wall flowers

I am beginning to experiment with ideas for my installation. I'm working with fake flowers, and applying them directly to the wall, planning to integrate them with a group of my works on paper. I'm also looking at whether or not I want to incorporate the terrariums into the piece, I might install small shelves for them to sit on amongst the paintings. My plan is to paint the wall(s) with either one large color field or various color "islands" that will act as backdrops to unify my paintings. I'm leaning toward the separate color islands as I really like the way the flowers look on the sterile white wall. So, I'll just have to see how things evolve...

bloom

In my online search for artists working with flowers, I came across this artist's installation, her name is Anna Schuleit. The project was titled Bloom, and she filled an abandoned mental institution with wall-to-wall flowers, lined the walkways with sod, and piped in recorded sounds from when the institution was up and running. I'm sure to experience this exhibit would have been very eerie and surreal. The pictures are striking, almost hauntedly so (above & below:)

I love how she fills the space with a sea of flowers, and on her site she touches on the way we send flowers to the ill as a commonplace ritual. The act of giving flowers can take on so many different meanings. Flowers can feel somber if placed on a gravesite, romantic on Valentine's day, and soothing for the ill. I am interested in the ritual behind them.

flowers

{Above sculpture by Roberley Bell}

I just bought 2 vintage terrariums on Ebay, and I'm working with them now, thinking of ways to incorporate them into my wall installation in my upcoming show:

I've been experimenting with fake flowers, inspired by bouquets I remember all over my grandmother's home. These also tie in with the flower forms in my paintings, which have also cropped up as representations of an interior "landscape" from my childhood.

I have been looking at artists' work that incorporates flowers, grass or other garden forms. I found this woman's work, Roberley Bell, and I really like her sculptures (top image and below:)

These are some other interesting images I found on Flickr:

studio rants

Lately I have truly felt like a tortured artist. I go to my studio all pumped and ready and I just KNOW I’m going to crank. Then I get there and I start, nothing much happens. My oil paintings stare at me, annoyingly. I hate them, they’re stupid. My top 3 paintings aren’t nearly as great as I thought they were. In fact, now I only have top 2, but secretly I only think one will make it. I really want to submit my work for this important show juried by a top curator. I have to finish at least 3 paintings in the next week to do this! It’s become impossible to for me to finish a painting in the past 6 months. I start them and start them and start them. I like them, then I hit a bump so I start a new one to keep my momentum going, then I go back to the one with the bump and I push it, I get it back. Then the new one I liked so much suddenly becomes the black sheep. I dislike it so much I can’t get it out of my mind, then suddenly it all comes together. It surprises me and then my favorites aren’t my favorites any more. I’m inching along and I feel I haven’t soared in awhile. My process as of late feels like such a slow struggle. I hope, hope, hope this is normal and I’m not finished! Maybe I should have never transitioned into this new territory! Who says growth is good? Does anyone else feel the same way?

works in progress

I strung a group of my small paintings together as a quick set-up for our 2nd Saturday opening at our studio. I pinned a note to the wall saying most of these were marked NF (not finished.) These mountain forms that have surfaced are representative of me {now in the present time} and reflect my surroundings living in southern California. The flowers continue to propagate as representations of childhood memories and pay homage to family departed.

Installations

I am doing a wall installation for our show in November. I still find Margaret Kilgallen's wall installations to be the most powerful and most brilliant as far as not over doing it, and beautifully unifying large groups of small works together:

I love how all the paintings have their own visual language, they work with each other and carry on a dialogue with one another. The few paintings that might not have enough information to stand alone work brilliantly as sounding boards for the others. They have a completely natural flow as a grouping.


Clare Rojas's really graphic, very dramatic shifts in scale have a really bold dynamic. Her oversized images of textile patterns are really strong in this installation (below:)
Jim Houser incorporated some really nice moments into this installation, I'm especially drawn to the little potted plants:

Margaret Kilgallen's work makes painting-based installations look so effortless and natural, but this is incredibly difficult to do! There's an amazing sense of elegance in her installations, and I hope to attain this same level of smoothness, of purpose, in the way I choose to present my current work.