The Artist's Guide

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!!

Another brush with famous artists

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.

Details, details

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.

The Seventies, and my brush with famous artists

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 she also says that the 70s were a time when women artists were actually perceived as a on a par with their male counterparts, having lots of visibility and forging new territory.

Greenie with yellow legs

Color leap take 2

Another wall sculpture, playing with color.

Whoops - this one came first!

This is the first iteration of the piece seen below.

Color leap!

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.

The rest of them...

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.

New series of sculptures

At the Danforth Museum of Art, Framingham MA

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.

Double rainbow over Route 2!

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!

Wacky wall relief #1

This is one of the sculptures from my previous post - am playing with color, and the two appendages on the bottom are not painted yet at all. These shapes all appear in the doodles, so they relate very much to my paintings.

Wall relief sculptures

Very exciting - new medium! Sculpture! Partical board sculptures glued and nailed together that hang on the wall. They are created from pieces that were designed to be seen by themselves (shown earlier in this blog), but I was inspired suddenly to try grouping them. I am very excited. I like the way they look together, and as individuals. I don't think they'll stay black, however.