Moving to Colorado summer 2010

So, I drove from Philadelphia PA to Boulder CO. It took about three days. It was a whole lot of not much to see. These are the only photos I took that I thought were interesting enough to post. I like them mostly because they portray how weird and eerie this trip was. My mom kept talking about horror movies like Children of The Corn and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and so wouldn’t get off the highway to see any of the bizarre attractions advertised on the billboards or in my weird America book.

Talk about compensation.

I swear you dont want to let that mist stuff get close to you. (Too many bad SiFi movies for me!)

My mom wouldnt even stop at night, I look photos the whole time to stay awake. This Mac truck almost hit us and then flew by!

I know, only city kids take photos of things like GIANT ROLLS OF HAY! (YEY)

I love this photo because its the embodiment of ceepy oldness. It reminds me of 1800's photos I've seen.

Waxes from forever ago!

The waxes I promised in the May 29th 2009 entry... Still incomplete…

Despite his dystrophy, his imagination would not atrophy. This is my favorite out of this bunch. It’s the most positive and it was fun to make. I have a lot of fond memories of the boy this piece is about. When I met him, he walked with leg braces. As time went on crutches were added, and then a manual wheelchair for when he was too tired. The last time I saw him, he was in a power chair full time. Always, despite this gradual decline, he was creative, playful and hopeful. He was Godzilla to imagined cities, we watched piranha fights in the pool, and we told jokes all the time.

He lies with his eyes but his smile always tells the truth.

                                                                                        This is about a man I worked with who had

quadriplegia and used his eyes to signal yes and no to asked questions. After working with him for some time, I realized that he often lied when he was tired of being misunderstood or felt like he was being a burden. Smiling however is an interesting function. He cannot control his mouth to eat or speak but smiling is an involuntary action. I made it my goal to make him laugh and smile as many times possible during our time together.

They had to sew his face back on; He can’t stop drawing yellow buses;

 I made this after working with a very small boy who had been hit, along with his brother, by a school bus while riding on the handle bars of a bicycle. He was basically catatonic for weeks after the accident, until an art therapist brought him art supplies. I never heard him speak, but the in depth drawings of the grill of a yellow bus were such strong images I often left the sessions almost in tears. The art really helped to start bringing him back to a functioning state. I think I made this piece mostly for myself to try to cope with the hugely powerful intensity of the situation.            Thanks to shitty health care policies, he was discharged as soon as he could walk again. I wonder about him sometimes.

  

A Safe Place

This is a piece I made at the beginning of spring. It's based on a piece I made a couple years ago in undergrad during an art therapy class experiential. We did an exercise exploring a setting or place we felt most safe. This is a reoccurring image in my personal art although it mostly manifests in childish crayon drawings and watercolors. I decided to bring it into a slightly more 3d world. I am currently working on a much bigger project that also has to do with this image. (I'll post that later.) I love this form of this image because so far it is the closest to an accurate representation. It fits in my pocket, I can carry it around always, as I already do. It's 2.5x3" closed. the fabric is greener in person, but I like this photo because of how the yellow pops.

Well Hello Again!!

So, It's been a little over a year since my last post! (insert typical life interruption story here!) I'm hoping to start updating this blog about once a week again! (Did i ever really do that in the first place?) So I have not been wholly unproductive in the last year! Ive been in two shows in Manhattan-which i forgot to post and actually publicize at all...but people still showed! You can view the gallery website directly at http://www.medialiagallery.com/ ....but my photos are better..

Instead of a massive dump of info and images I'm gonna spend my next couple of posts spreading stuff out in a hopefully more organized and interesting manner!

Enough with the boring stuff though!





This is a piece I made at the beginning of the summer. It's only a couple of inches tall, and maybe six inches long when open. It doesn't fold flat because one side is kinda three-d. The three-d side is the more personal side, it's quite literally a map of my life... I think you have to click on the third image to really see it.The outside is kind of an abstraction of my inside, which if you turn in various directions or squint really hard looks like different things in my life. or just a pretty abstraction.. And so if you think about it, this thing is inside out. I know there are so many things you could probably deduce about me from this, ha.

