I haven’t updated you on my pet gargoyle gecko Ashlar in a while - she’s doing very well, and has even redecorated her cage recently by moving the vine supports around!
Eating an Ethical Diet
in General Interest, News
I’ve been a vegetarian for ethical reasons for over twenty years, and my artwork and writings about my pieces address issues including animal rights, ethics, conservation, and ecological balance. The COVID-19 pandemic is a direct result of our generally poor relationship with meat consumption, including that of endangered wildlife. Now due to meatpacking plants, the city that I live in has topped a variety of coronavirus tracking charts in terms of spread, density, and duration. Iowa is mass torturing and slaughtering pigs as a result of the pandemic’s disruption of the processing and supply chain. Eating meat increases global warming, obesity rates, and an acceptance of cruelty and superiority that can’t help but seep into other parts of our lives.
Here’s a great Op-Ed in the New York Times that goes into more detail on all of my above points. I support eating an ethical diet and believe we need real reform in this arena as well.
Black Lives Matter
in News, General Interest
Here in the US, there have been massive protests against racism and police brutality; these have spawned global support and protests in cities around the world. I support the Black Lives Matter movement. Earlier this week I donated to the American Civil Liberties Union (more commonly referred to by its abbreviation ACLU) to support their work in suing the government and police on behalf of protesters and victims of police brutality and injustice. We need substantive reform.
Here’s a link to the ACLU donation page if you also feel called to support them!
New Artwork: Emerging
in New Artwork
An overhead shot of a Humphrey in the garden.
Since I don’t get to do an artist residency this summer due to the pandemic, I’m planning on producing from home! Sioux City is rabbit central - the Eastern cottontail, to be specific. Sometimes on neighborhood walks here I see just as many rabbits as I do squirrels. In my former town of Leavenworth, seeing a rabbit was notable and relatively rare. Earlier this spring, I noticed a juvenile rabbit made a home partially in my backyard (he also hops through the fence to my neighbors’ garden as well).
I named him Humphrey and began to try to acclimate him to my presence, so that I could take some nice reference photos for paintings. I talked about him to family and friends, and at one point joked with my parents that I supposed there might be several rabbits all being called Humphrey… and wouldn’t you know it, the very next day I saw two simultaneously! Since I can’t really distinguish them individually, giving them more names seemed unhelpful, so they’re now the Humphreys, plural. It appears there’s a nest/burrow under my deck, and I have now seen three Humphreys at the same time so there are at least that many but probably more. There do appear to be two different sizes of Humphrey, both juvenile but one small and one even tinier. My neighbor says she’s seen the parents, but I don’t know if I have; I’ve not seen an adult rabbit in my backyard at all this spring but I have seen one in my front yard once. And again, rabbits are ubiquitous here.
I plan to do several rabbit paintings, but here’s the first! It’s tentatively titled Emerging, though the title Under the Deck is also in consideration. It’s a 16x12x1.5” acrylic on basswood panel.
Sansevieria Has Been Subsumed!
I know we’ve had a lot of craziness of late, but I have another world-altering piece of information for you plant lovers out there who haven’t heard about it yet, so get ready: the genus Sansevieria has been contested for years and it has now been subsumed into Dracaena. Officially, taxonomically, there is no more Sansevieria! Below are a few images of some of my (formerly Sansevieria) species and and flowers if you need a visual aid. They’re colloquially called “snake plants” and “mother-in-law’s tongue.”
In my houseplant-growing years, I’ve been aware of plants switching genera before, but all of those switches only affected a small amount of plants and were relatively easy to swallow. Gloxinia speciosa and Rechsteineria leuchotricha both moving to the genus Sinningia, Philodendron bipinnatifidum changing to Thaumatophyllum bipinnatifidum, Cotyledon splitting into at least five different genera, and so on.
This switch, though, affects over seventy species that have visual and habit-related signifiers that seem to more narrowly identify them as a subgroup within their new genus compared to the rest of the Dracaena species that are typically grown as houseplants, so I don’t even know if I want to start calling them by their new taxonomic names!
For me and perhaps for most serious houseplant keepers, this is going to be much more of a challenge than Pluto’s downgrade to dwarf planet.
Approaching the End of the Semester
Well, finals begin at the end of next week for Spring 2020 here at Morningside College! It’s been a lot of work converting in-person classes to online - I spent several hours finding public domain imagery of skeletons and nude models for my figure drawing class, as just one example - but we’re making it through!
Here’s our first fully virtual senior show of the season, courtesy of our skilled student Riley Custer:
And here are some more photos from my walks around Sioux City over the past couple weeks, including a surprising and somewhat misguided street donut offering:
Pandemic Productivity
Well, the world’s been upended. As a professor, this is the first time I’ve attempted to teach online coursework, and obviously the circumstances - these courses were not designed with online in mind, ISP overloads are causing even my own mid-tier home internet to no longer be able to stream high-quality video between the hours of 7am-2am, students have other demands on their time like familial support and sharing devices and spaces - are sub-optimal for sure. The courses I’ve been teaching this semester include Figure Drawing (no live model anymore and no ability to give rapid critiques on what is the hardest technical subject matter, but at least they can do self-portraits and use public domain imagery), Painting I (honestly, not so bad especially since we had a little over eight weeks in person to lay the groundwork), and Senior Art Seminar (I am mourning the loss of accessible senior thesis shows and receptions but am intrigued about how a virtual exhibition could be executed), as well as overseeing internships. We’re all just trying to cope as best we can with these new circumstances, but from the conversations I’ve been having with students I think we’re all chomping at the bit to be able to return once it’s safe to do so. When that will be, though, is still the big unknown.
