Artomatic 2012

By in Artomatic, General, Shows, The Score is a Work of Art

Before:

After:

Artomatic is back! After 3 years, the artists have taken over an entire vacated office building in Crystal City (over by the Pentagon and National Airport in Arlington, VA). Man what a dusty, stuffy old space. I got stuck with blue carpet but what the hey. I’m generally pleased with my show this time around. It’s another part of The Score is a Work of Art series but dedicated to bluegrass music. If you’re in the DC area, check out Artomatic. My space is on the 11th floor behind the service elevator. (Space#11-3-03-0262 – Floor 11, Section 3, Area 3, Space 0262).

In other news, we just bought a new house and are selling our old one. We move in late June. It’s a great diet! Try and put an art show together while simultaneously packing up your house so it looks like you don’t live there and also chasing a 13 month old around who has suddenly figured out walking. Yeesh. I’ll be happy to get to the beach in July.

Edit: Here are some photos of the bluegrass band. If I was cleverer, I would have named it and posted a set list on the wall.

Wayfaring Stranger (Bass)


Big Scioty (Resonator Guitar)


Pretty Saro (Mandolin)


Little Cabin on the Hill #2 & #3 (Fiddles)


Blackberry Blossom (Banjo)


The Blackest Crow (Guitar)

New York Chestnut Cart at Christmas Time

By in Cards, General

Happy Holidays! As usual, I’m late for lofting this card to GCU in any decent amount of time this year but the link will be posted here as soon as it’s approved.

(Edit: wow that was approved in record time. Here’s the link.)

I had this idea last year as we were driving home from a weekend trip to NYC to see all the Christmas windows, the Rockettes, and, of course, some old friends. Bill and I were talking about the smell of the chestnut carts being one of the more defining elements of New York at Christmas. Unfortunately, it’s getting increasingly harder and harder to find chestnut vendors except in the tourist areas. And after doing a bit of research, we discovered that there was a pretty bad chestnut blight all across America in the early 20th century so now almost all of our chestnuts are imported.

For my holiday card this year, I wanted to create the iconic Sabrett vending cart. And for some reason, I wanted to do it in felt. I used to work with a lot of other media when I was younger and I was feeling nostalgic. I definitely wanted to get off the computer and get my hands dirty again. So I dug through all my art supplies and came up with all the ingredients for this piece. The only new thing I bought were the little Christmas lights which came from the sticker department at Michaels. I cut off the ones I wanted and used their own string to sew them on. I’m almost ashamed to say that some of the felt I used is almost 25 years old!

I scanned the piece directly and then messed with the colors, brightness and contrast in Photoshop. I admit I did a fairly quick job of it. Neither my laptop monitor nor my failing old tube monitor reflect print color accurately (I really need a new monitor), so I’m left guessing by number at the actual print color and saturation. Hmm, maybe I should ask Santa…

Have a happy holiday season, everyone!

Bedford Avenue Juice Shop

By in General, Work

Back in the late 90’s to early aughts my brother, Harris, lived on Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn across the street and a few blocks up from this wonderful juice shop where he took me for my first freshly juiced orange-carrot. I just couldn’t do the green stuff. We joked it was a lot like Annie Hall. Anyway, I made this illustration for him about 10 years ago or so. Custom giclee wasn’t that common and it was very expensive, so I printed the illustration myself onto four iron-on papers. I then painstakingly lined them up, ironed them onto a canvas, stretched the canvas, framed it in black electrical tape, and then presented it to Harris as a gift. Yup, classy. He loved it.

The juice shop and dress shop next door are no longer there. The street shot from Google shows that corner now to be so boring I won’t even bother posting a photo of what’s there. No flower stall, no vibrant yellow and blue walls. Oh well. Time passes, things change. Perhaps that is why art is (or should be) important.

Last spring, Cafepress offered a 16″ x 20″ canvas print including shipping on Groupon for $40 so I figured I’d try it out with this image. I pulled out the old image and discovered that not only could I not find a copy at a resolution higher than would print at 8 x 10, I HATED the techniques I used to digipaint it. This was back in my forced-patterns phase. That is to say, someone gave me a critique that I didn’t use enough pattern and texture in my work and I took them literally. Ouch. What they REALLY meant, I realized years later, was that my digital work was not friendly and organic-looking enough. Anyway, with the Groupon about to expire and REALLY limited time, I channeled my best Andy Worhol (that is to say my digital work will probably never be finished if I keep looking at it). I managed to locate the original drawing (inked as if it was meant for a comic book!), re-scanned it, blew up the low-res, aligned the paint layer as best as possible, used all the base colors, and repainted the image in roughly 5 hours.

