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Playing with words - literally - along with classical themes.

Acrylic on paper and silk. 21 x 32 cm.

The Buzz

Recently I have been making molds of old letterpress type. I wanted to say something about words, letters and speech, and remembered seeing discarded letterpress type scattered on the ground at Colonial Williamsburg. I wondered if the Print Shop there had a "hellbox" of discarded type, but they did not. Instead I was directed to look on Ebay by a young woman in period clothing. Somehow this didn't seem strange at all.

I purchased a set of wooden letterpress type of various sizes, as well as a complete set of tiny Copperplate. I also found some old hymn plates. I have no idea what I will do with those at this point but they were too good to pass up. In any case, I made impressions of the type using my gel medium method. I have found that the wooden type makes the best casts. The Copperplate, at font 6, is much too small to be seen through this method. but I have other ideas for its use.

This little painting is the first to be made with the new molds. It also features the impression of a fragment of a small paper wasp's nest. I used this because it was a repetitive and modular shape, like the Copperplate type which underlies the entire painting, but I soon also realized that the "buzz" of a bee or wasp could also be the "buzz" of news, or ideas. The outline of a human ear listens to the sound and tiny Cowrie shells line the edges of other letter forms crowding in from the right.

Acrylic on paper with glass beads and Cowrie shells. 10 x 19 cm.

Law and Art

We had our fresh hearing at the Wayne County Circuit Court on Friday. The Honorable Bruce U. Morrow, presiding. You can read all about it in the new Metro Times article:

Law and Art

I have to imagine that any ruling on this issue presumably will affect everyone in Wayne County, including well-established artists such as Tyree Guyton (the Heidelberg Project) as well as ordinary citizens who wish to decorate their properties as they see fit, and to express themselves according to their First Amendment rights.

Here's to many-faceted free expression!

"That a law subjecting the exercise of First Amendment freedoms to the prior restraint of a license, without narrow, objective and definite standards to guide the licensing authority, is unconstitutional...And our decisions have made clear that a person faced with such...a law may ignore it, and engage with impunity in the exercise of the right of free expression for which the law purports to require a license". Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart (1969).

Crescent

The boy entered the cool, quiet place in the evening. Outside, it was still very hot, but in here was blessed relief, surrounded as he was by thousands of blue tiles painted with swirling designs. He left his worn shoes at the door and began to wash carefully. He cupped his hands together and dipped them into the bowl of water to wet his brown face. He could still smell the freshly ground coffee he had helped to roast and bag all day in the shop a few dusty streets away. It perfumed his hands even through the water. He tasted the water and could detect a taste of the bean. He bent down again to scoop another palmful of water. Lifting his hands he saw dancing there the thin slice of the moon. The light was pouring in from an unshuttered window. He held the moon there, between his two palms and watched it tremble, as if it were cold.

In a dark, falling-down house in the middle of a muddy field, a small girl was hungry. Her mother lit a candle and placed a bowl of thin soup with some pork floating around in it on the table. It wouldn't be enough to assuage her hunger. She picked up a spoon to eat and noticed a reflection of the moon dancing in her bowl. The moonlight was pouring in from the window. There had been curtains once, but they had long ago been torn to nothing by summer storms. It didn't matter. There was no one around for miles. Her father rode at first light each morning in a battered pick-up truck along with seven or eight other men, all hanging on for dear life on the back, just to get to town and find work on someone's farm. The girl sometimes watched from her bed in the corner her mother make coffee for her father before the sky turned rosy. She thought of the coffee as almost a relative, so brown like her parents and so constant the presence of its smell.

The girl held her spoon poised above her soup, transfixed by the sight of the moon trembling in her bowl, as if it were afraid.

.............................................................................

This painting combines two of the recent coffee paintings. To make the connection between the two children I glued glass beads, abalone shells, coins and coffee beans in a rough crescent shape over the image of a market, other moons that resemble the shape of a coffee cup stain, and navigational charts.

The girl's dress fades into the plank walls of the shanty.

Acrylic on paper, with cotton, silk, glass beads, abalone shells, and coffee. 30 x 56 cm.

Good Morning

Sunrise over a half-frozen lake. January 12, 2009

Spark

One hand holds a quill pen; the other fires a flintlock pistol. The percussion from both echoes like horses' hooves or a thundering surf.

This painting presented a challenge in obtaining the molds. I used my own hands holding a paintbrush and a toy flintlock pistol - the type one would use when dressing up as a pirate. Since I work alone in my studio, there was no one to assist in placing the Amazing Mold Putty around my hands, but I managed anyway. After the molds were set, I filled them with gel medium, as discussed in the coin demonstration (see entry: "To Coin a Phrase" 3/4/08.)

It took FOREVER for the deep molds to dry and finally I got impatient and pulled them out. The trigger finger on the pistol mold was still quite wet and goopy. No matter, since I like the rough and imprecise accidental results and I simply formed an approximation of a finger in more gel medium and allowed this to dry free of the mold for a couple of days.

I glued the pieces onto my usual Arches printmaking paper and added some text from a reproduction copy of the Virginia Gazette in which the Declaration of Independence was published for the first time. I placed this text into the body of the horse. Four other tinier horses were destined for the waves (a recurrent theme of mine.) They swim over tea which rests at the bottom of the sea. A white feather worked into the gel created an almost-real quill pen.

It wasn't quite enough, so I added a sidebar of reproduction Colonial money and some feathers to give the sleeve of the pistol-holding hand some visual length. There is a pale face silhouetted in cork paper over the money. The lines of this small face flow into the lines which describe the waves.

Click on any photo for enlarged view.

Acrylic paint on paper with 22K gold leaf, feathers, cork and tea. 60 x 30 cm.

"X" Marks the Spot

17th-century Virginia gravestone after a rainstorm. No other markings left visible.

Norfolk Salute

My son receiving his Petty Officer Leadership Academy certificate from Captain Kelly M. Johnson, USN Executive Officer, Naval Station Norfolk. To earn this certificate he had to attend POLA training during his Christmas holidays. There were extra benefits to such a sacrifice, however. He was made team leader of his section. He was flown in a C2 cargo plane during aircraft carrier landing practice ("Touch and Goes") and spent New Year's on the carrier. Shopped at the NEX and experienced camaraderie with Petty Officer candidates from all over the country. Carried the US flag in the color guard during the graduation parade across the base.

Now, how cool is that?