“Back of the Garden”

plein aire painting by David Clark

David writes:

“I picked this piece for Sandra Gray because of our mutual interests in plants and gardens.  Sandra has been involved in plants, both wild and domesticated since childhood due, in part, to the influence of her father who was a lifelong botanist.  We both share a love for wild flowers and the wild places that nurture them.  Her garden and her art include many of our beautiful native North Carolina flowers.  She and I have enjoyed talking and trading emails about her flowering gardens and my hiking through glades of blooming wild flowers this spring in the Smoky Mountains.

I enjoy all kinds of outdoor activities, but especially cycling, hiking, and camping.  All of my current art works are plein air landscapes done either around Charlotte or in the Appalachian mountains of the Carolinas, Georgia, Tennessee, ad Virginia.  My work has taken me all over the world including living for extended periods of time in the U.K., Italy, and Russia so those landscapes also appear in my art.  I am interested in meeting other members of the Charlotte Art League that would be interested in plein air painting.”

I really enjoyed meeting David and exchanging paintings.  His work is wonderful and I will think of him when I look at it on my den wall. I have made a new friend.

There is no way a photo can capture the grandure of this panorama

Bloodroot

oil on canvas

16X20

A few months ago I did a painting as a gift for an acquaintance and realized how much I came to know about that person and how much I looked at her in a completely new light.  I realized that doing a painting for someone really brings him or her into focus. That is when I hatched the idea to organize an art swap at the gallery/art league I am associated with.  I thought it would be a good tool for a mixer….a way to get artists to really know each other better and appreciate the talents of one another. We dropped our names in a jar and I divided them up into new members and those who had been members for a longer time. Then I drew the pairs out of those two boxes. We exchange the art at a little party tomorrow evening.

I drew a man who does plein aire landscapes.  His wife is an avid outdoors woman who takes her husband on long hikes through the Great Smokies.  Consequently, my swap partner knows the names of many little woodland flowers and shares the same joy with me over seeing them bloom in the spring.  I would never have known this had I not thought up this project so I think it is successful for that reason alone.  I hope other members have come to be friends. I did this painting for him of blooroot blooming in the early spring.  I used pink and lime green and beigy trees to represent the earliness of the spring but the ground is dark and moist as the delicate white blooms push through the humus into the spring light. The red root on one tree echos the title of the painting.  It is one of my most thrilling experiences to see the spring wildflowers bloom.  I am sharing something integral to who I am with another person in a rather intimate way. I highly recommend it to the rest of you artists. Tell me if you have had similar experiences.

 The magnitude of this place just blew me away.  Ansel had introduced me to it in my youth.  I wanted to see it before I died (or got too old to travel). It exceeded my expectations by thousands of vertical feet with beauty that sucked the breath out of me. There was a calendar picture in every direction.

The Yellowwood (cladrastis) my father gave me is trying to hang on.  Its fragrant blooms are such a pleasure to me every spring.  Obviously it is in the pea family. You can see how much of this tree  is dead.  Still it struggles to survive…..just like its species….lingering precarioulsy on the endangered species list.

These iris plants came from my father’s collection.  I did not get many from him  I should have done so.  He was a member of the American Iris Society and swapped lots of rhizomes of new varieties with fellow members.  This was 50 years ago and these plants are really old.  As the years have passed, I have dug and transplanted the rhizomes and trimmed the old diseased areas.  I don’t know how long I can keep them. They came from my “home place” ….the property I grew up on…. and, through them, I feel a connection to it.

These are hands that I made to exhibit in the Hand to Hand project originated and captained by Cecelia Kane.  They represent the week of March 10-15 2008. Her explanation to me when I joined the project explains it better then I could.  Everyone is welcomed to participate, be you an artist or not, but especially if you are an artist. Here are links to the project that tell more and show the exhibits in the Round Gallery and the Spruill Gallery in the Atlanta area.

http://www.thecontemporary.org/pics/Hand%20to%20Hand/index.html
http://handtohandproject.com/
http://www.accessatlanta.com/news/content/arts/stories/2008/03/31/warartstory_0401.html

Sandra,

I first showed the gloves at the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center in 2005 when it was just me and 3 years of my daily war gloves.
Then I found a venue in Nashville at Ruby Green Gallery last winter to show the whole thing again plus all the collaborative artists’ gloves to that date. The next venue will be at the Spruill Gallery in Dunwoody, GA  March 6-April 26, 2008. I can provide you with 6 of the white cotton photo archivist gloves which I used, or you can use your own if you like. Some artists have used vintage gloves, rubber gloves, military gloves etc. It’s up to you. I have plenty. Just let me know if you want me to mail you the gloves. If so, I will need your snail mail address.

Here’s my explanation of the project:
Background: From the beginning of the Iraq War in March 2003 through January 2006, I painted a news story almost daily on stuffed white gloves. These gloves depict the newspaper headline, the date the story appeared and my interpretation of the event. Each glove is a “rosary bead” in this on-going, meditation of war witnessing. I made no other comment on the war.

Since 2006, I’ve expanded the project to include other artists in a variety of media as a living community dialog. 90 artists so far from Atlanta and across the country have each signed up for a specific week. They have chosen a news story a day during “their week” and created glove-related art works in response.
 
I use gloves because fingers count, and this is a counting, time-based installation piece of unfolding, chronological events. Hands also act for good or evil, construction or destruction, help or hurt. There are about 1,500 gloves to date.
 
Here are the “rules” and process:
 
You will wait for your 6-day week to roll around. (We don’t do Sundays.)
I’ve assigned

You will pick a news blurb or story or headline a day from whatever source you choose.

You will respond artistically to the stories, creating one artwork each day using gloves, or a combo is also possible.

Show the dates on the gloves.

You can be literal or abstract in any medium. Some people are even using sound and animation, plaster, embroidery, photography, beadwork, etc. etc.

Make the installation of your work as easy as possible to install in sequence. Most gloves went up with a pushpin.

That’s it. Ask me any questions you have.

Peace,
Cecelia Kane

Acrylic on Canvas

36X40 inches

Since the art league decided to do a show on graffiti art, I was motivated to think of something different.  Writing on the walls became the theme of my thinking for awhile.  I thought about why people write on the walls where others can see it.   They have something to say?  They just want to be seen?  They like to vandalize?

I have learned that the majority of graffiti artists take their work seriously and are highly skilled at what they do.  There should be more public walls and use of graffiti to engage communities in discussion.  There is a project involving the community in explaining democracy.  Here is the link. http://newsinfo.iu.edu/web/page/normal/6641.html

Graffiti has been recognized in museums all over the world.  The Brooklyn Museum had an exhibit in 2006.  Here are a couple of links. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/30/arts/design/30graf.html?fta=y and http://www.hhnlive.com/photos/more/12 .  Enjoy.

I chose Kilroy because I remember the Kilroy graffiti so well from my childhood. It typified graffiti to me.  It started out saying simply that  “an American soldier was here”. Then it became the joy of many a youngster.

Graffiti writing is a family thing!

Choosing the colors for her own personal tag.

Little artist tags the wall.

See what I drew, Dad?

Father and daughter sharing the fun of this family art event.