I was included in an article on drawing in the Spring edition of the wonderful Elephant arts and culture magazine. I found a copy of the article online. You can read it HERE.
It is a fantastic article, and I feel very honored to be included with such amazing artists!
What started as an experiment has turned into something much more. Tired of copying from photographs, and wanting to draw something from life, I started setting up still lifes. I grabbed whatever was handy in my studio: pretty fabric, skulls, fake plastic daggers, etc…
It didn’t interest me to draw them using charcoal, I really wanted to work primarily with line. So instead I picked up a pen. I did not use a pencil, only a pen. If I messed up, I either tried to incorporate the “mistake” into the piece, or I started over. Who knew pen drawings could be so liberating! Once the mark is down, you can’t touch it. No going back, only forward. When I was using charcoal, I was forever fussy and smudging the charcoal over the same spots over and over and over again.
Below are 3 drawings that I have done. 2 have progression shots, showing what the drawing looked like as I built things up and started to introduce color. I know color! Say what?! My art has been devoid of color for like a decade and here it is casually sauntering into my drawings. I also started to use toned paper, which never would have happened with my charcoal drawings. Pure white was always the way to go, no ifs, ands, or buts. And I am also using white charcoal! I know! White charcoal?! I would NEVER EVER use white charcoal in my charcoal drawings. Just the thought makes me shiver.
All photos were taken under track lighting with my iPhone, which makes a not-so very great photo, but good enough to share here.
The wonderful Dana Maier invited me to be a part of the great “Chain Letter” show in the Boston gallery Samson Projects. I couldn’t send up one of my existing pieces (way too big of an undertaking to ship) so I made a small piece just for the show. Here’s what I made:
I especially like the touch of the rounded frame. I hope it arrived safely (I forgot about the concept of delivery confirmation).
I Googled the show and found a blog with photos of the event. It looks like a mad house! I didn’t see my piece in any of the photos, but what are the chances when over 700 pieces are on display! Looks like this show was very much in the spirit of MAP’s annual Out of Order show. Wish I was in Boston so I could have seen the mayhem in person!
The Goucher college online school newspaper, the quindecim online, published a piece on the “Once Upon a Time show.” You can read it here.
On another note, my friend Regina Tumesella is having a solo show at the Creative Alliance. The opening is tomorrow night from 5:30 to 7:30. You should come!
Wolcott, 2011
I won’t be ashamed to admit that anytime my art appears on the BmoreArt blog I get incredibly giddy. Cara Ober came to the opening reception for the Once Upon a Time show at Goucher and took some great photos. You can see them here.
See if you can spot the man in the beret!
I am working on an ongoing drawing project where I am using museum postcards as my reference. So far I have about 5 of them and I can imagine creating maybe 50 more. Through this project I have discovered the joys of working small. You can finish work faster and move on to something new the next week! Having created only large drawings for a long time (drawings that are time consuming just because of their size), it is refreshing to be able to create work faster.
Another aspect of the project that is fun, is trying to capture the gestures of each artist while using a different medium than the original work. Also, since all of the work has been considerably reduced in size to fit on a postcard, this causes mark making to be more tricky. For example, Pissarro was a very gestural painter. To try and capture that gesture, but at such a tiny scale, is an exciting challenge.
I will eventually start adding them to my website. For now, here are two for you to see:
The “Once Upon a Time…” show opens at Goucher tomorrow night. The opening is from 6 to 8pm at the Silber Gallery. I hope to see you there!
Here are some photos from the installation day.
View of Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum and Rochelle Abramowitz installing their work.
View of my work installed next to Libby Barbee’s piece “In Search of the Myth.”
It is a wonderfully eclectic group of work and I am very excited to be a part of it!
Working on a new drawing in the studio. In this picture I am drawing toes. Very small toes are hard to draw. Thankfully I am not the type of realist artist interested in drawing very small toenails.
This is the first posted picture of part of my studio. Yes, the walls are pink. I like pink. I am a girl, it is acceptable. A colored wall also helps the paper not blend in with the wall. The chair next to me belonged to my mother. It used to go to the vanity table she had as a little girl. I now use it to stand and sit on when doing larger drawings. I think it adds to the drawing experience.
