New Work for June 2016

Taking a step back from my usual art-making routine seems to be working. Instead of circling a date on a calendar and working up to that date for a new gallery exhibit, I'm doing the complete opposite for a change.

It's been so long since I really sat down to make art for just myself. Almost every stick of art created over the last 12 years has been for one thing or another, (mostly to keep the lights on, food on the table and records on the turntable.) But lately, I've been able to make some art for me that has no immediate purpose, other than to satisfy my creative curiosity.

I'm still warming my way up back to painting, but in the meantime, I've been exploring more design concepts for print, such as these new black, white and red collages, combining torn and collaged newsprint morphed with faceless human forms. I'm still digging the torn paper aspect, which I started playing with a couple of years ago for one of my last exhibits, and I feel these design collages are stretching my imagination a little more. I'm looking forward to seeing these come to life on paper soon.

The figure of the lower right design will probably look familiar (Marilyn Monore had a pretty distinct silhouette), the one above maybe not so much (think Liz Taylor).

These new print designs won't be all female, there will be some male figures thrown into the mix, but I like the smooth curves of the face, shoulders and hair working with the bottom layer of the newsprint collage.

These newsprint collages were initially used for another project, but luckily, I took some photos of areas I liked before covering them with paint.

An interesting side note: all the newsprint used for these two designs are from November 23, 1963 newspapers, the day after President John F. Kennedy was killed in Dallas (to which our city will never live down, unfortunately.) But honestly, these particular newspapers really have nothing to do with the concept of the design directly, it just so happened those were the newspapers I had on hand to work with. Mostly, I love the ad designs from those old papers, and they finally got put to good use.

I'm still deciding what to ultimately do with these designs once they are printed. I'm leaning towards doing a limited portfolio release, collecting each of the prints in the series and releasing them in a set. Or, the other idea is to just release a book of the designs (depending on how many I end up with) and include one of the prints as part of the package. Either way, these designs will become reality soon, and you'll be able to find them exclusively availble from the artist.

Alright, back to work, I go.