SwapMeet in Providence

At the start of February the Tyler Painting Grads were up in Providence to do a show called SwapMeet at the ISB Gallery. We got together with the RISD Painting Grads to organize a show of our work up there and then they are going to be bringing a show of thier work down here in March. I brought the piece "Kick It' to show and then when we arrived on site my fellow grad, Brett John Johnson pulled out a pink shower curtain that he used to keep his piece clean. Well needless to say I was really enamored of that pink plastic and so when my friend Erin challenged me to make a piece on site I begged Brett for the pink stuff. Armed with a pair of scissors and some white yarn that I had knotted on the way up I proceeded to make the piece on-site called "It's a Girl!" I hope you enjoy these little snap shots of the product of this "designer challenge".

New Paintings

Lately I have also been doing a series of gouaches when thinking about the spaces in the 3-D works. Here are some of the results from January and February. In a few I am combining the paintings with collaged elements to create works that go outside the frame of the space defined in the painting. I have been thinking of these as my designer sketches, much like the design boards created to previsualize spaces in interior design. These are my imagined spaces functioning as possible proposals for the "real". Final works in and of themselves that can become departure points for the objects or veiwer.

DIY Modernism

This is some of the work that I have been doing lately in the studio. A departure for those of you who may be more familiar with the labor intensive cutouts and patterning that I was making previously. This work came from my exploration of what was behind that patterning and really is about merging modernism and art history with an impulse to make these little gestures which surround us in our domestic existence.



I want to transform my life, I am nesting, I am watching DIY shows, I am trying to achieve transcendence with pipe cleaners. DIY is about trying to improve yourself and your life by augmenting your surroundings using the quickest and cheapest means possible. Anyone can do it; all you need is yarn, paint, and possibly some upholstery foam.

Marrying the ideas of DIY with abstraction I am attempting to reach beyond the pathetic nature of limp yarn, plastic party tablecloths, and fuzzy pipe cleaners to craft objects that create moments for both contemplation and laughter. Sincerity and sarcasm exist in the same breath as pathetic materials aspire to noble results. There is a relationship established between the seen and unseen, the suggestion that what is physically perceptible also contains a moment of transcendance.