Art Is Truth

I’ve been getting lots of comments on my last post, many of them questions about the show based on Ivan Doig’s The Whistling Season. I forgot to put the information about the show into my post! Here is the press release regarding Lake Oswego Reads 2010!

Hear the Author
Tickets Available Saturday, January 30 at 11 A.M.

Ivan Doig, author of The Whistling Season, will be speaking at Lake Oswego High School about “Passion, Precision, and Whistling a Work Song.”  This event is for high school age and older.  Admission is free but a ticket is required for this event.  Tickets will be available at the Lake Oswego Public Library starting at 11 A.M. on Saturday, January 30. There will be a two ticket per person limit and a Lake Oswego Library Card is required. Note: the tickets will be valid until 15 minutes before the event begins on February 17.  Seating is first come, first served.  Wednesday, February 17, Lake Oswego High School Auditorium, 2501 Country Club Rd., 7 P.M. Free but tickets are required.

Art Show 

Opening Art Show Reception:  February 4 at 6:00 P.M.

Imagine! How do you capture the essence of 345 pages in a single piece of art?  That’s what faced the 18 artists listed below from the Splash! group.  In their 4th year of meeting this challenge, their visions will be unveiled for the first time at Graham’s at the reception.  From Lakeridge High School, art teacher, Shannon McBride and 14 art students read The Whistling Season and have prepared 15 pieces of art interpreting what they read.  From Lake Oswego High School, art teacher Katie Brink and Artist -in-Residence Michael Orwick had 14 art students work in oil to re-create the scenery from the book.

Throughout February, the adult art will be displayed at Graham’s Book and Stationery and the high school art will be displayed at Chrisman Picture Frame & Gallery.  Opening Art Show Reception, Thurs., February 4, 6:00 P.M. – 7:30 P.M., Graham’s Book and Stationery, 460 Second St. and Chrisman Picture Frame & Gallery, 480 2nd St.

Thirteen artists from the talented Splash! group and five invited artists have created images that came to them as they read The Whistling Season.  Their interpretations are imaginative and amazing.  Artists include:

1.  Ruth Armitage
2.  Kara Pilcher
3.  Susie Cowan
4.  Dave Haslett
5.  Mary Ellen Otten
6.  Anna Mastellos
7.  Dyanne Locati
8.  Janet Otten
9.  Lee Baughman
10. Patricia Schmidt
11. Jan Rimerman
12. Kathy Bethurum
13. Lois Larsen 
Guests

1.  Bill Baily
2.  Barbara Vance
3   Barbara Wagner
4.  Linda Terhark
5.  Deborah Marble

I also received a beautiful photograph from my cousin of my Great-Aunt Lois & Uncle Harry’s farm in Redstone, Montana which should get you excited to read this book! Thank you Carol!

Lonely Montana Farm - Carol Skiles

Yesterday was a good full day in the studio. My first project to tackle was a painting for our Splash Critique Group show next month. Each artist will interpret the Lake Oswego Reads book The Whistling Season
by Ivan Doig. I didn’t want to miss doing this exhibit because I absolutely loved that book. I’m looking forward to meeting the author in a few weeks! You can read an interview with the author here: 

http://www.harcourtbooks.com/WhistlingSeason/interview.asp

 It was a challenge for me to decide whether to focus my painting on the characters or the setting of rural Montana. There were so many wonderful characters in this book that I had a hard time choosing, and finally decided that the landscape was the one common factor to their experience.  Doig has a great gift and I must borrow words to help me explain how this book made me feel:

Before me lies the edge of the world. I am on my way there running. – from a Papago song

I rarely do landscape, so this was both a challenge and a joy. Montana is a place that I love to visit. I have family there, and my impressions of its vastness are filled with nostalgia as well as the simple, natural beauty that emptiness and space can inspire. I hope my interpretation holds some of that emotion, through my exaggeration of color and my choice to leave any trace of human touch on the landscape out of the painting. Let me know what you think!

Smooth Buttered Plain 12x12"

While I was working in the studio for the first time in a long while, I got a call from the RiverSea Gallery in Astoria. They want to do a solo show of my work in March! (Of this year!) Oh My! That is coming right up, and I will have to work my tail off to get enough quality work completed. Yikes. I guess I needed a deadline.

