Web page on upcoming exhibit

This is cool -- I am one of three artists in "Nature Works," an exhibit at the Hess Gallery at Pine Manor College in Brookline next spring, and Carole Rabe, the gallery director, has put up this page on the college's website to describe the show.

Patching together a new series

A friend whose opinion I truly trust voiced her love of a painting I made earlier in this style, so I have decided to make a series of them. I am loving every minute of making them, which is a good sign.

I'm going through old works on paper and printings on cloth as the "raw materials" for these paintings -- pieces from the past that I wasn't sure what I'd ever use them for, but I kept because I liked them so much. That's a good sign too!

These works are 20" square, collages on stretched canvas.

Reverse image

What a way to start the day! I hustled down to the studio this morning with plans to work on a painting I started a few days ago, and/or continue a series I had started a few months ago.

Why do I bother to make plans? I know the inevitable result. The supplies will tell me what to do that day, and it will never have anything to do with what I had planned (but instead be MUCH more fun!).

When I got down there today, I got the urge to go through some old works on paper. I pulled out a stencil I had cut out last fall, a blank page I had folded in half some time ago and so now wanted to use up, and a years-old can of black spray paint. So I randomly put them all together, and ended up with the cool image above! This gives me an idea for a whole new series of works on paper. Luckily, I have some time to work it out before my summer teaching begins.

Feathering the nest

Robin Family Update: The baby robins whose family who has taken up residence in our rhododendron bush are growing up! Their fluffy coats have been replaced by feathers, and their breasts are speckled with brown in anticipation of the bright red to come.

This photo was taken by my husband just a few days ago, and today they have started exploring the area outside the nest! Just perching among the bush branches, so far, but they’ll be trying their wings before long.

In other news, today I received a lovely letter from Janet E. Garvey, the United States Ambassador to Cameroon, thanking me for loaning my work through the ART In Embassies Program. She wrote, “I wish you could see how lovely your ‘Twist’ and ‘Pucker’ look in my dining room. I can tell you that visitors to the residence are delighted to see such terrific examples of contemporary American art.”

I was thrilled to receive this letter. Totally made my day … well, year. Here are the two paintings on loan and currently hanging in the ambassador's residence in Africa.

Time to fail

I recently saw a teaching colleague who has been on sabbatical for the past two semesters. I knew she had been looking forward to having a chance to work on her art, so I asked her how things had been going in the studio.

She beamed and replied that it had been wonderful to have so much time to create. She told me this was the first time in many years that she had had enough time to experiment, without the pressure of a limited time frame before she had to rush back to job-related duties, or having to come up with a finished product for a certain event.

I thought this was a significant observation. We artists often spend our time in the studio making work for a particular upcoming show, or a specified piece for a commission. These types of activities are wonderful career (or wallet) boosters, and they can yield some good work. But they don’t tend to involve discovery, which is the fun part.

It’s only when you’re messing around, with no time constraints, that you are free to push the boundaries of what you already know and explore new territory with your materials and tools. Something spills, and you get an idea for a new shape from the pours. Two colors get mixed up when you happen to put two brushes down beside one another, and you get an idea for a new combination. The best paintings I’ve ever made were the result of “mistakes,” when I had been trying to do something else and failed, but realized the unexpected part was far better than what I had originally been aiming for. (Think how many scientific breakthroughs were unintended results that “just happened”!)

It is crucial to allow yourself this kind of creative time, with no deadlines or rules, to try things and fail. That’s the only way to learn and grow, and the result might turn out to be a masterpiece.

The painting above, “Brown Scribbles,” is one of my all-time favorites, and it was the result of just such an experience. I had become so frustrated one day that I couldn’t come up with anything I liked after many tries, that I grabbed an old canvas that wasn’t going anywhere and started tearing up hunks of old works on paper that weren’t going anywhere either, and gluing them on at random. Without my trying – I was barely even looking at the canvas as I did this – a pattern began to emerge, of different line widths blending into one another. Not only did this random working style result in a lovely painting, it revealed an entirely new process to me that in turn resulted in a whole new series.

If I had “succeeded” at making the painting I was originally trying to make, none of this would have happened!

Have you ever had an experience like this?

Happy Mother's Day

I thought this picture was a good one for today, because it shows how devoted mothers are. Photographed by my husband Kevin, it shows the robin family who have taken up residence in the rhododendron bush outside our living room window. Look at all those demanding kids (four, to be exact), and Mom patiently feeds each one and then heads off in search of another worm for the second course.

(Or maybe that's a Dad robin. Well, let's wait until Father's Day to praise Dad.)

Anyway, here's to Moms everywhere today -- thank you for your love and care. This picture is of my beloved Mom and me, when I was 1 and my mother was 27. Frankly, I think I have the BEST, most beautiful Mom on the planet.

