Megabus won't be my buddy

I tried to talk Megabus into letting me buy an extra seat to carry a packed up plywood people piece to the DC area, and they turned me down. Rats. It would have cost an x-tra $15.00, added to my $15.00 out, and $10.00 back. Then, I would have had to pay for one bus to get the couple of miles to Alexandria, VA, (maybe $1.00?) then one free trolley to the Torpedo Factory's Target Gallery. So much for my efforts to use public transportation. if this was South America, they'd even let me bring my free-range chickens!

More Exhibits/ Spring 2011

I've got some of my plywood people in "Mountain Visions", at the Reece Museum at East Tennessee State University in Johnson City. (The exhibit name doesn't fit the show-it's very progressive)

The exhibit was juried by Greg Shelnutt, who is a professor at the North Carolina School of Art in Winston-Salem.

http://www.etsu.edu/reece/default.asp

Exhibit overview

My plywood people, from my big installation"Quantum Confusion", enjoyed the reception.

Daniel Marinelli, and instructor at Penland, had quite a few pieces, and got the big award.

A Jackson Martin wall installation. We are both in the Tallahassee International at the Florida State University Fine Art Museum in Tallahassee later this summer.

Gorgeous fiber piece by Stacey Isenbarger.

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One of my Produce Portraits just got Best in Show at the "American Still Life: Yesterday and Today" at The Bascom, in Highlands, NC. http://www.thebascom.com/ They are mixing contemporary work with a selection of 18th and 19th century work, which should be really interesting.

"Observation" oil on linen. Commentary on human migration over political borders. Historically, Still Life was always way more than stuff on a table. It was always loaded with symbolism.

Its' a very cool teaching art center, similar to Arrowmont and Penland. They have 2 really nice galleries in the main building, and a series of walking trails outside. They regularly have exhibits with sculpters who do found object outside sculpture and installation art along the trails which I love. The exhibit was juried by Kevin Grogan, Director and Curator, Morris Museum of Art, Augusta, GA

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Both Alison Oakes and I have work going to Target Gallery's (Torpedo Factory, Alexandria, VA) "In the Flesh lll". 630 entries, 28 accepted, 2 from Knoxville, and this is the 2nd time Alison has been in it! I was hoping they'd take my nude paint-flesh ladies with the glitter, but they wanted the one that has been up at the Custom House Museum in Clarksville in their "Ladies First" exhibit (along with 3 Alison Oakes paintings) since March.

http://www.torpedofactory.org/galleries/target_calendar.htm

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More upcoming exhibits and stuff:

"Point Time", a group exhibit of Knoxville artists curated by Jean Hess, that has been at the William King Museum and Slocumb Gallery, goes to Association of Visual Artists Gallery (AVA) in Chattanooga, TN this May.

http://www.avarts.org/www

Knoxville Arts in Airport, reception 5:50 -7:30 May 5th. The work stays up 'till October. (group exhibit)

http://www.tys.org/arts-in-the-airport

I'm waiting for my copy of INPA 1 (International Painting Annual 1) to arrive from Manifest Gallery Press http://www.manifestgallery.com/ I believe they are being printed now. I will also be in INDA 6 (International Drawing Annual 6) along with a couple other Knoxville area artists, and other artists from around the country and world. That publication will go to press later this year. Manifest makes awesome publications, and the gallery has really great exhibits, most of them open juried with very cool themes. Being on their mailing list is critical, I think. If you get into an exhibit, delivery to Cincinatti is easy.

Solo exhibit at Appalachian Center for Craft at Tennessee Tech that opens in June.

http://www.tntech.edu/craftcenter/exhibitions-calendar/

Tallahassee International, starting in Sept.

http://www.mofa.fsu.edu/pages/explore/schedule.shtml

A two person exhibit at Yeiger Art Center in Paducah, KY with Christine Wuenschel in 2012

http://www.theyeiser.org/

http://www.christinewuenschel.com/ChristineWuenschel/Home.html

Nu Nudes

I haven't done any serious nudes for awhile except for fairly regular life drawing sessions, and keep missing opportunities to submit to figurative and nude shows. SO-I searched a whole pile of reference photos I had taken at the Notorious Fleshpainter exhibit I helped curate a few years ago. (Those who participated or attended definately remember this night with a smile. Yes, this did happen in Knoxville. Yes, the Naked Carpenter was there, too, and he did get painted. Yes, it was fun, and nobody got arrested. John, the Fleshpainter, has unfortunately gone back to Orlando, though.) Both drawings are both full scale, free standing, charcoal and pastel pencil on plywood. And glitter. I'm still undecided on a title. Paintskins? Paintskin Glitteratti?

