Art Guy----Jonathan Franklin

Weaves

2012-02-10T12:30:00.001-08:00

In my quest to weave I found a bag full of paper scraps that I had used in other projects . (Me, throw anything away?) Usually in various stages with no specific order I cut, paint and weave strips into

8”-10” squares and rectangles. Adding more washes of color and affixing the pen and ink features I create the portraits. Another source of material came from kids’ (classroom) rejects, mess ups, that would have ordinarily ended up in the trash. I collected them and cut them into strips to be woven as well.

I liked the rawness of the pieces but still something was missing. I had been basically following the same routine for about a year and a half, randomly weaving the strips and adding the features without any embellishment. Then on a whim and in a fit of spontaneity I decided to experiment on a couple pieces adding highlights and color for more definition. I liked what saw and within moments I began to attack entire batch of weaves, all 130 of them. Within a few hours I had finished. It took me another bunch of hours to photograph and upload them. But the results speak for themselves.

Ups and Downs----Tesselations

2012-01-26T12:10:00.001-08:00

Ups and Downs----Tesselations

As a printmaker I enjoyed creating repetitive images that are virtually the same but for a few subtle differences. Almost any time I discover multiples I am compelled to organize them in series. I have a shoe box that contains a variety of selected exhibition announcements, some dating back 30 years. I was not sure what to do with them but because there were so many of them it seemed like a pity to throw them away. And I’m glad didn’t because a few days ago I pulled out the box again and decided to play around with them again.
I few years ago I had taken some of these same cards out, cut them up and arranged them into repetitive tessellated patterns just to see what they looked like. I liked what I saw. But then I put the show box away and forgot it, and the dozens of cards in the box.
Recently I pulled the box out again and contemplated the cards with fresh eyes. I made some beautiful little samples with water color and ink and collage. The first two series I created were called ‘Lins’ and ‘Strips’. But then as I studied all of the multiples they reminded me of tessellations and how repetitive images and shapes lead to quite exciting and unexpected patterns. These pieces are some of the results.

Strips

2012-01-06T10:40:00.000-08:00

From the same stash of postcards from a long ago exhibit of mine which featured a black and white photocopy of me and that I also used to create the Lins, I thought I would experiment once again with the elements of dissonance and distortion. I am fascinated by how even when using the same components, in this case cutting the photos into strips, I can drastically manipulate the shape and appearance of the image simply by how I arrange and organize them.

Lins

2012-01-05T08:56:00.001-08:00

I rediscovered some very old postcards in box that I had used for an old exhibition announcement. It was a small 3”x 3” photo portrait of me that I had had copied in black and white. Since there were so many of these postcards I decided to do some water color experiments on them, creating a series of portraits. Although I enjoyed the spontaneity of the initial results I was more interested in creating the kind of tension that I feel is more engaging. I cut the portraits into for and then mixed up the parts and reassembled them. This diffused element of discordance is something has begun to permeate much of my work both on paper and canvas. It is sense of finding order in potential chaos that I find so challenging.
The pieces are called Lins because my name, Jonathan Franklin, appears on the postcards and l-i-n are the only three letters that remain of my name after I cut out the portraits.

The Genesis of the Collage

2012-01-04T07:27:00.000-08:00

About 15 years ago I was sitting around with my kids doing cutting up magazines and doing crafts to make collages. I loved the random, unselfconscious spontaneity of they created. Being the ‘figurative’ kind of guy that I am, my pieces looked like naïve attempts at cubism. At that time I was beginning to feel a little stifled in terms of my own subject matter. Years before someone had suggested that maybe I should bring the background forward in my paintings and have the figurative subject matter recede into it. I was exploring patterning and shapes.
But these collages were entirely different. With their colorful geometric forms they became abstract. I was intrigued and wondered what they might look like as paintings. Unlike my typical nonlinear organic method of painting most of which was by trial and error the subject matter of these collages was already resolved. It was an entirely different process for me. To create the compositions all I needed to do was directly copy the collages. There was practically no thinking involved, like painting by numbers.
And thus I departed into an entirely new direction, leaving my representationalist (realistic) edge behind. At this same time I was also (lackadaisically) represented by a gallery who when I invited the director over to see my new work he was underwhelmed by it to say the least. It was still figurative oriented but abstract and far less literal than what he had expected of me. The result is he dropped representing me almost cold turkey. So much for loyalty.
It took me a couple years to work through this experiment. As the process evolved I found that I was willing to stretch my creative boundaries, to explore a broader range of ideas. In the end my cubist ‘bender’ directly affected how I reassessed not only my older work but how I was able to reintegrate this vision into everything that followed, not only in my painting but in particular my work on paper, almost all of which now involves the use of collage.

