Black Frame Art Sale

One last note!! The Black Frame Art Sale opens tonight! If you are in town,

drop in from 5-9pm

for some excellent art and some equally excellent eats!

2008 Black Frame Art Sale

Merrill Auditorium Rehearsal Hall, 20 Myrtle St., Portland, Maine

Friday, September 12th 5 - 9 p.m.

Saturday, September 13th 10 a.m. - 3 p.m.

The 2008 Black Frame Art Sale will feature 57 Maine artists, with 244 works to choose from, each priced at $200. Each piece in the show measures 10" by 10" and is framed in an identical black frame. All art work in the show was selected for inclusion by a curatorial committee. Visitors to the sale may also enter a drawing to win an original 5'x7' "Scotia" rug designed by Angela Adams!
Hosted by the Bayside Neighborhood Association, the show’s proceeds benefit children’s art programs and other Bayside community activities.

Woman with Wounded Man, I, 2008

linoleum block print with mixed media, 10" x 10"

SOLD.

Heading Downeast

I'm sailing out to Little Cranberry Island this weekend to help prepare for my daughter Kaitlyn's wedding on the 20th, then I'll be in Rhode Island for several days visiting family! See you back here in a couple of weeks!!

Romance of Autumn

There is a definite nip in the air here in Maine this morning. Soon the leaves will be changing. Today is 9/11, and I wanted to post a peaceful, positive image. This is a favorite of mine.

Romance of Autumn, 1916
George Wesley Bellows

The Odd Odd Nerdrum

As they say he-ah in Maine, de-ah,

Now ain't that odd...

Ayuh. I'd say so...

Brenda from Artslice mentioned in a comment on my last post that Ellen Lesperance and Jeanine Olson's performance photograph's made her think of Odd Nerdrum's paintings.

What do you think?

Off the Grid

Performance photographs from Ellen Lesperance and Jeanine Olson's Off the Grid project. Ellen Lesperance taught painting at MECA when I was there. She is an avid knitter and she knit parts of her costume for this series (that's Ellen on the left in the top photo). Knitting as Fine Art: Knitting is making a Splash in the Art World, a report by Ellen Lesperance, was featured in Vogue Knitting, Fall 2003.

I saw many of Lesperance and Olson's large scale performance photographs in the Portland Museum of Art Biennial in 2003. Powerful.

Late Summer on Miller Mountain

The hummingbirds have left a little earlier than usual this summer. Typically they leave around the 17th - perhaps they know something about the weather that we don't know. Heavy rain on Saturday night left the garden bedraggled and created a carpet of acorns in the woods. A white morning glory with pale blue stripes blossomed after the deluge. I picked yet another bowl of wild blackberries and made a blackberry crisp for the fourth weekend in a row, and we've been harvesting tomatoes and making sauce. My son Andy cleaned out the fire pit - it's ready for some autumn bonfires! I did baskets and baskets of laundry as usual, and knit. I haven't been in my studio for weeks - it seems that I need to do other things at this time of year, things that feed my soul. But I know that I will have to get back there soon. My art feeds another part of my soul.

Sometimes though, it all seems so foolish, making art. I read a disturbing and important book by Suzi Gablik several years ago called Conversations Before the End of Time. The book addresses our environmental crisis and how artists are dealing with this in their personal lives, and in their art. A few of the artists interviewed in the book have chosen radical paths. One couple decided to go completely off the grid and literally disappeared into the woods. And one woman stopped making stuff and decided instead to clean up a polluted river near her home. She spends every day in the river, picking up trash, bit by bit. This is her art now. I'm torn on this. I realize that every load of wash I hang out, and every basket of vegetables I raise to feed my family is a great help to the environment. Sometimes I think that I could be completely happy just doing these things. But then my brain gets hungry, too.

So it's back to that big unanswerable question:

What is art, anyway?

Lisbeth and Milkweed

My daughter Lisbeth is taking over today. Here's is a little story about her white cat, Milkweed, that she dictated to me:

Mmmhmmm, guess what guys. Little Milkweed, she was laying down long time asleep on my lap. Mmmhmmm, in the morning. When I was on the couch. Watching movie 100 Dalmation Little Puppies Get Stolen and she was on my lap all that time. That was nice that she stayed on my lap. I was happy. That was sweet way of it. And now Little Milkweed, she just got kissing on my lip! That way, too sweet of it! That can be nice, really, for you knowing it, and for Little Milkweed knowing it. Mmmhmmm.

Lisbeth, 1997

pastel and colored pencil on paper, 15" x 22"

lost in studio fire