Thursday, September 17, 2009

Sackcloth and Ashes

Beth Robinson is taking my Sackcloth and Ashes piece for a show at S.P.A.C.E. in Burlington for an exhibit near Halloween. She thinks it's scary, and it certainly is, for lots of reasons. I just sent her this statement and some images, and thought the rest of you would like to see them too.


Sackcloth and Ashes: A Garment for Our Times

This piece was made in 2004 for a Wearable Art show at SPA, and this is what I wrote about it at the time:

As far as we know, humans have always worn clothing. And the kind of clothing people wear has been an indicator of social status, occupation, gender, and even political affiliation.

Sackcloth and ashes was worn in the ancient world as a sign of remorse, repentance, and grief. This sculpture represents us – the Wealthy Western World – doing penance for our consumption of more than our reasonable share of the world’s resources. We are offering the poor 27 cents, the average daily income of a person in the Congo, Ethiopia, and Myanmar in 2003.

But since we are all really one, and there is no essential difference between an American and an Ethiopian, it also represents the person about whose plight we grieve. That person has only 27 cents in his or her bowl at the end of the day.

I often think about money, the state of the world, and our hoarding of material goods. As an artist, I wonder about the consumption of art works -- which are, after all, goods that are bought and sold. I wonder about the value of trading in art. I wonder what art is for. I wonder what will speak to our spirit and bring us to do what is necessary to heal our planet.

The cost of this sculpture, should anyone desire to own it, is $199.57 (cheap, like much of human and animal life is cheap), the average yearly income of a person in Burkina Faso or Rawanda in 2004.

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Art Rolls East!

You may have noticed that I haven't been blogging on ART ROLLS ON for quite some time (all summer long, in fact). The reason for this is that I've been busy with so many projects that I haven't had time to blog!

One of the most important things I've been doing is working on an art exhibit that engages the issue of Biodiversity called ON THE PLANET, which will take four Vermont artists (including myself) to Japan this January, and then bring some Japanese artists to Vermont in September, 2010 for exhibits combining Japanese and American artists in Barre at SPA and the Millstone Historic quarries, and at Flynndog during next year's Art Hop. At that time, the project will involve many more Vermont artists.

This is a wonderful project that involves those political and environmental concerns -- and how they connect with the work that we visual artists do -- that I was struggling with when I started ART ROLLS ON.

I am asking you to help support this effort by following and checking in with our blog at http://nagoya-vermont.blogspot.com/ (where we will be posting our work as it progresses) and also hope you will consider making a donation to help us get ourselves and our work to Japan.

I hope you will welcome this opportunity to support both me and a project that is bigger than one individual artist, a project that addresses critically important issues through the visual arts.

Here is some of my work in progress for this exhibit, which uses painted disks in a loose grid, affixed to the wall with push-pins. It will be about 35 feet long, stretching along a long wall in the gallery in Nagoya!

Sunday, May 24, 2009

Spring is Amazing and Fabulously Beautiful

I’ve been getting comments about the lack of action on my blog, which has set me to thinking about what I AM thinking about and what I’ve been doing. Some of what I’ve been doing is Daily Life, focusing on garden and barn.

So I went out this morning and took pictures of the things Outside, especially flowers, and especially flowers that will turn into yummy things to eat, like strawberries, raspberries, gooseberries, and apples, and I’m running them along here, as they run through my life, as a constant, wonderful presence.

I’m not a landscape, flower, or still-life painter, but I understand what other artists find compelling about these things that are so alive, awake and essential to our life on this planet – the things that grow, that we eat, that we smell, that are so full of color, complexity, and their own life that continues with or without our intervention.

Much of what I’ve been doing art-and-work-wise has been at the computer. Suddenly I’m working on four different curatorial projects:

• My job with the Art of Action through the Vermont Arts Council. There are 26 different sites for the tour, five of which are in galleries and/or museums, and the remainder in non-traditional downtown locations, where I will need to install work on five standing panels that are being created just for this project – and it will move to a new location every two weeks! The ten artists involved in this project are a wonderful group of people, all interesting and incredibly hard-working.

