New Work

This piece has been completed for a few weeks. I'm not sure why I haven't posted it yet. I think I just needed to soak it in. So, I guess it's soaked.

It's called Construction: Concrete and Stone. It's 50 x 40." (Gigantic! The biggest work I've done in a long long time other than the long skinny piece which was only big in one direction, so it still felt small in a way.)

You saw some in-progress and detail shots of this piece last month. Here is a finished detail.

The piece came together quickly. I knew what I wanted to do and I kept working until it was done. It came together in about three weeks, I think. I don't work in the studio "full time," so three weeks would be a long time for some artists, but I work in between lots of other responsibilities. (In fact, we had a bunch of house guests during the making of Construction.)

I came across a wonderful quote in D Magazine in a profile about a local painter. Jacques Lamy said, "I believe in speed. If you know where to go, you should not have hesitation." A brilliant statement. Putting it into action: not so easy.

Part of the reason Construction came together quickly is that I used a composition from an earlier work.
This is Branch Out #1. It's just 11 x 10." I created it in a workshop with Melody Johnson in 2005. The concept of the workshop was creating small, medium and large elements and then putting them together in various compositions. You can see the rest of the Branch Out series here. Melody also suggested that if a piece was particularly successful in a small size, it should be made larger. I scoffed. "I like to work small." Ahem. Three years later, the concept came rushing back to me as a genius solution.

I took out the tree icons and just used the very basic, rectangular shapes and the idea of layering to create the new piece.

Here are some random wide shots so you can really see the difference in size in these two pieces. Here's my terribly ghetto photo set up for Construction.
And here is Branch Out #1 hanging in my studio. (The tiny one on the top in the center.) You recognize Sonji's icons on the bottom?

I have sent off my images and paperwork for Tactile Architecture 2008. I don't enter to many shows, so it feels like an accomplishment to complete the work, feel confident in its execution and send it off into the world.

Construction was inspired by the experience of having our homes built here in Texas and in Maine. The cobblestone section in the middle is all Maine. In fact, the purply fabric under the stones was a Christmas gift from my Maine friend, Sarah. The other sections make me think of piles of 2 by 4s, wide slabs of concrete and contractors wearing jeans and listening to Spanish radio stations. I had to put that all into words for my artist's statement. For this show, it seems they jury heavily on both the work and the statement. It really has to be about "architecture." Of course, jurors have their own vision and I'm not sure my work will inspire them. That's fine.

I've got to sew sleeves on several quilts in the next couple of weeks. This quilt will get a sleeve and go right up on the wall in my studio. I hope you'll come visit.