Immaculate Canvas installation snapshots

Show entrance with Work It, mixed media on canvas, 2011

installation view: (L-R) Tribute Series pieces on shelves; Shineela; Shakayla—Yeah, Yeah, Yeah!

CeeGee!, acrylic & spray paint on linen, 4.75"x4.5", 2009 and
We Can Take It Slow, mixed media on canvas,  60"x72", 2012

Without a Doubt, acrylic & ink on canvas, 50" x 51", 2012

wall of drawings, 2010-2012

Porkchop Aspirations (Tribute Series), mixed media on canvas,  7"x8.5", 2012

Thank You, darling, mixed media on canvas, 4"x7.5", 2010Steppin' Out, mixed media on canvas, 8"x7", 2012
Oh, Calm Down. mixed media on canvas, 11.25"x7.5"x6", 2012(all from the Tribute Series)

Yes, But Try to Not..., mixed media on canvas, 80"x48", 2012
HutceeKa, mixed media on linen, 32"x33", 2011
You Know the Way, mixed media on canvas, 28"x35", 2011

Immaculate Canvas Opening

pianist Adam Marks, artist Kate Van Steenhuyse, vocalist Jennifer Beattie

Thank you to all who came out to celebrate the opening of Immaculate Canvas and to see the first *asterICT performers, Jen Beattie & Adam Marks. We had a wonderful event—thank you for your support.

If you missed us at the opening, the gallery will be open next weekend for the Final Friday gallery crawl. Stop by & see us!
NakedCity Gallery, 121 N Mead between Douglas & 1st Street

more images coming soon!

NakedCity Gallery Manager Lindsey Herkommer;  Work It, mixed media on canvas, 2011;  Kate Van Steenhuyse 

New American Paintings!

I'm in for the NAP West Edition! This edition was juried by Cassandra Coblentz of the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art:

Cassandra Coblentz is Associate Curator for the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art (SMoCA). A native of Los Angeles, Cassandra has spent her career all across the country, from L.A. to New York, and her years-long focus on museum education has largely informed her practice as a contemporary curator and how she approaches exhibition-making.


Read the full interview for her views on process, emerging work, and the importance of considering viewership when making curatorial decisions at the New American Paintings/Blog. 

Exciting stuff... should be out in the fall. Now I must pick 6 images & get the 'ol paperwork together.

About New American Painting:

Somewhat related notes on poetry

In an article titled "After the Drips" by Jerry Saltz in the April 4th issue of New York Magazine, Saltz says "A lot of the work in "Unpainted" is hard to take—even ugly. Some of it looks like junk. But much of it I love because it shows how fluid and uncanny beauty and form can be. Sit with the work here and you will find you are using you imagination more than  you eyes."

On a somewhat related note, I have recently been thinking about the kinship between painting & poetry.

I have never really been a fan of poetry but the more I look into it I think I've just been lazy about it.  My dear friend Colleen Sanders recently shared the article  "Laugh While You Can" by Kay Ryan with me that, though actually about poetry, is all about painting. I particularly love this passage:
Right now I am thinking of something unlikely that I saw a few days ago, the morning after my town had experienced a major winter flood. In the middle of a residential street, a cast iron manhole cover was dancing in its iron collar, driven up three or four inches by such an excess of underground water that it balanced above the street, tipping and bobbing like a flower, producing an occasional bell-like chime as it touched against the metal ring. This has much to say about poetry.
For I do not want to suggest in any way that this aquifer under poetry is something silly or undangerous; it is great and a causer of evry sort of damage. And I do not want to say either that he poem that prompts me to laughter is silly or light; no, it can be as heavy as a manhole cover, but it is forced up. You can see it would take an exquisite set of circumstances to ever get this right.

In terms of structure, layers, dangerous hilarity, undercurrents, and the role of the reader/viewer this article and how it can apply to painting make me giddy. The parallels of painting & poetry were originally introduced to me in college by professors Michael Byron & Julie Burleigh—but it's taken me this long to really delve into the idea.

And so, again on a somewhat related note, I leave you with one of my favorite poems of all time:
Poem, by Frank O'Hara
Lana Turner Has Collapsed!
I was trotting along and suddenly
it started raining and snowing
and you said it was hailing
but hailing hits you on the head
hard so it was really snowing and
raining and I was in such a hurry
to meet you but the traffic
was acting exactly like the sky
and sudenly I see a headline
LANA TURNER HAS COLLAPSED!
there is no snow in Hollywood
there is no rain in California
I have been to lots of parties
and acted perfectly disgraceful
but I never actually collapsed
oh Lana Turner we love you get up

"Not" installation at TSK!

