Saturday, June 21, 2014
Sunday, March 30, 2014
Exhibitions
First Friday is a reoccurring community event that helps make Raleigh, NC a vibrant city. The first Friday of every month is a city wide art walk. All the galleries stay open late and have receptions. There's food truck, street parties, wine and the city is buzzing with activity and socializing, particularly when the weathers nice. It's one of the things that make me love where I live. It seems like everyone participates. Art museums, galleries, cafés and businesses with rotating artist, cart collectives, street artist, voyeurs, exhibitionists ...everyone.
I happen to be a rotating artist right now. Since February, some of my work as been hanging at Makena Skin Care's space. Basically, Kathleen Makena shares a building with a few lawyers, a massage therapist and a yoga studio. On First Friday, they put a flag out on the sidewalk, open all their doors and have a party, each one hosting an artist. It's great. Just hanging out, sipping wine and chatting as friends and neighbors come in and out. The space is intimate and Kathleen is a sweet, upbeat host.
The two largest paintings are sold, so I'm changing them out for new ones for their first public appearance. I'll be there April 4th from 6 to 9. Stop in for some wine and mingling. 304 Glenwood Ave., Raleigh, NC. Plus if you book a facial on First Friday, you get $10 off.
The 2 sold painting were part of a house show in Durham last year. For the Old North Block Party, a neighbor curated a local artist group show in her home. Looking forward to more shows in 2014!
I happen to be a rotating artist right now. Since February, some of my work as been hanging at Makena Skin Care's space. Basically, Kathleen Makena shares a building with a few lawyers, a massage therapist and a yoga studio. On First Friday, they put a flag out on the sidewalk, open all their doors and have a party, each one hosting an artist. It's great. Just hanging out, sipping wine and chatting as friends and neighbors come in and out. The space is intimate and Kathleen is a sweet, upbeat host.
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| Makena Skin Care's February Show |
The two largest paintings are sold, so I'm changing them out for new ones for their first public appearance. I'll be there April 4th from 6 to 9. Stop in for some wine and mingling. 304 Glenwood Ave., Raleigh, NC. Plus if you book a facial on First Friday, you get $10 off.
The 2 sold painting were part of a house show in Durham last year. For the Old North Block Party, a neighbor curated a local artist group show in her home. Looking forward to more shows in 2014!
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| Old North Durham Block Party Show, October 2013 |
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| Old North Durham Block Party Show, October 2013 |
Thursday, September 19, 2013
I'm Published!
I co-authored an article on Construction Waste Reduction for Pharmaceutical Engineering Magazine's sustainable issue. It's actually in print! I can't to wait to receive my copy. It's these kind of opportunities that pop up at my firm that make me glad I accidentally found an architectural gig in an engineering firm.
The entire article can be read online in the September/October Issue
Construction Waste Reduction
by Jessica Cochran and Alicia Pandimos Maurer
This
case study presents the strategies and outcomes of implementing a plan
to divert waste from the landfill and back into the supply chain during
construction for building demolition waste reduction.The entire article can be read online in the September/October Issue
Monday, September 2, 2013
Time in Between
A couple of months ago I started 2 new paintings. I was already working on a follow-up to the Chicken painting. Then things got busy. Work. Social life. A bit of travel. A sad attempt to salvage a vacation-less summer. Career. Studying for the Architectural Registration Exam.
My sister and 3 of her kids had plans to come to visit for a night and I realized that our house was disgusting. Our second room is our studio space. It is also our guest room. The corners seemed full of cat hair and incense. I noted last month that the bottoms of my feet were dirty just from walking around. And wasn't just me-the cat had left some paw prints on the window sills too. 3 days of cleaning and we were ready for guests. Bonus: my studio is tidy and ready for some projects...
It's time for Fall. All the filler will start to fall away, leaving space to think and imagine. Time to organize. Time to buckle down and be productive. Finish some things. Get ready to make make new resolutions. Time to move on. Oh, how I love moving on...
My sister and 3 of her kids had plans to come to visit for a night and I realized that our house was disgusting. Our second room is our studio space. It is also our guest room. The corners seemed full of cat hair and incense. I noted last month that the bottoms of my feet were dirty just from walking around. And wasn't just me-the cat had left some paw prints on the window sills too. 3 days of cleaning and we were ready for guests. Bonus: my studio is tidy and ready for some projects...
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Sunday, July 28, 2013
Chicken
Why paint pictures of chickens?
