Wide Eyes Studio

Little books and More

2017-06-19T08:04:00.000-07:00

Last Fall I created a series of tiny books as companions to the Fading Boys exhibit and a series of boxes on flight and surveillance.

This year I am working on two new series of work: "Movements of Night" and "Pale Memories". Somewhere in the middle of design work for those two series, some sculptural designs for new books arose:

It will be interesting to make these metal, fabric and clay books.

My next shows are:

Closing of Merchants of Reality

Come say goodbye to the denizens of this inspiring artist collective
285 9th Street at Folsom
July 2-3 11 am to 7 pm
Reception Saturday July 1, 7 pm to 11 pm

Movements of Night

SF Women Artists Gallery
July 4 to August 5
Opening Reception July 6

Pale Memories

Artspan Open Studios
SF Women Artists Gallery
October 2 to November 4
Opening Reception October 5
Open Studios Weekend October 21-22

December 2016 Shows

2016-12-08T09:50:00.000-08:00

December is a wonderful and busy month!

Fading Boys this Saturday night:
Conception Arts Pop-up
Laughing Monk Brewery
1439 Egbert Ave @ 3rd St
San Francisco
5-10 pm
Including the above brand new box!

email me for tickets!

Studio Gallery Tiny Show
1641 Pacific Ave @ Polk
Open Daily 11-7
Show through January 2017

Great Highway Differing Feathers Show
3649 Lawton @ 43rd
Open Thu. & Fri. 12-6, Sat. 10-2
Show continues through December 31

Problem Library San Francisco Scenes
1288 15th Ave. @ Irving
Open Weekends 11-7

No Innocence Under Surveillance

2016-11-19T09:27:00.001-08:00

This work was started in response to the ever-increasing erosion of our humanity and personal independence by sophisitcated surveillance tools built by Silicon Valley for global corporations. That protest was put in perspective by the results of the 2016 presidential election. It brought us rule by another set of ultra-rich, bouyed by millions of violent hating voices and actors who threaten each of us and who, with their deafening cries, have reached in and ripped out the foundations of the American way of life using the powerful American act -- the vote. Oddly, Silicon Valley is shocked and dismayed by the rise of this regime even as they, "the elite", are building surveillance tools that destroy our humanity as surely as any hating rioters would.

This work is currently on display at Merchants of Reality

November and December 2016

2016-11-03T14:51:00.001-07:00

Fall into Winter.

Everyone who visited my shows this October made it the best, best experience! Thank you!

For November and December, I move away from the hectic pace of Open Studios. Getting back into the studio to start new projects, getting together with my printmaking friends at Chrysalis Studio, and all the wonderful eating we have in store for us as the holidays come over us.

I am happy to say that I will be showing work at a couple of galleries that are new to me, as well as continuing at Problem Library and Merchants of Reality.

Here are my shows for the rest of the year. I would love to see you there!

Tiny
Studio Gallery
Group Show
November 11 to Mid-January
1641 Pacific @Polk St.
San Francisco
Reception: November 13, 1:00 pm to 6:00 pm
Party: December 4, 1:00 pm to 6:00 pm

New Monotypes
November 15, 2016
Chrysalis Studio
Group Show
SOMARTS
934 Brannan @8th
San Francisco
Reception: November 15, 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm

Nourish
November 8 to December 2, 2016
SFWA Artists Gallery
Member Show
647 Irving @8th Ave.
San Francisco
Reception: November 10, 5:30 pm to 8:00 pm

Differing Feathers
December 1 to December 31, 2016
Great Highway Gallery
Group Show
3649 Lawton @43rd Ave.
San Francisco
Reception: December 3, 6:00 pm to 10:00 pm

CONTINUING

Fading Boys
Open Saturday, November 12, 2:00 pm
Merchants of Reality
285 9th St @Folsom
San Francisco

San Francisco Scenes
Weekends through November
Problem Library
1288 15th St. @Irving
San Francisco

A couple of photos from Open Studios at Problem Library:

October 29-30

2016-10-29T10:23:00.000-07:00

Artspan Open Studios in the Sunset District
IT IS NOT RAINING IN THE SUNSET THIS WEEKEND!

My San Francisco Scenes and tiny books are featured at Problem Library this weekend.
Problem Library
15th Street @ Irving

Open 11-6 Saturday and Sunday

The galleries in the Sunset District are all having events this weekend in celebration of Open Studios: The first Sunset Art Crawl. You can pick up a map to the Sunset Art Crawl and Open Studios Guides at any of the locations.

Problem Library

1288 15th Ave. @ Irving

San Francisco Women Artists Gallery

647 Irving St.

Western Relics

1400 Irving St.

A Little Lodge

1306 12th Ave. @ Irving

Whistle

1311 16th Ave @ Irving

The Great Highway Gallery

3649 Lawton St. @ 43rd

3 Fish Studios

4541 Irving St.

Irving Street Projects

4331 Irving St.

Far Out Gallery

3004 Taraval St. @ 40th

Woman with Raven triptych and other monotypes are featured in the Salon of San Francisco Women Artists Gallery:

My Fading Boys exhibit at Merchants of Reality was so beautiful. I am so grateful to the many wonderful folks came out to see the show. Here are a couple of shots of the event. It will be up through mid-November, gallery hours on weekends.

October 21 to 23

2016-10-17T09:00:00.003-07:00

Reminder:

Reception tonight, October 21, 7 pm

Merchants of Reality

285 9th Street @ Folsom

San Francisco

Show Continues October 22 and 23, 11 am to 6 pm

Fading Boys
On the subject of homeless and runaway boys: boys who have been coming to San Francisco probably since San Francisco began.

I will be showing a collection of work on this subject this weekend, October 21 to 23 at Merchants of Reality. There will be new boxes, tiny books, monotypes and oil drawings.

The opening reception is at 7 pm on Friday, October 21.
The show continues October 22 and 23, 11 am to 6 pm

Merchants of Reality is at
285 9th Street @ Folsom
San Francisco

Eight other wonderful artists will be showing also.

Thanks to everyone who came out to my opening at SFWA Artists Gallery in the Sunset.

The ravens got a very good reception!

Fall 2016

2016-09-26T12:59:00.000-07:00

I have had a website since 1995. Back then it was the "Strapless Magazine," hosted by a fox-headed woman in a cocktail dress. I used to say, "It doesn't really exist if it is not on the internet."

I feel that, maybe, I haven't been existing in all possible planes this year: the twilight of surgery in February, bouncing around cities in the Spring (Chicago, Washington, D.C.), still foggy from that twilight and with quite a limp, seem like some fantasy, someone else was there for all that.

I returned to San Francisco and fell into an obsession, madly drawing lost boys, street fashion, birds and more birds.

My website, www.wideeyescottage.com, has been inert all year. I have written all my interesting blog posts in a spiral sketchpad where they just keep piling up without really existing here on the blog. (They seem to be nudging each other inside the cover of the sketchpad, smirking and squirming around like some naughty kids left waiting too long.)

And now it's October when I start having lots of shows. All the images and obsessed ideas are being stuffed into frames, into boxes, under glass, photographed, described, judged. And finally, sensing the next lap, I write here. I update wideeyescottage.com, I post @jzjade, I make postcards, get published in Artspan Open Studios Guide.

I think I will introduce the shows in more detail in upcoming posts, here I will list them in invitation: Please come by and see what I and my fellow San Francisco artists have been doing this year!

Fading Boys
Merchants of Reality
October 21 to 23
285 9th At @ Folsom
San Francisco
Opening Party:
October 21, 7:00 - 9:00 pm

New Work
Artspan Open Studios Exhibition
October 7 to November 6
SOMARTS
934 Brannan @ 8th
Reception
October 6, 6:30 to 9:00 pm

Neighborhood Scenes
Problem Library
October 1 to 30
1288 15th Street @ Irving
San Francisco
Opening Party
October 28, 5:30 - 9:00 pm

A Woman and Her Raven
SFWA Artists Gallery
October 1 to October 30
647 Irving @ 8th
San Francsico
Opening Party
October 28, 5:30 - 8:00 pm

New Monotypes
Chrysalis Studio
November 15
SOMARTS
934 Brannan @ 8th
Reception:
November, 15 7:00 to 9:00 pm

Hot Press: January 2016 Monotypes

2016-02-06T15:30:00.000-08:00

Below are some new monotypes. I printed these at Chrysalis Studio at SOMARTS on my birthday, January 24, 2016.

Woman With Crow

Street Scene

Wonder

Nightmare

I will be taking a little break from writing here, as I will be having surgery on my ankle. But, there are some interesting posts coming: "Holding a Story in Your Hand", "Music and Telepathy", "Landscape: What do we want from Nature?"

Also, a play.

Thank you all for keeping in touch through Wide Eyes Studio Blog!

Monotype Discoveries

2016-01-28T11:36:00.000-08:00

Someone told me their nightmare.

That's not how anything started, but that's how something interesting continued.

In April, 2015, I began a series of black and white monotypes, the subjects of which are people.

Like my concert drawings, this series has its rules. All prints are painted in process black ink on the same 20" x 16" monotype plate. All use the same set of brushes. Each monotype is derived from a very rough sketch that can be interpreted in different ways. Each is printed on 30" x 22" Rives BFK paper.

When I was at a sleepover workshop at The Headlands Center for the Arts, I did nine tiny doodles of people in an urban setting. In November, 2015, I used these doodles as the source for several new monotypes (Hot Press).

For the January, 2016, session, I thought I might use the same set of sketches and re-interpret them. I came to Chrysalis Studio at SOMARTS prepared with the brushes, the paper, the monotype plate. And the enigmatic drawings.

Then the interesting thing happened.

Someone told me their nightmare: A woman was on a bed in a shabby rooming house and several men were standing around the bed ridiculing her. Another man, our dreamer, was standing and watching.

Having set up to paint the first plate, I used the same source drawing as I had used in the November session (for the print "Well"). With the nightmare in mind, a different image emerged.

As you may know, I am very dedicated to the sense of story in all my work. Each thing I make has to make sense in a narrative way. In my mind, each of these monotypes has their own story. But, now that I am looking at them, I see that there is something similar in their stories, something that comes from the source image: a sense of someone looming, or dominating, in a very dark way.

I think the story of the first print, "Well", is one of a person being exploited by a larger person, one who is expressing dominance, and even possibly ownership. The story of the second print, "Nightmare", is the story of the nightmare, a woman being ridiculed while someone more powerful looks on.

Originally, I thought of the source sketch as being of some cool guys standing around together. But, it seems that underneath the juxtaposition of the standing and seated figure, with the passive figures in the background, has developed, in my mind, a kind of menace.

Something else interesting emerged. Something that a more experienced printmaker would already know and make allowances for: We might well "read" a narrative image the same way we read a printed story, from left to right.

One thing that a printmaker has to get used to is that each print is the mirror of the image on the plate you made. Someone standing on the left in the image on your plate, will be standing on the right in the final print.

In the print "Well", the reclining figure, which I think is a young man, but most people see as a woman, is looking left, toward the looming figure; the story reads from left to right. In "Nightmare", the woman is not looking at the accusers or at the looming man. He and they are looking back across the image, from right to left, at her. I find that this makes my eye go back and forth. Does that weaken the story? Does it create tension, or just make the image hard to interpret?

If I had thought about this, I might have built the image on the plate in the opposite direction, to tell the story of the accusers and the man acting toward her. Of course, my process is set up to allow a great deal of spontaneous composition, so this kind of forethought doesn't happen very often.

You can see "Well" starting February 10, 2016, at San Francisco Women Artists Gallery, 647 Irving St, San Francisco, in their "Icons" themed show.

But, wait! What's a Monotype??

2015 Part 3: Making 50 Boxes in 2015

2016-01-08T12:38:00.000-08:00

Each summer, Sanchez Art Center gives artists the opportunity to make fifty artworks, 6" x 6" in size, one each day for fifty days.

For this show, I wanted to make fifty boxes using drawings I had made of people around San Francisco and Northern California.

In March, when I got the call for artists, I started to pull together images and ideas from among the drawings. I made a 6" x 6" square in the same place on uniformly sized pieces of paper. Each box design was prepared on this paper. I hung the sheets in a grid across the wired wall in my office so I could see all the designs together.

I needed more than fifty designs, as I knew some ideas would not work out. I ended up with 55 designs. Even though I had all the source drawings, it was clear that it would take work to turn source ideas into designs that made sense, then into drawings from which I could work.

Making Fifty Boxes
This was the excitement. I thought about each image. How does it make sense? What's the story? How does the composition work to tell the story? I wrote about the box: description of the location and text for a secret message to be included with each box. The excitement was physical when the conception came together, when I could feel the meaning and the relationships.

The grid on the wall grew as I developed ideas. The kind of work the sketches needed was conceptual. They needed story, action, humor and attitude. When I hit on those attributes, it was a rush!

That's why this project was so fine. It had tension building while I was finding solutions for story, form, relationships, construction, composition, color. It had resolution when I finally got the right story, color, relationship, and ultimately the gestures of the figure, the clothing design, the respective positions of the figures, the directions of their gaze, the shapes and emotions in their gestures.

All these strong feelings fifty times in succession. Every day, every day for months.

Fifty drawings, fifty color studies, fifty locations, fifty stories, fifty emotions, fifty sets of outfits, fifty landscapes, fifty wood boxes, fifty plexiglass fronts, fifty titles, fifty secret messages, fifty signatures. And, 101 figures!

Fifty Completions

At the time I did not enjoy the moment of completing each box. There were many difficulties with closing up the boxes. I had built the inside of the boxes completely during the fifty day period. I left the addition of the front plexiglass to August. Problems with the way the figures were fixed into the boxes began to show themselves as I was attaching the fronts of the boxes. Many failed.

I actually feared each completed box and did not want to look at it.

The installation at Sanchez did not go smoothly.

But now, I admire the completeness of the project and its components.

The experience of having completed something, and something worthy, repeatedly, fifty times, was very much like building a skill through repetition. Finishing a work of art is something I learned how to do.

Postscript:
I have been delayed in finishing my summary 2015 posts by a broken ankle. There are a couple more posts I will be making to round out my comments on the amazing year. I usually don't include this kind of personal comment in my blog posts, but a physical injury at this time, in the midst of writing these posts, makes me realize how emotionally dangerous it feels to write about and publish intimate details of my studio process. In the past month or so I have received many notes from readers and friends telling me how much they enjoy reading this blog. I appreciate being able to connect with you and share my experiences. Thank you all for your continued support! More to come!

2015 Part 2: Stuff I Never Told You About Boxes

2015-12-16T09:11:00.001-08:00

This is a story of what I've done and what I've as yet only imagined. Of how I never imagined I would do what I ended up doing.

It is also about how meaning and story elevate a thing into an experience.

When is it Real? Boxes I Have Not Made (Yet)

I've been collecting handmade boxes since about 1967, when I bought one at a craft fair. My dad picked up on this and gave me some nice ones over the years.

Around 1992, things were changing for me and that gave me a sense of freedom and possibility. I drew some boxes I wanted to make. I had the high idea of crafting them of silver.

In the fall of 2014, things that were set in place in 1992 seemed to come to completion. I was very happy about leaving software design and development permanently after working 30 years in the field. I was becoming an artist full time.

One of the unhappy aspects of making software is how fast everything changes. The world it operates in changes so quickly that products become completely unusable in just a few years. Very little of what I had made in those three decades could be run on current devices. The businesses I had worked for had transformed, the consumer products I had worked on had their day in the market.

There were a few interactive projects I had developed on my own. I wanted to continue to share and expand them. What would be the point of rewriting them in some new environment, where they would soon become unusable?

I began to imagine bringing these projects out of the virtual and into the physical world.

I have a lot of opinions about how both electricity and digital information are not sustainable. But, I am not going to argue them here. Those opinions inspired me to start working on certain kinds of project designs with real-world, non-electrical, interactivity.

One of these projects has to do with poetry generation -- not natural language generation, but specific poems with thousands of possibilities.

Others have to do with discovery, divination, unlocking, and, of course, stories.

Some are boxes, others are performances, like "The Color Game" performed a few years ago with a group of visual artists. The most recent of these performance-based pieces is a work-in-progress, a theatrical piece with disjuncted storytelling.

I started to design the inner workings of the poetry generation box in February, 2015. By March, this project was interrupted by another, very compelling project: Sanchez Art Center 50/50 Show.

Past and Future Meet in the Present: 2015

2015-12-07T14:18:00.000-08:00

Part 1

It's December of an amazing year. I turned 60 at the beginning of the year. 2015 might have gotten so jam-packed with amazing experiences because the moment energized me, reminded me not to fade.

Having arrived at December, I am thinking about the projects of 2015, getting an understanding of what happened, and imagining how they might seed the projects of 2016 and beyond.

I will be writing about all that here in the next few weeks. The blog is a very good place for a quiet person to admit what she is thinking and doing. Since it's public, it gains some clarity and honesty. I think successful projects have those things -- self-awareness, clarity and honesty -- to steer the driving forces of passion, recklessness, courage, curiosity, determination and skill, toward actually getting something done.

I'll be writing about things like music and telepathy, the long tunnel of dream, buttons and guns, longing in printmaking, electricity, holding a story in your hands, direction of gaze and emotional response, and also, what I didn't make!

I will be announcing the posts on Facebook and through my email list. If you have found yourself here at the blog and want to get email notices, just let me know through the email at the right.

P.S. I thought someone else might have said something like "Past and Future meet in the Present", so I looked it up. Here is the first part of a poem by Siegfried Sassoon, English poet and soldier of the First World War:

In me, past, present, future meet
To hold long chiding conference.
My lusts usurp the present tense
And strangle Reason in his seat.
My loves leap through the future’s fence
To dance with dream-enfranchised feet.

(Not my cup of tea, really. It's odd to feel that a poem about time could be anachronistic!)

Hot Press

2015-11-16T11:46:00.000-08:00

I made some exciting new monotypes yesterday at Katie Gilmartin's Chrysalis Press.

They are based on some drawings I made a couple of years ago at Headlands Center for the Arts. I was out in nature, but the drawings were very urban. Sunday's prints seem to mostly be about relationships and urban life.

Below are three of the six prints I made. The plate was 20" x 16", the paper, 30" x 22".

Well...

She

Guys Downtown

Concert Drawings and The Boxes in the 50/50 Show

2015-08-13T12:10:00.000-07:00

Here's a followup of my earlier post on Concert Drawings informing the boxes I made for the 50/50 show.

The boxes related to the Bay Area New Music scene are below:

Dispersing Birds
"Dispersing Birds": From the Sunday, February 15, 2015, performance at Mare Island by Voicehandler. (box photo above)

Dispersing Birds

Concert Drawing: February 15, 2015, Voicehandler

Flutist
"Flutist": From an exhibition and recorded performance of a resident artist at Headlands Center for the Arts. I wish I had made a note of who the performer was, but I didn't.

Flutist

Performance
From a performance at the Art Institute Graduate exhibit at The Old Mint a couple of years ago. I did not make a note of the performer's name.

Performance

Coastal Dream
From the Sunday, February 15, 2015, performance at Mare Island by Gretchen Jude.

Coastal Dream

Concert Drawing: February 15, 2015, Gretchen Jude

Secret Duck Receiver
From an October 2014 performance by San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra, one of Mark Alburger's UFO compositions.

Secret Duck Receiver

Concert Drawing: October 4, 2014, Mark Alburger

You can see all 50 boxes at:
Sanchez Art Center 50/50 Show

Opening Night
August 28, 2015
VIP Preview (Tickets) 6 pm to 8 pm
General Reception 8 pm to 10 pm

Run of Show
August 28 to September 20

Location
Sanchez Art Center
1220 Linda Mar Blvd.
Pacifica, CA

How to See All 50 Boxes

2015-08-10T15:44:00.001-07:00

Sanchez Art Center 50/50 Show

Opening Night
August 28, 2015
VIP Preview (Tickets) 6 pm to 8 pm
General Reception 8 pm to 10 pm

Run of Show
August 28 to September 20

Location
Sanchez Art Center
1220 Linda Mar Blvd.
Pacifica, CA

There is more to the 50/50 show at the Sanchez Art Center than just my 50 boxes!! Sixty-three other artists have participated in the demanding task of making one artwork a day for fifty days.

I love this show and attend every year because of the incredible variety of work and the inspiring ideas of the artists. This year there will be ceramic tiles, paintings of Sutro Tower, found object sculpture, delicate folded papers, something about bones, a book about gnomes, paintings of the sea and so much more.

All of the work is 6 inches by 6 inches. All is reasonably priced.

Sales are "off the wall," so each piece purchased will be taken home at the time of the purchase. What that means to people who want to see the collections in their entirety is that they will have to arrive early. This makes the VIP preview tickets very handy (they're only $20).

You may have been following my progress on Facebook or Instagram. Only 25 (half!) of the boxes have had their picture published in social media.

Here are the top five boxes by popularity on social media:

Cat Flit

Dispersing Birds

Graffiti

Swim

Barista

I hope to see you at Opening Night!

Jade

Terry Riley Concert Drawings

2015-08-03T08:34:00.000-07:00

We attended the Terry Riley Festival by Kronos Quartet a few weekends ago. It was three nights of Terry Riley's music and music by other musicians celebrating Terry Riley on his 80th birthday. It was my first outing at the new SF Jazz Center, and I loved the sound of the room there.

I drew all three nights. As you may know, I draw at sound, noise and music performances that don't have their own visual component. That means drawing in the dark, without being able to see the paper. It is very pure drawing, very pure experience and I learn so much from it. Both abstract and representational images emerge. Under these conditions, certain elements of drawing tend to drop out, like dynamic range -- lights and darks -- and the shading of shapes and connecting up of lines.

Sometimes, during intermissions or right after concerts, I may fill in some shading or shadows or connect up lines to delineate shapes. For the set of Terry Riley Festival performances, I did not alter the drawings after the performances, as there were interesting aspects to the gestures caused by the music that I did not want to lose.

Friday and Saturday night I made one drawing for each piece performed. Sunday night, during Salome Dances for Peace, I was sometimes able to start a new drawing when a new movement started, but sometimes I just turned the page when I felt the music changing. There were 21 drawings from Friday and Saturday and 17 drawings from Sunday.

Interestingly, throughout the three nights of music, across most of the drawings, visual themes emerged: fecundity, female images, plants and a particular view of the earth from above, but not too far above. I am not going to guess why this large body of music brought forth a seemingly singular visual theme, except to say that it was somehow there in my experience of the sound.

Sunday was the first time I heard Salome Dances for Peace in its entirety. I heard or read that Kronos Quartet had to practice both discipline and stamina in order to play it all in one night. My experience was that I was hearing a great deal of music, and that I, as a listener, would learn how to hear it over time, listening to it in the years to come.

Another piece that was especially inspiring was Yoko Ono's To Match The Sky. Somehow the music and instructions together were like a prism, faceting out more and more images and ideas and experiences though the music sounded still and clear and simple.

So here is a small selection of the drawings. There was so much music that weekend that I haven't included all the drawings I thought were interesting, just a few.

One Earth One People One Love, from Sun Rings, Terry Riley

Baba O'Riley, Pete Townsend

To Match the Sky, Yoko Ono

Earth Whisperers, from Sun Rings, Terry Riley

A Rainbow in Curved Air, Terry Riley

I Like Your Eyes, Liberty, Terry Riley and Michael McClure

Crazy World, Terry Riley

The First Pancake, Gyan Riley

The following from Salome Dances for Peace, Terry Riley

A Peep at the Boxes

2015-07-15T09:57:00.000-07:00

I am still making the tiny (6" x 6") boxes, working toward 50 of them by the deadline for the Sanchez Art Center 50/50 art show that opens at the end of August.

I have to find a pleasing way to arrange them in seven rows of seven boxes, a fiftieth off to one side. So, I put thumbnails in a grid to take an overall look at the project.

What I initially felt when I saw this grid was startling. It felt embarrassingly like a peep show. I have never actually seen a peep show, but I assume it is an arrangement where you peep in and see something uncomfortably intimate. The grid of boxes felt that way: like I was peeking at candid scenes of everyday people, people who did not know I was watching.

I actually intended to make scenes of regular people around the San Francisco Bay Area and in this the boxes seem to succeed. I just did not realize how slightly naughty it might feel to, say check out tourists on the bridge or kids on a rooftop. That was a surprise.

Here are some I haven't posted here in their peepshow grid:

Information on the show:

Sanchez Art Center
August 28 to September 20
1220 Linda Mar Blvd.
Pacifica, CA

Opening Night:
August 28
VIP Preview 6-8 pm (tickets here: http://www.sanchezartcenter.org/50.50.html)
General 8-10 pm

Follow progress on Facebook and Instagram (@jzjade).

See ya!

Concert Drawings Inform 50/50 Project

2015-07-06T11:12:00.000-07:00

Dispersing Birds

Having to come up with fifty different ideas made me take a look at lots of sketches and ideas I've had in recent years. Some of those were inspired by the Bay Area New Music scene and drawings I did at local concerts of mainly abstract music and sound performances.

The theme of my exhibit for 50/50 is "Scenes and Dreams around the San Francisco Bay Area," so work inspired by local performers is perfect for this collection of sculptures. The assignment is to make one artwork a day, sized 6" x 6", for fifty days. (I am 28 days in.)

Boxes inspired by these performances that I have completed so far:

"Dispersing Birds": From the Sunday, February 15, 2015, performance at Mare Island by Voicehandler. (box photo above)

Concert Drawing: February 15, 2015, Voicehandler

"Flutist": From an exhibition and recorded performance of a resident artist at Headlands Center for the Arts. I wish I had made a note of who the performer was, but I didn't.

Flutist

Not in the abstract or even necessarily local vein: "Concert" was inspired by a visit to the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival in Golden Gate Park a couple of blocks from my house.

Concert

Boxes I'm working on:

"Coastal Dream": From the Sunday, February 15, 2015, performance at Mare Island by Gretchen Jude.

Concert Drawing: February 15, 2015, Gretchen Jude

"Performance": From a performance at the Art Institute Graduate exhibit at The Old Mint a couple of years ago. I did not make a note of the performer's name.

"Secret Duck Receiver": From an October 2014 performance by San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra, one of Mark Alburger's UFO compositions.

Concert Drawing: October 4, 2014, Mark Alburger

I post frequent progress photos (there are lots more boxes on the way) at:
instagram (@jzjade) and facebook.

Here is information on the dates and location of this exhibit:

Opening Night: August 28, 6-10 pm

Sanchez Art Center

1220 Linda Mar Blvd.

Pacifica, CA

P.S.:

I was really inspired by the dreamy performances at ATA Saturday night "Nearfields" with film and sound by:

John Davis / Paul Clipson
Keith Evans
Jim Haynes

50/50 One Week In

2015-06-14T13:06:00.000-07:00

Gosh. I knew this project would be demanding. But I did not think about how it includes weekends, so "a day" means Saturday and Sunday. I keep saying "How Many is 50?"

Here are some things I am learning about process from this project:

How to FINISH something NOW.

How to SEE what is actually in front of me in an unmediated way (no second-guessing and, again, in the NOW)

What kind of planning and preparation is useful and what is just a waste of time.

Here are the boxes from this week.

Play

Eggs

Concert

Amnesia

Pyramid

Garden

Fifty Artworks in Fifty Days!!

2015-06-08T09:04:00.002-07:00

This year I entered and was accepted into the 50/50 show at Sanchez Art Center in Pacifica.

69 artists will produce one small artwork per day for fifty days.

Starting today, Monday, June 8, I will be making one 6" x 6" box with a sculptured scene of San Francisco Bay Area activities each day for 50 days.

I will be posting my daily progress on Instagram.
You can follow me on instagram: @jzjade.

Artists will be using #5050SanchezArt to tag work.

The opening party will be at Sanchez Art Center on August 28. I will send out more info on that event as it approaches.

I have been attending this event for several years now and am amazed and inspired by the work that gets produced for it. Jurors for Sanchez Art Center do a great job selecting such a wide range of artists who do so many different types of inspiring work.

Here's a Proof of Concept piece I made to submit with my entry:

Play (Golden Gate Park)

Gratitude and Surprise

2015-04-27T12:48:00.001-07:00

We each have our innate abilities and interests and the skills we've learned. We have opportunities to do the things we love and train for. And there's something else: there's the moment; the moment shaped by environment and by our own personal rhythm. When the best parts of all these things come together everything feels right and mostly goes right.

I think in our greed and selfishness we expect every moment to have this magic. But over time we see that the best moments are rare and learn to be grateful for them. Or, at least, we learn to be grateful for them if we are going to have any peace in life.

As many of you know, sometimes I get the opportunity to print monotypes under the tutelage of Katie Gilmartin at her Chrysalis Print Studio. Last Sunday I got to print there for the afternoon.

Somehow all the bits that go into making a rare magic moment showed up on Sunday at Chrysalis and everything felt right and peace settled on me when I knew how grateful I am for the best moments.

Here are the prints:

Atmosphere

Sierra

Sound

Girl

Here is a link to Katie's website where she lists her available classes and you can see her work:
Katie Gilmartin Chrysalis Print Studio.

Also, Crown Point Press has published a book about these magical moments:
Magical Secrets about Thinking Creatively. (highly recommended read!)

Godwaffle Noise Pancakes 4/18/2015

2015-04-19T08:33:00.000-07:00

Saturday's inspiring show at Noisebridge:

Born to Kill -- satisfying scythe slicing through us and leaving some sound behind.

Fistortion -- wailing and flailing sax, drums, and ozukuri, so satisfying.

Dumptruck -- almost symphonic spontaneous compositions on home-made devices.

and two very different journeys into consciousness:

Amma Aterra -- constructed a vast, seemingly physical space in which to feel lost and found.

Andrea Pensado -- showing us a tight closet of personal mayhem.

The drawings:

Born to Kill

Fistortion

Dumptruck

Amma Aterra

Andrea Pensado

Get Lost

2015-04-13T09:27:00.002-07:00

It's important to be lost.

