I’m participating in the Subversive Celebration: International Altered Card Exhibition at Gallery 110 in the Warren M. Lee Center of Fine Arts at the University of South Dakota, organized by artist Klaire A. Lockheart!
The show will be up from March 4-27, 2020, with an opening reception will be on March 4 from 5-7 pm. The gallery is located at 414 Clark Street, Vermillion, South Dakota 57069. An online gallery will be available through www.klairelockheart.com.
Here are a couple recent photos from fauna and flora in my life!
I know, I know… I made so much new work on this past summer’s BROTA residency in the Buenos Aires Botanical Garden that I still haven’t posted it all online yet - so here’s another reveal!
This piece is titled Wabi-Sabi because I think it’s reminiscent of Japanese wabi-sabi aesthetics. It is a mixed media piece including a NOID dried leaf collected from the Buenos Aires Botanical Garden, methylcellulose and toner photographic transfer, and matte medium on artisanal handmade paper, 14x11”, 2019.
I was selected as one of three Mary Blair Award for Art Finalists for this year’s Reed Magazine competition, which had a record-breaking number of applications! My work and a short artist profile will be published in Reed Magazine’s upcoming Issue 153. This well-known annual publication is “the oldest literary journal based west of the Mississippi!”
I look forward to learning who the ultimate winner of the award was and seeing my work in print!
Here are a few articles I’ve read recently that are interesting:
How Do You Save an Endangered Tree from Extinction When You Can’t Save Its Seeds?
Marine Fungi Are Totally Badass
After This Fungus Turns Ants Into Zombies, Their Bodies Explode
I can’t believe it’s already the end of the semester; my Design and Drawing classes are almost wrapped up, and finals are next week - then we’re on to winter break!
I’ll be teaching Figure Drawing and Painting for Spring 2020, as well as co-teaching Senior Seminar and overseeing a number of internships.
Just look at this poetic moment between Ashlar and her reflection!
This is one of my favorite new pieces from this summer’s BROTA residency in the Buenos Aires Botanical Gardens! It’s a mixed media piece including a methylcellulose transfer of a photograph I took of a Monstera deliciosa collaged atop a dried sweetgum leaf (Liquidambar styraciflua). The support is handmade artisanal paper from Ato Menegazzo Papeles.
Here’re a couple shots of my gargoyle gecko Ashlar hanging out inside of cork bark. The second photo is post-misting, and you can see that she’s scooted down and compressed a little to avoid directly being spritzed. The third picture shows how extremely variable in color she can be - in this image she’s what’s referred to as “fired down” while in the other two images she’s relatively “fired up,” though she can get even darker! She also has several in-between options to offer, too.
Here’s my melting face makeup for Halloween, inspired by the ever-amazing Mimi Choi’s version combined with another unnamed artist’s version and my own flair! Happy Halloween!
Three of my pieces have been accepted into the biennial international juried exhibition SMALL WORKS at the Northville Art House in Northville, MI. They are: Gardens of Memory: London Planetree and Maidenhair, Failed Test 1, and Failed Test 3. According to the exhibits committee, 140 works of art created by 60 artists were selected from 395 entries and 81 artists. All works had to be under 12” in length and width.
Exhibition Dates: November 1 – November 30
Location: Northville Art House, 215 W. Cady Street, Northville, MI 48167
Website: www.northvillearthouse.org
Reception: Friday, November 1 5:30 PM - 8:30 PM
Information is power. I try to ID all of the species I work with, as each species is important and adds layers of meaning and interest to my pieces. Accuracy is equally important however - randomly guessing at species IDs does more harm than good, in my opinion. The first leaf skeleton piece I shared with you, which incorporated a sacred fig or Ficus religiosa leaf skeleton, was identifiable due to its very specific and unusual shape. In this NOID leaf skeleton, however, the shape alone does not sufficiently distinguish the leaf from other trees in the Buenos Aires Botanical Garden. Since it is a skeleton, I also cannot use leaf color, texture, weight, and/or attached branches or flowers to contribute more identification information. Though I researched for some time hoping to find a conclusive match, I eventually had to concede that I cannot definitively identify the leaf species which is what makes it a NOID (a term we use in plant identification that - perhaps obviously - stands for no identification).
