Tomorrow will be the fifth Monday of mural work at DiPrima Dolce, 1936 N. Killingsworth. It's taking much longer than I anticipated. 

Green is the most difficult. Green against the gold wall changes radically from palette to leaf or fruit. I thought I could use a limited palette of 3 -6 primary colors (yellow, red & blue), mixing greens...that's how I like to work. I find very few greens worthy of purchase except for Sap green. Sap green is so transparent that it can tint nonchalantly, barely breathing on it's counterpart, only hinting at being green. 

The golden wall of DiPrima Dolce made this palette plan undesirable. I started buying greens trying to find something I could work with, something that resembled a true growing green once it stood next to the saturated wall color, adding blues and yellows to alter it's intensity. Still the green became odd when in contact with the wall. SAP GREEN to the rescue! Last Monday I glazed all green efforts with the Sap. That color changed the relationship with the wall as well as with me.

Thanks for visiting...

My dear friend Pat Di Prima is once again accepting the challenge of metamorphosis. She has transformed her italian bakery into a trattoria. If you haven't had the opportunity to visit before I highly recommend you drive all the way to north Portland, where we are not so scary but a growing and progressive neighborhood and enjoy real italian delights. I'd like to tell you a little about Pat's journey so you will fully enjoy your visit.

Her family is from New York and just like any good NY italian her parents frequented their neighborhood bakery. The little pink boxes her father brought home rested comfortably in her memory. She married, moved to the west coast and worked for Tri Met for many years but those little pink boxes would spill their contents all over her consciousness. 
Wanting out of Tri Met she took a baking course at a local cooking school. She bought a beat up building with a great door in a neighborhood full of potential and opened an Italian bakery. An ITALIAN BAKERY, no maple bars! If there is such a thing as a donut-loving neighborhood it  would be north Portland. One of the reasons I love living here. The bakery has survived being off of the beaten path for a long time because of her commitment to excellence. 

But change was inevitable. It kind of pissed her off when people would ask where the donuts are? and she hated being thought of as a coffee shop. And then wah-lah, Pat followed once again her desires and created a trattoria that still is a bakery. The interior has been remodeled and the menu reflects a true Italian environment and eatery.  
Here is a link to her website and menu: 
www.diprimadolci.com/


Lunch, dinner, bread, cookies by the pound, canoli, homemade pasta...actually everything is homemade. If you have been to Italy and crave real Ciabatta bread then you have arrived. Dean, her long time baker and dough guru turns out several daily varieties along with ciabatta and they are all worth trying. 

In that re-model I am repainting the mural over the door to the garden. The tree of bounty is a fictional fruit tree bearing many different kinds of fruit. The challenge in this is to have it seem as if the tree belongs to the many fruits without getting cute. I've decided to choose the following from Pat's list of favorite fruit: pomegranates, pears, lemons, plums, figs, cherries, tomatoes and olives. It seems to me that the leaves are the key ingredient to making this work. I started with the plum tree in my back yard as the base for the fruit to live. I decided to start with the fruit at the tips and not get too carried away with too much fruit and leaves but let each area grow in relationship to the other branches. 

The learning out come on day one is have the right sized ladder. I have to remove the tomatoes because I was about two feet too low. 

I'm using acrylics with a lightfastness of 1, golden gel medium so I have to erase with wall paint.

Thanks for visiting. Now go eat bread.

So it's over. A 3 hour opening and eight months of work. The next day it's a little like the first Christmas you find out Santa is make believe. 

I had intended to write about my experience in the studio for this particular exhibition. Expressing the development of a painting, my interpretations  of objects as a vehicle for identity and so forth...but alas my friends I truly needed more discipline.  Let me fill you in on what happened. First of all the dead line was not nearly close enough to set my pants on fire. So I procrastinated and became distracted with making shrines for Dia de los Muertos and dressing skeletons, not an easy task. As fun as this was when October rolled around I knew I was in serious trouble. I was never going to have enough work from October to December to occupy the entire gallery. I had several paintings going but was taking my sweet time with them. 

I asked my neighbor, an installation artist, Tyler Stuart, if he wanted the rear of the gallery. I love his work and we have had many over-the-fence conversations regarding art and metaphysics. He agreed and I felt much relieved but still had to kick ass to get what I wanted by hanging time. My studio is a small bedroom downstairs with great lighting. I have two easels so I started working three paintings at a time. This was crowded, all pieces were around 30" or more but a good way to work for an oil artist, giving work time to dry between sessions. I painted seven paintings in less than two months. (Please see Liminal Suspension in the gallery)

There are twelve paintings. I asked six friends to collaborate with me in choosing objects that spoke a little of who they are, the other six paintings are of my interpretation and relationship to objets that are personal to me.
It's up until the 30th of December, if your in town...

Out of this body of work came a great release of interpretation. Stay tuned and THANK YOU to everyone who came.
Thanks for visiting my website.

The problem of painting a person with eight hands is they all have to be the same size, be relative to one another and yet not be stagnate. 

The second in the Identity series. I have asked several people to participate by selecting objects that they had some definitive relationship with. The first was Patrick and his trumpet (The Musician) but there's more...more than an object and a person. We have relationships with objects in ways that I feel symbolize our hidden relationships with ourselves. 

