Today I received an email reminding to me to register for Art Walk 2010, and while I hummed and hawed about whether or not I had enough for a display, it dawned at me that I am vastly unprepared to return to the spotlight of exhibition once again.
It has been an artistically fallow year. Since the last show I exhibited in back in 2008, I've experienced so much upheaval in my professional and personal life that I shouldn't be truly surprised it's taking me a while to back into the "creative groove".
The year of 2009 was a great year for me emotionally as I was able to pick up the pieces of my erratic life and find stability, support, and happiness. It was also a year of experimenting: I took some classes in therapeutic massage, tai chi, and fencing trying to figure out what to do with myself. I also received an opportunity for a year long photography experiment involving the River Valley - which is, of course, still a work in progress. However, because of my rebuilding, it has left my "new collection" standing at 1 piece. Whoops.
I was excited to finish my last painting, "...web we weave". This painting sat on my living room floor for almost 6 months as I pieced, puzzled, drilled, and bolted and irregularly shaped canvas together. The actual painting of it was almost an afterthought. Looking back at its completion, the painful process of building the canvas, it has rekindled my desire to explore other mediums and techniques. Painting all by itself is no longer enough, I must consider the medium I'm working with, and build expression up and out beyond a 2-dimensional world.
In university I dabbled a little bit in figurative sculpting for the sheer joy of playing with clay. I didn't have a whole lot of talent sculpting with clay...I had a tendency to overwork it to the point that the surface had no texture or expression - a big no no when sculpting the human figure. It's a little ironic, my expressionless smooth hunks of clays versus my bumpy, layered flat paintings. Perhaps it's because I like the contrast of achieving a textured look on a flat 2-dimensional surface, and with sculpting, achieving a smooth, buffed looking on a otherwise rough and sticky medium.
I remember leaving the sculpting studio after class, winding my way through towering metal sculptures and wishing I was working with metal even though clay was fun. It's been a long time since I've been harboring an interest in metal working. After over a decade of pining and schedule conflicts, I finally managed to marry two age-old desires of mine...working metal and shiny things.
So I'm taking up silversmithing and learning how to saw, solder, grind, and polish my favorite metal, silver. The projects are simple, but will build the foundation to what I eventually hope will be passable skills. And while I know this will take me away from painting for a while, I feel it will only make my creativity all the more diverse. After all, Random Life Project was never meant to be restricted to only one means of expression.
Now...that just leaves me one with one problem. I need a workshop since working at home is like being in a sardine can. Wish I had a heated garage of my own. LOL.
Here are pictures of a couple of the projects I completed. I've also added them in a Project album call "Magpie Project" on the Random Life Project Facebook page.
It has been an artistically fallow year. Since the last show I exhibited in back in 2008, I've experienced so much upheaval in my professional and personal life that I shouldn't be truly surprised it's taking me a while to back into the "creative groove".
The year of 2009 was a great year for me emotionally as I was able to pick up the pieces of my erratic life and find stability, support, and happiness. It was also a year of experimenting: I took some classes in therapeutic massage, tai chi, and fencing trying to figure out what to do with myself. I also received an opportunity for a year long photography experiment involving the River Valley - which is, of course, still a work in progress. However, because of my rebuilding, it has left my "new collection" standing at 1 piece. Whoops.
I was excited to finish my last painting, "...web we weave". This painting sat on my living room floor for almost 6 months as I pieced, puzzled, drilled, and bolted and irregularly shaped canvas together. The actual painting of it was almost an afterthought. Looking back at its completion, the painful process of building the canvas, it has rekindled my desire to explore other mediums and techniques. Painting all by itself is no longer enough, I must consider the medium I'm working with, and build expression up and out beyond a 2-dimensional world.
In university I dabbled a little bit in figurative sculpting for the sheer joy of playing with clay. I didn't have a whole lot of talent sculpting with clay...I had a tendency to overwork it to the point that the surface had no texture or expression - a big no no when sculpting the human figure. It's a little ironic, my expressionless smooth hunks of clays versus my bumpy, layered flat paintings. Perhaps it's because I like the contrast of achieving a textured look on a flat 2-dimensional surface, and with sculpting, achieving a smooth, buffed looking on a otherwise rough and sticky medium.
I remember leaving the sculpting studio after class, winding my way through towering metal sculptures and wishing I was working with metal even though clay was fun. It's been a long time since I've been harboring an interest in metal working. After over a decade of pining and schedule conflicts, I finally managed to marry two age-old desires of mine...working metal and shiny things.
So I'm taking up silversmithing and learning how to saw, solder, grind, and polish my favorite metal, silver. The projects are simple, but will build the foundation to what I eventually hope will be passable skills. And while I know this will take me away from painting for a while, I feel it will only make my creativity all the more diverse. After all, Random Life Project was never meant to be restricted to only one means of expression.
Now...that just leaves me one with one problem. I need a workshop since working at home is like being in a sardine can. Wish I had a heated garage of my own. LOL.
Here are pictures of a couple of the projects I completed. I've also added them in a Project album call "Magpie Project" on the Random Life Project Facebook page.
No comments:
Post a Comment