Happy New Years!

From always sunny Florida. We wear our sunglasses because

Mixed media sketchbook page

"it's the sunniest spot for the shadiest of people."  Badaboom!
Looking forward to another great year, keeping it simple in my wonderful pad with my sweet lover.

View on the balcony

Hoping everyone stays safe, healthy and is feeling the love. Don't stress too much about the ritual of New Years Eve. It's only a new day, like any other, a gift to live through.

calendar page notes

Evolution of this, my annual self-portrait

 This started as a class demo for two of my different high school courses. Three classes were painting large colored "selfies" and the other classes were working on large heads in charcoal. In both, I was introducing the concept of the grid as a tool to transfer accurately and to enlarge.

 The isolated colors were my attempt to talk about bounced light and it's effect on skin tone. I was trying to demonstrate risk by using cool blues in patches, and not being so precious with my likeness. I probably should have done my hair darker, but over the time the class was working on theirs, I got my real hair tinted a little pink, and it really did not make as much difference, after hours in the salon chair, as I would have hoped, and hence, depicted!

The final image is apropos for the way it depicts a person split in different styles/directions. Do you like it?

Number Crunching to Gain Traction (on 2018)

As the year skids to a close I find my inbox full of friends generously sharing their lists. Even Obama has shared his list of favorite movies and books of 2018. Lists of books, (now I wish I had kept track), lists of trips, lists of deaths (4 small shatterings for me), lists of births, how many candles did we burn on the cake? How many cakes did we eat?

A time for reflection and gathering receipts, I jog my memory by flipping back through date books, logbooks, calendars and am happy to find that I am closing out my 3rd sketchbook for the year, so I feel pretty much on track as far as filling in Spring, Summer and Fall. (I live in Florida so there is no WINTER).

Hibernation Mode at Max's place

In January I make a ritual of checking my inventory- how many paintings did I accomplish last year? How many studio hours did I track? How many art sales was I blessed with? Where did I show my works? And then, it's always good to keep learning... so what new skills can I say I did develop? (letterpress, spray painting, drawing on the road), what new life lens did I assume (hello institutional racisim!).

Then to be financially mature, I have add up those tax deductions and count how many ways i donated to charities. How did my raises balance out between the job and the rent? How many political donations did I accumulate? (yikes!) Might as well make a list of the monthly automatic deductions I have signed up for.
And to be immature: how many followers did I attract? How many blog postings... I had hoped to do better with both.
I count my good health as my top blessing but shouldn't I weigh in my body's loss or gain, my blood pressure, my new cosmetic addictions, and my weekly attempts to exercise? Should I add up the grocery bills, the times we ate out for dinner, my travel expenses and medical procedures?
May I suggest we add to the lists the countless hours I talked to God, the times I smiled and faked it, my handful of new friends and the, not enough, times I sat still?

road trip sketch

The end of this sums up whether I feel like a winner or a loser. But before I go too deep I must be grateful to be alive. Not everybody made it this far, and I am a 2018 lucky winner. I count my lover, my kids, my parents and siblings, and my next few days off and call this a good year after all!

Holiday blessings

 I took a break from work and shopping to just hang out with my boys in the Florida panhandle. We had lots to catch up on. All of us stayed off the internet and relished the darkness of short days.

 A little rest and a lot of food has gone a good way to making me feel merry and bright again! Best of all is that we turned off the alarm clock. Spending quality time with my loved ones is what I wish everyone could, and would, do. It would make a much better planet. Its time to reflect on that together.

That is my wish, from my family to yours! Thanks for the follows, emails and sales. You are a blessing to me!

sweet tooth

"It was the sweet life she had always craved"

 

Seaside Ice Cream Shoppe, acrylic on paper 10 x 12

Just recently I spent an evening baking up batches, bowls and trays of cookies. And every day, as an end of term art teacher, I face the sweet dilemma of students bringing me boxes of chocolates, delectable pastries, and sugar cakes as gifts. My dining table looks as though I live in a sweet shoppe!
Found a sweet solution! I now put hand-fulls of my cookies in sealed plastic bags. Store them in the fridge. Every day I grab one and put it in my car console box. When I stop at a light and see a homeless person begging I hand them the bag. I have done this twice this weekend and the immense  gratitude is visible. Both times the person smiled wide, dug into the bag and had a mouth-full before making it the full length of the car away.    Spread the joy!

