I'm Featured Artist For March! Woo hoo!

This March is off to a great start!

I'm the Featured Artist this month at the Art Bank, and I've been working my tail off to get everything ready.  The subjects of my show are my "Mee-Ba" paintings, calling the show "Mee-ba.0" I've gotten a lot of great feedback on them over the years, so I figured I'd stick with what I know for my first Indianapolis Feature.

Last night, Thursday, was my Preview Show. We had a great crowd and I'd like to give a shout to the "Lawless Clan," and all that they encompass for being there and being great friends.  We had 60's surf/pop music provided by my friend, DJ Allan Dare (who did a great job of interpreting my musical requests: "I'd like something 60's, Beach Boys-like, and red and gold on a synesthetic level.") We were bopping around to the happy tunes and Kathleen, the Book Nook's "Book Mama," took a trip down memory lane. Awesome.

I got a chance to test out my Square card reader, that rocked. It was just so simple! And the transactions were all processed by the time I woke up this morning! It was a Christmas giftie and I'm grateful for it.

Mixed Media and Jewelry Artist Moon Stumpp was there and helped me out every step of the way. I'll admit, I was feeling a bit overwhelmed with this Feature month.  I didn't know what I was in for, or wasn't really sure if I knew, and I wanted to do it right, like a good first impression, of sorts. Moon was great, with advice and PR, and gave me some great ideas to branch out with, such as my "Wee Paintings," little 5in. x 7 in. watercolor and ink paintings or 8 in. x 10 in. canvas paintings in a spinning rack.  I painted nearly 50 of those things, to fill the rack, and won't be painting more for a bit, until those sell, mostly because I've never painted 50 of ANYTHING and I desperately want to paint SOMETHING ELSE. They were fun to paint though, like a feeling of freedom with how loose I could make them. But yeah, something else for now. 

I was on IndyStyle on WISH, Thursday morning, and I brought Remy with, for mostly moral support. I'd never been in front of the camera and that had me pretty nervous. It was the kind of nervous that you file in the back of your mind because you've had so much to do earlier in the week, that you didn't really have time to dwell on how nervous you were. But, I DVR'd the episode, and watched it when I got home, and I didn't totally suck! I'm actually kind of proud of myself. I didn't freeze, talking to people on First Fridays really really helped there, and I didn't do any weird nervous tics or anything. Remy behaved herself and even spoke up once, as if on cue! I'd wanted her to paint some lil paintings of her own (she used to do it!), partly for the interest and partly to help fill that "Wee Paintings" rack, but she wouldn't (she wanted to roll over instead), so we just moved on. She's hosting her own doggie-friendly event at the Art Bank on March 15th, so she had relevance being there too.

The Art Bank: wishtv.com

I feel like I'm in a good place for First Friday, as long as the weather doesn't get too nutty (we had some nice hail earlier--to wake me up-- and they're giving tornado watches/warnings for the afternoon). But it's nicely warm out, so I'm hoping we have a good turnout. In any case, I'm prepared. I know what to do in case of a tornado, and I made some killer dip (thank you Artist Within for showing me how to make that dip last March!) to feed to the people that come out if the weather's nice! Oh yeah! AND I finished 2 new paintings that are currently on display: "Two Stickers On A Wall" and "Mee-ba 11.0."  "Two Stickers" can be seen in the background of that IndyStyle video, but I'll have an official pic of both soon.

And hey! 10% of all of my sales for the month of March will be donated to FACE Low Cost Spay & Neuter Clinic in Indianapolis, so be brave, come the Art Bank, buy some art and help a furry friend!

Remy says, "Please?"

Walldogs Comes To Kewanee!

I can’t wait for July of 2013.

And that’s still a year and a half away.

In July, 2013, the organization, Walldogs, will be coming to Kewanee!  Walldogs started up in Pontiac, Illinois, in an effort to boost tourism to Pontiac. They painted murals all over the historic downtown, sometimes repairing faded “ghost signs” (faded previously painted, old-timey advertisements), sometimes creating new murals featuring hallmarks of the town, in that old-timey style.  Now, Pontiac hosts a mural festival every year and Walldogs have taken their show on the road.

And Kewanee already has a great downtown. All it needs is a fresh coat of paint!

