BACK TO WORK

Okay so I had my fun in the sun this summer, got outta town, stay-cationed, entertained guest, did my duty in the cafe at BWAC and all the while my studio called to me. So to have a sneak peek at things to come and what I will do with my winter months now that fall is finally upon us here is a work in progress at the moment called Nothin But The Bass.

I like the idea of being alone with the deep penetrating sounds of the bass in the dark but does he need a partner or is this his moment in a trio or is he fine tuning the mellow tones of a vocalist …. only time in the studio will tell.

But don’t forget there is still time until this Friday evening to see my ceramic city-scapes at Roots on 5th or a few more weeks  to make it out to BWAC and see the shows there. And just one more plug, while at BWAC to see my two pieces in the juried exhibit Color check out BWAC”s makers shop on the first floor to see my functional ware.

 

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FALL IN/FALL OUT @ BWAC

If its okay to say about my own work …. I love my new pieces for BWAC‘s fall show. It’s been interesting for me to see how this journey of my paper work has grown. I started calling them collages but have changed to referring to them as paper relief sculptures since I began figuring out how to give them depth and dimension. I like them each for different reasons. Each one telling me a different story which slowly unveils itself to me as I work on them.

When I was a student at Pratt we had a model named Rita with big red lips and flaming red hair. I love the hand hanging over the chair in the foreground. It still speaks to me telling me of her feelings of delicacy. This is Rita Rules the Room.

The other end of the spectrum of what inspires me these days are my sketches of musicians performing. I can look at the drawings and remember that moment of being in the dark feeling the music’s vibrations watching for that repeat in the pattern and position of the hands so I can tell you about the moment of magic in the dark. Hands tell so much as do facial expressions telling you how they feel in the moment. This is Waiting For My Solo. I made the paper in the upper left hand behind the musicians. it is how I spent part of my summer vacation. But I digress. Its the expression of the woman on the cello waiting for th duet to end feeling like it will never come. We are all at some time waiting for our moment in the sun.

But you won’t find any of my ceramic works at BWAC. For that you have to stop in for hibiscus ice tea, coffee or a snack at Roots @ 639 5th Avenue in Brooklyn. I’m exhibiting with 8 of my artsPSWT group. Here is a part of the wall where I’m flanked by Alise Lobelsohn and Raya Dukhan.

The other artists in the exhibit are Janie Samuels, Nan Carey, Robin Roi, Bob Hagan, Karen Giordano, Susan Greenstein

THE GOOD WALL

There is a wall in my living room where I hang my art as I’m working on it or when its all done. This is the good wall. I can see where I’m going or if I’m stuck and repeating myself which means I’m not growing and challenging myself. Not the best of who I am.

Below is the wall with some old pieces, a few I can’t part with yet and some new works. A couple of these were selected for BWAC‘s national juried fall show, COLOR, some are for BWAC’s members exhibit on the second floor of our gallery and one will be heading across the country to its new home in California. To find out what is what you should come to our opening on Saturday, September 21st from 1 to 6 PM.

There is no system to the hanging other than where is there an available nail but in the past couple of days some of the work has made its necessary journeys to their new place of residence and below is the wall with some of the work that has returned from other exhibits. A few of these pieces will be moving on but right now this is the wall I will look at for a few days that will inspire me to do more. Maybe I should call it the growing wall.

Suddenly realized I should show the really good wall. The wall that inspires me. The light I follow to do more to be better. to be my best. The walls in my studio are covered with sketches from my almost 55 years as an artist traveling around with my sketchbook, paints and markers finding inspiration in every day life. Also you can see by my finished work drawing musicians as they play is a great source of joy for me. Here is a studio wall.

 

ART During Summer in the City

You could drive for hours to get out of the city or make the epic journey to the airport and fly away or even subway out to a crowded beach and then drag yourselves home sandy, tired and sunburned OR you can come out to BWAC in Red Hook and see the work of over 60 artist and then end the fun and visually stimulating day watching the sun set over the Statue of Liberty and talk about your invigorating cultural experience knowing you can come back for only the cost of a subway ride. What to do with the money saved ….. buy art!