Water Spots

2011-12-20T20:42:00.000-08:00

Water colors are tricky and with students the frustration fuse can be short. They can easily test both the experienced and inexperienced. I am by no means an expert in the field but am competent enough do some simple exercises using water color. Typically we do a number of exercises that involve blending and bleeding colors and no matter how much I reassure the students that we are not creating works of art but technical experiments and that they should not give up and persevere, I will still find work in the garbage at the end of the class session. My mantra is that no matter how discouraging or hopeless the situation may appear, there is still room for transformation. These ‘Water Spot’ Portrait collages are cases in point. They were all created from discarded water color exercises that I retrieved from the trash.

Judy's Photos

2011-12-10T20:33:00.001-08:00

I came across some photos that my sister had taken of some of her college friends from many years ago. I enjoyed the sense of serenity that the figures imbued. But it was how the subjects formed the composition that most resonated with me. With her permission I used paint to fill and flatten much of the space to not only define the figures but also enhance their presence. Maybe one day I’ll actually take the leap and turn the photos into paintings.

2011-11-23T08:30:00.000-08:00

I visited an wonderful show at the Chicago Cultural Center called 'Write Now' where artists were invited to submit works related to written words and texts as well as actual letters (from the alphabet) as points of departure to create conceptual interpretations. I was inspired too and attempted to create my own abstract compositions. In two of the pieces I cut out shapes from the the word ART and collaged them into compositions. The third piece was composed from the word inspires. It was an interesting challenge and I'm looking forward to doing more of these soon.

2011-11-07T14:42:00.000-08:00

These began with an old water color pad that I found in the 1980’s. I like to stay busy and productive while I am watching TV and frequently find my self doing some art .

The portrait is so revealing and nuanced that I frequently refer to it when I am in the mood to experiment.

I folded two pieces of paper in half and painted four similar portraits with acrylic paint and then added pen and ink for definition. I then cut the portraits into 8 squares and b ‘mixed and matched’ them back together.

The second series is a revisit of some of the first Four Squares that I made in September. I need to add more edge and contrast so I collaged new features and gave them new identities.

The results are always surprising and mesmerizing.

Maurice Sendak in Egypt

2011-10-30T19:17:00.000-07:00

As a child I adored Maurice Sendak and devoured his books. They were a combination of mystery and absurdity with an edge of danger that percolated throughout. Chicken Soup With Rice, In the Night Kitchen, and of course the iconic Where the Wild Things Are were staples on my bookshelf.

But something changed for me and my feelings about Maurice Sendak and his books shortly after I turned twenty. By then, my father , a civil engineer who traveled around the world building roads was living in Khartoum, Sudan, situated at the junction of the Blue and White Nile. At the time I was a young college student studying archeology and was so taken by the place that I had to pinch myself to remind me that I was not dreaming. During the period of the Pharoahs, this area was known as the Southern Region. It was like I had been dropped into the midst of living history. I could not get enough of it. So you can imagine my surprise and delight when I was invited to join my father and a team of engineers and archeologists who were making a trip 80 miles north up the Nile to prepare a preliminary study for a huge hydroelectric dam that was being planned.

Outside of Khartoum there were no paved roads so we had to follow the tracks of criss-crossing camel caravans and the trails of rickety trucks precariously overloaded with bundles and people. The trip was slow and arduous and took 10 hours. After we set up the station we began to explore the site and one of the archeologists made an unexpected discovery----a cave which turned out to be according to one of the experts, the tomb of an Egyptian noble. He guessed that it dated back to the time of the Middle Kingdom, approximately 3,500 years. Unfortunately it appeared to have already been stripped by tomb robbers but fortunately some of the walls in the tomb were still intact. And they were full of hieroglyphics. If and when the dam was built, this entire site was to be inundated by the flooding waters. So it was decided that either the entire tomb would have to be moved stone by stone or if not that, at least there should be an attempt to save the hieroglyphics.

