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...

Movement? Whatdya Mean Movement?

Episode 2 of Work of Art: The Next Great Artist kicked off with mentor Simon de Pury charging into the artists' rooms, declaring "Wakey! Wakey" ...To which the BF yelled out "And come with me! Oui! Oui!"  Hey. At least he's having fun with it.

The artists are lead to a park and given a quick demonstration of New York Parkour, basically a way of running and jumping around a park.  I've always heard it called Free Running, but in any case, rock on exercise.  The challenge this week is to create a work of art based on movement.  The artists will be split into two teams, but they're only joined in theme; they'll each be creating their own piece.  They were kind of arbitrarily split down the middle of where they were standing, so Team 1 was: Leon, Young, Jazz Minh, Katherine, Tewes, and Lola. Team 2 was Michelle, Sucklord, Bayete, Dusty, Sara J, Sara K, and Kymia.

They immediately split up and analyze the concept of movement. Team 2: Michelle wants to do something with poo. She likes the idea and claims pooping is movement. So Team 2 comes up with a concept of digestion; each artist takes on a different part, such as chewing, swallowing, digesting... yeah. Simon says yes, it IS movement, although very slow movement, but is it too complex? Are they thinking too much? No whammies! No whammies!  EEEHHHT! Whammie.

Team 1 discusses movement in terms of migration, people moving from place to place. Jazz Minh starts doing handsprings while an artist takes photos for her, she wants to incorporate that into her painting. They all start wandering around the streets, picking up debris that they can incorporate into their art. Leon is really happy with a piece of glass he found.  Katherine, AKA Guts Girl, comes up with a wonderful concept of...guts movement. You know, like digestion. Wrong team, honey!  EEEHHHHTT Whammie.

Simon calls all of the artists together and gives them a stern talking-to.  He points out that the pieces are supposed to have more to do with movement in the literal than in the abstract. Make stuff with boingy  parts and springy parts and not contemplate bowels or herds.  Take two!

Team 2 scraps digestion and goes with a park theme. Sucklord goes to Coney Island in his mind and makes a sculpture where you pull back on this stick and launch a fake rat into a jar. He paints "Flip the Rat" on the side and bam! Good to go. Dude actually surprised me this week. He actually had some good management skills. He commented from the get-go that they might be off course, but still kept on task. He was a pretty reasonable manager, and not nearly as potentially annoying this week. He was safe.

Michelle made a creepy wooden statue, with a large photo of a park hanging behind it, and it was to signify pervs in the park. It had a wooden dowel erection. And when you pulled certain weights under the...dowel, his hands rose up.

Dusty made a lonely teeter-totter. He made a giant cut-out of himself and sat it at the end of the teeter-totter. He misses his wife and kid. I hope that doesn't become an issue next week. I do like Dusty!

Team 1 decided to scrap migration and go with Circles. Everything had SOMETHING to do with circles. Bayete went out on the roof and spun around a bunch of times, pointing a video camera at himself, until he wanted to puke. He then looped the video into two side-by-side boxes and projected it on the wall of the gallery. And, after being in the bottom three last week: Bayete won! It was simple, not too thought out, and the judges liked it. It moved! (And I kind of liked him murmuring, "C'mon render...Render!" a phrase often murmured or yelled at my day job).

Tewes made something with a hose coiled around a bucket and a hand in a circle on the wall. The hand was supposed to spin but didn't. The judges weren't pleased. Lola made a ball out of shredded paper that just kind of sat there. Meh.  Young touted his curator skills all the time and made a silvery flag with a circle sewn into it to symbolize Japan's flag and it flittered in the air, and said...something...about the earthquake there. 

Speaking of nuclear disasters...Guts Girl had a complete meltdown. She wanted to fling guts at a plastic sheet, while video taping it. It had nothing to do with circles, she kind of lost it when the artists pointed that out. She didn't even want to do the video part, just have guts on plastic (again!) but the artists pointed out that was soooo last week and had nothing to do with circles. So she said that she would make her first-ever video, because looping video is kind of like a circle, right?

Wrong. It was a mess. The judges called her out on it, that, hey! We've seen this before! If Ugo was derivative of Keith Haring, Guts Girl was derivative of herself. She started doing some kind of weird sobby crying in front of the judges, explained in her commentary that she has Crohn's disease and that's her fascination with guts and blah blah and she's harder on herself than anyone and this crushes her and blah blah blah she went home. If you're on a contest show like this, and can't bust out of the same thing week after week, it's good you go home early. No matter how hard you tried when you filled plastic with dough and jelly and called it a small intestine. Sorry. Harsh. But I wasn't very impressed on week one, still not impressed in week two.

And next week, we're promised a double elimination! Oooooo...

Kitschy time!

Alright, it's been nearly a week. Hey! Stuff got in the way! But...Wednesday marked the start of the second season of Work of Art:  The Next Great Artist. Yay! No, really. I loved the first season. Think Project Runway, but with artists instead of fashion designers.  The show, produced by Sarah Jessica Parker, gathers an eclectic group of artists, of various media, and has them compete against each other, week after week, challenge after challenge, for a nifty prize and a show at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. Last year, during Season One, I was rooting for a young artist, the likeable Abdi, for the win. And guess what? He one. Yay!

The first episode of Season Two was titled “Kitsch Me If You Can.”  This was our introductory episode, with each artist submitting, prior to the show, a self-portrait that is hanging in the Brooklyn Museum of Art. Some of the more interesting ones included Arkansas art teacher Dusty’s crayons-stuck-to-the-wall rendition of this own face, and Chicagoland’s Young Sun’s photograph of himself standing naked with a slimy covering, with his dying parents (cancer) laying on hospital beds in the background (he said this was their last family portrait together…). He must be vying for this year’s Nao. 