Anyway, its found wood that I wood-burned, oiled, and added thread to. The thread also makes the hinges and clasp+some found brass screws.

TREES!

So, after my computer gave me a lovely present, the "blue screen of death", and best buy took a chunk of my soul(not that my soul is by any means chunky), a valiant effort to save my life was made and ..tadaaah! I'm back! complete with photos that i had feared were lost forever. Trees. These are pieces that are in NY and i will probably never see again. NY tends to eat my work. They go in, and (insert various scenario here).
I know I've talked about Medallia before but I cannot stress how much I love to make it. These are all three palm sized things that i hope will end up in someones pocket(is that one of the scenarios?) instead of stuck on a shelf in a gallery or boxed up in my basement. The first is a thick piece of glass etched on the back( those words were so hard to write backwards). It says "help me help." It might seem pretty upfront but it means more then just face value to me. I think I'm going to make more things out of glass.


The second here is a medal i made for my dad. we don't have the best relationship ever but its not terrible. its gotten better since i moved away. Its kind of a tribute to one of the only things we ever did together, just the two of us, that didn't result in fighting...Watching lightning storms. No matter what mood, what time, day or night.. we'd hear the thunder and both end up on the front porch.
The porch had long before we moved in been a wooden deck with a roof. then it had been closed off with huge storm windows. it was kind of an eye sore on the front of the house. no one ever used it for anything. At some point in my childhood a lazyboy had been shoved out there,( i think it was an effort to compromise, it was my dad's fave and my mom hated it cus is didn't match anything and was stained.) My sister hates storms, and my mom sleeps through them. We had a lot of quiet, not being angry time out there. the reverse of this medal says, "the lightning shows me the pines poking holes in the sky, I count till the boom sets off car alarms, then smile" If you look carefully you can see my moms house and car.



The photo to the right is a detail of a piece. it was hard to sneak out of the glass case at my opening and photograph before the curator saw. so this is all you get. It's two pieces of wood sewn very badly back together. the reverse says, "I'm trying". I've started referring to the as "Together again". I think these are my favorite pieces that ive made recently. I'm still working on the ones that i made the molds for. it...sigh...didnt work out so well. they just dont want to cast whole. If I cant get them done soon, ill at least post photos of the waxes.
p.s. the first and third are as usual recycled materials. the bronze in between is one of a kind. they are all about palm sized. the bronze is about the size of a silver dollar.
As always, if you want something ive made, to cherish and to hold, till..you lose it or give it away.. let me know.

Medallia

I really enjoy making Medallia. I love making things that are small and can be carried in a pocket or purse. especially when they're wrapped in a kerchief for safe keeping. I guess its the old fashioned part of me; the part that loves writing letters, giving gifts to people for no particular reason, and old movies where the farewell scenes take way to long and include lots of intense stares.

I like the idea of important things that fit in the palm of your hand. not that i think the things i make are important.


I only have one more day to finish up for the upcoming show. I'm no where near being done....I did finish a couple more things though, so here they are! P.s. come to my show if your in NY on friday the 6th, free food, drinks, good people, and o yea, art.

Candlewood Lake

I got a lot of work done today! patinas! molds! photos! i even had time to make a mess!... o yea and i finnished this! I'ts Candlewood Lake, a large man made lake that is so large they had to flood three towns to make it. If you go scuba diving you can walk the streets and sit in ford model-ts if you want. There are lots of sad stories that go along with this, but good ones to. we now get tons of electricity generated by this lake. so i guess its a good thing...

I'm up early this morning, A little stressed but mostly excited about the upcomming show! I'll probably post photos later but here are some photos my friend Ashley Smith took of me for a project of hers. they should hold you over for a while

Hey! I have a show soon!!! here are a couple photos of some stuff that will be in it. I'm kinda keeping in line with the series i started a while back about pollution and environmental awareness, and I've started a new series about people I've worked with in the Human Services field. And as always, there are some things i just needed to make...

FUTURE SITE OF LANDFILL

Go to my show at the Plastic Club on Camac St in center city. Or just look at these. Bet you cant guess what these are about.