d'Arte Board

Abstraction and Representation

bennett77 — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 06:17:09 +0000

This week I’m posting 3 more or less unrelated pieces. I started the portrait last week with oil paint and a black oil medium with turpentine washes on a composite board treated with a gypsum-based hide-glue gesso, hand-made decades ago by my father. It’s a work in progress I’m posting as a documentation of a first “state”.
I’m including an abstract monotype that I printed with two separate images on the same paper, creating a layered print which provides a subtle depth that does not appear easy to find with a normal one-pass.
The other monotype is a loose portrait of the newest family member in fellow blogger Toni Tiller’s life.

Tom Bennett

WIP: Wiltonian in Progress, oil on board, 24″ x 24″

Indian Summer, monotype, 20′ x 16″

Lala, monotype, 16″ x 20″

No Art, A Dog, And Advice Needed

Toni Tiller — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 13:10:36 +0000

Whenever I talk about this blog to people I always describe it as mostly a process based blog, where we all spend time talking about how and why we do things, as well as posting the end results, for better or worse. Once in awhile part of the process seems to be producing, well, nothing.

I could have gone into the archives for something to post, but instead I’m just going to be honest and say I just didn’t have time this week. There have been summer flu’s to indulge, guests to entertain, and in the biggest news of my week, a new member to the family. Everyone, meet LaLa, my new French Bulldog.

She’s been pretty much dominating my week with getting adjusted and doing that house training stuff (very important business). Don’t worry, I’m not going to lose my mind and start posting a thousand pictures of my dog in lieu of art, just this one, to introduce her and say hello.

Moving on, I have a small quandary. I got into an art swap situation with a twitter friend where we challenged each other to use certain materials. In this case he ended up with glitter and I took macaroni, which at first I thought I would do something sculptural with, but now I am not so sure. I started wondering if it would be possible to cook the pasta, pulp it down in the food processor, and roll it out into sheets that I could then dehydrate in the oven and either print or paint on. Does anyone have any experience with this? Do I need to add some sort of other binder? Should I just think of something else? Feel free to throw out ideas because I am a little stumped.

Naturally, in keeping with our process based theme, whatever I decide to go forward with I will document and show the results of.

Six Self Portraits

jdhastings — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 16:47:15 +0000

This weekend I experimented with Bad Photographic Printing techniques. I’m calling the series of stuff like this “Bad Photos.” Towards that end I had issues photographing these in the reflective frames, so this picture isn’t great.

Here are the originals:

The other 3 and some discussion are after the jump.

The great thing about these is they are quick and (relatively) cheap to make. I have a lot of other ideas about where to take things like this, particularly once I start mixing it with some of my other methods. Or I could try to find a way to sell customized versions of these. I could probably sell a set of 3 for as low as 60$.

Anyways, it’s always fun to try out new “toys.”

-JD

New Painting: Five Finger Float

ssstephg — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 22:16:56 +0000

At least, that’s the current thought for a title. Any other suggestions? I’ll consider any offered.

48 x 24 x 2 inches deep
acrylic on pine-cradled masonite panel with collaged canvas and masonite shapes

The attached masonite shapes are the five finger-looking things in the circle there. The masonite is about 1/4 of an inch thick. This one will probably be included in my October show. I seem to have a few different veins of work open and active at the moment and this piece runs through them all. I’m hoping that once the paintings are all finished and laid out for the final decision of who goes to the party and who stays at home rejected and bored, this painting will form a bridge that allows me to include work from both open veins. we’ll see what happens.

detail photos after the jump!

OK yeah, I can’t think of much worth saying. Hope you’re having a great weekend!
-Steph

Saturday Morning Cartoons: You Can Become a Pants Man, Too!

ssstephg — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 14:51:47 +0000

How “bout a little late morning toilet fun courtesy of our wonderfully loopy Japanese friends across the globe?

Come to The Great Holyoke Block Party!

ssstephg — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 13:50:12 +0000

More food! More music! More art! than you can shake a stick at!

KPAO! will be setting up a table and drawing on the sidewalk at the block party. We’re also bringing the chalk character boards–FUN! Come join us! There will be live music all day! My friends’ band, Span of Sunshine, is playing in the morning–11 am! I know that sounds early, but Span will wake you up and make you glad you came! There’s even going to be a Klezmer band!!!

Lots of fun stuff going on all day.

Veteran’s Park

from 11 am to 8 pm
tomorrow–Sunday September 5

See you there!

-StephG

p.s. Did you know, the block party poster was designed by KPAO! this year? It’s a WABU – Bodart collaboration! Innit lovely? I think it’s beautiful!

