Karen Russell will be the featured artist at the TheDailyCity.com Mobile Art Show # 12 on Thursday, August 19th from 7 to 9pm outside the CityArtsFactory in a U-Haul truck. I first met Karen at a Kerouac House event. She had a dark brooding air about her that lead me to think she must be an artist of some kind. I have since seen her several times around town with her edgy, twisted, expressionistic, figurative work. I am always reminded of one of my favorite artists, Egon Schiele, when I see her work.
I have always loved sketching artists at work in their studios and I decided to make it a personal mission to sketch each artist that exhibits in the Mobile Art Show as a way to promote their work. Karen’s studio is located in a small ramshackle home set back far away from the road. There was a canoe in the driveway and I noticed that all the windows were painted over. When she greeted me and showed me the living room, the windows glowed with vibrant color like stained glass – only messier. There was an empty pizza box on the sofa and I heard a roommate laughing to himself in a back room.
Her studio had two mattresses on the floor, one with red sheet and one with blue sheets. She was working on a huge canvas which was leaning up against the wall. The only way I could get a sketch of her in the tight space was to crawl across the blue mattress and lean against the wall in the corner. On her laptop computer Karen played an online educational program called TED, about the flight of dragonflies across the ocean. Another program about robotics had me so fascinated that I stopped to watch for a bit.
She is working on a huge painting of Sirens. The stark, almost Egyptian poses express to me a constant mortal angst. While sketching, I liked integrating Karen’s arms as she painted, into the fray of gestures. The door and several of the walls had been punched or kicked, leaving large holes. In the hall, her work was hung at an odd angle. I felt like I was in a true artist’s garret. It wasn’t until I got to the bottom of the sketch that I noticed that the sirens were standing on a pile of human skulls, and that their feet were birds talons.
Carl Knickerbocker – Suburban Primitive
I bumped into Carl Knickerbocker at an art opening at the Peacock Room, we started talking art and I asked him if he would mind if I visited his studio and sketched him at work on one of his larger canvases. He told me he had a canvas ready and planned to paint the Annie Feiffer Chapel which is at the Florida Southern College in Lakeland. He suggested I should get there myself someday to do a sketch. Frank Loyd Wright had designed the chapel and he personally supervised its construction. Students from the college who Wright referred to as “Children of the Sun” had helped in the buildings construction.
Carl lives out on the East side of town in Oviedo. When I drove up to his home I knew I was in the right place because one of his Honda Element Art cars was parked on the front lawn. The second I walked through the front door I knew I was in the home of a serious working artist. The living room was used as a storage space for Carl’s huge canvases. Rather than having them stretched, Carl had a seamstress sew loops on the tops of the canvases so that they can easily be hung like curtains.
His studio is located right off the living room in a sun porch. Most of the painting was complete. He just had a few oranges that he wanted to add to the painting as I watched. He used a large painters palette to lay out the pure florescent orange acrylics. He quickly used a palette knife to lay in the color with bold strokes. He then used a hair dryer to dry the paint a bit. He then re-attacked the surface with the knife to get the impasto texture he was looking for. Carl decided he didn’t like the color of Frank Loyd Wrights building so he changed it to a cool blue. He was infatuated with the red steps which lead into the building and these became a very important pyramid shaped element in the final composition. He felt that the building resembled a UFO and so he had it floating above a black ground into which are scratched two Gator-Men.
I asked him how he first came up with the idea of using 3D glasses to see his work and he told me about an artist names Key Scramble Campbell who was a bit of a hippy and a psychedelic artist. Campbell had done his painting to be seen with a black light and he also experimented with the 3D glasses. Carl bought 60 3D glasses for his show at the Museum of Florida Art. This show exhibited many of Carl’s larger pieces. One painting of Mermaids of Wicki Wachi, is stunning when viewed with the glasses. The mermaids seem to float above a sea of deep blue pigment as if you were seeing down to the bottom of a pool of water.
On shelves next to me while I sketches were a bunch of objects which were used in the making of a 6 minute short film called “A Dog Goes From Here to There.” Heather Henson was pivotal in suggesting Carl make this film so she could have it shown in her Handmade Puppet Dreams Film Festival. Carl’s bold painterly style is used as the basis for this amazing short. This film was first shown in NYC on December 6th of last year. It had since made its way around the film festival circuits, including Providence, Atalanta and Prague. Carl said he will submit the film in a few more festivals this year.
