Abstract Paintings and Musings on Art
I am so pleased to announce that the wonderful writer, Charles van Heck has conducted an interview with yours truly, which he has published on his Woodhull Arts Journal at Whitman Pond (Charles apparently has shut his website down, but you can still read the interview here).
He asked such great questions! I hope you enjoy my answers!
Some of my online art friends started posting on Fridays a Flashback to previous works. I found out about the Flashback Fridays from Steven LaRose, who in turn credits Carla Knopp for starting this movement, and adds Mary Addison Hackett as the next artist to join the ranks of Flashback Friday posters. Is anyone else doing this?
I started this art blog* to put all of my notes from art school online in one place — mostly for my own convenience, but if anyone else benefits from my clumsily compiled notes (often with no real date), that’s good, too.
I’ve back-dated these posts, back to the beginning of when I started my first art blog, with a range (so far) from 3/20/05 – 4/20/05.
If I find more, I’ll add them on with back dates in 2005 as well.
*Note: referring to ArtNotes, which has been combined with my first art blog, which together have now been combined with my website.
(written in 1996)
It’s been 3 years since I left art school. I’ve been painting and drawing nightly for a while — it’s amazing how I’m starting to really ‘get’ some of the things I heard in art school, but somehow didn’t make it all the way through from my ears and eyes to my brain to my hands and brushes.
It was such an immersive and exciting experience to be in art school in Chicago, always doing, thinking, breathing, reading, seeing, smelling, tasting art, and always surrounded by others like me. At times it seemed like I was experiencing a sensory overload – I was like a kid in a candy store – there was so much I wanted to do and see – so much I DID do and see – our museum (hundreds of times), other museums, galleries, artist talks (like Ross Blechner and John Cage), school art openings and art openings in galleries, participating in some art shows, art camp at Oxbow, watching the beautiful iron-pour from the roof of the painting studio there, the sunset over Lake Michigan just like the painting we had seen in a slide just days before, parties, cheap dinners at great ethnic restaurants, a few nights out on the town, listening to great Chicago Blues, the occasional movie, the zoo, free music at Grant Park, riding my bike along Lake Michigan, riding the El, sliding on ice, trying to drive through snow. Getting in touch with the language and culture of my ancestors (which is so easy to do in Chicago, and so hard to do in Texas); having gobs of friends of so many ages from all over the world.
With all that going on, plus full-time classes and part-time working, it’s great to discover years later that somehow the lessons I kind of missed then were planted somewhere inside that didn’t manage to get lost.
Such as:
We saw the movie “P.S.” (2004) last night, with the amazing and beautiful Laura Linney. She may be one of the most underrated actresses working today. She conveys such a huge amount of emotion, yet it’s never in your face; it’s always somewhat tightly contained within the physical space she inhabits, but you so get it! And this movie has one of the hottest little sex scenes I’ve yet seen (without any actual nakedness, even!). But neither Laura Linney’s performance nor the great little sex scenes are what I liked most about this movie.