The show is up. Today is a day off and I'm sitting in a university library listening to smarty kids saying dumb things (oh who am I to judge?). My to do list is daunting. There's some homework to be done for my education class. I have to finish an application so I can escape for 2 weeks and make art in a different world I've been watching for a while. I shoulda gone to visit Shelly and new baby and maybe I ought to have spent my morning painting and while I'm busy regretting, I guess I should confess some guilt that this is the first glimmer of thinking here in a good bit. I've been mulling over a couple of entries for awhile but have posted none of it. I sit down at the computer and my thoughts disappear. My sketchbook gets thicker and denser and messier but this forum has been quiet. So I guess that means I don't like you. No. It means I am more concerned with what I'm saying where and why.

Case in point. The other day as I waited for my bus I was leafing through my sketchbook looking for a phone number. A woman (Marshay? Marshe? Marcia?) who I'd never met was looking over my shoulder. She complimented me and we struck up a conversation about art. I shared how I draw, some of why I draw, and some drawing tips. I listened to her ideas and questions and I completely enjoyed the opportunity to talk art to a civilian (i.e. someone not actively making or profiting from art, i.e. someone doing honest work). But then I looked up and noticed that the bus was watching me. I'd been outed as an artist and now had to show my drawings and be on view. It's good, it's bad, it's wacky at 8am to do an unscheduled show-and-tell.

Oh, well. I'm a talker. I'm an art maker and art thinker and so here goes with some more:
And the museum I work for just opened a really great show, Extreme Materials. I had no part in the organizing of it and I simply am pleased to see it and be around a show that kids respond so well to.
It's not just smog plates and drug bag quilts that I'm excited about though...I love the idea of Danny and the gang Drawing Together and hope to get to one of these someday.

I'm fascinated again with artist/printmaker/troublemakers from the 1920s and 30s and that has led me back to visit Wanda Gag's house (I'm only visiting virtually, not physically)

And I've been lucky to find an old friend from art school living and working in the area. Jeff and I went to the same small art school that Aaron Igler and Lisa Catalone went to, and we spent two years in a small communty of goofy art students. We were friends then and are friends now, even though we went our own ways a dozen years ago. So now Jeff and I are painting every tuesday in the same advanced painting class. We bring in the stuff from our studios and we listen to the thoughts of a good painter, good teacher who also used to teach in that little school (though he predated us). It's a comfort to know that we are all still making, to find an old friend, and to know that the core of our work habits, our need to make art, and our ability to form a creative community...all that is still there.

In other news, I saw the project below on nyfaand am impressed and happy to share the word. Let me know if you've been involved before, I'm curious and probably will get involved in some way.

GATES Project - National Call for Artists
IGIVEUP.ORG
(Phoenix AZ)

GATES Project - Final Call
You may have heard about the GATES Project, the national project turning symbols of life's challenges into art. A national press announcement is going out very soon. If you're interested please get your application in ASAP so we can list you prior to the announcement.

ARTIST'S BENEFITS
...You set the low bid price
...All artists will receive 20% of the bid sale
...Primary showing galleries will also receive 20% of the bid sale
...Award winners will get an additional 20%
...plus exposure and more

Brief project definition:
This is a charity project with the theme of life’s challenges
...The general public will donate objects to us (symbols of personal challenges)
...Professional artists will then incorporate one or many of these objects into an art work
...Art work will be exhibited in galleries across the USA in Summer 2006
...Work will be juried and then auctioned in the Fall with cash benefits

More about the project here

Answers to your questions are here.
This same link will take you to the Artist's Prospectus and Application
Application deadline: 2-28-06
email: info@igiveup.org
OK, so take care, make art, make trouble, make mine purple (that's for John's Larry King impersonation, mind you),
I'm back to my to do list...
Rachael

Among the dumb things I've done today:
sleep late
leave the house without my keys
read the bus schedule backwards
read my watch wrong and thus be an hour early

Among the smart things I've done today:
give myself permission to sleep
give myself permission to wander
draw and write
eat a healthy lunch
learn a little more about the busses and the streets around here
relax
and create an invite for the show (it's going to be hung tonight)



take care and try not to do dumb things but relax when you do...
Rachael

My amazing friend, Larissa, (she has a small PR business and started this whole business) and I will pick up my framed paintings from my other amazing friend, Jody, (she has a framing business and the ability to frame my little guys up nice and quick and inexpensively) tomorrow. I don't actually have to hang this show, they'll hang it for me and then I can order a latte and stand back and see what it is I've been making. That's a huge part of showing for me. Really, the ability to stand back and see what the paintings are when they are all grown up and out of the house. For those of you in the Rochester or upstate area (or with an excuse to be in the next 3 months) you can see them too at the Starbucks at 2900 Monroe after Monday.

Nothing appeals to me more right now than the thought of a day to simply make. Drawings, clay nonsense, bread, my messy house more clean, long letters to old friends. This simple, nothing expected of me, chunk of time is nowhere to be seen but I can see to making one soon. In the immediate future, I have a show of my own opening in a few short days, a deadline almost met at work, a sketchbook I keep filling, some time in the studio every couple of days for a couple of hours, and a painting and a clay class every week. I've just started a class about inclusion in education and I am the only non teacher or almost-teacher in the room. It's a fascincating thing, really, to hear so much talk and read so many words so quickly about evening the playing field, seeing all kids as kids, and teaching everyone.

For the dreamers, then, I share. I was reminded about Jim Hodges today and just need to spread the lovely.



just tell me, you are making something?!
take care,
Rachael

I made a painting recently that smacked of motherhood to me. Nursing specifically.

Yep, I'm thinking about babies. No, I'm not pregnant. Yep, I am fascinated by all the babies I know, all the toddlers I see, and all the mommies who still make art. That's simply amazing to me. How does an artist balance the responsibility of motherhood with day-job and income-gathering and making art? And then the work of getting it seen?
My friend Deb emailed me recently that she'll have a show in New York and I promise to fill you in with details when I know them. She is a momma, she's a painter, she's magic.
There's a whole world of representations of pregnant, nursing and mothering mothers. From Demi to The Art of Motherhood, it's in there and I oughtta look again at the images that women who are mothers have made of mothering. Like Alice Neel...
In wandering online looking just now for a Peggy Bacon motherhood image, I found instead a fantastic Library of Congress cartooning and caricature show with a smart Peggy print about vanity.
Time for me to get back to painting in the time I have allotted.
take good care, troublemakers, and more soon,
Rachael

Oh and see Junebug if you haven't, it's lovely and all about motherhood and other assorted mysteries. Makes me miss my friend Toni even more...

I had a chance to draw today. And also, I am pleased to announce that I'll have a solo show opening in a (gulp) week at a local store of a ubiquitous coffee company (think green mermaids). This company actually has a very friendly, very good way of working with artists localy, they'll take care of much of the work of the show, and also I like their coffee. It'll be up for three whole months and will maybe after that move to a new town. I'm excited to have my work in view for a whole bunch of people who sit in that space and talk, and think, and read, and occasionally buy artwork. And I tell ya, much of this happened because I have a good friend who has a part time pr business and the confidence to talk to anyone and on a day she was getting coffee she was also chatting with the manager about how she knew a painter whose work would fit right into the store.

In other fabulous news, my friend Shelly (she of the recent baby shower) gave birth yesterday to a little girl she and her husband have named Eva (in honor of the sculptor Eva Hesse and also because it's a pretty name and she's a pretty girl.)

And also, the sun shone, the day surprised, I learned and leisured, and feel refreshed for what will be a busy busy busy week. And also, it will be busy.

I think I'll be busy.

goodnight,
Rachael