There are still two more weekends to catch BWAC’s spring show which aside from our members exhibit also includes our first floor 11th annual Wide Open national juried exhibit and the BWAC (maker’s) Store, of which I am a part, and then one flight up to our members show and the national juried Recycle exhibit which proves there is no such thing as trash you just have to open up and use your imagination.

I’M EVERYWHERE

Okay so this month you can’t miss me because you have several opportunities to see and buy my work. I am still in the spring BWAC show which will be up until July 7th on weekends. BWAC will also be part of the South Brooklyn Open Studio tour this weekend and you will find me there with my BWAC panel and my functional table art.

Plus ArtsPark Slope/Windsor Terrace has its second exhibit opening at the Nitehawk movie theater on PPW in Park Slope this Wednesday evening from 6 to 8 pm.

Location: Nitehawk Cinema: 188 Prospect Park West, Balcony
Hours – Weekdays – 4 ~ 9pm and Weekends- 10am ~10pm
Date: June 6 – July 9
Opening Reception: June 5, 6-8pm
Participating Artists: Judith Eloise Hooper, Alise Loebelsohn Karen Giordano, Joyce Riley, Bob Hagan, John Powell, Phil DeSantis, Susan Greenstein, Raya Dukhan.

This is the link For the South Brooklyn Open Studio

But I am still in my Park Slope studio working and here is a piece I am working on now. Check back to see if they are sitting among the birches in the Berkshires or in a stage rehearsal.

Almost Summer

The BWAC exhibit is entering its third weekend as we all enter our third season of this year. This is the first time we are trying an eight weekend show and forgo asking you to choose heading to BWAC over the beach. Speaking of beach, that was the final solution for this piece titled by her buyer Her Crowning Glory.

When I create a piece it begins with their faces and then decide what they will wear. Then every day as I walk into my studio I ask them who they are and then where they are so I know what their surroundings should be. This couple had several incarnations and finally I decided they were at the beach. Probably searching for summer like the rest of us as the temperature kept dropping into the 40’s this spring.

But yesterday gave us a hint of the heat and humidity we dread about summer in NY and this piece is on its way to northern California for a much milder summer. But I hope you will check out BWAC before you head away for the summer.

 

 

Is It Spring?

The calendar says one thing and the weather keeps changing its mind and regardless what the weather is doing BWAC is opening its 2019 spring show on Saturday and this time will run for eight weekends 1 to 6 pm until July 7th. Saturday’s opening will be for the Wide Open national juried show in our ground floor space complete with music and food.

But come up to the second floor for our member’s show and the national juried Recycle Exhibit. The opening for these exhibits will be next week with more music and food and a lot of great art. But come once or twice or as often as you need to see great art and an incredible view of the harbor.

I hung my work about a week ago and feeling hopeful have been working on my replacement pieces. For the next two weekends I will also have some of my functional pieces…napkin rings, tiled serving trays and oval bowls just in case your still wondering what to get mom or yourself.

In a salute to our mother’s or those who have mothered and guided us with their love and wisdom the look for my paper relief sculpture Mother’s Hands.

My mother was a singer and may therefore be the reason I love music. She had studied opera but my fondest memory is summer with friends at the Jersey shore. After a day at the beach, while we kids were fed and readied for bed the women did my mother’s hair and make-up and she would come into the girls bedroom perfumed and beautifully made up in a cocktail dress and sing “That Ole Black Magic” before the adults all left to head to Atlantic City.  My parent’s friend worked weekends as a drummer in a jazz club and my mother was going to sing. We would all wait until we were sure they weren’t coming back having forgotten something and we would turn the living room into a club and in my cotton nightgown I would do my rendition of “That Ole Black Magic“. This is Diamond Sings The Blues.

Never having seen where my mother played I have created in my memory a darkened room with men in suits that I create in these shadow boxes. The lights are low, the music mellow and my mother’s perfume mingles in the air with with her voice.

The Suit.

