Shellbound

I've been working on this piece on & off for nearly a month in between deadlines... just like this poor creature I'm desperately eager to get moving, but my progress is oh so s l o w...
if only we were both better adapted for speed.

Acrylic on text (from Steele's Fourteen Weeks in Physics, 1878) & star map (from 1906 Chambers's Encyclopaedia) on canvas, 12"x12" Please click for details.

Shellbound will be in my upcoming show at the Block Gallery (Hargett Street, Raleigh NC) 4 June-28 July. It's called Picturing the Fantastic & includes 22 pieces of mine as well as the wonderfully weird work of Tisha Edwards Weddington. Her paintings are HUGE while mine will be accompanied by magnifying glasses (really!)-- I think the contrast adds a delightfully vertiginous Wonderland effect. Thanks to Sarah Blackmon for putting this together!

Running Slowly

The dodo: a fleeting presence on this planet, but apparently not very fleet of foot.

According to my trusty 1878 Chambers's Encyclopedia of Universal Knowledge, "The birds were easily killed, being wholly unable to fly, and running slowly. Their speedy extinction after the islands began to be visited and settled, is thus easily accounted for."

Maybe it was the shoes?

Acrylic on text & map of Mauritius, 4x5"

Victor's Victim

Acrylic on text (definitions of victim & victor from an old dictionary) on Victor brand rat trap.

We actually bought the trap late last Summer when hordes of enormous rats invaded our neighborhood (after the closing of the local pizza place & consequent dearth of dumpster delights).

I just couldn't bring myself to use it for its intended purpose. I thought about live traps, but then what??? So I quit composting food scraps instead... it seemed to discourage them, at least temporarily... but they're seasonal, right? (Squirm...)

Anyway, one day as I was contemplating the trap & wondering if I was a hopeless softy, I realized what I really wanted to do with it.

On display this month at Colony Theater, Raleigh (along with other work).

The Barking of Trees

In the winter I always find myself looking at bark... none of the usual colorful distractions! I love its strange (& intricate) contours & crevices.

I'm not quite so fond of barking dogs, but one appeared in my sketchbook one day growing out of a dogwood stump, & I just felt like painting it.

Browsing an 1878 encyclopedia for text to use in the background, I was thrilled to discover instructions for the barking of trees! The phrase actually refers to the harvesting of bark, but the article gave me both background & title for this painting.

Acrylic on text on canvas, 9x12"-- please click for details.

Oh! I almost forgot. This piece will be at the Visual Art Exchange in Raleigh. I'm one of the featured artists in the Exchange gallery for March. I'll be at the opening on Friday the 6th (First Friday).

Escape Artist

This is one of my very first "curiollages" from a couple of years back. I turned to this crafty art form after a long stretch of working digitally, out of frustration with the coldness of the computer. I remain entranced by the amazing possibilities of Photoshop, but after doing nothing else for a while, I was desperate for the tactile pleasures of stuff. So this is a sort of self portrait (yes, my torso is actually a used up paint tube! You didn't know?) showing my climb back onto the paintbox & away from the computer monster. (He's made from an old disk & a circuit board, plus paint & polymer clay, with a bit more electronica thrown in there...) Please click for a closer view.

Polymer clay, acrylic, collage & found objects on stretched canvas, 5"x10"

Beginning & End

You may think the new year has just begun, but according to Visions Art Gallery, it's already the end.

My painting "Last Ride" is part of their show "This is the End: Tales of the Apocalypse." Nice timing to show this piece again, as we bid farewell to Cowboy George!

Oops. Sorry I'm a bit late posting this... the opening was yesterday. It will be showing through 6 February. Visions Art Gallery, Medway, Massachusetts, 508-533-1369.

Poppycock

My second custom Dunny is similar to my first, yet they are far from identical. Clearly this fellow has a great deal of rooster blood. His tail, however, suggests papaverous genetic material. Wonder how that happened?

Acrylic on 3" Kidrobot Dunny, with a real poppy pod, & text from an old dictionary (defining poppycock: "bosh; nonsense").