Shortly after I arrived in Khartoum I visited a small museum that housed a number of exquisite frescoes that were removed from the ruins of an abandoned Coptic Church in northern Sudan. To save them a specialized team of Polish conservators used a system where by using a layer of mesh coated with beeswax they were able to peel off the images after making a series of shallow incisions along the edges of the frescoes. This is the same technique that the experts decided to use on the walls of this newly rediscovered tomb.

I spent the better part of three weeks assisting as best I could digging trenches and carting away debris. All the work went exceedingly well except for one wall that disintegrated and broke into pieces as it was being removed. It was unfortunate but compared to how many of the walls were saved it was relatively inconsequential. As a token of appreciation for all my hard work I was allowed to keep one of the fragments of the broken wall. I was ecstatic and could not wait to decipher what was written on it. What secrets would it reveal? But it would all just have to wait until I got home. And that is when my love for Maurice Sendak changed.

It seems that for all of his gifts for quirky originality, for mischievous fun, and his uncanny ability to see the world through the eyes of a child, he was in fact ….a fraud. For as I deciphered the inscriptions on the fragment, the true source of Sendak’s voice and vision began to dissolve before my eyes. It showed that his ideas and images did not sprout fully formed from his imagination. In fact, there is a brief account of Sendak in Egypt during WWII as a young intelligence officer who participated in a secret operation that involved remapping the region in anticipation of the surrender of Germany. Very little is known about this particular event but it is obvious that he somehow visited this tomb and must have deciphered the inscriptions as well. But he did not just decipher them or lift stories from them, he appropriated, some would say, actually plagiarized them word for word. He knew he could do it because after all, what was the likelihood that this secret would ever be known?

Unfortunately I cannot irrefutably make this claim because other than this one fragment from the wall, the only one that did not crumble into dust as it was removed, there are no other, more incriminating texts that exist.

I loved Maurice Sendak. Still, the coincidences are just too great to dismiss. And knowing and seeing what I know now, the case against him, to expose him, is compelling enough to challenge his unique legacy. I therefore feel a new look at Maurice Sendak and his prodigious work is in order.

To decipher the inscriptions on the fragment and appreciate my charges, please refer to the original Higgins Crypto-Guide. I came across it quite by accident in a resale shop a few years back. At the time I did not make the connection between M. Sendak scribbled on top and the Maurice Sendak we have all come to know and love.

VInnie

2011-10-30T19:11:00.000-07:00

This puppet is based on Vinnie, one of the original Monsters who auditioned for a part in ‘Where the Wild Things Are. ’ Maurice Sendak rightly or wrongly decided that Vinnie was just not right for the part.

But his story did not end there. Vinnie left acting and took to writing music. Probably one of his most memorable hits was a quaint little piece called ‘Wild Thingaling’. With his ukulele in hand he a criss-crossed the country performing in small hotel bars and venues until he one day he was discovered by Johnny Carson. Shortly after that a young upstart British rock group called the Troggs looking for a hit latched onto ‘Wild Thingaling’ and the song took off, with a cult like following across the globe. The song became the unforgettable ‘Wild Thing.’

What is little known is the rift that grew between Vinnie and the Troggs over their interpretation of the song. He felt that they ‘perverted’ his perky little love song into a rock n’ roll grinder. Never mind that it shot to number one and remained at the top of the hit parade for six straight weeks, Vinnie and the Troggs never reconciled.

Below are Vinnie’s original lyrics.

Oh, Wild Thing a-ding a-ling

You make heart sing a-ling-a-ling

You make everything a-ling

So (gosh darn) groovy be-doo-be-doo

Wild Thing I think I love you

You really move me

I want to know for sure---poo-poo-pee-doo

Four Corners

2011-09-18T19:15:00.001-07:00

These pieces started off as a quick exercise. I was looking at a recent etching collage called ‘Profiles’ and attempted to decipher one of the three overlapping faces. I drew four different versions with pen and ink. They were interesting exercises but I was more curious as to how they might be reinvented if I realigned them in my typical fashion. At first I cut the face in half laterally. They were similar to another series of portraits called ‘Bipolars.’ I decided to cut them into halves again so that each portrait would be separated into four square sections and then reassembled and completed with pen and ink. This series is called ‘Four Corners.’