1. I love paintings of quaint farm life, particularly painting of chickens, cows and barns. My husband always complains that the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam is nothing but paintings of farms and cows. Imagine my disappointment when it was closed for renovation last year when I visited Amsterdam for the first time. I recently read in ARCHITECT magazine that it's open again with architectural magnificence and I simply can't wait for the opportunity to go.
2. Before Gallery C in Raleigh relocated to a proper downtown location and it was still in the shopping center with Whole Foods, I found a painting by Jean Jack tucked away in the back of the gallery. I was in awe of her approach to capturing Midwestern farms as well as the landscape around them. Landscapes aren't usually my thing, but when it's well done... When I began to look for more of her work I discovered that she has a series of minimalist paintings of "utilitarian structures" that really capture something essential about the subject matter. See for yourself. They are incredible.
3. Painting and drawing animals is difficult. It's hard to capture the pose just right to make the animal look natural and believable. It is figure drawing and painting, but with a less familiar form. Learning the skeleton and muscle mass of any living creature is essential to capture what is recognizable and real about it. It actually requires a bit of research and practice. I started honing this skill with a chicken.
4. When I was but a child....
My mother signed me up for the 4-H club. For those of you who don't know, the 4 H's are head, heart. hands, and health. In my rural South Carolina community it was an after school agricultural club. We learned to bake, craft and make posters about baking and crafting like good little southern girls should. There was a different curriculum for the little boys, but of course I was not privy to it. These monthly club meetings were hosted by the girls' mothers in their warm country homes full of crafts, folk art and other types of quaintness.
At some point in middle school you were no longer eligible for the beginners club, but you could sign up for other skills based programs. My mother, the life long learner, sent me to weekly bread baking classes for a few months. And then she took it too far. She signed me up to raise 2 dozen chickens. My father and I built a brooder house for the 2 day old chickens we brought home and eventually a much larger coop with a 6' tall caged yard. That was where my interest in this project ended. My father raised and cared for the chickens for me, his whiny baby girl. I still had to feed them sometimes and gather the eggs every now and again. I hated every second of it. Then, I had to take the 6 best chickens to the county fair. It was a long boring day spent with 6 ugly chickens. I won exactly nothing that day...except my freedom from 4-H! The redeming part of it all was the friendship I develop with a girl who grew up on a real-life farm and my father. Years later when I was in undergrad he would say to me "You know, you are still a country, even though you don't sound like one." We both knew that wasn't true, but it made him giggle and me roll my eyes and that's how we got on.
Fast forward almost 2 decades and guess who has a soft spot for chickens. So I commemorate this coming of age story with a painting:
I wanted to keep it abstract and light. Not over loaded with meaning. Two birds. Not representing anything other than themselves. The soft background is gesso based combined with practically every color of paint I had in my studio. The chicken is acyclic paint with a bent toward graphic design rather than painting. The one sparrow in pain-staking detail is also done in acrylic. The rest of the sparrows are drawn in charcoal.
1. I love paintings of quaint farm life, particularly painting of chickens, cows and barns. My husband always complains that the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam is nothing but paintings of farms and cows. Imagine my disappointment when it was closed for renovation last year when I visited Amsterdam for the first time. I recently read in ARCHITECT magazine that it's open again with architectural magnificence and I simply can't wait for the opportunity to go.
2. Before Gallery C in Raleigh relocated to a proper downtown location and it was still in the shopping center with Whole Foods, I found a painting by Jean Jack tucked away in the back of the gallery. I was in awe of her approach to capturing Midwestern farms as well as the landscape around them. Landscapes aren't usually my thing, but when it's well done... When I began to look for more of her work I discovered that she has a series of minimalist paintings of "utilitarian structures" that really capture something essential about the subject matter. See for yourself. They are incredible.
3. Painting and drawing animals is difficult. It's hard to capture the pose just right to make the animal look natural and believable. It is figure drawing and painting, but with a less familiar form. Learning the skeleton and muscle mass of any living creature is essential to capture what is recognizable and real about it. It actually requires a bit of research and practice. I started honing this skill with a chicken.
4. When I was but a child....
My mother signed me up for the 4-H club. For those of you who don't know, the 4 H's are head, heart. hands, and health. In my rural South Carolina community it was an after school agricultural club. We learned to bake, craft and make posters about baking and crafting like good little southern girls should. There was a different curriculum for the little boys, but of course I was not privy to it. These monthly club meetings were hosted by the girls' mothers in their warm country homes full of crafts, folk art and other types of quaintness.
