as calm as a fruit stand in new york and maybe as strange

SO in the last three months I got married, moved to New York City, started graduate school, and eaten about three thousand avocados. 

After reading relevant literature all day (which included a PubMed search for "human feces"- I'm studying colitis here) I re-discovered secondary structures like this:

which is a piece of this "tertiary structure":

FOR THE NON-SCIENTISTS:

"primary structure" is the RNA sequence (for example: AAAUUGGGGGCGCAU)

"secondary structure" is the way that the RNA can bind to itself to make the types of complex shapes as seen in the first photograph

"tertiary structure" is the way the ribozyme (RNA with the ability to perform tasks like "helping" other reactions just as enzymes usually do) folds in three dimensional space

in other words, I'm back and making work again.

fever to tell

Olivia Jeffries 


I'm always interested in this aesthetic. I like beautiful things. I like thinking about why things like this are beautiful. I like time. I like delicate things. I like pieces of her artist statement about things that move her: "the complex and unknowable nature of reality, an intimate moment which exists for just a second and is then forgotten or the impossibility of feeling how someone else feels..."

and you still refuse to speak

empty vessels

my secret self: you can't always be friendly, there just isn't time

In short: I don't like all of her pieces but I like thinking about them.

Lilac Wine

My drawings have stagnated... I need distance and time and patience. In the mean time, I've been making the mental switch back to painting.

I think one of the hardest and most important questions I ask myself and agonize over is why anyone should invest their time into looking at one of my pieces. I look to the art world, to communication, to process, and to the internet. I've been really interested in the physicality of paintings: a frame with stretched canvas, a wooden board, a piece of paper, a wall... As I searched through the sculpture and paintings section of MOMA's website, I came across...

Hannah Wilke. I don't quite know how I missed her before this. I have seen several of her works (online, in classes, in real life) but never attached a name and persona to the works as a whole.

 thanks for the photo, MOMA

Ponder-r-rosa 4, White Plains, Yellow Rocks

1973

thanks, HannahWilke.com

from her SOS Starification Series 

1974

I don't always love feminist work but I like her. I like her boldness. I like that she was nearly always topless (including during installations). I like that she made things that were both beautiful and meaningful and she used this beauty as part of the piece. Mostly, I like how much thought is evident in her pieces: I feel like the artist thought through every detail of her pieces far more than we could ever know.

They ain't ready for this one nephew

Heike Weber is a German artist who makes amazing pieces like this:

Mardin Kilim 2007

silicone

680x340 cm

Dorotheum 300

2007

permanent marker on vinyl floor

Utopia

2009

permanent marker on acrylic paint

I like this statement about her work:

" The foundation of her work is the idea of a neutral space whose potential is first realized through the drawing and is what consciously positions Heike Weber within the critically reflected tradition of Minimal Art. Judd's cubes, Andre's metal plates or Morris' serial objects had focused for the first time on the referentiality of art to its neutral environs... The reality of the room is confirmed, classically, stroke for stroke, line by line, only the next minute to be thrown out of sync. The gestural input, the physical working on a picture support that expands in all directions, seems to veer towards a momentum that now on its part appropriates the viewer. It is not the object on view that finds its irreconcilable and multi-angled visibility made manifest, but the ‘specific object' that strikes back. "

I feel it all, I feel it all

Untitled

ink on paper, 2005

Sometimes I do everything backwards. Some people have these great artists who they always admire and look up to and their work contributes to some sort of visual conversation with these great artists. That sounds awful to me. Instead, I make things and when I get down or confused or curious or excited I look around to find other people like me. Other people who use the same visual language, or the same medium, or the same scale, or with the same general concept (i.e. time, memory, classification, etc.).

As I was meandering around the internet, I found Katie Sehr.

I can see it. I can see her thinking about time, translation, and intimacy.
I like it. I like that they took forever to make. I like how purposeful they seem. I like the language she uses which is very similar to my own.

Untitled

ink on paper, 2005

30" x 29"

I do

I'm getting married to @TimDennisLive.

Tim proposed in Central Park during my last few days in New York City, and since then my life has been filled with packing, unpacking, more packing, art making, thinking, celebrating, quality time, family, and lots and lots of planning. I promise this blog will not become a blog of wedding-inspiration, but today I'd like to share some images we're using and things we're excited about. We, like many others whose stories can be found on Etsy's Handmade Wedding series, want to celebrate our decision and commitment with our closest friends and family in a way that fits us and our friends. Here are the things we've been looking at and inspired by... enjoy!

