installed images.

 

How cool is this work by Andrea Mastraveto.

BTW I am in a show....

Opening over but show up for almost 2 months. Go see it if yo are in PA.
Details here.
and hopefully pictures soon here.

not.

I am not dead just so busy and overwhelmed. I gave myself permission to have 2 whole weeks off.
But good news, good stuff, and good studio days to share next week.

poetry in the banal.

The work of Zhang Enli just feels a lot a like poetry.

A poem that you don't totally understand but which simultaneously breaks your heart and makes you grateful to be alive.

I really love this work.

See more here.

I am really wanting to explore some word work again. It feels like a good direction instead of treading water. But not sure what I want to say...

thread, candy and prolificness

I feel like this work is kind of all over the place and I am not sure how to write about it unless I were to focus on one or 2 works. None the less the work of Shane Waltener is interesting.
Conceptually driven the subjects vary from honoring the dead, the history of craft and a work in homage of an aunt.

Her installations are mostly some variety of thread installation but also include explorations on cake and sugar graffiti.

Her drawings and earlier wall works are lovely to say the least.

No cohesive statement and an annoying to navigate website. But lots of great art works to find. I will let you wade through and come to your own conclusions. See here.

in print.

A little more then a week ago I got an email from a gallery I worked with some years ago...unbenownst to me they had published a catalogue for the exhibit and the publisher was no longer going to make them so last chance to buy.

I bought one and was surprised to find a very well done catalogue arrive at my door. The curator wrote very eloquently about my work and that is always so wonderful to have done. When a curator or critic cans peak about your work in a way that you feel is accurate and meaningful it makes one feel like your work is actually a successful communication.

Eventually I will get around to scanning and appropriately posting the pages but you probably can read the little bit under my bio here. (if you click on the pic it will get bigger.)

I am in such a funny state. I so much want to be once again showing and being written about and all that wonderful stuff. But my footing with my work feels so disconnected.  I guess when you feel truly done with a series that is what happens. I actually remember when I finished undergrad feeling a lot this way. I was done with the work, I had exhibited it, and that just felt so final.  But in truth I need to get off my lazy butt and try to get some of that work out there as it is great work even if I have emotionally moved on to whatever comes next.

 

 

I love the simple exploration of lines in these works by Audrey Stone.  She is conceptually driven by lines, lace, the grid, and so many other things but in the end I just want to be lost in the line.

Kind of like the paintings and pencil works of Agnes Martin, they are best left without words and simply looked upon and into.

 

FYI all the works have thread and drawing in them.

See more.

share, words

I feel like psychologically I am in a strange place. All artists and all people must visit these places during life--- but it is uncomfortable.

I am happier in some ways then I have been in years but scared and confused by that very happiness- mainly of letting my "art career" be neglected. While in NY I was so focused on my art it flourished but my relationships, my finances and the rest of my soul suffered. If I wanted to  live in a vacuum of my art that would have been ok. But I do not.

So now I am able to financially be self-sufficient- which is a huge confidence builder and empowering experience- but it leaves so much less time and energy for my studio life. Simultaneously because of moving my community of artist friends has shrunken to a paltry size (at least ones that I can see and hear in real life and real time.) This makes me want to spend the time I do have to create community and dialogue -something I fall more and more in love with doing as the days and experiences go buy.

As I get older, continue to be mama and all that stuff- I wonder what the purpose of being so insulated and isolated in the studio is?  I feel the urge to find a way to make my art more about the very community and dialogue that I yearn for.  Also starting to feel the urge to find a studio outside of the home if I can find a way to afford it.

But then I wonder where does sewing fit into all of that? Does it? As an artist who is pretty conceptually driven at all times and who always starts with an autobiographical seed-as my life changes my work changes and it is all in such flux now.

In NY maybe because it is so large and at times overwhelming it made sense and was easy to make work about my little insulated world of the domestic but now in a community that needs to feel more of a sense of community, in my opinion, it feels selfish and unimportant to focus on my small world.

so many rambling thoughts, so many questions.  Such a deep desire to make and share but such uncertainty of what it is I want to share.

glitch

woven blankets inspired by the "glitch" by Phillip Stearns.