I see it like this: There is only so much of the manufacturing and farming pie to go around in Northwestern Illinois. Really, there’s no real artistic hub in the area, so no one’s fighting for that pie. Why can’t Kewanee take it? We’re already a pretty eclectic, eccentric place to be. Residents really don’t see it, until you move away, tell people of your hometown, they cock their heads to the side and ask, “really?” And you have no other answer but yes. Yes, our mayor punched Santa Claus (and no, I don't know how I found that article in the Orlando Sentinel of all places). Yes, Deer Man is a local legend/graffiti artist. Yes, we make boilers that are all over the world. Yes, we apparently had our very own stunt family, the Cole's (I just found that out). We’re also home to random famous folks, like realism painter RichardEstes, and we should be proud of that! So let’s paint it on a wall!

I’ve become involved in the Kewanee Walldogs movement, from afar, using my mommy as my meeting proxy (thanks Mom!).  I’m thrilled, I really am. There’s a town in Indiana, Nashville, that has made itself the regional artsy-craftsy hub and has done well with it. There’s no reason Kewanee can’t do that too. We could have a First Fridays-type event, a once-a-month get together of artists, musicians and appreciators. We have the unique advantage of being able to draw from the Peoria area, as well as the Quad Cities, so if we think outside of our normal bounds, there is money and success to be had.

This will be good for Kewanee, a new spark to the town.  Yes we have Hog Days, but we are more than that. Let’s celebrate the spirit of Kewanee, who we are and where we came from. As a displaced Kewaneean, I know how much of that weird city has shaped me (mostly for the better), so c’mon! Let’s Make/Keep Kewanee Weird!

Click here to see a video of one of the Walldogs meetings!

If you want to know more, check out this article in the Kewanee Star Courier, or this one--which is a nifty photo gallery of some of their previous work, or visit the Walldogs website, or shoot me an email and I’ll give you the deets on the committee. We need you! And, oh yeah, I'll be posting updates, so c'mon!

Super Dooper Bowl Time!

These last few weeks have been action packed.  The Super Bowl has come to our turf. And to Turf, the IDADA Pavilion, and to the Art Bank. Because, you know, we're all in Indianapolis.

We've been spiffing up the Art Bank, and extended our hours. We're part of the arts tours going through town, starting at the Turf Pavilion, working its way up Mass Ave, down to a local Winery, down to the artsy district of Fountain Square and then back to the center of town. Repeat. We're also a warming station, providing cocoa and cookies, even though we have the very un-January climate right now of 55 degrees.

And this Friday is none other than First Friday to boot!  I've been working on my display of my small stuff like a new 'cupcake' stand for my greeting cards, and I've created 'street-legal' postcards (just add stamp) and are now selling them for $1 each or 6 for $5 (basically just as much as a greeting cards, except they're not bundled).  Like the greeting cards, they're images of all of my paintings, even the ones that have sold, so feel free to sift through them until you find the right one!

I hadn't touched pen and ink in a while, so I gave it a go for the Super Dooper Bowl too. For all of the East-Coasters packing downtown, I created some "suitcase-friendly" art, starting with some watercolor but the bread and butter of each piece comes from its pen and ink detail. They're 5 in. x 7 in., matted to 8 in. x 10 in. and sealed in a nice plastic sleeve, ready to go home with whoever would like one. Collectively, I'm calling them "Wee Paintings," and they're $10 each, across the board.  I'll paint more as the initial batch find their forever homes, but I probably won't post photos of all of them, since they're small and numerous (although unique! No two are alike!).

And, one of the greatest flourishes to my display is a copy of Michael K. "The Artbook Guy" Corbin, titled Art For The People.  I've added a bookmark to my copy indicating...a write-up of my first-ever show at the Greenwood Public Library (in Greenwood, Indiana).  The book is basically about the accessibility of art and different ways people find to display and express art.  There's even a poem of pies. Color pictures, tales from New York, to Chicago, to Miami, to Indy, and a nice photo of my painting, "This End Up."  Check it out, if not to read a certain section (*wink wink*) then to read a really wonderful...Art Book.

For the people, by the people, let's bring art to everybody.  And stop by the Art Bank and see all the cool stuff we have going on!

Commissions!!!

I’ve been so crazy busy.

Not that I’m special or anything, I’m just explaining my absence. I do want to stop starting posts with that thought, though.

I had a crush of commissions (like a murder of crows) to complete for the holiday season. I’m nearly finished, but at least now I have breathing room! 

