Tuesday, November 26, 2013

New Work at Atelier Gallery, Charleston SC

Three new Produce Portrait paintings are available at Atelier Gallery, 153 King Street, Charleston, NC.
 Still Lifes, or Vanitas, which is the genre these works most closely fit in with, were originally domestic images containing items symbolic of life and death. The items in mine act out narratives in keeping with human behavior and cultural social structures.

Bokchoy Flipped   oil on canvas   30” x 30”
A Ruinous Weekend  oil on canvas  20” x 30”
Undocumented    oil on canvas    24” x 36”



Thursday, November 14, 2013

Commissioned Work for FirstBank

Portal Into Twentieth Century Banking   
commissioned for and owned by FirstBank for their new Green Hills, Nashville location through The Arts Company Gallery.
49.5"W x 77"H x 3.5"D  
Archival stamp ink on rag paper, pigment prints on rag paper and cut rag paper, thread, wood, task board, plexiglass, glass orbs, pigment prints on mylar, leather, enamel paint re-purposed typewriter parts, specimen pins.

Archival prints of original bank ledger sheets from 1916-1947 form a stitched, grid base for the construction of images referencing the function and philosophy of banking from the early 20th century into the beginning of the contemporary era. The roots and growth of the bank, symbolized by the banks tree logo, flow over the tellers desks, ledgers, and state map sections. The original bank location and the new Green Hills location are marked with glass optical orbs in the map section of the western part of the state. The mechanisms and tools of the record keeping of banking are represented by the vintage typewriter parts that appear over the old, handwritten ledgers. The ink found on the ledgers changes by the year, most dramatically in some samples from the 1930 ledger, one of the most traumatic banking years in US history, where pages would fluctuate from full strength ink, to watered down ink, to pencil, then back again to full strength ink, demonstrating the thrift and persistence that enabled the bank to weather even the toughest of times.
detail
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There is a really nice collection of art in this new bank. Some of the other artists represented are Andy Saftel, Norman Lerner, Phil Savage to name a few. The commissioned work was from both myself and   Carrie McGee.

Installation

Carrie McGee makes transparent resin sculptural work that is either wall hung or suspended. The imagery in them is from both chemical reactions and photography. 
They are wire hung with some really cool hardware she gets from Japan. This piece fits into the banks rotunda.

The buildings architect,Carin Jeffords of Vaughan Associates Architects, and The Arts Company director Anne Brown look on as Carrie describes the process of getting photographs she had taken of the buildings steel beams in the early stages of construction into the resin.
Both McGee's and my work are just installed, along with some really slick new high tech bank machinery. My piece was an easy install- just a simple oak French cleat hanging bar with 3 screws, and it was good!


Tuesday, November 5, 2013

New Arts in the Airport exhibit

The latest  Arts in the Airport is up at McGhee Tyson Airport. It will be there for the next 6 months. This program is coordinated by The Arts & Culture Alliance of Greater Knoxville and the Metropolitan Knoxville Airport Authority. This latest exhibit was juried by Jeffery Morton, professor at Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, GA. He selected 43 pieces, both 2D and 3D, from the 523 works submitted. All work is behind security, so you need to be a ticketed passenger to see it.
Morton's exhibit statement:  “In our frenetic fast-paced world of smart phones, on-the-go coffee stops, and continental travel, it seems appropriate to house a collection of artworks in a busy space such as the airport. Art has an ability to capture us in time, and perhaps now more than any other we need to stop, look, and listen. Whatever we feel about traveling to and from places, the art in the Knoxville airport was chosen to give the passerby an opportunity to share the same question asked by these artists: how do I balance a life of speed with a life of pause. It seems that the art and artists in this collection answer the question by looking closely at the world with wonder and delight.”

I've got 2 of my Contemporary Mythology Invention altar series there.
Leaving the 19th Century : graphite, cut Italian rag paper, paint, and hand built wooden altar   10”W x 16”H x 3”D