THE PEOPLE'S GALLERY, 2018, CITY HALL

The painting AGATHA will be in city hall this year!! HOORAY! It will be out in a peculiar place where the uninitiated might notice! I am so pleased, honored, thrilled!!!!!!!!!!!  That is a big honey bee in the lower right, about 11" x 14". The century plant is only 60" tall in the painting but it was done from a real plant 42 feet (yes, Feet) tall. 

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Dear Melanie,

On behalf of the City of Austin Cultural Arts Division, I am pleased to inform you that your artwork, listed below, has been selected for the 2018,  14^th annual People’s Gallery Exhibition at Austin City Hall...."  

"Giclée" OKAY. ARCHIVAL BUT...

Layers and layers of paint, built up like building a house. Giclees don't match. Paint is transparent, layered, goopy and slopped on a surface.

GRACKLES DANCING

Changing a painting is also figuring out what it is all about. Painting from the inside out can be painting out of that big mystery that is inside oneself. But fun. This Strutting Grackle needed a smile, I felt, then a dolphin, I felt.

 Now I look at it and "Oh! It's about this administration stomping on the environment or the world or like that!"

I'm still fussing with it but it is ALMOST done, cooked, resolved. 

Okay! Got It.... The PRESIDENT AND HIS 
CABINET. Love it~

CHINATI WEEK-END

I just read about Chinati Weekend in Marfa  on the GLASSTIRE website. This year, 2017, October 6-8. One of the critics commented that her first visit to Marfa was for a whole week which was a bit much, especially for a first visit. She drives from Dallas the long way and it takes 10 hours to get there. I just cannot get excited about Marfa and minimalism in the desert. Four years of my childhood (plus another 3 years here and there in my life) in that high desert cured me. Yes, when the desert blooms (once every seven years or so) it is beyond words or photographs or anything other than experience. The stars at night in that black sky are magnificent. But like the critic said, a week out there is a bit much.
                                                       

A CIVIC TRAIN MAYBE

It is made of cement. Not big. About 2 feet tall and length of 4 feet or so. My great campus manager, Linda Haywood, wants to put one on campus. There are committees, forms and permissions to get for the project. I've started sketches and ideas. My first idea was just about an abstract ground for the engine. Rainbow colors dancing.

 Linda has made some GOOD suggestions. Collaboration can be powerful. She bought one of my paintings years ago called BREAKING WALLS. 

BREAKING WALLS, 2006, 20" x 16"

She thought I could use some of that idea. I think I can put it on the front. Change the rainbow. Linda also suggested travel stickers to suggest going places for the students.

I think I could suggest motion. so the idea is evolving. Linda also suggested education instruments like formulae and beakers. Those can be added. The "canvas" is about 12 feet by two feet so there is room.

I haven't seen the object yet. Just photographs. I need more measurements to do a good maquette.

ACC CYPRESS CAMPUS

Hooray! I'm back at ACC Cypress Campus which is a very art friendly campus.
This morning I hung four paintings in the hallway. Soon I will have student work to put up in the hallway, too.

One painting has been changed, a new iteration of the painting.

WINDS OF CHANGE, 30" x 24"

The Civil Rights Movement gave trail-blazing guidance to the Women’s Rights Movement in this country by demonstrating the cost and courage required for changing the power structure.

#98 (CERTIFICATION), 32" X 20"

These blocks are visuals for any of the many inescapable problems in a life. The doll could be women or childhood or innocence of individuals against the forces of life and culture.  

SUN WITNESSES, 28" X 36"

Ruins of civilizations are behind a grid of wild sunflowers, birds; wild things that don’t need humans. Vast expanses of a peculiar desolation

still holds remnants familiar and not. I was thinking that if some water and land persists, the remains of the human footprint will be ancient, broken, stone buildings and broad expanses of contamination.

SALT DOME (GEOTHERMAL ENERGY) 36" X 48"

               Salt domes are bubbles in the earth’s crust that are heated by the earth’s core. They are potential sources for geothermal energy with negligible pollution of the environment.