• The Circus! Show at Studio Place Arts, which I will be installing the week of June 8. The opening reception will be on Friday, June 19, from 5:30-7:30 PM. I hope you’ll come – I think it’s going to be a really fabulous show.

• The On The Planet exhibit in Nagoya, Japan in January, 2010 and in Vermont in September, 2010. I’m working with three other artists (Janet Fredericks, Sophie Hood, and Riki Moss) on an installation for Nagoya, and working with Sue Higby as co-curator to design the Vermont component, which will be installed in three locations – Studio Place Arts in Barre, the Historic Quarries at Millstone Hill, and Flynndog in Burlington. This morning I was up early working on ideas for paper pieces for my own contribution to the Nagoya show. We feel a need to have things that are light and easily shipped, so paper fills the bill. I don’t usually have anything to do with paper (except reading it), so this is a challenge.




• And finally, I worked on proposing a retrospective exhibit at a gallery in a nearby state for a friend. The proposal is in, and I’ll let you know if we get it!

From the top: apple blossoms, strawberry bed with blossoms, dandelions (ubiquitous, irritating; I've made them into wine in the past, but now I just ride it out and wait until they go away), raspberries (I'm terribly proud of my row of raspberries, beautifully pruned and weeded), and my wonderful husband R.D. Eno with his own outdoor project.

Tomorrow I'm going down to Dartmouth to meet with the other people in the Nagoya group, so I'll take some pictures and maybe put up something about that.

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

S.115

Since the passage of S.115 and the subsequent dramatic override of the governor's veto, I have been working on this piece, first in my mind, and then in the studio. The wonderful wood, with its prominent female genitalia and its skin bark (like a second, embracing woman), was given to me by Jim Lund, and the pieces strongly suggested a loving couple. During this time I read a posting on Daniel Wetmore's blog about his own wedding to Josephine Romano that said all this so much better than I could, and he has given his permission to reprint it below. You can find it on his blog here.

The Meaning of Marriage, Revised Standard Version

by Daniel Wetmore

It had been a six month train ride and it ended here, in the dark, with the stacked-up chairs, the rented canopy, the portable potties, and a pile of fat black plastic trash bags next to the building. Memorial Hall, North Calais. August 17, 1997.

The guests had all departed. Our extended families were snaking their way back down County Road, caravanning towards the Inn at Montpelier, my father’s car barely missing a moose that had stepped out of the darkness, and my mother so happy she could die. She actually said that, to my startled younger sister, “You know, Judy, I can die now. Danny is finally married.”

Six months earlier, to the day, I had asked Jo to marry me. She said yes and from that moment we were tied to the calendar, to dates, places, people, to decisions that had to be made, where, when, who, how.

It came down to the Old West Church, near Kent’s Corner, my old friend and former seminary classmate Tom as minister, and Memorial Hall for the reception, with the same old friend and former classmate as musician and dance master, leading the motley throng in contras, squares, and circles.

But now the great day was over, darkness had fallen, the lights and extension cords all coiled and boxed. Tom was the only other person there, collecting his things by the picnic table under the one flood light. Jo and I drank in the cool air coming off Number 10 Pond.

“There’s one more thing,” Tom shouted. The train had not quite stopped. The marriage certificate. We still had to sign it. We walked past the garbage bags over to the damp table, the knot returning to my stomach. Another “I do.” The famous “piece of paper from the City Hall” that seals the deal, that makes this real, permanent and binding as permanent can be. I had thought we were done. And then this final detail.

But here’s the thing: there were three lines for three signatures - husband, wife, and officiant. We all had to sign. I stared at the paper and hesitated - not because of the knot, but because of the irony, bitter and painful, that Tom, the man who had helped guide us through this process, led the ceremony, delivered the homily, a respected pastor and preacher and dance master, whose signature was necessary on the certificate, could not himself sign on the spouse line in his own wedding. He whose signature made the certificate legal and binding, and who had signed many such certificates at many happy weddings would not be allowed to sign his own.

