Get Ready to RUMBLE

Spitfire. That's the title of my new series....the series I have been hesitant to create. I'm going to still gloss over what it's about, but along with the hint in the title, I'll give you a few of my recent musical influences. One newish, one oldish (beyond Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, which is an 'always'...those sick, twisted geniuses).

I like the feel of this song, I like the bass...




I have also been listening to this old Prodigy song...a bit more frantic than the other, and I have always enjoyed the visuals on this one. I wanna kick some asses after watching. Also, *yoink* thanks for the title, dudes...




The main point about this series is that it has to be powerful, that the imagery isn't somehow weaker than the message. I don't know that I've ever made 'weak' imagery before, but there's a first time for everything. So without further ado, I'm ready to rumble.

More on this series later, IN THE NEW YEAR!
Have a good one, cheers.

Good Times, All Around

I was meaning to get to Maryland Art Place (MAP) last night, but I got so caught up at MICA and all the exhibitions they had opening. Super good stuff, super "Baltimore". I saw Picture Windows: The Painted Screens of Baltimore and Beyond, The Amazing Johnny Eck and Life Interpreted & Home at Last by Colette Veasey-Cullors. Colette invited me to be a guest artist in her Foundations class in 2012 while I was attending MICA for grad school, so it was cool to talk to her and see her work.

In the meantime, last night or this morning before I arrived at MAP, my work sold! That's tremendous, because I really needed to buy some paint and I don't buy new art supplies unless I sell work. As you can imagine, I am a bit more motivated to sell my work than I normally am when I need new art stuff. I went halvsies on the sale...and I feel good about my small donation contributing to their art programming this coming year as well. Good times, all around!

They had these really nice bios under each of the pieces and the red festive bow signified a sale. And even though many of the pieces were gone by the time I arrived, there were little photocopied images in their place, so everyone could see what they were missing. This was a culmination of several 'nice touches' at MAP's Under $500. It was a very nice, full show, I left wanting a few of the pricier pieces, myself.

Art: Fast and Furious on a Thursday

On Thursday I had a whirlwind of a day. Hard to be in three places at once, but I managed two of them! I managed two exhibitions, 45 minutes apart within two hours....somehow. The first was the Student Art Invitational at HCC in Columbia, Maryland. I had four students in the show this semester and I got photos with three of them! Here is us and their exemplary work!

Ingrid Nuttle, "Giractus"

  Belle Eunjong Ko, "Pineapple-hedgehog"

Lindsay D'Andelet, "Merging"

 

Joel LaFerriere, "Untitled"

Joel's work had many admirers! Photo of a photo-taker!

AND THEN, if that wasn't exciting enough, I drove back to Baltimore for Jubilee Arts' "Deck The Walls", where I had several pieces in the show, which I donated. When I got there, I realized that my work was right above that of Fletcher Mackey, one of the brilliant Community Arts faculty at MICA. So I got to show my work right above one of my past professors! I have been in exhibitions with my past professors a few times, but I've never been this close. Delightful! Here's the proof...

 

Bake Me A Cake...

...a cake made with money, and filled with creamy art-awesomeness. The Baker Artist Awards happen every year for Baltimore's finest and often most interesting artists, and every year we artists can re-activate our profiles and get that shot. True, it is a shot in the dark, but still, one day.

So with that being said, here's my nomination for the 2014 Baker Artist Awards! http://www.bakerartistawards.org/nominations/view/shanagoetsch/

Deck the Walls

Jubilee Arts in Baltimore is having a one-of-a-kind art sale coming up Thursday, December 5th! I have donated a few of my row house pieces, and you should see me there (although there is a student show in Columbia at the same time, so I somehow have to make it to both). Be sure to buy some tickets and support your local professional artists and artists-to-be. Your art purchases will help Jubilee Arts continue their arts programming! For tickets, click here.

In other news, my youth class at the Creative Alliance is about to finish up their semester, so it's almost exhibition time. And that means it's also brochure time!

'Under $500' at MAP

Huzzah! I will be a part of a new group exhibition at Maryland Art Place in Baltimore, coming up in Friday, December 13th, starting at 7p. Be sure to buy tickets for Under $500.

And this is my piece that will show, Painted Ladies I...

  It's good people-watching at these types of swanky Baltimore functions. Let's hope the work sells!

Oh! Also a Show!

I forgot because this was sprung on me at the last minute as well...one of my pieces will be in The Highlandtown Arts District Association Exhibition, which runs October 26 through the Closing Reception on November 2, 530-730pm. I think Los Muertos will be in the Amelia Rothschild Gallery upstairs at the Creative Alliance...it's a multi-locale exhibition for people who live and work in Highlandtown (that's me, at the Creative Alliance!)

