A friend will help you paint….

… a real friend will help you paint a body.

Read the story of the bodies in this month’s Newsletter.

Riverside Dogs

In September I attended the Riverside Art Museum fundraiser ‘Art Bark in the Park’.  Selected artists had been given a metal dog to paint on and they were auctioned or sponsored as a fundraiser for the museum.

The reception was held in White Park in Downtown Riverside one warm evening.  There were a lot of dogs there.  I was really surprised how many.

All dogs were well behaved!

Oh look. Jeni and a Beagle. It inevitably has the poem about dogs painted into it.

Some dogs were painted on the back too (mine is the colorful one in the middle)

The crowd matched the amount of dogs

No on had to pick up after their dog!  The perfect pooch.

One up for adoption

None of them used the tree…..

There was a huge variety of decoration

…and they all found a new home…

The Puppy project

Riverside Art Museum is holding a fundraiser called Art Bark in the Park to which I applied and was assigned a pup. I decided to paint the pup in oil – a skyscape with lawns on the bottom of each paw with dogs on, and my sonnet about dogs painted into the clouds.  So far I’ve done the sky and the lawns.  I will need to wait a week or so until that is dry enough to add the dogs and poems.  I didn’t know until I picked up the dog that I was getting a beagle.

The blank canvas. I’d had to fix the undercoat in a few places. The difference in undercoat color won’t affect the painting.

My fellow artist Mary Foote came over to see this as a demo so took some photos of me in action

I was showing Mary how to blend clouds in oil

Photographed this one at an angle to get the entire dog in.

And it’s possible to paint on the back, so I have another canvas to dream up!

Preserving public art in a city of earthquakes — thinking city

Mexico City’s public art is an integral part of the city’s identity and history. But in a country prone to devastating earthquakes, what is the fate of these creative monuments, asks Martha Pskowski – and is meaningful preservation possible? Mexico City is a bastion of public art in the Americas, with murals, mosaics and monuments lining its […]

via Preserving public art in a city of earthquakes — thinking city //

October Monthly mailing

Here’s my monthly art news for October.

Hermosa Beach

Saturday night’s reception was quite a change from the previous night in Temecula.  It was the hopping place to be.  We had about 30 artists showing work and a lot of supporters.  The theme of the show was ‘Indivisible’.  Rafael McMaster, our leader at Hermosa Beach Artist Collective had designed a logo to embody this:  Create a division sign, then put an x through it.  There were a couple blank canvases on the wall next to the door and everyone was encouraged to ‘make their mark’!

Despite the quality of the artwork, I think I was the only artist whose artwork embodied the theme of the show.  Not sure if it was good or bad that a couple people commented that they thought my painting, behind the desk which functions as the bar during receptions, was the logo for the show.  Hmm.  Comments encouraged.  One of the things that I like about my painting, “One Side“, originally designed for entry into a competition on art to promote world peace, is that I could photoshop the saying in any language for reproductions.

“One Side” behind the desk/bar at HBAC

 

Article about the Salton Sea

I had heard that Bombay Beach is such a close-knit community, it’s one of the last places that you can let your kid run the streets in safety, but I had not realized it was becoming such an artists’ community. I guess they reach out to LA artists more than local ones…..

Here’s the full article on the Palm Springs Life website.

 

July’s monthly newsletter

One of the highlights of this month’s Skyscapes newletter is the honorable mention in an international ‘Skies‘ competition.

 

Zooming back

Have been away for awhile so no blogging.  This time that I flew to Heathrow, I took United, so I ended up in Terminal 2, whereas it seems just about every other airline that flies out of LA uses Terminal 3.  So, on the way home, I had time to seek out some of the artwork at this terminal.  Slipstream is a huge sculpture that occupies a massive covered area between the terminal and the buses/taxis area.

“Slipstream”

The associated sign says a little more about it, and there’s yet more information here.  I don’t see any information about material, but it seems to be made of aluminum.  Or aluminium, if you use the local dialect. Sadly, despite the enticing shape, we’re not apparently allowed to slide on it.

Indio Chalk Festival, Day 4 – the results

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.)