Summer Holiday

I'm away from the studio this week and next so I have no process shots to share. Instead  I thought I'd share an image from last summer at this time, when I was installing work at Kiang, Atlanta. Next week I'll post gallery highlights from summer shows in NY.

Happy 4th -- This does not feel like Wednesday.

Some people think of painting as a window on the world. These paintings are windows on the wall. I'm playing with the relationship of canvas to plexi, thus the small build canvas sitting on the top edge. Not much more today - it's a holiday. Happy Independence y'all!

New Modular

Thirty newly painted red and creamy panels. They had a hard time coming into the world but they're here at last. Fifteen red and fifteen cream. They will spend their time leaning,resting,and languishing in various formations. Their energy comes not only from their color but also lies beneath their surfaces, which carry the very subtle memory of trial and error.

a new build painting

Cheap Entertainment

The flat screen mounts are a signifier for cheap entertainment, which made me think of optical illusions.They're a corny substitute for TV.  I painted this on acrylic film which is wrapped around a canvas.

This is an optical illusion, too, but it doesn't work unless the image is flat. The illusions need the support of the canvas, even though the paintings don't

New Modulars (sketch)

These are the new frames, built with holes every two inches allowing for many more outcomes than the previous modulars. The last iteration of this project had two holes on each frame's edge, so that there were only four possible relationships between any two panels. Now, the grid is under siege with the promise of unexpected, even contingent results.

This project has always discouraged a singular vision, insisting instead on options that allow it to respond to existing architectures. But now order is being threatened and I'm uncomfortable. The panels can stand as free bodies on their own as long as they are in groups, but I keep them pushed against the wall, lest they forget their roots.

They're like erector sets and the great thing about them is they encourage creative play. Ultimately I'd like to present this opportunity to the viewer by designing a piece durable enough to be assembled and disassembled during exhibition. 

AWFFLE HOUSE SPECIAL

Drop two hash browns, one smothered, peppered, and capped.

This siding once clad the garage that became my studio two years ago. It was old and dirty and painted white. I still have scraps in my studio that I may do something with one day. I thought it would be great to strip it down and then have it chrome plated. I imagined going to the plating shop where all the guys go to have their vintage headlights and bumpers carefully restored. I'd walk in beaming with my mangled pieces of aluminum. I would feel the same pride in my siding that they felt with their '49 Town and Countries and '29 Caddies, willing to pay the big bucks, because triple chrome plating is the way to go if you care about your details and I do. I really do. And I did, but in the end the job was bad and it blistered within a few days. So I went the elegant route, one silver (au naturel) and one gold*. Sure it takes maintenance to keep the mirror finish buffed up like the side of a tanker, but hun,  it's worth it. The other painting is smothered with gold powder coating, peppered with metallic flecks and capped with an extra shiny clear coat.



*Makes me think of Burl Ives, which makes me feel safe, but a little sad because Rudolf is a lonely story and the North Pole is desolate even in puppet land, and a Jewish kid watching Rudolf TRNR feels more than a little like Rudolf right down to the hero fantasy.

A View From The Easel

Check out my studio on Hyperallergic

It might look like a giant fruit roll-up, but I was really thinking about a big, hot 32" plasma TV.

Summer is here!

I started this blog because I thought you might like to see some process shots as I go into summer studio mode. This week I've been working on what was conceived to be a long, low wall of canvases. The canvases and paint work like bricks and mortar, grouped modularly to be reconfigured at will. Today I was thinking of opulence so it became a column. The way these pieces play out depends on considerations of the site. Tomorrow it might be a wall again, or a group of posts or a bench.

In the background are two sections of aluminum siding left over from my studio renovation. I stripped one section and buffed it to a mirror sheen and powder coated the other section with metallic gold. The idea was to refer to paint as a covering -- so this piece is naked/dressed, stripped/coated, buff/covered, etc. I also wanted to play around with a common tendency to extravagantly decorate worthless garbage in order to make it look "classy."