Happenstance

Have you ever looked at the back of your painting and found that it's better than the front? Sometimes, I muddy up the front too much (usually as a result of my anticipation and inability to wait for everything to dry), then I'll flip it over to the back...more often than not, the back is the side I go with.

So I've been thinking for quite awhile about the accidents that happen in my studio. Hell, most of my mixed media and collage work comes from the floor, I often attribute the phenomenon to helper elves, because how else would 'exactly what I need' be right there for the picking, exactly when I need it?

It is maybe a bit of chance or a happy accident. My work is FULL of them. I think I was first confident enough to display them as the 'real' work in my 2009, 365.series. Below are two different approaches to/examples of the same premise, which is essentially: arty accidents are often cool art.

365. fifty-nine

365. ninety-seven

On that note, I also am having some issues with my dying old computer, particularly when I'm running a video. Whether it's the video player or the computer processor or a combo (I'm not solidly sure), it makes for some interesting art! Some of my newest work, Glitch, is technologically accidental. I just happened to be around to catch it..."happenstance" (or helper elves, we can't be sure of anything)... Computer art on my website.

Yarnz

I felt compelled to work with yarn. I don't honestly know what happened other than a few general impressions I had and continue to have. This is a work in progress for sure...I am still exploring.

My impressions of yarn are of comfort, they remind me of my paternal grandmother, Dorothy. I used to play with her yarn and unwind it and wrap it around her dining room furniture (what a nightmare). I am attracted to the feel of yarn, I am attracted to how it makes me feel and remember; it calls on my nostalgia.

I also like the lines that can be made with yarn,  the linear quality. I like the order of lines all in a row, and the chaos of them not being perfect because my human hands touched them. Many human hands have touched the handwoven yarns. Close to perfection, but not quite.

My college students are right now completing a narrative project, what I've titled as "String Theory"; to tell the story of your everything (yourself) with string, yarn or rope (may be low relief, high relief or in the round)....I realized later that I had been completing the project before they embarked upon the journey. It was an interesting moment. I teach, to a certain extent, to what I am interested in as an artist. I pick the image examples based on them being appealing to my eye and my aesthetic. The students get my experience and I get their experience regardless, if we realize it or not. It's a subconscious and reciprocal conversation.

So the story of my everything (at the moment) is...tactile...comforting...youthful...wise...fond... memorializing...patient...womanly...motherly....strong...safe...grandmotherly.  These pieces are about memory, and I am currently still experimenting with application and medium...but I do think there may be a deification of Grandma Dorothy on the horizon...I'm thinking soft, colorful, altarpieces to be ready for the Day of the Dead in November...I always miss it, well not this time!

Memento Mori...

The above piece, Keepsake, will be up for auction at this year's Lotta Art, for School 33 Art Center in Baltimore in April.

The first one I did is the small, intimate one above, Loss. I will have to keep this one for my own collection.

...And now I feel like I'm getting there...bright and 1970's/1980's. They have a shag rug feel to them without actually being shag rug.