Final Days

This is the last week of my show, Reconstructed, at the University of Delaware in Newark.  The Closing Reception is tonight at 6pm during which I'll be giving a short gallery talk.  And so a few more shots from the exhibition. 

More from Delaware

Growing

It's still growing, possibly nearing it's "for now" conclusion, as I get ready to install my show at the University of Delaware on the first days of March.  I really like looking at it from the side.  It's so much fun to see something I imagined so long ago take shape. 

Spirals

I've been in my studio pretty much non-stop since I got back from Tennessee.  Good thing too since I have a show coming up at the University of Delaware in March.  These spirals are elements in the large installation.  I enjoy photographing the shapes and colors they produce.  At this point these have all been cut and sewn into the larger installation so they don't exist except here in these photos.  I may, at some point, make prints of these.  I'm envisioning something large, of course.

A Bit of Fun

A Bit More

This is going to be a pretty well documented piece.  It's nice to keep track as it grows and changes.  It feels like a piece that could undergo never ending metamorphosis.  The photos definitely help me see what's going on and what matters.  Next week I'm going to be doing a lot of looking and thinking.  A nice break for my sore hands. 

Further Developments

Studio Color

Spiral

I'm pretty sure when I finished sewing my 13th spiral during my Arrowmont residency I swore I would never sew another spiral.  But then I got home and I remembered how I'd always wanted to do this thing I could never figure out how to do.  And after completing the blue wallpaper piece at Arrowmont I now know exactly how to do that thing.  So of course I have to do it. 

Studio

I'm not sure if I'll be able to keep up weekly studio posts.  I'm not sure if things are changing that much from week to week.  It's all part of the studio process, this uncertainty, not being sure. 

Studio

For about month now I've been painting my coleus plants.  It's all very much still in the experimental stages.  I think.  Maybe. 

Sneak Peek

And finally to wrap up my studio updates a peek into the future.  After all that brown, black, and grey I've begun to paint my coleus plants for what I hope will be a pretty cool installation. 

Puffin Cam

After the gulls I started playing around with the Puffin screen grabs I've been taking while watching the cam on Seal Island, Maine.  They are 15"x20" and part of an installation of 15 paintings.  I'm not sure if I'm done with it yet. 

My Virtual Puff Observation installed:

Paintus Interruptus

My month of painting Lesser Black-back Gulls (at least I think that's what these are...) was interrupted by my summer teaching job and by crappy photos.  I took the photos in Virginia Beach but the light was too annoying and the birds too far away to really enjoy working from them.  This might be the only one of the bunch I'll show to anyone. 

Ring-billed Gulls

I set out to paint the Willets (previous post) before my semester ended and I determined that I would just paint willets for a month.  I felt the need to focus on something specific and since I'd taken about a thousand photos of those willets I had something that was both the same and offered enough variety to keep going.  I'm particularly interested in the brown birds which can look so alike at a glance but really do have specific differences.  In this case it's the Immature Ring-billed Gulls.  I have a lot to learn in making these paintings which I'm making in the same manner as I made the mountain paintings.  I try as much as possible to paint exactly what I see for as long as I can.  Unlike the mountains, where if the complexity of the image overwhelms me and I get off track no one can tell, these bird paintings are a real challenge to stay focused.  With a few exceptions I determined it was best to work on them all at once.  I determined this after spending several weeks trying to make the worst painting I've ever made that started out fine but got worse every time I touched it.  I'm not so interested in making a bird painting as in maintaining my focus through complex imagery.