J. D. Hastings « d’Arte Board

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Old Habits

Posted in abstract, Art, Collage, J. D. Hastings, Toni Tiller, Work in Progress with tags abstract, Art, Collage, J. D. Hastings, Toni Tiller, wip on May 30, 2012 by Toni Tiller

After getting all jazzed up last week about the new materials and all that color and pattern oh how exciting because boy don’t I love new challenges, went upstairs, spread everything out, and picked…

that.

It’s so boring. And if you add a swipe of teal in there it becomes the exact same color scheme as the Ramada Inn circa 1984. I think I must have been terrified when I was looking down at everything, all those pieces, 87 total, and just selected the colors that were safest to me. On the other had there were some successful elements, it was another clarification of how the white thread changes and pulls together the designs, and the actual sewing of the shapes came much ore easily. Not sure if it is worth finishing though.

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Stick With That

Posted in abstract, Art, art on paper, Collage, J. D. Hastings, Toni Tiller with tags abstract, Art, Collage, J. D. Hastings, quilting, Toni Tiller on May 23, 2012 by Toni Tiller

These colors and patterns made me uncomfortable.

But of course that was the point, right? Previous efforts in this collab have been in my color/pattern safety area, nice and neutral. Puzzling this one out was fun, working hard to keep the chaos of the free shaped forms in some harmony with the rigidness of the lines, fearing muddled results otherwise.

I don’t usually use these colors, or stripes either, and that two pages were so similar in color made an easy choice to flip one horizontally to give the forms some definition against each other. The opposite approach seemed fitting to handle the black and white, syncing up the lines where possible so vertical structure could be created,but none of it was working until the stitching was added, giving the eye just enough of a break to navigate it all.

I think.

I mean I hope. Did it sound like I knew what I was talking about up there?

That was an honest reflection of the decisions that went into it, but it’s all new, new materials, new techniques, so it’s still pretty mysterious. But I want to make more, so I figure it must be the right track.

By the way, the title came from a random thing on the bottom of my computer, but it seemed to fitting, so I followed instructions.

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I’m Lazy. Sue Me.

Posted in Art, Collage, J. D. Hastings, Painting with tags Art, Collage, J. D. Hastings, masking tape, Painting on May 15, 2012 by jdhastings

I couldn’t be bothered to photograph a new piece yesterday so you get this.

-JD

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Tape and Tape and Tape and

Posted in Art, Collage, J. D. Hastings, Painting with tags abstract, Art, Collage, J. D. Hastings, Painting on May 8, 2012 by jdhastings

So on. I need to cut back on these. I ended up with a stack of 40 or 50 to scan last week, and it’s absurd.

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Gray Scales

Posted in Art, Collage, J. D. Hastings, Painting with tags Art, basquiat, Collage, gray, masking tape, Painting on April 24, 2012 by jdhastings

My legs ache. After a week of collecting masking tape without applying it to sheets of paper, I ended up sitting on the ground for 10 hours the last 2 days making sheets.

“Why did you sit on the floor if it was so uncomfortable?” you might ask. Because there was so much tape that in order to view it all to be able to select each piece to put on a sheet I had to surround myself with it.

I ended up producing a lot of brightly colored pieces, but am mostly taken with the limited palette gray scale pieces I’m showing today.

More after the jump. Read more »

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Tape Parade

Posted in abstract, Art, Collage, J. D. Hastings, Painting with tags Art, Collage, colors, J. D. Hastings, masking tape, Painting, recycling on April 17, 2012 by jdhastings

My experiments with masking tape have taken on a life of their own. While these started as a way to avoid wasting paint while making paintings to sew together, these have gradually become something of a focus in their own right.I’ve been posting them daily at my Tumblr site, and currently still have 47 queued up to post, with many more likely to added.

These have become exercises in color for me. There are obvious elements of form in the dots, checker boxes or occasional letters, but most of the composition remains linear. The main differences between different sheets come from the color schemes.

While I control these to an extent in deciding what to paint when, there’s also a lot of chance involved. I may be working on 3 different quilts requiring 3 completely different types of color and pattern, but the tape used for each of them winds up together. The results may be a fairly tight scheme (top) or something more unexpectedly diverse (2nd piece down).