Studiomates showing at the Coral Gables Museum

I'm so proud of my friends Emma Echenique, Martha Larmier, and Krisse Pasternack whose work

was juried into the 68th annual Ceramic League of Miami's Member exhibition. The guest curator was Adam Field.
Echenique is a prolific artist, a caretaker, daughter and mother. Her works are most notably delicate slab built vessels with colorful glossy and matte 1950-ish patterns embossed and painted on the surfaces. The container is of a utilitarian form yet betrays itself by it's tender wavering lip and sculptural fragility.It is too beautiful to be put to use.
Larmier teaches and creates personal works that speak about her place in the world. Recently she downsized out of the house she had lived in for decades and the sculpture in this show revealed a black clay female "skin" suit hanging from a small metal hanger. Was it being packed away? Or is she laying "bare" and preparing for a future?
Pasternack had two separate porcelain and mixed media works hanging in the show. They were a "collage" of elements reminiscent of the coral bedrock of south Miami and the creatures inhabiting the shore. It is hard to know just where the illusion and the found object define themselves. Her pieces call for lots of hard looking!
The opening was last night, yet the show is up through the 2nd of January. The Coral Gables museum is located at 205 Aragon Avenue next to Books and Books.

NEW 2019 I Scream You Scream We all Scream Calendar

I am an activist working towards peace for all. Right now we are a community too divided and stuck in our own fears. I know, in my own family, politics is a topic we all steer clear of because it seems nobody stays logical or level headed anymore. We snap into emotional concrete when it comes to holding our stance and any discourse is whispered for fear it can slip into someone screaming. I have heard friends "blocking" friends on social media over the same subjects. Makes me want to scream! Has this happened to you?

hand printed and painted envelopes for each calendar

The holiday season is a traditional time of family gathering and these days the events are fraught by current events. Are you screaming? Well this might help!

2019 Ice Cream Calendar

Sometime over the Thanksgiving break I put together 13 paintings as a 2019 calendar gift idea.  My inspiration was the midterm elections, specifically, how close several races were, that they even got recounts and runoffs, and how I just dreaded another two years of sharp political divisions. Was there a way I could use my gifts of making art to stop us all from screaming? I researched counseling for reconciliation between warring factions. I made a 12 step list. Then I looked for the art.

What could be a theme of our common appreciation?
Ice cream is estimated to be in the refrigerators of 97% of US households at any time! So with that as the motif, I created some new paintings and mined my old series of a Month of Sundaes from 2007.
PrintingCenterUSA did a fantastic job with saddle stitching a 120lb gloss paper calendar that left me room for "sweets scoops", small steps towards reconciliation, and full moon artwork. They are lovely!

Printed in a limited edition they have flown out of my hands. Now there are only 10 9 left. If you would like one, ($12 plus shipping), please email me soon.

Ornament makers

Thanks for the visits and filling my Miami studio with laughter and creativity. I was so happy to have new and old friends show up last Friday. Everyone is so dear to me. Best, best, best of all... was the time we took out of real life ... to pause to interact, converse and create.  A lovely start to my weekend.

I wish I had taken more pictures. We kept the focus on making ornaments, so I came home with more booze than I started! (thanks for the gifts of wine, eggnog, cookies and cakes, chips and cheese!)

If you went and saw At Eternity's Gate (the new film by Julian Schnabel on VanGogh) you would see just how important it is for an artist, and how eager we ALL are, to have a community of friends.

One purpose of art

One purpose of art is to preserve experiences and mark time. That is why I like to paint everyday. It captures a moment or an experience for me in a way that builds a story that helps me understand what matters.

 

In a season of blessings, I want to share with others the creative experiences that I have had. That is why I am opening my studio to friends this Friday for an ornament decorating party. 

If you are in the area and want to drop out of the shopping madness and into your own creative juices, let me know with an email (tillystudio@aol.com). I appreciate the RSVP so I can plan ahead and have enough materials, cookies and cocktails* on hand.

