East Austin Studio Tour 2010, Part Three
Above (or left): Sculpture “Plucky” by Dominique Vyborny at the Pump Project Arts Complex during E.A.S.T. 2010
Full Day of Visiting Artist Studios, Last Day of E.A.S.T.
I decided to spend the final day of EAST visiting more artists’ studios rather than hanging around The Vortex. If you came to see me at The Vortex yesterday, my apologies for not being there; if you’d like to see more of my paintings, you can always schedule a private visit at my home studio; just contact me and we’ll set something up.
I started at neighbor Robbie Ortiz’s studio, where he and fellow painter Stephen Schwake were showing their work. Robbie does some amazing cubistic paintings and drawings; visit his website at: RobbieOrtiz.com.
Stephen does large paintings and drawings influenced by “80′s skateboard graphics, hot rods, science, stained glass, American roots music, mid-century Modern design, art history, and World War II fighter planes.” His site is StephenSchwake.com.
Next I headed down to the Artpost, where I visited with Court Lurie for a bit. I really love her abstract paintings! Court is very deservedly a rising star in the Austin art world.
See her work at: CourtLurie.com.
I popped my head into a few other studios; there’s a glass artist named Nicholas Dertrien who is doing some pretty amazing blown glass sculpture of the human body, some complete with (what I think are) internal organs. See his “Transparent Body” work at Shoal Creek Gallery.
I also peeked at the work of sculptors/installation artists Scott Proctor and Marianne McGrath.
Then I headed over to the Pump Project Arts Complex, where I visited with fabulous abstract painter, Jan Roset, portrait painter Nicole Jeffords, and lightbox sculptor Brooke Gassiot.
Also poked my head into the studios of Alicia Hartzell, Amber Kappes, Erika Jaeggli, Mark Johnson, Katherine Sheehan, Leanne Venier, Darvin Jones, Paul Alix (illustrator, very funny guy), Scott Ewen, Audrey Lopata (awesome kids illustrator), and Lana Waldrep.
Then I drove up to the Pump Project Satellite, where I met painter Keva Richardson (love her work), and visited with good friend Jill Alo at Women Printmakers of Austin, where I also ran into friend and fellow encaustic artist Maggie Jordan. Popped into Damon Arhos studio, too.
Then I walked down to Big Medium (the folks that started all this), viewed the show at the gallery, visited with encaustic painter Kristy Darnell Battani, abstract painter Rebecca Bennett, and said Hi to Judy Paul above the crowd that always surrounds her. 
Stopped in to see Daphne Holland‘s new work, and chatted with Juan Moreno, two more encaustic artists from Texas Wax. Stopped into Bay6 Studio, where I talked to Kevin Kuhn briefly (he’s taken over the Texas Wax website, bless his heart), and Sharon Kyle Kuhn, the encaustic artist who started the Austin Chapter of Texas Wax.
By this time, it was after 5:30, and I still had at least 6 more artists on my must-see list, but knew I only had time for one more. So I zipped over to Jennifer Chenoweth‘s to see her new work and the work of Virginia Fleck. Her work is always so interesting, and her home itself is an amazing work of art! Good call: Jennifer very kindly packed up a bowl of her delicious chicken pesole to take with me after my very brief visit.
And that, my friends, was my whirlwind one day tour of EAST 2010 (seeing only about 1/10th of the artists participating this year).
View some photos from the ArtPost and the Pump Project Arts Complex in this gallery:
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See also part one: Participating as an Artist at The Vortex
and part two: EAST Artists Tour
East Austin Studio Tour 2010, Part Two
Above (or left): Sculpture by Hank Waddell and paintings by Shawn Camp at Shawn Camp’s studio during E.A.S.T. 2010
An artist is not an isolated system. In order to survive he has to interact continuously with the world around him… Theoretically there are no limits to his involvement.— Hans Haacke
EAST Artists Tour
This year, for the first time, artists were able to visit other artists’s studios on a few weeknights in the week between the two EAST public tour weekends. This is a really great development! A major drawback of being a participating artist in EAST these past years has always been that you’re stuck at your own studio and can’t get out to see new work, new artists, new spaces, new ideas, and visit with your artist friends. It was one of the main reasons why I didn’t open my studio last year, and instead spent the time visiting as many artists and studios as I could comfortably squeeze in.
