"Elegant Finestra" (8" x 8")

Not much to say about this one at this point. Just thought I'd share. I'm hoping to finish a couple this week. Enjoy!

Opportunities?

Steven Specht here...
I hate to bump Fred's work (SEE BELOW!), but thought some of you might be interested in the following:
A couple of things for folks to consider.
The Rochester Contemporary Arts Center is conducting one of their interesting fund-raisers again this year in June. It's called the 6x6x2011. Artists can submit a 6" x 6" piece of artwork (any medium) which becomes part of a 5000 piece exhibit (yes, 5 thousand!). Each of the pieces is priced at $20 to benefit the Center. It's interesting to see the diversity of artwork. The down-side is that your name does not get posted with your piece. It is only revealed to the buyer (so the name exposure is virtually non-existent). BUT, I think it's a worthwhile cause. I think I am going to do it again this year and attend the opening reception on June 4th. Should be fun. Check out the website at: www.rochestercontemporary.org/ You can see a cool video from last year's 6 x 6 event at this site too. Deadline for submission is May 1, 2011.
The Old Forge Arts Center is sponsoring an exhibition with the theme "H2O". They are accepting artwork and written work for this show. The show runs from March 26-May 7th with opening reception on March 26th. The deadline for submissions is March 7th. Check out this site for more details: www.artscenteroldforge.org/exhibitions.cfm?newsitem_id=23&action=view
Enjoy!

p.s. Also, way further on down the road. Jonathan Talbot will be conducting one of his wonderful workshops at Utica College during the weekend of April 21-22, 2012 in conjunction with a collage exhibit at Utica College of which Julie will be a part! More details to follow (you'll be able to enroll through Jonathan's website soon).

Fred Tomaselli

Discovery of the day:
Fred Tomaselli
I found these beautiful works through Look into my Owl. What fascinating and in depth pieces this man creates! To quote wiki:
"Tomaselli's paintings include medicinal herbs, prescription pills and hallucinogenic plants alongside images cut from books and magazines: flowers, birds, butterflies, arms, legs and noses, which are combined into dazzling patterns that spread over the surface of the painting like a beautiful virus or growth."
Fantasic pieces that feed my imagination, works that take awhile to absorb!  He coats the finished product with resin, and I can't think of anything more glorious visually than looking thru the depth of resin at these primordial images.

Fred Tomaselli (American, b. 1956). Big Raven, 2008. Acrylic, photocollage, and resin on wood panel, 84 x 72 in. (213.4 x 182.9 cm). Private collection, courtesy of the artist, White Cube, London, and James Cohan Gallery, New York

Fred Tomaselli (American, b. 1956). Desert Bloom, 2000. Photocollage, acrylic, and resin on wood panel, 60 x 60 in. (152.4 x 152.4 cm). Collection of Martin and Rebecca Eisenberg

My love of anything organic prompts me to look further. I go to the Brooklyn Museum site and find this wondrous piece that puts me in a swoon and inspires my sad and lonely collage muse. What a celestial masterpiece. I am an instant fan. Can't believe I haven't seen his work before.
More on him here:
Brooklyn Museum
James Cohan Gallery
wiki

"I was thinking of something different"

Steve Specht here...
Here's a piece I did a couple years ago, before I learned Jonathan Talbot's technique. I "refurbished" it and re-matted and framed it (mat and frame not shown here). It's 8" x 10". Enjoy!

Lapel pins

Steve Specht here...
During one of my evening travels through collage-land, I happened to do a little mini-collage with some scraps. After some exploration and experimentation, I thought these might make nice collage lapel pins. Still need to work on some of the details, but I kinda like these. I gave one to MC for Valenine's Day. Enjoy!

Primordial collage

Steve Specht here...
This exhibit looks like a great opportunity to see some of the earliest collages of Picasso and probably some of the initial collages that gave "fine art" credibility to the medium. Check out the story at the New York Times site.
"Picasso: Guitars 1912-1914" is on view from Sunday to June 6 at the Museum of Modern Art
I can't wait to see it!!!

i am a collage assembly line

I am working on a project for my daughter. She is getting married in May and her shower is in March down in Wilmington, NC. I volunteered to make centerpieces for the shower and this has had me collaging my brains out.
The theme for the wedding decor is black and white. She has used music motifs in her invitations (which I also designed for her...) and I wanted to include these ideas in my project.

saturday

I made 12 collages so far, 8 x 7 in size. They will be scanned and printed. Then I will create table cards out of the prints.
The originals? I plan to bind them in a book that i will present to her at the shower.

