Favorite Christmas pictures

Lacy on Christmas morning.


Using the china and crystal from Pittsburgh for Christmas dinner.


Michael in a festive mood.

"Material Girls" opening reception

Michael and I drove out for the opening of "Material Girls" in what turned into rain last Thursday evening. The show is very interesting -- several quite dramatic pieces, including two enormous embroidered white aprons hung from the ceiling, and a lot of good work. The museum employees installed "Porte bonheur," and it was a treat not to have to show up with a drill, contingency plans, etc. to get the thing on the wall! Here are a few photos of the rest of the show. I'm going to have to take more photos of my piece when we go back out to Riverside -- I didn't get any that look right. There will be a catalog of the show by the beginning of February and the show will remain up through March 10.

Material Girls to open the Riverside Art Museum

I just received cards for "Material Girls" -- the exhibition I have been invited to be part of at the Riverside Art Museum. There will be work in the show from 15 women artists working non-traditionally with fabric. The Museum itself is in a Julia Morgan building in the historic district of Riverside. I am to deliver the work during the week after Christmas (next week!). The reception will take place on Thursday, January 4 from 6-9 pm. The show runs until March 10. I can't wait to see the other artists' work -- a good show and an interesting venue. I am also very excited that my piece with Granddaddy's photos has been so well received. I wonder what he would think if he could know that his pictures were being shown in a museum in California? He really loved traveling to California every winter -- I have another series of beautiful slides he took while traveling. (Another project??) I wonder if he ever visited Riverside?

More holiday sales! Post-Postcard 2006

December just turned very busy -- I am now participating in three holiday sales! Tomorrow night I will have two of my new paintings on panel at Yong Sin's studio in San Pedro (see post below). Friday through Sunday I will be participating in "Post-Postcard 2006" with Outpost for Contemporary Art. This sale is small-format work or multiples that will be displayed in shelves full of long, narrow cardboard boxes. It is called "an annual open-invitational show of small-format work that challenges artists to stretch the parameters of media and conceptual strategies by doing what they do best -- subvert and manipulate the theme to their own ends." So I have created packets labeled "A bit of Los Angeles" -- small glassine envelopes labeled with a fragment of various vintage maps and guidebooks of Los Angeles, each containing a quarter-teaspoon of Los Angeles dirt.



Post-Postcard will be open from 7-9 pm (Members' Preview) on Friday, December 8, 7-10 pm on Saturday, December 9, and 12-5 pm on Sunday, December 10. Location is Outpost for Contemporary Art's new Highland Park facility at 6375 N. Figueroa in Highland Park. More info at www.outpost-art.org.

I will also have another of my new, small paintings on panel in the Cash and Carry show at the Acorn Gallery -- work sold straight off the wall, everything under $100. Works will be replaced as they are sold. Reception December 9, 7-10 pm, show goes on through January 5. There will also be a special one-day holiday sale with Avenue 50 Gallery on December 17 from 12-6 pm. The Acorn is at 135 N. Avenue 50 in Highland Park.

Material Girls and EcoArt shows coming up --

One of the nicest results of participating in "Hung Out to Dry" at OneLeaf Gallery in Pomona was having "Porte Bonheur" chosen for a show called "Material Girls" opening on January 4 at the Riverside Art Museum. It is gratifying to experience the positive response that has developed around this piece. From what I have been told, "Material Girls" will be a women's fabric show but the art will be on the experimental side.


The Southern California Women's Caucus for Arts EcoArt group show at Barnsdall is also opening in April, and I am looking forward to expanding my shower curtain installation, "Arroyo Seco Watershed and Environs," for that show. This time I will use two plastic shower curtain panels to give a fuller effect and allow for more images to be displayed.