2011-09-04T15:19:00.000-07:00

I thought my etching collage days were over. But like every other time I say 'no' it turns out that there's always room for 'yes'. In this case I found a number of older etchings that were buried away and recently rediscovered. Typical of me is my tendency to see my past work with a contemporary eye. I saw the potential to once again build on the past and reinvent the pieces in the present.

I decided to create portraits because the human face is both universal and immediate. As in all of my collages I organize seemingly incompatible scraps and remnants into recognizable arrangements. I used pen and ink, water color, or acrylic as a means to an end and played with elements of improvisation and spontaneity to make all the pieces fit together. As in all of my work, the results were a surprise.

Hard Edges

2011-08-28T11:56:00.000-07:00

Portraits, self and selfless, present questions that may both reveal and conceal. They may be literal in their interpretations or ambiguous in nature. They may capture a likeness or merely approximate it in abstraction. Sometimes they bare little or no recognizable relationship to the subject and yet are imbued with an innate spirit. Some portraits are complex in their detail while others can capture the essence of a subject with a few strokes of a pen.

Almost all of my portraits, whether on canvas or paper, are imaginary and evolve gradually in a nonlinear process. I intentionally cut the work into incongruous parts and then reassemble unrelated bits and pieces into entirely new assemblages. Sometimes the results are representational. Other times they are more abstract.

Like the portraits, we as a people are the sum of many disparate parts, amalgams of those who preceded us. We are the results of unintentional confluences and unexpected social interactions. As an immigrant society we are a potpourri: a multi-ethnic, mutli-racial society whose strength is built on its dynamism and diversity. It is social cubism. There are so many different ways to see and evaluate how we perceive, identify, and define ourselves.

These are issues that color my point of view and my work:

How to take so many disconnected pieces and fit them together to create entirely

new identities.’

How to take so many different and sometimes incompatible parts and make them

whole.

And finally, how to make order from chaos and create something entirely new.

Portrait Parts

2011-07-25T10:37:00.001-07:00

Portrait Parts, a set on Flickr.

The sum of many parts make up the whole. These drawings were created as different facial features were randomly organized to create some surprising results.

2011-07-15T20:57:00.000-07:00

I was invited to paint a mural on a bath house at Olin Sang summer camp in Wisconsin called ‘Noah’s Ark.’ An older mural had been painted on one side of the building back in 2004, about 25 feet long and 8 feet high. My job was to create a new mural on the opposite side. But in actuality the mural was to encompass all four sides of the building.

All in all, painting ‘Noah’s Ark II’ was a very challenging but also an extremely gratifying and satisfying project. I loved the notion of starting it all off with nothing more than a pencil, a blank piece of paper, and an idea. But most importantly, without the kids’ drawings, imagination, and inspiration, the mural would not have come to be.

I was also pleased to be able to integrate and incorporate the new with the old. Although stylistically the two murals are adversely different from one another the lines of the ark in the original mural are aligned with the new one thereby unifying both boats. It also turns out that the two murals are almost seamlessly joined together where the rainbows meet, at the corner of the bath house. Finally, and probably the best part is that the two murals, old and new, have become one piece united. I guess that’s how it should be.

2011-07-15T20:48:00.000-07:00

In 1963, Pablo Picasso was commissioned to create a monumental sculpture for the city of Chicago. In 1967 it was unveiled to much controversy and debate. I too have found it quite intriguing. What exactly is it? A horse, a bird, the head of baboon? Picasso never really explained it.

I had also read someplace that the piece was inspired by a young acquaintance of Picasso, a woman with a long neck and high ponytail. The Beautiful Lady series is my attempt to visualize this notion. I painted six similar but not exact likenesses of the sculpture and after cutting them apart, I mixed them up and reassembled all of the pieces back together again. It was my cubist solution to a cubist question.

