As Promised

As promised, here are some shots from my drawing books of the studies that I've been spending my time on. I've taken a break from my other drawings to focus on the installations. These are meant to get me looking at the spaces more closely, help me to distill the parts out of the images of the spaces better. Hopefully, theses drawings will influence the installations, maybe some of them might become installations. Most of them are from Baroque Palaces and some are from Gothic Cathedrals. I will probably get into some Vegas imagery as well. Using the ball-point pen helps me to keep the drawings fast and to focus on the look of the space rather than the finish of the drawings. I do find myself loving the marks... and loving making the marks, however. These are really meant only to be studies but I could see them leaping onto nicer paper, or perhaps onto the wall at some point. I think the better ones, of course, are the more ambiguous drawings. I'm struggling with adding too much information, and not getting at that "essence" or "glimpse" that I'm looking for.

Below is the diorama that I built last week. I'm pretty friggin' excited about this one. I'm going to use this to work through installation ideas more quickly. I'm also probably going to turn some of these mini-installations into stereoscopic images. It will work as another fold of space. I built the diorama to scale with the working walls of mt studio.

Promise

I think that this is what optimism looks like.

I revel in the feel and look of a crisp, clean new notebook or sketch book. When I sit down to start working in a new book, it feels cleansing in a way. There is an air of possibility that comes with the blank expanse of paper. The clean page clears my head. Potentiality. Setting out. Not much beats that feeling in my art-making practice.

I think that this is what optimism sounds like:

http://www.wfmu.org/playlists/FP

I've been listening to this show a lot. It's pretty great.

Printmania!

In case you were wondering, this is what I've been doing lately. For the most part at least. Nicole and I just spent two and a half weeks of grueling print marathon. We just finished up a set of wedding invitations for a good friend. Running into almost every conceivable problem with the silkscreen process, we wound up replacing most of our set-up at home while problem solving and eliminating variables. After finally finishing the project, we now have to go back and change an address. So...the fun isn't over yet. While I love printing and am extremely excited about getting Nightingale Press off the ground (we are currently working on our first "real" job as well!), this particular project has been a bit of an ordeal and a great learning experience for getting our print shop running smoothly. We've also been able to learn a lot about timing and working with clients.

Needless to say, I haven't been able to get very much art or reading done in over two weeks. Damn. This really threw me off my routine, but I'm glad to report that I'm back on it and feeling pretty good. I'm getting excited about some new drawings I'm doing of architectural spaces/details that I'll post images of as soon as I have a group from which I can select a number of good ones.

These are the direction cards for Erin and Jon's invitations. We now also have a blog up for Nightingale Printing Press until we get the means to make/buy a website.

http://nightingaleprintingpress.blogspot.com