Art sale at Yong Sin's studio in San Pedro

Coming up this week --

Thursday, December 7, 2006, 6-10 PM

Special One Day Art Sale (for 1st Thursday in San Pedro)

with Edith Abeyta, Chris Elliott, Carol Es, Christopher Grinnell, Betsy Lohrer Hall, Kimiko Miyoshi, Lynne Mori, Florence Rothbart, Harold Rothbart, Howard Sacks, Yong Sin, Deborah Thomas, and Matthew Thomas

at Yong Sin's studio: 414 W. 7th Street, San Pedro, CA (Cook's Kitchen Center building)

I am looking forward to visiting San Pedro and meeting some new artists. Please come if you are in the area!

Thanksgiving in the Bay area

Two days after the Tour Michael, Olivia and I left town to spend Thanksgiving with Michael's sister Theresa, his brother Brian and family, and our friends Alex and Bezi. Here is a picture of Theresa's lovely dining room.

Oh, yes -- the other guests were Lacy, Boris and Max -- all on their very best behavior.

Work on display during the AAC Discovery Tour

A few of my smaller paintings and mixed media pieces on the mantel; paintings on steel (one on the easel) and a painting on spun polyester on the wall.

Thanks to Susan and Patrick Gleason for opening their home.

Discovery Tour coming up!

The Arroyo Arts Collective annual Discovery Tour is next weekend! There will be nearly 100 artists (including me) showing work on the Tour, and the price this year is quite reasonable -- $10 in advance, $15 the day of the Tour, or $5 if you bike, take public transportation, or are a senior citizen. I think it is one of the best local art tours around -- really diverse people involved, really interesting houses and neighborhood idiosyncracies to explore. Highland Park is one of the oldest art neighborhoods in LA.

So -- I started working on some new paintings. It feels good to be working with paint again, and I hope to have some new, small pieces to show on the Tour. This year I will be at a new place, the home of Susan and Patrick Gleason, at 516 N. Avenue 53 in Highland Park. It is located in a cluster of Craftsman homes hosting Tour artists, and it should be a lot of fun. Alexis Abrams, who makes wearable art, will be showing in the same location. Tonight is the preview party at Avenue 50/Acorn Galleries. (7 to 10 p.m.) You can buy tickets on the AAC website (see my links section), at the preview party, or just stop by to say hi at the Gleasons' if you don't have time to do the whole Tour.

Beth's work enters another dimension

Beth sent along these pictures after Estate of Mind. As she describes it, she and her daughter forwarded some mail to her parents at the full moon. (This was not one of the pieces in the show, though part of the same series.) Thanks, Beth.

"hung out to dry" in Pomona

Michael and I just spent yesterday installing "Porte bonheur" at a gallery in Pomona -- it was selected for a women's show called "hung out to dry" opening Saturday at OneLeaf, an experimental gallery run by Jena McRoberts. (Invitation image above.) The show will open on Saturday, November 11 during the Pomona Art Colony art walk (6 - 10 p.m.) and run through December 2. Installed on another brick wall -- this one raw, which actually is a nice background for the diapers. We bought a masonry drill bit ahead of time and were glad we did!

Here is the gallery information:

OneLeaf Fine Arts
153 West Second Street
Pomona, CA 91766
323-496-1736

www.oneleaf.us
jena@oneleaf.us

Gallery hours Monday through Saturday 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. or by appointment (worth it to call ahead)

Future Studio and Chicken Boy

Amy Inouye and Stuart Rapeport host Future Studio in their live-work loft. Stuart is an artist who paints, draws, and makes interesting dog sculptures from reclaimed wood. Among other things, Amy is a talented graphic designer, a lover of pugs and Chicken Boy ("too weird to die"), and a collector of just about anything from funky lamps to Dodger Stadium seats. She also operates a gift shop on the premises (see photo) that stocks items ranging from Chicken Boy memorabilia to snow globes to rubber duckies in the image of James Brown. If you want to find out more about Amy's projects you can navigate directly to her Chicken Boy website from the links section of this blog.

A few of my favorite baby pictures from the project

Here are a few of the pictures of me that my grandfather took. I had not seen these in several decades.