The first finished, due to its Christmas present deadline, is this little puppy. Or, little puppies. It was commissioned by a friend, as a gift for his aunt.  This is a follow-up to his commission-gift-awesomeness of this one for his wife.  This family likes yorkies. I’ve also found out that yorkies are hard to paint, due to their beige and grey coloring, but I’m no longer as intimidated by them. Well, painting them. I got bit by a yorkie once.

My second commission that I’ve completed, I no longer have the imagery to post.  They were court-style sketches, but for a court case in the early 80’s! I was contracted to draw sketches, as if I was present (I was alive then, but my crayon work has gotten better with age) for four scenes. The director/producer of the project had audio of the scenes, but no video to cover it. I’d done court sketches before, in real life, on the spot, but this one required a phone call to my mom to find out what color palette people wore then. And, yes, I made sure all the required sideburns were in place.

My third commission was a custom framing job for a customer that had recently bought a painting. He wanted me to frame in a 3-d manner (to give it depth) some sentimentally-valued papers that he had saved.  Check! Done! Completed at the Art Bank to play keep-away from dog hair. Thanks Remy.

My last official commission is so almost done, I can almost taste it. I’m just waiting on the informational particulars. This one’s looking pretty rad too, so I can’t wait to finish it.

I have one informal commission that I’ve been told to work on at my leisure, and, it sounds like I’m about to be working on yet another one. At first, all these commissions scared me quite a bit, but now I’m starting to like the work. So, anyone else?

Color Of The YEAR

ANNOUNCING…. THE LATEST IN PANTONE!!!

The 2012 Pantone color has been declared. Please join us in welcoming “Tangerine Tango.” Yes, folks, it’s a reddish-shade of orange. ORANGE. I love orange. I blame my Kewanee High School roots on that one. Orange and Black, baby. You get conditioned to it.

I’m liking this. This means that soon you’ll be seeing everything from clothing to toasters in Tangerine Tango. Pantone is a fashion color trend company.  They look into their crystal balls and figure out what is going to be the ‘big’ color of the next year. They actually come up with a whole palette. Tangerine Tango is joined by the yellow-orange “Solar Power,” dark-lavender “Bellflower,” deep blue “Sodalite,” fushia-like “Cabaret,” light sage green “Margarita,” light pink “Sweet Lilac,” aqua-like “Cockatoo,” dark brown “Driftwood,” and tan “Starfish” (even though the first image in my mind of a starfish, it’s the color of Tangerine Tango).  Designers around the world will look at these colors and start to produce all kinds of merchandise out of them.  People will see these as the must-have colors for items. You’ll wear them on shirts. You’ll shop for college dorm supplies and cheap-plastic housewares in them. You’ll buy drapes in them. 

I’m digging Tangerine Tango. I like it better than last year’s “Honeysuckle Pink.” I already work in Tangerine Tango. So remember: This year, I’m not following the trend…the trend caught up to me! Oh yeah!

All The New Pretty Paintings

I’ve been busy. No, really.  I’ve decided to quit reviewing Work of Art. Why? Well, I just want to enjoy the show! I couldn’t just watch for the fun of it, because I was taking notes! Anyway, there’s plenty of reviews online, and if you’re really hooked, go to Bravo on Wednesday nights, and get your fix. Same as me.

I’ve also been churning out the art. Yay! So settle in, this is going to be a nice little post with lots of pictures.

First up, we have this guy: “Violent Green.” I’ve been jokingly telling people that this is what happens if you don’t color in the lines. (I’ve also been encouraging random kindergarten teachers to hang this in their classrooms. No luck so far. But it would drive up coloring grades).  He’s acrylic all the way, with a nice splatter background. He’s also a take on similar crayon I drew back in the day. Much like the sunglass-sporting Easter Island Dudes, I wanted to revisit the Violent Green crayon and see if I could do one better. And who knows? Maybe there will be other disturbed crayons down the road.

“Moo Too” is also a redux. I painted these cows, now, three times. The first time was in the same original piece with the Easter Island Dudes (they were hanging out in the background). Then I painted them as a watercolor-and-ink that is now hanging in little Noah Gallinger’s room (what can I say? Kid loves him some cows). But both of those were really small, so I wanted to do an acrylic version, much larger.