Arch Grounds Revitalization Project

jasongrayfineartist — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 18:51:13 +0000

I’m not sure what kind of national press this has received so far, but in St. Louis, the project to revitalize the St. Louis Arch’s grounds for its fiftieth anniversary has been a huge topic of conversation. It will certainly be an undertaking of massive scale for the region, with cost estimated at upwards of 500 million dollars (for perspective, that is about what it cost to build Millennium Park in Chicago). The problem with the park grounds as it stands is mostly that an interstate slices it off from the rest of the city making access complicated. It appears that all of the teams are looking to emphasize the natural landscape, and at first, I felt that this was a bit of a disappointment, given that St. Louis already has one of the country’s largest and best landscaped public parks with Forest Park (where many cultural institutions, like the art museum, zoo, history museum, and science center, are located and are all free to enter). In my mind, I had hoped that the wonderful Citygarden concept would be extended to the riverfront. However, I can appreciate what adding another beautiful green space will do to the city. Hopefully, St. Louisans will take the cue and spur a litany of green design around town, which would really center the city as a hub of the ecologically based movement and bolster the local economy. Whatever the result, there is a lot of change in the air in St. Louis, and I am very happy for the opportunity to be experiencing it firsthand.

Here are a few pics from the five finalists in the associated design competition, followed by a video from my favorite team. The winner will be announced on September 24, 2010.

What do I have in common with Derry, Ireland?

jasongrayfineartist — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 17:55:34 +0000

Okay, so this post is going to be a total mash-up, and will probably come across completely convoluted. Just warning you; I am still pitching my current series to galleries, working a great deal, and not really painting/etc., so I am going to attempt to at least make this a little interesting, despite the utter lack of any “real” art to present.

Concluding this weekend, I have been photographing staff portraits at a neurologist’s practice, and attempting to concentrate on drawing each person’s personality out of every shot, which has been a rewarding process. The doctor is retiring and this is her going away present to her team. Anyway, here are two shots from the series:

(Double-click on the second pics to see more.)

Derry, Ireland after the jump–>

Another project that has been eating up all of my spare time has been post-processing the shots that I took for a wedding a couple weekends ago. There are quite a few shots that I wouldn’t mind sharing, but one in particular that I think merits posting on Darteboard:

In other news, I was filing transparencies at work and I ran across images of two paintings by an anonymous artist from 19th-century Ohio (sorry, no pic). The paintings were each a portrait, one of a man and the other a woman, both with the last name of “Gray” (same as me). I don’t really know a lot about my paternal family history, and these paintings got me thinking. I spent the whole of that night combing the internet for any traces or clues concerning my family’s past whereabouts. It turns out that I am probably not related to the Grays from Ohio, although, I guess it is possible, since I was unable to track the “Grays” in my family back any further than my great-great grandfather, who helped found the town of Puxico, Missouri back in the mid-1800′s. However, I was able to trace back my great-grandmother’s family back quite a ways. The Lees are from Derry, Ireland (location of Bloody Sunday) and first immigrated to North America shortly after or during the American Revolutionary War. William Lee, III was the first of my distant relatives to come across the pond, and upon settling in North Carolina, he took a Cherokee woman as his wife. With their daughter, Fanny “Fanna” Lee, the Lee family merged with the Chatmans (later Chapman). Slowly, my Chapman brood settled further and further west, finally reaching southeastern Missouri in the early 1800′s. In 1923, Mary Elizabeth Chapman married John William Gray, and one of their six children is my Grandfather, Herschel Gray.

How’s that for a completely scrambled post?

First Thursday Art Walk

jdhastings — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 00:20:59 +0000

Its that time of month again, and yes I’m cranky. I have a new phone that actually posts decent photos and makes hilarious autocorrect mistakes. You can follow the fun at http://twitter.com/j_d_hastings.

-JD

If you want to know what the photo has to do with anything, then you just. Don’t. Get. It.

Rock Haul of Fem

bennett77 — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 04:37:24 +0000

Wow, that was a baaaad pun. Ok, this week we have more successful and not-so-successful experiments with the search for monotype interpretations of Tiller’s dreams. These are takes on her dream of moving rocks.
Think of this as a sort of a Dr Dre sampling of Zeppelin. Only maybe not as entertaining.
Tom Bennett

Dream Study: Moving Rocks 1, monotype, 20″ x 16″

Dream Study: Moving Rocks 2, monotype, 12″ x 18″

Dream Study: Moving Rocks 3, monotype, 12″ x 18″