with one stone

I submitted these pieces to a drawing group show at the Purdue Galleries. I marbled this paper about a year ago.  I used water based paints and inks mixed with floating medium.  I applied the paint to a pool of Methocellulose from Dharma Trading co. (http://www.dharmatrading.com/html/eng/3380-AA.shtml).  I used big round multipurpose paper from Twinrocker Paper mill in Brookston, IN about 30 minutes from my house. The circles are about 20 inches in diameter. (http://www.twinrocker.com/) 

I marbled the paper in  kiddie pools in my garage. I basically made large vats of slime. (Disposal of the slime was tricky.) The methocellulose is thick like pudding and is used in some food products.  I used dish soap as a dispersant on the surface of the methocellulose. The dispersant allowed me to exploit the natural patterns created by the chemical reaction.  I don't think the cell-like patterns are desirable in traditional paper marbling but that pattern was what attracted me to the medium.   Under the marbling I painted simple watercolor shapes accentuated by a salt dusting that created some patterns and texture.  The final layer includes pastel and color pencil outline drawings of birds.  

midnight printing & inventing stuff

Doing some printing for a wheat farm press exchange in New Hampshire. Needs to be postmarked by tomorrow. Using an old image printed a new way. I plan to do some handcoloring before work in the morning.  Maybe add some neon green and glowing yellows to the print.  I've thought it was 10 o'clock for the past 3 hours. Need to change the "studio" clock battery! I wanted to do some new monotypes for this exchange but did not find the time.

I tried out a new invented monotype screenprint method about a week ago.  I call it mono-screen-frottage printing. (Still working on the name).  Basically rubbing objects through the screen with a watercolor crayon or pencil then printing with transparent base. The result is ugly no way around it but maybe I learned something from the experimenting? I did rubbings of peach pits and cardboard shapes and strings.  At first the crayons resist and then it prints. Max Ernst made up the term and used frottage in many of his drawings and paintings as a starting point. Ernst mostly did rubbings of wood textures. I thought I'd try to apply the idea to a screen. Maybe I'll come back to this later when I find a really good texture.


Claire and I went to the Art Institute last week on free night and ran down Michigan Blvd. to the Museum of Contemporary Photography.  I saw an Ernst piece at the Art Institute. Maybe my rubbings would be more successful if I chose simpler or fewer objects. Man that new modern wing has a ton of doors and bossy gallery guards. Claire got reprimanded for taking a picture and the guard may have also accused her of not speaking English? At the Museum of Contemporary Photography we were very inspired by the Kahn & Selesnick exhibit and the polite art guard. 

detached

My mind is far away, again I'm finding the milk in the oven with my car keys. Routines have collapsed. Waiting for the fog to lift.

coyotes at wolf park

Went to Wolf Park (http://www.wolfpark.org) on Saturday to take a tour and shoot some pictures of the wolves. Wolves are not dogs. The blood frozen on the snow and was impressive.

They also have two coyotes at the park,Twister and Willow. A male and a female from Utah. I was excited about this because I have been thinking about making a piece with coyotes in it. Thinking about a play on a french phrase expressing liminality or twilight. L'heure entre chien et loup literally translates "the time between dog and wolf". I think of a coyote as being between a dog and wolf. Last year when I had to rush to the hospital a coyote stood in the middle of the road on the bridge as I crossed the river. I had to drive around it. I thought it was strange and significant. Since then I have felt a connection to coyotes as a symbol of liminality. The idea of a coyote on a bridge reinforces this idea of being neither here nor there. I plan to use the images as sources for some drawings.

Humans enter the fenced in area with the wolves and they offer photography workshops at the park. But, due to the volatile nature of the coyotes, only experienced staff members visit them. I wanted some images without the fence in front but that was not possible. Maybe I'll think of a solution or run into a coyote in the wild but for now I'll just work on the drawings.

Canceled Shows- work too controversial

I checked my email today to find two shows I had scheduled for 2011 are canceled. Feeling overwhelmed by rejection. Need to find a hundred extra hours this week for the new work!

It turns out that the venue for “The Doctrine of Unclean Hands” has communicated a dissatisfaction with the overall work selected. They expressed the work was "too controversial and requested a more conservative show." As a result, the show dates have been pushed back to 2012 and 1 Op Collective has been advised to revise the theme to “The Abandoned Landscape” to suite the venue’s preference. Unfortunately, they will "not be able to show my chosen works."

Feels like a repeat of September's rejection from the

Indianapolis International Airport. "I believe that the form your work takes is visually stunning and a good use of the display ... I appreciate the amount of hand labor inherent in your process. However, I feel that the impetus behind it and the narrative content that you explain in your artist statement is not appropriate for the airport context.

The themes you address are not specifically disallowed by the stated guidelines for art in the airport; nevertheless, we try to keep expressions of illness, death or extreme unhappiness out of the airport experience, which has its own set of potential fears and apprehensions. "

Also the 3 person Mock Academy show was canceled at Lala. The reason was that there were "not enough artists to make that happen".

The Doctrine of Unclean Hands

I was accepted to participate in “The Doctrine of Unclean Hands,” a group show in exploration of right vs. wrong. This exhibition will be within the appropriate legal context afforded by the Seton Hall University Law Building in New Jersey (http://law.shu.edu/). The show is curated by 1 Op Collective and presented by City Without Walls. The above framed photographs of melted bottles will be in this show.

Happy New Year!!

New Website is up check it out...

jasminebegeske.com