Adria Arch

Swept into NYC yesterday for an art fix, a one-day whirlwind of MOMA and the Whitney. Highlights at MOMA included the Daniel Ortega exhibit. Some pieces were hilarious and poetic: the room with three plastic yogurt containers tacked to three walls, and nothing more. Elegant: the hanging shapes of plastic insulation material that looked like a whale. The Bauhaus exhibition felt strangely familiar. So that's what my teachers at RISD were inculcating in us with their insistence on color swatches and texture studies. The designs are elegant and contemporary - that is how much we have completely incorporated the Bauhaus aesthetic into modern life. Unpleasant: the waterlilies room - too many tourists taking photos of each other standing in front of them! Sacrilegious. Whitney: Georgia O'Keefe was a very sexy lady. Even though she protested that her flower-inspired paintings were NOT about female sexuality. Those nude photos that Stieglitz took of her... hmmm. Roni Horn - two floors o...

Just to explain how the final piece came into being: I prepped the wall, then cut shapes from orange and white sticky vinyl (random colors!) to use as a mask for the yellow paint. (Behr "Disney" yellow!) When I finished painting yellow, I pulled off the orange vinyl to reveal really nice, clean edged shapes. After the yellow, I projected the glyph shapes onto the wall and painted them using acrylic. Then I silkscreened, and finally I cut out skinny lines of black sticky vinyl to finish off the piece.

I have the week off from work. The last several years, I have found myself doing some home improvement projects between Christmas and New Years. This year, I decided to create a wall installation in an under-used bedroom. Similar to my bathroom installation at the Bromfield Gallery, this piece is much larger. I used my projector to transfer the glyph imagery to the wall, and also my silkscreens, though that was challenging, especially since the walls angle in and there is the danger of sliding screen ink!

This semester, I have had the pleasure of teaching 3 young teen girls, 8th and 9 th graders, drawing and painting. Today was their last class of the semester, and I thought I would honor their hard work by putting some of their pieces on my blog. The work here is charcoal, pastel, and acrylic paint.

Today I went to a lunchtime talk hosted by the New England Foundation for the Arts , concerning the topic of presenting your work for potential public art commisions. The focus was on photographing your work. If you can find out who is on a certain panel that will be looking at your work, it can help you to tailor your presentation. Generally, it was everything we all should know about presenting artwork - professional photography and presentation are really important. It really does pay off to have a pro take your photos if you want to enter this venue. Since architects and landscape designers have entered the competition for public art, and are used to doing very clean and professional presentations to get clients, artists have to work especially hard to be competitive in this field. But my take away is if you really want to go this route, try hard to get a small beginning commission or do a temporary piece in a local building or neighborhood, get really good photos, and look for the...

I went back into some pieces that I had thought were complete that did not go into my recent exhibition - reworked them to simplify and strengthen color. Here is one half of a diptych that I have been thinking about for a while. I like the introduction of more solid shapes of color. Based on seeing my work all together at the Bromfield, I can see that I can hold back a bit. What does that mean exactly? Simplifying, I think. I want to look into presenting my work as public art, because I think that the wall constructions would be wonderfully whimsical in a public space. I am excited to create more site-specific installations, as I did in the bathroom at the Bromfield Gallery. That was so much fun! And shouldn't we all try to have more fun? Can I just say that it is important to have humility in this world? Thank you to all of my friends who make me laugh and show me that the art world is just a small small slice of the big picture.

I had a great day in the studio - the first solid day since before my show. I am working on a couple of new wall sculptures. Yes, very playful!

Thank yous to folks who have visited the exhibit. I gave a short gallery talk on Saturday and had a young videographer do some taping. He and I will pull together a five minute video that I plan to post on YouTube and also send out on a CD with future press and gallery mailings. Having an exhibit takes an enormous amount of energy and pretty much consumes one's time in the studio for perhaps months. Now that the show is up, it has given me the chance to digest where I have been and think more about where to go next. The most fun I had was installing the bathroom wall treatment, and after I had finished I wished that I had taken over an entire gallery wall, too. That tells me that there is a direction I need to visit! Also, lots of good feedback on the wall sculptures... and I can see doing an installation of smaller pieces. I made myself go into the studio yesterday morning and work, for the first time since about a month ago, pre-show. I started back into some sculptures I had sta...

My exhibit, Glyphs, was reviewed in the November/December 2009 issue of Artscope Magazine. You can read it here !

My big event, the opening reception at the Bromfield Gallery, is up, and the opening reception was Friday evening. Thank you to all of my friends, family, and colleagues who visited that night - I really appreciate your support. Thank you also to Vermont Studio Center for the residencies providing time and the support of other artists. Thanks especially to my son Josh, my muse for this body of work. Artscope Magazine did a two page preview of the exhibit which you can see on the Bromfield homepage.

