Latest Donuts

Bite. It's a big one- 42" x 48". I'm eager to finish this series (4 more to go) so I can buy more donuts to set up the next series.

Snake Box

This works-my husband's 1st reaction was that it was real. The graphite snake drawing is fused on mylar, then nailed on supports that project out of a dowel you can rotate with knobs on the side of the frame. I filled the box (Had to hand build it) with ink jet prints on vellum of leave scans, and real milk weed seeds. 3 views during rotation:

The latest Donuts Behaving Badly painting: "Boston Creamed". Who knew donuts could express so much about the human condition?

Elkmont Project: Ghost Town

Elkmont is decaying at an alarming rate, and the Park Service does not have the $6,000,000.00+ to initiate Alterative C, which is to preserve 19 cabins and remove the rest. Though they did release plans to entirely re-do the Cades Cove Road in March 2010 today, nothing has been announced regarding Elkmont. I have a fear that the earmarked cabins will be beyond saving once they do have the capital.

As an artist and photographer, my project is to record what is left of Elkmont. Through photographing primarily the interiors of the cabins, I intend to preserve the spirit of the lives that evolved within these summer homes. The floor plans, colors, and details inside these places radiate the joy and abandon that overtake people when removed from the responsibilities of their regular lives. The simple beauty has me obsessed and mesmorized by the cultural remains of a once vibrant community. I have well over 100 finished images, and hundreds more that are simple documentation.

The exhibit installation will involve having the work divided on the walls according to which of the three areas of the community they were taken in. Photos of the deterioration of the floors will be printed large and mounted directly on the gallery floor, where they will be interspersed with large, hanging photos of interiors.

Part 2 of my project, (after I get a worthy venue for the exhibit) is to sit down with former owners to scan scan family photos to offset my own, to get a solid sense of history. I already have a few vintage photos from public collections.

A few sample photos of my work:

One of the houses furthest up Society Hill

This is the Murphy Lodge from Millionaire's Row (next to Little River trail) below, which belonged to a friend's aunt.


The Parrot House on Millionaire's Row


I call this one "Scream".

Another shot from a house far up Society Hill.

The house my freind's family owned when she was a kid. They called it Oh-So-Cozy. Yes, that is a pink dress hanging in the window.

Inside a Daisy Town house.

An upstairs scene from Society Hill. You can never have too many colors of paint.

This was written on the living room floor, obviously by the owner, inside the Thomas House on Society Hill. "You Take My Home, My Wings Grow With Pain, Good Bye.

Binge and Purge: Donuts Behaving Badly #2. 22" x 56". Next up is Boston Creamed. I wonder if they'd like these for the Dunkin Donuts Corporate headquarters? Krispy Creme?

How many days should you go 'till you fire your server provider? They were hacked on a Fri., it is Wed. and my control panel and website are still down. And-how lousy are they to GET hacked? Did they not regularly hire a penetration tester to check their network security?

It is finished-I decided not to blur the jelly.

One of a series of jelly donut paintings. It's all about sex and violence. This one is 6' wide, and it isn't finished yet. If I stare at the photo of the painting, the parts that need resolving jump out more. I was thinking of titles- Our Lady of Duncan Donuts- no, that is too Boston. I think Donut Distress.

More Fractured Wood Pieces

Experimenting with fractured imagery by drawing and ink-jet print transfering on 1" wood blocks and direct printing on squares of paper subbed with digital ground, then stitching them together and treating with wax.
The top is graphite and silver leaf, mounted on plywood covered with blackboard paint and white chalk. The entire piece is encased in a 2" deep frame. Buying this many blocks required having to go to Hobby Lobby, which makes me sick. I go out of my way to avoid patronizing this company, which has no respect for our 1st Amendment rights. They took out one page ads in papers across the country July 4th filled with their selective propaganda. The irony of a company with this attitude dealing with art supplies is fairly bizzare, but the name of the store says it all. I quess they aren't aware of artists who aren't hobbyists.

This one is ink jet transfer on gesso, with chalk text on steel gray heavily textured paper in another deep frame.

Ink jet print on paper prepared with Golden's digital ground. The wax I brush on later stiffens the thread used to stich together the squares. It is mounted on course linen and a strip of Canal (awesome Canadian paper company) rag paper with rows of steel pins-kind of like how they mount Japanese scrolls. I don't like the tiny bit of white paper protruding from the sides, though. X-acto time.

The biggest photo-based piece-ink jet on mylar prepared with digital ground. The 8" x 8" squares are sewn together with ribbon, and hung on curtain rods. It is translucent. Total size: 3' x 4'. I originally wanted to have a double layer piece where you could see a text layer through the face. Too cluttered.

Ongoing Work on Wood

I have an ongoing series of work connected to a series of portrait photos based on an imaginary paleolithic tribal culture.

This first one is 65" H x 48" W on birch plywood, with a sheet of plexi overlapping the face. The face markings were painted transparently in acrylic on the plexi. It is wired to the top and bottom of the framing to rest 1/2 inch off the face, so as to create a barrier and to cast shadows.

This is photo transfer on gesso, embedded feathers, with blackboard paint and white charcoal for the writing. It's about 2' x 4'. I use inkjet prints to transfer, not photocopies. They transfer well when printed on photo quality inkjet paper, and my archival ink in my printer is superior to photocopy ink. A final coat of matte varnish keeps the "paper" quality of the surface.

I'm working on a huge series of fractured imagery on wood cubes of various sized, and tiled paper or wood.
This one below is rather small-charcoal on squares of plywood with a very heavy coating of gloss acrylic medium. They are glued on plexi rods, and mount right on the wall. I drilled holes in the back top of the rods, and they are inserted into white panel nails. This piece, along with the one below, will be in "Face It", a national portrait exhibit at the University of Tennessee Downtown Gallery on Gay Street in Knoxville from July 15 -Aug. 8. There will be a First Friday Aug. closing reception that night.

This other piece in the "Face It" exhibit, ironically, are life size charcoal on plywood drawings of the exhibit director, Benjamin McKamey (right), and his business partner from the now migratory Three Flights Up Gallery, T. Michael Martin. They had teased me during a reception earlier in the year about how I had never have done a cut-out drawing of them, so I ran off a bunch of shots of them there, and when I found out about "Face It", got the project finished and immediately submitted. Luckily, the outside juror, Carl Gombert, put it in.

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