Social Networking and Alternate Realities

My mixed media sculpture, constructed from audiocassettes and steel called "In the Beginning", which is taller than a man, and filled with more than 250 tapes, was submitted to the O'Hanlon Center For the Arts for their "Social Networking and Alternate Realities" show, up through March. I arrived at the Round Table talk, and was delighted to be invited by Marin IJ Newspaper photographer Frankie Frosch to pose with my sculpture. On March 10, 2011, the photograph was featured in the Plus Section, along with David Benoit's "FaceBox", a mixed media piece which was a real hit at the show. For more information, click on the title above to go to IJ.

www.marinij.com/portlet/article/html/render_gallery.jsp?articleId=17566071&siteId=234&startImage=1

Photographing Your Work for Gallery Shows

Photographing my own work has been a daunting task. I started out with bad advice to use white photo paper as a backdrop for my art, but encountered all kinds of problems with ambient light and reflected colors ranging from warm to cool tones of yellows and blues whether I took the pictures indoors or outdoors. It was very frustrating for me. I learned how to use Photoshoppe and was able to clean up the photos, but not to the liking of a friend/professional photographer. Shadows were a big problem, too. Then, my friend Ventana, came across some excellent advice for amateur photographers and shared it with me via email. I ended up using a piece of black velvet as a backdrop, attached to the wall, similar to when Juline used it to photograph the hats for Plexus cancer project, and the results were fantastic with no shadows or reflections on the velvet. Tomorrow, I'll post the pics I submitted to the MOCA show.

Additionally, I finished backing my piece, "Inner Reflections", made with Shisha embroidery, with a bright green piece of Lame. It turned out beautifully. I repaired my eggshell dress and photographed it as well. I retitled my piece, "Free Reelin'", submitted to the OHCA Portraiture Show, and submitted it to MOCA as "Sound Off", after Georg suggested the title, "Sounding Off". Sound Off is used when someone expresses their opinion about something. I'm expressing my opinion about the oil spills throughout the planet.

I delivered three pieces to OHCA yesterday, including my Shisha embroidery piece called "Inner Reflections", my first wire sculpture called "Wired to Go", and my painting called "Neptune's Horses".

I didn't get my act together to make the piece for the LAB Gallery, Art:Tech featuring biotech art. I guess two out of three isn't bad. Next time.

Now, I'm working on pieces for the next two shows, WEAD for the Bioneers Conference and the Wild Animal Art Show Benefit in New York.

Abstraction of a Photograph

Free Reelin', mixed media, 12" x 36"

At the Roundtable last night, for the show called "You, Me, Us and Them: Contemporary Art Portraits", Juror, Irene Belknap, was present and talked about what she looks for in artwork. Her first and foremost interest is in how an artist comes from the gut and grabs the viewer emotionally. She also values a quote from a forgotten source who says that art is best when it comes from that place that says, "It's not me. It's not me. It comes from the wind that blows through me." I was delighted to meet a "kindred spirit" who thinks about art the way I do. Further, I thought about this quote and how a photograph is transformed into an abstract rendition of a 3D representation, as seen in my first "assemblage" art work called "Free Reelin'".

Last Friday morning, when I woke up and "saw" the audio cassette tapes I've been collecting for a year as potential material for a self portrait, I had no idea what the final piece would look like. Other than painting a "realistic" pallet of colors on the cassette tape housing and breaking it up into pieces, I had no idea how all of the tiny internal parts that make up a cassette tape would fit together. But, the magic of how structure and form of materials influences the final project is the joy of assemblage. From the beginning of breaking the tapes with the hammer, I noticed that the shapes resulting from the "random" breaks lent themselves to looking like the lines and curves of a face. The various plastic shards and some Elmer's glue emerged into a "necklace" and joined a pair of "ear rings", made from the colorful tape leader, and the wheel that holds the tape. After the main "face" was laid out onto the acrylic painted board, I realized that the scale of the various crocheted and knitted audio cassette tape was perfect for fashioning a "summer dress" and "hat". The "seahorse" piece I sculpted as part of the opera project, "A Sea Odyssey: 2012", is the kindred spirit that forms a "hat" and now lives in the upper right hand corner of the piece. As "Free Reelin'" continued to leap from the board, bits of metal inside the audio cassette tape became the perfect "eye lashes" and highlights in my self portrait's "eyes". Finally, the tape itself served as "hair" and "seaweed", and was attached under the hat.

Now, assemblage has grabbed me in a powerful way and will be the basis of three more pieces, created for the upcoming Faces of the Wild art auction and benefit.