Now that my exhibit is up, I am in the process of networking and sending people info in the hopes of generating more publicity. It is a conceptual art project, really. In the process of researching publicity and contacts, etc etc, I ended up on Joan Mattera 's blog which led me to Jackie Battenfield's blog which led me to an artist I had never heard of before but who I think is absolutely fascinating in her blending of the conceptual and realist painting. Check out Ellen Harvey , and down the rabbit hole you'll go...

I'd love to see you at the opening - this Friday evening, Nov. 6, 5:30 - 8 pm. I will be talking about the work in the gallery space on Sat. Nov. 14 at 3 pm. AND, gallery will be open on Sunday, Nov. 22 from 1-4 pm. Regular gallery hours are 12 - 5 pm, Wed. through Sat. or by appointment. Let me know if you want a private showing!

Here are pix of the highly anticipated bathroom installation. This will be part of my exhibition at the Bromfield Gallery in Boston, opening this Friday night! Materials used here are silkscreen, latex paint, and sticky vinyl. My son helped me complete this installation. Since his doodles are the main source of imagery for this exhibit, I felt it was fitting that he give some input. Josh was a great help with the silkscreen part, as well as suggesting when to leave well enough alone! Thanks, Josh.

Visiting my daughter in Madrid last week - how to take photos that aren't just tourist shots? Across the street from our apartment there were rectangular swatches of sunlight on the wall. And here is the view from our balcony down onto San Pedro street. I visited the Prado and saw Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights. I never thought I would see that painting in person.

I've just started teaching my Intuitive Painting class again at the Arlington Center for the Arts. One of my returning students sent me the following, about when to just throw out and start anew. I am using her question with her permission because I think it is a really interesting dilemma for all artists. "I was just up in my art room making a collage. Decided to take something I didn't like that much, cut it up and work quickly. Just now trying to clean my art room so I can really use it I had this insight that I also need to give myself permission to throw away things I don't like. I'm thinking that perhaps this is another aspect of valuing what you as an artist like or want to see---that is, acknowledging what you don't really like and letting it go. I keep thinking that I 'should' keep things and make them into something I like. Do you struggle with this? Do you think others do? Do you have any words of wisdom?" My reply: Yes, artists conti...

This is my piece for the Icons and Altars exhibit at the New Art Center in Newton, Ma. It is silkscreen and acrylic paint on wood panel, 20" x 16". This is my 10th year participating in Icons and Altars, a fundraiser for the New Art Center. It is always fun to see the images created using this topic as a theme. All the artists interpret it in different ways according to their unique style and vision. Since I have been working with the glyphs for the past three years, it made sense for me to continue in this vein... so the "iconography" is the same as in my other work. I like the challenge of coming up with a new small work for this show, and it always provides me an opportunity to try things out (in this case, I used my new silkscreen imagery) on the cradled masonite boards that are so nice to work on. IIf you are in the Boston area, you might want to go to this show and purchase a ticket for $250 that allows you to choose your favorite piece. At the end of the show...

The Heretics is a new film about the second wave feminist artists of the 1960s and 1970s, and the publication, Heresies, that documented the exciting thoughts and developments of women artists during that time. Be sure to watch the 10 minute trailer.

I am getting ready for the show at the Bromfield in November. One of my plans is to take over the bathroom and screen print the glyphs directly on the walls. Yes, the background color will be bright yellow.

A patent for intuitive painting methodology? Someone actually got a patent on intuitive painting?? You gotta see this! Wait, maybe this is a piece of conceptual art. Read it and let me know what you think.

What have been up to between finishing work for my exhibit in November and my day job as an art administrator? Oh - taking in a few museum shows in the Boston area. Sunday found me driving two hours to Mass MOCA in the Berkshires. A Sol Lewitt retrospective is currently the highlight of their offerings, in my opinion. I was overwhelmed by the beauty of this work. Many art students and artists were hired to paint and draw on huge walls according to Sol Lewitt's instructions.

I am hoping that my hand-printed envelope and portfolio cover as well as my fancy printed CD label gets some notice! Anyone else out there trying to get noticed by the press? What has worked for you? Please share!

This is what I did yesterday with my screenprinting. I found some really nice watercolor sheets and other papers that had I had made previously with some experimental painting, cut them all to the same size (about 5" x 7") and printed them all with the same triangle glyph. (note - never throw anything away!) I may use them all together as a wall piece or... ?

It's funny how you keep coming back to things that you love. Screenprinting was something I learned in college, and I just took to it. Later on, in my twenties, I used screenprinting to make posters and t shirts in a variety of jobs. I am using it to print on fabric. And now, finally, I am making screens of the glyphs I have been using in my paintings. Here is an experimental print using the glyph images. I am planning on trying out a variety of combinations using these images. The piece is about 15" x 10". To make a screenprint, you need a screen and images printed or photocopied onto transparencies. Here are two of my glyphs, laid out on the screen I will use. Also, here is the screen coated with photo emulsion. I expose the screen with a photoflood bulb conveniently hung up on my basement studio pipes. Speedball has a nifty brochure with directions on how far away your screen must be from the light source for correct exposure. Once you have exposed the screen, you w...

