Things NOT to do to Avoid Painting

Or how I didn't feel like painting and broke my head instead.

Some days are like this, gloomy, too quiet. Funky. I spent a few minutes in the studio. Stared at everything and walked out. Went down the basement spent about 5 minutes watching my wonderful new Daniella Woolf DVD, "Encaustic with a Textile Sensibility". I had watched the whole thing a couple days ago, but somehow was too restless to watch more than a couple minutes again. Came back upstairs, looked in the refrigerator. Turned on the living room tv. Turned off the tv. Looked in the refrigerator again. Went back upstairs to the studio. Felt the paint brushes. Left the studio. Poured a cup of coffee. Opened the dish washer. Put a dirty bowl in. Wiped the counter. Grabbed a wood tray to put back in it's place. Fell over the opened dishwasher door.

Ahhh, that last item… That's what you really shouldn't do to avoid painting. The wood tray hit the floor and evidently my head hit the edge of the tray. There was blood, blood flying out of my head. I managed to extract myself from the dishwasher door and went into the bathroom. I looked like a cheesy horror movie…my face totally red with blood. I rinsed my face and went to the kitchen for a clean cloth and pressed it into my head hole. Found my phone. Called John.  

Twenty minutes later he arrived and took me to the hospital for stitches. Four hours, 3 inter-stitches, 8 outer stitches, a cat scan of my head (no internal bleeding), an X-ray  of my right hand (no broken bones), and insurance forms signed later, we headed back home.

I'm fine, a few bruises here and there, and an ugly forehead. By the way, if you're going to try this yourself, it's a good idea to wear bangs.

Reminiscent of Hitchcock films, I'm including a picture, blood looks better in black and white. 

I was renaming myself Jill (of Jack and Jill fame), however Jack was the one who broke his crown. So go ahead, call me Jack.

Work of Art

Did you see "Work of Art, the Next Great Artist" on Bravo last spring? I liked the show, it was fun and I did learn a thing or two. There are fourteen artists at the start. Each week has a different competition and one player is eliminated. The winner at the end gets a show at the Brooklyn Museum. 

So spur of the moment, this week John took me to Chicago for the casting call for the next seasons show. It was fun. At 9:00 on Wednesday morning I got in line. I was number 311, I think a hundred people were behind me in a line going around the building. I was surrounded by some very nice people. Moora from Pennsylvania, Johnny from Milwaukee, Jay from Chicago with his girl friend Megan. Everyone liked the show except for the "shock" episode…is sex and nudity really still shocking?

Johnny, me and Jay. Moora took the picture with my phone

I was up for being the token old person, however judging by the line there would be some competition for that spot. But mostly I think people were in their 20's to mid 30's. Ok, so half my age. 

Three hours of standing… and then, but wait, I can't tell you about the judging process or I could be fined $100,000 or was it $1,000,000.

But, anyway, back to what I can tell, after I was finished at 1:15 John and I had lunch. We checked out  the Contemporary addition at Art Institute of Chicago. We roamed all the gorgeous public gardens, and ate dinner in Millennium Park under an umbrella. It rained but we stayed dry.

We were back at the hotel when my cell phone rang about 6:00. It was someone from "Work of Art" telling me they wanted me for a call-back and I should come back the next day. I was really shocked. I danced around the room on my ever so tired and achey feet saying, "oh, my god, oh, my god."

So Thursday I was back in another line (a short one). The artists came from all over. I met three from Atlanta, one from Wichitaw, one from Omaha, one from Toledo, one from Detroit. There were a couple very interestingly attired young women, performance artists.

As I was sitting there, I was wondering how I would possibly compete, or keep up with these talented artists if I did make it on the show.  I was still tired from the day before. The last woman I met was Sarah. She's pretty, charming, with an education from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, University of Michigan and Cranbrook Institute of Art. I hope she makes it all the way. Me. I'm back home, very pleased to have had this experience, AND really relieved the I didn't make it.

One other thing, I have the greatest husband. Not only was he happy to drive me to Chicago, he did an awful lot of running to the Fed-Ex store to zerox. First my entry form, then to zerox pages from my "Images" book, then back to the zerox store to get the book that we had left in the machine. I love you, John.

If you're interested there's a casting call at the Brooklyn Museum in New York Saturday the 25th. You don't have to sign up ahead of time, just hop a bus, train, plane or car (like we did), and show up.  Go to

http://www.bravotv.com/casting and print and fill out the 23 page form to take with you.

Now onward. I think I'll take up painting again.

Hey, Guess What!

Okay, so here's the story. "Detroit 1-8-7" is a new show on ABC. It takes place in, AND is being filmed in, you guessed it, Detroit.

A couple days ago designers from the show went to Ariana Gallery and choose several pieces of art (paintings and sculptures) to use on the set. They're using a house in Grosse Pointe and felt it needed some brightening up. My painting "Overboard" (shown above) was one of the ones they picked. Yesterday I went to Ariana Gallery and signed a release form. I hate to sound star struck, but this is very exciting.

