New Group of Canoe Strip Canvas Pieces

I had my second group of "canoe strip canvas" pieces photographed by RL Photo Studio in Burlington, Vermont a couple of months ago. With this group I experimented with painting the entire surface, taking wood grain out of the work. Because the pictures are, for the most part, taken straight on center, the best indication of the shape is found in the drop shadow. 

This first piece was painted while doing a residency at Vermont Studio Center. The free-form style was a big change and challenge for me, but was completely the result of being in that intensive environment and being pushed to try new things.

Timeless

acrylic, milk paint, and shellac on wood

32" x 41.5" x 7"

2017

I have a small garden plot in front of my house where I grow thing deer won't eat, like kale and mesclun mix. I love grabbing hand fulls of greens whenever I walk by and eating them immediately.

Garden Snack

acrylic, gouache, milk paint, and shellac on wood

32" x 43.5" x 7"

2017

I love my truck, a 2003 Toyota Tacoma with >200,000 miles. If you saw it you would think, "I bet that's Rob's truck."

Truck Love

mixed media on wood

32" x 43.5" x 10"

2017

Twilight

acrylic, milk paint, and shellac on wood

32" x 35.5" x 6.5"

2017

Below are two new pieces in my "ART?" series. I love that it is a completely ambiguous question, allowing many interpretations and many times more answers, so I feel it is a question worth repeating and recreating in different forms. Ideally, the ambiguity spurs discussion and thought, which I believe is more important than any specific interpretations people identify. Personally, though, I'm kind of stuck on the interpretation of what art can do in this increasingly divisive and scary political environment the US is experiencing; as in, "What good is art?" or "How can art be used to bring people together?" However, I love hearing what other people think when they see it.

ART? (4)

acrylic, graphite, milk paint, and shellac on wood

32" x 36" x 5.5"

2017

To construct ART?(5) I used the actual forms from my 16 foot canoe. 

ART? (5)

acrylic, gouache, milk paint, and shellac on wood

32" x 35.5" x 13"

2017

Because the piece is so deep, I thought it was necessary to take images from each side as well.

ART (5) 

second view

ART (5) 

third view

I have a couple of show scheduled for 2018 where I hope to display these and my earlier ones. Stay tuned for more info.

Residency at Vermont Studio Center

I was at the Vermont Studio Center last week for a one week residency with 59 other Vermont artists. One week isn't really enough time to get a significant amount of work done, but it was a good opportunity to focus on work for a week and meet other Vermont artists.

I've decided to dedicate this year to working on my Flag Proposal Series so I had prepared three of them to work on during my stay at VSC. After a couple of days I realized my goals for what I was going to accomplish were completely unreasonable. I've always known that my process was slow but I thought that if I had a week to just focus without having to worry about cooking and shopping or any of the other various distractions I normally have, that I would get a lot done. I learned that the work is just slow, regardless of how many other things I have to do.

By way of background, this series is part of my efforts to get the American flag replaced with one of my designs. I've completed three already and I hope to get enough of them done by the end of the year for a show. After last week I think this goal may be unreasonable but I'm trying to focus to see how far I can get. I'll be real happy if I can finish six this year.

This first one, a nine-sided flag, has been the biggest struggle design-wise. The middle section is the second I've made for it and I'm still not happy, though I need to look at the images more to decide what to do. I'm also not sure about the orientation either -- horizontal, vertical, or diagonal. 

I'm happy with the direction and progress of this one, trapezoid flag. I still need to paint the center but I'm not worried about it at this point. I think the salamander-shaped, epoxy-filled, knot in the future blue-ish section is a great addition.  

This final one, double-star or double-sun flag, I am worried about because I know how difficult it will be for construct. I need to fit all the pieces together so they overlap but are still offset by about an eighth of an inch. I'm not looking forward to the assembly but at least I have the excuse of having to fix my router and finishing the others before getting back to it. I thought I would finish the other two and get well into this one during my time at VSC but I still have a ways to go on the others and I never touched this one, other than to arrange it. 

The overlapping circles are constructed, and will be painted, like this older piece, Forever Holiday, except with variations of blue rather than red, yellow blue:

To see the direction of the work, here are images of the first ones:

First Flag

shellac on curly maple, cherry, and bird's-eye maple

24" x 41" x 1"

2009

 Starry Night Flag

shellac on curly maple, cherry, and bird's-eye maple

26.5" x 26.5" x 1

2010

  Inverted Chevron Flag

shellac on curly maple, curly birch, and bird's-eye maple

53" x 34" x 1.5"

2010

J.T. Kirkland @ Vermont Studio Center

One of my favorite blogs to follow is J.T. Kirkland's Thinking About My Art because he is a fellow traveler in the quest to find an aesthetic path that celebrates wood as art. So I was happy to hear he was going to be doing a one month residency at the Vermont Studio Center because it would give me a chance to meet him and see his work in person.

He recently started a new series that caused quite a bit of debate on his blog because of the difficulty in experiencing the effect of his technique through images. He has been playing with the subtle reflective qualities of finishes (gloss, semi-gloss, matte) and using it to "paint" designs on top of veneers he has glued to plywood. In the first series of images he posted, and many of the later ones as well, it was essentially impossible to see any effect from the finishes in the pictures. So with this visit, I would get to see for myself.

I can say that J.T. has been busy exploring his new series and starting some other ones as well. He has generated a lot of work in a short amount of time and it is interesting to see how it has progressed. With this veneer/finish painting series, you really do have to be in front of them to understand them. From some angles, often straight on, you don't see the effect of the finish, then when you move, it will suddenly appear. It is actually an interesting effect that surprises the viewer, taking a piece that is perhaps initially dismissed and causing both a visual and intellectual awakening.

The best example of this is the piece I have the worst picture of, his yellowheart/purpleheart piece with square on the far left of the wall below (most of these are 12" x 12"). I think the simplicity of the yellow and purple veneers work well with the subtlety of the square.

I needed to take the picture from this angle to show the effect of the finish, straight on it is unimpressive. You can also see how much the rosewood piece on the right changes between the two angles. Above, it just looks like veneer on wood, below ghost-like perpendicular lines appear.
I think this piece on the left is also very effective (yellowheart and padauk) With some of the pieces I think he left some of the lines unfinished, with just the raw wood and this might be one of them.


As you can see from the angles of the images, I struggled to find a position where I could capture the effect of the finish, often times that angle wasn't the best for showing the overall composition. The piece below, second from the left (purpleheart and black ash), was interesting in that from some angles you would just see vertical lines but from this angle you would suddenly see a checker board design. The piece on the left has diagonal lines going all the way through but you can only see it on the lighter stripes from this angle.
J.T. has also been playing with real paints during his residency. With these below, his shapes are more organic, reflective of the wood grain, and designed to highlight the grain patterns that he finds most interesting.
With these two below, the wood is used more as a canvas than as a part of the design. With the one on the left below, however, the colors and shapes of the paint are subtle complements to the grain.These paintings also integrate different types of finishes that add ghost lines to them, visible only from certain angles. I'm not sure that the technique is as effective with the paintings, however. The colors are so dominant and the finishes so subtle, that I don't find that it adds significantly to the work.

It was great seeing what J.T. is up to and talking to him about the work. I think the residency was a great opportunity for him to explore different directions of a new series. It is especially interesting to see the surprising directions that new work takes. I like where it is going and believe that the strongest of his pieces are the ones that really focus on subtlety. It is too easy to do too much and with this work, being caught by surprise is what sets it apart.