 

(thanks, MarthaStewart.com)                                  (thanks, Sufjan Stevens)

   

(thanks, intimateweddings.com)                      (thanks, theknot.com)

Strawberries in the Summertime

I went gallery hopping in DUMBO with a friend this weekend. To be honest, I didn't expect much... I thought it would be ultra-hip and less than inspiring... but I found an amazing gallery filled with prints and books! I think in the face of contemporary art making practices that I struggle with, prints, and books are a way for me to keep a foot in the traditional while exploring the contemporary. I got to think here. These are some images of pieces that challenged me or made me think more about my own art practices and themes.

Donna Maria de Creeft

Ellen Weiner- Blue History

Emily Martin- Siftings

Sarah Stengle- Five Fragments from a Forest Sanctuary

You looked like a swimmer

After a few twelve hour work days, this is my first chance to post about my trip to the MoMA and The American Folk Art Museum last Friday. As I meandered about and inundated myself with the act of looking (as opposed to seeing, which we do all the time) I did something out of the ordinary for me and my sketchbook: I wrote about it.

I feel compelled to share it with you, if only out of a desperate desire for more honesty and more transparency between artists about their work and their process and their thoughts and their inspirations. Here are mine:

"I'm not sure if I'm on the right track or if I'm light years behind. As an artist, I must take comfort in the inherent uniqueness of my work being that it comes from ME and I DID IT. The things I like in these great works overlap with things I love in my own. Logically, I know this is normal, and possibly even a good thing. Themes and stories and patterns that occur and reoccur in art and history are great -- standing the test of time indicates that the content deals with questions of humanity-- yet, I find myself wondering how I can compete with the likes of ERNST and JESS and DALI? With the bookmakers, printmakers, and drawing-based artists who have years of experience, time, funding, training, patronage, and practice?

YET I CONTINUE TO MAKE.

I take comfort in the inherent me-ness of my work. I take comfort in the practice itself. and I take comfort in the knowledge that great artists make crap too, sometimes."

Here are some pieces I enjoyed and wanted to share:
Mona Hatoum (medium: paper and hair)

Rivane Neuenschwander- I love this. The colors, the idea, everything.

MAX ERNST and a biology poster. one of my most surprising finds. and strangely encouraging. (as in, if he can take an actual biology poster and dissociate it from its content this much, then I can definitely use organic-inspired elements and not have them just be illustrative)

I would love to hear your thoughts.

(all photos from MoMA's website)

A Spoonful Weighs a Ton

I've been spending an exorbitant amount of time looking lately: at the MoMA, at the Museum of Folk Art, on the street, and on the internet. Soon, I'll share some of those images with you, but for now... here are some artists I've been looking online whose work I'd like to share:

Chelsea Hertford Taylor

(nefertiti, left + joanie, right)

These watercolors are really fantastic: I can't wait to track one down and see it in person! Oftentimes, I find it a lot more difficult to discuss abstract images, and there's really no reason for it, but I'll try. (I'd love to hear some comments about these pieces or about that feeling of hesitation in front of an abstract work, if you have anything to chime in with!) I love the three dimensional quality these works contain. They're very clearly objects and not just swatches of color. The colors really compliment each other: they flow together, work together, and share the canvas.

Mel Kadel

The reoccurrence of this figure throughout her drawings takes the somewhat abstracted imagery and makes it somehow more personal, more of a representative of an unidentified struggle, and tells a story. 

If you find yourself caught in love

I've frequently run across Justin B. Nelson's work in my internet travels, and I think it's about time to share him with you all.

I'm currently obsessed with tying in my abstractions to something more tangible (side note: I do NOT believe that abstract works need to be tied to realistic images to be successful.. but in this very particular case my imagery would really benefit from an anchor). Nelson tries to do this in an interesting way. Relating abstraction to the figure can be a risky endeavor, and I admire his boldness.

Both photos from www.justinbryannelson.com/

His work is detailed and includes a lot of imagery I love: muscle striations, movement, pattern, abstraction, hair, noodles, and all things detailed and line-driven. I like that our work has similar elements but (at least appears to) come from completely different places and do completely different things.

Just something I've been digesting for awhile, I hope it has a similar effect on someone else out there.

IMPORTANT:

 you can find one of Nelson's pieces at My Love For You's Gulf Restoration Fundraiser! The fundraiser has collected beautiful works from tons of great artists.. and ends on the 5th! So hurry and snatch up some great works for an even better cause.

this is it

It's so good to be back in a lab again. The first few weeks in a new lab are always tough but nothing compares to that unbeatable rush of doing something for the first time, for seeing something new: the same feeling I had as a kid when I first pulled a worm out of the ground or when I learned why the sky was blue or the grass was green.

