I donated a robot photo (picture of a 50 foot robot sitting in a parking lot on the waterfront) to the Maine College of Art auction and went with some friends to see the preview show of all the work. Some stunning work with lots of great landscape paintings of Maine. The most interesting part, which came as a surprise, was as I was strolling by my piece. A man and wife stopped and squinted at my picture, with the husband saying, “This is really amazing. Look at the technique this artist used”, etc… and then a moment later another man dragged his friend over to squint and stare and make the same type of comments. It was a nice way to get some unsolicited comments on my work and to be a fly on the wall for the process.
The auction itself was pretty bizarre, as I didn’t expect the high energy carnival barking of the auctioneer. A blustery and annoying fellow, but he did sell about 100 pieces of art in about an hour and a half, so I guess that system works. Near the end of the auction I saw someone taking my piece off the wall (my piece was part of the silent auction, as they had a total of about 300 pieces and only included 100 in the live auction) and I asked her if she’d bought it. She said she had and apologized for not paying more, but was excited to hang it in her home. She works for a local gallery so may be a good contact to have at some point. The most interesting part of the auction was to read the bios of the artists as their work was being auctioned, as it helped to get a feel for their background and to see where their work has been shown.
• Architectural Series
I have largely finished my series of architectural buildings and composited them into photos of my area. Rather than hack away for hours at incorporating them into this page, I’ll simply provide a link to a quick photo gallery of the images, which I’ve placed on my website.
(click on the image below to open the webpage of architectural images)
• Other Project Work
I’ve also finished a few miscellaneous things:
• Here’s my version of what a tattoo should be.
• This is a picture of Bobo, my new animated character, who I hope to have speaking to the crowd at the AIB residency via a performance animation system I’m building (lot’s of technical nightmares, and the software company is telling me they basically won’t fix the glitches or support their product, which is a bit maddening)
• Here’s a new robot dog, and I’ve been manipulating my 3d images in photoshop to get more of a hand painted feel and when I print it on watercolor paper the effect is fairly pleasing.
• November trip to see Wegman
I showed most of this stuff to Bill Wegman in mid-November. He liked the robot, and he woke up his son (sick in bed with the flu) to have him take a look at my architectural series of images. I was really looking forward to his input on my wooden panels, as this is a very new direction for me. At first he didn't see a point to them and they didn't make sense to him, but as he continued looking I think he saw some of the thematic content and the treatment of the imagery, as said a few of them were beautiful. I asked him to show me his painting studio again, as his paintings that connect postcards images together are truly inspirational, and I think it helped with some of my ruminations about where I'm going with these panels.
• Robot Sculpture
The rationale for this piece is as follows: Based on Rodin’s “The Thinker”, this piece attempts to extend the picture space to include a subject that the character is contemplating. There are a handful of different objects/subjects that the robot might be contemplating. Does it change the viewers’ perception of this tableau if the subject is a flower, or a carved wooden figure, or another mechanical object?
Here's a bad photo of my robot sculpture
• Wooden Panels
I finally managed to get some passable photos of my wooden boards with collages of my images. I’ve spent so much time trying to figure out how to combine all this imagery and now simply need to try and get a concrete starting pile of these that represent the various approaches I’ve used. I'm trying to find a way to combine photos, 3d graphics, line art, and landscapes in a more organic and painterly fashion, so I've manipulated some of my images in photoshop and printed to a variety of different paper types and then collaged them onto wooden boards.... and here are my intial results, although I don't think my photos do them justice. (you can click on a thumbnail image to bring up a larger version in a new window)
• Next
It’s time to work on my video and animation and time based projects. I have a handful of things in mind and need to simply crunch away at them in hopes of finishing the bulk before my next and final visit to see Bill Wegman, and then it’s off the residency a couple of weeks later.