Like so many other people drawn, called to ministry, Tom was, is, gay, an orientation which he had wrestled with most of the years I had known him. He had had to wrestle with it, of course, because it wasn’t “normal,” not accepted by society, because it makes straight people uncomfortable, forcing them to wrestle with things they would rather not think about. But Tom’s wrestling was over, he had found some peace in self-acceptance, had come out, even though it likely meant he would be booted from the Methodist pulpit. For the time being he could continue to minister, to preach, to marry and bury, as long as he was single. He could be gay, but not do gay, as if there was a difference.

He had told once about the double bind that gay people have found themselves in, that same-sex relationships have had no legal standing and thus were seen as immoral, and that they are seen as immoral and thus not given legal recognition. A vicious, tight circle that has stifled and crucified countless human beings, fellow citizens, co-travellers on life’s journey.

Above the pulpit, where Tom spoke at our wedding, arching across the wall above his head, were large plain black letters spelling out a warning from the Book of Proverbs: “REMOVE NOT THE ANCIENT LANDMARK WHICH THY FATHERS HAVE SET.” The beating rigid heart of conservatism, its essence, yet absurd and laughable. We humans seem to love the idea of eternal verities, of things that don’t change, that must not change. Yet change is everywhere. The divine right of kings has crumbled before the rise of democracy –the “natural order” that places women below men, regards them as weaker, not fully human, has been discredited — fundamental and ancient assumptions about “race” are now discarded– how many of these landmarks have been exposed as walls meant only to keep certain people out, allow certain others in? How many have now been happily pulverized, reduced to gravel and stone dust, put to better use fertilizing our fields?

My father used to tell me that while he sympathized with interracial couples who wanted to marry and raise a family he felt it was not a good idea — since the children would suffer, be ostracized, and not know who they were, White or Black. Forty years later, a blink in the eye of history, the United States has a biracial president. Are we not the better for it?

Some landmarks need to move, including some really old ones. Some definitions need to change. Any linguist will tell you that the meaning of a word rests ultimately not in dusty dictionaries or obscure Indo-European roots, but on the tongue and in the heart and mind of the living speaker and the living listener. Meanings change. Words change, grow, and shrink, because we change. The scary and wonderful truth of language is that it is continually discovered, rediscovered and recreated. It is our birthright and our duty. We are the authors and arbiters of meaning, as were our ancestors, and we are not bound — unless we choose to be.

We all signed the certificate. The evening ended. Our married life began. Tom eventually met someone and got booted from the pulpit. Such a loss to the Methodists. And so unnecessary. It has been a long and generally painful train ride through Western civilization for our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters, people who have added so much to our shared humanity. Changing a few lines on a marriage certificate, expanding the definition of a word, an important word, may not usher in a new world of peace and harmony, but it can be done and I believe we will all be the better for it.

Saturday, April 4, 2009

Priests presented at Parker Pie, a pizza place

Thanks to Liz Nelson for picking up the Priests, hanging them at Parker Pie, and taking these photos.

Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Priest-o-Rama

Fellow Travelers of another kind, these Priests are secular clerics, our comrades.

Liz Nelson came this afternoon and took all the Priests that are finished to exhibit at The Parker Pie Co. in West Glover, Vermont. She said she'd try to take some photos of the work when it's up, so I'll post images if I get them.




Sunday, March 29, 2009

Fellow Travelers

As I’ve walked the Art Road (so to speak) I’ve discovered the occasional person whom I think of as a Fellow Traveler. This was a term used by Joseph McCarthy and his ilk to denote people who were Communist sympathizers, but not actual “card-carrying” Communists. Only instead of Communists, I’m meaning Artists. Whatever that is. Hmmm, and what would the card look like, anyway? And who keeps the minutes and makes the agenda?

