Working on "C'est la Vie", my solo show at the SDAI

my outdoor studio, the deck!

I almost did not talk yet about my upcoming show "C'est la Vie" at the San Diego Art Institute in my blog. It's because I do not want to show too much before the show is all installed! But I worked on more than 30 new pieces that I am very excited about.

I still have a lot to do because this time I decided to paint the wall directly and I only have 4 days to do so between the end of the current show at the SDAI and the opening of mine...
I am starting this Sunday night.

Opening of the show: Friday June 5.
Opening reception: Friday, June 12.

Movers and Shakers II / The portrait I made of Lynn Susholtz, director of Art Produce Gallery

Lynn Susholtz, 2009, acrylic on canvas, 6x[24"x24"] - total size 78"x51"

Organized by The San Diego Visual Arts Network (SDVAN), "Movers and Shakers" phase II was launched today on the SDVAN website. The new series of portraits will be exhibited in January 2010 at Art Expressions Gallery in Clairemont, San Diego.

I painted a portrait of Lynn Susholtz, the director of Art Produce Gallery. By now the people who read my blog know that I like her energy and all the things she does for the community! So it was a pleasure for me to work on her portrait.

In the past year, I took a lot of photos at Art Produce during the openings and with my children I attended art classes Lynn teaches at the recreation center in North Park. So I had a lot of images to work and play with. I also needed photos of her, so one morning we had a photo shoot which took place inside the gallery, in her work space and outside on the parking lot, in front of a mural. In the background, I stamped texts Lynn wrote and quotes she uses in her website(s).

Iphone drawing on the cover of The New Yorker

The New Yorker

Voices: Mapping the Hood / A Multi-media Interactive Collaborative Installation @ Art Produce Gallery

Voices: Mapping the Hood @ Art Produce Gallery
A Multi-media Interactive Collaborative Installation May 17 - June 28, 2009

"Stone Paper Scissors, Eveoke Dance Theatre, TranscenDance Youth Arts Project, North Park Main Street, and the Cultural Worker have collaborated to create Art @ the Core: Building Community whose goal is to increase access, engagement, and participation in the civic process through community cultural development. Envisioned as an interactive collage, the installation is a giant pop-up book that tells a story you can walk through and contribute to. The idea was to physically, metaphorically, and cognitively “Map the Hood” with all our various collaborating partners, architecture students, professional artists, children, teens, and community members."


When one enters the gallery, one can see the wall with all the photos of the people who participated in the exchange.

I am happy to have participated in this adventure. I really like the idea of interactive and collaborative installation. I went there during the North Park Festival. A lot of people already exchanged gifts: there were a lot of photos on the wall. To participate you must give an object. Then you can take one. Someone takes your picture and put it on the wall. you put your name in a book next to the name of the person who offered the gift you are taking. One of my painting was gone, the other one was not yet on the wall (all the objects are not on the wall at the same time, the wall is re-filled regularly!















my participation - two 4x4" paintings



I found a toy truck "Champagne Mercier Epernay"! - that's the gift I chose!
Jim Erwing: "Enjoy this toy from Belgium/France.
A gift from my daughter in remembrance of my toy car/truck
collecti9n from my boyhood."


Richard: "Goldfish"


Scott Thomas: "Pine Cone from Sea Ranch"


Lea Dennis: "Fragment from bar @ Commonwealth Cafe"









Rodrigo: "I'm heard when I speak the truth. To be heard
is to be acknowledged and recognized as a human."





"My voice is unique, makes my heart beat.
The sweet soound of my voice will be
heard in eternity
My voice needs to share truth
That has been suppressed by
those that view people
by stereotypes
My voice is important in our
community because it knows
plenty of people
The more is shared
the easier community
can happen."
Rebecca

Voices: Mapping the Hood
A Multi-media Interactive Collaborative Installation
May 17 - June 28, 2009
Art Produce Gallery
Art at the Core

Notes (in Encinitas, CA)

Skyping Jennifer: Jennifer Rockage @ The Garage

Jennifer Rockage, on Skype in the garage gallery,
Saturday night during the opening of the show.

The art of Jennifer Rockage
May 15, 2009 at the Garage, from 6 to 10pm.
While the work of Jennifer Rockage was displayed in the gallery, it was possible to talk to her on Skype. She was in Morgantown, West Virginia, where she works and lives. Four hours ahead of us.

Jennifer Rockage: "I am interested in what happens when text is removed from its original context and placed in a fine art realm. The text used in my work is found language that I overhear and text I am collecting from public places. Repetition, chance and visual alteration are used as metaphors for how spoken and remembered language can be manipulated over time. Recently my work has consisted of printed lists, paper shreddings, installations and sound."


