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!