4×4 Show at the Steez! – July 8th-31st 2011

Well, having an art blog, you’d think the first thing I’d write about was art shows! Hahaha, consider that remedied now. It’s kind of exciting for me to write about art shows as I never really got involved in them with exception of a couple I got into sort of randomly in the past few years. It’s different now, because this’ll be my second show in a matter of months instead of a couple years in between! I missed out on writing about the Salon Style and 4/20 at the Steez Gallery in Nashua, NH back in May, but I’ll make up for that by writing about my current show.

We got a bit written in the Hippo about the show! I’ll save you the trouble of having to read the same information I was about to write that the Hippo clip provides for me.

This show is especially exciting for me for a number of reasons. I had participated in the open-call show Salon Style at the gallery back in May, my first bit of participation since the launch party of Marginalia Studios in August (if you count that as a show – I did get to show off work, so I guess that does count!). Aimee Cozza, the gallery’s art director, liked my work and invited me to join in a special four-person show in July. Obviously I jumped on that in a heartbeat, and I’m incredibly honored to have been asked to join in in the first place. This is the first time I’ve ever been asked to return to a gallery before.

This is also made awesome because of my fellow artists in it. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Sam Paolini, albeit briefly, at the opening reception, and I’ve gotten to talk to both her and Sara Richard on Facebook. I haven’t gotten to meet James period, but here’s hoping we’ll cross paths eventually. Showing alongside such talented people has both utterly terrified me and made me absolutely chomping at the bit to make more work.
Still giggling at the “nomadic artist” bit I got in the Hippo article. It was a bit of a joke title (that I now seem to take seriously) because of when I moved four times in as many years. I can’t sit still it seems! And it seems I’ll live up to the name yet again come February, but that’s for another time.

The Steez is such an awesome place to get to show work at. So many gorgeous hand-blown glass pipes all over the shop. Makes me want to learn to do it too! Always room for more skills, am I right?

(p.s. Many thanks to Aimee Cozza and the Steez for permission to use their photos.)

I chose 5 pieces to show and almost all of them originals. Hung here, clockwise from top left:  “Cu Sidhe” – acrylic on canvas / “Like It Rough” – digital work, gliclee print / “El Sastre” – acrylic on gallery-wrap canvas / “37mm (1 + 2)” – acrylic on gallery-wrap canvas / “Persephone” – acrylic on masonite

The opening reception was quite fun! My home-girls backed me up like what, and it was their presence that kept me sane and stable through the whole thing (so many thanks and love to Draco, Nicole and Kelsey)! And a coworker and her husband came to represent, complete with a handful of bra-hogging sugar gliders. (Magic trick – here’s two!) And the bands The Awkward Robot and Comma came to entertain us, to our delight and notsomuch delight of the cop-calling neighbors.

All in all, it was successful and I’m looking forward to more! Watch for a custom-painted skateboard/longboard show come September. I will at least have a couple decks for sale – completely usable as boards or just to hang on your wall.

Peace out!

El Sastre

An update on the painting from this entry. :3

_{“El Sastre (The Tailor)”
acrylic on canvas / 24″x36″ / 2010}

Despite having been painting, drawing and generally making art for a while now, I make very few personal pieces. I can count on one hand the number I have finished, including this one. So this is kind of a rarity for me. And I find it interesting and a bit amusing that a painting that holds so much meaning to me is actually my most popular piece. It boggles my mind that people feel so strongly toward a painting I created solely for myself. On the downside, my feelings for the painting makes it very hard for me to consider selling it, but this is what prints are for, right? :3

The photo isn’t much to write home about (paintings are ridiculously difficult to photograph), so if anyone is interested in seeing it in person, it’s currently hanging in the 4×4 show at the Steez Gallery in Nashua, NH until July 30th, 2011.

neon makes the world go round, amirite?

You guys just.. You have no bloody idea how much I raged at this painting for the longest godawful time. I love the outcome but just thinking about the progress makes me want to rage all over again. So we’ll just sit and admire it through sunglasses, shall we?

For sale!

Oh and my roommate is totally sneaky.

a blast from my past

So my parents have officially moved out of their old house and into an apartment. That meant I had to come up to Maine (which isn’t a problem really – I like visiting my family) to rescue a couple canvases from the depths of their attic storage space. One was a smaller blank canvas that I was pretty psyched to find. I need to mess with smaller canvases just so they’re less expensive and easier to ship. The other one turned out to be:

“La Tortura”, oil on canvas, 36×48″

Also nicknamed “A Song for XX” which happened to be the song by Ayumi Hamasaki that I had had on repeat during a lot of the painting of this. This was done back in ’05, while I was at good ol’ CCNE. I had to move it to the Uterus Room* over in Douglas Hall to work – the fishbowl effect of the huge picture window facing the front hall in the studio was irritating me to no end.

The painting was a way for me to deal with the rubbish that was my boyfriend at the time. He had been nothing short of emotionally abusive, and I put all my energy toward this instead of just being upset all the time. I also found it a good excuse to break in my first ever set of oil paints.

It had spend the last 5 years mostly in my parents’ house (it spend about half a year hanging on the wall of my Waterville apartment, so it did get some fresh air). I finally rescued it, and now I’m on the hunt for someone interested in giving it a good home.

for sale in my Etsy shop!

*the Uterus Room was dubbed so because it was a small room painted all a warm pink – ceiling, floor, walls. i think it was for a project where the girl wanted it to look like a mouth, but it was more like working in a womb. :3

new painting is fin.

detail

This is why I have disappeared last few days. Trying to get this done. It’s been haunting my dreams for so long now – i had such a hard time with the background! Colors weren’t working, tried a lighting effect that turned out rubbish (even tho the mockup a friend did looked like a fab idea). I almost scrapped it entirely. I hate to give up on things like that though, so I persevered and eventually got to a happy place with the painting. I really adore how she herself came out, and her colors, but that background… It was the bee in my bonnet for the longest damn time.

Titled “звезда (Zvezda)” which is “star” in Russian. Russian’s really a beautiful language, and it’s fun so far learning Cyrillic. But I digress. 30″x40″, acrylic on gallery-wrap canvas. The sides are the same purple as the stars and lines.

The piece’ll be up on Etsy soon. Now one more horrorshow colorful painting to go…

FOR SALE AT MY SHOP