It's meant a whole lot of crazy collaging and with this theme, I can relax and not worry so much about composition. It's been fun. But I feel like an assembly line!

to you

1-1
Originally uploaded by misphit

Sending you love on wings.

Anthony? Johnny? or no name?

Steve Specht here...
It's been a while since I posted a new piece. Here's one that I finished this weekend. I need to mount it and frame it though. But I'm having a bit of a problem with a 'name'. The title of the piece will be either "One Day Johnny... One Day" or "One Day Anthony... One Day" or "One Day Son... One Day". Does it make a difference if I assign a name to the individual in the vintage photo used in this piece? Hmmm... Any thoughts? And... should I care what others think? In general? Interesting questions methinks. Regardless... Enjoy!

A message from Alexis Anne

Dear Friends,

I hope this finds you all well and enjoying the new year. 

This Saturday at Swarm Gallery in Oakland is the opening reception for Bloom & Gloom, a duo exhibition with my friend Katy Horan and myself. The works I’ve created for this show are all non-figurative, a side of my work that I have always loved personally, but have not exhibited much. 

Other news: studio visits from just last weekend have been posted on Juxtapoz and The Flop Box... Follow those links to check them out. And, on January 30th, keep your eyes peeled for an illustration I made for the New York Times Sunday Magazine On Language column, utilizing football players, of all things. 

Below is the press release for Bloom & Gloom, and a couple images of my new work for the show; hope to see you Saturday!

Best,

Alexis

“Milk Grass”, collage on vintage paper, 14 ½ x 12 in.

alexisanne.com

Sachem

Ho Nee Yeath Taw No Row got promoted to collage today. I really was thinking about ways to float his face on top of script. I came up with all these various techniques, but each of them had faults. I ended up printing my own ink drawing on the paper and then working the collage. His face is so busy already with the tattoo, I didn't really feel the need to add too much embellishment.

Sachem

Ho Nee Yeath Taw No Row

The next thing I need is 2 fine Mohawk Indians. I need them to be somewhat true to what a native American actually looked like. I researched and found information about this fine warrior and Iroquois Sachem. They had fantastic face tattoos and I think I will use these patterns in my upcoming work on this particular vid.

Ho Nee Yeath Taw No Row

Here is his companion, Sa Ga Yeath Qua Pieth Tow, the grandfather of Joseph Brant who is quite a figure in our local history. These 2 prototypes will now go from drawings to collage.

Sa Ga Yeath Qua Pieth Tow

Music to my ears

Anthony has completed the music for my first hidef video project. I am so excited about this and I will try to express it! It's a bizarre thing to have a vision that you make visual by creating an artwork. It's another bizarre thing to have a concept, and have someone else complete your concept in another medium. There is such an inner exhilaration that I feel as I listen to the music that was composed for me for my situation on this occasion.

It's like magic. When the things that spawn in our minds become real. The power of it!!! It's like a rush, like a drug, like endorphin execution overload.

It's like a game of toss. I had the ball and passed it to him. He took it for the play, and sent it back at me.

Go listen here and share this excitement with me!

The next part is the video. Finally the moment i have been waiting for! It's this actual moment in a project that I love the most. It's when something has already taken hold, and you are already into it deep enough that you can't turn back. It's when you can't think about anything else but finishing it, or going back there, into the magical part of your own brain where these things live...even in your sleep. It's when the tingling excitement of your accomplishment is felt in your pores and in your organs and you feel it leaving you in it's own birthing. It's when it is happening that I love creation the most.

Gotta go. You know where. Back there....
I'll be back soon.

The clearinghouse dilemma and Jeff Koons

clearing out the house
A couple of posts ago I brainstormed here on the various aspects of distributing my work.
I still am hammering this in my mind, and I have yet to come to any kind of reasonable conclusion.