I’m not sure what makes you a member of the Artist Party. I’ve often resisted calling myself an artist. It seems a lot like calling yourself a guru. If you appropriate the title (or confer it upon yourself), are you really entitled to it?

Sower, R.L. Croft
Sower is a subtle homage to van Gogh’s paintings of the same title in the form of an 11-foot-long maple seed (winged seed or “helicopter”) built in the manner of an airfoil. It features handles, an access panel and a view port. Sower rests on its own dolly, or on the floor propped by a short pole. It also carries long poles and guy wires for temporary, fair weather outdoor display in an oblique upright stance that abstractly mimics the painting’s striding figure.

Anyway, when I say Fellow Traveler, I mean someone who is “plowing the same field,” who seems drawn to similar materials, motifs, shapes, or icons. It’s not that he or she is a better artist (whatever that means) than other artists you know and love – just that they’re like you, like a clone of some kind, like someone who’s making art that could be your own.

Perpetual notion machine, R.L. Croft
Perpetual notion machine (Sisyphus machine) is an absurdly low-tech comment on the fascination and trust we place in technology. Idealism found in promises of a better future are frustrated by the reality of mankind’s tendency to settle for significantly less. Included in its construction are a whisper/ball tube, a malfunctioning solar powered thermometer and dead switches. Its main feature is a hidden ball track. The viewer can insert a ball bearing into an opening and listen to its clanking progress until it emerges at the bottom, beckoning for perpetual performance of a meaningless task.


Such a person, named Robin Croft, popped into my life recently. The wheeled pieces on his website (under Floorwork) are wonderful, and the piece called Platform, Madrid on the Wallwork page dramatically conveys the bomb-blast in the metro, as well as the injured and killed, represented (amazingly and accurately) by bottles of nail polish!

Platform, Madrid, R.L. Croft


Robin says, “My intention is to create the effect of two conflicting forces, that which touches on the depths of despair, unsteadily balanced against anxious humor and simple joy in work. Idealism found in promises of a better future are frustrated by the reality of mankind’s tendency to settle for significantly less. These sculptures are abandoned visual props left at the end of an absurd solitary performance, susceptible to decay and multiple interpretations. Nothing can be taken for granted. Constant change proves to be the only reliable point of reference. Equilibrium being evanescent, one tries to fuse an array of thought fragments into a drawing of graphite or metal. By doing so, the artist builds a fragile mental world of metaphor that lends meaning to his largely unnoticed visit in society.”

Platform, Madrid (detail), R.L. Croft

Why do artists clump together? Sometimes it’s for more or less venal (or at least self-promotional) reasons: Making contacts with others puts us in the way of opportunities, and gets us out in the world through “friending” people (that irritating expression). Sometimes it’s just a need for the companionship of others who are in the life (of art). But I think it can also be a genuine recognition of an artistic doppelganger, a person whose work (and, possibly, aesthetic motivations) are continuous with your own.

Sunday, March 22, 2009

Sliding on Down the Line

I've been thinking about this blog, and my aspiration to find ways to think about, create work partly motivated by, and talk about how our experience in the world as citizens connects with the life of art and aesthetics.

I've found myself, in my last several posts, blabbing on about the paintings I've been making and what I'm going to do next, and all the mechanics of making work. I try to make it interesting, and try to bring you along on what the process and experience is like, but ultimately I don't think that's what you and I want to be doing. I'm not really sure what we do want to be doing, but I will keep trying to find out. Writing, I suppose, is a lot like painting or making other kinds of art: you just have to keep puddling around until you feel you've got it right.

Sometimes painting is a heady, exhilarating experience, sometimes it's painful and frustrating. When it's boring, you just have to stop and do something else. Sometimes you make mistakes. No, that's not right: sometimes you experience the gift of making something wonderful happen that you didn't know you could do, didn't know where it came from, and you accept this gift gratefully.

