Come see me this weekend at the Bemis Spring 2014 Art Show. I will be exhibiting my work alongside thirty or more artists and live musical performances. The show is held at the edge of Seattle’s industrial district in the Bemis Building, a renovated textile manufacturing plant that now houses artists lofts.
For more information check out Bemis Arts.
Shown at the City Hall Rotunda Gallery in Rock Hill, South Carolina throughout the month of January is a collection of work exhibiting an assortment of mixed media paintings created from 2011-2013. In this body of work the idea of portraiture is explored both traditionally in the representation of a figure and symbolically with assembled objects. Inspired by nostalgic mementos and collected knickknacks each painting is compiled of hidden narratives. Patterns and stripes dissimulate figures into their surroundings while objects and chairs personify portraits. Collages and assemblages are formed with sentimental memorabilia stacked and rearranged, torn until the context is stripped to something entirely new. This work exists in a realm between two and three dimensionality with objects protruding and fabric wrinkling above their surfaces.
Special thanks to Mike Gentry for installing the work and my family for transporting and documenting the installation of my work.
I have recently participated in a local print exchange coordinated by local artists Chris Rollins and Paul McKercher. This is the sixth year of the X Print Exchange, which is essentially a group of artists creating editions made of different combinations and methods of printmaking based around the same central theme that will be exhibited and collected together.
This Friday, October 11th come join me for refreshments at an informal reception at Stylus Salon and Spa during the Belltown Art Walk from 7-9 pm. My 2012-13 Dollhouse Diaries series curated by Ghost Gallery will be on view throughout October.
Once again I will be exhibiting at Hart Witzen Gallery’s interdisciplinary visual art competition. This year I will be unable to attend the show in person but will be exhibiting the last painting I completed in North Carolina before moving across the country. It is one of the largest paintings I have completed (51″x53″inches) as well as one of the longest ongoing projects I have had. It began in 2011 during my first of three Painting Projects courses taken at UNCC and ended this April 2013. All artists participating will be competing for the best in show prize determined by patron vote. The opening reception will be held this Saturday September 28th from 7-11 pm. The best in show selection will be announced at the closing reception which will be held Friday, October 4th from 7-11 pm.
For more information about the exhibition click here.
Last night ended my eight week large format screen printing class with instructor Kerstin Graudins at Pratt Fine Art Center in Seattle, WA. It was nice to finally see my small 8″x10″ sketchbook size collages expand to a 30″x40″ scale. I used my time at Pratt to experiment with screen printing scanned collaged images over physical collaged backgrounds. I recycled patterns from some of my favorite handmade papers and lines from old drawings to create prints that became a layer in a larger collage. Much of the material that I used for these collages was collected from my stash of my grandfather’s blue prints of the buildings he once designed, torn advertisements and posters ripped from the streets of Florence, Italy and Paris, France as well as paper rolls found in player pianos.
Come this July you can view a collaborative work by yours truly and Carmen Neely in person at the Elder Gallery in Charlotte, NC’s southend. We will be exhibited in the Salon II show opening July 5th.
Recently my life has become a whirlwind of changes. In just a month I will be moving across country to Seattle, WA. This will be my first experience living anywhere other than Charlotte, NC, my hometown. In preparation for the big move all of my things have been scattered, packed, shipped, sold and all around relocated to new places that leave me with minimal resources to continue to produce artwork at the current moment. Instead of letting my artistic limitations restrict me from continuing to make things, I have embraced the limitations that have been put in front of me.
My most recent project has been a collaboration with a close friend and artist, Carmen Neely. We met at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte where we both studied and received Bachelors in Fine Art, concentrating in painting. In our final painting projects course we shared a studio together, however, it wasn’t until we graduated and moved out of the studio that we began to work together.
I have decided to dedicate a tumblr blog to my moleskin sketches. For the past year I have carried around a moleskin and a pen. As a rule I only draw in my moleskin with a pen because I erase too much. I enjoy practicing discretely drawing the people and things around me from critiques, cafes, hospital waiting rooms to traveling abroad.