Sometimes pieces take a week or two to fill out, leading to unexpected combinations, like the above, which has pieces of 21 different paintings in it, I think. It’s a very useful tool for trying out these new color combinations quickly, without much risk, and will help me plan more detailed works in the future.

I’ll post several more below. Read more »

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I Forgot to Name This

Posted in Art, J. D. Hastings, Painting with tags Art, J. D. Hastings, Painting on April 3, 2012 by jdhastings

“Dropcloth with Square 2012″ 48″ x 60″

This is big. To photograph it in a single frame I had to back up as far as was possible in my apartment leaving room so I could actually check to see that it did, actually fit in the frame. Getting something approximating even lighting was it’s own issue, and perfect focus? Well, just don’t click on the original.

This served as my dropcloth for months. I painted hundreds of smaller canvases and sheets of paper upon it. I used masking tape to get the effect of the squares, so there are 4 layers atop one another here.

Detail:

Apologize for the poor focus. My favorite parts are where snippets of pattern remain from leftover pieces of canvases painted on this. Remind me that when I’m working on my next dropcloth.

-JD

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Masking Tape Remixes Redux

Posted in Art, Collage, J. D. Hastings, Painting with tags Art, Collage, J. D. Hastings, masking tape, Painting, quilting, recycling on March 27, 2012 by jdhastings

Here are more quilted remixes of some recent pieces made from masking tape leftover from other paintings.

-JD

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New Tape

Posted in Art, Collage, J. D. Hastings, Painting with tags Art, colors, masking tape, Painting, recycling on March 20, 2012 by jdhastings

I’m in between finishing projects now, so here’s some recent used masking tape from paintings.

-JD

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Masking Tape Remixes

Posted in Art, J. D. Hastings, Painting with tags Art, J. D. Hastings, Painting, sewing on March 13, 2012 by jdhastings

I may have an opportunity to show some of my masking tape pieces in the future. This weekend, I decided to prop a few up with some quick editing to make them a little more display ready. These are the results:

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Trash

Posted in Art, J. D. Hastings, Painting with tags Art, Collage, paint on February 14, 2012 by jdhastings

I went on a bit of a painting binge last month. The result was a lot of used masking tape. Usually I use the tape to get simple line patterns like this:

But this time I also used the odds and ends to make patchwork stuff like the pieces below. I generally like the effect. These will end up collaged into some quilt some day.

More after the jump. Read more »

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A Bunch of Thes

Posted in Art, J. D. Hastings, Painting with tags Art, Collage, J. D. Hastings, Painting on February 7, 2012 by jdhastings

Still very much work, still very much in progress.

These will not be paired with “Ends.”

-JD

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Woven Watercolor Cross

Posted in Art, J. D. Hastings, Painting with tags Art, J. D. Hastings, Painting on January 31, 2012 by jdhastings

Last night instead of preparing art for today I ironed shirts. I have no regrets, but I also have nothing to post. I don’t know if I’ve ever posted this before.

“Woven Watercolor Cross” 2005 It’s like 30″ wide or something. Watercolor soaked through canvas, woven.

This is a woven piece made out of a dropcloth that I used a lot of watercolor on. I then flipped the dropcloth, where you could see where the watercolor soaked through. Toni hates me for this because it’s so light sensitive I won’t allow it out of my closet.

-JD

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Automatic Writing

Posted in Art, J. D. Hastings, Toni Tiller with tags Art, paper, Toni Tiller on January 25, 2012 by Toni Tiller

This week my mind has been racing with all kinds of thoughts, usually unfriendly ones, but hey it happens from time to time and when it does one of the most soothing things to do (besides cleaning everything) is to find something repetitive that distracts through a form of monotony. I had a little side project from JD tucked away for just such an occasion, transcribing lengthy text.

What I really loved about this was it was all text I would have never really read on my own, and even better still haven’t. Even though I faithfully copied Lovecraft and Robespierre faithfully I couldn’t really tell you what either was about. I was so focused on one word at a time that they never formed any cohesive sentence in my own mind. I do remember writing the word “liberty” and “virtue” quite a bit.

