art history

70 Million by Hold Your Horses ! from L'Ogre on Vimeo.

Super funny video! How many artists and paintings do you recognize? I'll post the answers later.

figure drawing

I took a figure drawing class in the fall of 2008. I actually thought I was mediocre when it came to drawing the figure, but I quickly realized I had lost any skill I had acquired during my undergraduate figure drawing classes. Drawing is like a muscle and if you don't work it out you will certainly lose that muscle.

I tend to focus on line in all forms of art and that is obvious in my drawing. Hopefully my lines have a sense of energy and movement. I was focusing more on expressive line quality than accurately creating the illusion of 3 dimensional form. This wasn't necessarily by choice, as much as habit. I definitely have some bad drawing habits that I need to break. Even though I still need to work on my drawing skills, I am happy with the small collection of drawings that I have from this class.

Once upon a time...

Jeanne-Claude, 74, American artist and resident of New York City, died suddenly November 18, 2009 as a result of of complications due to a ruptured brain aneurysm.
Christo is deeply saddened by the passing of his wife, partner and collaborator and is committed to honor the promise they made to each other many years ago: The art of Christo and Jeanne-Claude will continue.
Christo is dedicated to completing their current works in progress: Over The River, Project for the Arkansas River, State of Colorado, and The Mastaba, Project for the United Arab Emirates, as Jeanne-Claude would wish.
Christo and Jeanne-Claude met in Paris, France in November, 1958, sharing the same date of birth and have worked together for 51 years creating temporary works of art.

(christojeanneclaude.net)

I am so saddened by this news. I love the artwork from Christo and Jeanne-Claude. I feel as though I have lost a close friend. I watched a documentary about their most recent project, The Gates, this weekend and it was so bittersweet to see Jeanne-Claude speak about the temporary character of their artwork. She explained that their artwork is temporary because it is an aesthetic decision to give love and tenderness to things that will not last. Jeanne-Claude compared this same experience to childhood and our own lives. She will be missed.

show off

Wow, I am the worst blogger ever. If blogging was more like eating candy I would be a lot better at it, but in my world of comparisons blogging is more like bowel movements, once a month. Yikes! I didn't think I could be worse at this but instead of writing about my art I'm focusing on poop. Moving on...

I love my iPhone, but I hate the gel-like cover a friend gave me to protect it. So I decided to sew a cute, soft, won't get stuck in my hair iPhone case. I love the bird button (you might recognize it from one of my coffee sleeve notebooks). I promised my girl Nini I'd make her one...two weeks ago...believe me I started it...I already bought the felt, cut it out, pinned it together and picked out some buttons. It's basically finished. Just give me about two-three more weeks of procrastination.

This is a linoleum relief print I created to show as an example to my Intro. to Art students while they were working on a similar project. It's a maneki neko kitty. Maneki neko are good luck cats that many Japanese shop owners put in their stores to promote good business. I discovered them while on vacation in Hawaii in 2005 with my mom. So now they make me think of her and I love them. I recently got her a chubbier, cartoonish version of a maneki neko while in Miami.

I know I've shown the peacock print already, but I had to feature it again because I recently entered it in the Juried Student Art Show at Lindenwood University and I won 2nd place in the Graduate printmaking category. oooo OOOO! I'm very proud. Although I'm also an idiot because I forgot to go to the opening and I wasn't present to accept my award (certificate).

I also submitted this drawing in the art show. I took Figure Drawing last semester and this was my most successful drawing from the entire course.

This is one of my natural fiber sculptures. The god's eye knot at both ends wasn't meant to be a focal point, but it did quickly become one. I was more interested with the linear quality of the wrapped reed and the space between, under, around, and through the individual pieces of reed. I created a series of these sculptures, but in the end I think this was the most successful piece.

These pieces are still on display at the Boyle Family Gallery inside the J. Scheidegger Center for the Arts on the Lindenwood University campus for another week or so.

(I don't know why I just tried to make that sound so awesome, the only 3 readers of this blog are Lindenwood alumni and you know how amazing it is to attend LU. Impressive right?)

loops

Recently I stumbled upon the paper sculptures of artist Johanna Burke while browsing through the website designspongeonline.com and I was immediately inspired.

The image below is a beautiful golden jungle that Burke has created using cut paper.

I don't want to mimic what Burke has created. I want to explore the use of paper to create a relief sculpture.

I'm going to use magazine pages (reduce, reuse, recycle) torn into strips and then formed into loops. The loops will then be attached to a piece of matte board to resemble the image below. This is an image from a book titled One Million Things. The book is a visual encyclopedia of literally one million things. The image is made from data collected from two telescopes and shows infrared waves, light waves, and ultraviolet waves. I'm not interested in "waves" I just think the image is beautiful.

Since my media is magazine pages, I had to search though dozens of magazines and find my pallette. I separated my colors into warm, cool, black, white, browns, and multi.

This is a sneak peek of my sculpture. I don't have much completed yet, but I really like it so far and had to give you a taste. So please let me know what you think.

And just for fun, this is my cat Andy. I'm not sure if he thinks he's helping or if he's waiting for me to turn the other direction so he can chew on my paper. Either way, it's good to have some companying while I'm working.

I will keep you updated as I continue to work on this piece.

purpose

I've decided to keep a blog to document my artwork.  I'm currently working on my Master's degree and it's forcing me (in a super productive, stellar way) to create.  So I promise to continuously post my current, in-progress, unfinished, sometimes finished and always original artwork.  I just ask that you give me some feedback.  Tell me you love it, hate it,  or want to marry it, but if I'm in need of a new direction speak your mind.

I'm obsessed with peacocks.  They're turning up in everything I create.  I recently got a peacock feather tattoo on my back; it's beautiful.  This is a print from a single cut linoleum.  I'm really happy with the way it turned out.  It's bold and graphic and I love searching for the peacock's head amongst all the eyes on the feathers.

The next 7 photos are earrings I made to sell at an art teacher conference I'm attending in the Lake of the Ozarks this weekend.  There's a cool session called Bizarre Bazaar, where any of the art teachers can sell or trade artwork they have created.  Cross your fingers and hope that someone buys these.

I love recycling and I'm trying to use recycled goods in my artwork.  These are really simple, recycled coffee sleeves turned into notebooks.

So what do you think?