Primer Prime Pics

My daughter-in-law Tracey Miller took these stellar shots of my triptych, A Girl's Primer, on the last day of the exhibit at Aucocisco Gallery. Tracey has an excellent eye and a superb camera - you can really see the details and the surface texture in these images! I'm so grateful to her for travelling to Portland to document my triptych while it was still installed at Aucocisco, which is such a beautiful space.

This group show never did get a formal review, but I received many wonderful and insightful notes, comments and e-mails about A Girl's Primer. One of my favorite remark's came from independent curator and writer Britta Konau:

Saw the Aucocisco show and was really taken by your big drawings. The following names came to my mind while looking: Dix, Klimt, and Chagall. Not bad associations, right?

(Right!)

Delivered and Installed!

Opening reception @ Aucociso today from 2 - 5 p.m.!

I'll blog more about it all later - wish me luck!

A Girl's Primer

I have been working on this trio of drawings for 9 months and I'm finally ready to march these ghosts out of my studio. My triptych, A Girl's Primer, will be in a group show at Aucocisco Gallery in Portland for the month of December. I'm thrilled to be invited to show at Aucocisco with four other artists: Michele Caron, Rachael Eastman, Tanya Fletcher, and Judy O'Donnell. I'm just about finished, still doing a bit of fine tuning, and I need to make the hanging mechanisms. They will hang unframed, and I'm planning to string wire to three boards and attach each drawing to its respective board with velcro. They will then simply hang on picture hangers. Theyre not heavy, but they're big, at 4' x 8' each.

Here is my working artist statement which still needs a tweak or two. I don't want to say too much - just a sort of lead in...

My mother’s loss of memory due to the ravages of Alzheimer’s and her recent death prompted me to create this series of drawings, a triptych populated by three major spirits: my mother, my father, and my maternal grandmother. A Girl’s Primer speaks of love, loss, dreams, desire, memory and experience, and the early forces that shaped me.

Dig It

After a month of digging in the dirt, I'm back in my studio, and I am digging into panels two and three...

Deepening Details

Rain rain and more rain, so lots of time in the studio this week. I'll let the pictures tell the story.

Detailing

Primer: any book of elementary principles.

I've been fine tuning the first panel in my Primer series, adding small details. This feels like embroidering on a large woven tapestry. I had a studio visit with a fellow artist in my building last week, and she encouraged me to really amp up the details so that the work is as satisfying to view up close as it is from afar. If I go overboard, I can always cover some of it. The beauty of mixed media! But it sure is fun. A rainy week ahead here in Maine, so I'm sure that I will be in my studio alot again this week! I'll keep you posted...