 

New From the Cutting Board

To fill the hour ride while on my way to and from work I pass the time counting the number of people on their cell phones while riding the subway. I do remember the teenage me falling asleep laying on my transistor radio, however I did know how to be alone with my own thoughts. But now on the train I can take out my sketch pad and draw these people frozen in time with only their thumbs in motion. In the piece below, called Addiction, I was going to put them on the train as I found them but they have ended up at the counter in a coffee shop where they would equally be doing the same thing.

A few years ago I took a photo of a friend embracing her daughter she knew she would soon be leaving because she herself had an inoperable brain tumor and the image of her arms tightly wrapped around her daughter stuck in my memory. I always say there is a beauty in life we only see in death. I had a need to tell or share the moment and here it is below Cordula and her daughter Eden who I think still feels her Mother’s Embrace and that is the name of this piece.

I’m still working on more and have the struggle of what to do next as all the sketches scream out to me “…..me next me …me…me”. This is when they follow me into my sleep and I wake up knowing what to do next and surrender to what they are telling me they are and let go of my struggling intentions. They are like children born into their destinies while we try to mold with our dreams of who we want them to be. I now embrace the surrender of the unfolding destiny!

The Soloist below is a combo of sketches of an opera singer I drew in the park bandshell almost thirty years ago and a woman I drew recently at the piano rehersing for a holiday performance in a public space in the city. The opera singer with his open mouth, tuxedo and bowtie sat in my brain for years waiting for the right accomptiment.

NEW WORKS IN PROGRESS

Thank you to all of you who came to WAH to see the exhibit of 21 innovative women and I was honored to have been one of the selected artist.  Now onto whats new with the paper relief sculptures in my studio.

At the moment this is called What! 20 x 20 x 2 inches.

I enjoyed the making the birches so I decided they needed there own story. This one below on the left at the moment is called Full Moon. Then of course on the right there is No Teeth But The Bluest Eyes. Both of these are 12 x 15 x 1.5 inches.

 

I thought I would also be showing a few more jazz pieces but they were sold before they could even leave my studio. I was going for that intimacy you feel cloistered in a small darkened room having the music vibrate inside of you. Her Solo was made to be the companion piece to She’s Up Front. Just when I was finding comfort of walking into the room to sit and look at my wall of accomplishments…GONE! Now back to the drafting board.

  Her Solo is 12 x 15 x 1.5 inches and She’s Up Front 15 x 12 x 1.5 inches.

But for the work in progress you can see now and I give it the name of The Shady Side there is this one. I’m waiting for them to tell me where they are so I can decide the background and then the final name

That’s all for now. will get back to you when I know their story. If it’s just they are on the shady side of the street or of life.

 

 

 

New Year ~ New Shows

What can I say. Three month long colds in four months and three shows that still needed my attention so once again my blog suffered so here is the update on what’s new. I totally messed up on letting you know about the WAH Center‘s Salon Show in January but its not to late for you to see the new show there. I was selected to be one of 21 women artist to be in their exhibit titled

Women Forward, Part 2: Innovative Women

Do come and see this show. I am blown away by the creativity of these women and honored to be in this exhibit with them all. This show is up until April 7th, 2019

Also as a member of ArtsPS/WT we have the Nitehawk movie theater into a gallery space for us and we will share it with Good Neighbors of Park Slope on a six week rotation.

Artists Include: Rich Garr, Alice Garik, Alise Loebelsohn, Judith Eloise Hooper, Raya Dukhan, Charlotte Noruzi, Tom Keough, Cynthia Ruse, Janie Samuels, Robin Roi, Dara Oshin, Karen Giordano Hours – Weekdays – 4 ~ 9pm and Weekends- 10am ~10pm

The show has been up for two weeks, but we are busy bees with a lot of happenings our opening is next week so I hope you stop by or after a movie take the walk up to the mezzanine to see my work along with eleven other artist. You will see the header for this blog with eleven other artists works.

But I have still been struggling along in my studio with new works and this piece   became 

So that’s all for now and I will keep you posted.