This is the caption that we posted on the wall next to the installation:

"Porte bonheur means 'good luck charm' in French. In cleaning out my parents’ house I was lucky to find a collection of slides taken of me by my grandfather, Joseph Thomas, a gifted amateur photographer. I was my parents’ first and only child and my grandparents’ first grandchild. As these photos attest, during my early childhood I was fortunate enough to have been very much adored. Granddaddy and I got along famously and I remember enjoying it as a little girl when he brought out the camera or the slide projector to take pictures or show slides on Sunday evening. Granddaddy later gave me his slide projector and his prized Exacta SLR, used to shoot these slides. I still have the projector and the camera and I am lucky to have rediscovered the slides. I am even luckier to have had such a nice grandfather."

Gallery photos from Estate of Mind

Here are some of the photos I took at the opening party for "Estate of Mind." Suzanne Siegel's assemblages created from lingerie and personal items belonging to her mother formed a grouping inside the door to Future Studio, Amy Inouye's live-work space at 5558 Figueroa in Highland Park.


At the far end of the gallery area, Beth Elliott's sculptures, braided from shredded paper collected from her parents' documents and mail, carry the corner marked by the magenta wall.



My installation, consisting of a collection of "preemie" sized cloth diapers printed with a series of baby pictures of me taken by my grandfather, was located between the two.


Some smaller pieces by Beth and Suzanne were also placed around the gallery.



The kitchen featured quite a spread, including Beth's collection of cakes, baked in a mold of her face (lower right).


Here is Beth, photographing her handiwork.



The show will be up through November 4 -- contact either me or Amy Inouye at Future Studio, 5558 N. Figueroa in Highland Park, to make arrangements to see it (Amy can be reached at 323 254-4565 or amy@futurestudio.com).

Mrs. O'Rourke's gingerbread recipe

"Estate of Mind" opened Saturday night at Future Studio -- we had a good crowd and the art was well received. In addition to the art on the wall, however, we also put together quite a spread of refreshments in the kitchen. In honor of the occasion, Suzanne, Beth and I decided to make recipes we had gotten from our families. Choosing to avoid the whole issue of 50s and 60s suburban cooking and various strange recipes we encountered as children (for example, Beth revealed that she has a vintage WeightWatchers recipe for chocolate jello that her mother often made), I decided to jump back a generation and bring gingerbread from a recipe I got from my paternal grandmother, Jeane Crawford Thomas. The funny thing about sharing a recipe from Grandmother is that although she got meals on the table for her family for years, she never liked to cook. In fact, Grandmother thought housework was a demeaning activity for any woman with a brain. Her creative solution to the problem of having to cook for her family in any case, was to become as efficient as possible at it. This recipe that she got from her neighbor, Mrs. O'Rourke, in New Brighton, Pennsylvania, wins over mid-century boxed mixes, hands down. It is both easy to make and uses simple ingredients that would have been stocked in any early twentieth-century kitchen. Here is the recipe, plus a photo of my grandmother at her sink.

MRS. O'ROURKE'S GINGERBREAD (from JEANE CRAWFORD THOMAS)

1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup shortening (butter can be substituted)
1 cup black strap molasses
2 eggs, beaten
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon cloves
1 teaspoon ginger
2 1/2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking soda dissolved in 1 cup boiling water (do this at the last minute)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cream sugar and shortening. Combine with eggs and molasses and beat well. Sift flour with dry ingredients and add to egg mixture. Dissolve baking soda in the boiling water and add to batter. Mix thoroughly (by hand) and pour into a greased, square baking pan. Bake 25 minutes. Cut into cake-like squares when cool and serve with whipped heavy cream, if desired.