Finally, I wanted to share some more links of artwork for the 100 Artists show at Mary Lou Zeek. Mary Lou has posted some more on her blog, and here are some other blogs of artists! Check them out! 

http://www.thesteelfork.com/wordpress/100-artists-show-the-honeybee/

http://www.jenworden.com/2010/01/06/january-means/

http://idolatrieartist.xanga.com/719573915/beans/

F79DTVSD6V8C I’ve been visiting blogs this morning and followed a link from Mary Lou Zeek’s blog to one of the artists participating in the 100 Artists show: Jessica Burke. She is an Art  professor at Western Oregon State University and does some fabulous work!  Check out her blog! Also, Mary Lou has posted some of the very creative products of the 100 Artists project… so fun to see what everyone comes up with to help this great cause. Dayna Collins has posted her creation on her blog here, and I love what Katherine Dunn did with her can… see it here.

Jessica  included a link in one post that is so funny…. the instant art critique. Put in any five numbers and it generates a phrase that will make you sound pithy, smart or at least over-educated when talking about an art piece.  My numbers generated this lucious bit of art-speak:

“It should be added that the optical suggestions of the sexual signifier makes resonant the essentially transitional quality.” 

It would be fun to look at a random painting and a random critique together and try to make sense of the two!

OK… enough procrastinating! Off to the studio

No, I didn’t forget about the blog I’ve just been busy unpacking from our move, celebrating the holidays with family and entertaining friends and fellow artists. Our new home was ‘party central’ for a month or so, with kids home from college and their friends (old & new), family here for the holidays, book club, critique group, everyone curious to see our new place.

I’ve been cooking, cleaning, unpacking to beat the band and it finally feels like things are getting back to ‘normal’. Even though my studio is still a wreck, I’ve started back working, which feels great! I’m going to love having all the new space to roll around in… Still need to install better lighting and get rid of boxes & clutter. But one of the greatest pleasures of moving has been finding new display areas for some of my favorite art pieces. I felt so lucky when I saw all the things piled in one room during the move. And just putting them in different places helps me to notice them more and others to see them often for the first time!

Vicki Hammond's Beautiful Assemblage

This piece by Vicki Hammond, which used to give me great inspiration in my studio, now provides a great mood on my bathroom vanity. If you haven’t moved your artwork around lately, try it! A fresh look for the New Year!

I wish I had photos to post of my newest artwork, but I was working on it until the last minute before I delivered it! Deadlines are a powerful motivator!!!! My most recent piece was for the 100 Artists show at Mary Lou Zeek Gallery in Salem. This year’s show is called “Nourish & Sustain” and will benefit the Marion-Polk Food Share. If you’ve seen these shows in the past, you’ll know what an honor it is to be invited to participate. Artists from all over the country (and places even farther) work together to accomplish good things in our community. It is always amazing how different the art pieces are, each artist beginning with the same challenge: an item sent through the mail.

This year the item was a tin can, pictured below.

The show runs February 2-27 at Mary Lou Zeek Gallery, 335 State Street, Salem, Oregon. If you are out of state, you can usually view the work online. Bids on the artwork begin at $50 and go up in $5 increments. The competition can be fierce!  The artist’s reception on February 3 promises to be thrilling! Hope to see you there!

Mary Lou has posted one great example of William Skripps’ piece on her blog: http://marylouzeekgallery.blogspot.com/2010/01/100-artists-show.html Check it out!

I finally dug out the charger for my camera and was able to upload some photos from the past couple of months! Exciting photos to share: First from my trip to Seattle with art-buddy Mary Keefer. The slide show below is from our meet-up in Seattle… the Olympic Sculpture Park is a must-see if you’ve not been yet! Also included is a photo of Mary accepting the top award for the Northwest Watercolor Society’s Waterworks Exhibit, and a grand piano painted by local art hero Dale Chihuly.

I’ll also include here a sweet picture of the newest member of our flock: Bobbie

Ready to pounce out at the dogs!

Wow… I can’t believe it’s been over a month since I posted here! It has been incredibly busy and I guess I just got out of the habit. Since last I wrote, I’ve attended the opening of the NWWS Waterworks show, spent the day at the Seattle Art Museum with my friend Mary, closed on our new home, sold our old home, met numerous contractors at the two homes, arranged for movers, packed, rented a Pod,  gone to my daughter’s concert at Willamette and heard her fabulous solos, attended book club, rooted for the Beavers, shipped a painting to the Netherlands, written my Christmas letter (don’t want to miss of those cards and need to get my change of address out!), packed some more, made countless trips to the new house and much more.