I know that I am very lucky in that overall I still have my job and am not currently in financial crisis like millions of others due to this pandemic. The quarantining has nevertheless overhauled my personal life, too, beyond the obvious lack of professional and social gatherings. I really enjoy exercising, but more than that, I also need it - when I’m too sedentary, my back weakens to the point that it then goes out. What seems to work best for back maintenance is regular, long, and fairly high-intensity cardio. However, my knees are not able to cope with high-impact exercise. This means that ellipticals are my favorite workout, followed by swimming and riding stationary bikes. (I’m a gym devotee not only due to the access to low-impact forms of exercise but because I really appreciate climate control when I’m exercising - I sweat a lot even in air conditioned spaces. I also like the ability to watch cable television on their machines since I don’t have cable at home!). Because I can’t do any of my gym workouts, I have been alternating long walks around the neighborhood and riding my bicycle in laps around a nearby elementary school parking lot.
I try to stay out for at least 30 minutes each time, but especially on the walks I aim for an hour since I’m not getting high-intensity exercise from them. I haven’t ridden a real bike (as opposed to a stationary bike) in such a long time that I’m basically relearning how to do so and am not great at controlling it yet, but I’m already improving a little! The neighborhood walks have been both interesting and a bit scary - I was attacked by a loose and very territorially aggressive dog a couple days ago but luckily I wasn’t bitten. I have discovered that Sioux City is not the most walkable place due to a lack of sidewalks and crosswalks on some major streets (Gordon Drive, I’m looking at you). A lot of people also block their driveway sidewalks with vehicles. Furthermore, the weather has not been particularly conducive to outdoor exercise. We had a blizzard that knocked the power out for several hours a week ago, and today I was awoken by the sound of hail and whistling wind. It’s also been quite rainy, which is fairly normal for March but does put a damper (see what I did there?) on being outdoors. But needs must! Here are a few coronavirus door signs I documented on my neighborhood walks.
Since I’m still working (and doing so in a different way that was unplanned-for), I have less free time than one might anticipate. Between work, needing to exercise more frequently since the intensity is lowered, and cooking all of my meals, I’m staying fairly busy. I also have a list of chores I’ve been slowly tackling (filing my taxes are next on the list). But everyone needs some form of fun, and I’ve been feeling just a little too stressed to want to begin a new professional piece - though I hope to begin that soon! So instead, I’ve been making a few ceramics. For professional development, I was sitting in on a section of Ceramics I this semester because it was the one discipline I knew barely anything about, and that seemed like a deficit that especially since I also serve as Art Department Head I wanted to address. I learned some about wheel-throwing (there’s much more there than I’ve mastered as of now, but maybe some day!), and a little about glazing. About six or seven weeks in, I gathered that you can add chunks of rust (aka iron oxide) into the clay and they will add value and texture. What values and textures are TBD each time, though, based on firing and other variables - the iron oxide will likely melt in high-fire temperatures and that can cause cavities and vertical runs! That really captivated me - I think because A) I love color, B) I love nature-based chaos as a compositional wild card, and C) I love the conceptual power of rust. It also opened up the world of additives in general, and I decided to attempt experimenting with adding mica pieces, dried clay bits, and potentially other media like vermiculite too.
Obviously the pandemic has disrupted my ceramics progress, but it hasn’t halted it. I’ve been slowly but steadily making pinch pots at home as a low-pressure creative outlet and form of fun. Here are a few images of some of my current experiments. I won’t see how any of these pieces actually turn out until they’ve been through bisque-firing and then glazing, so probably at this point we’re looking at the fall, but it’s something nice to work on nevertheless!
Gallery 110's Subversive Celebration: International Altered Card Exhibition
in Exhibitions
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.
Ashlar and a Blooming Sinningia Cardinalis
Here are a couple recent photos from fauna and flora in my life!
BROTA and Buenos Aires Series "Gardens of Memory" Wabi-Sabi
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'm a 2020 Mary Blair Award for Art Finalist!
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!
A Few Interesting Plant and Fungus Articles
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
The End of the Semester!
in Teaching
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.
Graceful Gargoyle Gecko
Just look at this poetic moment between Ashlar and her reflection!
BROTA and Buenos Aires Series "Gardens of Memory" Dried Sweetgum Leaf
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.
Houseplant Hobbyist Checking In!
in Houseplants
I haven’t done a houseplant post in a while - so here are a few for you to admire from a recent small photo shoot I did! They are, in order: Aloe jucunda, Aloe cv. ‘Snowstorm’, Deuterocohnia brevifolia, Gasteria cv. ‘Little Warty’, Pinguicula gigantea, and Sarracenia purpurea.
Ash Channeling Cork Bark and Napping
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.
Melting Face Makeup - Happy Halloween!
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!
Upcoming: Small Works Juried All-Media Exhibition at the Northville Art House
in Exhibitions
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
BROTA and Buenos Aires Series "Gardens of Memory" NOID Leaf Skeleton
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).