When mistakes happen, it's because you aren't acting selflessly. You are imagining what you might do, where it might go, and forcing it to go there. I think that's what happened with the Priest of Schooling, at the top of this post. I put the gold foil in ("well, they're all supposed to have gold foil"...) and took away the wonderful watery blue.

I watched an interview with President Obama on Sixty Minutes this evening. He said he is constantly making decisions. Of course, he must make decisions based on evidence, facts, and assumptions about what's good for the country and what's bad for the country. I keep making decisions too, pressing forward, moving down the line. I wanted to do a Priest of Inflated Assets. It turned out to be even grosser than I imagined, like a horrible cancer. But then that is sort of what this whole economic thing has been about -- acting in ethically reprehensible ways and pretending it's great. I think he looks sort of like the Mona Lisa. That mysterious smile; those mysterious actions.

The new work on the blog this week is all in progress. It will certainly have more painting, and (like those guys on Wall Street) may even get some gold!

Finally, I want to let you know that I've decided to eliminate the FOLLOWERS widget on the sidebar. It feels weird to be soliciting "fans;" It came with the package when I was a young and green blogger, but now it seems wrong. I'll add the people who signed up there to my email list for notification when I put out a new post. And if anybody else wants to be on that list (or off that list), let me know by email at: janetvanfleet@fairpoint.net

Thank you for your interest. I'm glad you like to read this blog, and welcome your input. If you want to comment, I'd be interested in hearing about whether you like the gold leaf or not, and why.

Friday, March 13, 2009

Energy for Everything


Priest of Priests
, oil and gold foil on board, 16 x 16", 2009

So here are the last two Priests in this group. Today I framed up four large and one small piece, and here are the last two that I painted on today. The one at left, the Priest of Priests, I like very much. It's mysterious. After the white paint dries, I'll varnish the gold foil and frame it.

Below is the Priest of Schooling. An old lady (such as I am becoming), schoolmarm-ish. And fish. With her fish-net, hair-net / hat.

After the Priest of Schooling dries, I will put gold leaf in the background around her head. I think the piece will feel quite different after that, with the gold background and silver fish swimming through the picture plane.

I've already had two offers to exhibit this body of work, in Glover in April and in Castleton in May, so they'll soon be going out into the world. This body of work seems quite engaging to people; today I got a call from someone who saw them on this blog and wanted to buy The Priest of Unexpected Developments. I am still finding painting very exciting and challenging, and hope to have a few more pieces in the works soon.

Priest of Schooling, oil (and soon gold foil) on board,
16 x 16", 2009

On another topic, several different people have said to me recently, "People who have a job aren't really feeling the recession." Well, I have just gotten a part-time job, so that is a great relief to me, and exciting too. I will be curating an exhibit of the ten artists selected for the Art of Action project that Lyman Orton and the Vermont Arts Council have created. I will have time to work in the studio, but also have some much-needed predictable income. Plus I'll get to work with some interesting people and hone my curatorial skills. I am lucky.

Thursday, March 5, 2009

All that glitters...

... is not gold. It’s gold FOIL (leaf), but it still looks pretty spiffy. Here are the paintings you saw a few posts back, and it's now clear to me that they are a continuation of the Priests series. Here are the ones that I think are finished.

What do I mean by “priests”? I mean they are secular clerics, fellow travelers on the road into the future, ordinary exemplars, comrades. What does THAT mean? Well, we are all examples to each other of how to be human, how to be Americans, how to be painters, how to be wives, lovers, runners, writers, caretakers, and friends. So the people in these paintings are icons of their particular states, their tasks, their confusions.

As always, you can click for a larger image.