Keeping in line with my recent love affair with spray paint, I submit “Verde” and “I, Cloud.”  Both were acrylic on the background, with an aerosol stencil overlay.  “Verde” is named as such, because it is a Spanish-style sacred heart. I mean, that’s pretty much it. I saw some on teevee and wanted to paint one for kicks. I liked the colors, I wanted to be all brush-strokey and have fun with it. I even painted a practice piece on some foamcore that is now the inlay on my (non-functioning) fireplace. Instead of logs, I have that. The name came from the BF; I wanted something non-obvious, he’s a fan of Kerouac and said that Kerouac said that love was green. So Verde—Spanish for Green.

“I, Cloud” is an interpretation of a photo I took with my IPhone, sitting at a stop light, after a large rainstorm. I looked out the window, saw this awesome cloud (we were setting up for an awesome sunset) and all of these telephone poles and such, and shot the picture. OF COURSE I wanted to paint it. Initially, I thought I would just paint the black parts with acrylic and be all by-the-book, but I got bored of that idea. So why not stencil something semi-realistic? Sure! So there it is.

And then there are these guys: “Mee-bas 7.0, 8.0, 9.0, and 10.0.”  I had a request to paint some more Mee-bas, especially for a show at a local Chik-Fil-A, and they’re fun to do, so I did it. I’m not sure how many more of these I’m going to do; so far, painting these TEN have been the most of any one thing I’ve ever painted.  They’ll be up at the Southport Chik-Fil-A in Indianapolis through the first week of December, so get them now! While they last!

Make It Pop!

Episode 3 of Work of Art: The Next Great Artist was a little closer to art I'm used to: Pop Art. Whoo hoo!

The contestants started out by following a line of label-less cans through De Pury's auction house until they discovered...Simon and host China Chow standing under Andy Warhol's Cambell's Soup Can!  Each artist was charged with making their own piece of pop art. To quote Simon: "Pop is bold; pop is brave; pop is sex; pop is life; pop is fun, pop is brash, pop is political...so Make it Pop!"

Young For The Win!

We finally get to see the artists rummaging through an actual art supply store and get a glimpse into their plans. Sucklord is going after Charlie Sheen. He plans to make bottles of Tigers Blood and a line of Wizard Dust products, packaging them like they're at a shop. Tewes is going to build the back end of a FedEx truck, changing the name to "FadEx" and tagging it with his own art.  Sara J. is going after online dating with a series of 'webcam' photos, Sarah K. is going after the foreclosure crisis with some see through "Sorry, We're Closed" signs. Young is making a big billboard regarding Prop 8 (Sara J rolls her eyes: That's sooo overdone in California...) and people are encouraged to grafitti the back of it.

We do find out some interesting things about our contestants: Lola and Suck seem to be attracted to each other, although Sucklord fears that when his actual girlfriend sees this episode, she'll "cut his balls off."  Kymia suffers from social anxiety disorder, after she discovered her father dead from a jet ski accident.  Jazz Minh has "Bite Me" tattooed on the inside of her bottom lip (OUCH!). And Michelle's confidence is shaken after her early success, and she's showing it through her Coke can painting...uh oh...too derivative...

Leon's piece is cold. Ads don't make pop art.

We end up with Young, and Kymia (nude water bottle ad) in the top two, and Young takes it home! The judges loved the interactiveness of the piece, and its presence and spark of conversation.

Jazz Minh tries to defend her splatter.

In the bottom, we have Leon (glass collection of ads), Dusty (trash bin that says "How could you?" on the flap), Jazz Minh (two portraits of herself, one that Suck spilled paint on--but she likes it) and Michelle.  But remember! Tonight is a double elimination! Michelle is instantly declared safe, she can leave. Her work was too pop, to Andy, not enough Michelle, but she'll live and learn. Dusty is declared safe, but told that he should have painted his bin a bright color (Side note: I told the BF when I first saw it that he should have painted it red. He rolled his eyes at me and asked why he should do that? Beige is the color of trash bins.  I said that red would make it more...poppy.--no pun intended--and I was right!)


That means that Leon and Jazz Minh (the BF's favorite) are out.  Jazz Minh's piece didn't SAY anything, and Leon needed to make his more personal, or as the judges put it: It was not a bad story to tell, just bad storytelling.

Next week: We get to see the artists interact with small children...which also means that Sucklord: Toy Artist will be interacting with small children...