A Passion For Creativity

Recycling…considering the process

An 18″ x 20″ collage created from recycled paperboard which is part of the Arvin Green Arts Festival Juried Show in Arvin, California,  May 16-17, 2009.

More than fifty people participated, ages three to eighty seven, to create this feathered 5′ x 36 ” image at the South Fork School Arts Festival. A great mix of individual style. We’ve got color!  This mural and the one from last year remain at the school.

You are looking at the group mural from the 2008 Arts Festival. We’ll be creating another one this Saturday April, 18th, 1:00 PM-7:00 P M. at South Fork School, 5225 Kelso Valley Rd. Weldon. The Arts Festival also has art exhibits and other workshops, plus great music, and food to fill your belly. The day is geared toward kids, but all ages are invited to participate. Come be creative!!  Here’s the whole fishy story for the Mural. Hint, this year we will be flying instead of swimming!

Envision walking through a downtown arts district on a Friday night with open, brightly lit gallery spaces, featuring contemporary art, interspersed with conversation and thrumming music flowing from aromatic coffee shops and ethnic sidewalk restaurants. Sounds stimulatingly cosmopolitan, doesn’t it?

Bakersfield is probably not there yet, but I sure got the sense it’s heading in that direction after reading the Spring 2009 issue of ArtLook, the Arts District and Community e-Newsletter which popped into my mail box yesterday. Designed, compiled, and distributed by my friend, artist/gallery owner Jill Thayer, ArtLook showcases the galleries and the upcoming visual art events in downtown Bakersfield. The colorful, photo-filled, 8-page newsletter spotlights particular galleries and ends with a listing of gallery venues available. You can download your own copy of Artlook on Jill’s site. Oh, and while you are taking in the downtown art scene, don’t forget to check out a favorite restaurant, Mama Roomba, serving Caribbean food.

a clipping from ArtLook -listing galleries.

My work is included in this exhibit 

10TH INTERNATIONAL MINIART EXCHANGE MEXICO

Cultural Center Acasolo at the School of Architecture, 

University Autónoma in Monterrey, Nuevo León, Mexico

March 25 to April 23, 2009.

 My contribution for the Surrealism Festival

Showing now at the Mistlin Gallery, 1015 J Street, Modesto, California. March 3-26, 2009. Organized by the Modesto Art  Museum.

It’s Untitled. Any ideas for a title?

“Writing on the wall is not allowed here,” said the museum attendant as he walked toward me. “Ahh, but I’m not writing on the wall,” was my response. “ I’m writing on a piece of paper on top of a brochure on top of a catalog. It’s not going through to the wall at all.” “Yes, personally I don’t care, but it’s still not permitted” he replied.

“Ok! Got it. Sorry!”

That was earlier this week as I was taking some notes on a sculpture titled  DYBY, by Magdalena Abakanowicz. It’s part of the permanent collection at Weatherspoon Art Museum at The University of North Carolina in Greensboro. I’d forgotten how much I admire her work, until, turning a corner; I saw it at the end of a hallway in front of a window. Abakanowicz’s style is immediately recognizable to me, familiar. The strength of her work always wrenches my gut. The headless, life-size or larger figures she creates never fail to spark a mental/emotional, questioning inner dialog about our human existence.

What Abakanowicz verbalizes about art and imagination is also notable. Here’s the last paragraph as written on the museum wall’s description plaque next to DYBY.

Interestingly, if someone asked me to list artistic influences, her name would not immediately come to mind. It took seeing her work again to remind me that if my figurative paintings speak  honestly, it’s partly due to experiencing her work.

Come to think of it, how do people come up with those “artists who have influenced me” lists so quickly?  I’d have to think long and hard to put one together. In a way, everything we admire, everything that affects us, leaves an imprint on some internal level.

This image sums up my initial impressions of virtual networking. It’s a digital work I created for Valentine’s Day and sent out. The art is based on two scanned collages, edited, combined, and reworked– layer within layer within layer. Let’s call it digital collage. I love the possibilities and discoveries when manipulating computer imagery. 

Remember the brown lunch bag taped on the back of your desk chair in elementary school on Valentine’s Day? Then on the teacher’s signal we’d all walk around with our fistfuls of heart and cuddly bear cards and play mailman. All the while keeping a watchful sideways eye on that cute kid as he neared your desk to see if he dropped one in your bag. Even then it caused me to ponder what “friend” meant when receiving cards from kids I barely spoke to. “Oh, I didn’t even know they liked me.”  Or not.

Now through artist blogs and virtual social networking sites such as Facebook, I’m connected to close friends and family, but also to people I’ve never met. It’s fascinating. It’s weird. It’s engaging. Once again, it has me pondering what the word friend means. 

The web has redefined “friend”. Plus, I’ve been prompted to brush on my foreign language skills, usually through translation sites such as lexicool.com.  I’m humbled by foreigners’ command of English.

What’s all this rambling have to do with creativity? Back to the image.

mail art stamp created from my collage

The only time I really feel productive is when I’m creating art.

There, I said it!

So much of this art business is…well…business oriented. There is office work: the bookkeeping; record keeping; ordering supplies, printing brochures and such; mailing out info to individuals and shows; shipping or transporting work to individuals and shows; keeping up my resume and artist’s statement; documentation of artwork; photographing works to update my web site with images and info—although I do work with a great web designer; reading art newsletters, not only about new artists’ calls, but also by other artists and what’s happening out there in the art world at large; then there’s the daily maintenance in other areas of my life.

I’ve read different estimates of how much time a working artist should put toward art business in order to “make it”, with some numbers as high as 60% of an artist’s time.

This greatly depends on how much an artist is willing to outsource. Because of costs, and a general pickiness, I also tend to stretch many of the canvasses, and do the matting /framing.  With the current uncertain economy many artists may have to re-evaluate what can be done “in house”.

Much of what I’ve included in the list above is enjoyable to me. Yet there is usually a nagging sense that I’m missing something. Even as I’m typing this, there’s the shouldn’t you be drawing something instead? feeling. This is how it is, a balancing act between the making of art and the rest of my life. And yes, I will go draw and then I’ll do the dishes.

Friday morning bird mask