Priest of Beasts, oil and gold foil on board, 16 x 16 in., 2009Janet Van Fleet: Priest of Beasts
The Priest of Unexpected Developments, oil and gold foil on board,
16 x 16 in., 2009Janet Van Fleet: The Priest of Unexpected Developments
The Priest of Science and Art, oil, enamel, and gold foil on board,
16 x 16 in., 2009Janet Van Fleet: The Priest of Science and Art
The Priest of Hot Things, oil and gold foil on board, 16 x 16 in., 2009
Janet Van Fleet: The Priest of Hot Things
There are two more in the pipeline. Stay tuned!

Sunday, March 1, 2009

Put your mouth where your money is

I am one of 19 artists doing a project at the Sullivan Museum at Norwich University in Northfield VT called Inspired by Stories: Artists Respond to the Historical Collection of the Sullivan Museum.

The museum assembled miscellaneous artifacts from their collection, and each artist chose one to respond to. I chose a roll of bills called a “Short Snorter” (see below, unrolled a bit). You can see some websites that have information about these artifacts here and here and, if you're interested, you can probably find lots more if you search the web.


I found this artifact compelling because it seemed like the male/military version of the friendship/signature quilt. These men collected signatures of their buddies on paper money, sometimes the names of places they had passed through (along with their currencies), sometimes short messages of solidarity or humor.

I would like to create an Art Community Long Snorter (or maybe it will be called Put Your Mouth Where Your Money Is) – a long streamer of bills taped together that will be suspended from the ceiling. I'm asking artists and art-community folks to send me a piece of currency with their name(s) and/or signature(s) written directly on the bill, along with a short (snorting?) message you may wish to convey to the world and visitors to the Sullivan Museum. Write it all on the bill; you can include as many people's signatures and/or messages on the bill as you can fit!

It would be wonderful to have currencies from other parts of the world if you have something (not too valuable) you’d like to contribute to this effort (hanging around from a trip to an exotic locale?), but a regular old dollar bill would be fine too. If you don’t want to send money, cut-to-size (about the size of a dollar bill or slightly larger) fragments of maps, two-sided images from magazines or other sources that are meaningful to you, or pieces of travel brochures would also be great.

Please feel free to forward a link to this post to artists you think may be interested in contributing to this artwork.

If you are interested in participating, please send your piece by April 1, 2009 to me at:

Janet Van Fleet
32 Thistle Hill Road
Cabot, VT 05647

Sunday, February 15, 2009

You can never tell...

I haven't painted for three or four years, so I am surprised to find myself returning to painting intensively over the last few weeks. The work I'm doing is clearly an extension of previous work in two series, the oldest of which I did over ten years ago, when I had my studio in St. Johnsbury.

That was a series of 14 paintings responding to a group of drawings my mother did as part of a manuscript she had written called Promethea. Here are some of the early ones in that series, shown mounted with a copy of her drawing, and excerpts from the book's text. When I exhibited them (at AVA in New Hampshire and at the Woodenhead Gallery in Key West, Florida) the show was called Jungian Journey: A Mother-Daughter Collaboration.



Next came the the Priests series I was making the last time I was painting (below). (L-R): The Priest of Moisture, The Priest of Red Dresses and The Priest of Closure.



This time there seem to be two rules for the portraits
  1. Something is coming out of (or going into -- I can't tell which) their mouths (or the mouths of someone or something in the painting) and
  2. There is a pattern or decoration on the face (this is less important).
I have been calling this series Afflatus as a working title, as it seems to have something to do with the movement of wind, breath, or inspiration into or out of the figures.Here is a look at one piece that I've been working over a great deal in my current fling with painting; it started a long time back as a bird sitting on the figure's shoulder, but I didn't like it and put it away.


It's been through quite a few changes, and at the end of the day today I shortened the tail on the big bird at the left and painted in the rest of the shirt. I may wind up putting gold foil leaf on it (like two of the priests above) instead of the yellow ochre. I don't like this painting yet, but it may wind up being a keeper. Right now, not.


Here is another one (right), painted on a smaller board (8x8"; the ones above and below are 16x16") that had been put away long ago and actually used as a palette, so it had globs of dried paint on it. You can click on it to enlarge and see the paint globs.I think it will need some more work, but I rather like it.