Whew! I’m thankful that the end is in sight. We have professional movers scheduled for this Saturday to come haul the heavy stuff over to the new house. I’m so excited to be moving in! We feel very lucky to have sold ourold  home so quickly, and I’m sure  the new owners will be a good fit for the neighborhood and will love raising their family here. They have a 10 yr. old, a 2 yr. old and a 2 month old. Nineteen years ago this December, we moved into this house with a 2 yr. old and 9 mo. old twins. There is still a small mountain of clutter in the garage, but I’m feeling pretty good about the state of the house. I took all the artwork down yesterday and it looks so bare! Just a subtle hint that you need more original art in your home!

Wishing you a blessed Thanksgiving! We are full of thanks for all the bounty and looking forward to sharing with family and friends.

The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak. (20^th century abstract expressionist painter Hans Hoffman)

Getting ready to move is an exercise in getting organized, and I need it badly! People often look at the volunteer activities, teaching, parenting and art that I do and assume that I am organized. I assure them that I am not. I just work hard. Really. I’m not joking. I-am-not-organized. My house assumes the illusion of being organized, but beneath the surface there is a jumble. Everything in its place? nope. Everything is someplace though, and I do mean everything. It is amazing what a house can hold in its dim dark recesses.

Yesterday I woke up, took a peek at the comments on my blog, and suddenly realized…. horror of horrors…. I had framed and sent the wrong painting for the NWWS show! As I was framing the painting in a rush on Monday, I thought to myself that it didn’t seem as good as I remembered it. The figure’s arm and hand looked wonky… the background was too simple…. it didn’t stand a chance to win an award.

As I glanced through the blog yesterday morning after already delivering the painting it hit me… I had framed the first version of “Explorer” not the second, much finer version. I ran upstairs and quickly shuffled through the paintings in the flat file…. no Explorer. Where was it?

Oh no, did I accidentally sell it? No, I wouldn’t have done that… I knew it was a competition worthy painting. Did I take it to the gallery? No, I hadn’t framed it yet. Did I accidentally leave it at critique? No, someone would have called me. Did my private student accidentally pack it home in her portfolio? I called her… nope! Panic was setting in now. I started saying the rosary passionately. I dug out the St. Anthony (patron saint of missing items) key chain.  I called the woman who is transporting the paintings to Seattle, explaining my dilemma. She said I had until late evening to find the painting and switch it.

OK… it must be here somewhere. I tore apart the flat files and moved them to see if it had fallen behind the huge pieces of furniture. Nope. As I was doing that, I meticulously sorted through each drawer, looking for that darned painting on each side of paper, beneath mat board, collage papers, sketches from life drawing…. etc. I searched both portfolio cases, behind the paintings I had done in that same month that were already matted & shrink-wrapped, thinking maybe I had done it on the back of one of those. My friend arrived to paint the utility room. We moved the dryer and found the masking tape & paint roller. I wondered if I was losing my mind.

I contemplated fabricating a story about how someone had broken into my house and stolen just that piece of artwork as I explained why my painting could not be exhibited. I reminded myself of the plans I had just made to attend the opening with my friend Mary from Montana. I imagined greeting the juror and explaining why my painting didn’t arrive at the show, and the look of derision on his face.

Finally the only place left to look was the back of the image I had already framed. I wouldn’t have been so stupid as to miss framing the correct painting just because I had the wrong side of the paper would I? I called my friend. She opened the frame. There was the elusive “Explorer”. I had framed it wrong side up. I guess that will teach me to try to be thrifty by painting on the other side of my rejects. I’m just so thankful that I realized my mistake before the painting actually travelled to Seattle!

Organizing is what you do before you do something, so that when you do it, it’s not all mixed up. (A.A. Milne, English author and creator of Winnie-the-Pooh)

I haven’t posted about our upcoming move, since everything has been in turmoil, and I felt strange saying anything until I was sure what would happen. On October 1st we backed out on our offer on the house I mentioned in this post. We had been trying to resolve the many issues with the property for three months, and kept running into problem after problem. We were starting to doubt that the bank would satisfy our needs with resolving the access to the property, so we started to look at other homes.

The last property that we looked at was my dream house! It had more acreage, more studio space, more space for the kids and a bigger kitchen, pantry, living area. It has a barn, beautiful pastures and all kinds of other neat stuff. We made an offer the same day we backed out of the other offer. Today we finally found out that our offer was accepted! I am so excited, and we are scheduled to close on November 30. All that remains to be done are the inspections and the packing! Here are some photos of the new place!

New Studio!

Who knows… we might actually be settled by Christmas!   In other news, I finished the painting below yesterday and will be framing it and taking it to Salem next week to Mary Lou Zeek.

"Possibility" Watercolor on Yupo 20x28"