Do You Think We're Naked?

The boots and shoes were real. They had to wear something on thier feet. We had this event in that place next to the old Blue Cats and it was a bit nasty. Used condoms behind the plastic couches nasty.

I mention Glitter because I used lots of it it. Lt. pink, hot pink, green, bronze. I soaked it in the varnish layers where the color is. It adds sparkle that is, of course, slightly lowbrow and ironic. And make-up/beauty industry appropriated. And made a hell of a mess in the garage where I spilled some. Now if I get lucky-they will be going somewhere. If not, they will wait around to go somewhere else. Hopefully. They really want to go out and have a good time.

"Ladies First", Custom House Museum, Clarksville, TN, March 3-May 1, 2011

Each March, Terri Jordan, curator at the Clarksville, Tennessee Custom House Museum, examines the work female artists are producing in the state of Tennessee. This is the second year I have been honored to have been included in it. Last year's "Modern Girls" was a massive installation in the huge, three story high Crouch Gallery.

This year's exhibit, "Ladies First", was a more intimate exhibit in the museum's Orgain Gallery.

Panoramic view of one wall, with Alison Oakes. The big yellow painting behind her is a Camille Engel

Alcove view. The museum has an extensive costume collection that was integrated with the art for a very cool effect.

Work, left to right: Jennifer Otto, Tammy Dohner, Edie Maney, Melinda Peavy

Each artist was asked to communicate where they were at this point as an artist and woman. The responses ranged from historically based feminist observations to deeply personal musing.

Alison Oakes works it with the mannequins. Her triptych from her "Repulsively Beautiful" series, is to her right. All are oil on porcelain.

My installation, "Domination Extinction" (charcoal and pencil on plywood), is a deconstruction and feminist updating of Manet's "Luncheon on the Grass", which I expounded on in an earlier blog.

A detail from Sher Fick's installation "You Made Your Bed". Fick takes her own empty perscription bottles and uses fabric and found objects to create comfort scenes from her childhood spent sleeping in the same room as her sister. Her adult perscriptions for anxiety and depression successfully make her live and thrive as an artist, mother , and wife.

A detail of Miranda Herrick's post-consumer recycled food container piece. Lots of Tostinos and Cherrios! Herrick directs Mir Gallery in Nashville's dowtown Arcade Building.

Terri Jordan's self-portrait with son and dog involves lots of symbolic objects used in portraiture since the Middle Ages. White tulips I believe are for purity, dogs symbolize loyalty. To the right is a Sandra Paynter Washburn, and a Claudia Balthrop.

Some people can't handle the wine at receptions.

Hats. Amazing hats. Mid twentieth century, I believe.

The old ladies at church used to wear these when I was a kid and creep me out. Who even came up with this? Truely one of the most bizarre fashion trends in recorded history.

Alison Oakes, Sher Fick, Terri Jordan, and photographer and playwright Mitzi Cross.

Other artists in the exhibit, which can be seen 'though May 1st, are Linda Kerlin, Diane Shaw, and Cyndi McGrail.

Group Exhibit at Archetype Gallery in Atlanta

I've got 3 of my Civil War reenactor lomography photos at this exhibit at Archetype Gallery in Atlanta's Studioplex on Feb. 26th and 27th. Reenactors travel around, and it is surprising to have some of them come to East Tn to act in an event, and when they start talking I realize they have no clue that this entire upper eastern part of the state supported the Union during that war. History is always complex.

The image in the poster is a detail from a photograph by Anderson Scott.