And finally, two more below, with a large image and a detail shot that shows you more of what the surface is like. An interesting thing is about gender and how we know which of these figures is male and which female. In the figures below, I think the second figure is a woman, but someone who was in my studio was surprised to hear that. Remember, these are all in progress. They will all change.



Sorry for the long trip down memory lane that I started this post with, but somehow it seems good to put it all in context.

Thursday, February 5, 2009

Computer Artist?

Why haven’t I posted recently? I have hardly been at the studio, except for an excursion into Barre to participate in last weekend’s snow sculpting festival as part of a team from SPA headed by Georgia Landau, who rustled us into making a giant frog that won third place. It was cold, very cold. Do you realize that the temperature hasn’t been above freezing all year? But once we got going, we warmed up.

Instead of making art, I have been at my computer, working on two worthy projects. First, for many years I’ve been wanting to do a project that has many different people make small sculptures, then brings them all together in a big collective parade or throng of figures. What I wanted to do with this idea came into focus for me when I decided to apply for the Kip Tiernan Social Justice Fellowship last October, which asks women to propose projects “promoting social justice and empowering poor and homeless women.” I proposed to travel to each of the New England states, working with women at homeless shelters to create 18-24" sculptures out of materials found in the local natural and personal environment. These figures would be self-portraits, with each participant representing herself in a way that references her inner life or life experience. At the end of the Creation phase of the project, all the pieces from all the workshops I had conducted would be assembled into a large installation called WE ARE AN ARMY, marching together on raised platforms and tabletops. During this Exhibition phase of the project, I would bring this installation back to the communities where the workshops were held for exhibit, celebration, and discussion.

Well, I wasn’t chosen as one of the finalists, but by then I was really excited about this project, and wanted to do it no matter what. So I’ve been working on applications to other grantmakers, and am planning a much larger project that will involve women in countries all over the world. Perhaps this is grandiose, but I am so compelled by this idea of the poor women’s art army that I can’t rest until I make it happen. Or, I guess, until it becomes truly clear that I can’t find enough money to make it happen. At left is a figure I made to give a notion of what you can make out of found objects, and how it can speak about the person who made it. I used an old sock and other found materials. The flower is about joy and humor, the paintbrush arms are about my work as an artist, the vacuum leg says “Suck it up,” and the plastic knife says “Cut the crap.” The maniacal face is because I embroidered it with some string I found and then used paint from a squeeze tube. The figures will be mounted on discrete stands so that they can stand upright and march!

Anyway, I’m test-driving this at the end of the month in Barre (thanks to Sue for letting me use the classroom at SPA) with women from the homeless shelter there (which Good Neighbors has been kind enough to help me recruit), and I hope I’ll get a videographer from the public access channel in Barre to document the first few workshops so I can make a dvd to send out to other potential sites to let them know what I’m doing so they can decide if they would like to participate.


The second project that has glued me to the computer is a statewide visual arts publication called Vermont Art Zine that Marc Awodey and I have put together to get more talk, writing, and images online about the visual arts. We’ll be putting up reviews, essays, studio visits, interviews, and whatever else people can offer, well written and full of energy, joy, passion, and humor. We think there’s not enough coverage of the hundreds of installations of interesting artwork that dot the state, and we need a vehicle that can connect us. So, this has been the first week it’s up, and it’s not quite ready for prime time, but go have a look and see what you think.

Sunday, January 25, 2009

Twice a Day

Gee, I'm having to post for the second time today, as I forgot to put up two other things:
First, I promised to show you the big hanging Disarmed piece, which is now finished. (You know, you can click on these images and get a larger view.)


And also I wanted to put up the piece I finished for Landfill Art. Ken Marquis asked me if I would art up a hubcap and it sounded like a neat idea, so I have. It's called Auto Industry Humpty Dumpty.



Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall
And all the king's horses
And all the king's men
Couldn't put Humpty together again.