Pina Bausch

Lots of good memories about my years spent in Paris came back to me today... I was lucky enough to see Pina Bausch's work several times in the Theatre de la Ville before I moved to the U.S.

Artists' call announcement / "Capitalism in Question (because it is)" / Pitzed Art Galleries, Pitzer College

Deadline: July 20, 2009

Pitzer Art Galleries
1050 North Mills Ave., Claremont, CA 91711
Director, Ciara Ennis
Email, CapinQuestArt@Pitzer.Edu
Website, http://www.pitzer.edu/artgalleries
Tues.-Fri., 12-5pm

The Center for Social Inquiry at Pitzer College and the Pitzer Art Galleries are pleased to announce an open call for art works addressing the broad theme of "CAPITALISM IN QUESTION (because it is)."

The rampant capitalism of the last decade, and its recent catastrophic crisis, has left us in a peculiar and unfamiliar space. Capitalist economic ideology and practices are suddenly under renewed scrutiny. "CAPITALISM IN QUESTION (because it is)" invites artists to explore our current economic predicament and to consider a range of alternatives to it. Visual artwork in all media-painting, installation, sculpture and photography-is encouraged.
.......................................................................
about the juror, Daniel Joseph Martinez

C'est La Vie: Territories Series / Connections

"C'est La Vie", (detail)


Territories Series / Connections (#1)
2009, acrylic on wood panel, 4"x4"


Territories Series / Connections (#2)
2009, acrylic on wood panel, 4"x4"


Territories Series / Connections (#3)
2009, acrylic on wood panel, 4"x4"


Territories Series / Connections (#5)
2009, acrylic on wood panel, 4"x4"


Territories Series / Connections (#6)
2009, acrylic on wood panel, 4"x4"


Territories Series / Connections (#7)
2009, acrylic on wood panel, 4"x4"


Territories Series / Connections (#8)
2009, acrylic on wood panel, 4"x4"


Territories Series / Connections (#9)
2009, acrylic on wood panel, 6"x6"


Territories Series / Connections (#10)
2009, acrylic on wood panel, 6"x6"


Territories Series / Connections (#11)
2009, acrylic on wood panel, 6"x6"


Territories Series / Connections (#12)
2009, acrylic on wood panel, 8"x8"


Territories Series / Connections (#16)
2009, acrylic on wood panel, 8"x8"

C'est La Vie
San Diego Art Institute / Museum of the Living Artist
June 5 - July 12, 2009
Monday - Saturday from 10 to 4.
Sunday from noon to 4.
1439 El Prado
San Diego CA 92101
(619) 236-0011
contact Debbie Wells: dwells@mola-sdai.org

C'est La Vie - Watching Series

"C'est La Vie", detail


"C'est La Vie", detail

In "C'est La Vie", I worked on four different series of images: "Watching Series", "Territories Series / troops", "Territories Series / Connections" and "Territories Series / Landscapes". Here are the paintings from the Watching Series.


Watching Series (#4)
acrylic on canvas, 12"x12", 2009


Watching Series (#10)
acrylic on canvas, 10"x10", 2009


Watching Series (#8)
acrylic on canvas, 8"x8", 2009


Watching Series (#3)
acrylic on canvas, 6"x6", 2009

C'est La Vie
San Diego Art Institute / Museum of the Living Artist
June 5 - July 12, 2009
Monday - Saturday from 10 to 4.
Sunday from noon to 4.
1439 El Prado
San Diego CA 92101
(619) 236-0011
contact Debbie Wells: dwells@mola-sdai.org

Collective Mail Art

Eric Meyer worked first and sent his envelope to Ivan Sigg.


Ivan Sigg worked on the envelope and he sent it to me.


I intervened last and I sent the envelope back to Eric Meyer.

Cruisin' Grand 2009 - Escondido

Cruisin' Grand 2009 - Friday nights from 5 to 9pm / Downtown Escondido.

San Diego - Paris

My image "San Diego-Paris" is in Paris. I sent it to Ivan and he put it on a wall in his neighborhood, it will be covered by another image soon. Ivan posted it in his blog. It is also in the French blog "Un Jour Une Oeuvre" ("One day One Artwork"), created by Alexis Monville, which proposes one image of an artwork each day.

One-Day Exhibition of Figurative Art / Today, Sunday, June 21

Anna Stump

From Anna Stump:

Dear Friends,
You are invited to a one-day exhibition of figurative art to see Anna's newly restored 1924 Craftsman bungalow before it's rented.

