New paintings spring 2012

new paintings 

acrylic on 8" x 10" plywood.

Layers 1

Layers 3

Layers 4

new paintings

New paintings from 2010 in the Ochre series, Ochre 6, 5, (top row, left to right) 4, 3 (bottom row, left to right). All 16" tall, by 12" wide on hardwood panel.

Paintings from 2009

Paintings from 2009 in the Ochre series. All 16" tall by 12" wide on hardwood panel.

The Dress

My dress was juried into the 9th Annual Frances N. Roddy Open Competition at the Concord Art Association. The opening reception is this Thursday, September 11th, from 6-8 pm. The show runs from September 11-October 12, 2008. The juror was Pamela Clark Cochrane, an independent curator and former director/owner, Clark Gallery, Lincoln, MA.

I found the dress last April at our local semi-annual swap and grabbed it not knowing exactly what I was going to do with it. The kids loved it, and I kept it hanging in the breezeway where I work and have my supplies. Finally, I needed something to submit to the Roddy competition, and decided to embellish it with leftover roses. Of course I needed jewelry, and my fake pearls just didn't seem right, so I took some of my mini-assemblages and strung them together with waxed thread. I mended the rip in the tulle with more of the same thread and proceeded to write on the satin underskirt with indelible black ink. Initially I wanted to cover the entire skirt with writing, but I underestimated the fullness of the skirt, and ran out of time. Later I'll go in and copy down some of the writing to put excerpts here for people to read.

It is hanging on a pink satin covered hanger. I used more roses to hold the dress shoulders on the hanger. The people hanging the show hung it from the ceiling, and it spins with the movement of air around it. Very magical in the setting.

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".