I posted about 14 items on etsy last weekend. I found that less than satisfactory! Somehow, just listing stuff up there and hoping someone finds it among thousands of other craftwerks seems silly. I am not into posting favorites, and tooling around in forums, or buying online real estate so my things can be seen. I just hate this mode. It's like art pimping. And besides, I would rather be making that talking about what I have already made.
It's such a battle to find the time to devote to marketing. I am thinking about setting up some kind of loose schedule for myself and trying to follow it. Maybe this will help me achieve those pesky marketing-type goals I hate to deal with. I don't have the time to ponder this too long, I would much rather be creating, as as evidenced by my recent posts showing i am back to work on the table again.

I started a facebook page for myself. Now that was a leap! I always think of these pages as pretentious and arrogant. However, I am hoping to populate the page with scans of art that I am disseminating, upcoming shows, etc. Maybe this way I can steer folks to these artworks I want to distribute.
???
It's such a crap shoot!

of course, the clearinghouse needs to sport a pic of the infamous dog balloon

Copyright remains a hot topic in art news and I always read articles pertaining to this subject. Meanwhile, speaking of copyright....we have the Jeff Koons debacle. Apparently he seems all balloon dogs and images of such belong to him. Read about it here or here or here....

Nitefall

Looking across the snow drifted fields I saw nitefall. 

A star studded vaulted sky slowly came into focus while sapphire stars fell to the ground.

This began as a quick super loose watercolor. I really didn't like how it turned out painting-wise, since I did it in a rush, without waiting for layers to dry. It sat overnight.

The next day, I spend time painting the tree branches. These are tedious little devils and to make them at all believable, I really have to be in the zone. It sat overnight.

The next day, much to my chagrin, I paste a huge gold foil star in the upper left corner. Horrors! I ruined all the goodness of this piece in one motion. The glue sticks to watercolor, unlike acrylics, and actually will remove paint and alter the colors so removing the star after I cursed at it for an hour left a huge scar in the prominent sky. It sat overnight, but it bothered me all night.

The next day, I find the perfect piece of swirling cardboard (it escaped the recent big destash even tho I have had it for years) which becomes my descending sky. Problem solved! It sits finished. And it no longer bothers me.

great site about Joseph Cornell

Roaming the web this morning, I found a super nice site about that artist we all know and love, Joseph Cornell. There's such a soft spot for him in my heart. I went to a surrealism show at the Met a few years ago and got to see some of his work up close and personal. It's fab stuff!
This site has some really cool videos that show Cornell's work in motion. I loved this, since at exhibits, you sure can't touch anything.

Cassiopeia 1 - Joseph Cornell

the halfway point

looking towards home
Originally uploaded by misphit

This was the halfway point, prior to all the collage stuff.

She pulled the wind from the sky and birthed a forest

The sky was pale and ominous and the sun tried to penetrate. She pulled the wind from the sky and began to birth a forest.

I told myself I could do whatever I wanted on this canvas, since I just did 2 really tedious pieces. The watercolor was done from memory of a scene behind where I work. I have in mind to build up off the paper and try to make the objects appear to come out at you. In this case it's quite literal, as the netting reaches up off the paper and closer to the viewer.

Highly recommended!

Steven Specht here...
I forward here a message that I received from Jonathan Talbot regarding his up-coming workshops. I attended two of these workshops and they were AWESOME! These will be held in his studio in Warwick, NY (in the Catskill region of New York State):

"Four workshop opportunities have just been posted on my website at www.talbot1.com/workshop. Two are collage-focused, one is about image transfer, and one allows each participant to select the medium of his or her choice.

At www.talbot1.com/workshop you will find additional information, links to comments of and works by past workshop participants, and links to both online and mail-in registration forms. You can also call me at 845-258-4620 for answers to your questions or to register by phone.

I hope one of these workshops will fit your schedule.

Cordially,

Jonathan Talbot"

The wings this all that is

It's difficult to see in this scan, but the buildings protrude from the paper. Such a strange color combination in this one. The pink is purposeful, due to the subject nature of the upcoming video work.