EDITING AND SAVING

Another surfaced that was a stinker. My notes says it was unfinished. Oh Yes! Unfinished, unresolved and ambitious. Measurements were 88" x 40".

1998

I cut out the loom image and glued it to a canvasboard 12 inches square. The welder image got glued to a 20" x 16" canvasboard. I framed WELDER.

LOOM 12" X 12"

WELDER, 20" X 16"

The paint shows no cracking but who knows what may show up later. I think these deserve the "2016" date.    

FOUND ART

This painting I had totally forgotten. The dates on it are 1994 and 1996. What a surprise! So different from my memory of it. It was tightly rolled up but the surface shows no cracking. Acrylic paint really is more rubbery than oils. As I recall, I quit messing with it because I gave up on it. I took it off the stretcher bars so I could use them. I like it now! Wow!

SELF 60" x 22"

 Now to restretch it. That is a job! If I hated it in 1996 and love it now, can I claim "2016" as the execution date? Twenty years to grow on me. I was in NYC at this time. The joined hands, under water is about friendship. The gun, enemies and the sand dunes are from memories of west Texas, Monahans, really.

BLUE HORSES ROLLED

Today I finished wiping off the surface dirt with distilled water on Geraldine's BLUE HORSES, After Franz Marc. 

Before

After

 

 Here are two of the rags I used. They were cut from diapers.

Then I rolled the painting up with glassine then wrapped in bubble wrap. I will now wrap in brown paper and store.

 

RESTORING/SAVING

RESTORATION/SAVING SOMETHING

               Trying to organize MY storage means also to face up to decent storage of my Mom’s art work, Geraldine Clark Hickerson’s art work. Her work had been poorly cared for. These are stuck around my house. I’m vacuuming, wiping away dirt and putting backs on canvases. Then wrapping them for storage. A few will hang in her room at my house.

oh NO! Mold on AMSTERDAM

              The dreaded black mold has attacked two of Geraldine’s paintings. I’ve decided to cut off the mold and save the rest. How? Restretch on new stretcher bars is one possibility. Or I might just roll them up, paint side out, covered with glassine and wrap in an old sheet.

               But first, cut off the mold and see what I have. That’s what I’m up to. Luckily, I am in sunny Texas. Sunlight kills the mold but does not remove their dead bodies. Plus I don’t trust the sunlight to kill every single one of those nasty spores. Surgery.

AMSTERDAM all trimmed

 AMSTERDAM is trimmed but not cleaned and not stablilized on new stretchers.

Blue Horses on picnic table

               When the Blue Horses came to my house in March of 2015, I removed the rotting canvas and stapled it over one of my paintings (I didn’t like all that much, unresolved, an idea not hatching well) as a temporary storage.

Blue Horses stapled my painting.

This is my painting that was covered by Blue Horses.

SALT DOME

 Now I’m trimming to see what I have. It is a different size now. Oops.

               Both paintings are still dirty. Wiping off the loose dirt is next.

TIDYING AND SORTING

Sorting, dusting I found a painting from 2010 that I have no photograph of. I thought "Does a painting exist without documentation?" My notes are unreliable but there is no notation that it has ever been exhibited. I know I kept fussing with it, changing it. So this morning, I photographed then wrapped it. Like a secret or forgotten friend. 

BURKA AND BONES, 20" x 16"

WISHES

The painting of the wishbones might be finished.

WISHES (MINUET) 22" X 28"

I think they are dancing. The demands of this level of invention in imagery is both easier and harder. Mostly, its different

COMMODITIZATION OF ART

In a recent New Yorker article by Calvin Tomkins there was a discussion about the "commoditization of art". It was in an article about the new Metropolitan Museum of Art modern art wing which is actually another building. MOMA has a new building opening in March 2016. The Met has MOMA's old building for an expanded Met modern art department.

This is a detail from one of my small paintings. It is paint. Washes, fat paint, glazes, and changes.

Detail from this painting.

photograph by Christopher Zalesky, Inc.

 I know I am contemporary. I am alive now. I may not be "modern".