THROWBACK THURSDAY

Pastel self portrait. My face seems really flat.

THROWBACK THURSDAY

 

American Gothic with both of our drawing class models. Sewanee, 2008.

THROWBACK THURSDAY

After Klimt, Sewanee 2008. This was the first time I understood how chalk pastels worked for me. Normally they left me disappointed, and covered in smudged colored chalk. I'm pretty sure my piece of paper usually felt the same way. This time was different, and using a pencil to highlight areas was key.

THROWBACK THURSDAY

 Another still life photograph for a drawing class assignment. You can't make stuff up like this. This is just what happens when 4 teenage girls share a bathroom. And eat easy mac.

THROWBACK THURSDAY

Figurative ink study. Sewanee, 2008. We were fortunate enough to have the same two models for the entire semester of life drawing. At some point I stopped struggling to draw the person and was just able to draw the pose.

THROWBACK THURSDAY

Here's another picture from drawing class. We were assigned to  create an unconventional still life to draw using shoes. I put them on a plate in the dining hall and called it done. I'll post the drawing later.

THROWBACK THURSDAY

I've run out of artwork for Throwback Thursday until my parents bring another portfolio when they visit. I've decided to post some old pictures that I took in college to tide you over. This picture is from Sophomore year and is documentation of the first drawing assignment for my painting and drawing class. Each student was given a stack of photocopied topographical maps. We each had to make 10 different "modules" (3-dimensional shapes made only using cut or folded paper and tape). Our professor then chose a module for each student to reproduce 10 times. Here is the pile of my 10 identical modules before I took the over to the art building. All of us pinned then up into clusters onto the giant studio pin-up wall. Then we had to draw the entire thing. It took me forever, and I know I still have that drawing. I tell people (artists!) about this assignment and they cringe in sympathy.

BORND AND DIED

 These pictures are from the Sherwood cemetery just down the mountain from Sewanee. I like old cemeteries, and I especially like the way these headstones are made.

HURRICANE ELVIS CHRISTMAS

It's been ten years since I visited Sewanee for the first time, ten years since a tree did not fall on our house, ten years since we lost power for a week, and ten years since I listened to Weezer in my Discman on full blast, trying to forget I was so hot I could barely sleep.

Happy Birthday, Hurricane Elvis.

RECENTLY

then and now

Last week I was checking out the blog of a former professor of mine. I first encountered him at Sewanee's Merit Weekend for incoming students. I don't remember much of what he spoke about at dinner, but it involved Harold and the Purple Crayon. Four years later, I took his Religion and Ecology class. I majored in neither religion nor ecology, but it seemed like a safe bet anyway. Populated by seniors, the class was paperless and examless. We were to look, listen, ask questions, think, and devote three hours every Wednesday afternoon to tearing around the Plateau in hard hats. On our last day of class (which also happened to be my last class at Sewanee) Smith read an excerpt from an old Senior Dinner speech. He knew what he was doing, and we seniors were putty in his hands. Twenty minutes later we were all crying. Even the firemen in the back row. Class was dismissed, and we all walked snot-nosed and red-eyed through the library and out the doors.

The latest addition to his blog seemed to be a Senior Dinner speech from this year, or maybe what he read to his class to get them to cry this time. That is beside the point. A few lines jumped out at me.

I am not an academic monogamist; I am an unashamed polygamist. I have had many loves. You could never tell from my library or from my shopping history at Amazon.com what I teach. Nor could you tell from their careers what most Sewanee students majored in.

That last sentence rings a little true with me. Here is a little peek at what I've been doing when I'm not making art. My job is many things. Recently it has been building crates. I majored in art history, but no amount of lectures on Pop Art or Gothic cathedrals could have prepared me for this.

They're art crates.

Or this. (A little project I was a part of last year.)

I graduated 4 years ago this month. I majored in art history, but I also learned about forestry, geology, the intertwinings of religion and ecology, how to look, and how to think. I can figure anything out if I just think about it a bit... Maybe not astrophysics.

My brain-muscle got a little bigger at Sewanee. My arm muscles have gotten a little bigger with my job.

My co-worker and I are filling these crates next week. We'll see if my brain-muscle calculated them correctly. The proof is in the pudding.

the litmus test

I have a test for any new media I decide to start using on a regular basis. I make an image of mountains. This isn't something I deliberately set out to do. It just crept up on me one day. I'll explain.

Eight years ago, I moved from Memphis to the mountains -- the Cumberland Plateau to be exact. I attended Sewanee (the University of the South), and the campus sits on a 10,000 acre plot of forested land in southern Tennessee. Sewanee is secluded and didn't even have reliable cell phone reception when I was there. The remoteness bothers some people. I fell in love. Until I went to Sewanee, the Milky Way was something I just read about in books. I loved trail running through the woods, hiking, sitting on the edge of the Plateau and watching the sun rise or set, and doing my reading for class on a large sandstone rock that overlooked the forest and was older than the dinosaurs. For the first time, I could look out a window and have a "view." I took classes in forestry and geology. I could identify all the rock layers making up the plateau and most of the trees that grew on top of it.

I think mountains are mind blowing and very humbling. I never get tired of looking at them.

A view of Morgan's Steep at Sewanee

Another view of Morgan's Steep.  This image is creeping away from reality, but I had a specific place in mind when I made it.

After college, I moved north to another remote town near the mountains. (Noticing a trend here?) This time I lived along the Susquehanna River in the upper ridges of the Appalachians. I had cell phone reception, but there were hitching posts at my stores to tie up a horse and buggy. Central Pennsylvania's remoteness was not entirely physical. There were pockets my new place that were remote from modernity. Welcome to Amish country. The mountains in the Susquehanna Valley looked familiar -- like 

Tennessee. They were different though and looked completely new when the snow came.

I was obsessed with the way leafless trees looked in the winter -- A sketch from Pennsylvania

When I came back to Tennessee, I settled within spitting distance of the Smokies. I live 15 minutes from the highest point in Knox County, and on a clear day when I drive down Central Avenue, there's a gay bar on my right, a bakery on my left, and miles of purply- blue mountains in the distance.

This watercolor was inspired by the very beginnings of a 5am winter sunrise in Knoxville.

This similar painting came later. Hand incised contour lines describe the rise and fall of the mountain peaks.

At some point in 8 years, the mountains have crawled into my psyche. I have painted and drawn them along the way, but at some point they stopped being specific mountains and just became an image of little bits and pieces of all the mountains, seasons, and times of day I've seen. Mountains have turned into a very sophisticated doodle. The nature of the medium dictates what season or weather seems to appear in the image. I do all of them from my imagination now, and I want each image to be as interesting as the real thing. When I can reach that equilibrium, I feel like I have a decent mastery of my new medium or idea I want to try out.

My first attempt at encaustic painting

More encaustic with dyed cheesecloth for texture.

Cheesecloth on wood. I pulled on the warp and weft strings of the loose weave to create those ridges

I got new Pitt pens a while back and took them for a walk...