Three Autumn Trees in Hoyt Arboretum.

I have grand hopes of learning to document my work over break so I can get my portfolio together. By the time I get around to applying to 4 year programs I will be under the wire as the deadlines go. Anyways it seemed really simple at school when people were helping me, AKA doing it for me! I have a tripod and a level and I seem to think that it should be easy now. Not really, I took his picture before I got lights so we'll see what happens when I get those set up.

I haven't named this painting yet. I painted it from sketches I made at the Arboretum, though I did not stay true to the landscape exactly. My painting teacher feels that this is the least resolved of my pieces and while I think it is the most static I really can't figure out what else to do to it without completely repainting it. I love trees and color so I guess I don't mind having a static but colorful painting of some very beautiful trees. Hopefully I will outgrow static.

Oatmeal: the Movie.

I am now officially on Winter break, finals week was rough but I did well and I am very happy to report that I am finished with my college math career! Painting finals are a whole different story. We don't take tests. We aren't forced to paint a still life in 2 hours to prove our skill. We have a critique. Everyone puts all their work up from the quarter and we disscuss as a group what works and doesn't work about each piece. They are extremely educational but somewhat dissapointing in that, inevitably, there are pieces I think are finished that aren't. I have three such paintings. Patience is the hardest part of being an artist so far.

Anyways, like I said, I'm on break. Although I have been running around trying to gather lights, velvet and camera gear to take slides of my work, and lumber and tools to frame work, I am actually trying to relax too. One thing I find really important is to play creatively like I did before I had any notion of making art a career. Oatmeal: the Movie. is just that sort of endeavor. My sister and her husband thoughtfully gave me their digital camera after they upgraded. It's far superior to the one I had and it makes movies! I have no idea why this film is so funny to me. I know nothing about film making and it is really hard to film what you are doing when what you are doing you would normally do with two hands. I like it anyways.

The End of Math and Other Post-Flu Stories.

Well, I have just returned from the land of ill-health. It's not my favorite place to be but now that I am back in a sound body I feel as though I've accomplished something, like taking a trek through the desert or enduring a meditation retreat. Of course it's not like my life stopped, I'm a student, you know, and I work in a restaurant. Neither industry stops for the wounded. So, although it feels like I have slept through the last few weeks I have still been an artist making art and a barista making lattes and a math student avoiding limit notation and logarithms. The print to the right is one I thought I would give up on but one day when I needed a reason to avoid the function of g with the function of h as its input I found myself hacking away at this plate with abandon. It's really lovely to work on a plate you've decided to give up on. There's no pressure, you can just experiment. I'd like to cultivate that freedom in pieces I haven't given up on.

Today I attended the last math class of my college career. I felt strangely elated when I left the room and my new found health seemed to elevate further. It's another kind of freedom, one less thing in the way of painting and print making.

Coming to Terms with the Postmodern Age.

As you well know an artist can get away with anything these days. We keep trying to get away with more because everything has already been done and it has been done with incredible skill and beauty. I have had a profound dislike of minimalist art, DADA, and postmodern art for some time and am slowly learning to appreciate and even adore some of it.
It all started with Mondrian. I had to do a report on him for a design class. He had this Grey Tree painting that I loved and as I learned about the spiritual pursuit underlying his art I began to think it wasn't so pretentious. Then I watched a video about him, as they panned the camera through a gallery of his work I could feel the resonance not available in printed reproductions. Later I went to visit the minimalist art wing in the Portland Art Museum and discovered it was my favorite wing, all the pieces had a profound resonance. Agnes Martin made no sense to me in a book, but standing in front of her work I found it indescribably beautiful. I have heard from many people that they did not like Pollock until they saw his work in person, now they love it!
I still have trouble with the Postmodern and DADA aesthetic but after reading about the context they were born out of I can finally appreciate them as important movements. DADA being a reaction to the senselessness of war, the initial impulse to make art without reason or rules is inspiring but the destructive attitude that went along with the movement really puts me off. They wanted to obliterate everything previously held sacred or revered. While it's certainly worthwhile to deconstruct cultural assumptions the bitterness is hard to find attractive as an artistic aesthetic. I have only learned a little about it yet and may change my mind. These days it seems much of the art out there is either a dry imitation of something else, a forced attempt to do something unique for its own sake, or its very conceptual. So far I am not very drawn to conceptual art but my continuing education may change my mind on that, too.