At some point in middle school you were no longer eligible for the beginners club, but you could sign up for other skills based programs. My mother, the life long learner, sent me to weekly bread baking classes for a few months. And then she took it too far. She signed me up to raise 2 dozen chickens. My father and I built a brooder house for the 2 day old chickens we brought home and eventually a much larger coop with a 6' tall caged yard. That was where my interest in this project ended. My father raised and cared for the chickens for me, his whiny baby girl. I still had to feed them sometimes and gather the eggs every now and again. I hated every second of it. Then, I had to take the 6 best chickens to the county fair. It was a long boring day spent with 6 ugly chickens. I won exactly nothing that day...except my freedom from 4-H! The redeming part of it all was the friendship I develop with a girl who grew up on a real-life farm and my father. Years later when I was in undergrad he would say to me "You know, you are still a country, even though you don't sound like one." We both knew that wasn't true, but it made him giggle and me roll my eyes and that's how we got on.
Fast forward almost 2 decades and guess who has a soft spot for chickens. So I commemorate this coming of age story with a painting:
I wanted to keep it abstract and light. Not over loaded with meaning. Two birds. Not representing anything other than themselves. The soft background is gesso based combined with practically every color of paint I had in my studio. The chicken is acyclic paint with a bent toward graphic design rather than painting. The one sparrow in pain-staking detail is also done in acrylic. The rest of the sparrows are drawn in charcoal.
Wednesday, July 10, 2013
Motivation
When I first moved to North Carolina in 2004, life changed for me and I started painting, again. I had not created artwork -despite having a degree in Fine Art- in my spare time since I lived in Charleston, SC in 2001. Making art always coincides with the happiest and healthiest times in my life. I just can't seem to have one without the other. So when inspiration came, I jumped in and start creating art in earnest because I was excited about ideas and wanted to work through them.
Momentum slowed as I started graduate school to study architecture. Although I was still creating and designing, the pressure, schedule, constant competition and mountain of knowledge to be climbed proved to be more demanding than I ever imagined. Except for a couple of projects that I had begun before school, I quit painting.
3 1/2 years later, when my final semester rolled around, I began to relax and imagine life outside of school. You know sunshine, sleep, talking to people who weren't obsessed with architecture. And the urge to paint came back. I would day dream about using the bucket of gesso I had bought during my third semester after being inspired by the work of Richard Meier to give my architectural models a soft chalky white finish. I wanted to make a soft chalky paintings full of texture and movement
Not long after graduation I made a little room in my budget to buy stretcher strips and canvas and started to work. It developed as I painted. I used a pallet knife to move the gesso around. I experimented with applying the ink only to work it back in to space of the canvas, eventually I built up a ridge of gesso down the center of the canvas. While the gesso was still wet I dripped ink down the ridge. As it ran down the canvas, it found its own path around the bumpy gesso mound and soaked into the gesso.
One day a dear friend who works at the Nasher Museum, asked if she could buy it. Having someone who really understands art want to have my work is one of the best feelings ever. Talk about motivation! It really reminded me why I love painting, drawing, designing, building and creating in general. There's a thrill in developing and interacting with something as it takes on a life of it's own. New ideas arise through your process and then become another idea. It's the continuum that I love. I visited her recently for a house concert by an incredible music duo from NYC and snapped a quick photo:
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| This one was inspired by a fight scene in a bamboo forest in a movie, House of Flying Daggers. 24" x 48" 2005 |
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| This one was inspired by quilts. 48" x 48" 2006 |
Momentum slowed as I started graduate school to study architecture. Although I was still creating and designing, the pressure, schedule, constant competition and mountain of knowledge to be climbed proved to be more demanding than I ever imagined. Except for a couple of projects that I had begun before school, I quit painting.
3 1/2 years later, when my final semester rolled around, I began to relax and imagine life outside of school. You know sunshine, sleep, talking to people who weren't obsessed with architecture. And the urge to paint came back. I would day dream about using the bucket of gesso I had bought during my third semester after being inspired by the work of Richard Meier to give my architectural models a soft chalky white finish. I wanted to make a soft chalky paintings full of texture and movement
Not long after graduation I made a little room in my budget to buy stretcher strips and canvas and started to work. It developed as I painted. I used a pallet knife to move the gesso around. I experimented with applying the ink only to work it back in to space of the canvas, eventually I built up a ridge of gesso down the center of the canvas. While the gesso was still wet I dripped ink down the ridge. As it ran down the canvas, it found its own path around the bumpy gesso mound and soaked into the gesso.
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| Finished piece 32" x 32" 2010 |
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| Detail |
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| We hung it in our dining room. You know...like people do... |
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| My painting is hanging by a metal fish sculpture - a beautiful piece by another local artist. |
Thursday, December 1, 2011
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