Windows

2011-06-16T09:05:00.000-07:00

Years ago in an effort to camouflage the chaos that defined our somewhat disorganized bookshelves I fashioned some decorative doors that pleased me but annoyed my wife for the very reason that they obscured the books. One day she took it upon herself to remove the doors but only after she reorganized the books. So I was left with the doors that I had originally fashioned from old window frames. I had removed the thin wood strips that I had used to create lattice structures in each window panel and searched for something to fill the spaces. Over the years I had collected remnants of canvas that were too small to stretch but too big to discard. With a little trimming they would fit perfectly into the window panels. I had previously used string to secure works together in my ‘Remnant’ and ‘Walk About’ series and thought I could try the same thing with this new ‘Window’ series using the sum of parts to create a whole. In this case, portraits.

2011-05-14T17:27:00.000-07:00

I found about the Viaduct Mural Project in Oak Park, IL the day before the deadline for submissions . Because time was of the essence I decided to submit an image of an actual painting. Lo and behold it got selected. I ordered the paint and waited for the walls of the viaduct to be prepped and primed. They were ready on a Thursday and I worked for four hours on Friday until I could not stand the chill any longer (it was in the mid-40’s), worked another chilly day on Sunday and finished the piece the following Wednesday. Bing , bang, boom. It was almost like painting by numbers since all I was doing was copying the painting although I did end up taking a few liberties as the work developed. The good news is that I was working with acrylics. They dry in minutes. And the bad news is that I was working with acrylics. Because of the speed that they dry it made blending colors difficult. The course cement surface is also rough on the brushes. But other than these minor adjustments the piece came together beautifully. I haven’t quite decided on a name but for now I’ll call it “The Brush Off.”

Forever Garden

2011-04-16T09:27:00.000-07:00

I have done dozens of painting programs with students over the years. We use brushes and paint but what do we put the paint in when we paint? Small plastic cups. Although they can easily be disposed of (and recycled) after each class I keep them to reuse over and over and over time, with much use, colorful layers of dry paint begin to build up on the walls of the cups.

Sometimes through ware and tear a cup will crack, or break. In short, they are no longer usable, at least to hold paint. But I discovered another use for them. I saw something somewhere where the bottoms of plastic bottles were cut out to create flowers. I looked at my paint cups and thought, why not these as well? I found that cutting the paint layered plastic with ordinary scissors not impossible but difficult. But a tin snip was perfect for doing the cutting. Then bending the flaps back to create petals I would secure the flowers to dowels with thumb tacks. In moments I planted this forever garden amidst the hostas. The best part is that the flowers bloom all year round with or without watering.

Styrofoams

2011-04-01T09:48:00.001-07:00

Styrofoam s

I love printmaking even though my actual printmaking career was quite short-----about three years. But I still love the process of creating images making impressions and layering lines and colors. I was conducting an after school program with 3^rd and 4^th grade students who had never knowingly created any kind of print until I asked them if they had ever walked in mud or snow and looked at the impression that their shoes had left behind. Oh yeah, foot prints. The art work that I wanted to create with them was not so different than what the feet left behind.

Because the surface on which the prints were to be made was identical to the trays that are used to package chicken and some vegetables in grocery stores, I called them Styrofoams. The students sketched drawings that were then retraced onto the Styrofoam leaving lines that were etched inot the Styrofoam, which is quite soft, to collect ink.

As a demonstration I created a quick drawing which I then traced onto the Styrofoam. I applied yellow with a brayer (a roller) to the Styrofoam plate pressed the plate onto a sheet of paper. Then I washed the plate and applied a layer of red which I followed with a layer of blue. The results were quite exciting. The entire process from drawing the image to printing the three colors took me less than five minutes. Talk about instant prints and instant gratification. The kids couldn’t wait to their hands into the prints. The best part is that their work was so much more interesting than mine. Check out the four 'Ice Cream Cone' prints made by a little boy named Angel.

Horses

2011-03-18T05:56:00.001-07:00

Not an equestrian, there was a period in the early 1980’s when I was obsessed with horses. I introduced them into not only my drawings but my paintings as well. There innate strength and command coupled with a sense of calm and serenity simply fascinated me. But I almost always kept the figure present as a companion. What I enjoy about these drawings is their appears to be natural impulsiveness and transparency about them, which is something still struggle with in my paintings which tend to be technically much more opaque and less spontaneous.