This artwork is mixed media including a NOID skeleton leaf, matte medium, and handmade artisanal paper and is 12.5x9.75” (unframed dimensions).
When I first wrote about PSLF last November, some of my blog readers/friends/colleagues mentioned that the program had only just opened, that some of the rejections were intentional ones aimed at accessing a different Congressional fund for loan forgiveness, TEPSLF, and that given some time the overall statistics might improve.
Now that another year has passed, that’s not the case.
I’m participating in Art for the Animals, a national exhibition and benefit show for the Kansas City Zoo hosted at Jones Gallery that runs from Wednesday, October 2nd to Thursday, October 24th, 2019, with a First Friday public reception on October 4th from 5 to 9pm. Jones Gallery is in the Crossroads District at 1717 Walnut, Kansas City, MO 64108. I’ll be exhibiting Puffinry and Camelflage. If you go, take some photos for me!
I’m interested in starting a new body of work that involves growing aragonite and/or calcite crystals atop various substrates including sculptures, reliefs, and found objects. I am attracted to the conceptual and aesthetic power of nature overtaking manmade constructions. Additionally, aragonite and calcite are the crystallized form of calcium carbonate, a natural material that is the primary component in seashells and corals. Marine animals with calcium carbonate exoskeletons are particularly susceptible to ocean acidification; in order to grow these crystals, I am immersing limestone (which is a sedimentary rock composed of marine skeletal fragments) in acid, so in some ways the growth of these crystals is also a funerary rite for marine wildlife dying to climate change.
Here is the first completed work I’ve done using this medium. I’ve titled it Reclamation, and it is a mixed media relief including QuickCure Clay, QuickCure Glaze Coating, acrylic, aragonite crystals and salt on birch panel. It’s 12x9.25x2”.
I experimented with a number of different chromatography processes to learn which method would be conceptually and aesthetically strongest for my own practice. Two of the failed tests I did were interesting enough in their own right that I kept them, too, though as is evident they use a different technique that proved less effective at pigment differentiation than the process I used for the main Transmigration Landscapes.
These are, respectively, Failed Test 1 and Failed Test 3.
I had my chromatography series Transmigration Landscapes framed right before moving, and so I’ve taken the time to photograph the pieces in their final form! From this Buenos Aires Botanical Garden collection, there are seven framed pieces each containing five loosely grouped chromatography plant portraits. The framed dimensions are 8.875x30”.
These are, in order:
Transmigration Landscapes : Arc
Transmigration Landscapes: Atmosphere
Transmigration Landscapes: Cadence
Transmigration Landscapes: Flare
Transmigration Landscapes: Percussive
Transmigration Landscapes: Reflective
Transmigration Landscapes: Vibration
I had to have a short hiatus from exhibiting due to moving and the resultant lack of a valid return shipping address for a few months… but the hiatus is over, and breaking it is Artists Who Teach, a pair of national juried exhibitions linked to National Arts in Education Week that is hosted at the Ellington-White Contemporary Art Gallery as well as the Fayetteville State University Rosenthal Art Gallery over the course of eight weeks from September 14 – November 2, 2019. Both galleries are located in the city of Fayetteville, NC.
Two of my acrylic paintings were juried in by Shane Booth, Soni Martin and Dwight Smith: Volcanic and City Solstice. Awards will be selected by a separate juror, Willis Bing Davis, at the opening reception on September 14th. Let me know if you happen to be in the area and can check either (or both) of the exhibitions out!
This is one of my favorites (I have several!) of my new pieces from this residency - it’s perfect in its deceptive simplicity. I say deceptive because work went into obtaining the components of this piece, from learning how to make banana paper while on residency in Peru, to sifting through hundreds of fallen leaves in the Buenos Aires Botanical Garden before finding this perfect leaf skeleton specimen, to discovering that the two suited each other beautifully.
This artwork is mixed media including a Ficus religiosa skeleton leaf, matte medium, and handmade banana paper and is 17x11” (unframed dimensions).