They're only using the painting for two days before returning it to the gallery. What impresses me about that is how organized they must be...how tightly scheduled and timed everything is. There's a possibility the painting won't be used, or may be seen for just a fleeting moment. But still. It's cool.

There's a lot of filming going on around here these days. Ann Kuffler, owner of Ariana Gallery, told me that there are 11 films currently being made in the area, and there have been several occasions when production people have come into her gallery for art.

So, check out "Detroit 1-8-7". It's on ABC and premieres Tuesday, September 21st at 10:00 pm EST. I'm told "1-8-7" means homicide in police talk. Michael Imperioli (Christopher from the Sopranos) is one of the stars. If it's good, maybe it will have a long run and help our economy.

Sunrise

 "Black Lake" is an older painting that, I think, has the feel of a sunrise or sunset.

One morning before 7:00 I was driving east down the expressway. Forecasts predicted rain and thunderstorms that hadn't happened. Ahead of me a wedge of the dreary gray, cloudy sky broke open and unveiled a glowing pink. Then edges of the clouds around the pink became fiery gold. It literally took my breath away. 

My first thought was to wish for my camera. Capture it. Keep it forever. Savor it. Share it with others.

We've all gotten emails of breathtaking photography. The photographer was there at that precise moment of beauty. Snap. Captured. When we see those images on our computer monitors we whisper, "wow".

But as painters in 2010, I think we need to do more than capture the perfect sunrise or the beautiful flower. The goal should not be to repeat natures perfection. Could that be considered plagiarizing nature? But rather we should create something new. Something not seen or known before. Something we can "wow" ourselves with.

PS. keep in mind that tomorrow I may paint a hydrangea. In art the rules (especially mine) are meant to be broken.

Weeding

Something has happened to my garden. I don't know whether it's some kind of blight, heat, neglect because of the heat, or just the Dog Days of August.

It's looking really bad.

We're having a lovely cooler morning, so I spent a couple hours cutting out sick leaves, and completely eliminated some cucumbers that want to rule the world.

As I was cleaning up the garden I was thinking about painting. Painting and gardening have this in common; it's important to know what to weed. Is there a cucumber in my art that wants to dominate? Should I let it? What if it's a round yellow cucumber. Interesting to look at. Sweet. How much room should it get?

Final thought: gardening, painting and writing are all enriched by thoughtful editing.

Primary Colors

A few weeks ago Treena Flannery Ericson called, and with many apologies for asking, asked if I would donate a painting for a fund raising auction. It seemed like the perfect way to nudge myself back into painting. I adore Treena.  She's the gallery director at the Scarab Club in Detroit, and the Scarab Club has been good to me. The first juried show I was ever in was at the Scarab Club in the early 70's. 

The Scarab Club was founded in 1907 by a group of artists and art lovers. The main gallery is a bright, big space. Perfect for enhancing art. http://www.scarabclub.org/

The fund raiser is called Primary Colors and they wanted art that was confined to the basic primaries, plus black and white. After some messing around with acrylics, and I do mean messing, I decided to do a tryptic in encaustic. 

It's been 85 to 90 degrees here and humid as hell. I'm naturally assuming hell is humid. So I get out my blow torch, electric griddle, and electric frying pan. I figured I was already very hot, so a few more degrees wouldn't kill me. It didn't. In fact, encaustic is a great medium to do in the heat. If your sweaty brow drips on the art it just evaporates. Picture what can happen to a watercolor.

So I'm painting… fusing layers and layers of pigmented wax and damar varnish. Carving into the layers and fusing some more. 

Thank you, Treena.

If you are unfamiliar with encaustic, I'll tell more in a future blog.

Little Houses

When I was a little girl my mother sat with me at the kitchen table and taught me how to draw. It was nice, mostly being with my mother. But the thing that drew me the most was building houses. My first homes: a refrigerator box (nice and cozy); blankets hung from the clothesline (a little too roughing-it for my taste, even at 7); blankets over a table in my great-grandmothers flat. 

After mom divorced, she and I moved into my aunt Katie's house and shared the attic bedroom. My houses became much more sophisticated. Kim, my best friend, and I would walk up to the paint store and collect old wallpaper books. We got cardboard boxes from behind the grocery store and knives from the kitchen. Then we'd cut little windows and doors in the boxes, put in cardboard partitions and wallpaper the rooms. 

Then in the fifth grade my art teacher, Miss Schwitzer, taught us perspective. PERSPECTIVE! Wow. You can draw the inside of rooms with perspective! So on to the next phase, drawing my little houses and making floor plans. Bliss. I favored the cozy, efficient, no waste of space houses. This continued all though high school and beyond.


Ok, so that's some history.

My architect husband and I  now live in a four bedroom colonial house. As I get older this house gets bigger and bigger. More work. Too much stuff. 

A couple days ago I found a PBS video that I've played over and over. It's all about the small house movement.
http://video.pbs.org/video/1553961054. 


This video brings me back to a very appealing place that I used to live in in my head. Small (not my head). Cozy. And I owned nothing more than what I really needed. 
........................................................................................................................................

The Doll House. The grandkids like it. John hates it. You can't please everyone.