*open to adults and adultish children

I went to the Miami art fairs and all I brought home was some snake oil

All I brought home was some snake oil, a stack of cards, sore feet and aching eyes. But, boy, we had fun!!!

There were so many fairs going on at once, outside the BIG ONE at the convention center, that I had to make some decisions regarding my finances, my tolerance level, and Miami traffic.
Untitled is by far my favorite fair. The tent on the beach glows with diffused light and the art work is smart.

Carl D'Alvia work (its a drawing of one of our sculptures!)

house flipping- a common sight in my neighborhood

burned out rubble of a neighborhood, spelling...

more commentary on Florida real estate?

In addition to clever drawings and sculptures, there was an abundance of good painting. I was intrigued by the works in umber and browns on top of neon yellows and oranges by Karine Hoffman of Galerie DIX9 in Paris. Very beautiful. Yet my favorite works were these crazy clever tight photographs of painted elements arranged with attention to the juxtopositions of shapes, the very edges of shapes forming new shapes, by Erin O'keefe. She calls herself an architect and a photographer and was represented by Denny Dimin of NYC. The work almost took off where de Chirico left off.
Next door in SMAC, gallery from South Africa, were some thickly painted largely smeared portraits by Georgina Gratix of Mexico city. Enjoying her work was all about the viscosity of paint.

There was such an array of materials on display! Miami artist Michelle Weinberg had a rack of bleached jean jackets for sale and for use in a daily collaborative dance performance. She was in the midst of sewing her tattoo designs onto one of them when we stopped by. We had enjoyed her open studio at Fountainhead studios last weekend and it was great to see another side of her art practice.

a series of words cut through almanac pages give new meaning to the map

these porcelain models are absorbed on their cell phones

 Topics such as immigration and technology pervaded much of the works on display. I love the use of different materials... especially the variety of the woven materials. There were woven photographs, woven furniture, recycled toothbrush heads, the plastic bags turned into dresses, and embroidery patches sewn to walls.

A good warning for some of us- but I avoided putting on the ear buds.

After Untitled we lunched with a view of the ocean, and then went into Scope. That fair was full of riffs and humor. My camera started to die, but I did get a few images... I had to wrestle past all the people striking selfie poses with the works.

I had a few "aha" moments... as an artist, as a teacher, and as a human being. I got to see in real life the paintings of Emilio Villalba from San Fransisco who I enjoy on Instagram. I saw art that gave me lesson plan ideas, such as the guy using packing tape on light boxes, Max Zorn in Stick together Gallery. And art that should have been what I was doing like the guy painting portraits out of his ice cream shoppe in BGArt Gallery from Santa Monica! For $80 John Kilduff would "serve up" a custom small 8x 10 portrait of you as an ice ream cone. Apparently he is the host of a TV series called Let's Paint TV. In other acts he paints while running on a treadmill or answering live calls on air. Basically it was a performance and a fun spot for creating a carnival atmosphere in truth.

There was serious stuff to think about such as a lot of art addressing gun control and school shootings. This exhibit gave me pause.

We left the fair in the late afternoon and then found our way, by a few clubs, to my favorite little hotel fair: Aqua. It was dark and the music was pounding. Our feet were starting to really ache. If we didn't laugh we would have cried. At one point we seriously contemplated how we could purchase a $4600 painting by John Sanchez for my son for Christmas. That's when I knew we should go home.
Somewhere along the way we picked up the bottle of snake oil.

The student art show

At the end of the semester we hang our annual juried student art show in the dining hall for one night only. I have the task of narrowing down to 25 works, something from my 72 students. Each of the four art teachers has 25 student works in a 100 work exhibition. I madly try to cut mattes for the chosen works late into the evening before the event.

When I shared pictures of this on social media I got a lot of love from fellow art teachers. They know the routine! We turn a sows ear into a silk purse and we make timid artists feel grand.

The music and the English department collaborated so we have a variety of performances and poetry readings through out the evening.

The work is hung on temporary walls transforming the usually busy cafeteria into a gallery.

I really am proud of the department and have total respect for my colleagues. They are passionate professionals and we work very well together. It has been a great year so far.

Gellatly, guest judge, with the art department

Here closes the books on another semester. Time sure does fly!