This year’s “Miles” is…The Sucklord. Yup. That’s what he calls himself. And if you call him by his real name, Morgan, as mentor Simon de Pury made the mistake, he will quickly emplore you to address him by his formal title.  On the one hand, this guy is hilarious. He identifies with the nerd culture, making art out of disassembling Star Wars action figures—apparently is quite successful at it—and has quip after quip of never ending sarcasm. But…It borders on the pretentious. That’s one of the fun aspects of this show: Groaning at the super-pretentious artists, and appreciating the down-to-earth artists. That’s a big reason why I rooted so much for Abdi last year: He wasn’t that pretentious, he was a real guy. The Sucklord, well I’m glad he wasn’t eliminated this go-round, he’ll add a lot of humor to the show, but I don’t see him winning, and his antics may get old quick.

There was Chicago graffiti artist Tewes, who was amazed by the décor of their studio. He said he’d worked in abandon buildings, rooftops and …jail, so this was all very neato.  He had a cool painting of a pink spray painted hand on a wall, in his body of work.  But the trick here is that the challenges aren’t just geared to painters. Some artists are photographers, some are performance artists, some are, actually painters, but the challenges will often force people out of their comfort zone, such as the first one did for Tewes: He had to make a sculpture. With a cheesy cat.

For The Win!

Each artist was challenged to take a piece of ‘kitschy’ art and rework it into something more acceptable for a gallery. I’ve read many reviews where people were actually standing up for the artistic value of the kitschy style.  And leave it to The Sucklord, he stood up for it. He loves crappy art! (He got a wizard painting, declaring it Gandalf and Lord of the Rings to be a religious experience).

There were several female artist with dark hair, they kind of blended together for me. Sara J tended to have a hang up on inner pain, and expressed it with watercolor paintings of a style I just usually refer to as “Nightmare Before Christmas.” Little big-headed people all weepy and…wah. 

There was a woman who knew real pain, Michelle, who apparently was in a car vs. bike accident (she was on the bike) a few months before the show and had developed a new appreciation for life. She had an interesting technique of creating paper sculptures. Her kitschy piece was a wood carving of an eagle. She painted it grey, making it look like a tombstone and created a paper skeleton to lay at its base. She was the challenge winner.

This sent Ugo home.

Ugo was the evening’s looser. He went home. His work was declared too derivative of Keith Haring. And it was. It was also very red-on-red, and when he took the red back panel off the piece at the end of the show, leaving only the plexiglass with red…thingies…painted all over it, the judges looked like they felt they made a mistake. Almost.  And Sucklord got into their sights for his lack of defense defense of sucky art. He and judge Jerry Saltz are going to get along great! (sarcasm).

Oh yeah and then there was the girl that creates art by creating guts sculptures. Yuck. And according to the season’s previews, she cries weird.

In the end, for this first episode, it comes down to the question of “Who do I root for?”  It’s not so simple. I don’t have any immediate favorites like Abdi. I just had a good vibe on this guy.  I’m kind of liking Leon, the deaf Malaysian guy, but I’d like to see more of his work so he’s not just a reality TV novelty.  Tewes has a neat style, I only hope he’s versatile enough to make it. Other than that, Dusty does have some of that ‘good guy’ appeal, and his crayon thing was really cool.  I quizzed the BF and he (really really enjoyed his first time watching the show!) picked Kymia (one of the brown-haired chicks that has yet to make herself more memorable to me), Leon, or Michelle, the challenge winner. He also likes Jazz Minh’s painting style, but also worries about her versatility. And, as he put it, he fears the judges are “too snooty for her stuff.” I guess that's a synopsis of what this show is about. Art...but for the masses (the BF describes himself as an art appreciator, but no artist. He especially marveled at the idea of being challenged to complete a certain project like the show requires. He said he could take on high-pressure work environments or video games, but never ever creativity on demand!)


Snooty versus regular folks. Kitschy versus gallery-ready. Ding! Ding! Ding! GO!

Noah

This is Noah.                               And this is “Noah’s Farm.”

My first foray into baby nursery décor, I did this three-piece for the newborn son of my good friends, Gary and Sarah Gallinger.  It was his “Welcome to Earth” present.

Gary is a farm kid, I believe he knew how to drive a tractor before driving a car, and, of course, is a fan of the green and yellow. Sarah has a background with the horsies, especially dapple ones (and I got to find out what a dapple-colored horsie looked like).  So of course this kid was going to be spending his rooky years in a farm-themed nursery. 

I designed the three to be tied together with the fence at the bottom, but yet be placed around the room as they fit, should the family ever move. Initially, this project was supposed to be a mural, but they and I decided on some canvas work, as a keepsake, as mobile art, and, as Gary likes to joke, an investment in Noah’s college education fund (heh, yeah right! I’m waiting for my art to still pay off MY college education!).

So in the end, we have here, a dapple pony with some li’l chickies peeping at her, two cow buddies, and a John Deere, put-putting away on a faraway field. Either little Noah is going to grow up loving farms and animals as much as his parents, or he’s going to be forever creeped out at animals staring at him. Either way, I had fun doing it, and the grown-ups like it, and there may be one more addition to this project (though not on a canvas!) in the future. By Christmas…If I start on it now….And given that Noah was born in March, I had been working on them before that, and only finished them when he was five months old…I better get cracking!