Over the weekend, Russ and I made a quick jaunt up to Columbia, MO to help install a two-person show at the Davis Gallery at Stephens College. The show called Vital Threads features my work and the work of Annie Helmericks-Louder, another Missouri artist who does art quilts, silk paintings, and fabulous plein aire pastels. Check out her website and roadtrip blog.

It was fun to meet Annie for the first time, and her husband who is also a painter and artist. Dan Scott the gallery director also brought his family, so between all of us, it was pretty quick work to get everything looking good for the reception coming up this Friday.

The Davis Gallery is a sort of retro 60′s space with floating stairs, waffle ceiling, cool chairs and a charming sculpture patio just outside.

The reception will be this Friday, August 27 from 4-6 p.m., so if you’re in the area, please stop by!

Vital Threads
August 27-October 14, 2010
opening reception: Friday, August 27, 4-6 p.m.
Stephens College – Davis Art Gallery
Corner of Walnut & Ripley
Columbia, MO 65215

Sometimes interesting things happen if you look back at old sketchbooks and follow a new tangent.

Had to get the antique irons out for this one. Some patterns that I draw are either so big, or the dimensions are such that the drawing is always slipping off my work table. So I found that these old irons are perfect for weighing down the edges — and they have nice handles to move them around as needed. I can’t imagine heating on of these things up on a fire and using it to iron clothes. But maybe moving them around a lot will also help tone up my arms:)

Sometimes it’s a little scary at the beginning of a project, facing a big wall of raw fabric wondering if you’re ever going to be able to make something out of it. Wondering how it’s all going to come together. So you just sort of have to jump in and have faith that it will work, or that you will indeed be able to improvise and adapt to whatever problems you have set yourself.

Here’s some more colors that I plan on using. Earlier I had picked a safer, easier palette of mainly blues with a few teals, but then Russ challenged me to use a combination that would really pop. Sometimes it’s also good to have someone behind you, pushing to try something new. Do you have any tricks to push yourself past fear and inertia?

Working on drawings of old abandoned technology for another project, I was distracted when Russ dragged his first computer out of the storage room. Honestly, at first I thought it was an old sewing machine. Then I found out it was a prehistoric portable computer called the Osborne.

Can you believe this thing? The bottom of the case unhooks and plugs into the top to make a keyboard. Floppy drives — remember those? And it only cost a mere 2K, but that was the economical version.

Unfortunately, when we plugged it into a nearby outlet (because I wanted to see what came up on that tiny little screen), the thing literally caught on fire and smoke started pouring out of the vent on the top. I was so unnerved by the smoke that I forgot to take a photo of that.

Anyway, something fun to draw, even if it doesn’t work anymore.

layered cotton fabrics stitched with thread, 65"x50" by Pam RuBert

ITAB is a juried exhibition of work by artists exploring the intersection of fiber art with new information and communication technologies, to be held in conjunction with San Jose’s biennial ZERO1 Festival, the 2010 01 SJ Biennial, which runs from September 16-19, 2010. The exhibition includes 41 works by 28 artists from six countries—including Canada, China, Germany, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. For more information and some images from the upcoming show, check out the museum website article.

San Jose Quilts & Textiles Museum, San Jose, CA
August 17 – October 31, 2010
Opening reception is Sunday, August 22, 2-4pm

As always, I am fascinated by the abstract designs being formed on the back of the quilt, so even though it’s slow — it’s an enjoyable process.

The theme of the exhibit curated by painter Stephanie Cramer and underwritten by Dianne Elizabeth Osis, was to create art on doors or about doors, so you can imagine there is a wide variety of two- and three-dimensional interpretations rendered including paintings on house doors, cabinets, coffins, electrical boxes, sculptural gateways and more.

"PaMdora and The Doors meet Dorian Gray", acrylic on canvas, 40" x 30"

For me one of the most interesting parts of making art is developing the concept. While getting ready to paint this, I did a lot reading about the characters, and what I call late-night drawing — waking up in the middle of the night and sketching from the subconscious. Anyway, it seemed that I needed to write up something to go with the painting for the exhibit, so I created these footnotes…

The Doors
According to rock historian Daniel Keating, lead singer Jim Morrison got the name for this 1960’s band from Aldous Huxley’s book The Doors of Perception. Huxley took the line from the William Blake book The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, “If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.”

Dorian Gray
Character in a novel by Oscar Wilde who sold his soul in return for the promise that his painted portrait would age instead of him.

PaMdora
My cartoon alter ego who gets her name from PaMdora’s Box.

Pia Zadora
Actress and singer who came to national attention in 1964 when she starred in Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. For a while she was married an Israeli junk bond king who had a portrait of her painted nude to hang in the entrance of their Hollywood home.

Doritos
A snack food made by Frito-Lay.

Adorable
(a.k.a Stella) My sister-in-law’s cute little Boston Terrier who mostly just lays on the sofa.

“Open Doors” – Creamery Arts Center – 411 N. Sherman Parkway – Springfield, MO
open M-F 9 a.m.-5 p.m. July 2-31

The little drafting table was just the right size for the canvas. Conveniently it fits over the top of my old metal accounting desk. A stainless steel bus cart is a great palette-holder, and the wheels turn on a dime — which is great in such a tight space.

Plus with this arrangement, I can turn my laptop around if I want to check some details for the painting. A cozy arrangement indeed! I just might leave it this way for a while. Although I’ve already delivered the painting to the gallery, I won’t show it on my blog until after the opening reception tomorrow night.

These flip-flops on a rag rug are the ones that I wore on the way to my worst case of poison ivy ever. And these fancy ones I saw in a catalog – except that I embellished them with color, pattern, and daisy panty hose.

These days I’m trying to work at least a couple of hours a day in the studio. Sometime more, except for days like this when I had to move EVERYTHING not attached to the walls out so I could get the carpet cleaned. Since my studio is in a warehouse, the carpet gets pretty dirty after a while. So I’m very proud and pleased that it came this clean.

As for the rest of the space — thank goodness for clutter. It helps hide the dust!

Update: I was joking about clutter when I wrote this post late last night, but just now read a good blog post about myths of clutter by organization expert Julie Morgenstern. One line really jumped out at me: “Releasing the obsolete will get you unstuck—by opening up space for something new. It creates the energy, space to think, and time to figure out what’s next.”

I’ve never really tried to recreate nature in art. Been tempted and wished I could. But actually nature makes me feel pretty inferior as an artist. It just seems enough to be out there, there’s nothing new to be made. So I don’t know why I always take so many photographs. Maybe it’s just to try to remember the moment.

While I’m writing this, we’re watching a video of Andy Goldworthy on Netflix, which says a lot about my bad habit of multi-tasking. (But it’s hard to do in a day everything we want to do, right?)

Anyway, hearing him speak about his thoughts about sculpture as he makes has given me new insight into his work. His works are beautiful in that they are from nature, they work with nature, and somehow they don’t disrupt the landscape that they are part of.

It’s also interesting to hear him say that photography is a way that he understands his own work. According to Goldsworthy, “Each work grows, stays, decays – integral parts of a cycle which the photograph shows at its heights, marking the moment when the work is most alive. There is an intensity about a work at its peak that I hope is expressed in the image. Process and decay are implicit.” (from Andy Goldsworthy: Art of Nature.)