Under Construction - The Fairgrounds

Drawing Stories 2

We put a lot of effort into getting dressed up and being on all night, but at some point it gets to each of us. This young lady gave up in the hotel lobby and took a little nap.

The drawing was originally part of a large drawing installation, composed of 57 drawings, spelling out the word "Ladies." All of the drawings are of girls and women, many of them involved in the activities and rituals that make us "ladies."

graphite on paper
7" x 7"
available for purchase on Etsy

My Stories

James Franco will be on General Hospital and in an exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles AT THE SAME TIME! I grew up watching GH with my great-grandparents while playing with Silly Putty on their green vinyl couch. This makes me very happy, art-wise.

Here's the description from the press release:
“In this special episode, Franco… will be having an exhibition at MOCA Pacific Design Center, during which time Jeffrey Deitch, the new director of MOCA, and the characters from Port Charles from General Hospital will be making their West Coast debut. The character’s exhibition will include full-scale models of the locations in which he encountered mobster Jason Morgan… Franco will attempt to lure Jason and others into his art-trap. If all goes to plan, mastermind Franco will turn both Jason Morgan’s life and his own death into art, a performance to end all performances.”

Awesomeness

Dwayne Butcher

Erin Wright @ Flicker Street Studio

"Nonsensical Nostalgia" (taken with my camera phone)

Colorful Adirondacks and Porch Swings on the Interstate

I took these pictures with a phone!

Memphis and the Arts on Twitter

I love seeing these right next to each other.

Work of Art: The Sh*t I Found in My Yard Episode

• I remain unimpressed with dude's OCD
• I prefer the neater artwork (as opposed to the messier art). That is really all I have to say about the art itself - I'm not going to spend a lot of time thinking about it
• Okay so Judith has no problem talking about her artwork
• I totally would've accidentally done the 2-D art as 3-D
• If Miles keeps winning I'm going to have to stop watching
• OMG I totally did not expect them to kick off Tron (Trong?) so quickly!
• This episode really felt like reality TV, and the artwork felt far less important - hence my shallow impressions of it

Work of Art!

I just realized while watching Work of Art: The Next Great Artist that I can't not blog about it, on this blog called Artwork. So here are my initial impressions:

• The artists seem a teeny bit jerky. Not all of them, but definitely some.
• There is a much bigger emphasis on painting than I would have imagined. Don't people keep telling me painting is dead? (It's not, that's dumb.)
• I think Abdi is really talented and charismatic.
• I am immensely impressed that they were able to do what they did in such a short amount of time without having a breakdown. I couldn't have done it. Well... I couldn't have done it and liked the end result.
• The art administrator in me is surprised and disappointed in how poorly everyone spoke about their own art. Only two of them had a good excuse for that. I'm sure they were nervous and tired, but what was running through their heads that whole 13 hours they were working? Were they not having an imaginary conversation with the judges? Huh.
• I felt bad for Amanda, whose work of art "didn't work," but the piece she made was ultimately a bit shallow - she only reacted to Jaime Lynn's appearance. [Edit: If she was going to go with appearance alone, her design should've been more rococo!]
  
• I'm not impressed by that one dude's OCD.
  
• Simon de Pury's accent is FABulous!

Technical Difficulties

Due to technical difficulties with Blogger (exasperated sigh) it may have looked like I said that Clare Torina's exhibit at Material was bad but it was not! It was excellent - she has an incredible facility for painting, particularly flesh tones. There was a show on South Main that shall remain unnamed that was SO BAD, and the placement of text and images in my post may have obscured that statement. Sorry, Clare! Keep up the good work!


























See more of Clare's work here.

Sketching at the Zoo

Last week my art account treated me to a membership at the Memphis Zoo so that I can go there on weekends and sketch the animals, people, nature, architecture. I went twice last weekend and even took a small set of watercolors to do some color sketching for a change. Here are a couple of watercolors. You can see more here.

Clare Torina @ Material

This is from a couple of Fridays ago.

























































































































I also went to a show on South Main for the Trolley Tour, but I'm not posting any pictures. Everything about the show was SO BAD that I'm not even saying what show it was.

Beth Edwards at David Lusk Gallery

If these pictures don't look so great it's because I took them with my phone. But then again, for a phone it takes pretty good pictures.

Making a Postcard Painting

Bridge Mash-up
4" x 6"
acrylic