Today I spent the whole day in the studio while my daughter went skiing, and I also managed to catch a few exhibitions. The painting that I've been stuck on for days, the she-wolf in the mangrove forest, now has a bunch of spoonbills populating it. I never thought I'd see the day when I would be painting spoonbills... but I have to admit it's sort of fun (and more than slightly ridiculous). Here's an in-progress shot.
Downstairs from my studio, I saw the Tara Tucker show at OSP Gallery that I talked about last week. The show is impressive, and Tucker is a very skilled draftsman (draftswoman, actually). I learned that her mother worked as a taxidermist at a natural history museum for many years, and her step-father grows rare orchids; it is amazing to see how these influences infiltrate the work. This show has been carefully curated, right down to the frames that the drawings are in; the frames are wood stained a graphite color that plays off of the graphite in the drawings and sets them off nicely. It makes me think that maybe I need to be more conscious of my framing choices... In any event, here are some installation shots.
Over at the Artists Foundation in the Distillery building in South Boston, there was a retrospective of drawings and animation by the artist Max Coniglio, who died from cancer in 2007 at the age of 33. The opening was packed and felt like a celebration not just of Max's work, but also of his life. Here are some of his drawings.
The Artspotting show that I was in a month or so ago was also in the Distillery, and I picked up my pieces from Bob DaVies while I was there. Many moons ago, I had a studio in that building, and to say it is a quirky old place would be a profound understatement. Well, legend has it that Bob found an abandoned Vandercook press in the building, lugged it to his studio, and now runs an inspired letterpress studio, complete with blog. I swapped Bob a collage for this fabulous letterpressed proof of a book cover.
I also came away with a Chad Reynolds chapbook that Bob illustrated, as well as a letterpressed "venus bird" for my daughter to invent a story about, which I will then email to Bob for him to add to an ongoing collection of venus bird legends. What Bob is doing with the press is so inspiring. He does a lot of work with children, helping them to write stories which he then publishes, complete with letterpressed book covers. It is a labor of love, and amazingly creative, and I am just plain inspired by the path his artmaking has taken. (And: did I really walk by that abandoned Vandercook all those years going to and from my Distillery studio and not ever notice it????) This is the venus bird print:
And the chapbook:
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And a happy rest of the weekend to you all.
