 'spontaneous interaction' where the objective is to make use of a space that I'm not used to working in. There is no plan for what I'm going to do from day to day, but something will change in there every time I'm present.

Even though I'm just about done with works for the show, I'm going to continue working just as hard over the next couple of weeks on new pieces and putting final touches on others. I'm in a good creative place right now and I want to keep making use of it.

2.12.09 7:11am


2.12.09 7:15am

Been up since sometime after 6am. Couldn't sleep well at all last night. Now I'm sufficiently tired, but need to get some things done, like getting some new cat litter and heading up to the studio to work. I need to take a few paintings to be photographed and after that its back to the studio to continue painting. I'm settling into a good continual working pattern now. I have just over a month to have all of the works completed.

I've begun to take second a look at finished pieces to see if they need more done to them. I worked on two yesterday that needed a little tweaking. It's important to me at this point that I make sure the paintings and works on paper are as strong as they can be before I let them out into the world. One thing I don't do is obsess over 'perfection'; my way of painting is pretty intuitive to begin with and I try to not mess with the fresh feeling of a piece once I get it where I want it...or where it wants to be.

The next week should be interesting because I'm using up vacation time before I lose it. I could have just kept working and gotten paid for the time, but I feel that I need the time in the studio right now more than anything. Not that I can't use the money, but this is the better choice for me.

Ph 11409.1, 2009, acrylic on paper, 20" x 20"


Ph 11409.2, 2009, acrylic on paper, 22" x 30"

Two new works on paper that are part of the 'Phenomena' series I've been working on. They may wind up in my show at the Philadelphia International Airport starting in March.

......

Again, I spent a whole day feeling much more proud to be an American than ever before. The realities of my, and everyone's, existence are still there, demanding more and more attention. However, today I was able to let some of that go for a few hours and feel proud to be an American and proud of President Obama's accomplishments so far.

There are going to be some tough days still, but at least there's a sense that we will get through it all together and be a better partner with the world and bring our own country to a better place than we have been for the past 8 years.

Congratulations, Mr. President Barack Hussein Obama!

Warm Tips

Keeping my hands warm at the studio on Thursday with a good, hot cup of tea.

Today, I took a 'cold day' and stayed home. It's the same as a 'personal day' except it's because you don't want to deal with a cold studio. I had every intention of going up there; thought about what I wanted to get done, got up early, got dressed, had breakfast and so on. Sat down at the computer, saw how cold it was outside and thought, "You know, I could put up those bathroom shelves that have been sitting around for almost three weeks...". You know it must have been bad for me to not go out because I'm pretty hard-core about dealing with the cold weather on my bike and the cold in my studio.

Stayed home, drank lots of tea, tried to catch up on a million and one things online and finally got to the shelves late in the day. I'd done a good bit of work in the studio over the past two days, so it wasn't a loss. That, and E was happy to have the shelves up.

A couple of things stood out for me on the web today:

As you most likely know by now, Andrew Wyeth died. Here's the NYT obit by Michael Kimmelman. Wyeth was one of those artists whose works you either liked or didn't-there seemed to be no light between those walls.

Ph 121808, 2008, acrylic on paper, 22" x 30"

A recent piece that might be shown in the airport show in March.

Untitled, 2008, acrylic on panel, 36 x 36 inches

One of two new paintings I've completed in the past couple of weeks. I'm integrating some of the striped elements that characterized my work around 2001-2002 with the more gestural painting I've been doing lately.

Worked in the studio for a bit today before heading to the gallery to see eleven of my works (seven paintings and four drawings) off on the first leg of a two year traveling exhibition. The show is titled, Concurrent and features Natalie Alper (Boston), Larry Webb (New York), sculptor Diane Simpson (Chicago), and myself.

The show begins at the University of Tennessee's Ewing Gallery. From there, it goes to five other schools, which include, William Patterson, Bucknell University, along with three more. I wrote down the entire schedule, but managed to misplace it. I'll post more info after I find it.

......

In other news, CONGRATS TO THE PHILLIES!!

285/366" open studios day 1

Day one of this year's open studlos went really well. There were 35 visitors, of which 33 were not friends or acquaintances. There were a couple of return visitors from previous years. Very good for one day.

I only wish that I felt better. The quality of my sleep last night was abysmal, to say the least. I was left with a mildly scratchy throat, felt congested, and incredibly sleepy. I don't know how I got through the day, but every time a visitor came into the studio I perked up pretty quickly. I'm definitely looking forward to tomorrow.



To have been there, 2000, acrylic on panel, 48" x 48"

Every year that I have an open studio, I drag out some older work for people to see. It's good to see some pieces that I haven't looked at in a long time and see how my work has evolved from that time.