The above picture is one of my first attempts at abstracting from an observed subject, the Columbia river. This painting at right is a small canvas I painted after looking at Paul Klee's work. I was using it as a warm up to try to get in a less structured spirit before I began work on another painting. I think I will continue to paint over it as a warm-up improvisation.

Soft. (book arts)

This book is made of handmade paper, a blend of Abaca, cotton and recycled paper. I really enjoyed designing this book. I made the inside pockets first then found a poem I thought would fit the format. I made the cover last. I sold this book last spring. Of all the books I've made this is my favorite and I was glad that it was the one that sold because I felt it deserved to more than any of my other pieces which are equally beautiful but not as cohesive. Before I went back to school it was difficult for me to think of parting with my art, even casual little paintings on sketch paper. I felt like I lived in a recycling bin, there was so much art stuffed in my closet and under my bed! Now I recycle things regularly and would gladly part with any of my pieces. Oddly enough, I feel I "have" this piece now more than ever because it has lived the full life of an art piece and now enhances someone else's life.



I decided to post this piece tonight because I was just out sketching trees. Afterward I went for a hike and I felt as if all the trees were being especially alluring in their windy branches and stark dusk light. It was as if they all wanted desperately to be drawn! Of course, I know this isn't true. They have been fine forever without any portraits and they will continue to be more content than I can imagine without my attention. So, I thought of this poem.

The Denial of Little P's Flight. (Intaglio)

Well, I'm not quite done with this print to the right but I want to post it anyways because in my world its a feat to get a decent aquatint unsupervised. Aquatint uses spray paint as a ground for etching. It covers just enough of the plate to make an even shade of grey without open-biting the plate (etching such a large ares it cannot hold ink.) I've had trouble getting an even coat that isn't too thin or too thick. The other tricky part is to render your shading in reverse, blocking out the light areas with a Sharpie pen. It hurts to think backwards like that. The original drawing is a line etch and I used white ground on top of the aquatint to get the gradations in the sky.
The main change I want to make is to lighten the bird up in the left part of the tree. You probably didn't see it did you, see what I mean? The title, The Denial of Little P's Flight is just a working title for now. The piece is about how we sometimes would rather deny the wrongdoings of someone important to us than to make them uncomfortable. We can also deny out own wrongdoings just to "save face" in the world. I don't know if I've conveyed that or not.
The other two pieces feel at a standstill to me

and I'm tempted to abandon them and move on to new plates. Sometimes when I try to correct a mistake it causes ten new ones. It's not easy to let go of a piece I put a lot of time into but I think it might be good to apply what I've learned to a new plate instead of struggling with an old one.

Fertile Paper.

So here's the finished product...I get a little enamored with handmade papers. I love getting up in the morning after making a batch to see if they are dry. It's just like a holiday with presents. Each piece is so different from the others and seems to tell its own story. In this case some pieces are busy with lots of frantic sperm trying to get to their destination, trying to be the select parcel of genetic material that gets to be expressed in an actual human being. Other pieces with just a few wayward sperm seem to be in some far reaches, having totally missed the meaning of their existence. They also look like microscope views.
I love all the inconsistencies, the one piece of blue lint or the wrinkle, the misshapen corner. They seem to have more character then the few pieces that turn out more perfect. Now I need to test them out to see what mediums can be used on them . I did use some sizing but its difficult to get enough in and not too much. Very scientific and since I am more interested in making new papers I rarely get a chance to perfect the science part. I think my paper had become boring then anyways, less inconsistencies.