Monthly Archives: October 2009

At Bat and On Deck

1 Reply

Baseball analogies seem appropriate this time of year, and these past few weeks have felt a bit like a pennant race as I scrambled to set up for Open Studios and then tested my stamina by getting through two full weekends of visitors.

Now we’re into the next round, and a new show is in the batter’s box. On Sunday, I took down my Open Studio. On Monday, I put up a new exhibit just around the corner at the Seabright Storefront Gallery. It’s just what the name implies: the bay windows of a storefront have been converted into a mini-gallery. When I went by last week to scope it out, I had the happy realization that I could hang several pieces that have been in deep storage. They are too big to frame, being about 6 feet tall and 3 or 4 feet wide, on Fabriano watercolor paper that I bought in huge rolls. Most venues don’t like to hang bare paper, and I concur; too much traffic and too little protection. But this was perfect!

Here is the window gallery with my installation:
Seabright Storefront Gallery show

The large work on the left is called “Worlds Without End”, from 2006, and the one on the right is called “Palm Trees”, from 2005. Both are ink and acrylic on watercolor paper. I rounded them out with one other ink and acrylic painting (“Feather”, not visible in this photo) and several sets of prints: a couple of Camino prints, the fairy tale series, the Blake proverbs, and the set of prints about violence against women.

Here I am, looking pleased with myself after setting it up.
Me in front of the Seabright Storefront Gallery show

The Seabright Storefront Gallery is located at 533 Seabright Avenue in Santa Cruz, and my work will be up through the end of November.

I once read a quote by Georgia O’Keeffe to the effect that an artist should always have enough work on hand to hang six shows. I’m trying to meet that standard, but it’s hard to do. Even the small window gallery took 16 pieces! On deck is a solo show at the Lakeview Branch of the Oakland Public Library, which I’ll be hanging in two weeks.

World Series, anyone?

Fairy Tales: Hansel and Gretel

Leave a reply

The most recent print in my fairy tales series: Hansel and Gretel.
Hansel and Gretel

This story has always bothered me. First, the mother dies. That’s disturbing enough; the stepmother is, of course, less loving than the original. Then hard times befall the family, and the father and stepmother decide to send the children away into the deep woods to get lost and, presumably, die, so the parents will then have enough to eat. I remember seeing my parents drive away while we were visiting family friends in Florida. They were only going to the store for something –milk? cigarettes?– but somehow I thought I was being abandoned, and it was heartbreaking. So the idea of the parents purposely sending Hansel and Gretel away, on purpose, to kill them off…. no, I didn’t like that, at all. And on top of it all, to be set up as the witch’s next big meal!

Yet somehow, Hansel and Gretel’s resourcefulness wasn’t satisfying, either. Oh, using rocks to find their way home the first time they were sent into the forest was clever, and I could applaud that. But giving the witch a taste of her own medicine by pushing her into the oven, wasn’t that just as bad as her doing it to them? Couldn’t Hansel and Gretel just run away, or lock her in Hansel’s cage, or do something a bit less violent? less vindictive? Is turnabout really fair play? Weren’t they supposed to be the ‘good guys’? This story did not sit well with my youthful sense of justice. Perhaps this fairy tale upset me more than others because the protagonists were children, not the usual woodsmen or soldiers or princesses, and I could better identify with them.

When I was first contemplating a series of fairy tale prints, Sarah-Hope pointed me in the direction of Anne Sexton‘s Transformations, her book of poems, or “transformations,” of seventeen Grimm fairy tales. They are all astonishing, but I was particularly struck by her version of Hansel and Gretel.

In the poem’s introductory section, Sexton points out how we use the language of eating to express affection.
“Little plum,
said the mother to her son,
I want to bite,
I want to chew,
I want to eat you up.
Little child,
little nubkin,
sweet as fudge…
Your neck as smooth as a hard-boiled egg;
soft cheeks, my pears,
let me buzz you on the neck
and take a bite…
Oh succulent one,
it is but one turn in the road
and I would be a cannibal!”

Sexton also invokes images of the Holocaust:
“Hansel and Gretel
and their parents
had come upon evil times…
The final solution,
their mother told their father,
was to lose the children in the forest.”

She also points out how quickly and easily we turn around to become the monster ourselves:
“As for Hansel and Gretel,
they escaped and went home to their father.
Their mother,
you’ll be glad to hear, was dead.
Only at suppertime
while eating a chicken leg
did our children remember
the woe of the oven,
the smell of the cooking witch,
a little like mutton,
to be served only with burgundy
and fine white linen
like something religious.”

