I was invited by my NE Wax and FUSEDChicago Diptych Project II partner, Kari Hall, to join in on this blog hop. Thank you Kari! The project consists of answering some questions regarding art and my art process as well as to highlight three artists/creatives that I admire. First are my answers to the questions asked of me for the blog hop project:
1.) What am I working on/writing?
I’m working on a series of paintings about edges, plants, still life, and real life, incorporating some of my ideas about fractals, sound, and physics of the universe. They will be 24″ square panels, with encaustic and mixed media. The ‘mixed media’ usually includes oils, pigments sticks, graphite, metallic foils, monoprints, other papers, and sometimes transfers. I work with the images of plants that I have in the studio, often with still life paraphernalia such as charis, pitchers, old instruments.
2.) How does my work/writing differ from others of its genre?
My work is not realistic, though parts are recognizable as foliage or furniture. It’s abstraction in the original sense of reducing to forms from perceived vision, but it’s not non-objective. I would hope that my personality appears in the line and movement and color and marks it as unique and recognizable.
3.) Why do I do what I do?
Because everything else is less engaging. Because nothing is harder (except public speaking perhaps). I can’t wait to get into the studio and challenge myself with the materials. The task of making something tangible out of thoughts and perceptions is just the most fascinating way I can think of to spend my time.
4.) How does my writing/working process work?
Drawing is the beginning, the middle, and the end. I’m in love with the hand-made mark. I draw to find out what the painting will become, paint to flesh it out, draw to define it, and draw at the end to emphasize and delineate. There are layers and layers of changes to correct, change, edit, refine, but in the end it is the synthesis of color and shape and line that I find exciting.
So, let me introduce you to these two artists whose work I admire (I’ll add the third when available). Look for their blog posts next week.
Jodi Colella
Jodi is a new colleague of mine in New England Wax, a collective of artists who use wax or encaustic in their work. I’m just crazy about her recent Hive installations.
Jodi Colella is a contemporary artist who creates tactile sculptures and installations laced with both whimsy and threat. Among a selection of recent exhibitions are: The Nobility of Things, solo exhibition, Fruitlands Museum, Harvard, MA; The Order of the Universe, Beard/Weil Galleries, Wheaton College, Norton, MA; 65 Degrees: Contemporary Encaustic; Re:Constructed, solo exhibition, Carney Gallery, Regis College, Weston, MA; De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things), Joshua Creek Heritage Art Center, Ontario, Canada;Outside/Inside the Box, FiberPhiladelphia, Philadelphia, PA; GREEN: the Color and the Cause, Textile Museum, Washington, DC. Her awards include 2013 Artist-in-Residence Fruitlands Museum, Pollack-Krasner Fellowship Vermont Studio Center, and 2012 Somerville Arts Council Fellowship. A graduate of Boston University, Jodi continued her studies at Massachusetts College of Art and Design, and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. She is currently having fun conceptualizing a series of interactive public art installations.
Ethel is a fellow artist from the NH chapter of the Women’s Caucus for Art.
I’m an abstract landscape painter living and working in Hampton, NH. My studio is in an old factory building a couple of miles from the ocean. I came to art late in life, learning to draw so that I could make the simple line drawings necessary for traditional rug hooking. In that moment when I decided to learn how to draw, my life shifted. I fell in love with drawing and then painting and haven’t looked back since.
