September 02, 2006
Two (Prototypen)
Two (Prototypen), 20060902, HTML, 250 x 200 pixels
September 01, 2006
One (Prototypen)
One (Prototypen), 20060901, HTML, 250 x 200 pixels
August 31, 2006
Congrats to Don Relyea
Don Relyea, artist, composer, and maker of The Reductionizer (which I've been using during August to make HTML images) and other things, and his family welcome kid #3, a son, Aiden Aldon
Relyea, born August 29. Congrats to everyone.
Joanne Mattera: Heat of the Moment
Joanne Mattera: Uttar 294, 2006, encaustic on panel, 36 x 36"
JOANNE MATTERA
"Heat of the Moment: New Paintings in Encaustic"
Arden Gallery, Boston, September 5~30, 2006
Reception: Friday, September 8, 5-7 pm
Gallery Talk: Saturday, September 9, 1pm
August 30, 2006
Eva Lake
I have been wanting to feature Eva Lake here for sometime. Now is the time.
EVA LAKE: CRIMSON, 2006 oil on canvas 12 x 12 inches
Eva Lake is a Portland artist whose show at Augen Gallery is just about to close. She's hardworking, and her paintings are intense, beautiful, and very visual.
Although the forms in her current work might be called geometric or grid-based, and some might even toss out the "Op" word, her work is firmly rooted in the natural world, in color and atmosphere and times of day, and has to do with the way we see our world as both the thing it is and then abstract from that to sensation, periphery, memory and the iterative circle of translation or conversion from the visual to emotion to intellectual, and back and forth again. (There is a kinship between Eva's work and Mel Prest's, who I wrote about in June.)
Eva's work is about how we see and experience nature, and provides and frames the experience of how we are able to take in only so much at a time, how we scan and take things in it bits and pieces, and how the actual act of seeing nature isn't necessarily about seeing a whole.
Seeing nature as a whole isn't possible, because nature, what is before our two eyes and in our periphery, is too overwhelming. Our two eyes aligned horizontally provide a relatively narrow field of vision. But if while we look at nature we also feel ourselves in nature, as part of nature, there is the possiblity of a feeling of wholeness. A painting is a finite area of certain dimensions with edges, and so the painting has to have a kind of composition and resolution and containment. It has to be a whole, integrated and complete. I think Eva achieves this.
Eva's work helps us see and feel part of nature, but in a way that does not tie us to place, allows a kind of focus, and makes this kind of seeing and feeling rooted in the material and the handmade. This kind of consciousness of nature, made with materials and with a human touch, is a unique aspect of nature, is evidence of our place in nature, is a way of talking to and sharing with each other.
Additionally, Eva makes excellent photomontages, keeps an excellent running diary that's well worth following, interviews folks for Artstar Radio (many archived and downloadable, and excellent), and runs Chambers, a Portland Gallery, to which I've never been, but I'm assuming since Eva is running it, it's also excellent. And I don't throw the word "excellent" around all that much. But whoo! If I even thought to aspire to all of those activities, well, I'd just need a nap right now.
Joseph Hughes
SF painter Joseph Hughes has a new website and a show opening Sept. 7 in SF at Takada Gallery.
Ernie Kwiat
Ernie Kwiat has an August run of digital drawings- they're great. See 08 Green Fuzz or 05 Hay Fever. Check out the sketch made in Painter. Ernie tells me that it is his intention to draw a monster a day until Halloween, which I happen to know is his favorite holiday. That's gonna be like close to a hundred drawings.
11 Summer of Love, digital, Ernie Kwiat