Flowers, Fake Grass, and Acid City

I began the two paintings below last semester.  They were originally part of six panels that I planned to be a cohesive series but three became individual paintings of houses, one turned into a weird chair painting, and these two branched out on their own.  They kept inching closer and closer towards each other on the wall, gradually turning into the pair they are today.

Stage 1

 Holy Patriotism!  Muse ease up the red…

Stage 2

Whew.. The blue calmed things down a bit.  What's up with the smoke/clouds above the grass?  I don't know…just seemed like the thing to do.

Stage 3

The flowers got some work today.  It's coming along, not as quickly as I would like but I've got two museum gigs this summer so studio time is less than ideal (learning that efficiency is the key).  But just because I am at work does not mean the making comes to a halt, it means the Acid City series is growing.  Who says you can't make art with limited resources…office supplies rule.

Step into my time machine, fast forward a month and real flowers/fake grass is complete!

Still Here

It's been a busy summer…I've still been making work…didn't want you to think I'd been slackin' off.

 The Acid City series is still chugging along.

I moved.  Yesterday was the first day I painted in the new place - two thumbs up on the digs.  Above is a re-work of a painting I did last year.  It used to look like this…

Moving means exploring new scenery and there's no need to go far.  This busy pole lives just beyond my roof.  It looked like this today at 7am, 12:30pm, and 7pm.  I consider looking at the sky part of working in the studio.  It's just as important as the painting part.

Hammock Time

So I'm sitting smack dab in the middle of my return from an artist residency and my upcoming grad school adventure.  I'm in the process of sorting all of the stellar experiences from Connecticut while at the same time preparing myself to be completely wide open to TCU.  It's an interesting place to be - I feel like the best thing to do is tie one end of a hammock to the rez and the other end to school and just relax in the middle for the time being.  And this is what it looks when I make work in that frame of mind...

 new york had an effect on me

 house factory

double double

And of course life wouldn't be complete without janky stop motions...

delish

dang.

Weir Farm: Day Thirteen

Lucky day #13, my last full day here at Weir Farm.  It's cold and wet but the rain held out long enough this morning to take one last walk through the woods.  The sweet girl above and I hung out for a bit.  She grazed, I stared, she stared, I took her photo…we kinda just shrugged our shoulders at each other like, "Hey."

This experience has truly been amazing-I feel full and like the other residencies I've done, I'll leave here changed in a unique way that I could have never planned.  What I take away from Weir Farm is a sense of quiet.  The plaque above the Weir Home entry says it best, "Here shall we rest and call content our home".

Here is the work I did during my stay...

Path Through Field, acrylic, 24.5"x51"

Weir Farm Guest Room, acrylic, 20.5"x50"

Livestock Pens, acrylic, 12"x18"

The Deer and the Little Girl Story, acrylic on cardboard, 9"x12"

Stones, acrylic on cardboard, 9"x12"

Sparrow on Stones, acrylic on cardboard, 9"x12"

8 Flavored Houses 1 Wall (above) 13 Flavored Houses 1 Wall (below), collage & acrylic on cardboard, 9"x12"

12 Wooden Houses, collage & acrylic on cardboard, 9"x12"

3 Wooden Houses 3 Tree Houses, collage & acrylic on cardboard, 9"x12"

5 Tree Houses, collage & acrylic on cardboard, 9"x12"

Weir Farm: Day Twelve

 Good morning baby ferns!

Moss, looking nice today as always.

 So good to see you Butterfly.

 (Made this.)

For walk #2 of the day I went peeking into spaces.  Above is a corn crib, which is a term new to me.  Below is looking inside of the Mahonri Young sculpture studio.

Weir Farm: Day Ten

Today was a rainy day in the woods but there was a break just long enough in the weather for a morning walk.  My mission - photograph some rain drops.  Check.  And…

 Baby fern photo shoot #3.

Tree alien.

This thing is real folks.  I swung by the Visitor Center to see if the park rangers knew what it was.  Lichen, a fruit perhaps?  I'm 100% sure what it is…a brain eating alien.  Or a cool Christmas ornament. 

Part of the tour I took on my second day included visiting J. Alden Weir's personal studio.  Wait…side note:  I may have neglected to mention that J. Alden Weir (the Weir in Weir Farm Artist Residency) was an American impressionist painter who purchased the land in the late 19th century.  Many of his paintings come from this environment.  This is the only National Park dedicated to American painting.

Carrying on…the ceiling of Weir's studio is painted a beautiful blue with metal stars scattered about.  Today on my walk I looked down and my feet were standing in tiny green stars (a.k.a. moss of some sort) which instantly reminded me of the studio stars.  Below are the stars I experienced today with the photo I took of the studio ceiling several days ago.

Speaking of studios…that is where I spent the rest of my day.  The rain came down all afternoon so I couldn't  procrastinate by escaping outdoors.  I finished the two larger paintings and made a weird Acid City collage/painting. 

Weir Farm: Day Eight

Gooooooood morning Wilton!  

(Please note: I totally have a robot hand.)  

Today I got straight down to bidness.  Above, the path with strewn about straw got some solid time and below, the indoor/outdoor situation got a forest.

And 13 flavored houses.

Then some decisions had to be made…

I literally had to think long and hard on this one, if I had pen and paper I would've done a pros/cons list.  On this day, the waterfall won out but only because I promised myself I would do the rock walk tomorrow.  Win/win.

I found a nice forest shank.  

And you know what is probably the cutest thing on the planet?

  

Baby.  Ferns.

Weir Farm: Day Seven

Three major things happened today: 

1.  I made some work.

2.  I went to the grocery store.

3.  It was confirmed that I will be going to the American Museum of Natural History on Sunday.

 I began a painting with the below photo collage as reference.

 Sparrow on rocks is finito.

 I brought the flavored houses with me, about 200 hundred of them in fact.  If Acid City was built in Connecticut, it would look like this...