End of semester thoughts

The end of the semester is always a bittersweet time for me. I feel spent after all that hard work, and relieved that my mission is accomplished and I can look forward to a bit of time to relax and collect myself before the next semester begins. But I also greatly miss my students and the special group comaraderie my class established after having worked intensely together for the past 14 weeks.

This semester I taught a color theory course at a state college, and I was very proud of the students' accomplishments and their progress over the course of the semester.

Above is a project by one of my students, Claudia Parent, who created this work in response to an assignment to illustrate a memory that involved a strong impression of color. Claudia discovered an intuitive working process this semester. She was initially inspired by a photo of a merry-go-round in motion, which she used as a starting point for this complex variety of colors, textures, and paints applied with different tools.

You can see why it feels so rewarding to me to have the opportunity to encourage my students to find their voices as artists. No one goes into teaching to get rich, but many times we teachers are richly paid in a way that doesn't involve money: by knowing we are part of helping someone along in their process of discovery.

My profile on painter Nilsa Garcia-Rey

Click here to read my profile on painter Nilsa Garcia-Rey, which appears in today's edition of the New Bedford Standard-Times.

For more information on Nilsa, visit her website here.

Enjoy!

Confessions of a spray-paint addict

I tried to stay away, but the urge was too powerful.

I began using spray paint in 1998, when I noticed that a studio neighbor was using it and I liked the soft edges it left in his (mostly oil) paintings. From the moment I shook my first can and hit that spray button, I was hooked! I developed all kinds of ways to make the paint dry in uneven pools, I layered it to “mix” new colors, combined it with collage and oil stick marks, sprayed through found-object and hand-cut stencils, and tried all kinds of experimental tricks. I loved it! It was like working with a giant crayon.

It also felt like a subversive way to work. I thought of gangs of kids bombing subway cars parked in silent night-time train yards. It felt like a very “non fine art” way to create.

But when I moved my studio to the basement of my home three years ago, I figured spray paint as a medium would be out. I didn’t want any chemical smells sneaking up through the floor, or lingering in my living room the way they did in my former warehouse studio. So I gave away my new or almost-new cans to a friend who’s a graffiti artist, and took the older or almost empty cans to my town’s hazardous waste disposal day. I thought my spray painting days were over.

But last week, when I accompanied my husband on a trip to the hardware store to buy some toilet repair supplies, I spied a row of sweet new Krylon colors as we passed the paint aisle. I told myself to forget it, that spray paint was out of my life forever.

But I couldn’t get that vision of the Krylon aisle out of my imagination! So this morning I found myself standing at the register of the hardware store with four cans: Periwinkle, Oxford Blue, Burgundy and Purple. My hands were trembling with excitement as I handed my money over to the cashier. I was about to re-enter the world of spray paint!

I experimented by spraying onto a small piece of cloth in my studio this afternoon – with the door opened to the back yard, two fans blasting, and wearing a respirator – and it didn’t seem bad at all down there. A few hours later, there is no lingering smell at all. So I’m going to try making one painting and see how it goes. (I’m spraying lines onto cloth and cutting it into collage pieces, rather than spraying multiple layers onto the surface of the entire canvas, so it should be less intense than some of the other spray-painted series I’ve made.)

So it seems that I’m a spray-paint artist once again!

Not rejected, just not selected

Today I received a rejection letter from a college gallery I had applied to for a show, in response to a classified ad in Art New England. I have to admit, rejection letters don’t make my day. In fact, even at this stage in my career, sometimes they bum me out and/or make me angry and frustrated.

But this one was so pleasantly worded that I didn’t even feel rejected, just “not picked.” The director said she appreciated my applying, explained that there had been 45 applicants for 4 openings, and thanked me for “sharing your wonderful calligraphic paintings.” Now that’s a classy way to say “thank you but no thank you” to an artist’s application.

A colleague of mine told me recently that she saves all of her rejection letters and uses them as reference for deadlines for particular annual juried shows or grants. My friend Bob told me that he keeps all his rejection letters in a file so that one day, when he’s rich and famous, he can remind the galleries and jurors of their grave mistake in overlooking him and savor his revenge. (He’s got a “Count of Monte Cristo” vibe going on there.)

I think saving one’s rejection letters shows a strength of character and a focused professionalism. And in Bob’s case, a sense of humor. Me, I toss out rejection letters as quickly as I can rush over to the trash barrel. I admit, I have a tendency to live in a world of unicorns and lollipops, and I don’t want a file of rejection letters raining on my parade.

But if they were all carefully and considerately worded like the one I received today, they wouldn’t be such a burden to save.

The image at the top of this entry is "White Grid," a fairly new painting (January) that I've just entered in a juried show. I hope it's accepted (naturally), but even if it's rejected, I really love it! It's 20 inches square, and made of collaged squares, alternating, of cut paper and acrylic on fabric, collaged onto stretched canvas.