Larry Caveney and Richard Gleaves, Jennifer Rockage on Skype


Richard Gleaves in conversation with Jennifer Rockage.
(The notecards are on the wall behind)




The notecards





Jennifer Rockage: "The phrases on the notecards were overheard by me in public. I took out the main words in them and gave them to instructors to hand to their students. So a lot of the people who were filling them out were undergraduates at West Virginia University. each student filled out about two so there were quite a few students involved. I wanted to see how the meaning would change as I took a phrase from public and took out some of the words and then placed it back into a public setting. I have been thinking about doing something similar to this over the summer but with a larger, more diverse group."


one of the shopping lists


Art you can touch and play with:
the pencils can be thrown at the target on the wall.

I like the low-key aspect of Rockage's work, the fact that one piece is interactive, that some pieces are made with found things (shopping lists, shredded papers), and that Jennifer Rockage was there via Internet.

The Garage
4141 Alabama Street #4,
San Diego, CA 92104
contact: deapseal2@aol.com

Note (at school)

Altermodernism / Video Interview: curator Nicolas Bourriaud

A revigorating concept! I love this!
Nicolas Bourriaud: "Altermodern is the cultural answer to what alter-globalisation is, a cluster of singular and local answers to globalisation."



"Nicolas Bourriaud,art theorist and co-founder of the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, has coined the term "Altermodern" to describe how artists are responding to the globalised culture we live in.
Altermodern: Tate Triennial 2009 at Tate Britain was the culmination of a year of events discussing this idea and has just closed."A new modernity is emerging, reconfigured to an age of globalisation – understood in its economic, political and cultural aspects: an altermodern culture.


Off Voice Fly Tip by Bob and Roberta Smith 2009
Courtesy the artist and Hales Gallery. Photo: Tate Photography

Altermodern Manifesto

A new modernity is emerging, reconfigured to an age of globalisation – understood in its economic, political and cultural aspects: an altermodern culture Increased communication, travel and migration are affecting the way we live.

Our daily lives consist of journeys in a chaotic and teeming universe.

Multiculturalism and identity is being overtaken by creolisation: Artists are now starting from a globalised state of culture.

This new universalism is based on translations, subtitling and generalised dubbing.

Today's art explores the bonds that text and image, time and space, weave between themselves.

Artists are responding to a new globalised perception. They traverse a cultural landscape saturated with signs and create new pathways between multiple formats of expression and communication.

The Tate Triennial 2009 at Tate Britain presents a collective discussion around this premise that postmodernism is coming to an end, and we are experiencing the emergence of a global altermodernity."

Also read: "Altermodern" in Wikipedia.

Art Run to L.A. part two / Bergamot Station: Shoshana Wayne Gallery, Rosamund Felsen Gallery, Richard Heller Gallery, Samuel Freeman

Zadok Ben David: "Blackfield" / Shoshana Wayne Gallery / (April 4 - May 16, 2009)
yes, I know, it's closed already, I am late to post this!

Surprising/beautiful/poetic/soothing/ephemeral/delicate installation by Zadok Ben David at Shoshana Wayne. Thousands of small drawings of plants (laser cut metal pieces) are displayed vertically on a surface sifted with light colored fine sand.

We saw people coming and staying. It was a place where one could meditate. The field is not so black once one walks to the end of the room and looks back. Then the plants come alive and the rainbow like colors make the whole field vibrate.


Is "Blackfield" a dead forest?




The view from the side of the installation...


and the view when one arrives on the other side...


Is "Blackfield" an explosion of life in the middle of the desert?


Jean Lowe / Rosamund Felsen Gallery / (April 18, May 16, 2009)
It was very interesting to see the collages of photographs that Jean Lowe makes prior to paint each piece. It explains how she constructs the space between the museum views and the big box retailer photos she takes.
The books she presented on the shelves (that she also made) are darkly hilarious and it was a pleasure to take the time to discover each of them. I love the energy which emanates from her work.





Girl Boy. 2008
Collaged photographs, 18 ¼ x 22 ½", matted and framed


Girl Boy. 2008 Enamel on panel, 75 x 95"



Tite Grip. 2009
Enamel on panel, 95 ½ x 72"


Overstock! 2009 Enamel on panel, 95 ½ x 84"


Clearance (Baby Dolls). 2009 Enamel on panel, 95 ½ x 75"




Bric-a-Brac. 2009 Enamel on panel, 95 ½ x 72"


Cloister Bookshelf- Double & Single. 2009
Acrylic on cardboard and wood with gold leaf.


Books: enamel on papier mâché - each one is for sale









Camille Seaman:"The Last Iceberg" / Richard Heller Gallery / May 2 - May 30, 2009








Jeremy Thomas: "Cotton Modules" / Samuel Freeman / (April 4 - May 9, 2009)