“Afloat” Image. Ceres Gallery. New York. Solo Show.
This collage was the signature piece for my “Afloat” show. I used it on all eblasts, the brochure and the invitations.
Archives for posts with tag: Orion Pictures
“Afloat” Image. Ceres Gallery. New York. Solo Show.
Pansies. I love pansies. Here they thrive in the winter. Rows and clusters of them are being planted in huge quantities now at all gas stations, median strips, apartment complexes. People are buying them to put in their flower beds. I am too busy with this blog, I don’t know how I am going to get any artwork done.
But when I see pansies. With their sweet, upturned faces, sometimes shivering in the cold, I turn all Southern and say, “They hung the moon.”
“Afloat” Image. Ceres Gallery. New York. Solo Show.
The basement studio is almost finished. Everything in it is white. Floor, walls, table, brick wall. I am even spray-painting random “junk” items to reside there. Still keeping my studio downtown, which remains my sanctuary.
Everything is crystal-clear in my studio downtown: focus, attention to detail, ideas. It’s a wonderful space, located in an historical building on the National Historical Building Register. Heat is negligible. And in the summer it’s very hot. Peeling lead wall paint and asbestos flooring (which I covered with particle board.) An earthly place. I can totally relax.
There, the floor and walls are white too, as color is important to me. Do you know that surrounding white extracts a small amount of color out of every color? When I paint there, I make the colors brighter. When work is in a gallery, the effect is the same. Hence my desire for white. I wanted to be working on things as they will be seen.
Recently I hung a painting of mine, not too large, maybe 36″ x 48″ in a patron’s (Is that too pretentious?) office. The man has taupe walls and some blue on an adjacent wall. The blue “matched” and the taupe “matched.” It sold the painting. I have to admit, the colors were exactly were the same. My purist preference would have been, to have him appreciate the artwork on its own, which he truly did. But the matching, well you know….. To sell a painting is so wonderful, but to sell one appreciated on its own terms is even better.
Again, white is everywhere. To keep me on the right path.
“Afloat” Image. Ceres Gallery. New York. Solo Show
I am transitioning out of my present blog format for a very good reason: Showing the 100 collages in my current blog format is coming to a close. (We are on “Sixty-Eight”) To make the transition easier, (soon) , I am planning to blog about other art-related things interspersed with continuing to post the “Afloat” collages until I reach the 100. I will ease out of the front and center visual and few paragraphs of copy into something else.
I have a fear of boring my present followers. I am taking a risk. First, I have tried to keep my blog short. And primarily visual. People do not have time now to do anything but scan.
I am scheduled for another solo show in 2015. A solo show requires me to spend at least an entire year to bring it to its conclusion.
In addition to planning what I will do for the blog, I must first plan what I will do for the show.
And part of the blog material will come from experiences with my new studio and my old studio. Successes and challenges with technique and subject matter, (I’ll keep problems with people to a minimum), materials, time, commuting back and forth for supplies and to work.
I won’t show any finished work, I don’t think. Since the exhibition is for that. I will focus on experience and process. Even in my “Afloat” blog, where I showed finished pieces, I described process and sometimes I drifted into memories. This too will happen. I doubt it will be a “How to Put Together a Solo Show” type of thing. I’ll just see how it goes.
I am not ready to break away from these little collages yet, however.
“Afloat” Image. Ceres Gallery. New York. Solo Show.
There is an expression: “walking on air.” It generally means a person is so happy, his or her feet don’t touch the ground. Or that is the way the person feels.
I had this feeling once. It lasted a few months. I could not shake it. I tried, but I continuously felt, literally, that my feet were not connected to the ground.
It was after I had been accepted into a juried exhibition in New York, where Anne Umland, Curator, Painting and Sculpture Department for the Museum of Modern Art had selected one of my pieces for New York exhibition.
I had just started painting seriously, after I had left my full time job in Advertising. I had been in the studio constantly for a few years, working. I saw the ad for this show, applied and got in.
A lot of artists work hard. I am just one of them. Even a former professor of mine said, when I complained of this euphoria, (because, believe me, it became annoying not being connected to the ground!) “Enjoy it now! It won’t last!” Thinking how harsh he was, I kept painting and working.