Carl showed me around his home and when he opened the door to what was once a guest doom, I saw hundreds of paintings stacked against the walls. He has enough inventory to fill the Menello Museum several times over. He said that now that he is getting older he is focusing more on exhibiting his work in large museums. He recognizes that as he gets older these large paintings will become harder and harder to do. He is racing against time to make his mark. As I got ready to leave, He gave me a car magnet of one of his Crocodile-Men. I now proudly exhibit it on the back of my truck. When viewed with 3D glasses the painting floats magically.
Betsy Dye
Betsy Dye will be the featured artist in the July Mobile Arts Show, July 15th from 6 to 10PM. The Mobile Art Show takes place in a U-Haul van parked across the street from City Arts Factory (29 South Orange Avenue). I exhibited my work in the Mobile Art Show, and had a blast.
Betsy’s studio and apartment has a fresh retro feeling of the sixties and seventies. The walls are painted a submarine grayish green and everything in the place makes you feel like you have stepped back in time. She collects records, that’s right real vinyl, and that collection fills a huge bookshelf in the living room. Arranged by recording artists the albums are all in their original sleeves and she must have the complete works of such groups as the Beatles and Moody Blues. She collects owls and hand crafts owl dolls. On a table in the living room there was a basket full of white rabbits with huge black eyes. These rabbits are cute and yet strangely demonic. Also on the table were a bunch of round mirrors which were framed and encased in old Boys Life magazine adds. The sexist ads were light hearted and very funny. The Bob Dylan poster on the kitchen wall turned out to be a rare collectors item. Only a few of these posters were printed to promote a new record label. Betsy bought the poster for cheap and later researched to find out about it’s history.
Behind Betsy in the sketch is a blue cardboard tube tree that she plans to mount in the truck. She plans to place nests in the tree where she will then place her felt stuffed owls. In the sketch she is painting a sloth onto a wooden plaque. She has a whole series of these plaques which will be hung on the U-Hauls interior walls.
Everything about the space was warm and inviting. Sketching I felt like I had stepped back into a time when things were more tangible and less hectic. Something about the retro feeling of the place made me feel like I was finally sketching in the right time period. I felt so at ease and the sketch just flowed. I experienced a playful feeling of bliss.
As I was working on a second sketch, a friend of Betsy’s stopped in named Gina Yolango. She helped Betsy out by painting several of the cardboard cockoo clocks with a bright base coat of paint. Seated in the corner of the kitchen I really couldn’t see Gina so she never made it into the sketch. Betsy told me to pick out an album from her massive LP collection. I searched the titles of some time until I saw that she had Pink Floyd. The album “Wish You Were Here” was my immediate choice. I delicately removed the album form it’s sleeve and placed it on the antique record player. Lowering the needle was strangely rewarding. The needle gave off a familiar hiss and the album began with its delicate guitar melody. I couldn’t see Betsy working if I sat on my stool, so I stood the whole time I sketched while swaying to the familiar music. Since I was in the living room I was put in charge of the music and I fully enjoyed the responsibility.
Gina finished 2 cuckoo houses and got ready to leave. She gave Betsy a present which was a demonic little voodoo doll complete with pins piercing its blue heart, an earring and stitches for eyes. Betsy loved it and laughed out loud. As soon as Gina left, Elizabeth Cason arrived. She kept Betsy company as I finished off the last of the watercolor washes. When I was finished and showed Betsy the second sketch, she invited me to join Elizabeth and her for a bite. We went to Taco Bell. On the trip back to Betsy’s studio, it started to rain. This wasn’t just any rain, it was epic. On a mad dash back to my truck I was soaked to the bone. Every event of the evening was punctuated with laughter. You will see that humor in every piece in the show. So close up Facebook and come on out!
Tomorrow I will be sketching Jazz, Art on a Summers night at Redlight Redlight (745 Bennett Road) sometime between 7PM and 2AM.
McRae Art Studios Open House
I always love to sketch artists at work in their studios. So when I found out McRae Artist Studios in Winter Park was having an open house, I headed right on over. The first artist I visited was Dina Mack who is an abstract painter who also teaches a course called Destination Journal. Dina had a set of colored pencils that were made from tree branches and we debated for some time how they got the leads inside the pencils. It made sense for them to have drilled out the center then shoved the leads in, but the branches sere gently curved to a straight drill bit would have been useless. I decided they might have grafted the leads onto the sides of trees and let the branches grow around the leads, but that would take too much time. Another studio visitor wandered in and conjectured that the colored pencil leads might have been molten or liquid and allowed to dry, but that still doesn’t account for the hollow space needed to pour the liquid into. Quite simply, it is an unexplainable miracle.