Press release, "Estate of Mind"

Future Studio Gallery presents:

ESTATE OF MIND

art created by Beth Elliott, Suzanne Siegel and Deborah Thomas
using things belonging to their parents’ estates
curated by Deborah Thomas

October 14 – November 4, 2006
Reception Saturday, October 14, 6 – 10 pm

Calendar Listing: ART – “Estate of Mind” – art created by Beth Elliott, Suzanne Siegel and Deborah Thomas using things belonging to their parents’ estates, curated by Deborah Thomas. Future Studio Gallery, 5558 N. Figueroa Street, Highland Park, October 14 – November 4. Opening Saturday, October 14, 6 – 10 pm. By appointment: (323) 254-4565 or amy@futurestudio.com
Who: Artists Beth Elliott, Suzanne Siegel, Deborah Thomas; curated by Deborah Thomas
What: “Estate of Mind” – art created by Beth Elliott, Suzanne Siegel and Deborah Thomas using things belonging to their parents’ estates
Where: Future Studio Gallery, 5558 N. Figueroa Street, Highland Park, 90042
When: October 14 – November 4, opening reception Saturday, October 14, 6 – 10 pm (by appointment after opening – 323 254-4565)
For information: 323 254-4565 or amy@futurestudio.com


What do you do when your parents get old and turn the tables on you, needing time and care? In addition to taking on their parents’ immediate needs, the three artists whose work is represented in “Estate of Mind,” curated by Deborah Thomas at Future Studio Gallery, make art. Artists Beth Elliott, Suzanne Siegel, and Deborah Thomas have fabricated sculpture, assemblages and installations which are both directly reminiscent of their personal family experiences and, as Elliott puts it, universal “messages from the past moving into the future.”

Suzanne Siegel’s assemblages, created from her mother’s 50s-era lingerie as well as natural objects and domestic artifacts ranging from rose petals to razor blades, carry implicit social commentary and bittersweet emotion. Ordinary items are delicately modified in ways that embody a material vision both whimsical and surreal. Siegel approaches these remains of her mother’s wardrobe as a language to be interpreted; her pieces communicate longing, secrecy and loss reflective of her mother’s personal history. As an artist, Siegel finds it crucial to interpret and contextualize what she reads and engages with in these items of apparel as common to the ordinary experience of many other women and part of a larger socio-cultural picture.

Deborah Thomas finds herself compelled to “time travel” into her family’s past, as she puts it, by working conceptually with family photographs and slides found while cleaning out her parents’ house. Her work is motivated by a desire to re-visit family relationships she remembers from childhood. After selecting images that resonate intimately for her, she maps out formal groupings according to patterns and repetitions only marginally related to any information the photos might convey. What results is a shift in emphasis away from any particular personal content or affect attached to the images to a more suggestive and universal zone of perception neither purely representational nor non-representational.

Beth Elliott, who describes her work as “destruction and creation,” relies on visceral process to cope with the shredded personal papers and junk mail addressed to her parents that continues to arrive in her mailbox. In order to make a universal statement, she shreds and braids the paper into irregular sculptural forms that are dynamic in their materiality yet restrained by means of her hands-on engagement with the paper discards. She produces organic shapes that reveal pre-logical formal qualities as well as an unexpected randomness or lightness of being.

Through their work, each of these artists moves between evocative past and ordered present, transforming highly personal reactions into universally resonant visions of life.

“Estate of Mind” at Future Studio Gallery, 5558 N. Figueroa Street, Highland Park 90042. Reception: Saturday, October 14, 6 – 10 p.m. (part of NELA Second Saturday art walk). Open by appointment (323 254-4565 or amy@futurestudio.com).

Countdown until Estate of Mind

I'm starting to feel back on track again -- my camera is back from the shop and the router is repaired after giving me a week of not being able to go online from my computer. I am working some more on "Estate of Mind." Here is one of the photos I've found. All of the slides are glass-mounted (by hand, by my grandfather) -- trays of them were stored in lovely little leather and fabric boxes. The colors just glow. I am planning an installation of about a dozen or more of them, but I won't say anything more at this point. Amy designed a very attractive card, too.

