Thursday, December 27, 2012

Happy Holidays

Now that Christmas has come and gone, it's time to share the holiday commissions. I hope that everyone had a wonderful holiday, filled with lots of love and tasty food. I am including in this commission round-up any fall commissions that may or may not have turned into holiday presents.














Tuesday, December 18, 2012

CEAM: Transliteration Highlights


Now that I am officially "on break" (painting all day, working on loose ends for commissions, upcoming exhibitions and teaching...but yeah, it's break because most of this happens in my pajamas), I am trying to catch up on a few things, these posts are included.

Transliteration: Liz Robbins + Sara Pedigo closed on November 21st, which makes these shots of the installation very overdue. The show was excellent, and I am deeply thankful for everyone who helped to make it possible and who visited while it was up. Special thanks are in order for Julie Dickover, the director of CEAM, for putting everything together. The final show included 26 poems (written within the last year): 10 new drawings and 6 new paintings based on pre-existing poems and 10 new paintings used to inspire 10 new poems. This collaboration challenged me creatively and gave me a dear friend in Liz, I think she is a truly amazing writer.

Liz and I at the Opening Reception!






















Sunday, October 28, 2012

Sara Pedigo + Liz Robbins: Transliteration

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Upcoming Exh banner
Sara Pedigo, Amy Needs to Unclench, 2012, Oil on panel
Sara Pedigo, Amy Needs to Unclench, 2012
Oil on panel, based on "Poem With Corset Allusion," by Liz Robbins
Sara Pedigo & Liz Robbins
Transliteration

October 26 to November 21, 2012

Opening Reception:
Fri, Nov 2  |  5 to 9pm

Conversation with Artists:
Fri, Nov 16 | 4pm
Based on a mutual interest and respect for each others work, a collaboration of creative forces naturally evolved between Flagler College colleagues Robbins and Pedigo. The impetus for this joint effort began when Pedigo created the cover painting for Robbins' latest book of poems, Play Button. Upon reading the manuscript, Pedigo created several paintings for the prospective cover that attempted to capture the mood of Play Button while not directly quoting any one poem. After the publication of Play Button, Robbins and Pedigo were interested in seeing what would happen if they created work in response to specific pieces by the other artist. The outcome of this collaboration takes the form of new paintings, drawings, and poems that each serve as a response to a particular work by the other artist. Through the continuously evolving creative process poems took new shapes as drawings, and paintings became new stories on a blank page. The artists have used each others respective work as a new-found canvas, a creative springboard for new potential and artistic exploration.

As a visual artist, Pedigo is interested in the sensory power of Robbins' poetry. Robbins' masterful use of language creates perfect slices of experience that transport the reader mentally and physically to the world described on the page. Pedigo's response to those slices of experience take the form of loosely painted portraits and drawings that don't always nod back to the specificity and particulars of the poems, but weave an atmospheric interpretation of the mood and lyricism that the poetry offers. The layered and sometimes dream-like quality of the paintings evokes substantial personal responses under which the paintings themselves seem almost to be tangible memories.

As a poet, Robbins is drawn to the potential narrative aspects, such as character, in Pedigo's work, as well as the music and mood she creates with color and texture. She is also moved by one of Pedigo's artistic motivations: as a deeply creative way to reunite with loved family. To negotiate these aspects, Robbins moved beyond mere ekphrastic poems (poems about art) and tried to create differently complex, layered products, which included borrowing from other forms, genres, and devices, such as playwriting, aphorisms, songwriting, haibun (a Japanese poetic form), logic (if-then statements), personality typing, synesthesia, and biographical statements.

Sara Pedigo has exhibited throughout the United States and in 2007 she was a recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation MFA Grant. Most notably, she was included in the 2006 Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, and in exhibitions at the Cue Foundation, Jacksonville Museum of Contemporary Art and the Naples Art Museum. Pedigo received her Master of Fine Arts from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. She is currently an Assistant Professor at Flagler College, her undergraduate alma mater.

Liz Robbins' second full collection, Play Button, won the 2010 Cider Press Review Book Award. Her chapbook, Girls Turned Like Dials, won the 2012 YellowJacket Press Prize and is out this month. Her poems have appeared in Barrow Street, Greensboro Review, New Ohio Review, Poet Lore, Rattle, Verse Daily, and The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor, and are in recent or forthcoming issues of Cimarron Review, Hayden's Ferry Review, The Journal, New York Quarterly,and Notre Dame ReviewHer first book, Hope, as the World is a Scorpion Fish (Backwaters Press), was published in 2008. She is currently Associate Professor of English at Flagler College.
 
Crisp-Ellert Art Museum
48 Sevilla Street
St. Augustine, FL 32084
(904) 826 8530

Museum Hours:
Monday through Friday, 10am to 4pm
** Now open Saturdays, 12 to 4pm **

All exhibitions and events are free and open to the public.



About the Museum: 

Built in honor of Dr. JoAnn Crisp-Ellert and her husband, Dr. Robert Ellert, the Crisp-Ellert Art Museum offers Flagler College students and the Northeast Florida community a venue for fostering knowledge and a deep appreciation of contemporary art. As an educational resource for the College, the Museum exhibits regional, national and international artists, and provides opportunities for critical engagement and exposure to a variety of exhibitions and personal interactions with visiting artists. The Museum challenges students, the Flagler community and the public to cultivate individual creativity, critical reflection, historical consciousness and respect for the free exchange of ideas. In this spirit, the Museum also hosts public programs, including artist talks, readings, panel discussions and film series that provide a platform for vital interdisciplinary dialogue.
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Sunday, September 30, 2012

September Round-Up

Today I dropped off a bunch of paintings to Plum Gallery, located on 9 Aviles Street in St. Augustine. I am excited to have new work there for the next six months, with the first of many ArtWalks taking place this Friday. If you can come by on Friday between 5-9pm, I will see you there. 

Below are cleaned up images of the paintings you have seen in various states of creation in the recent past. Taking stock of the work today, made me realize how much darker my palette has become over the past year. I have changed my painting medium, and really tried to push layering transparency. Often I think the work has a life of its own, and I am just along for the ride.

Easter, 5" x 7", oil on panel
Floating Feet, 7" x 5", oil on panel
Nap in the Orange Chair, 5" x 7", oil on panel
Ocean Waves, 7" x 5", oil on panel
Potluck, 5" x 7", oil on panel
Sand Fort, 5" x 7", oil on panel
Turn Around, 7" x 5", oil on panel
4H Farm for Chase's 6th, 20" x 24", oil on canvas


Brown Dog, 12" x 9", oil on canvas

Ode to Bummer, 9" x 12", oil on canvas

Birthday Cake Parade, 36" x 24", oil on canvas