Anyway, this is a sort of bad photograph, but I had to pop one off all fast-like, early yesterday morning before the drop because I had altered it from it's original. This is a somewhat normal practice for me...the tweaks...however it means I sometimes have to shoot new photos of the work before it leaves the studio. Since I only had about 12 hours notice of the exhibition beforehand, it was a mad, mad morning; one with way too little light. I'll be sure to get a better photo at the exhibition. If it's installed today, I just might be able get the image while I'm at work this week.

But here's the crappy version until then:

Los Muertos

yarn, acrylic on canvas

Exhibition announcement: http://www.creativealliance.org/events/2013/highlandtown-arts-district-association-exhibition

Hope to see you there, Bmore!

New Images of New Work!

If you didn't catch it, I have uploaded images from my new series in progress, Contrary.

 

The images can be found on my website at this link, here: http://shanagoetsch.com/section/376875_Contrary_series_WIP.html

I decided to make some very colorful landscapes, I needed that feeling of expansiveness after my recent burn-out...the wax and wane of artmaking. However, I ultimately enjoyed playing with the tissue paper and I slowly grew within the series. I think you can see a bit of the progression from start to finish. It's interesting to note, that in the end I used a reductive method. I seem to feel most comfortable destroying the art to then create what I need.

I think some of the first few had 'too much' (or 'not enough') going on for my liking...they were too bright, too foreign to come from my hand--but they did! Although I enjoyed playing with color and tearing strips of tissue paper, and gluing....the end results were not right. So I did go back and revise the first three after the fact, took some away, added some pencil lines or added more layers. The most important change to note, was that I also flipped most of them. I turned them so that they were oriented vertically rather than horizontally, which really activated the space a bit more, or at least made them much more energized and unexpected in my opinion.

At this point, it feels like a fairly cohesive series to me and I might start shopping around for some galleries. I could explore it more, but I'm anxious (nervous) to get into a new figurative set. I will be using some of the same techniques as are found in these newest landscapes. Words...words/text are sometimes difficult to integrate visually. That will seemingly be my main issue with the upcoming figurative set, but we'll just see. I'll also be thinking about transparency and layering, as seen in this current series.

Look for progress reports soon, and thanks for stopping in! Please check out the link to my website!

The Feminist Art Project - Baltimore

Hey all, as regional coordinator of The Feminist Art Project - Baltimore chapter, I'd like to announce that our first meeting is THIS Thursday, the 17th! I am fairly excited to see who shows up, and fairly nervous to run the first meeting. The details are below on this flier, if you'd like to join us. Please check us out, all are welcome. We'll be at City Arts in Baltimore for this first meet and greet...

Settling In

Ah, the fading light of summer...to me that means school is IN session! I have had the first meeting for my youth literature-based art class, AND both of my 3D college classes have already started. I have been slowly getting back into the groove of educating and not just 'sitting'. I am also taking an online business class, so this weekend, and subsequent Wednesdays I will be devoted to this new professional endeavor.

In other very fine news, I am a new regional coordinator for The Feminist Art Project (TFAP)! I will be 'coordinating' the women artists of the Baltimore Chapter, although they already got it in spades. But I am still very excited about my new, challenging role. The main challenge here will be how to fund everything we want to do, as zero dollar budgets are 'fun' and 'interesting'. I guess I'll need to dust off my grant-writing skills, shoot y'all.

If you'd like more information on The Feminist Art Project - Baltimore Chapter or TFAP, in general, here are some handy links...

For TFAP Bmore, here is the link to the facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/tfap.bmore
or find us on twitter at @TFAPbmore. Website/blog to follow soon!


The Feminist Art Project (TFAP) is an international collaborative initiative celebrating the Feminist Art Movement and the aesthetic, intellectual and political impact of women on the visual arts, art history, and art practice, past and present. The project is a strategic intervention against the ongoing erasure of women from the cultural record. TFAP promotes diverse feminist art events, education and publications through its website and online calendar and facilitates networking and regional program development throughout the world.

You can learn more about the organization and its initiatives by accessing TFAP's website here: http://feministartproject.rutgers.edu/about/ 

STE(A)M

I just wanted to share a few photos of the great work the kids did this summer in the 22nd Century Pioneers program. Last year, I taught for the same program, but it was named something else...this year, they chose the name because we were all going to Mars (in our imaginations)! So I got to play around with all manner of awesome spacey concepts. I tell ya what, all of my years as an avid Star Trek/sci-fi fan really paid off. Thanks, Gene Rodenberry, and Joss Whedon (Firefly), and countless other visionaries of television! This one's for you...

Collaborative Mars Rovers made out of newspaper and tape only

Space helmets, yes! We need those for our trip!

Faux Stained Glass Planters. This was the first time they ever planted food!

A Terrarium I made, to illustrate a lesson on the Earth's Biomes

Engineering! The 5th grade science class built towers out of newspaper and limited tape. And look, it's as tall as they are!

Mars (Moon) Boots, gotta have those...especially ones with rocket boosters!