2011-03-02T08:51:00.001-08:00

30 years ago I worked in a printmaking studio. My income was almost barely above water, but over the course of the two years that I spent there the amount of work that I created was as big as a ship. I began first as a student, then as an assistant and finally as a master printer. One of the perks of printing someone else’s etchings was that I got to keep one sample called the printer’s proof, or p.p. Over time I accumulated quite a collection of printer’s proofs. Some I liked. Some I liked less .

Over the past ten years I have been using my own etchings to create collages. But recently , much to my surprise, I discovered that my ‘inexhaustible’ supply of etchings had all but dried up. Aside from the five or six pieces that I reserved from each series there were no more extras to choose from. I had reached the bottom of the barrel. All that remained were my printers proofs which sat undisturbed gathering dust in a drawer since I first printed them …..Until now.

Gradually, an idea began to inkle above my head. Could I, would I consider ‘violating’ any of these printer’s proofs? Cut them apart, use them for myself? Hmmmm. It was an interesting dilemma. Would I daretouch another artist’s work by cutting it into pieces and then use the pieces to incorporate into my own work? I vacillated….but not for long. Many of the proofs were aesthetically (at least to my eyes) problematic---objectively, they were not very good. Still, they were the result of someone’s time and imagination. Who was I to tamper with them? But after a few back- and-forths I finally rationalized the situation by figuring that after over 30 years the artists who had created the etchings would probably not miss them, especially since they were printer’s proofs, technically not even part of the final edition.

So very quietly I picked up a pair of scissors and with the aid of a pen, some ink, and glue I incorporated the etchings into the creation of what became my final etching collages.

And with these pieces my etching collage career came to an end. The supply lasted me almost 30 years. You would think there would be some kind of pomp and ceremony to mark the occasion. After all, it was the etchings that brought me to collage which has become such an integral part of my work ever since. So alas, all the deeds have been done. I guess you could say that I have now finished this particular picture.

2011-02-23T09:34:00.000-08:00

During my frequent wanderings around the alleys in my neighborhood have on numerous occasions found old discarded mops that I just couldn’t resist. You never know when one might come in handy. I immediately found a place for a couple of them on heads of two home-made scarecrows in my vegetable garden.

Later for an exhibit honoring the 200^th anniversary of Edgar Allen Poe’s birth I decided to create a piece that would be perfect for a mop. I painted Poe’s head in black and white on an 8”x10” panel and placed a mop on top of his head. I then dangled some black ravens from his fingers and called the piece ‘The Dreads,” as a double entendre referring to the word dread endemic in Poe’s stories and dread locks for obvious reasons. After the show I created more Dreads and turned Poe into a father. The others became his sons. That’s not to say that there won’t be any daughters brought into the family later on. I guess it depends which direction my brush takes.

Corners

2011-02-12T08:51:00.000-08:00

Usually I do not frame my paintings, not because I prefer them unframed but because of other constraints. Frames add a significant amount of weight and dimension to the paintings. Both elements I am in short supply of in my rather ‘compact’ studio space. Still, I was curious as to how adding a frame might transform my otherwise unadorned paintings. So I scavenged around my ‘used lumber yard’ (my garage) where, for better or worse, I save (OK, I admit it--hoard) old and used wood scraps. (You just never know when a particular piece of wood might come in handy.

So I chose my smallest paintings and decided that they might be good candidates to experiment with. Aware that my technical skills in this department were rather thin I decided that I would plan for a more rustic look to the frames. In the end I ended up framing about a dozen pieces with mixed but generally good results.

When I finished and was gathering up the corner bits and pieces from all the 45 degree miter cuts that had to make for the frames I became intrigued by how they could be fit together into these interesting shapes. Ordinarily I would have (reluctantly) disposed of the pieces but as I played with them I began form them into squares. Why squares? Who knows? That’s just how they seemed to fit. Obviously I could have gone in any direction but the squares worked for me. I used old and in some cases well worn pieces of wood so the execution on my part was a bit crude. Still, I enjoyed how each piece brought out a rustic variety of colors and textures.

