Nature Morph

ducks and quilts

The duck magnolia piece is finally finished and en route to the Jen Bekman Gallery, where it will be in the Ornithology show that opens next week.

Check out the gorgeous Carrie Marill painting on the front of the show postcard:

 

I am really sad that I'm going to miss the opening, but I'll be beach front in Cape Cod, so I think I will survive!  I am also missing the opening of the group show Beauty and the Beast at Overtones Gallery in Los Angeles, and the Paper Quilt opening here in the Boston area.  Yikes!

Speaking of paper quilts, this is my finished "Mapping a Log Cabin" quilt:

I am going to try to keep up with the blog when I'm away, but it is dependent on the strength of the wireless signal available there, and the last time I was there, it was slooooooooow.  So we shall see.  Wishing you all a wonderful rest of the month!

 

taking a bit of a break

I am in that funny limbo period where my daughter's school is out for the year, and summer camp doesn't start for a few weeks.  In essence, the studio will have to wait (until Monday, June 30th, to be exact).  In the meantime, I've been to her kindergarten graduation...

 we've gone strawberry picking...

and I've been to the beach.

All in all, a good time has been had by all.  And I am headed to Cape Cod soon!  I am anticipating that I will return to the studio refreshed and excited to begin working again.  But in the meantime, why not play?

catching up

What a whirlwind trip out to California!  It may have been a little too adventurous of me to have two days in San Francisco followed by a packed 24 hours in Los Angeles before flying back east, but I am finally back and am trying to catch up on sleep, laundry, emails, and gardening.  Oh, and that pesky little thing called work deadlines.

Here is my wall of work at Rare Device.  This link has information about all the pieces.

The two women -- Lisa and Rena -- who hold down the fort at Rare Device could not have been nicer or more welcoming to me.  That fabulous pup, Wilfredo, made the show prep light and fun, and he also made me miss my dog back home.

I got to meet so many bloggers in San Francisco!  Lisa from Rare Device, of course, plus Lisa S., Diana, Katrina, Libby, and Emilyn (and I hope I'm not forgetting anyone).  Emilyn has a blog called It's (K)not Wood, dedicated to all things faux bois, which is absolutely worth a visit, if you're into that sort of thing.  I personally love the idea of dressing up the phrase "fake wood" with glamorous-sounding French words, and I've been cracking up over the phrase faux bois for months.

Down in Los Angeles, I stopped in at Overtones Gallery in Culver City, where I'll be in a group show this summer, and I also have a solo show lined up for early 2009.  The current show is New York artist Simone Lourenco, who makes stunningly beautiful papercut drawings.  Look at this detail of one of her pieces:

And you can sort of get a sense of how cool they look on the wall, with the shadows created by the three dimensional elements of the drawings.

So now I am wrapping up my paper quilt project, due to be delivered to the gallery on Saturday, and I need to deal with shipping work out to Overtones for the group show and also to Jen Bekman for the Ornithology show.  Both open at the end of the month.  Then I can concentrate on cranking out work for my two New York shows that open September 4th.  I can't believe I'm already thinking about September!

Hope you are all keeping cool.  Boston is wilting under the heat.

j'arrive!

I'm here in SF, completely exhausted, but the show is up, meeting Rena and Lisa and Wilfredo at Rare Device was an absolute treat, and Daily Candy thinks you should come see my show on Friday night. 

 

 

 

June 5, 2008

The Weekend Guide

What to Do This Weekend

SEE
Amy Ross Reception
What: Check out the artist’s new exhibit, Shapeshifter, featuring her signature watercolors of plant-animal morphing hybrids.
Why: Get freaky.
When: Fri., 7-9 p.m.
Where: Rare Device, 1845 Market St., at Pearl St. (415-863-3969).

leaving on a jet plane

I will be on a plane to Oakland (by way of L.A.) at a truly obscene hour of the morning.  I haven't packed yet, the house looks like a tornado swept through, and I still have to back up my laptop.  Yikes!

If you are in the San Francisco vicinity, please stop by Rare Device on Friday, June 6, between 7 and 9 p.m., and come say hi to me at the opening of my Shapeshifter show.

I'll be posting pictures of the show once I'm out there and it's up.  Wish me luck! 

gearing up for SF

All the art shipping that I was supposed to do at the end of last week got put off until today because of an impromptu weekend studio visit with a curator from a university art collection who is interested in commissioning a large-scale wall drawing for a new building on campus.  It would be my first permanent mural; usually they are up for a month or so and then get painted over and are lost forever.  This is potentially very exciting!  I will say more about it once things get nailed down a bit.

