Category: Blog

I am a good example of why encouraging experimentation in different mediums and fields of study is a good idea. For a few years, I took it upon myself to take some poetry workshops to gain more confidence in writing poetry (I am a visual artist who happens to love poetry). One of the prompts in a workshop was to write a poem about your name. This writing prompt unexpectedly brought up an avalanche of childhood memories. In turn, those memories launched a body of work that became the exhibition, Fate and Fortune, which showed at Artspace in 2015.  The exhibition contains a series of assemblages (3d mixed media collages) and poems.  The Fate and Fortune show will be on display again at Durham’s Golden Belt this September. I believe this exhibition is one of my strongest because of its intensity.  The show explores, in part, my childhood struggles with dyslexia and it is the reason why I take my role as a teacher so seriously.

There is a poem I want to illustrate to add to the show and I will be working on it this summer. The poem, titled I Told You to Write Your Name, is about a teacher who did not understand a young Jenny Eggleston.  Fortunately, most “learning differences” are now caught early and most schools try to quickly educate parents on ways to help kids who struggle academically. But I still hear horror stories of teachers being unsympathetic and at times damaging.  I like to think of Egg in Nest Art Studio as a place far away from that kind of stress, a place where kids (and yes, I am including adults) of all ages, personalities and academic levels can come together with the common goal to create art from their own sense of self. I teach anything is possible and that art that is personal is more powerful.  It is strangely wonderful and easy for me to have a group of kids or adults working on different projects simultaneously. I feel it is an honor to watch and offer help to emerging artists as they create and experience magical AH HA! moments not only on paper and canvas but in their hearts as well.

— Paintings, Poems and Assemblages —

at Artspace
201 E. Davie St. Raleigh, NC 27601
March – May 2016

These works are my “rearview mirror” observations…a looking back while moving forward. I picked up oil painting again after years of producing drawings and more recently assemblages. This act of seriously painting feels new and strange to me. The iconography that emerged was also vaguely familiar yet alien. Imaginary creatures appeared; cherries and furry things kept making their way back onto each canvas. The paintings brought back memories of roaming the Salvador Dali and the Faberge Egg collections that were once housed at the Virginia Museum of Fine Art where I spent hours as a kid. I revisited my collection of bones I collected as a child from the fields and woods of my grandfather’s land.

While working on these Fur Ball paintings I was also re-exploring 20 century art and discovered correlations between what I was painting and certain images I love in the art world. The little poems in boxes are nods to these artists. Images and thoughts and stories I had filed away bubbled up to the surface of my consciousness as I painted and wrote. Putting the poems on cherry jars seemed like an appropriate play to pop art. Lit they became like Dali’s jewels, placed in boxes like Joseph Cornell’s. Take them as humorous shrines.

The paintings are humorous as well and at times unsettling in the exact way I feel handling color. They are a bit raw and garish but I like that about them. They speak to that raw child that felt the call to explore the dark places under rocks and trees and was not afraid of the land or the strangely silent galleries of the Dali Jewels that moved with tiny mechanisms and seemed to breath with life.

see also: http://artspacenc.org/

An Unlikely Valentine to Public Art!

One of my students, Maya, is working on a portfolio for college art school admission. Her love of the graphic arts has sparked an interest in graffiti. This has inspired a series of work on street art. Her most recent piece is a tongue in cheek Valentine. The image: angel and devil spray-paint cans with the phrase stenciled across Love me/Hate me. The idea behind the work is the ethical dilemma many street artists face: where to make the art? Graffiti by definition is illicit and the public often fears if a wall or store face is donated to this art form it will inspire others to leave their mark. Let us all hope so! Being inspired by graffiti surely doesn’t mean a young artist is going to hop curfew and start tagging windows at Walmart. A better train of thought would be supporting public art and getting behind the movement to make our public places more intrinsically interesting. Commissioning graffiti artists, muralists, mosaic and sculpture artists is a good thing for our community. Discovering art in unlikely places and spaces gives us the opportunity to stop in our tracks and LOOK. Love it or hate it, when we intersect art, for a second or two (or gasp, maybe longer) we are invited to think. If there is a well-placed bench, a piece of public art might just inspire us to put down our phones and embrace the day in an entirely new way.

I admire Maya’s interests in this art form and encourage it. Her Love me/Hate me spray cans are more than a call to think about graffiti, they illustrate things are never as simple they seem….note, the angel can is the “Hate me” and the Devil can is the “Love me”. Maya is wise for her years, and as all of us proponents of public art know: The devil is ALWAYS in the details. Tell your city or town managers that you support public art! And Maya, Good luck getting into the school of your dreams! WE all hope you make your mark.

For more information on supporting public art go to:
http://www.pps.org/reference/artfunding/
http://blog.americansforthearts.org/2014/03/20/top-10-reasons-to-support-the-arts-in-2014/

We’re not leading you on a wild goose chase! (Pun intended:-) The North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences has a stellar special exhibit on display until March 23, 2014: Birds of Paradise Amazing Avian Evolution. For those interested in the art that nature has to offer in all her splendor, the 39 species of Birds of Paradise found only in New Guinea and parts of Australia will leave you grabbing your sketchbook and wondering why there aren’t more colors in the rainbow to depict them as clearly as shown in this exhibit.

More information about this exhibit can be found here: http://naturalsciences.org/exhibits/special-exhibits