Nothing on that great a scale has happened since. Similar career achievements and experiences have approached it, but never again did I get that feeling.
“Afloat” Image. Ceres Gallery. New York. Solo Show.
Here I am again, indulging my fascination with tidal waves. And for those of you who have not been following me and my love of depicting natural disasters, here is a picture of a tidal wave about to wipe out a swimmer.
What I like most about this one is the apparent determination of the swimmer in spite of the tidal wave. She is not letting the fact that a tidal wave is coming deter her from her goal.
This reminds me of all those tasks we dread doing and therefore, we avoid them. If only we did not put them off, we would realize how fast the jobs can be accomplished. It is in procrastinating that we do these tasks more than once. Conceptually doing them over and over, rather than merely marching toward them, like the swimmer.
In our minds, we will be destroyed by the task. There is no outcome collage. No way of knowing what happens to the swimmer. So maybe it is best to procrastinate.
“Afloat” Image. Ceres Gallery. New York. Solo Show.
Happy Halloween! Today is the day all of us have the freedom to “be” someone different. To wear a costume and play another role. To either be on the receiving end of candy handouts or the giving end.
Looking at this collage now, I feel incredibly free! The energy with which this dancer is making her leap, arms up, indicating complete abandon! But she is not free, really. Text messages are coming in. They are finding her out in the middle of this American West wilderness.
Be mindful, if you can, this Halloween, to put your phone on vibrate, your computer on hold. To dress up and wear your crown! To leap across the room and be someone else today. It’s Halloween!
“Afloat” Image. Ceres Gallery. New York. Solo Show.
Technique has never inspired an idea for one of my shows. Or even a title for a piece. By the way, titles mean very little to me. It’s a visual medium. If you have to look at the artwork through the lens of what the artist wrote as its title, you are not using the discipline for what it was intended. You are not looking.
A man and a woman walked into my exhibition, “Afloat: An installation” in New York last March. They were an extremely engaging couple. They “got” my work to an extent that no one usually does. We laughed and joked about things and it turned out they were artists.
The woman had been doing some work with crayon and a hair dryer. Blowing the hot wax around. Using acrylic paints as watercolors by watering them down and letting them drip. Artist talk. I enjoyed them immensely. They could see the theme of most of my collages was based on natural disasters. They were inspiring me to use the technique of paint running all over the canvas as something to try for my new body of work.
Mudslides and Meteorites.
“Afloat” Image. Ceres Gallery. New York. Solo Show.
Very recently, I purchased an infrared sauna. Now, this idea came to me from my allergist who told me it would clear the toxins from my body, such as environmental toxins, like metal and plastic. He also told me it would help relieve a sinus problem I have had for a very long time.
I even heard from some metaphysically minded folks that infrared sauna use would eliminate “bad energy.” Such as someone glaring at you in the supermarket, which apparently goes into your system. Or more blatant bad events, like a car accident or a fight with your spouse. Or someone’s jealously that manifests into so-called “thought evil” doing your body harm.
Infrared waves (heat waves) go through the sauna, and unlike a regular sauna, a person doesn’t get as hot. But profuse sweating occurs. The toxins come out of the person’s body by way of sweating. Being in it for a much longer period of time is possible.
It’s a little spooky to imagine these unusual waves are shooting around in this small box. I have seen movies where infrared glasses are used to track down criminals at night. And there are infrared cameras, familiar to us all. A kind of green light is shown.
No green light. Just a regular-looking sauna.
The first day, after being in the infrared sauna, I noticed that food tasted better. After the second day, things got a little weird.
I felt so clear, calm and clean, that toxicity was craved. I needed some crap in my life. I felt this urge to turn on the news. (I never watch/listen to the news) Apparently, my body must be so full of toxins that the absence of them produced this effect. I had two Diet Cokes, not one. Three glasses of wine, not two. I craved bags of m and m’s before dinner. Not like me at all.
Hopefully, we have not evolved to the state where being normal is being full of crap.
“Afloat” Image. Ceres Gallery. New York. Solo Show.
The figure here looks like it is separated from the “background.” With the exception of a few cotton ball wrappers, linking them together. Usually I integrate the so-called background and foreground in collage, painting or drawing, making it one piece.
Hollis Hildebrand-Mills 