Sunday, June 21(it's Father's Day, bring a dad!)
4 - 6 pm
2968 B St. in Golden Hill
(B and 30th)
there is parking on the street.

Participating artists:
Jennifer Bennett, Jeanne Dunn, Misty Hawkins, Jocelyn Duke, Marcela Villasenor, Terri Hughes-Oelrich, Anna Stump.

You are welcome to bring something to drink,
or a drought-tolerant cutting from your yard to plant...

Hope to see you there.
Anna and the Artists

Red Lights

I love to take pictures from my car, when I am stopped at a red light!

Participate in Brenda Regier's project: "Re Envisioning a World Beyond Borders"

3 photos I took with my cell phone that I sent to the project.
(Pacific Beach, San Diego)

Re Envisioning a World Beyond Borders: A global cell phone project for generation Y and beyond. In collaboration with Qualcomm and Beyond the Border International Contemporary Art Fair. Artist: Brenda Regier.

I signed up for this project and I started sending photos from my cell phone. We'll see what happens. People from all over the world are participating!

Log on and register at: http://www.brendaregier.com (ReEnvisioning)
Selected photos will be included in an exhibition to be held at the Beyond the Border International Contemporary Art Fair, San Diego on Sept. 2nd-4th, 2009.

Essay By Jane La Motte - about "C'est La Vie"

I’ve always loved the expression “You can’t dip your toe in the same river twice.” Everything changes, everything moves on, even when you come back to it in the same place, offering the same bit of yourself to it as you did before. Artists often seem to be taking on two contradictory tasks at once—the preservation of a moment in time, along with a celebration of the fully writhing, changing nature of life itself.

Michele’s second solo show at the San Diego Art Institute has that dynamic. It is both a presentation of her most recent individual works as a painter as well as an installation of beautiful snapshots within a single context. The pieces, all square but of varying sizes and thicknesses, are loosely grouped in thematic ribbons over a large suite of silhouettes that are painted on the walls. The images are not fixed to one another like chapters in a story. If there seems to be only a hint of a narrative here, that is for good reason. They are moments, Michele says, but they are not frozen.

As Michele showed me a preliminary version of the installation you see at SDAI today, we placed the paintings on the hardwood floor of her home. Her children are completely at home with artworks within arm’s reach, and as they made their way in, out, and through the room, they navigated the squares on display as though the paintings were anti-stepping stones. I had to remind myself to stop holding my breath—this is their life, after all, they know what these are. The paths of their bare feet between Michele’s paintings were the incarnation of C’est la vie. Life goes on around you even as you are stopping to contemplate a still life.

With the paintings on the floor, Michele and I talked about an installation we saw in LA last year of handmade stuffed dolls. Each doll had been the result of an experience the artist, Vanessa Matthews, wished to externalize. One doll, for example, was catharsis after anger over a parking ticket. The dolls were individually for sale, but the presentation of all the dolls together, hanging from the ceiling, was most effective. They were funny, cute, sad, and confusing. They were enough of a curiosity that they defied you to leave the room without learning more about them.

Michele feels that the images in this show fulfill a similar need to externalize moments in her life. Most of them have people—sometimes strangers she has photographed at the beach—as the central form. Typically, her landscapes are almost deserted, the ocean is empty. But in this installation, at the same time that her landscapes are like sanctuaries, they make a human connection. Abstract shapes that mimic sea life and tide pools illustrate a bridge between Michele’s mother, a marine biologist, and Michele’s embrace of the natural world.

The clean silhouettes have a way of making Michele’s art look effortless. Does this bother her? When I ask her about it, she says, “The digestion process from photo to painting….is….,” then she looks at the ceiling with outstretched hands. But in the end, that is something only she will know about. “I don’t want it to look like I spend a thousand hours on everything.”

Looking back on Michele’s first solo show at SDAI last year, I am so impressed with how much this river has changed. The change in the scale of her work is most notable, but it is not the only thing that has grown in the year that has passed. Her paintings work together like pieces of a language that is still evolving. As soon as she began to think about this show, Michele says, she knew that she wanted to do something completely different from her previous solo show. She loved the idea of very large scale works, but over time, largeness started to define itself as many small things happening at once. That is life, and to be as large as life is to experience a multitude of tiny moments at the speed they are thrust at us. The great surprise for us is that Michele’s new piece is both the single sweep of the wall in front of you and these many small things that compel you to stop and wonder. The resulting ensemble is appropriately temporary—it will disappear when this wall is handed over to another artist—and the individual pieces will never be presented in this way again.

