Category: Art

Center: “Chartres”, 18″x20″, encaustic, $500
Others: various, 6″x6″, $100 each

My November, 2015 wall at Archway Gallery features my first public exhibition of my hexagon frameworks. This piece has a subtle under-etchings and is topped by stenciled etchings using instruments I talked my dentist into providing. After a friend’s comment that it had a New Orleans vibe, I named it after a venerable French Quarter street: Chartres.

The larger of the 6″x6″ pieces are some of my earlier pieces where I was doing more elaborate framing and applying a 2-part resin top-coat. The upper left is one of my pieces featuring vermiculite, and the lower right is one of my rare abstracts.

On September 23rd, 2015 the Visual Arts Alliance held the opening reception and awards ceremony for the 33rd Juried Membership Exhibition at 1600 Smith in downtown Houston. This exhibition was open to all current VAA members and was juried by the notable Gus Kopriva, owner of Redbud Gallery in Houston.

From the 457 submissions from 126 member artists Kopriva selected 65 works by 66 artists that will be on display at 1600 Smith Street through Saturday, November 22, 2015.

I was delighted to have my recent piece “Winter – Take It Away Kid” selected as one of those 65 works.  It is one of many I am producing for my upcoming solo exhibition in February at Archway Gallery utilizing 3D-printed material incorporated into the artwork.

A stark tree image buried under many layers of encaustic rises and enlarges, with the final iteration being a large 3D-printed rendering emerging off the surface of the encaustic.

You may recognize this as a progression of my “Song of the whippoorwill” encaustic that was in the Lawndale Big Show last year. It also incorporates a bit of my “Maestro if you please” piece with the music score.

As a whole it depicts a memory of my sitting in the back of my high school orchestra in the percussion section, watching idly as the strings rehearsed a movement from Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” – a piece that really inspired me to take up the violin.

The music score is the opening violin solo from Vivaldi’s Winter movement of The Four Seasons. Mari Samuelsen performs it at the 0:44 mark:

 

 

Pearl, 12″x9″, $300
Ginger Minj, 12″x9″, $300
Violet Chachki, 12″x9″, $300

I have three pieces at the front of Archway Gallery in June for our “INK&IMAGE 2015” exhibition.

My pieces were all created by pressing ink through or over cardstock cutouts onto rice paper which was then adhered to gessoed birch panels. Tinted or un-tinted encaustic media was then layered over the work, fusing with a blowtorch, buffed to a high gloss, then mounted onto custom-made float frames.

Titles were reflective of my having to whittle down from a dozen raw prints to a Top Three for this show at the same time “RuPaul’s Drag Race” was about to crown its winner from their own Top Three drag queens with colorful names: Pearl, Violet Chachki, and Ginger Minj.

Mannequins at the leatherbar: It’s still early, 12″x9″, $300
Mannequins at the leatherbar: Thruple, 6″x6″, $100
Mannequins at the leatherbar: Let’s dance, 18″x24″, $750
Mannequins at the leatherbar: Thruple, 12″x9″, $300
Mannequins at the leatherbar: Quadruple, 6″x6″, $100

For my back wallspace at Archway Gallery I put up all my remaining Mannequins at the leatherbar series in celebration of Pride Month.

El muerto y las flores, 9″x12″ $300
Girando el muerto, 12″x12″, SOLD
FIEsTa, 6″x24″, SOLD

 

Following a fantastic show at King William Fair in San Antonio, I am in full Cinco de Mayo mode for May. My exhibition wall space at Archway Gallery has my sugar skull and Fiesta pieces, though I will be taking these on the road to the Allen Arts Festival and the Gulf Coast Arts Festival.

And I now have a ceramic tile version of Girando el muerto available at the art fairs, at Archway Gallery, and in my online shop:

 

 

(left) Basswood grove basement, 24″x18″, encaustic & vermiculite, SOLD
(center) Basswood hurricane, 15″x11″, encaustic & vermiculite, $500
(right) Poplar basement,24″x18″ encaustic & vermiculite, $750

My Archway Gallery exhibit for February continues my tree basement series. The upper portions have a smooth sky background with one or more image transfers of my favorite trees for this series. The lower sections are a very textured area with my favorite additive, vermiculite, embedded to give it a golden hue.

I show the creative progression of Basswood grove basement and Basswood hurricane on my JoelAndersonArt Instagram account, together with some mannequin pieces I was creating for a separate show. You can see the progression from raw plywood to finished, framed piece.

It didn’t dawn on me until late in the series that the predominant colors I was using in the basement section were the colors I painted the house I owned in the ’90s.

The original title of Basswood hurricane was ‘Basswood mini-storage’, given that it was a smaller-scale version. But after fusing the white sky the image of a hurricane was pretty pronounced, so I felt a name change was in order rather than over/redoing things.

Finally, researching this I’ve learned that what we in the US call a basswood, it Europe the more predominate term is lime tree, even though it produces no limes. I thought that would be too confusing, sorry, so I stuck with basswood.

 

I attended the Artists’ Business Practices educational event sponsored by the Visual Arts Alliance where David Hardaker of Avis Frank Gallery was the host speaker. One of David’s key pieces of advice was to ‘get your art out there’ and he spoke highly of using bars, restaurants, coffee shops, etc as venues.

Being an every-so-often patron of Collina’s Italian Cafe in the Heights, I had already made observations and done a little research on who had their art on their walls.  But being inspired by David I approached the manager when I was in the area and got the low-down. Seeing that there was an open wall I decided to grab it.

There were really just a few conditions:  1) There is no insurance on the pieces (alright I guess); 2) No animals (not a problem); 3) Food & beverage depictions preferred (not a problem!).

So up went my “Spin the bottle” encaustic and below that the accompanying ceramic print.  I took the opportunity to try to make it as easy as possible for anyone to buy these by putting QR codes on the labels linking to PayPal.

And since this was cause for celebration, we had a nice dinner there that evening with friends to mark the occasion.

I’ll see how this goes, and keep my eye out for other good places to ‘get my art out there’.

(upper left) “Foggy flight”, 11″x15″, encaustic, SOLD
(lower left) “Foggy flight 2″, 11″x15”, encaustic, $400
(center) “Basswood basement”, 24″x18″, encaustic & vermiculite, SOLD
(upper right) “Basswood on spiraling nuggets”, encaustic & vermiculite, $300
(lower right) “Basswood in molten rockfield”, encaustic, $300

The theme of my January 2015 exhibit at Archway Gallery is trees, birds, and vermiculite.

I came across vermiculite as an encaustic art additive by watching Andy Braitman’s instructional videos on YouTube.  I found some at the local Lowe’s hardware store.  I knew if it didn’t work out I could always toss the remainder in the garden.

My first piece using vermiculite was Mr Koi.  Then I used it again in Spanish Moss Tree before setting it aside for awhile.

When I returned to the tree theme I reemployed it in two pieces:  “Basswood basement” (center painting above), and “Basswood on spiraling nuggets” (upper right).  Those two plus “Basswood in molten rockfield”  have smooth-as-glass upper sections with image transfers of basswood trees over lower sections in which the encaustic is built up and left rugged.

The artwork on the left both depict birds in flight near a lone tree.  “Foggy flight” (upper left) is mono-color with the birds under numerous layers of encaustic, giving a very foggy vibe.  “Foggy flight 2” (lower left) has fewer layers of encaustic and uses a full-color tree.

Those that follow me on Pinterest may recognize that “Basswood basement” was inspired by “The Tree of Life” by Erna de Vries.  Here is her original:

All are available and on exhibit at Archway Gallery Jan 2 through Feb 5, 2015.