There are also visual inflluences in this print, most notably German expressionist woodcuts, and the movie The Cabinet of Dr. Caligarai. The two children approach the cottage, drawn in by the light cast by the hot oven.

Hansel & Gretel
Linoleum block print with hand coloring
Edition of 30

****
Open Studios Encore Weekend!
See this and all my recent prints during the final weekend of Santa Cruz Open Studios.
Saturday and Sunday, October 17 & 18
11am – 6pm each day
816 Hanover Street, Santa Cruz (see map)

My Art Walk

Leave a reply

These past couple of months I’ve been completely tied up getting ready for Open Studios, so my latest strategy is incorporating my walks into my chores. Today’s walk was a pleasure, hardly a chore, so I’ll include it as blogworthy.

This is the second weekend of Santa Cruz County’s Open Studios, and covers all the artists whose studios are south of the Santa Cruz yacht harbor. I live just north of the harbor, so took the opportunity to walk to the studios closest to my house: those at the 17th Avenue studio complex.

I walked down to the harbor, and skirted the end of the berths. I first noticed the boat in the foreground because it’s an old Chris Craft, and reminds me of the one we had when I was growing up. The name is the best part: “Crisis Every Hour II” — which implies an ultimate crisis for boat #1.
Crisis Every Hour at the yacht basin.

It seems to be my task to explore the train tracks around Santa Cruz; they do provide the most direct route to a lot of places!
Train track short cut.

Some interesting graffitti along the tracks.
Graffitti on a fence along the tracks.

Graffitti on a fence along the tracks.

Here is the 17th Avenue studio complex, a mix of old warehouses, quonset huts, shacks, and still-working garages. It’s a popular destination, since 17 artists there were participating. Another incentive to walk; parking can be problematic.
17th Ave studios.

Among the artists whose work I particularly enjoyed at 17th Ave. are Donna Bourne‘s landscapes, Michael Mote‘s paintings of waves, Marvin Plummer‘s fabulous animal drawings, Jean Sheckler Beebe‘s mixed-media images, and Michele Indiana Anderson‘s abstract paintings. Most are doing the encore weekend on October 17 & 18, as am I, so do come out to look at some good art!

Even apart from the art, it’s an interesting place. An old rusty truck:
Rusty truck.

An arty auto juxtaposition:
Car and grille.

Santa Cruz Open Studios: The First Weekend

1 Reply

Whew! I have just run an Art Marathon, and it feels good. This past weekend was the first weekend of my first-ever Open Studio in Santa Cruz, and I have to say I had NO idea.

Which is to say I had some: Sarah-Hope and I had driven around to many studios in previous years, and bought art, and enjoyed seeing a lot of fabulous work. And we had noticed crowds, but being in the crowd is much different than having the crowd descend.

But back to the basics. Here are some photos of my setup.
First, an overview of the tent.
The tent and art.

Matted prints in bins:
Matted prints in bins.

A card rack, holding mini linocuts and commercially printed cards with images of my prints; then snacks, more matted prints, and the guestbook and business card table:
The card carousel.

Inside the garage, prints, paintings, and (out of sight) my press with a description of my process:
Folding panels in the garage.
Note the lovely fabric behind the prints, covering the ugly metal grids; courtesy of the fabulous Sarah-Hope’s sewing talents.

These are from Sunday, after a wall panel had blown over in the wind on Saturday, dinging a bunch of frames and forcing us to reconfigure the setup. Originally I had two walls of folding panels outside under the tent, where they are more obviously visible, and the bins of matted prints in the garage with the press and working display. But after the wind incident, the panels got moved inside, and the prints, oddly less volatile, moved outside. Either way, I was pleased with the setup. This was the first time I’ve mixed all my prints, all different series, with paintings and other work. I have an oeuvre!

I’ve participated in Open Studios in both Oakland and San Francisco, and even before the weekend, I’d already told people that the Santa Cruz version is far and away the best, both in terms of organization and in terms of support for the artists involved. Now I have to add also best in terms of the attendees. The crowd was much larger than in either Oaktown or SF, and the people were friendlier, more interested in the work, asked better questions, and in general were much more fun. I was exhausted, but had a great time. Now a week off to celebrate Sarah-Hope’s birthday, and on to the next weekend of Open Studios! Please come by if you can!

****
Next Open Studio:
Saturday and Sunday, October 17 & 18
11am – 6pm each day
816 Hanover St., Santa Cruz (see map)
Sponsored by the Cultural Council of Santa Cruz County