The folks who organized this actually pulled it off more or less at the last moment, so I think that not all the artists were even aware of it. I found out too late to make it during the first two nights, but managed to get to three artist’s studios on the third night.
First, I got to visit with neighbor and painter extraordinaire Jennifer Balkan. Jennifer is a very painterly figurative painter who often uses bits of maps in her work (and she’s really, really nice!). I saw her work during the very first EAST Tour that I visited—maybe it was #2 in 2004 (when there were only 51 locations)—and I was blown away by her work then.
Jennifer just gets better and better, and her work is currently included in this great invitational “Women Painting Women” show at Robert Lange Studio in Charleston. You can see the show and read the articles from American Art Collector, ArtMag, & Art See at: Robert Lange Studio, and you can visit her website and see more of her work and info at: JenniferBalkan.net.
Next, I visited with neighbor, friend and painter Ines Batllo in her wonderful new studio. Ines is a Catalan painter whose paintings in oil and encaustic are skillful, deep, and full of soul. She’s doing some very interesting three-dimensional work with encaustic. She and I were having such a great conversation that I forgot to take any photos there, but you can view her work online at: inespaintings.com.
My last visit of the evening was to Shawn Camp’s studio, with Shawn Camp’s paintings and Hank Waddell’s sculptures.
Shawn’s paintings are so luscious; they are very thick with gorgeous paint, and I just want to roll in them (like in the movie “What Dreams May Come”). His work also references the landscape from an aerial perspective. I first saw Shawn’s work at the Davis Gallery in 2006, when he showed with the awesome sculptor Caprice Pierucci, and I just fell in love Shawn’s work at that time (and Caprice’s!).
Well, I fell heads over heels in love with one particular little painting of Shawn’s this night, and so, soon I will be able to look at it every day. Yes! I am buying a small painting from Shawn, and I could hardly be more excited! (EAST folks, take note: The EAST Artists Tour is definitely worth it for artist and artist alike!). :)
See more of Shawn’s gorgeous paintings at ShawnCamp.net.
Sculptor Hank Waddell’s work is very cool, and so is he. He uses a lot of construction materials in his work, makes beautiful and intriguing sculptures in wood, bamboo, metal, foam and more. He also creates some very cool (and affordable) lead airplanes, and is always, always surprising. Hank was one of the very few artists chosen for the 24th “New American Talent” at Arthouse’s Jones Center. The work was selected by New American Talent juror, Hamza Walker, Curator and Director of Education, The Renaissance Society, The University of Chicago.”
I met Hank when he was president of the Texas Society of Sculptors, and I was taking over as webmaster. We’ve both since moved on from our positions at TSOS, but we have stayed friends, and I designed his newest website. To see Hank’s fantastic and fun work, visit his site at: HankWaddell.com.
View a small gallery of images from the EAST Artists Tour:
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See also part three: Full Day of Visiting Artist Studios, Last Day of E.A.S.T.
and part one: Participating as an Artist at The Vortex
Ten Rules of Thumb for Maintaining Creativity
Wendell Castle
Music Stand (1964)
Oak, Brazilion Rosewood
55.5″ x 25″ x 20″
I just discovered this great blog post about an artist/craftsman named Wendell Castle at Emily Evans Eerdmans’ blog. Wendell Castle has been creating amazing furniture for over 50 years. He has ten “Adopted Rules of Thumb” for staying at the top of one’s creative game that I find very compelling:
- If you are in love with an idea, you are no judge of its beauty or value.
- It is difficult to see the whole picture when you are inside the frame.
- After learning the tricks of the trade, don’t think you know the trade.
- We hear and apprehend what we already know.
- The dog that stays on the porch will find no bones.
- Never state a problem to yourself in the same terms it was brought to you.
- If it’s offbeat or surprising, it’s probably useful.
- If you don’t expect the unexpected, you will not find it.
- Don’t get too serious.
- If you hit the bullseye everytime, the target is too near.
To find out more about Wendell Castle, and view more of his amazing creations, visit his website at wendellcastle.com
RIP: Ray Yoshida, Painter and Teacher
I just learned that Ray Yoshida, one of the Chicago Imagists and one of my painting teachers at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, passed away this week.