Well, hello it's been awhile. It's the fault of canvas curing. I had to work on the other side of this exhibition, The Mysteries. Everything is loosely titled at this point but I need a way to identify the work. 

The Mysteries are a group of paintings that are beginning backwards. I am allowing spontaneity to move the painting forward rather than having a definitive idea. A photographic image may attract me, lately the images have involved billowing clothes, the painting is only influenced by the photograph then I give the image what it calls forth. There is a strong subconscious desire to incorporate a symbolic structure allowing the meaning to remain a mystery until the piece is finished and/or beyond finishing. 

I'm moving between worlds in my approach to this body of work. The Shaman would say a foot in each universe. One foot firmly planted in the perspective of now. Our physical forms, what we can hold, see, hear, feel, smell and taste. Our relationship to objects and how that relationship places us in the world. The other foot in the void of our connectedness through symbolism and the subconscious. Our Beliefs, Our Mythologies, Our Cultures and Our Heart's Desire. 

How can these images even be manifest in the physical world you ask...
I don't know. I'm just letting it happen. 
Will it all make sense in December when the show goes up?
I don't know. Does it have to?

there is work. 
I have to admit that I have been sloppy at preparing surfaces to work on. I am eager to begin, to create, to watch the collaboration between  what is conscience and tangible mingle with what is intangible and unknown... but for now patience is called for and layers of preparation need to dry and become a foundation for the unknown. 

I'm working towards the December show using materials that are new to me, epoxy and resin. This is the best part exploring the possibilities of growth. There are two paintings setting the stage for the ride, Patrick and Kevin (to be renamed later) these paintings begin with a look at objects that reflect their identities. I started Patrick two months ago but had to put it aside to prepare for the March show. I will be preparing the canvas tomorrow for Kevin, this is also a new process. I'm using an oil based ground instead of gesso...each painting has to be done separately and left to dry for 24 hours before a second coat can be applied and need to cure for a week before the painting can begin. So in the meantime I'm gluing pages of books together in order to rearrange their content and waiting for canvas to dry and that is about all I can do for now in the space. 

I can not paint in the studio until this work is done.
This is where I stopped, luckily I made a note of the palette colors.  ->->->

Thanks for visiting.


 

Thank you for coming to the gallery on Thursday. We had a nice showing. I am glad this event is over, six weeks to prepare is stressful. After a show is complete there is a time lapse of not knowing what to do, like when flying, the plane lifts off of the ground and becomes suspended, everything seems to stop. This sensation only lasts a few moments but it is distinct and weightless.

My practice is to clean the studio making it more acceptable of the materials I plan to fling in its direction next. This is what I do in the suspended time.

On to the larger plan of the solo exhibition in December, 2011. One of my reoccurring themes is Identity. What objects do we identify with? How do we identify ourselves? We are not what we do or what we have, what identifies us? 

I had an idea: I would explore these questions through collaborating with a variety of people some known to me and some not. I would ask the participants to choose objects that described aspects of their identity. This idea was formally hatched when I decided to paint Patrick with his trumpet. (Living in a house where live music is played is pretty nice.) His complete dedication to mastering this instrument gave me the opportunity to see the symbolism of an object in a new way. The painting is simple and direct. I made a list of potential participants, Kevin was first on my list. 

Later...

I was driving on the freeway thinking about who I would ask to participate in this project, having photographed Kevin a few weeks earlier. I started feeling penned in, claustrophobic.   I thought why do I always set myself up with a plan then half way through it I am no longer interested? What if I didn't want to paint the people I asked? How would I feel in July, trapped in an idea of yesterday? 

Wait - A - Minute, waaaaiiiittt... This is my gig!

I am not required to make anything certain.

How freeing.

I want to fully exercise my many talents as an interdisciplinary artist. To freely allow creativity to take over and to begin with uncertainty and identity and see where the work takes me. 

Deadlines! We had to hang the work Monday night. I had three wet pieces and they did not feel done. I read in an article that Pierre Bonnard would sneak a small palette into his exhibition, working on the paintings when the guard wasn't present. I put up eight paintings. I was not happy with the results. Tuesday morning I brought four more paintings to the gallery, older but necessary. It didn't seem as if I was telling the whole story and in my mind these paintings completed an idea even though they cover a four year span. 

The show consist of five women. We will have wine and snacks. Come out and support your local artists.

Thanks for visiting.

I can't count. 

Five days until we hang the show. Today I changed the composition on three paintings, discarding one painting all together that I had struggled with for a month, it didn't fit the concept. It will find it's place in some other time. Started a new painting, did I say five days?...and scraped the face off of one more. 

These paintings had become contrived in my opinion and needed some serious messing up. Now I can work with the ideas that they present. 

I call this a segment show because it's a group exhibit but not collaborative. So what is this segment about? I am mostly working from the concepts of subconscious identity. We each create worlds that include meaningful objects and places that assists us in describing ourselves. In examining the remnants of family photos, letters and stories I create a psychological narration.

Is that what I'm doing?