Graduation Exhibition!

The Annual Student Exhibition (ASE) of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) has only two more days to run! Last day to see it is this Sunday June 1, 2014. For those who can't make it, here is what I have hanging in the show:

"Presence" oil on canvas 18 x 24 inches 

"Young Man" and "Young Woman" oil on canvas 48 x 30 inches each

"Cheer" digital image 52 x 36 inches

"Signifier" oil on canvas 36 x 24 inches

"Veiling" digital image 18 x 22 inches

"Head Dress" digital image 14 x 20

"Angel Caul" digital image 14 x 20

"Emerging" digital image 14 x 20

"Laptop" digital image 14 x 20

"Push" digital image 12 x 14

"Stamp" digital image 12 x 14 inches

"Witchy Anne" digital image 20 x 14 

"Henry King" digital image 20 x 16

You can see a gallery showing a few pieces by every artist in the show by clicking here. If you wish to make a purchase, you can call the museum at: 215-972-7600

End of Semester!

My newest obsession project!

The semester ended a week ago with my showing both paintings and also my newest project, a series of photos playfully exploring personality and identity. Its working title is Re/Present. So far I have done 27 sessions, all but one with just one person at a time, friends, family and fellow graduate students whom I think of as my collaborators.  I've made a blog of selected images over at Tumblr but a) I am waiting to get the okay from all my collaborators before going public and b) I am having some trouble with the Tumblr interface: I find it much more difficult to configure and control than Blogspot. ;-( So I may in fact scrap it and start all over again on Blogspot...but I'll keep you all posted either way.

Here I am inbetween two mediums: digital and canvas! Photo: Kathleen Hogan

A big crowd at my review!  Photo: Kathleen Hogan

It was a rough week leading up to the final review on Friday, with an art opening, several snow days, weather cancellations, and sudden family health emergencies in CT necessitating a lot of extra confabulating with siblings and parents and almost as soon as Friday's effort was over I immediately became sick. After the last review on that last day I had my coat on and was standing at the school entrance with a bunch of fellow students getting ready to go out and have a celebratory drink. I suddenly felt wham! an enormous clout of shaky exhaustion. I made an excuse and went straight home and was sick for this past entire week! A terrible bad cold, I guess but more like a mini-flu, fever, congestion, sore throat, aches, etc. worse than any cold I've ever had. Anyway, just starting to feel the recovery has started as of today, one week and one day later! Oh well...onwards and upwards!

illustration by Norman Rockwell

Friend Friday!

Nancy Bea Miller, Sarah Barr, Lisa Mintzer at the
Philly Photo Day Exhibition

Regular readers of this blog probably realize that I do a lot of photography in addition to painting. I don't consider myself a professional photog, even though I have had several photographs bought for book-covers, magazines and websites, and I am occasionally commissioned to take product shots, art shots and head shots. I still think of it more as a hobby. I don't really know what I am doing, technically speaking. I'm just an eye with a lens. Photography simply satisfies my unflagging impulse for observation and appreciation of life and expression, quick and easy! I can't be painting 24/7 but I do have a camera to hand at all moments. You never know when something will reach out and grab your heart. When that happens I reach out and grab my camera. As Baudelaire put it:
To glorify the cult of images (my great, my only, my earliest passion)


Nonetheless, I have never exhibited my photography in a gallery setting until now. Pal Sarah Barr urged me to participate with her in the first annual Philly Photo Day. On October 28, photographers took their best shot within the Philadelphia city limits and send it in to the Philadelphia Photo Art Center. The work was compiled and printed out on huge banners and hung. There was a real opening reception too, with drinks and nibbles and a speech by the fascinating director of the PPAC, Sarah Stolfa. So, thanks to both Sarahs and the PPAC I finally have a piece of photography on view...a first for me.



"Leaf Blow on Clearfield Street"(click image to enlarge.) On Philly Photo Day I happened to be driving through the East Falls section of the city when a sudden gust of wind whipped the leaves into a hail of gold pieces. I checked behind me, saw there was nobody coming up and quickly shot the scene. Talk about driving while distracted (just kidding, I of course, stopped the car while shooting.) Steering wheels make good tripods! Rotopods? :-) Prints can be ordered through the PPAC: $10 for a 5 x 7, $20 for an 8.5 x 11. If you're interested in purchasing a copy of "Leaf Blow" contact the PPAC and tell them you want image number 168.
Philly Photo Day Exhibition
November 11 - 21
Philadelphia Photo Art Center
Grey Area, Crane Arts Building
1400 N. American Street
Philadelphia, PA 19122
215.232.5678
267.324.3268 (fax)
info@philaphotoarts.org

And here is my friend Sarah Barr, with her own beautiful image:


It is truly an amazingly interesting show, giving a wildly varied portrait of a day. It should interest Philadelphia historians and sociologists as well as artists and anyone who just loves Philadelphia!

Golden Gratitude

Golden Tulips
I have been posting less on Genre Cookshop because my "good" camera (Nikon D70) broke and I was paralyzed with indecision about what to do: repair or purchase anew? A neighbor who follows my blog, asked the reason for the slow down, and then knowing a friend of his had a D70 body for sale, set us up: success! How helpful was that? It feels good to have the familiar heft of a D70 back in my hands.

Only Connect
~E.M.Forster

BEAUTY

I took this shot last weekend at Beaver Farm. For anyone who doesn't know, I have been helping organize a plein air event to benefit my son Henry's wonderful special needs school: Camphill Special School. The main painting day in August was sort of amazing (so much so that mention of Plein Air at Beaver Farm has gotten into several national and regional magazines!) However, some artists wanted to come back to finish up a piece or two, and a couple of people could not make the big day for various reasons, so we held a make-up day this past weekend. The skies were astonishing!

When I shot this I was intending possibly to work from it later to make a painting, but now that I've seen it on the screen there is something so complete about it that I think whatever I saw and loved is already fully expressed. So no need for me to go further with it...which is what I guess I am usually doing when I make a painting: expressing something further about reality. But sometimes the reality is enough.

i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth
day of life and love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

~e.e.cummings