For now I keep them stacked in a box. Maybe one day if I find an empty wall, I'll hang them up.

Cubism is a Crushed Tin Can

2011-02-03T15:35:00.001-08:00

Once again I am revisiting a period of my life from over 30 years ago. As a soldier in the Israeli army we found ourselves on constant occasions in the desert in the midst of maneuvers. Much to my dismay and despair tons of garbage and spent debris would be abandoned and discarded as we moved from one spot to another. Sometimes we’d encounter piles that looked like ancient heaps of rubble, rusted and unrecognizable . Who know how long they had been sitting there? Someone once found an old hand grenade, probably from WWII.

I, on the other hand, set my sites on more mundane objects. An admirer of Marcel Duchamp, the father of found art, I was fascinated with the old rusted K-ration cans that littered the fields probably dating back to years of soldiers eating on the move. To others they were nothing more than disintegrating garbage but to me they were absolutely beautiful. I would collect them whenever I could, stuffing them into my ammunition belts, packs every open pocket I could find. Rattling cans make a lot of noise. So much for moving in stealth and maintaining an element of surprise.

You can still see the sands of the Negev and Sinai in the can crevices.

Everybody Let’s Twist

2011-01-31T06:58:00.000-08:00

I was invited to decorate a plastic megaphone for a fund raiser. I could have taken the traditional route by painted it but after studying it a bit I realized that I was more interested a less conventional solution. Being the inveterate scavenger and collector of odds and ends that I am an idea began to emerge. I love music. I love dance. I would transform my megaphone into…….a ‘hula gogo dancer.’

I inverted an old mop and stuck the handle into a 10” section of railroad timber. This was the infrastructure for the dancer. The mop became a beehive hairdo, a former lampshade ring was used to create a hula skirt made of strings of marker tops. Her arms were made from wooden laths attached to a dowel that I passed through a hole in the mop handle and held everything together. Her hands were cut out of plastic milk jugs.

With a little paint and a sense of humor, my megaphone was transformed into a dancing queen.

Weaves

2011-01-18T12:07:00.000-08:00

These are extensions of the Checkers series of made from cutting pen and ink drawings that were cut into strips and woven back together again. In these pieces I used remnants that I glued together to form strips and then them wove into 8"x8" squares. I then drew features with pen and ink and randomly assigned them to the woven squares. I enjoy the texture of the weaves contrasted with the features and how the portraits then emerges from the arrange of the features

Checker Portaits

2011-01-11T14:05:00.000-08:00

On numerous occasions as a teaching artist in public schools I have given all kinds of demonstrations ranging from doing simple perspective exercises to building simple sculptures. In this case I was doing water color exercise illustrating some effects that could be achieved with water colors, not that I am anything close to an expert. But I can do some rudimentary exercises that are accessible to inexperienced students. At the end of the exercises rather than throw away the samples that I had used, I would keep them. After all it was decent paper and seemed a pity to throw it away just because it had some water color on it. After all, you never knew when it might in handy for something.

Well, I found a way for them to come in handy. When all else fails, weave them.

I ended up applying a white wash of acrylic paint over the water color designs to create a neutral field, allowing for the water color to bleed into the whitepaint. I then used a thinned down black paint and a bit of ink to draw very simple but similar portraits on twelve small squares of the used water color paper squares that I had used as samples with the kids. I then cut pairs of drawings into strips and wove them back together, as I have done on countless of other occasions. The results, though not new, are always a surprise. I’m calling this series ‘Checker Portraits.’

Bulletin Board

2010-12-31T13:17:00.001-08:00

What is a bulletin board? A collection of flotsam and jetsam. A visual cacophony. An assemblage of miscellaneous things that are tacked to cork panels. Pictures that trigger tactile memories. Details that inspire creativity. Random impressions layered one over the other.

These bulletin boards have been secured to the low narrow wall of my studio above the old pegged frame that use for my easel for 20 years. I look at them every single day and only now have realized that I have never given them their due. They include pictures that I enjoy, sentimental bits and pieces, photos from past, and other things that just plain inspire me.

The best part is that there is always room for more.