Do you blog, tweet, friend, or link? As an artist, do you find that these are helpful to your marketing/networking efforts? Tonight, a group of fellow artists met at my house to discuss how to use the plethora of social media out there. Most of us were ambivalent about having to join in, mostly for lack of time. How does one fit all this stuff in around doing whatever else we do to make money, take care of families, exercise, or get together with "real" friends? Blogging is more than marketing for me. I use this as a visual diary and a way to shed light on my art for anyone who is interested in the back story. It is much less formal than a website, more immedate and far less intimidating. My fellow artists felt that a Facebook fan page was the best use of the medium for promoting upcoming shows, open studios, or whatever. Twitter was the least embraced by the 8 of us at ths point, but that may change... we'll see! The consensus was that all these vehicles may or may not b...

My first series of sculptural paintings is complete. No titles yet.

Just found out that my work was accepted into the next online exhibit at the Caladan Gallery . The exhibit call seemed appropriate for my work, so I thought I would give it a whirl. From the gallery director: What comes to mind immediately regarding “Gesture, Action, and Expression” is the tradition of Expressionism in Western art. Part of the territory includes, of course, the Abstract Expressionists, as well as the German Expressionists, and a whole army of “subsets”. In 2009, fledgling art form though it is, the introduction of technology as an art tool has expanded the notion of expressionism into realms previously unknown…this is not to say that the more traditional representations are not included in this exhibition, not to mention those that are derived from emotional experience. They are; but we have a balance between tradition and new inspiration, which manifests in a unique way through various models of the interpretation and application of gesture. The work chosen for t...

On my quest to do better marketing, I have been exploring all sorts of avenues. Visiting Joanne Mattera 's blog the other day, she suggested " The Artist's Guide " by Jackie Battenfield. I got it used on Amazon and it just arrived yesterday. I am very impressed so far... there are so many of these kinds of books out there, but this one is very current with lots of web references. I agree with so much of what she says. I love page 75 where she discusses readiness to show. And I discovered Edward Winkleman 's blog which has tons of links to many other art-related blogs that took me away from my studio for about 2 hours!!

Oh yeah, another one of my favorite stories from the 70's ... I hitchhiked with David Byrne to NYC with another friend from RISD. (See two posts ago- my other brush with famous artist Deborah Kass.) And I once was at a dinner party with Ravi Shankar.

These are closeups of the new sculptures... it is kind of hard to see the dimensional quality and also the paint quality on the larger images. I have been sanding the acrylic to give the surface a nice matte finish and also to allow the base colors to come through.

I am in the process of preparing to do PR for my upcoming solo show at the Bromfield Gallery in November, and have been spending way too much time this morning getting sucked into blog-reading while I am supposed to be researching writers who might be interested in my work. While blog-surfing, I discovered a couple of must-reads: Joanne Mattera's blog is witty, literate, and super-interesting, and she features shows she has seen in New York that she likes. I went to art school at Carnegie Mellon in the 1970s. Who knew that the girl next to me painting those big expressionist hearts was Deborah Kass, now pretty famous NY artist? You have to read this article she wrote about feminism and art in the '70s , in her article in the Brooklyn Rail. As far as I know, she is one of the very few of us who moved to NY and made a real name for herself. In the article, she discusses the male dominated art school faculties and the whole "painting is dead" mentality of the time. But ...

Another wall sculpture, playing with color.

This is the first iteration of the piece seen below.

Ok, you saw the same pieces yesterday in plain ol' gray and black. Well, I took the leap and decided to add color! I am very happy ... they are not yet complete, but they are on their way. I am having such fun deciding about colors, and using different colors to paint the edges.

This is where I am so far with the series of sculptures, first seen a couple of posts ago. I am trying to decide if I like the color simple like this or whether I should add/change color. I think that they will be fun to play with on a wall, the way they can be arranged to relate to each other.

Me, standing next to my piece, Swing 2, at the opening for the Danforth Museum annual members' show. There is some very good work in the exhibit, a wide variety, something for everyone. Some friends whose work is exhibited include Jeanne Williamson, Anne Sargent Walker, Mary Spencer, Virginia Fitzgerald, Stephen Haley, Dan Feldman, Mary Tinker Hatch, to name a few. I also connected with Barbara Grad, a fabulous artist who was my advisor in my MFA program at Mass Art back in the 1980s. A good time was had by all.

On Sunday, driving through the rain on Rte. 2 toward Boston, there was a magical event! A double rainbow appeared directly over the road. It was the brightest rainbow I've ever seen, and rare to see a complete semi-circle, end to end. If you look closely at rainbows, sometimes you can see another bow of yellow and violet. These pix don't show the second rainbow all that clearly, but you get the idea. Amazing!