After wandering around a bit I found that there was always a group of people standing outside the studio of Susan Bach. Susan is a potter who makes wonderfully ornate funeral urns and vases. She was demonstrating how she throws a pot on her potters wheel and she sometimes invited passers by to try the wheel for themselves. Hal Stringer, who I had met a few weeks before when he hosted an artists gathering at his home, decided he would give the potting wheel a try. He struggled with the clay at first, using a bit to much brute force to try and keep it centered on the wheel. Susan encouraged his to relax and close his eyes. Then with just his sense of touch he gently began to build the form. He did a fine job, and Susan placed his piece aside so she could fire it and glaze it later.
A crusty old fisherman who used to be a captain of a fishing boat on the Bearing Sea near Alaska stopped to watch Susan work for a while. He told her about how he was the only captain who had an all woman crew in the cold arctic waters. This is a fine example of artists and patrons sharing and learning from each other. This was a fabulous event where it was possible to see artists as they work. I hope the McRae Studios continues this tradition.
Hal Stringer’s artist gathering.
At the last minute I was invited to an artists dinner party being hosted by Hal Stringer in Winter Park. Mary Hill had told me about this event once before but the last time it was held, I was driving down to the Keys. When I entered the first order of business was to walk room to room and look at all the beautiful paintings of Florida landscapes. I bumped into Don Sontag a portrait artist who I first met when I worked at Disney and later at the McARae Studios. There was a self portrait by Don in the living room leaning up against a wall and waiting to be hung. There was a blur of introductions and then I asked if I could dig into the Paella that Phillis Miller had made. I thought I was going to leave within an hour to go sketch another dance rehearsal. I was the first to load up my plate and I went into the living room to eat. I only knew a few people at the gathering and as I ate, I started to feel overwhelmed by the sound of all the different conversations. In a crowd like this I start to hear everything at once with no filter. It gets to the point where I don’t even notice if someone is talking right at me. Mary Hill suggested I take a look at the artist studio in the back yard.
When I went back to the studio I fell in love with the space. It was a tiny little outdoor shack with exposed beams and a warm inviting interior. Inside a table had been set up and people were seated having dinner. The studio also had an outdoor patio with comfortable lawn chairs with a perfect view of the bright half moon. I suddenly realized I had to sketch so I ran out to my truck to get my sketchbook and supplies. The people around the table were, Elizabeth and Joe Ferber, Maralyn Masters, Sharon Osterhold and Jazz Morgan. After they finished eating they started to paint their dinner plates. All of these plate paintings were abstract and very colorful. One finished plate painting can be seen on the fireplace mantle in my sketch.
A few people became curious about what I was up to, so I found myself surrounded with people who wanted to see my sketchbook. As usual, my eyes teared up from the strain of sketching, and I struggled to recover. The host joked about how he took the longest time to join Facebook. He said “This gathering is face time, not Facebook.” Mary came out with a blanket and sat in the lawn chair next to me. We joked for a while about the notion of making a B grade horror film. It is actually a really fun idea that I am now considering doing some visual development for. I was glad I had decided to stay longer at this artists gathering. I got a good sketch and met some talented and inspiring artists.
Confluence
I first heard of Confluence from Brigen Gresh at an opening she had of her work at a show called Lot 1433. At that opening she began talking about a collaboration among 4 women artists. Having tried to collaborate with an artist myself in the past and having failed miserably, I was intrigued by this idea of 4 artists all working on the same paintings. I arranged to meet these four artists at McRae Art Studios in Winter Park as they began to work on these huge paintings. The 4 artists are Brigen Gresh, Dina Mack, Anna McCambridge and Vicky Jones. It was a typical steamy Orlando afternoon and the industrial studio space did not have air conditioning, but that did not slow down these women. Anna immediately got to work mounting a drawing to the panel. Vicky had previously drawn in the feet and Anna used her judgment to balance the two works together. Brigen placed tape along the top edge of the panel and painted in a thin band of light blue reminiscent of a sky. Dina started painting in the corner of the panel a bold warm cascade of shapes with the rhythm and flow of jazz. Vicky is Anna’s mom and these two have a similar narrative, representational feeling to their work. Dina and Brigen both work more abstractly with gentle color harmonies and a delicate balance of shape and form.
It started to rain outside and things cooled down. A train rumbled by outside. Anna backed away from the panel and started to dance to the music playing on the radio. She pirouetted and leaped like a ballerina. When she had finished dancing and everyone had stopped laughing, she said something that really resonated with me. “Collaborating with other artists, when the work is really going well, feels just like being in love.”
Confluence will run from September 25th through November 1st at the Maitland Art Center. They will host a gallery walk on Sunday October 18th at 1PM.