Art and Music: July 2013

Sunday, July 21, 2013

orange crush

"Orange Crush" Glen Alps

I am tickled pink, (maybe I should say "tickled orange") to show you a new addition to my art making collection of equipment and assorted creative stuff.

I am now the proud owner of a Glen Alps Press! Glen Alps was a artist, printmaker, teacher, developer of the "collagraph" process in printmaking, and creator of about 30 presses. You can read more about Glen Alps here and here.

My press was stored in a trailer for the last year and has a lot of rust on its unpainted steel parts. Prior to that, it was used (and I suspect, abused) at a community college for many years. No matter. It is a tough machine, built for abuse and heavy and frequent use. Once we get it all cleaned up, it will be my work buddy for the printmaking I want to do! (Here's what it will look like when it's restored to its working order condition.)

Monotype attracted me years ago and I have taken several workshops and classes to learn more about the form. I loved those experiences, but felt like I could do more and learn more with a press of my own. In the privacy of my own space, I can try big and fail big and stretch and grow in my own ways. That day will come soon!

When I look at my old monotypes, I understand why I have remained excited about it.

monotype with Chine colle

The former owner told me that this press was nicknamed "Orange Crush." I like that!!


takes a forklift to move it!

REM "Orange Crush."

Sunday, July 14, 2013

rhythm

6 x 8, acrylic and ink

It's when I can do it in straight time that I know how to swing it, how to stretch the beat, and play with the elements to make it my own. With music. With painting. Music and art. Wildly different. Strikingly alike.

With these new paintings, I am deliberately missing the downbeat and shifting the rhythms.
Frank Sinatra was a master at it. Here's one of my favorites, "Fly Me to the Moon."

Monday, July 8, 2013

to be free

I found it along a worn path in my yard, this perfect bird nest. No broken eggs nearby let me hope that this nest was no longer needed and the chicks had flown to their own lives in trees nearby.

But the nest! The nest! I carefully picked it up and brought it to the studio, where I could study it.

I sat it on a satin cloth and pulled my lamp over to light it. It was beautifully crafted from small sticks, moss, grass, feathers, and white dog hairs. Every piece of its construction was fitted together with the others in such a way that its form did not shake or shift as I moved it.

There are times when the hurry-scurry of life wraps me in a cloak of I'm-too-busy-to-stop-and-see. It seems that this cloak becomes a strait jacket of ever increasing immobility and distance from what touches my soul.

And then, I found the nest. Such a small object, and yet it touches me so deeply, I am left gasping for breath. The strait jacket falls away. And I am back. Trying, in my own way, to be free.

Leonard Cohen "Bird On the Wire."