For those who haven't had the extreme pleasure that is Tanya's Soup Kitchen, get over there!

Max is a fan!

Apple & Asafetida in painting!

Reading an article in the New Yorker about pastry chefs & the evolution of dessert & one particular passage was a great parallel to painting:

asafetida

"The key thing for a cook is to develop a library of flavors that you can recall. If I say to you, 'Apple & cinnamon,' you would click in immediately. 'Yes, apple! Yes, cinnamon!' The library of your mind contains that. But what if I say "Apple, asafetida'? Nothing! You have nothing stored there." He added slyly, "Now, this is a benefit to the chef, because if I do apple and cinnamon and you don't like it you think there's something wrong with me, but if I do apple and asafetida and you don't like it there's something wrong with you." He laughed briefly, professionally. "The development of a pastry chef is not the development of techniques. It is the slow, careful development of a catalogue of savors and flavors, which you can develop the way you develop muscles. There is a logic in every dessert worth eating. Consider the logic of white peach and rich cheese. We must be conditioned not by sight but only by flavor, the tongue, the nose, and the feel in the mouth."

Really?, mixed media on paper, 2009

An artist who really wants to push her/himself and make something new must develop a cache of flavors as well... but in doing that cannot just "paint" apple & cinnamon over & over again. Doing apple & cinnamon over & over makes you a baker/crafter/artisan not a true artist. I love apple & cinnamon but that combo isn't going to teach me anything. Apple & asafetida? I have no idea what the hell that is. That is exciting. As an artist, it's my job to push comfort zones stretch our collective ideas of "flavors" because only by letting new information & experience into our lives do we grow & learn as individuals & as a society.

There is a logic in every artwork worth experiencing. However, if you approach said artwork with your own apple/cinnamon baggage, your experience will be that much more skewed. However, if an artist can present you with apple & asafetida, then you are forced to approach like a child & take in something new. What a beautiful thing... if we were really able to take in new experience like a child & notice our own processing with freshness!

installation photos

"...i know you" exhibition at Bob Schwan Studios with Trish Higgins Fine Art!
thanks again to all for your support. The larger pieces are all from a couple years ago, the smaller works ongoing from the past 2 years. The items in the drawing installation include brand new works on paper and canvas, drawings, studio scraps, and important pieces of writing—some extending back almost a decade. 

...Leads to Blue, Aneblefa, Kagren (top pink), Ceegofi (bottom yellow), MaJoot, Ofeko

...Ahh, Yes, Muhunse, ...Leads to Blue

Spirmak (top), Ooorapa (bottom)

...Ah, Yes, Murhunse, ...Leads to Blue, Aneblefa, Kagren, Ceegofi

Kaypowla

Drawing installation in the loft

Drawing installation in the loft

Drawing installation & a painting so new it doesn't have a title yet

Drawing installation

Two brand new, currently untitled, paintings

Drawing installation

Drawing installation including email with the best passage about intuition (*see below for text)

Akka, Ahhbwak in the drawing installation

drawing on velum, shark illustration, Moo-i, and note from Amy Sillman lecture that says "stop trying to finish every painting the moment you start one"

*Definition of intuition: from a Williams Alumni Magazine.  
Mike Glier '75, Studio Art

Being creative in the studio requires a kind of mental state that is sometimes referred to as right-brain thinking. Some call it intuition, but I don’t like that word because it makes it sound as if a creative state of mind is mysterious, as if it’s sent to you from above. That’s total baloney. Being creative in the studio is an intellectual process that’s not verbal. It’s a very synthetic process wherein your brain is constantly comparing your sensory awareness of the moment to your memory of similar moments in the past. It’s not a verbal comparison; it’s happening at a nonverbal level. And you’re able to react to the problem of the moment very spontaneously, without a verbal engagement. Then later, you go back to language. You switch back to the left brain and do a critical analysis of what you’ve done.

Mike Glier, May 3, 2006, 58°F, N42º 52.635, W 73º 20.717 (The Garden)

Watch for KayPowla coming to a gallery near you in September!

details to come... stay tuned!

KayPowla detail
KayPowla, 2010

acrylic, graphite, spray paint, ink on canvas

60" x 72"

NYC studio visit

Ryan and I went into the city to show some paintings from 2007/2008. It was great fun to get everything up in the same room again. Thanks Lisha for letting us take over your studio for those few days! Here are some installation shots:

Green Line Cafe show & a couple really dorky pics of me!

Akka & Rewagga

Seracoo, MaJoot, Ula & Nablan