holiday rorschach

I’ve begun sketching in preparation for site-specific work I will be creating for the ornately Victorian Castle Key Lounge; to be completed and hung during the Fall 2010.

These sketches (collage with some embellishments) have become the images for this year’s crop of holiday winter cards.

If you want one, send me your mailing address (which of course I will not share).  Each is one-of-a-kind. (If I’ve sent you holiday images in the past, don’t assume you are already getting one — I lost ALL of my addresses when my harddrive imploded last month.  So be sure to drop me a line.   Thanks!)

i like vegetables just the way they are

My daughter belongs to an amazing garden club. Candace Cosler, who runs the program, asked me to work with the kids to create a piece of art that could be hung at a recent Farm to Cafeteria conference that was held on the Olympic Peninsula in November. She wanted something that directly reflected the kids’ feelings about eating fresh food. The idea being that no grown up could move other grown ups half as well as a kid simply asking for fresh, healthy meals.

So day one: In small groups the kids and I talked about eating fresh food. How did it make them feel? Did they care? Do they like it? Do they know where their food comes from? etc… They did care, and for the most part they did know.

Day two: From brown paper grocery bags I cut 100 silhouettes of beets, onions, potatoes, grapes, carrots, strawberries, radishes, and apples. The kids painted these however they saw fit and then I strung them together into a vine of wire and twine.

To the vine I added about 25 additional silhouettes printed with direct quotes from the kids, gathered during our discussions the previous day.

public art

Thank you Kathie Meyer of The Leader for Getting it right:  Arts commission, city work with artists in next public art project, a thorough article about Port Townsend’s current public art project.

If you reside in PT or surrounding area, or just care about it, please try to get your hands of the print version.  For all the finalists (7 total people, 2 of whom work as a team) Kathie includes bios, headshots and images of their past work.

straight on for you

the hot buttered rum of voices…

 

 

at the edge of the world is a field of wildflowers

A sphere is an excellent shape to live on.  It’s so fair, no edges, no up or down.  With gravity’s assistance we remain reasonable rooted and are not flung off into the void.  And, there is something elegant and instructive in the idea that (if one had the endurance) a journey begun in one direction has the potential to return you to the place where you began, only to see it afresh with the benefit of new perspective from all that was gained along the way.

So, no, I am not about to join the Flat Earth Society.

However, I find the visual possibilities of a flat earth enchanting.  What happens in those outlying areas?  What does it look like when familiar terra gives way to nothingness?   Artists’ answers to that tend toward the ocean view.

I wonder about finding the edge while wandering through a field. There is a moment of transition between field and outer-space where space, with it’s scatters of stars, amorphous nebulas of color and fields of dark play  backdrop to drifting petals, seed pods, and clouds of pollen . . .

I’ve begun with this piece which is dominated by my abstraction.

I’ll hole up for a while to study and sketch from scientific botanical illustrations.  The results will emerge as the series progresses; the paintings becoming increasingly informed by the actual geometry and patterning of wildflowers and their various parts.

IMAGES:
At the Edge of the World is a Field of Wildflowers
acrylic, ink, glitter on hollow-core, no-bore door
24 x 80″
2009

plus, three details of same.

white winter hymnal

level

wolf like me

when i grow up

When I Grow Up from Fever Ray on Vimeo.

what they do