Today I spent far too long doing an extremely simple task: move 5 worms from one plate to another. But as I sat there and chased those guys around the plate with my little apparatus, I had some of time to think about the connections between my art and science. It's a topic I'm afraid of in a lot of ways. It's a topic that makes me question everything that I think about myself as an artist and as a person (what are we if not perception-ists?). There are times I don't know if my science influences my work, runs my work, or is my work. I don't know if I should even try and stop it any more. More importantly, I start questioning why I make and why I don't just observe. But I can't stop. and sometimes that in itself has to be enough. 

Here are some images that bring out this apprehension: they are some of the most beautiful images I've collected and ones that I come back to again and again.

DNA at metaphase (when you can see chromosomes most clearly. it's the way we all pictorially think of chromosomes: as little Xs) without the proteins that hold it together. So, all of those loops are DNA strands. The skeleton is what the DNA usually holds onto to look like an X.

C. elegans

  

cross sections of C. elegans (1mm worms)

With the game and soul of an old school flick

I'm catching up! So. My birthday was last Thursday, two days before I left. Since then there's been a whirlwind of packing, leaving, loving, and running around. I do want to post this, if only so I remember it more vividly: I had the best birthday of all time.


My parents and I had lunch at Tom's Oyster Bar in Royal Oak followed by super delicious cupcakes from The Cupcake Station in Birmingham: so good!

my new birthday tradition: the pineapple delight cupcake. It has a real piece of pineapple inside!

Then I headed over to Tim's to help set up to have our closest friends over for a small, but perfect, celebration... Aussie-style! We made Australian burgers and had a plentitude of beers to choose from (it was my 21st after all) and after the BBQ we made a fire and all sat around, laughed, talked, played games, laughed, and had the most perfect night I could ask for. The next day I left for Rochester, spent a glorious day with good friends doing fun things (mostly walking around with Dory, the lovable long haired chihuahua), had dinner at my all-time favorite place: Dogtown, followed by an evening of games, music, friends, and fun. I got two perfect birthdays!

 

Bella and I sat on the porch while the guys got things done: I love having Boy Scouts around!

What are Australian burgers, you ask? We made two types: 

1) included cheese, fried egg, beets, sauteed onions, bacon, lettuce, BBQ sauce, burger, and bacon.

2) (pictured) same thing, but with turkey bacon and BBQ chicken. So delicious!

I love when things just work out the way they're supposed to. I love being able to say "the way it's supposed to". In conclusion: best birthday ever. Thanks for indulging me.

for the love of

for the love of PANTONE: just try to NOT want these

Pantone bicycle bag
thanks, designapplause
to go with your Pantone Bike

Pantone Rubix cube (Rubitone concept pieceby Ignacio Pilotto)

and the Pantone HOTEL in Brussels!


for the love of TRAVEL:
I've been daydreaming about traveling around the globe. Brussels ranks high on my list, and this new Pantone Hotel has moved it up a notch. In a perfect world, we could start by visiting colleagues in Prague (ahoj Alena a Petr!), take the overnight to Belgium to explore for a few days and staying in the Pantone Hotel, take the Eurail to stay at the Fox Hotel in Denmark, followed by Tim's dream-vacation in Sweden.

for the love of SWEDEN (goals):
Eat at a smorgasbord with only white-colored foods
Learn the differences (and names) of each of Stockholm's 14 islands
Find Tim's extended family/eat their food
Hike the Kungsleden trail
Buy beautiful, nerdy sweaters

thanks, knitting iris (flickr)

The chills

I love Michele Bosak's new work.

These gouache paintings feel intimate, feminine, and well cared for. They remind me of some books I'm working on about texture. (Yes, books. Books are my solution to my lack of space and money problems thanks to my impending city livin' situation).

Speaking of... 

               I've finally decided on my narrowed-down list of supplies:

               1. This series continued

               2. Books books books 

               3. Watercolor posters: somethings I've been working on for awhile, really detailed line drawings that may or may not become non-traditional prints

               4. The Necessities: a sketchbook to hold all of the my ideas that will undoubtedly involve large, costly materials; pastels, because they fulfill my color mixing needs when I'm away from tried and true paint; and my small-but-nice pencil and pen set that I've accumulated over the years.

it's a lot, but compared to bags and bags of paint, unstretched canvas, paper brushes, lino supplies, and screen printing supplies, I'm totally content. All that stands between now-art-making and then-art-making are four paintings and time. I can't wait!

Sha la la

I can't stop painting, building canvases, sketching, and buying art supplies. Photo updates as soon as I have a camera again. In the mean time I've been meandering around the internet and found this:

photocredit heliotrope

I am color obsessed. This may explain my fascination with these Pantone chairs by Seletti. So cool!