As far as physical process there was a learning curve. Find a pen, it is the wrong pen, look for another, remember how to write clearly, contend with adverse paper textures, wonder about placement…all of this kept me plenty distracted from the obnoxious chatter of my own mind for awhile, but I’ll be needing more paper soon.

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Work In Progress

Posted in Art, J. D. Hastings, Painting with tags Art, J. D. Hastings, quilting on January 24, 2012 by jdhastings

Finally getting these to where I can spell words. However, these are actually the only letters I have enough of to do so. This will be the background for a stencil to be added hopefully this weekend.

Clearly legibility isn’t this style’s strong suit, but I can live with it for a repeated phrase like this. If I ever do longer texts it’s something I’ll have to manage. Perfect for ransom notes though.

-JD

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1000 Es

Posted in Art, J. D. Hastings, Painting with tags Art, Painting, quilting on January 17, 2012 by jdhastings

First things: I’ve started a Tumblr to post some of the pieces I make that will go into future quilts, and other progress shots.

This is one of today’s posts:

This is a test of work I’ve been doing with stencils. I can use individual letter stencils to then create words and more.

Towards that end, here are 1000 Es that I created.

More after the jump. Read more »

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Randy + Kate

Posted in Art, Collage, J. D. Hastings, Painting on January 10, 2012 by jdhastings

My cousin and his bride, Kate, were married in December 2011. I promised them a good piece that night and used the full year allowed by good manners to finish it. The result was their Wedding/Christmas present this year.

Each piece is 24″ x 18″, and is a quit of paintings, collages and traditional fabric quilt. Pieces of each background are used to fill in the different planes of the form within it. This is what I was testing in this post.

Unfortunately, because I had to build the frames and stretch these in Los Angeles I wasn’t able to photograph them in my studio with my equipment. While my uncle and father are both good phtographers with solid equipment, we had a hell of a time getting worthwhile photos. Two of these are too blurry to show details of, and the two that are still have problems. So, while these are some of the most intricate pieces I created last year, I haven’t the documentation to prove it. Typical. Regardless, here they are:

-JD

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Full Color Baudelaire

Posted in Art, J. D. Hastings, Painting with tags Art, J. D. Hastings, paintings on January 3, 2012 by jdhastings

On average, the New Years weekend is probably my most productive of any time of the year. Decembers are usually spent finalizing Christmas gifts and rushing around trying to finish a variety of things. Then the Holidays come and I’m usually separated from the studio for about a week. By the time New Years comes, I am alone in my apartment without any near term responsibilities and all I want to do is play. Around this time last year I had just bought a new Sewing Machine and was experimenting with the form of quilt I played with all year.

This weekend may have been the most productive of my life. I started playing with stencils, and different colors of paint. Because these hues are ridiculously expensive, I started diluting them and creating my own mixtures. The result of these 2 things was a weekend of painting or preparing to paint (making stencils/mixing paint) near non-stop. I learned a lot in these 3 days, but may have to force myself to slow down to prevent burning myself out.

What I didn’t do much of was document what I was doing. So for now you’ll have to trust me and accept these 2 stencils of a passage from a poem by Baudelaire that I am working with to become accustomed with text:

(This one got cur off in the rush to scan it at midnight last night. Apologies.)

-JD

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I’m Back (And So Is The Feeling In My Index Finger)

Posted in Art, J. D. Hastings, Toni Tiller with tags abstract, Art, collaboration, Collage, J. D. Hastings, Toni Tiller on December 7, 2011 by Toni Tiller

Every year I have the opportunity to run away to the middle of no where, take a break from daily life, weekly blogging, and any art making at all. I love making art but I love my sanctioned break from it just as much, there is a relief to being able to put it all aside and not feel it hanging over your head. That time ends up being useful to reflect and consider the previous years efforts and loosely plan what might come next.

This year I had some time to work with JD Hastings, where we thought about ways to team up using my marks and his quilting. One of the things we tried was using some of his pre-painted sheets and layering the same design repeatedly. It’s not something I can do with my usual materials because of the thinness of magazine paper, but the thickness of the painted paper means I can trace and reuse the same squiggle as many times as we like. He took over the color choices in these while I took care of the mark making and cutting. The enduring challenge in working on these came in the form of a very numb index finger, a consequence of the pressure applied to get through the materials. It took 3 days to wear off.