Spotlight: CW Slade

CW Slade is a California based artist whose paintings I have admired for quite a long time. Carol's luminous mixed media paintings are alive with color. She works on on paper, canvas, and wood. There is a dynamic energy to her work. Layer upon layer, each of which reveals a hint of what came before and what is to come next. Her work is spontaneous and abstract, yet includes collaged images of both words and objects which strongly anchor it in the familiar. According to her website, her technique includes both adding and removing, layering and scratching away, leading to a phenomenal level of texture and depth. Her work is in many collections, has garnered multiple juried awards, and has been published, most recently in the book In This House: A Collection of Altered Art Imagery and Collage Techniques. I have posted several of my favorites but so many more can be seen on her website.

Shadows

Turn your face to the sun, and the shadows fall behind you - Maori proverb

Small Gem

I have recently purchased this gem from Angela Rockett at her Etsy shop. The image is small, about 4 x 4 inches, but I think it packs a punch with such rich, vibrant colors and great movement. You can see more of her work on her blog RyhopeWood.

Happy Holidays to All

Underground

I have just completed Underground - my book of altered photographs celebrating urban images from New York City. All the photographs were shot in New York to capture the impact of time, change, and movement. Click on the images for a more detailed view.

In New York: Martin Puryear

There is an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art of sculptures created between the 1970s and the present by Martin Puryear, a post-minimalist American artist. His primary materials are wood, steel and wire. His sculptures are simple, yet quite sensual and hypnotic. There is evidence in the work of his extensive travels in Africa and in Asia.

By far my favorite piece in the show is "Ladder for Booker T. Washington" (1996), created from ash and maple.


Although not apparent from the photo, this piece is suspended in midair in the Museum's large atrium and is 36 feet long. It is 22 3/4 inches wide at its base and tapers to 1 1/4 inches wide at the top. In person, it looks like it goes on to infinity!

Photography in the main exhibition hall was not allowed, but I was able to capture another piece on film that was exhibited outside the main venue, Greed's Trophy (1984), made from steel, wire, wood, rattan, and leather.



The entire exhibit can be found here.

Mail Call: Book of Countries

In an earlier post I wrote about Yamato Hotel my contribution to a Yahoo group swap where each participant chose a letter of the alphabet and created 26 mixed-media pages, one for each participant, based on the theme countries. Jan Post hosted the swap and bound the pages using a piano hinge binding. Here are some images including my page.

Mixed Media: to be continued.....

Another page for roughcast, my mixed media book. Click here to see the completed first half of the book.



Details

Spotlight: Janet Jones

Janet Jones is a San Francisco-based printmaker and mixed media artist. She has been exhbiting since the 1980s and is in multiple corporate collections across the United States. Her artwork uses traditional material in unexpected ways, and includes found paper, hand-printed paper, book covers and pages, found objects, beeswax, and metal leaf. Many of her pieces are rooted in Japanese principles and others are influenced by the concepts of time and place. Surface, texture, composition, and color all intersect to suggest ethereal, miniature landscapes. Letter forms are used in unique ways. To me, her serene artwork suggests journeys to far away places. Images of a few of my favorite pieces are below, but explore her website to see the breadth of her work.

Microcosms - mixed media landscapes reminiscent of sueseki or the Japanese art of stone appreciation: Microcosm #31/Microscosm #2




Ex Libris - encaustic book cover assemblages: Penumbra/Imago



Decollages - miniature landscapes made from the reverse side of weathered posters rescued from a construction site: Haiga #5/Haiga #8




Mirages - landscapes made from book, found, and monoprinted papers: Mirage #17



Counterpoint - monoprint collages of found and prepared paper: Counterpoint #5

Mail Call: asian tag deco

I received a beautiful tag deco with an Asian theme from Livia Hajovsky, who made the deco for me in a Yahoo group swap and completed the cover page, as can be seen in the image below. Thanks also to Susan, Sari, Eva, and Patois, who also contributed pages.

new eyes

the real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes...marcel proust

Mixed Media: thinspiration

In an earlier post I showed an image of "Falling Flower" - my contribution to a skinny book swap hosted by Chrysti Hydek. I recently received the finished book and I wanted to share the cover and some pages created by the other contributors. There are too many to post them all, so I have included a select few.

Cover by Chrysti Hydek with additional embellishment:



Page by Kim Tedrow:



Page by Kathleen Hendrix:



Page by Tina Shoaga:



My original page, one more time:

Mixed Media: fragile

Details:

Thanks

A big thank you to Another Shade of Grey, a fantastic blog on my list of daily reads, that has highlighted my doors and windows from Mexico post as Today's Must Read!

And a shout out of thanks to artist Bridgette Guerzon Mills at Contemplating the Moon for including my blog on her list of ten new art blogs that she enjoys. They are all great links...check them out here.

In New York: Sotheby's Contemporary Art Auction

Sotheby's and the other auction houses are the hidden gems of the art world in New York. There are always several days of exhibition prior to each auction. The exhibitions are free to the public and allow close viewing in an intimate setting of amazing pieces of art, many of which will be held in private collections and never publicly seen again. A contemporary art auction was held earlier in November which led to the highest grosses (319 million)for a single contemporary art auction in Sotheby's history. There were so many incredible artworks by some of my favorite artists, a few of which are pictured below (along with final sale price).


Jeff Koons - Hanging Heart: while not at all my style nor my favorite, this artwork is worth mentioning for two reasons. First, it is 9 feet tall, weighs 3500 pounds, and is painted with layers and layers of pink paint to create a mirror-like surface. Second, it sold for $23,561,000 (yes, 23+ million) making it the most expensive artwork by a living artist ever sold at auction!


Jean-Michel Basquiat - Electric Chair: sold for $11,801,000


Jean-Michel Basquiat - Elaine: sold for $2,393,000


Jean-Michel Basquiat - Elaine: detail
(can you tell that I love this artist?)


Robert Motherwell - Mexican Night: sold for $1,026,600


Andy Warhol - Hector and Andromache: sold for $690,000 (a bargain compared to the others!)


Mark Rothko - untitled: sold for $7,881,000


Robert Rauschenberg - Primo Calle/Roci Venezuela: sold for $2,617,000


Cy Twombly - untitled: $5,081,000