I studied with him in an advanced painting studio for one semester: he once told me my work was “too sentimental.” (Thank goodness!).
I’m sad and very nearly speechless. So, let me just quote from the NYT article:
“He was very important to a lot of people there,” said Robert Storr, dean of the Yale University School of Art and a student of Mr. Yoshida in the mid-1970s in that school’s master of fine arts program. “As a teacher he was mysterious and witty. The mystery would draw you in, and then he would say something funny but with an edge that would make you think — kind of like his paintings.”
Life is as complicated as it appears
Painting by Matthew Ritchie
“Self-Portrait in 2064″
2003
Oil and marker on canvas
80 x 100 inches
That quote is from an interview with Matthew Ritchie.
Better yet, I found this wonderful post by Vera Mitchell about Matthew Ritchie:
His work takes a basic line and takes it farther in meaning, in space, and in motion. He enlarges the line design to get a reaction from the viewer. He makes a drawing three dimensional and becomes a transcriber to a gesture and retains the one idea to free it and make it live in the world. He is interested in filtering out all the noise of life and focusing in on what is important. I never thought about it this way, he says that if one thing has a story, then the millions of things we see everyday have a separate story, and if we tried to see them all at once then nothing is seen or noticed. We tune it out. What he is trying to do is try to see a bit more deeply into things. Not just what is on the surface.
Read the rest of it at: Vera Mitchell’s blog.
Or check out more of Matthew Ritchie’s work at his website.
Fall of Babylon
I like his point of view.
Painting by
Adam Cvijanovic
See a lot more of Cvijanovic’s colossal spectacular work online at the Bellwether Gallery.
Looking at Earthworks Artists & Their Descendants
“You” by Urs Fischer
Today I look at how various artists over recent time have reacted against the idea that developed through the history of art of the gallery as a sacred place, and the art within as items to be worshipped.
A recent installation in New York by Urs Fisher takes place inside a gallery, while some of his antecendents had moved their work outside the gallery.
Urs Fischer has reduced Gavin Brown’s Enterprise to a hole in the ground, and it is one of the most splendid things to have happened in a New York gallery in a while…A 38-foot-by-30-foot crater, eight feet deep, extends almost to the walls of the gallery, surrounded by a fourteen-inch ledge of concrete floor. A sign at the door cautions…intrepid viewers can, all the same, inch their way around the hole.
It is the gallery deconstructed and “makes you look at galleries in a new way.” Read more about it in this New York magazine article.
Peaceful Abstract Landscape by Karen Jacobs
Painting by Karen Jacobs
“Hope Ridge”
mixed media on canvas
30″ x 30″
Here’s another really gorgeous abstract landscape — makes me wish I were there (kind of like Robin Williams in “What Dreams May Come” or that bit in Akira Kurasawa’s movie (I think it may have been called “Dreams”) where Van Gogh wanders through his own paintings.
Anyway, I’d love to roll in a field of paint that looks like this. Luscious! View more of Karen’s Work at her website.
Follow Me!
I Loves Me Some Art!
Which painting represents you?
As part of my just-completed website redesign, I added some comment avatars that anyone who comments on my blog can choose as their avatar (you know, that little picture that accompanies your comment). I chose some of my favorite paintings and sculptures by some of my favorite artists for the avatars. It was very tough to whittle the list down to some number small enough for loading and presentation purposes. I did try to make myself select a well-rounded representative sample of famous artists throughout art history, or at least art history in the last few hundred years, but in the end I couldn’t remove some of the art and artists who have most influenced me as an artist.
The image above is the group of images I had selected–before I cut it in half. Here are larger images of the selection you can choose from in the comments section on every post, along with the artist’s name for each piece:
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You can view the list I started with on the Comment Avatars page.
And please comment, if you would, on that page or on this one, choosing your favorite avatar from the group of sixteen that made the final cut. I’d love to hear what artists/art you would have chosen for your group, or what painting/sculpture/artist you would rather see represented.
Thank in advance for any and all replies!
*Feb. 2011: The comment avatars were one of several nice but unnecessary things that were slowing down my site, so I have removed them. Sigh.