Yesterday at Vanguard Gallery in Moreno Valley, I hung the (mostly) plein-air art of four ladies who love to paint scenes around Catalina Island. Terry d.Chacon, Joan Coffey, Patricia Rose Ford and Nita Harper. There was quite a lot of artwork and it was a feat of engineering and organization to get as much of their wonderful work in as possible. Their reception is on November 10th, 3-6pm.
Pat and Terry.
A very full wall! Lot’s to choose from.
Before you get too excited about my achieving second place with my chalk painting last Saturday in Moreno Valley, it was a very small field of competitors. I also had a small booth at the art fair and my beloved was being the store keeper for me, while I wore off my fingerprints. I discovered fairly early on that our choice of space to set up (chosen because putting Doug under the tree in the shade would allow me to use the umbrella to keep the blacktop I was working on from melting my fingers), was in front of the band. The band (there were several during the course of the day) and the between-bands background music was LOUD. So, to relieve Doug and allow him to walk around and repair his eardrums and sanity, I hurried through my work.
The need for speed was exacerbated by wind which took the umbrella for a tumble and meant I had to chalk with one hand while quickly rubbing the chalk into the now-scorching blacktop with the other. I finished in 2 hours, and apparently was the only one who completely finished, though other chalkers, intending to take until 4pm created larger compositions.
I had a limited amount of blue, so did the surrounding ‘atmosphere’ in red, rather than follow the original, and created far less clouds than on the mixed media painting this was based on. For this it’s more about the message than the accuracy of the map.
“That the world is round reminds us that we are on the same side.”
Lost and found!
At the chalking festival, I had a lot of spare time on Sunday, sitting next to my creation and talking to people. Across the street from me a couple of youngsters drew the above in the gutter and against the curb. Inspiration indeed!
Draw your lost things.
Draw your lost things, there upon the street:
Your heart, your head, your homework, or the key.
A part of life suddenly incomplete.
Oh things! you think, oh please come back to me!
You rack your brain for where they’re left behind,
the cafe or the office or the car.
You look and look and still you cannot find
but that they’re not the same place that you are.
You turn over a glass, a wish to make,
but still your precious things eludes your grasp.
Were they stolen? Did they evaporate?
You cannot think of who else you could ask.
Your lost things’ minds might try to draw you too,
thus wishing might just draw them back to you.
It didn’t rain at my house overnight on Saturday. However when I got to Indio, I found that there had been two hours of steady good rain there. Ugh. The city people had gotten there a little earlier and removed all the tarps to let the paintings dry. They needed to be dry before we could start on repair work, so we had a little time to commiserate between each other before we could start. Rafael’s painting – Lincoln, and Bijan’s painting (we think we read each others’ minds when we came up with such similar design ideas) had the most damage.
Some damage to the right hand corners and both hands that required a little rework. The throat dried out fine. The wash marks on the ocean wrist I just incorporated.
There were still puddles around 9:30am
Lincoln needed a nose job.
Bijan’s tarp leaked, causing a lot of damage on the neck and into the clouds.
Repair work done, just in time for the judging. Except that about 2 minutes before Kathy came by, a woman let her 3 year old run through the painting. Then yelled at me for chiding him!
The last competitor finished later in the day.
Amateur entries continued throughout the day, to the extent that there was so much judging for Kathy Dunham to do that the awards ceremony was about 40 minutes late. Here were the results in the professional category. The prizes were $2,500, $1,500 and $1,000.
1. Bijan Masoumpaneh
2. Rafael Valencia
3. Jeni Bate
The artist as part of the environment. 8’x8′, chalk on blacktop. (Photoshopped to be vertical, though you can possibly now see some of the foot damage.)
I’ll just post the pics to show the progress. It’s hard to type, my fingers are so sore and rough!
About 11am 350 fellow chalkers arrived from local schools. These are just a few of them.
One of the city photographers was kind enough to take a pic of me working on my phone.
The trees/fingers and veins/rivers are now complete.
Underpainting for the ocean.
Ocean/hand complete with waves rushing to shore/shoulder. I used one crack in the blacktop as the area behind a wave in order to minimize the impact. Couldn’t think of how to do anything with the others.
I started adding the hair/sky/space at the bottom, but then clouds came and I decided to take advantage and work on the top of the painting, as I can’t shade that part with the canopy.
Yellow on top, black/blue under and sore underneath that.
An inspector came by.
I decided to end the day by blocking in the transitions of the sunrise part of the hair as a guide for tomorrow.
I spent much of the day folded up on Miles Ave in Indio, wearing out my fingerprints, making my knees and hips sore, and straining my back. This is for a big competition. Well, big for me, anyway. I’ll let the pictures paint the thousand words as my fingers are sore from rubbing chalk into the blacktop.
Here we go!
Laying the grid to guide my outline
The outline
This is what it’s called
I look like Darth Vader at this point
Progress on the face
Face and neck mostly done
More corrections on the face. Being faceblind isn’t easy – I think** it kinda** looks like me, but I’m not sure.
The waterfall on the left of the face, and the sky in between
The field is in. I’m not entirely happy with this part and might rework it later.
Blocking in the left hand. OK, I’m done for the day.
Today I spent seven hours slaving away over a hard concrete slab. Yes, the annual Indio Chalk Festival. This year the festival was moved from outside the city hall to Miles Avenue a block away, and the street was blocked off. I knew that I was being asked to do a much larger painting this year, and had in mind that I might do a triptych, though I had no clue what exactly I was going to do. However, instead of being assigned a space, I was asked to pick one. I had the choice of concrete or blacktop, and opted for a familiar surface, mostly in the shade. The area I chose had four perfect squares with spaces in between, so I decided to use them all. I wasn’t sure whether to do four seasons (like Vivaldi’s Window) or 4 times of day, like the painting I’m working on for my timelapse video (hopefully done in time for May’s newsletter) – so I did both.
And yes, tomorrow will be the best day of the year to commit a crime – I have no fingerprints – wore them off rubbing the chalk into the concrete. Oh wait, I have a show in Indian Wells this weekend, and I ache everywhere, especially my knees.
The Plan
Winter Night
Spring Morning
Summer afternoon
Fall Evening
All four
Brief video of the chalking in Indio today.
Chalk skyscape at Indio Chalk Festival, 2013
For several years I ‘chalked’ at the Indio Chalk Festival. Grubbing away on the floor and removing all traces of fingerprints. The last couple of years there was a date conflict so I was unable to fold myself up in an abnormal posture for many long hours, however this year there is no escape from the reminder of the distance of youthful flexibility or why I don’t paint in pastels.
If you’re in the area on Friday, come and see me bringing the sky to earth, or come and join in yourself on either day. (Wear clothes that you won’t cry when they get wrecked…)
Plain blue sky.
Here are five progress steps for the painting I created at the 6th Indio Chalk Festival yesterday. I understand my painting is being washed away by rain as I write. That is the destiny of ephemeral art. It took about 5 hours.
Tops of clouds, early stages
Lower clouds taking shape
Golden reflection added.
Finished.
Skyscapes for the Soul - Jeni Bate 