Estate of Mind - starting work

I am starting to work on my next show, called "Estate of Mind" -- it will open at Amy Inouye's loft/gallery called Future Studio in Highland Park on Saturday evening, October 14 during the Second Saturday art walk. This show will include some of my work incorporating photos I found while cleaning out the house in Pittsburgh and also work by two other artists, Beth Elliott and Suzanne Siegel. Beth has made sculpture out of papers and magazines from her parents' estate and Suzanne has created a series of assemblages using her mother's vintage lingerie and other items. I am enjoying curating as well as thinking about my own new work. My camera is back in the shop at the moment, but I will start adding photos as soon as it comes back.

Right now I am looking at slides taken by my grandfather during the 50s, and I am thinking about ways to incorporate his photos into the work. Interestingly enough, the first slide I looked at was of the LA River, taken right around Elysian Park from the train. He and my grandmother traveled to California from Pennsylvania on the train every Christmas to visit my aunt and her family. Many of his photos were close-ups of flowers. There are also some interesting posed shots of my grandmother and other family members. Looking at these photos is almost like time traveling.

Just back from Mendocino

Well, my finger has recovered (mostly), but the camera had a relapse. No way to photograph anything during our vacation to Mendocino County last week. So I am writing now sans photo embellishments. Don't know what is going on with the camera -- it acts as if the lens cap is on even when it isn't. So -- I got only a few photos in one of the most beautiful places in the world, and those are on two disposable cameras. It was almost pointless to shoot anything without my Nikon (I especially missed the zoom function), so Olivia took most of the pictures. I felt quite incapacitated without experiencing my usual look-and-photograph response to intriguing places and natural settings. Haven't traveled without a camera since I can remember. An interesting, if frustrating exercise. But I think detaching from my own visual process at least once may be beneficial in the long run.

During our trip we first visited Michael's sister, Theresa, who just rebuilt her house in Oakland -- her contractor basically recreated a 1920s-style house, even to the level of craftsmanship and handwork applied to the task. They added a second storey with two bedrooms, a second bath, and a reading alcove, and it is just beautiful.

After visiting Theresa, we continued to drive north through Napa and Sonoma, then on to Cloverdale, where we broke off the 101 (highway) and headed through the Anderson Valley to the coast. The Anderson Valley is beautiful, rolling farmland -- vineyards, orchards, tiny towns and exquisite hilly landscape. At this time of year the hills were the golden color of dry grass contrasted by the deep greenery of oak trees and vines. The air had a warm, fresh smell from the grass. There was barely a village along the way, but we spent two nights in Philo, a tiny town just east of the beginnings of the redwood forest at Navarro. Then we meandered north along the coast through Mendocino and Fort Bragg to Westport (the last tiny town on the coast) and the Howard Creek Ranch, five miles or so beyond. We stayed there in a ranch-style bed and breakfast -- the owner has hand-built redwood-paneled guestrooms in the 130-year-old antiques-filled house and barn, 300 yards from the deserted beach. The quiet was restorative -- the soft grayness near the water during foggy mornings was especially conducive to contemplation and relaxation. It was hard to come back.



Olivia is in great spirits -- she had two trail rides on the beach: one with me (a group ride, Western-saddled walk/trot type of thing, which was as much as I could manage) and one on her own with a guide. The second ride was like a dream come true for her -- she and her guide took Arabian horses 20 miles up and down the beach for three hours, galloping and walking in endurance-riding fashion. She is still tired but blissful.

I am coming gradually back to earth in Southern California.

Greetings@#$%^

I haven't been able to add much for the past few weeks -- things have skidded to a halt because I am doubly incapacitated. Both my finger and my camera are broken. So -- typing is modified hunt and peck and there are no new pictures! In spite of these drawbacks, the driveway is almost finished -- a very nice pea gravel that crunches underfoot -- and we have slipped into more of a summer schedule. The house in Pittsburgh is being repainted. I am on jury duty. Olivia is home -- at least when she isn't out with her friends.

Here is a picture of my broken finger: