June, 2010

Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Tennessee.

U.S. 5 Dollar bill hand-painted with acrylic & returned to circulation. I’m doing a bunch of these to get me warmed up for some new paintings.

Blue Poison Arrow Frog at Fort Fisher Aquarium, Kure Beach, NC. I was really impressed by the layout of this place. There’s a giant walk-through atrium that has free-roaming quail, box-turtles, and other various creatures scurrying across your path, while the more dangerous & vulnerable animals are located behind glass or in secure pens. The aquarium has managed to create a very unique & non-traditional approach to the usual blueprint of walk-through animal voyeurism by providing a seemingly wide-open space where pathways wind around abundant patches of indigenous vegetation and little animal critters zig-zag between the swollen diabetes ankles of fat tourists & their shrieking offspring. Equally impressive is the fact that the aquarium has an albino alligator named Luna, one of less than 50 albino alligators known to exist in the world. This beauty seemed pretty content to spend her days lounging around in a meager-sized pen rather than fending for herself in some Louisiana swamp, as most albinos very rarely survive in the wild due to their lack of natural camouflage. All the other fish at the aquarium looked equally delicious.

U.S. Dollar hand-painted with acrylic & returned to circulation.

Self-portrait in the “Old Crow’s Nest” room at the Island Inn on Ocracoke Island, Outer Banks, NC. The 3-story house was built in 1901 & served as a Naval officer’s club in the 1940’s. Really cool old place that definitely felt like it had it’s share of ghosts.

I’m painting today for the first time since before I left for the show in Atlanta, almost a month ago.

Maria & I drove down to Atlanta earlier this month to install my solo show at BeepBeep Gallery. I had a general idea of what I wanted the show to look like, but didn’t really remember the size & layout of the gallery from the last time I was there 2 years ago.

All I knew was that I wanted to create a completely cohesive installation where the gallery became one of my paintings in order to tie the art to the space. I’ve never been one to just show up & put my paintings on the wall. I want people to walk into my shows & immediately feel like they’ve stepped into my world, the world of the Black Tower.

We cleared everything off the gallery walls & began measuring & taping areas off. I was pretty upset (as we all are) about the Gulf oil spill, & really wanted to use the current environmental catastrophe as the setting for The Big Bang. I had the idea of the gallery being submerged in an ocean of oil, with black droplets raining down over a few of my signature symbols (Black Tower, Black Pyramid).

The title “The Big Bang” could be interpreted as being the actual explosion that sunk the Deepwater Horizon, the explosion that set forth the chain of events that led to what is now the worst environmental disaster in the history of the United States. This complete clusterfuck of a boo-boo we have made ties directly into the subject matter I’ve been painting for years now, the introduction of black forms into a pre-existing natural environment. The origins of these shapes are open to interpretation, but they all represent a destructive progress, victory of the un-natural over nature, harbingers of harder times ahead.

The oil was painted about 60″ up the wall, just about eye level, so that when the paintings were hung they would all be partially submerged in the black.

Once the general oil-line was in place, I added the 2 main symbols to the walls, directly across from each other.

The Black Tower on one side…

…and the Black Pyramid across from it.

Then the black raindrops or “oil drops” in order to link the walls further, to show that this was one landscape, one giant black pool of oil slowly rising & swallowing up the gallery.

I wanted the oil line to run across the whole interior of the gallery, & this included the front door & windows, which posed a bit of a dilemma. I couldn’t paint the windows (they were plexiglas) without possibly damaging them permanently, but luckily my buddy Steve Dixey, an amazing artist & friend, had a pretty good solution to this problem.

Black paper was cut to go along with the wavy surface of the oil, and then taped into the windows & front door, with the shows lettering being stuck on the outside of the plexi, partially submerged in the oil. Later at the opening, James from BeepBeep lamented that it’s almost impossible to completely remove the vinyl lettering from the plexiglas. Whoopsie-daisy!

By the 3rd day of installation everything was pretty much painted & ready, and all I had to do was hang & light the show. This was Friday evening, the night before the opening. As a side note, I was sick this whole trip with some kind of upper-respiratory infection, & had be on crazy steroids that made me feel pretty wired and shitty.

This was the pyramid wall. I figured it made sense to hang these pieces together.

I was pretty worried that I didn’t have enough art for the show, since most of my paintings are so small, but it was actually a very tight squeeze getting everything hung.

I don’t think I could have fit one more painting on this wall without everything really looking crammed together.

I had 2 sets of limited edition prints made for the show. The Big Bang and Doomsday Star over Monument Valley, giclee prints on hot-press watercolor paper, signed & numbered set of 10 each, selling for $65 a piece, or $100 for both. There’s still a few sets left, so email me if you would like to own one of these. Rsquare14@hotmail.com. Sorry for the hustle.

You have to walk up a few steps to get into the gallery, so from outside the paper was up pretty high & you couldn’t see inside. It added a nice touch of mystery to the show as you had to get right up to the window & really stretch to see what was going on inside.

I was my usual anxiety-ridden self, so of course I was double-fisting the entire opening. I don’t have any crowd pictures to prove that people actually showed up, so you’ll have to just take my word for it. All my fantastic Atlanta friends were there, along with a bunch of other people, many of which were very friendly & eager to talk with me about my art. The show went really well, better than I could have ever imagined, with about 70% of the paintings selling opening night. I was so surprised to keep seeing new little green “sold stars” appearing next to many of my paintings as the night progressed. I think I’ve gotten past the pain of separating with art that I’ve worked so hard on & that has so much meaning to me, but there were definitely a few paintings that I’ll really miss. All the people that bought my pieces were really nice & interesting though, so I find comfort in knowing that my paintings are going to good homes with good people. Overall, The Big Bang was an awesome experience, a big step forward for me in regards to the career side of me calling myself an artist. The show is up for another few weeks, so if you’re in ATL, try to get to BeepBeep Gallery on Fri, Sat or Sun, and check out my show. Thanks everyone who showed up and supported me & my art, especially Maria, Steve, and Michelle. I could never have done this without you, and I am greatly thankful and indebted to you all.

Also, here’s a great review of the show from Creative Loafing Atlanta.

Doomsday Star over Monument Valley

This was the last piece I finished for The Big Bang. I’ve always been interested in the many strange & beautiful natural stone structures that exist throughout the immensely diverse landscape of North America. Devil’s Tower in Wyoming is probably the best known, as it was the setting for the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind, but Monument Valley in Southeastern Utah has got to be imprinted in the subconscious of every American who’s ever seen a few Westerns or post-80’s car commercials. I find the massive buttes & mesas extremely humbling, serving as a reminder that we are merely a temporary detail in the grand masterpiece that we call home, our Earth. In our short time here, we struggle to leave our mark, often in blood red or ashen black, but we are all under-drawings, destined to be painted over with vivid shades of cerulean blue, sandy brown, and forest green. These colors are often covered up as a result of man’s destructive nature, but their pigments are pure & strong, and they always manage be seep back to the surface.

I’m just settling back into my life after being away for 2 & 1/2 weeks, driving to & from Atlanta, installing the show, visiting some National Parks. The opening was by far the best experience I’ve ever had showing my art. I’m just going through all the photos now, and I’ll post about the show & the roadtrip in the coming few days. Lots of pictures and stories to share…