Solo Show at the Coleman Gallery

The Black Roses are on display for the month of February in the Coleman Gallery of the Concord Art Association. The exhibit has 15 Rose wall sculptures, 6 collages incorporation the roses, and two new pieces using tarpaper in a different way. Showing the work together in one place is always inspiring. Here are two pictures of the installation. There is going to be a reception February 14th, Thursday evening from 6-8 pm.

Roses at the Clark Gallery

Here is a picture of the installation at the Clark Gallery. They are so nice in there, I went there this morning after the gym, in slightly nicer clothes than usual, and took the photos. I love the shadows that are cast on the wall. The entire piece is about 11 feet wide and 4 feet tall. It is hard to see it here, but they project about 15 inches from the wall, really making a relief structure.

Roses at the Clark Gallery

I am going to post a picture of the hanging from the Clark Gallery. They hung them wonderfully, under very bright sharp lights, so there are wonderful shadows on the walls under each piece. Because the pieces are close together, the shadows all intersect, forming another dimension to the pieces incorporating the wall into the piece. It is very wonderful and exactly what I had planned.

Tarpaper Roses

Tarpaper Roses are included in the summer group show “Introducing...” at the Clark Gallery in Lincoln MA. I made a series of pieces specifically for the show, planning them as a unit that hang together to form a black and white grid on the wall. The picture shows the layout, the sizes (h x w x d) of the three different units from left are: 40” x 20” x 10”, 40” x 50” x 18”, and 15” x 17” x 7”. The largest one weighs about 50 pounds!

What a production! Just planning the base for the pieces involved endless steps. Of course I wanted to use a single sheet of plywood efficiently, have a minimum number of cuts, and end up with pieces that would fit into my car without destroying even more of the door gaskets. A fellow artist pointed out that at the larger sizes, ½” plywood would be too heavy, and I would be better off using ¼” sheets and banding them with 1” x 2” strips on the rear for support. Ok, that just meant now figuring out the total lengths of wood for the support, and then planning how to lay them out. A few missteps along the way: make sure to screw the boards together before the glue dries and the clamps are removed! In the end they worked out great, very solidly attached and rigid. Phew.

Then to fill them with roses: I wanted to have a range of sizes, and on the larger pieces, I needed to fill the space, so that meant making really big roses to form a framework. There is a relationship between the width of the paper strip and length needed to fold the rose, and for larger roses, the strips end up being unwieldy! Carole Andrews makes giant sculptures out of tarpaper forming them over an aluminum structure and getting inside them with a blowtorch to weld the seams (!), well working with the paper is not only very tactile, but gets very physical as well.

totem 1

One of my large rose pieces was accepted into a juried show! Lucy Lacoste of the Lacoste Gallery in Concord and Ilana Manolson juried the Members Jury II show at the Concord Art Association and accepted Totem #1. Interesting enough it was hung next to a black/white drawing of roses.....This piece is 32" high, 16" wide and 8" deep and is part of a series of large rose relief sculptures I am making. I like this one a lot and have it hanging in my living room.

Icons 4

This is another piece similar to Icons 2, which layers waxed paper, miniature boxes filled with various detritus from my garden and walks, all placed on a piece of scrap plywood which was gouged and waxed.

Icons 4: 10" x 19".

Icons 2

I’m also interested in the contrast between the tarpaper rose and it’s placement in a miniature environment, created by assembling objects from my walks and garden expeditions such as garlic stems, tomatillo wrappers, birch bark, paper wasp nests and hickory seed pods. Someone mentioned treating the bark for long term viability, and wax occurred to me, and as I started waxing the bark with a travel iron I unearthed in my basement, left over from my husband’s former life when he traveled the world, I found myself waxing papers from my stash as well. Now I have tarpaper roses, matchboxes filled with found treasures, and other objects, placed on layers of waxed papers in turn placed on waxed and gouged plywood, the wax being the common material linking my finds from nature with my folded tarpaper roses.

The piece shown here is 6" x 8" and is called Icons 2.

adorned and embellished, grace notes of roses

In getting a proposal ready for a show of my tar paper roses, I’ve been thinking a lot what the title should be.

Adornments
Adorned and adored, open and shut, making do
Shopped, captivated, sculpted, fabricated, woven, web, statue
Adorned and trimmed, notions of adornment, notions, trimmings
Decorated, enhanced, covered, shielded, hidden, layers, tiers, layers, shells, layers, peeled away, having a core, hard nut to crack, gristle of fat and bone.
Layers of meaning, nature, and nature run amok
Appropriated space, appropriated imagery, materials used out of context
Apples to apples, apples to oranges, dust to dust, ashes to ashes, new life

Adornment: deck and furnish, be an ornament to, bedeck, ornamental adornments, embellishment, frill, grace notes, accessories of worship, gewgaw

Embellishment: beautify, add interest to
Adornments of desire, accouterments of success
Trappings of power, trappings of wealth
Ornaments of worship, embellishments of beauty

Caparison: have trappings, obscure, to adorn richly

Rose: Everything is roses, Roses all the way, Ease, success, favorable
Optimistic, Rose colored glasses, unfounded optimism
War of roses: red vs. white

Rosary: Rose garden, rose bed, bed of roses
String of 55 beads to keep track of prayers
Form of devotion in which prayers are said while counting on a special string of beads

Grace notes really sticks with me.

Tar Paper: What's the big deal?

Amazing, there are people who don't know about tar paper. I took a small wall hanging of tar paper roses attached to a 5" x 6" plywood to the Artist Exchange at the Copley Society this past Wednesday evening to show to the group. Jason Brockert didn't know what to make of the piece until I explained tar paper to him, and then he found it interesting. It is a tar (just like the stuff that goes on roads) impregnated paper, that is used extensively in roofing. It comes in huge rolls, about 36" wide, is black (just like tar), costs around $20 for the roll, and has faint white lines on one side to help in laying it out on roofing projects. It has a wonderful soft black color, very dense and with deep tones. It also has a very pronounced grain, which enables smooth tears along the length. It folds well with the slightest crease. It is also called roofing felt by some people.

All of the above is why I like using it so much. I've used it as a support for collages, I've made little boxes out of it, and now I'm using it for folded roses.

Tar Paper Roses

Tar Paper Roses are so cool!

I started making more tar paper roses after a long break. The picture on the right shows the first piece I made which is about 22" wide, 20" high, and 4-5" deep. I love the way the light bounces off the folded surfaces, and the shadows that are created on the wall. I finished 5 smaller pieces, which are 7" by 8" by 3". I took four of them to the holiday exhibit at the Concord Art Association, and kept one for a spare. I showed them to Faith after the fourth grade coffee, and she laughed, saying now that is getting weird. Like my earlier work wasn't? No, she could fill her walls with it. Anyway.