I hung up all of my work in my studio, and I put together a grouping of some of my pieces that are headed to Rare Device in San Francisco.

Thank you to Lisa Congdon and Poppy Talk for giving my show a shout out!

Now I'm off to FedEx...

before and after

Yesterday I collaged some woodpeckershrooms onto an old watercolor drawing of clawed birch trees that always felt a little sparse and unfinished... it's so much better now!  The before and after:

paper quilt

Geez, I've been away from Typepad for a few days, and suddenly the whole format of typing a post has changed.  Where have I been???

So, I've been finishing up my work for a group show of paper quilts that opens next month at the Essex Art Center in Lawrence, MA.  I decided to sew log cabin quilt blocks out of antique maps and my favorite paper from my printmaking days in art school, Kitakata.  The Kitakata paper has a sheen and weight that is similar to the maps, and the two work well together.  I wish the red colored maps I used for the quilt centers were a bit more vibrant, but they turned out pretty muted. 

For all the quilting I've done in my lifetime (when I was pregnant with my daughter, I made no art all those nine-plus months, but I did sew upwards of two dozen baby quilts, and I've kept up with it a bit, though not nearly at that pace!), I've never made a fabric log cabin quilt.  I've always liked the idea of the log cabin block symbolizing a home on the prairie, with the light and dark sides of the block representing the sunny and shady sides of the house, and the red middle square standing for the hearth.  I've been thinking about the idea of "home" lately, and I thought it would be interesting to piece a log cabin quilt out of maps.  Here are two of the blocks:

And here are a few mock-ups of different settings for the blocks.  I haven't decided which way to sew them together yet.

It's such a funny thing, sewing paper.  There's a precision to these paper blocks that I find really satisfying.  I'm still debating whether or not to superimpose a design on top to mimic free-motion quilting, maybe with punching holes in the paper with a pin, or actually sewing on top with thread.  (Though you can't really use a seam ripper on paper if you make a mistake...)

I am in the final stages of getting work ready for Rare Device, and I do hope to be better about blogging and posting images of work in progress and ultimately finished!

Ryan McLennan and shroom loot (unrelated!)

Check out the great Ryan McLennan interview on www.fecalface.com here!  Wow, totally impressive, and great images to boot.  As I've mentioned before, Ryan and I are showing together at Transmission in Richmond, VA in the fall, which I am completely excited about.  Go Ryan!

(Image: Ryan McLennan, Victory Roar, from www.ryanmclennan.com.)

As for my loot, I found this fabulous specimen while walking the dog this morning:

And these bluefoots and morels are from Whole Foods:

 

I am off to the studio now with these mushrooms packed in my bag, ready to be painted and given legs or hooves or heads or... 

SoWa Art Walk and Lisa Costanzo

I completely forgot to write an advance post about the SoWa Art Walk going on in Boston's South End this weekend, which is where I happen to have my studio.

I have a bit of a hard time opening up my work space to the public, so instead of working the floor and schmoozing, I usually stay at my work table and try to get some painting done.  I've been slowly working on this same duck magnolia watercolor for weeks and weeks.

Of course, for all my complaining, a friend of mine reminded me that clearly I must be at least a slight exhibitionist (if that is indeed what an artist is when she lets complete strangers walk around her studio) if I have my profile up on various online networking sites that shall remain nameless, and perhaps I do protest too much, but I am always relieved when these open studios weekends come to a close.  Here are some studio shots, including an easel full of work from the youngest artist in this household, and work on the walls that has come back from various galleries in recent weeks.

Down the hall from me is the studio of my friend Lisa Costanzo, who was the T.A. in a painting class I took back in art school in the late 90's.  She makes large-scale oil paintings that examine such heavy-hitting topics as portraiture, fairy tales, identity issues, fashion, gender roles, costume and ornament -- all sorts of things that I love thinking about.  Her newest paintings have to do with Alice in Wonderland and the fashion images found in the pages of W magazine.  (Lisa, I hope I didn't completely butcher your artist's statement!)  Here are some shots of Lisa and her work (and check out the cool balcony she has in her studio!).

 

If you are local and want to see some art on this stunningly beautiful Spring day, please come on down to 450 Harrison Avenue in the South End and say hi!