I Quit My Day Job To Make Work

Yeah I did, but it was a cheapo part-time thing, and thisahere show might be more important than that, so...you know...

I've been working on weekends for the past three weeks to come up with things.  "Things" are going well, but I am continually reminding myself not to get too confident, as I still believe some aspects of my work need tweaking.

Here are some previews of parts to the whole:

 

 And here is about 1/3 of the space to be reckoned with: yikes.


My goal is to not only make nice, fabric-y pieces, but to do so in such a way that they could be stand alone sculptures or spread out for an installation effect. Yeah, my work goes both ways.

I found out that the whole thing will be funded though the center, including travel and installation costs. This is a huge step up for me.  I feel like it is a precursor to the big time and even if it isn't, I think some amazing opportunities can arise from this experience.

My art is getting better every week.  I anticipate having strong body of work by the Aug. 22 deadline.

PS The info on the show is Sept. 2, 2011 - Jan. 7, 2012 at the McColl Center for Visual Art, 721 N. Tryon Street, Charlotte, NC. 

Hi, Remember Me?

I'm that crazy girl that can't sleep! As irony would have it,  I feel like I am where I was a year ago.  In Feb.'10, I would've had a few short weeks to finish up for my thesis and I can remember the insomnia and panic. In the long, lazy months that came after, I thought I'd never get around to making another piece again. Heh, I'm baaaaaaaaack! It is super cray-cray for me to have a solo show- not that I don't have decent work already, but I'm the type of person who wants a new cocktail dress for every occasion (hello, impracticality) hence I also want new fab work for said show. I must get started now at 4:07 in the AM! I only have 7 months!  Working only on the weekends, that time is going to fly right by!

Sometimes you need time off to regroup.  From April '10 to just a few weeks back in December, I was not in thinking mode at all. Felt a bit bad about that, but not enough to remedy the situation.  All I've done for the last 48 hours do is envision how to solve the visual problems that I feel are present in some existing pieces and how to create even better new stuff. I think it's going to be grand. Look for the continuance and return of my favorite materials, as well as some new additions- girly, girly stuff! Yeah, it might be pink.

 

Hi, we are inspiration!  I'm Cave Pearl and you've already met Honeycomb, up there.

...When I Least Expected It.

 I was lying in bed last night after a day of making experiments from the usual suspects (fabric, plastic) and feeling agitated that my issues with proper presentation had not made any headway over the course of a mere six hours. Then I reminded myself that I was not in school anymore and time frames didn't matter.  I had all the time in the world to tinker around and figure things out. I felt very relieved.
So then today...
The most wonderful magic of magical things happened. The McColl Center, which will be hosting my residency in September, called up and made me an unprovoked offer that I couldn't refuse: a four-month long solo show in their biggest gallery space. (This was an upgrade from a previous offer of a month-long group show in another space.)  I don't know what I did to deserve such an honor. I've been keeping close tabs on other artists that have shown in the same space and they are not lightweights like Yours Truly.  I am nonplussed.
I have six months to pull out all the stops.  Last year I had a similar time line for preparing for my thesis show and god knows that I needed every minute. I have to do it again, this time with virtually no money and on a tremendous scale. Make or break time is here and I am beside myself. The responsibility and repercussions of both success and failure are MASSIVE. I might be shitting myself right now.  I hope I can deliver.

That which doesn't kill us, right?

New Sculpture - First in A Year!

I finally had some time to experiment the other weekend. In previous rants I've swung the pendulum between wanting my work to be either abstraction or representation but I just don't think that it matters anymore. Eva Hesse spent years pointedly getting her sculpture to not represent anything known.  I feel like the more I might try the opposite approach, I get truly bizarre things.

Now my conundrum lies in presenting the final form.  I have a lot of interesting parts, but I have yet to make a solid, cohesive, finished whole. I'm not afraid of commitment, I just cant seem to find a solution that works.  It needs to be something that's more than a means to an end; the solution needs to be something that is truly  unique and perfect and catapults the forms from merely "interesting" to "phenomenal". At this point in my career, all I can do is experiment and respond to the various options. These are two trials from the past week.

Maybe someday knowledge will come.

Long Time, No Blog

It's been a slow couple of months since I went to Elephant Rocks and took those pretty pics in the blog before this'n.  I worked for exactly two weeks in November at the St. Louis Art Museum as a gallery attendant before I was hired as a photo retoucher for a local wedding photographer. But now, things are looking up as I'm teaching two photo classes at one local community college and a 3d design course at another one not too far away.  My Kickstarter fundraising was successful and I was able to buy some supplies with the proceeds, and as luck would have it, I'm now to busy too make any damn art!  However, I did stumble upon an image from a recent National Geographic that blew my mind.  I don't really want to divulge what it is,  not at least until I'm further along in my current project- so it's a surprise! Anyway I will say that it answers a conundrum that I was having about the nature of my little pink blobs.  This time last year I had to write my thesis and I was wracking my brain to try to discover what they were.  Post grad school, it seemed unnecessary to liken the abstract forms to anything, but now, uncoerced, here I am doing it again. I know what I can compare my work to now and that's just fine with me. I know I don't need a real-world comparison, but my work just seems more resolved and justified if I have one, even if I never mention it aloud.

Pretty Fall Pictures!

Yeah.  I like photography too.
Taken in Middlebrook, Mo at both Elephant Rocks State Park and Johnson Shut-Ins.

Back to (Art) Reality

So the Kickstarter thing has been incredibly useful.  I've reach my funding goal and next month I will be able to get back to business and start with the fabric experimentation again.  I still have no idea what the larger implications of the series are/will be, and even though I was forced to come to a conclusion in graduate school, I no longer think that the work that made up Emergent Structures has to be likened to any thing, real or  imagined.  So, I now have total artistic freedom to invent absolutely anything. It's a little daunting. I feel a little stuck. Granted, I know what my materials are and the basic ideas and shapes that have been kicking around the 'ol noggin, but damned if I know what I'm "really" doing. 
Since grad school was a whirlwind adventure of Holy Shit I Have To Make Art Now, I want to get back to basics and just do some nice, pretty objects as a way of relearning and/or expanding on very basic 3D properties, before I try to go balls out again to create installation art.  (I will admit that with three years of sculpture know-how, there is no way I was bound to make masterpieces out of a fricking thesis show.) Time to start over!
PS I nearly have a full teaching load for next semester at a couple of area community colleges.  This time last year I was scared to death of the prospective perpetual unemployment conundrum, but it looks like it all worked out in the end.