This is a river. This is life. Michele doesn’t want or need to demonstrate anything. “C’est la vie is about accepting things which are happening without necessarily being resigned,” she says. “I may be less interested in fighting than in finding a way to live in the present.”

Jane LaMotte, San Diego, June 2009.

C'est La Vie
San Diego Art Institute / Museum of the Living Artist
June 5 - July 12, 2009
Monday - Saturday from 10 to 4.
Sunday from noon to 4.
1439 El Prado
San Diego CA 92101
(619) 236-0011
contact Debbie Wells: dwells@mola-sdai.org

"C'est La Vie"

"C'est La Vie", an installation of Paintings (detail)

Lots of things these past days! Could not find any time to write in the blog! I finished the installation of my show at the San Diego Art Institute last Thursday and then the days flew by.


work in progress

The painting on the 45-foot long wall took three very full days and fortunately I was helped by my friend Super Claudia - she also took care of my children when needed and that was a relief (we got very organized that week!).


Great Paint!

It was great to use the Mythic paint to paint the wall. It is totally "green" and odorless, it goes way beyond California requirements for paint safety. The color is great. But still, the wall needed three coats. That paint is quite expensive but definitely worth it.


work in progress


The installation once done

I went back to the San Diego Art Institute several times after the installation was done. Some doubts of course. Needed to see the wall again. It is very new for me.


Sketch for the installation (March 2009)

Months ago, knowing that I had that specific wall at the San Diego Art Institute, I made several drawings of the installation: the painting on the wall and the small paintings around. Finding the exact scale between the painting on the wall and the wall itself was already a challenge, then finding the scale between the painting on the wall and the small paintings.


"Here It's Peace", my solo show at the SDAI in June 2008
I have the same space this year


"Here It's Peace", my solo show at the SDAI in June 2008
This year I let these walls completely blank.

I knew after my first solo show at the SDAI last year, "Here it's Peace", that I wanted to change the scale of the work I would be presenting for this show. And I did! I am very happy about that. There is a really big difference between the way I used the space last year and this year. And even if there are flaws, I like the path I took for "C'est La Vie", it is new for me, I challenged myself, I had to solve different problems and that was thrilling!


With the class

I took my son's Kindergarten class to see the show and we had a good time!


On the cover of the San Diego City Beat:
A Time to Heal (#4)
digital print, 2008, 24"x24"
limited edition of 5

I had the pleasure of seeing the very nice cover of the San Diego City Beat with one of my digital images on it, from the "A time To Heal" series (2008). In the same issue, Katherine Sweetman wrote "Lust for Life", an article I like very much about my work and the show. She came one day to my house and we had a good time talking. She was taking notes on her laptop. It was a beautiful day, a lot of the paintings were on the deck outside, some were on the floor inside. It was kind of a mess but it was nice to see them kind of all together.

I was thrilled that there is a link to the City Beat's article in Art As Authority's blog with the reproduction of the cover!

My friend and writer/designer Jane LaMotte wrote an essay about "C'est La Vie". She wrote one last year for my solo show "Here it's Peace" at the San Diego Art Institute. She is a dear friend but I can still be objective, both essays are really interesting!

Time with the children too. Went to see "Up" which I really liked, especially the beginning, the life fast-forwarded. About the things which count and the choices we make along the (not so long) way.


Territories Series / Connections (#1) 2009, 4"x4", acrylic on wood panel

Time on the beach too, taking pictures of people while the kids were in the waves, boogie-boarding. Some people are aware, some are not. I love to take pictures on the beach, it gives me images of beautiful silhouettes I use in my work all the time.

After having taken pictures of the show, designed and printed pages to make a small portfolio to display at the SDAI, went to Kinko's to get some photocopied postcards, and get the City Beat article laminated, ordered some more postcards on internet, took time to make - and messed up with - an event guest list on Facebook, sent some personalized emails...
I am finally done!

The show is open and the opening reception is this Friday!

C'est La Vie
San Diego Art Institute / Museum of the Living Artist
Opening reception Friday, June 12, from 6 to 8pm.
1439 El Prado
San Diego CA 92101
(619) 236-0011 contact Debbie Wells: dwells@mola-sdai.org