30 Sketches Project VII

     Anybody out there? Is this thing on...testing one, two, three. It's been a long, long while since I've thrown out my work and words to the world here. Much has happened and through it all the studio has remained busy. The last year or so I've felt like keeping my work on the quieter side. I am happy to have some shows lined up and I keep my website up to date for the most part.
     The desire to leave my studio crypt to share a current project must mean I haven't turned into a complete hermit. I am on Day Nine of a 30 sketches project which you can check out here: https://30sketchesproject.blogspot.com. Ok...I am going back underground.

Thesis Show Preview

83 days left of grad school - can I get an amen?!  Graduation = Thesis Show (eh-ghads!).  My show runs from April 11-15th, 2016.  Below is a preview...(Side note:  gotta couple of wild cards not shown that might make the cut.)

You're all invited!!!

Blueprints, graphite and colored pencil on tracing paper

The Story of the Purple Vitrine, collage and oil on wood panel

Urns on Auction Day, collage and oil on wood panel

From the Property of a Gentleman (six 6"x6"), mixed media 

Lot 19 (fifteen 13"x11"), mixed media

This Space Has Worth (three 13"x11"), plaster, wood, acrylic, plexi, and found objects

In-progress: 24 urn collages mounted on masonite and covered with plexi glass.  

In-progress: urn oil painting on wood panel.  

Urns Gone Wild

So this is what you get when you mix imagery of urns and 6"x6" test panels with plaster, graphite, colored pencil, acrylic paint, and some tracing paper.  It is a continuation of the vitrine idea on a smaller scale.  I am obsessed with the notion than an object can encapsulate a specific space giving it greater value and/or sacredness than the space outside of its parameters.  It began with the structure of the home, then moved to vitrines, and smaller still to urns.  The plan is to build boxes to place these pieces within not only as a framing/display device but also for portability and protection.

Wrapping up the month of March!

2015 is flying by. Not long ago this worried me greatly - I saw the time slipping through my fingers like sand and I wasn't ready to speed through this grad school experience so quickly. I think differently now. I welcome you summer break, I welcome you with open arms. Here's some work...

Interior Exterior, oil, 22"x16"

Real Fake, oil, 22"x16"

Haunted, oil, 22"x16"

Here are more houses with yards...

Green Houses With Yards, colored pencil, 11"x8.5"

Blue Houses With Yards, colored pencil, 11"x8.5"

Sometimes you just need to sand off a painting.

That felt great.

Last week I began to feel up to my eyeballs in house paintings and a bit (lot-o-bit) like I was loosing direction. I interpreted that to mean I needed to pull the work together in order to edit it down, write an exhibition proposal for the series, and seek out a venue to show the work...so that is what began in the studio today. At the moment it looks like a garage sale.  I am hoping that will change.

Spring Break=More Work

I need a spring break from my spring break because apparently I am incapable of enduring leisure time. Time off from class translates into taking up the art making a notch.   Exhibit A:  I reworked the painting below.  

Last semester it was this…

And now it is this...

The damn Honeycomb House is complete.  Or is it?

I've always found it to be an odd thing that to get to a finished painting like this one...

 it took all of this...

 I've started to make small colored pencil house drawings that make me go mathematically crazy.

And the 6 panels are coming along. 

The End.

Less words, more pictures.

If you spend too much time analyzing what you are compelled to make, chances are you'll talk yourself out of making it because...let's face it, as creative humans we tend to think up some really weird shit.  So I will be minimal with the words to describe the most recent studio haps.

Stage One:  The urge to make specific shapes emerges.

Stage Two:  Panels are built and aerial maps are drawn onto surface.

(Side note:  In keeping with the home theme, the criteria for choosing the aerial maps is as follows - I found my address in other states on Google Maps.)  

Stage Three:  Add color to maps.

Stage Four:  Make maps appear less map-like.

Stage Five:  Stuff just starts getting weird.  That means I'm on the right track.  I'll continue to post the progress on these dudes.

Above is the painting that will never end.

House family.

This is what happens when you lasercut Bukowski's Bluebird poem.

 I am obsessed with couches.

 I put the above painting through the table saw and it became this painting...

Construction Zone.

Guess what…I'm still making houses.  Above is a collage on crumbly wallpaper made from paint samples.  Below is an oil pastel drawing in a dang handmade (my hands) frame.

I'm back on the wallpaper train y'all.  The top collage is made from old wallpaper samples and I am affectionately calling it garbage art and below you can witness another garbage art masterpiece in the works.

And finally, the top drawing was done with pastels, graphite, and oil pastels on a portion of butcherpaper that was on my drawing table and below is the beginning stage of a painting I'm calling the Honeycomb House. Excuse me…I've got to get back to work.

Grad School: First week. Second semester.

View from a rooftop in Bushwick.

Semester Dos had a pretty epic kickoff - NYC baby!  The trip was a success - everyone made it back alive and we collected morsels of inspiration to savor for a very long time.  The days were cram-jammed with gallery, museum, and studio visits.  It was a whirlwind of awesome, all done in frozen tundra-like conditions.

Let's take this NYC biz back into the studio - how can that insane city fit into my work?  I saw an apartment with potted plant-filled windowsills which overlooked the most unnatural landscape.  In front of every residential building were countless browning, discarded, and undecorated Christmas trees mixed in with the garbage.  The lines between public and private environments are stretched as thin as humanly possible.  Spaces are built within spaces then stacked on top of more spaces.  As we were being hustled along in a crowded coffee shop my friend said, "there's just nowhere to be", which I think is a perfect description of New York.  It's as if you have to remain in motion because there is no room to stand still.

I find it all fascinating and revolting and energizing - so I am making a painting about it.  Here's the progress...

stage one

stage two

stage three

stage four

While the paint dries on the NYC painting, I have a couple of other projects in the works.  I got my mitts on some badass wallpaper scraps.  They are old and dirty and crumble at the slightest touch and I love them.  What does one do with such greatness?  Well...you laminate and layer them, you glue them to wood panels, and you cut them into squares, stack, and hang them of course.

Then it's on to researching and drawing the house.  I scored some amazing books in New York, Funeral for a Home and Playing at Home:  The House in Contemporary Art, and the stack of books wasn't high enough in the studio so I hit up TCU's library and found Rural Studio.  I am absolutely in love with the chapel-like space that serves as a connector for smaller living spaces.  It is that particular space that has my undivided attention at the moment.

from Rural Studio 

from Rural Studio