Video of the exhibit, by Chris Hutchinson:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0X7c47n2cc

(My work is the B&W photography triptych)

This exhibition investigates the fascination in the reenactments of the Civil War and the linear historical context of the Antebellum South. Pageantry and romance surrounds the concepts of Secession, Slavery and the Confederacy. It is in this Romance where the Civil War is unique, whereas Germany banned symbols of the Third Reich- symbols of the Confederacy are flown with Pride & Prejudice.Where does this pride originate from, when the linear history of the War is clear, the South lost? Why are their monuments commemorating these concepts as heroic? These sentiments can be traced back to the lack of the transference of control- as what occurs at the end of War. President Lincoln did not treat the Southern Generals and leaders as traitors and treasonous- allowing most to keep there Pride & Prejudice intact. Chris Hutchinson

http://www.facebook.com/l/ac007h5fqeulW4VNyF83yC6kZ9Q/AR.CHE.TYPE

Participating artists:

Anderson Scott

Kate Windley

Bethany Collins

Denise Stewart-Sanabria

Bailey Barash

Dru Phillips

Brian Steele

Jonathan Callicutt

Whitney White

March Exhibit

Custom House Museum,

Clarksville, TN

"Ladies First"

http://customshousemuseum.org/?sel=0

This is a group exhibit by museum curator Terri Jordan, that asks the question:"Who are you as an artist and a woman?" Artists in the exhibit are:

Claudia Balthrop, Mitzi Cross, Tammy Dohner, Camille Engel, Sher Fick, Mirranda Herrick, Terri Jordan, Linda Kerlin, Edie Maney, Cyndi McGrail, Alison Oakes, Shae Otto, Diane Shaw, Denise Stewart-Sanabria,and Sandra Paynter Washburn

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I prefer not to look at this from a personal angle, because I don't see myself as a female artist- just an artist. My work occasionally is markedly feminist (like for this exhibit), but I'm interested in the human condition more than anything female-centric. I have always wanted to make a statement about a Manet painting that has always annoyed me: "Luncheon on the Grass". Two guys in a park who seem to full of their Bohemian artist-ness are briefly interrupted in their important philosophic and esthetic conversation to acknowledge someone watching them. They are proud because they are caught with a couple of naked groupie/muse girls. It almost seems like an indie band road trip moment.

"Domination Extinction"

charcoal and pastel pencil on plywood / installation

My reaction to it is to reconstruct of the roles the individuals are playing in the original, one that I feel is more in keeping with the reality of the 21st century. The two males are still self-involved, but are monochromatic, like old black and white photos-a relic of the past. I have appropriately placed them on a shelf. The women contain color to designate they are of the moment. My model for the big drawing actually owned this crazy skirt-almost right out of a Manet ballerina painting-but she's no ballerina. She is the observer of the situation. The woman in the far background is Anonymous-symbolic of the role female artists of the past have been made to take by their work either being attributed to males, removed to museum storage, and written out of history by male art historians. Until, of course, the time I grew up in, the latter part of the 20th century. In the course of my career, women have evolved from an occasional name in a gallery listing to a normal presence not only as artists, but historians, curators, and critics. May things never revert to the past!

Have You Seen Bob project

"Have You Seen Bob" http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/pages/Have-you-seen-bob/164395610249824 is a project of Richard Legg, a British photographer http://www.tinlizard.co.uk/ . He has been contacting photographers around the world to photograph "Bob". Bob is a screen print on cardboard of a rather depressed looking kind of Hipster Dude. Collaborating photographers receive a Bob in the mail, and go about putting them in their world. I decided on a simplistic narrative bit. My Bob has had an:

Adventure in Appalachia

Bob heads to the Big City on a snowy Saturday night. Lots of pretty girls in Downtown Knoxville. They ignore Bob. Why is it always this way?


Bob heads up Rt. 75 N hoping that maybe if he pays he can get some action. Wrong. The strip joints are closed. It is Sunday morning.

Bob gets a sign that he might be heading the wrong way.


Should he end it all? Of course not. That water looks freezing.

Bob heads for the wilderness. Maybe he should just live in a cave.

Could he survive here?

Not likely. A giant icicle knocks Bob down and nearly kills him.

Bob decides he'll make another go of it, and heads back to Knoxville. Maybe if he takes his hands out of his pockets and looks up once in a while people won't think he's a total drip. Maybe he just needs a latte.