After that, you can start. Start without the presence of stuff not your own.

Lost and out of touch.

Lost because that's when everything is new, unfamiliar and nutrient for ideas, visions, feelings, fears, debunking fears, clinging to and abandoning beliefs. The bits that tie us up to what we've already known have come loose when we have stepped across into the unfamiliar. We thought we knew where we were going, but a turn, a step, a journey lost in thought, and it seems suddenly we just don't know where we are.

Not knowing is the place to begin to make something real, something honest, something more truly on the path of what we must make, must be, must say.

Re:sound at Mare Island: Concert Drawings

2015-02-20T14:22:00.003-08:00

February 14 and 15 Re:sound produced a show of experimental music -- or sound performances.

Note: While there, I asked performers whether I could call this work "music". Most were very polite and said something like "If you must", but there was a voice saying this is not really "music" and we are just being nice because we're so happy here in the sunshine.

Labels in places where boundaries and traditions are being tested, and sometimes exploded, tend to always be suspect.

So, long story short, here are some more "concert drawings".

The performances took place in Magazine A-168, where ammunition had been stored. It's a large concrete building with no electricity (there was a generator out back, a glass filled with pomegranate seeds sitting next to it). Mare Island Strait was visible from the place, its blueness and its boats. The coastal hills of Vallejo and the East Bay rose nearby. There were trees, sure, but also the wreckage of World War II preparations all around. It's interesting that what seemed an impossible dream of swords to plowshares decades ago when I was an idealistic college student has come real all over America; these military establishments are so passe. (Some of the repurposing of these facilities supports artistic endeavors, and some implements forward thinking in ecological ways: at the Flyway Festival that weekend I learned that they are allowing the natural biological processes, assisted by the way scrub jays move seeds around, to re-forest Mare Island.)

There were three sound performances each day, as well as the audio/video installation by J. Frede which played both days.

Saturday:
Kevin Corcoran & Jen Boyd
Jorge Bachmann & Michael Mersereau
Jim Haynes

Sunday:
Gretchen Jude
Joe Cantrell
Voicehandler

Each of the performers took advantage of the natural darkness of the space and the acoustic properties of the vast concrete building.

Some readers may already be familiar with my concert drawings. Basically, I draw during performances on an 8" x 6" tablet of toned paper with an ebony pencil. The drawings are just responses to the sounds. Sometimes images, sometimes just abstract shapes. Often a particular sound gets translated into a shape or image, which might repeat if the sound repeats. I let anything happen, and sometimes I have no idea what is emerging. Also, it's dark during the performance, so I am not really looking much at the paper.

The images of the locale figured strongly in some of the drawings, but some of the performances created their own worlds or narratives.

Kevin Corcoran & Jan Boyd

Jorge Bachmann & Michael Mersereau

Jim Haynes

Gretchen Jude

Joe Cantrell

Voicehandler

Thank you all so much for enriching my life.

New Year New Painting

2015-02-12T11:07:00.000-08:00

There's something about December. It seems to take us offline, for so many reasons. And January is a wake-up because we can be ourselves again.

Back in the painting studio and the year's magic begins.

"Just keep painting" I kept taking out those 10" x 8" gessoed canvas boards that I use to limber up on, one after the other, and discovering image, love and process, color, new ideas and new abilities.

Painted ten canvases over the two weeks, two were discarded.

Wrote a bit about process and want to share it here.

I sketch the figures directly onto the canvas with a brush and a bit of oil paint. Mostly a dry brush. Working too directly or too literally from a drawing or photo does not really work. The figures benefit from movement and from abstraction.

Build form using color. Discover volume and space. This happens in the process of the painting. There should be some meaning and sense in what is being built.

Tune my senses to my own personal experience and observation and let that guide the discovery.

Know when to stop.

How do I know when to stop?

A. If the painting seems complete but is not satisfying, step away and look away, then look at the painting and note the very first thing that catches attention. If this is not the very essence of the image then it must go. There will be marks that are too dark, light, bright, dull or which inadvertantly create a volume or space unintended. Keep doing this exercise until all impressions that don't belong in the painting are obliterated.

B. Notice what your eye does when it looks at the painting. It will move around. It will stop. It should be moving across and stopping on the right things in the painting. Your moving view of the painting should find the sense in it.

Here are the paintings in backwards order of when they were painted.