As far as I’m concerned, it’s still not the greatest but it’s A LOT better than it was. I just uploaded it to Cafepress. Let’s see how it turns out.

Sea Turtle Ideas

By in General

I’ve been thinking about getting a tattoo in a henna color of a sea turtle. Not sure why it took me so long to realize that the sea turtle is mine but there it is. Actually, I finally realized it when I saw a mosaic of a turtle made of stones in the concrete sidewalk last spring in the little Mexican village of Puerto Morelos (but then I got pregnant so I have to wait a little bit). I also have a batik tapestry covered in the turtles that I bought in Saint Martin 8 years ago which had been all but forgotten, stuck in the closet all this time waiting to be displayed in my someday art studio.

Thinking back on it, I also remember a woman named Janet whom I knew some 20 years ago. She was going on about the turtle club or somesuch nonesense which led to a definition of turtles and snails. Back when I was just about 20 and everyone I knew was backpacking somewhere or on a walkabout, we made the distinction that snails always carried their homes with them but turtles always have a nest to return home to so they just bivouac in their shells. I hope not to be corrected too severely on this colorful anthropomorphic point by my scientist friends.

I do have a few other personal reasons for picking this design that have surfaced in my life in strange little places (like the day I was at the San Diego zoo and every singe turtle from the teeny weeny to the Galapagos tortoise were breeding) but which I will mostly keep to myself.

Lastly, there is all the ancient symbolism in so many cultures about the turtle. And here we are on Turtle Island. A simple Google search will provide more information that you really want to know about this. But the majority of these traditions hold the turtle or sea turtle as a symbol of life, the cycle of life, strength and pillars of support, renewal. Here are some quotes I’ve taken from various websites with meanings I appreciate (and yes I realize I am making no distinction between land and sea turtles. This all just made for some fun reading).:

“SEA TURTLE – cautious spiritual search or path”

“One of four Chinese sacred animals, the mythical Turtle is a creature of two elements; land and sea, as such the Turtle reflects an ability to adapt and flourish in any environment.”

“In American Indian culture, the Turtle represents the wisdom of the ancient ones and is respected for it’s strength and individuality. Those who bear the symbol of the Turtle carry the responsibility of caring for, protecting, and nurturing others.”

“In the Hindu religion the Turtle is considered to be the second incarnation of the powerful god Vishnu… Turtles are also symbols of immortality and are considered temporary dwelling places for souls making their way through a series of lives on the path to Nirvana.”

“The Turtle. A water animal. Strength, feminine “power fetish” animal, fertility, long life & perseverance. Considered by many to be able to defy death, also an annoyance to the Coyote. (Southwestern Native American)”
And this from a website about turtles (turtletanks dot org):

The Native American turtle has a lot of meanings. The turtle, a water animal, is a symbol for strength, fertility and perseverance. It was considered a power fetish animal. It was believed to have the ability to defy death.

The turtle was part of communication between tribes. The Great Plains people regarded the turtle as a symbol of a meaningful and long life. Not all tribes used the same symbols, but they often communicated using languages to portray a central idea.

The Native American turtle was a symbol of truth as well. It is believed that knowing the truth means understanding and staying loyal to all the fundamental laws of the Creator. It is believed that the Grandmother Turtle was present when the Creator gave man the 7 sacred laws. The Grandmother Turtle was there to make sure that the sacred laws would not be forgotten or vanish.

The back of the Turtle consisted of the 13 moons, which portrayed the truth of a single cycle of the Earth’s revolution around the sun. There are also 28 marks on the back, portraying the woman’s body and cycle of the moon. The shell itself portrays the actual happenings of the body and is also there to remind people of the Creator’s plan and teachings.

Torah says you may not make marks on your body to commemorate the dead. So I won’t do that. I will instead chose a symbol for my new life. Here are some of my early ideas for my singing turtle.

ETA 2025 – I have not gotten a sea turtle tattoo.

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