Couple

This piece is engaged with many of the themes and materials that have preoccupied me for the last several years. Thematically, the notion of pairs, dyads, and couples is very resonant for me -- I am struck by the richness of two beings entangled and acting in consort.

The materials are ones that I've been using in different ways for a long time now -- wine foils, historic photographs, and buttons. These cultural artifacts are, ironically, much longer-lived than mere flesh, which has a brief efflorescence and is then gone. But the objects that living beings have touched, owned, or created lives much longer and, perhaps, continues to bear some of the energy or essence of those beings.

This couple will be exhibited in Studio Place Arts' main gallery exhibit, Amore, January 20 – February 21, 2015, with an opening reception on Saturday, January 24 from  3:30-5:30 PM.

 

New Modified Albumen Print Portraits

I ordered 15 new frames, and have LOTS of new raw material/photographs, thanks to Jenny Warshow who gifted me with over 20, and 21 that I bought from the Country Bookshop in Plainfield during their half-price sale!

The portraits are now connecting with other prior work, as I'm using wine foils and buttons, along with other found objects. It's funny how things keep coming around. I have also made two (a couple) that are associated with button garments, slated to be part of the Amore exhibit at SPA, opening Saturday, January 24, 3:30-5:30 PM. I have not yet photographed those pieces, but stay tuned.

Here are four of the new pieces:

 

Gumballs Installed in Bogotá

Here's Gumballs in its new home, outside the entrance to the executive conference room in the offices of GNI Latinoamérica. Through the window at the right, you get a spectacular view of the city of Bogotá, climbing the Andes ridge up to the peak of Monserrate.

Reminder about Torture

Now that more of the facts about Rendition and "Enhanced Interrogation" have come out in a summary report released on December 6 this year , I thought it was a good time to remind folks about the piece and video I made with Tim Azarian in 2008, six years ago. It's awful to keep thinking about such disgusting things, but we have to do it, lest we forget...

The Opening at Catamount Arts

Last Friday we had our opening reception at Catamount Arts in St. Johnsbury from 5-7 PM. It was pretty nasty weather, but plenty of people turned out and seemed to have a good time!

Martin Bryan, who works at Catamount, told me that he had a friend who had come the previous Friday, mistakenly thinking it was the reception evening, and really wanted to know what my piece called TWO was about. Martin asked if I would talk about it while he videotaped my explanation and I said "Sure."  He didn't tell me he was going to put it up on YouTube, but the footage of the reception is good, and even my blather is fine, except for balling myself up again about the facts  about species die-offs, which I posted about here.

Gumballs goes to South America

One of my favorite button encasements, made in 2004, has been bought for GNI Latinoamérica, located in Bogotá, Colombia. This encasement has four layers:

• a layer of mylar in the back, painted on both sides (creating two layers) with acrylic circular elements and graphite lines 
• a layer of buttons held in a grid if fine annealed steel wire, and 
• a layer of acrylic circles painted on the inside of the plexi cover 

I think Gumballs has some great Latin heat and will like its new home!