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!

Sara Pedigo + Liz Robbins: Transliteration

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 Review. Her 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. flagler.edu/crispellert     |     facebook.com/crispellertartmuseum     |     crispellert@flagler.edu

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

 

Tuesday to Tuesday

This week.....

Friday Night: I attended an artist talk at Plum Gallery with Laura Mongiovi, a wonderful colleague and fellow artist.  Images of her visually supple and amazing work can be found here. Listening to Laura discuss her background and process made me really excited to get into the studio, and very thankful to work with such talented individuals. 

This Weekend: I spent family time celebrating my husband's birthday, we watched football and ate borsch. Below is an adorable photo of our nephew with our dog at the in-laws!

And then some paintings:

This is the painting that I can't quite seem to finish. Every time I think it's done, it's not. I have left this painting in the studio declaring victory too many times! I know it has the best of me at this point, but I am stubborn. I am hoping to loosen up the marks and trick it into something cohesive. We will see. I mostly hate everything but the girl bending over in the creek. Of course she is the figure I have touched the least, I really need to leave things alone more.

A new start on a small 9" x 12" painting, based on a single source photo. This painting features my mother, myself, our dog "bummer" (great name, thanks mom), and my brother's hands. I am most excited about my brother's hands, floating arms are really in this season with my paintings!

Finally, I am working on a group of 7" x 5" paintings. I posted two last week. Here is a shot of the four recently completed, followed by two close-ups made this week.  You can tell the time of day changes, because my carpet color shifts.

(school)work

With the fall semester fully in swing, it can be very challenging to keep up with creating new work. Luckily I have several deadlines that are forcing me to stay on top of working (at making art, not teaching it)! Next month my work goes back up at Plum Gallery, located on Aviles St. in St. Augustine. At the end of October-November, the collaborative works between Liz Robbins and myself will be on display at Flagler's CEAM (Crisp Ellert Art Museum). In January, I have a solo show scheduled at Florida School of the Arts in Palatka.

Point being, outside of teaching, I still have a lot of work to do. I left my house at 8:45am this morning and am just stopping now to sit down and write this post (with the exception of my 45 minute dinner break). With all of this said, I would like to point out that I am not complaining because I throughly love every minute of the whirlwind that is my life. I recognize how lucky I am to be in this position.

So on to the work...I promised my Exhibit Portfolio class that I would post weekly, since I am asking them to do the same thing...so hopefully I will be able to keep up the bargain. This is what I have been up to.

To double check the feasibility and outcome of a drawing one assignment here is a 45 minute blind contour self-portrait. It is pretty entertaining!

On to the birthday cake painting, which I'm pretty confident will be titled Birthday Cake Parade. At this point I think the painting is finished, but nothing is safe until it has left my house, so who knows. On a side note, this photo is terrible and I promise a better on in the near future.

The next painting has really shifted significantly in the past couple of painting sessions. At first, I realized that my brother's head (the little boy on the right) was too small, then too big, then the figures were all too orange...etc. Long story short, the painting has really changed dramatically, while appearing to stay almost exactly the same. I think the title for this one, will be taken from the back of one of the photographs, "At the 4H Farm for Chase's 6th Birthday Party". Since taking the last image, my mom's mouth has already changed a little, but overall I am a lot happier with the painting. 

Finally, I am working on 4 tiny-small commissions that I will share upon completion. Outside of that, I have two more small paintings to share, both are 7"x 5" and feature my most adorable nieces. On a tangental note, my BFF is also visiting her parent's condo this week and I took several photos of her amazingly adorable daughters on the beach (which will hopefully make their way into a couple of paintings). My oldest niece is officially the age I was when I first met my friend Kari, and the painting of her and her sister in the ocean makes me think of being in eighth grade again.

+2 to online

So this past week I dove off the deep end and started a Facebook Page so you can follow/like me there in addition to reading about my work here. Pretty soon this will just turn into a never ending loop. In that spirit, I am including the Portlandia clip that I previously posted on my personal Facebook Page to introduce my "public artist page". Following the completion of this post on the blog, I will probably link it to both FB pages...that's right folks I'm truly in the "technology loop" (the Portlandia reference is not a joke)!

So on that note...here is the progress made on my recent long painting with a birthday cake. Not sure what the title will be. It's 36" x 24". Please pardon the glare, I am mostly painting at night now, so the surface is much more difficult to capture with my iphone.

Additionally, here are two new tiny-smalls...

and finally 2 new drawings from poems. Both drawings are graphite and white acrylic paint on 9" x 12".