This is my fourth year on the Greater Ithaca Art Trail, and all 41 studios will be open 11 AM - 5 PM the next two weekends, Oct. 11-12 and 18-19. For more information, visit my GIAT listing.
You can also download a map and studio guide.
For a preview of what's on the Greater Ithaca Art Trail, please visit the current exhibit at the State of the Art Gallery. I have two sculpted prints in this show.
Hope you can stop by!
A different take on combining drawings and digital prints, using the same computer-generated fractal as my last post, this time obscured by a sculpted drawing layered on top. 24" H x 12" W.
I produced this small study (12" x 12") at the end of a week off from work dedicated to art-making. I started the week off by refining a fractal-generating program that I wrote a few years ago (using Processing). I ran the program many times and printed the most interesting images on heavy photo stock. See the first photo just below for one of these images. Then, these prints were subjected to my usual manipulations -- cutting and folding and embroidery -- followed by mounting on wood. The layout of this particular piece gave me a lot of trouble, but I think it fell into place nicely in the end. Just another reminder that creativity works in mysterious ways....
This piece was inspired by a number of works currently on view at the Johnson Museum at Cornell University: prints by Stella (Frank), Vasarely (Victor), and Albers (Anni), as well as contemporary art quilts from the collection of John M. “Jack” Walsh. I've also been thinking about Malevich and the suprematists; can you tell?
Here, I'm departing a bit from my recent line of thinking, which has been about fluidity, ambiguity, and uncertainty. This piece is more of an expression of confidence and optimism, using the vocabulary of mid-century graphic design that informed my earlier work. No matter; I like to try on different hats from time to time. Besides, it's a chance for me to practice folding the more densely articulated pattern that I worked out in my last blog post.
Here is bunch of new work, all based on ink pen drawings that were then scanned, printed, folded, photographed at grazing incidence, photoshopped, reprinted, refolded, collaged, and embellished with thread. The triptych Over and Over will be included in next month's show at CSMA, entitled Drawn, curated by Arthur Whitman. For me, these pieces evoke the formation of knowledge, from the broad outlines of myth, through the optimism of reason, to a frenetic overload of information.
This sprawling piece is made of scraps from other projects. To me, the point of this collage is not in the individual elements, but in their organization and arrangement in space, somewhat like icons on a webpage. The randomness of the material also reflects the disparateness and plurality of information that is available today. Each element refers to a separate work that I have made in the past, but the fragments are now linked into a larger, boundaryless whole.
I find myself making works in series these days. Visual material that I may edit out of one piece will be rearranged and incorporated into a different piece. I think it's my way of erasing the boundary that separates one piece from another, of sidestepping the idea of a unitary work of art. It allows me to step outside the frame.
One series that I am particularly pleased with is shown below, entitled Memory of a Cold Winter. The images are based on photographs taken last January and February, during a long, difficult stretch of sub-zero temperatures, when beautiful ice crystals would form on the windows during the night. I took lots of pictures looking through those windows at dawn, with the ice gleaming in the sunlight. I reworked those pictures in Photoshop, printed them on heavy paper, and began cutting, folding, and assembling them into these sculptural collages.
