Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Week 4 - Getting into the groove

OK so I am 2 days late.  Unfortunately I was wiped out because I caught something and decided to take it easy on Valentine’s day.  OK so what did I accomplish this week.  

I did a skin over an abstract dripping - I will post it later.  
I met with Natasha (my mentor) for the first time.  We discussed all sorts of great ideas and what I pulled from her overall.  Was a great study on
Ingrid Calame
http://www.jamescohan.com/artists/ingrid-calame/selected-works/  
She also gave me a great article- called Sourcing Information
Practiced stain-making 
Also making a series of smaller paintings to share with her

Got a meeting with Terrel James (artist referred to me from Darra Keaton) http://www.terrelljames.com/tjpaintings.html

I went to the Forbidden Gardens City- It is being closed down - In 259 B.C. at the time of the First Emperors birth, China had been in a state of civil war of over 200 years and was divided amongst 7 Warring states. Qin ascended the throne at the age of 13, but did not have full power till the age of 21. One of his goals was to end the centuries of war and to unite the warring states into one kingdom. After almost twenty years of pitched battle, he was able to do just that. For the first time, the warring states were united into one country. Not content with just one lifetime, he began searching for things to prolong his life, including the fabled elixir of life. But what his alchemists brought back were things like powdered jade, phosphorous, and mercury. Before his death in 210 B.C. he began working on an elaborate burial site containing all the luxuries he'd enjoyed in life.  
Most impressively, it is said he had made 8,000 terra cotta warriors, the vanguard of his army, to protect him forever in the afterlife. Each of these statues is unique, from the braiding of their hair, to the way their armor is pieced together. Most of these statues are life sized, standing an average of 6ft. These statues were rediscovered in 1974, in Xi'an, Shaanxi province. The excavation is ongoing.
Our exhibit features about 6,000 1/3 rd scale replicas, made in Xi'an for Forbidden Gardens. The layout is as was thought to be in 1992 when our construction first began, but new discoveries have been made since that time,
including figures of animals, dancers, and acrobats.
http://culturemap.com/newsdetail/02-10-11-highway-99-paves-over-forbidden-gardens/

Oh and the highlight of my week Fernando Casas - Nature at the Very Verge, who is my professor had an opening reception at the Gremillion & Co.  He is also my professor at the Women's Institute - Astonishing Art over the Ages.  His stuff was incredible and very deep. Check him out. It is hard to feel the actual presence of the picture on line.  
http://www.fernandocasas.com/main.htm

Lastly, lots, lots and lots of research for my upcoming paper. I think I am going to write about Norman Lewis and Sam Gilliam.  I started out thinking I would write about my favorite Helen Frankenthaler and Morris Lewis but the more I researched, the more in common I seemed to have with Lewis and Gilliam. More to come on this. I could research for the rest of my life.

Well that is all I really have time to report for the week.  More happened...painting, 2 classes and need to reschedule and meet with Geoff Hipenstiel.  

Saturday, February 5, 2011

Natasha Bowdoin (mentor) / Carlos Cruz-Diez (exhibit)

Has another week already past? Well again a very productive week. I got a set of my second set of 3 immunization shots. Also, I turned in my first paper - it was about my experience of critiques.  Thursday, I painted with Sallie (fun times learning new texture tricks) and I also attended a lecture about the Masterpieces from the National Gallery. Thursday - everything in Houston got shut down b/c it was too cold for everyone at 35 degrees - they even let out school on Friday and Victor got to stay home with me.  We just studied at a coffee shop and I painted - I will post soon..I even started working on Sanjay Patel's Painting.



Time for the best news of the week and the month - I have a mentor! NATASHA BOWDOIN She is an incredible artist and a wonderful person. I am so excited to learn from her and pleased that she has chosen to take me on in this journey. http://natashabowdoin.com/2009/2009-1.html


I went to a gallery that was exhibiting Control Gallery - http://ctrlgallery.com/cms/


The detail is almost unbelievable, if you are in Houston, this is something your eyes should see. I will post pics so you can see her stuff. A little info about her: Natasha Bowdoin was born 1981 in West Kennebunk, Maine. She lives and works in Houston, TX. Bowdoin recently completed a two-year CORE residency at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Recent and upcoming exhibitions include "Art on Paper 2010", Weatherspoon Museum of Art, North Carolina; "The Daisy Argument", Visual Art Center, UT Austin; "Girls Just Want to Have Funds" (organized by the Rema Hort Mann Foundation), PPOW Gallery, NYC, "A Torrent of Words: Contemporary Art and Language", Kohler Arts Center, Wisconsin; Pulse Art Fair, solo project with CTRL gallery, Miami, FL; "Toil and Trouble", CTRL gallery, Houston and the "2011 Portland Museum of Art Biennial, Portland, Maine. She was recently awarded a residency at teh Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, NE. Bowdoin is represented by CTRL gallery, Houston and Extraspazio Gallery, Rome. She studied painting at the Slade School of Art in London (2002), received her BA and Post Baccalaureate degrees from Brandeis University (2003/2005) and her MFA from Tyler School of Art, Philadelphia/Rome (2007).
 Front of Natasha's Gallery Exhibit - Control
 Entrance
 Natasha
 Remarkable close-up!
 More ...
 Breathtaking!
 Close-up


Also, I was able to go to a Members Preview Party at MFAH for Carlos Cruz-Diez and then a talk Conversing with color. I got a pic with him - he is a great guy. For more than five decades, Carlos Cruz-Diez (born 1923) has experimented intensively with the origins and optics of color. His wide-ranging body of work includes unconventional color structures, light environments, street interventions, architectural integration projects, and experimental works that engage the response of the human eye while insisting on the participatory nature of color. The MFAH and the Cruz-Diez Foundation, Houston, present the first

large-scale retrospective of this pioneering Franco-Venezuelan artist.Carlos Cruz-Diez: Color in Space and Time features more than 150 works created from the 1940s to today, including paintings, silk-screen prints, and innovative chromatic structures; room-size chromatic environments, architectural models, and videos; and a virtual re-creation of the artist´s studio. The exhibition introduces international audiences to Cruz-Diez´s extensive production and places his theoretical and artistic contributions to 20th-century Modernism in a broader context than they have traditionally been seen.


The starting point for Cruz-Diez´s chromatic investigations is the unstable nature of color. His work combines color theory, science, kinetics, mechanical engineering, and the painter´s craft, and it defies easy categorization. In order to realize his artistic vision, particularly with regard to the innovative Physichromies series, the artist adapted or invented his own tools and machines.

 Me & Carlos Cruz-Diez
 Carlos Cruz-Diez
 Carlos Cruz-Diez
 Carlos Cruz-Diez
 Carlos Cruz-Diez
 Carlos Cruz-Diez

 Carlos Cruz-Diez
 Carlos Cruz-Diez
Seth Alverson - Another one my favorites that I saw this week