Vanishment at the Supreme Court

In a few weeks I'll be putting up a large exhibit at the Vermont Supreme Court gallery space. Here's a taste, and some information about the 3 events that will happen over the course of the three months it will be on exhibit (April-July, 2019).

I'm presenting a large 32-foot installation called Digesting the Planet, a series of eight mixed media pieces with wine foils collaged over 20-year-old oil paintings that chronicle a deteriorating relationship between humans and the natural world (represented by animals), and a 3-part piece called Rivers of Blood. 

Boats are Back

Every few years I get a yen to make boats. A recent boat for the Long Haul series was called Baggage (tiled shot), 76" long.

And, probably most out-there-in-the-world, this piece I made for the Telephone project.

I'm working on a new series (about 5 pieces in progress at this time). Here are two finished pieces.

This one needs a different, angled shot, showing the mast, but this is all I've got at the moment. It's about 20" long, with a delightful bird/dinosaur/unicorn figurehead. I have many pieces of found wood and objects in my studio that sometimes have to wait for a long time before I find the right place for them in a sculpture.

I'm working on how to display these new boats. Maybe they'll be suspended from the ceiling, like the Long Haul pieces...

Open Studios at SPA on Saturday, February 2

Come on over to SPA this weekend to visit studios in the building, noon - 1:30 PM. Here's a page about the studios and studio artists.

Time to Speak

I have a piece in Strictly Sedimentary, the current show in the Main Gallery exhibit at Studio Place Arts (SPA), Sticking with my current experiment in re-purposing paintings from the past, I chose this one, which has paintings layered over paintings from a series of three I did on passages from Ecclesiastes. I wanted to make a way to show the intensity of speech without using text, and found that thread, gathered and tangled, seemed to do it.

Rebecca Weber, a member of the Upper Valley Sew-Op in White River Junction (who came to my artist talk at AVA this fall) gave me a bag with lots and lots of thread of different colors, all on wooden spools. Spools are mounted on a wooden rod, unravelled down the surface of the painting to pool on the floor below. Thank you, Rebecca!

Work in Progress for Upcoming Supreme Court Exhibit

The Supreme Court exhibit, which will be on view from April 2 through June 28, 2019, will be called Vanishment. It explores the fraught relationship between humans and the natural world, using, in part, materials that I've repurposed from previous bodies of work.

There will be two main elements in this show: eight pieces built on oil-on-board paintings from 1998 that have now been sealed with shellac (a surface treatment made from the secretions of a female insect from India or Thailand, the lac beetle), then collaged over with figures of people and animals made with wine foils (the wrappers at the top of a wine bottle that seal the cork). The pieces in this series chronicle the dissolution of a "relationship" between humans and the natural world (represented by animals), from beginning to end. All eight of these pieces are now complete.

 
1.  In the Beginning, mixed media on board, 27x36", 1998/2018

 
5 Parting of the Ways, mixed media on board, 25x33", 1998/2018

 The backspace of the gallery will feature a 31-foot installation called Digesting the Planet, built on an 18" high grid of rusted steel, reminiscent of an installation I created in 2010 in Nagoya, Japan in conjunction with COP 10 - the tenth meeting of the UN Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (the United States is not a signatory to this convention). "Intestines" are made with red and brown buttons threaded on wire, interspersed with boxes in which those buttons were originally packed, stored in a basement, and immersed in a flood that left a muddy "shadow" imprint of the buttons on the interior surfaces of the boxes. Small groupings of plastic animals shelter inside these boxes. The medium here is ironic – the animals are made of what threatens them. I'll be preparing the background grids next week, and will then mount the "intestines" and the animals.

It's been really interesting re-purposing my own older work and using wine foils in a new way (in addition to the collages I made for the alphabet book I published. 

Roundup in Woven Tale Press

I'm so pleased that Susan Apel wrote about my exhibit at AVA in her recent Roundup for Vermont and New Hampshire for Woven Tale Press.

We always need more writing and thinking about the visual arts, so this publication is a good thing, and much appreciated!

Buyer for Button Encasement

One of my favorite Button Encasements, Red Moon Rising, created in 2004, has gone to its new home. I took this piece to the Governor's Institute this year to show what can be done with layers.

Here's a closeup:

I find it very wonderful that the person who bought it had been thinking about getting a piece from this series for a very long time (maybe over ten years...) before she approached me. This is not the first time this has happened. I guess that's one of the wonderful things about staying in the same place for a long time and having many connections and history in the community. And that's good.