 

This my favorite shot that I took this summer...these are Star Boxes! They contain LED lights so at night they shine stars into their rooms.

This is the display of all the art-related work we did in the science class

Eeewwww, Alien Mold! (really watercolor on paper inside petri dishes)

Final display for the program...

 Planetary Mapping

Inflatable Space Alien!

All of this (and me) was inside a giant geodesic dome! (it was obviously really hot inside that damn thing, but it was still fun)

I love STE(A)M, I truly, truly do.

Out / In the Loop

I'm back! I have some news! I will have more news in a few more days! I have been frantically earning a living for the past five weeks. It feels good to get semi-steady work though, or at least enough to pay the bills for the next half a year. Teaching pays when you know what you're doing ;)

In the meantime, One of my row house pieces was recently in the Creative Alliance's annual Big Show and, AND the piece sold! My co-worker and friend Leyla snapped this photo for me because I had not gotten to see it and the exhibition has already closed.

You know you're busy when you can't get to your own exhibition for the whole duration of the showing. Yikes, that feels awful...but the red dot surely does help!

All Up In It

This is what I've been up to lately...

I scored two jobs this summer, one college class, teaching Three Dimensional Art and Design again, and one with the Baltimore City Public Schools again (I was employed with the same program last summer). The gig with the kids is pretty sweet because it involves STEM-related arts programming, or as I like to refer to it, 'STEAM'. They are taking a trip to Mars (in their imaginations)! So for the next five weeks we will be preparing for our journey and creating a lot of models, maps and product prototypes. We will, as well, be growing a few things...you know because of terraforming. I am having a lot of fun making the exemplars for them and kind of wish I was getting ready to go to Mars too...I'm seriously ready, in theory.

I have work in Creative Alliance's upcoming exhibition, The Big Show, an annual tradition for members (or like myself, employees). I'm still testing out the waters of Baltimore in terms of what sells and what doesn't. If it's attached to a good cause, like an auction or something, my work sells. No problem. Now to translate that to me, personally. I chose to submit a colorful row house piece because I noticed last year that the works which sold were Baltimore-related or themed. We shall see.

I also had an art sale / birthday party in June. I broke even...mainly because I wanted mimosas...it was my birthday! But I've learned a lot for next time. I also recently bought a large, round table for any workshops and classes I might want to host in the future. I got it for cheap, but it's a great, heavy brute of a table, so I'll most likely be lugging that thing around for the rest of my life.

If you'll remember, last month I was in an alumni exhibition at MICA (you can refer to the last few posts for the skinny on that)...well, that show was recently featured on Bmore Art and I even got a name and image drop out of it: http://www.bmoreart.com/2013/06/wst-ssy-art-community-at-micas-decker-gallery-by-cara-ober.html

BOOM.

I neglected to mention on here, that I have kittens, as well! They are nearly 2 months old by now (currently doing their midnight run, "The Household 500"). The stray cat I intended to save from getting pregnant, was in fact, already pregnant. So close. So she at least had them once she was inside. I was lucky enough to get the whole birthing process on camera. Well, I missed seeing the first one, but only because it was 3:30am when she delivered him. I woke up to the sound of a baby crying and grabbed the camera as I was getting up. She had four fluffy buns in the corner of my bedroom, approximately two feet from the edge of my bed. I was privileged to witness it. And I'll say it here too...birth smells like a musky sunshine; really clean and elemental.

I'm telling you, this summer could not get any more optimistic. All signs are a go! Mercury (currently in retrograde) can just stuff it, for I have kittens.

Some Good News

Found out at the exhibition reception that both of the pieces I submitted to the ACCR/MICA Art + Community exhibition and project have been claimed! These pieces will be going to two separate agencies in the area!

The piece on the top, Horizon, will be at Laurel Advocacy and Referral Services, Inc. "LARS is a non-proselytizing ecumenical ministry serving the Greater Laurel area by assisting homeless and low-income individuals and families who are experiencing crisis, providing both emergency and long-term services designed to promote self-sufficiency."

The bottom piece, Event Horizon will be at Loyola Clinical Centers. "Loyola Clinic Centers is a community based organization operating under the auspices of Loyola University Maryland, providing comprehensive education and training of graduate students in collaboration with academic departments across a variety of disciplines. The Clinical Centers are committed to the idea of social change in service to the community, the city, the nation, and the world, and dedicated to research and scholarship of issues that most affect the ability of people to develop, change, and lead meaningful lives."

Saw President, Fred Lazarus at the show, since it was all alumni...that's about the only person I knew, unfortunately. But it was a really great exhibition, full of some really great abstract pieces. I was happy to be included among the alumni represented and body of work shown. Thanks to The Art Connection in the Capital Region for organizing this great project!

ACCR/MICA: Art + Community

 I'm very excited that two of my watercolor and print pieces have been accepted into this project/exhibition! Opens June 11th, 5-7 pm in MICA's Decker Gallery. See you there!