Monday, May 11, 2009

Wow: Sunny

Going through my daily reads (see sidebar), on which incidentally I had gotten a bit behind, I found this incredible artist via the most awesome Dear Ada blog. Her name is Sunny Belliston, and just holy cow! Her skill and versatility bowl me over; I love her sense of color and contrast especially. Check it out!





***

In more personal art news, I am very pleased to announce that I have been invited to participate in a group show at Nahcotta in Portsmouth, NH in August. I'll be including six of my house paintings (all new, most likely, including some NH houses if I am lucky on my next trip there in June).

Need to get painting!

Monday, May 4, 2009

The Incredible Print Show

I had a very busy weekend and was remiss in neglecting to mention again this wonderful exhibition I feel so honored to be part of in Rochester, New Hampshire. The Incredible Print Show at Artstream Studios is on view both online and in person until June 27th. There are 50 artists from around the world showing all types of printed work: linocut and woodcut, photos, silkscreen, monotype, intaglio, etching, digital prints, and more! All the work is for sale and priced under $400, with many available for under $100! There's some amazing stuff.

You can go here to view some of the art as well as gallery installation shots.

I can't wait to see the exhibition in person! (I will be there for the June 6 art walk that happens once a month in Rochester.) But based on what I have seen online, here are some works that especially caught my eye:

Ana Ventura


Heather Smith Jones


Stacey Durand


Helle Jorgensen


Wayne Pate


Along with five others, I submitted this work to the show.

U-Men


***


Photo: CAM staff photographer (Note: You can catch a glimpse behind me [standing] the table o' zines! Click to enlarge)

On Sunday, I had an incredibly good time at the Castellani Art Museum presenting my workshop about zines called Invisible Voices: Zines as Art, to a small but very enthusiastic group. After a short slide show in which I covered a very encapsulated history of zines and talked specifically about old zine friends Emily Lyon, Sonja Ahlers and Emily Larned, we had a quite lively discussion about, among other things, the relevance of the zine format in the 21st century compared with blogs and social networking venues like Facebook. My pal Jan Nagle and I also talked about how we put our respective zine "dummys" together in a very low-key demo fashion, and the rest of the time was spent, understandably, gushing and cooing over the fantastic zines I brought along from my collection (well, actually, I brought my whole collection!) It made for quite a display spread out on a couple large tables. I can't believe I forgot to take photos! Tsk.

It was especially great because the workshop really seemed to spark genuine interest in all those attending (even the curator, Michael Beam!), which included people who had never even heard of zines before. One of my old high school friends who came said she found one zine on the table in particular that she ended up reading all the way through—she liked it so much she couldn't put it down! I think it was a copy of Kyle Bravo's These Are the Days, which definitely warrants such a response. It was really representative of the entire workshop, I think. And while it may not necessarily have produced any future zinesters, I know that someone is surely to become a regular reader of zines, if anything. I saw a lot of eyes sparkling, that's for sure.

Yay zines!