Pic-A-Day: More Doodles

Suited, Swing Low, Posed, Grounded, Trying to Break Free






Treed, Staged, Caned, Scarfed

Pic-A-Day: My Self Portrait, on Your Studio

Pic-A-Day: More You Studio

Pic-A-Day: Rock

Pic-A-Day: Two Memories Done On Your Studio

Memory of my kitchen as a kid.



Memory of a path I walked along.

W.I.P.: Pinwheel

Mark Making

I'm thinking a great deal about marks today.

I am back to working on canvas, including rediscovering a canvas I started -- and thought I had finished -- over a year ago. I appreciate a quote attributed to Cezanne, at least the paraphrased version -- every mark should finish the piece -- and I try to make each mark count that way; it didn't surprise me that I thought the painting was already complete a year ago. Looking at it today, I was unhappy with the way one closely knit collection of marks just sat on the canvas, like the clunk when a bad note is played on the piano. That loud and off. How did I miss that before? A couple new marks, with my new perspective, softened the harsh area, coaxing it into place. And a year from now?

I am working on a series of canvas pieces sitting a red area inside a larger earth-toned shape, seeing how the eye moves around the canvas and between canvases, what overall shapes move in and out of focus. Apart from a lovely error (clunk), which I'll have to address tomorrow, I feel that I was achieving seamlessness. Conceptually, red = Heart/turmoil; earth = body/grounding.

Pic-A-Day: Untitled

Pic-A-Day: Bunny

Pic-A-Day: Figure

Pic-A-Day: Cloud

Pic-A-Day: Interrupted

Pic-A-Day: Forgive Me If I'm Tired

Pic-A-Day: Color In Grey

Remember summer, brighter.

Pic-A-Day: Grey

It's grey out -- ubiquitous, winter.

Pic-A-Day: Fun with Photoshop

Playing around with photoshop for a break. Red/Green/Purple. It's a bit of a mess, and the psd file quality is better than the jpeg, but I like it,

MyArtSpace.com Featured Artist

I am honored to be selected as a Featured Artist this month on myartspace.com A nice, unexpected start to the new year.

The work I have on their site now includes images from the Open Studio residency, images from Unform, Inform, Deform, Reform (Chicago Artist Month -- Andersonville), Ponder and some of its derivative patterns, drawings on surfaces, and a transformation sequence shifting from physical to virtual. I hope to be posting from the Snuggles work a bit later in the month, if that work develops to finished artwork.

Pic-A-Day: Snuggle

Happy New Year

Another fresh year begins.

At the tail end of last year, The Drawing Center Viewing Program, which includes an online artist registry, selected me to participate. A high level of many variations on drawing can be viewed in their registry: perusal there is well rewarded. I am honored to be included.

I also finished my stint at the City of Chicago Open Studio, managing to videotape and photograph my installation. I think the experimentation with paper construction will prove significant as I move forward. It was very immediate, yet still meditative, as a process. It's a simple enough step to move to doing this experimentation with more archival papers and varied types of papers. Caution at the other end -- avoid redundancy. I am less certain about the integration of the graphite imagery on newspaper; I like the result, but the process lacked predictability in how the newspaper took the graphite. Ink may well be a better option there. I loaded images of the Open Studio project onto www.myartspace.com -- I'll post the link when I sign back into blogger in using Firefox -- their site has a quick flash program that shows the images in a moving slide show.

I am working on picking up knitting and crocheting. I see utility for expanding the weaving concept in my work, and I see room for using these techniques to expand my drawing. Plus, as an aside, I feel like making cute critters. I have my mother's knitting and crocheting needles, plus some of her patterns, and I found general instructions on the web. I am working more or less free form on my own version of what is beginning to resemble an elephant at the moment as I get the hang of the different crochet stitches.

Here's hoping for a great and productive year!